Priest's Sermons
August 2016
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 2: 4 – 13
Sunday, August 28, 2016 Hebrews 13: 1 – 8, 15 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 14: 1, 7 – 14
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
Luke 14: 11
The waiting room of a hospital emergency room can be a very humbling place. You have come to the ER because you are sick and suddenly find yourself among a host of folks who also are not well. Some of those folks may appear to be sicker than you; some less so. Some of those folks may be alone and some may be caring for crying babies even as they seek medical attention for themselves. Some may be grandparents attempting to comfort a sick grandchild. If you go to an ER waiting room in the middle of the night, some of the folk may be homeless and just looking for a place to sleep.
You may, but probably will not, bump into people you know. And if you feel the need to go to the ER, you probably have not cared much about your clothes and what you look like. The ER will triage and if you are short of breath or bleeding profusely, you will be seen quickly. Otherwise, you will need to wait, wait with a whole host of others with a variety of bodily complaints. In the ER, those who come in by ambulance are given pride of place as they are taken immediately into a treatment room and do not have to sojourn in the waiting room.
Many hospitals now give an average wait time on billboards. None of us like to wait especially when we are not feeling well and the hospitals are responding. But a sojourn in a hospital ER is not an altogether bad thing.
A sojourn in a hospital ER can be humbling.
Our experience in a hospital waiting room is very different from our experience at a large wedding reception. At a large wedding reception, the bride and groom are usually seated at the center of a head table. Seated next to the bride and groom are their bridesmaids and groomsmen. Close to the head table are smaller tables designated for the families of the bride and groom. The rest of the room is set with tables for friends. All those in attendance have paid close attention to their attire and conversation flows freely among the guests. And, unless you spill a glass of red wine down the front of your wedding clothes, humbling is probably not a word we would use to describe our experience as a guest at a wedding reception.
The word “humble,” like “human,” come from the same root – the Greek word humus which means “earth.” To be humble is, as we say, to be “down to earth.” A humble person is someone who recognizes that we all are “formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return,” in the words of the funeral liturgy. A humble person knows life is both bitter and sweet for all of us and no one of us can change that reality. A humble person can learn from the inevitable bitterness of life, aware that none of us can always control what happens to us.
This morning in our gospel reading, we join Jesus at a Sabbath day dinner, where we are told, Jesus watches the guests choose the places of honor. Those seated closest to the host would be privileged by their proximity to the host. A guest seated next to the host would, no doubt, have the ear of the host, the ability to ask for favors or negotiate a deal. And just as we all know at a wedding reception that those seated to the right and to the left of the bride and groom are “distinguished,” so, too, all the other guests at this Sabbath day dinner would know that those seated to the right and to the left of the host were special.
Jesus warns those who choose these seats of honor that they may discover they are not as special as they thought. Someone may arrive at the dinner who is more distinguished and they would lose their front row seats.
And then Jesus turns to the host, telling the host that he is not to invite friends, family and rich neighbors to his dinner but rather the “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Friends, family and rich neighbors will return our invitation to dinner with one of their own and the host will have given nothing as he will have been repaid.
Jesus begins with a story about humility and ends with a story about hospitality. Hospitality is the root of the word for hospital and before the modern era, the church was the place that looked after “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Modern hospitals may be more or less hospitable, but in an ER waiting room, we all are guests. And there are no places of honor as we all are hoping that the ministrations of the doctors and nurses will relieve our aches and pains.
“Humble people walk comfortably in every group,” writes the Benedictine sister Joan Chittister. A humble person is as comfortable with those gathered in a hospital waiting room as with those at a wedding reception. A humble person has nothing to prove, nothing that needs to scream: “Look at me! I’m special!” A humble person is a person who knows that life, and my life in particular, is just one very small part of a much, much bigger picture, all drawn by God.
Humility, I was reminded this week, is often construed as meekness or passivity. To be humble, we often believe, is not to draw attention to oneself, to refrain from being the center of attention. And from time to time, here at St. Asaph’s, I have discovered that folk do not want be thanked for a job well done or singled out for whatever the reason. That is not humility. That is false humility.
We all have something to give and something to receive. Humility is recognizing our gifts and sharing them. Humility is being able to receive thanks as well as criticism. Humility is about keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground, in the sure and certain conviction that God planted us here for a reason. Humility invites us to be extraordinarily comfortable in our own shoes and always willing to buy a new pair when the old ones no longer fit.
One night when I was on call at MCV, I was called down to the ER. When I arrived, I met the family of a patient. The staff had told them my name. As I extended my hand and introduced myself, I could see the look of surprise on their faces. “Bambi?” one family member said. “We were thinking you would show up in stiletto heels, fish net stockings and long red nails.” “I can call you another chaplain if you would like,” I responded.
This week I learned that humor, like humility and humanity all have the same root. And so humor, like humility and humanity, are all about being grounded, grounded and rooted in the reality of our being – made by God from the earth, destined by God for glory and honor, but not there yet.
What I know is that my mother named me “Bambi” because she liked the book by Felix Salten. What she liked about the book I never knew. What I also know is that my father did not think “Bambi” was “official” enough and so the name on my birth certificate is “Barbara” after my mother. My Dad knew the name “Bambi” did not carry much weight (a.k.a. status or honor) and wanted his daughter to be special. So Mom deferred to Dad, but always called me “Bambi” and never Barbara.
My name came up again when I went to seminary and some faculty wondered if I should use Barbara rather than Bambi to establish my authority in a parish. I have no idea what you all felt when I came among you and told you my name was Bambi. I remember when I learned that some faculty thought I should use Barbara rather than Bambi, thinking how much I had given up to follow my call and I was not about to give up my name!
I do believe my mother, who was very down to earth and could not put on airs if she tried, gave me a great gift but one I only recognized after I became a chaplain. In the midst of trauma and grief, introducing myself as “Bambi” somewhat immediately lightened the load, if you will. We could laugh about my name. We could laugh in the midst of tears.
We could laugh in the midst of all the pain of life in this world which is, for many, often more than we think we can bear. Barbara never would have cut it. Thanks Mom! Be humble and human and humorous, and keep your feet on the ground.
Sunday, August 28, 2016 Hebrews 13: 1 – 8, 15 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 14: 1, 7 – 14
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
Luke 14: 11
The waiting room of a hospital emergency room can be a very humbling place. You have come to the ER because you are sick and suddenly find yourself among a host of folks who also are not well. Some of those folks may appear to be sicker than you; some less so. Some of those folks may be alone and some may be caring for crying babies even as they seek medical attention for themselves. Some may be grandparents attempting to comfort a sick grandchild. If you go to an ER waiting room in the middle of the night, some of the folk may be homeless and just looking for a place to sleep.
You may, but probably will not, bump into people you know. And if you feel the need to go to the ER, you probably have not cared much about your clothes and what you look like. The ER will triage and if you are short of breath or bleeding profusely, you will be seen quickly. Otherwise, you will need to wait, wait with a whole host of others with a variety of bodily complaints. In the ER, those who come in by ambulance are given pride of place as they are taken immediately into a treatment room and do not have to sojourn in the waiting room.
Many hospitals now give an average wait time on billboards. None of us like to wait especially when we are not feeling well and the hospitals are responding. But a sojourn in a hospital ER is not an altogether bad thing.
A sojourn in a hospital ER can be humbling.
Our experience in a hospital waiting room is very different from our experience at a large wedding reception. At a large wedding reception, the bride and groom are usually seated at the center of a head table. Seated next to the bride and groom are their bridesmaids and groomsmen. Close to the head table are smaller tables designated for the families of the bride and groom. The rest of the room is set with tables for friends. All those in attendance have paid close attention to their attire and conversation flows freely among the guests. And, unless you spill a glass of red wine down the front of your wedding clothes, humbling is probably not a word we would use to describe our experience as a guest at a wedding reception.
The word “humble,” like “human,” come from the same root – the Greek word humus which means “earth.” To be humble is, as we say, to be “down to earth.” A humble person is someone who recognizes that we all are “formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return,” in the words of the funeral liturgy. A humble person knows life is both bitter and sweet for all of us and no one of us can change that reality. A humble person can learn from the inevitable bitterness of life, aware that none of us can always control what happens to us.
This morning in our gospel reading, we join Jesus at a Sabbath day dinner, where we are told, Jesus watches the guests choose the places of honor. Those seated closest to the host would be privileged by their proximity to the host. A guest seated next to the host would, no doubt, have the ear of the host, the ability to ask for favors or negotiate a deal. And just as we all know at a wedding reception that those seated to the right and to the left of the bride and groom are “distinguished,” so, too, all the other guests at this Sabbath day dinner would know that those seated to the right and to the left of the host were special.
Jesus warns those who choose these seats of honor that they may discover they are not as special as they thought. Someone may arrive at the dinner who is more distinguished and they would lose their front row seats.
And then Jesus turns to the host, telling the host that he is not to invite friends, family and rich neighbors to his dinner but rather the “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Friends, family and rich neighbors will return our invitation to dinner with one of their own and the host will have given nothing as he will have been repaid.
Jesus begins with a story about humility and ends with a story about hospitality. Hospitality is the root of the word for hospital and before the modern era, the church was the place that looked after “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Modern hospitals may be more or less hospitable, but in an ER waiting room, we all are guests. And there are no places of honor as we all are hoping that the ministrations of the doctors and nurses will relieve our aches and pains.
“Humble people walk comfortably in every group,” writes the Benedictine sister Joan Chittister. A humble person is as comfortable with those gathered in a hospital waiting room as with those at a wedding reception. A humble person has nothing to prove, nothing that needs to scream: “Look at me! I’m special!” A humble person is a person who knows that life, and my life in particular, is just one very small part of a much, much bigger picture, all drawn by God.
Humility, I was reminded this week, is often construed as meekness or passivity. To be humble, we often believe, is not to draw attention to oneself, to refrain from being the center of attention. And from time to time, here at St. Asaph’s, I have discovered that folk do not want be thanked for a job well done or singled out for whatever the reason. That is not humility. That is false humility.
We all have something to give and something to receive. Humility is recognizing our gifts and sharing them. Humility is being able to receive thanks as well as criticism. Humility is about keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground, in the sure and certain conviction that God planted us here for a reason. Humility invites us to be extraordinarily comfortable in our own shoes and always willing to buy a new pair when the old ones no longer fit.
One night when I was on call at MCV, I was called down to the ER. When I arrived, I met the family of a patient. The staff had told them my name. As I extended my hand and introduced myself, I could see the look of surprise on their faces. “Bambi?” one family member said. “We were thinking you would show up in stiletto heels, fish net stockings and long red nails.” “I can call you another chaplain if you would like,” I responded.
This week I learned that humor, like humility and humanity all have the same root. And so humor, like humility and humanity, are all about being grounded, grounded and rooted in the reality of our being – made by God from the earth, destined by God for glory and honor, but not there yet.
What I know is that my mother named me “Bambi” because she liked the book by Felix Salten. What she liked about the book I never knew. What I also know is that my father did not think “Bambi” was “official” enough and so the name on my birth certificate is “Barbara” after my mother. My Dad knew the name “Bambi” did not carry much weight (a.k.a. status or honor) and wanted his daughter to be special. So Mom deferred to Dad, but always called me “Bambi” and never Barbara.
My name came up again when I went to seminary and some faculty wondered if I should use Barbara rather than Bambi to establish my authority in a parish. I have no idea what you all felt when I came among you and told you my name was Bambi. I remember when I learned that some faculty thought I should use Barbara rather than Bambi, thinking how much I had given up to follow my call and I was not about to give up my name!
I do believe my mother, who was very down to earth and could not put on airs if she tried, gave me a great gift but one I only recognized after I became a chaplain. In the midst of trauma and grief, introducing myself as “Bambi” somewhat immediately lightened the load, if you will. We could laugh about my name. We could laugh in the midst of tears.
We could laugh in the midst of all the pain of life in this world which is, for many, often more than we think we can bear. Barbara never would have cut it. Thanks Mom! Be humble and human and humorous, and keep your feet on the ground.
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 1: 4 – 10
Sunday, August 21, 2016 Hebrews 12: 18 – 29
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 10 – 17
And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
Luke 13: 11
Every Friday, the table is set in many Jewish homes, dressed with the family’s best linens and set with their finest silver and china. On the table are two loaves of twisted bread, a glass of wine and two candles. Just before sunset, the woman of the house lights the candles, and then covering her eyes, prays: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His Commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Shabbat. With the lighting of the candles on Friday night, faithful Jews remember and celebrate the Sabbath, God’s gift and promise of rest.
From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, faithful Jews will refrain from work, worship in the synagogue and enjoy the goodness of God’s creation. The Sabbath is the one holy day commanded by God in the Ten Commandments when God tells Israel: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Six days Israel could work but on the seventh, Israel was to rest as God rested on the seventh day of creation.
On the seventh day of creation, after God created the light and the dark, the seas and the dry land, fruits and flowers, animals of all kinds and finally humankind, God rested. God rested, not from exhaustion or the fatigue of hard labor, but more like a painter who, after finishing a work of art, steps back to admire his handiwork. Like an artist whose has laid down his brush for the last time, God rested in the perfection of God’s work.
And so God called God’s people to set aside the seventh day of the week, to celebrate the glory of God, to remember what God has done and look forward to the completion of God’s purposes for us and for all of creation. Six days we can labor, but on the seventh we are called to remember and to celebrate. For the Jews, the Sabbath is “a taste of the world to come,” in the words of one commentator, a day of re-creation in anticipation of the time when God will come again and make all things new. In the words of the rabbis, “ As Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel alive.”
Keeping the Sabbath means coming to rest, letting go of all those many tasks that demand our attention the other six days of the week. You and I have grown up in a culture that recognizes Sunday as a day when most people are “off,” schools and banks are closed, and mail is not delivered. But in the ancient world, one day looked pretty much like every other day and when the Jews refused to work on the Sabbath, many perceived them to be lazy. To the pagans, this Jewish practice made no sense.
And the pagans were not the only ones who were troubled by this practice. Within Judaism, the command to do no work on the Sabbath raised up the issue of what exactly constituted “work.” Laying brick, as the Jews had done for Pharaoh was clearly work. But what about preparing meals, giving your animals water or caring for a sick family member? The Jews wanted to honor the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, but how to interpret the commandment was not always clear.
Some things must get done and to this day, prohibitions against work on the Jewish Sabbath respect and acknowledge concerns for health and safety. Meal preparation is understood as “work” and must be done before the beginning of the Sabbath, but leading one’s ox and donkey to water on the Sabbath, as Jesus acknowledges in our text, although work, is allowed during the Sabbath rest. Insofar as Jews are able, faithful Jews are to leave aside the tasks of daily life in order to rest in God alone.
And so, we meet Jesus this morning in our reading from Luke, healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath. And Jesus is met with an indignant Jewish religious leader who accuses Jesus of “working” on the Sabbath. And before we condemn too quickly this “leader of the synagogue” let us remember that we, too, would be indignant if the company we hired to install new carpeting insisted upon doing the work at 8:00 a.m., on a Sunday morning. We, like the Jews then and now, would frown upon such a disturbance on a day set aside for worship and rest. So the leader of the synagogue takes the crowd to task saying: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”
But for Jesus, the Sabbath is a day of liberation, a day when we are freed from the cares and anxieties of this world as we remember and celebrate God’s faithful presence among us and God’s dream that God’s very good creation will, one day, be very good once more. Sabbath is a gift to us from God who wants us to trust and rest in God’s love. The healing of this crippled woman is a sign of God’s promised rest and renewal for all of creation. This woman who has been unable to stand up straight for eighteen years, bent over by affliction, is now given, without even asking, the dignity of being able to hold her head up. Her re-creation is the gift of the Sabbath, not just for her but for all of us.
The idea of a Sabbath rest was and continues to be, odd. We are a people whose identity is usually grounded in what we do, how much we can accomplish, and how much we can produce. The important part of our lives is our work, what we can do, whether or not we are compensated. Just “being” seems fruitless, pointless and a waste of time. Not working makes us feel useless, like we are doing nothing.
We live between work and “vacations,” a respite from the rate race, ultimately “retiring” as if any of us can ever really retire from life. Sabbath time is not a vacation, but a time in which God can re-create us to keep on keeping on. Jesus heals this crippled woman to set her free to return to her community praising God, making her a witness to the good news that God can and will free God’s creation from all that binds them. This crippled woman is not given a vacation but a new life.
Following the resurrection, the observance of the seventh day, Saturday, took a back seat to Sunday, the first day of the week and the day of resurrection. Most Christians now hallow Sunday rather than Saturday as our day of Sabbath rest. Unfortunately, preparing for Sunday’s worship does not always make Sunday a day of “rest,” not for sure the kind of rest Jews intended by all their prohibitions against work on the Sabbath. Making “church” happen is no small task and Sunday mornings for many of us can be as tasking and challenging as any other day in the week. Of course, we all have Sunday afternoon.
Taking a nap on Sunday afternoon would be very much in keeping with the Jewish understanding of Sabbath. So too, would be asking those in your family who they think God is and looks like and acts like. Sunday afternoons would be a good time to wonder about why you went to church, if you did, in the morning. Sunday afternoons are probably not a good time to begin stressing out about Monday morning. Sabbath time is God’s time and we need to hallow that time, to protect that time from all the many diversions and distractions that will invariably foist themselves upon us. Do nothing this afternoon. If God had the confidence to rest after creating six days, surely we can rest in the assurance that nothing we say or do is so critical we cannot lay it all aside. Take a nap, eat leftovers, enjoy those you love, turn the T.V. off and do not go shopping. I think our newest generation calls this “hanging out.” Hang out with God this afternoon and enjoy a bit of Sabbath time.
Sunday, August 21, 2016 Hebrews 12: 18 – 29
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 10 – 17
And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
Luke 13: 11
Every Friday, the table is set in many Jewish homes, dressed with the family’s best linens and set with their finest silver and china. On the table are two loaves of twisted bread, a glass of wine and two candles. Just before sunset, the woman of the house lights the candles, and then covering her eyes, prays: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His Commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Shabbat. With the lighting of the candles on Friday night, faithful Jews remember and celebrate the Sabbath, God’s gift and promise of rest.
From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, faithful Jews will refrain from work, worship in the synagogue and enjoy the goodness of God’s creation. The Sabbath is the one holy day commanded by God in the Ten Commandments when God tells Israel: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Six days Israel could work but on the seventh, Israel was to rest as God rested on the seventh day of creation.
On the seventh day of creation, after God created the light and the dark, the seas and the dry land, fruits and flowers, animals of all kinds and finally humankind, God rested. God rested, not from exhaustion or the fatigue of hard labor, but more like a painter who, after finishing a work of art, steps back to admire his handiwork. Like an artist whose has laid down his brush for the last time, God rested in the perfection of God’s work.
And so God called God’s people to set aside the seventh day of the week, to celebrate the glory of God, to remember what God has done and look forward to the completion of God’s purposes for us and for all of creation. Six days we can labor, but on the seventh we are called to remember and to celebrate. For the Jews, the Sabbath is “a taste of the world to come,” in the words of one commentator, a day of re-creation in anticipation of the time when God will come again and make all things new. In the words of the rabbis, “ As Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel alive.”
Keeping the Sabbath means coming to rest, letting go of all those many tasks that demand our attention the other six days of the week. You and I have grown up in a culture that recognizes Sunday as a day when most people are “off,” schools and banks are closed, and mail is not delivered. But in the ancient world, one day looked pretty much like every other day and when the Jews refused to work on the Sabbath, many perceived them to be lazy. To the pagans, this Jewish practice made no sense.
And the pagans were not the only ones who were troubled by this practice. Within Judaism, the command to do no work on the Sabbath raised up the issue of what exactly constituted “work.” Laying brick, as the Jews had done for Pharaoh was clearly work. But what about preparing meals, giving your animals water or caring for a sick family member? The Jews wanted to honor the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, but how to interpret the commandment was not always clear.
Some things must get done and to this day, prohibitions against work on the Jewish Sabbath respect and acknowledge concerns for health and safety. Meal preparation is understood as “work” and must be done before the beginning of the Sabbath, but leading one’s ox and donkey to water on the Sabbath, as Jesus acknowledges in our text, although work, is allowed during the Sabbath rest. Insofar as Jews are able, faithful Jews are to leave aside the tasks of daily life in order to rest in God alone.
And so, we meet Jesus this morning in our reading from Luke, healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath. And Jesus is met with an indignant Jewish religious leader who accuses Jesus of “working” on the Sabbath. And before we condemn too quickly this “leader of the synagogue” let us remember that we, too, would be indignant if the company we hired to install new carpeting insisted upon doing the work at 8:00 a.m., on a Sunday morning. We, like the Jews then and now, would frown upon such a disturbance on a day set aside for worship and rest. So the leader of the synagogue takes the crowd to task saying: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”
But for Jesus, the Sabbath is a day of liberation, a day when we are freed from the cares and anxieties of this world as we remember and celebrate God’s faithful presence among us and God’s dream that God’s very good creation will, one day, be very good once more. Sabbath is a gift to us from God who wants us to trust and rest in God’s love. The healing of this crippled woman is a sign of God’s promised rest and renewal for all of creation. This woman who has been unable to stand up straight for eighteen years, bent over by affliction, is now given, without even asking, the dignity of being able to hold her head up. Her re-creation is the gift of the Sabbath, not just for her but for all of us.
The idea of a Sabbath rest was and continues to be, odd. We are a people whose identity is usually grounded in what we do, how much we can accomplish, and how much we can produce. The important part of our lives is our work, what we can do, whether or not we are compensated. Just “being” seems fruitless, pointless and a waste of time. Not working makes us feel useless, like we are doing nothing.
We live between work and “vacations,” a respite from the rate race, ultimately “retiring” as if any of us can ever really retire from life. Sabbath time is not a vacation, but a time in which God can re-create us to keep on keeping on. Jesus heals this crippled woman to set her free to return to her community praising God, making her a witness to the good news that God can and will free God’s creation from all that binds them. This crippled woman is not given a vacation but a new life.
Following the resurrection, the observance of the seventh day, Saturday, took a back seat to Sunday, the first day of the week and the day of resurrection. Most Christians now hallow Sunday rather than Saturday as our day of Sabbath rest. Unfortunately, preparing for Sunday’s worship does not always make Sunday a day of “rest,” not for sure the kind of rest Jews intended by all their prohibitions against work on the Sabbath. Making “church” happen is no small task and Sunday mornings for many of us can be as tasking and challenging as any other day in the week. Of course, we all have Sunday afternoon.
Taking a nap on Sunday afternoon would be very much in keeping with the Jewish understanding of Sabbath. So too, would be asking those in your family who they think God is and looks like and acts like. Sunday afternoons would be a good time to wonder about why you went to church, if you did, in the morning. Sunday afternoons are probably not a good time to begin stressing out about Monday morning. Sabbath time is God’s time and we need to hallow that time, to protect that time from all the many diversions and distractions that will invariably foist themselves upon us. Do nothing this afternoon. If God had the confidence to rest after creating six days, surely we can rest in the assurance that nothing we say or do is so critical we cannot lay it all aside. Take a nap, eat leftovers, enjoy those you love, turn the T.V. off and do not go shopping. I think our newest generation calls this “hanging out.” Hang out with God this afternoon and enjoy a bit of Sabbath time.
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 5: 1 – 7
Sunday, August 14, 2016 Hebrews 11: 29 – 12: 2
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 12: 49 – 56
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”
Luke 12:51
In 2004, Duke Divinity School theology professor Teresa Berger published a commentary on our gospel reading from Luke this morning in the magazine The Christian Century. She opened by saying:
In the reading from Luke we confront stark and conflictual sayings of Jesus that sit poorly with contemporary images of God. Our culture seems to prize a God with an infinite capacity for empathy, a God who is "nice." (Bumper stickers tell you that "Jesus loves you" even if everyone else thinks you’re an ogre or worse.) Luke challenges this thinking. He offers a glimpse of redemption for a world that is anything but nice, and that needs much more than a nice God to redeem it.
Jesus does not sound nice this morning as Jesus asks: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus asks, “No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;” Jesus is bringing fire upon the earth and families will be divided one from another. Jesus, this day, is not the nice Prince of Peace but rather the author of division.
Our evangelist Luke is writing towards the end of the first century within the culture and context of the Roman Empire, a vast empire that stretched around the Mediterranean Sea from Europe to Asia. Trade routes and grand building projects flourished in large measure because Rome was very good at keeping the peace, quelling revolts which would disrupt the building of a great empire.
And at the heart of Rome’s desire to build an empire of peace and prosperity was the family, a social unit bound together to insure the well-being of its members. Stable families created stable Roman citizens; stable citizens created a stable empire. A stable empire enabled the flourishing of trade, prosperity and learning. And the Roman Emperor was very much like the head of the household of a Roman family – the paterfamilias – a man who held the power of life and death over his family.
Now Jesus crashes into a culture whose peace is predicated upon maintaining stable family units saying fathers will be divided from their sons and mothers from their daughters. Jesus is tearing at the very fabric that holds the Roman Empire together. Destroy the family and you destroy the Empire. Jesus is disturbing the peace.
As I read our gospel for this morning I was reminded of a young woman who in 202 A.D., was condemned by the Roman Empire for her conviction that Jesus and not the Roman Emperor was to be worshipped. Her name was Perpetua and she was the mother of a young child. Perpetua chose to die rather than renounce her faith and handed over her infant child to the care of her parents before being torn apart by lions. Perpetua’s story is gruesome and her father pleads with Perpetua to renounce her faith which Perpetua refuses to do. Perpetua’s faith called her to die and to give up mothering her newborn. Perpetua’s story is not “nice,” as we say. Most of us I daresay, recoil in horror at this story of martyrdom and wonder how following our faith could ever lead us to abandon the most basic of all relationships - that between a mother and her child. The story of Perpetua has always disturbed my peace.
As does the story of Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose resistance to Hitler cost him his life in 1945. As does the story of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in 1968, for trying to remove barriers of racial inequality. As does the story of Oscar Romero, a Roman Catholic priest who was shot in 1980, in El Salvador as he was celebrating communion after condemning the violence of government soldiers. As does the story of Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian who was killed in 1965, in Alabama for his participation in the civil rights movement. These folk all disturbed the peace and these folk got killed.
Killing was precisely the way the Roman Empire achieved the celebrated pax Romana. Conquered peoples, such as Israel, could continue to maintain their cultural traditions until or unless those practices brought chaos to the Empire. When Israel sought to keep Rome from interfering in their practice of worship, Rome responded by burning down the Temple in 70 A.D., and lining the roads with crosses. The peace and glory of the Roman Empire was accomplished at a terrible price.
Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate because Jesus was a troublemaker, a disrupter of the peace. Jesus was not crucified for being “nice.” Jesus challenged the Jewish religious authorities, broke bread with prostitutes and refused to take up arms against Rome. Jesus disturbed those who made easy compromises with Rome to keep the peace as well as those who sought to secure peace by overthrowing Rome with violence.
You and I are called to be peacemakers. But like Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of the bus, sometimes the way to peace is through conflict and disruption. Such disruption rarely comes without resistance, usually by those who are satisfied with the status quo and the way things are. But until that day when God brings to a close “this present age,” the world in which we live will need prophets and protestors, disturbing us and keeping us from becoming complacent or indifferent.
Prophets and protestors are rarely described as “nice,” but should always seek to be called “peaceful.” Have you ever wanted to protest an injustice but resisted for fear that folk would say you were not being “nice”? If being nice is what we seek, then honoring our baptismal promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being” is going to be incredibly difficult. Being nice is often understood as code that if we wish to “get along, we need to go along.” Sometimes, we do need to go along; sometimes going along serves only to perpetuate an injustice to our neighbor.
Faced by the cross, Jesus, this morning, is not at peace, but “under stress.” In the words of one commentator, “The road to God’s peace is not a detour around the cross but goes through it.” Many who have followed this crucified Messiah over the last two thousand years have suffered for their faith. We “are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” our reading from Hebrews tells us. Those witnesses include young Perpetua, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Jonathan Daniels, to name just a few. All of these folk challenged the status quo in the name of the Prince of Peace and they all suffered for it.
“Gospel” in Greek means good news and was used long before our gospels were written to announce the birth of a king or a victory in battle. Saint Paul, followed by the evangelist Mark, were the first to use the word “gospel” to speak about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul, Mark, and later Luke, from whom we hear this morning, were indeed sharing “good news,” but good news that was dangerously good news which would echo through the centuries in the words of the Magnificat, “scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” “bringing down the powerful from their thrones, and lifting up the lowly.”
Sunday, August 14, 2016 Hebrews 11: 29 – 12: 2
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 12: 49 – 56
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”
Luke 12:51
In 2004, Duke Divinity School theology professor Teresa Berger published a commentary on our gospel reading from Luke this morning in the magazine The Christian Century. She opened by saying:
In the reading from Luke we confront stark and conflictual sayings of Jesus that sit poorly with contemporary images of God. Our culture seems to prize a God with an infinite capacity for empathy, a God who is "nice." (Bumper stickers tell you that "Jesus loves you" even if everyone else thinks you’re an ogre or worse.) Luke challenges this thinking. He offers a glimpse of redemption for a world that is anything but nice, and that needs much more than a nice God to redeem it.
Jesus does not sound nice this morning as Jesus asks: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” Jesus asks, “No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;” Jesus is bringing fire upon the earth and families will be divided one from another. Jesus, this day, is not the nice Prince of Peace but rather the author of division.
Our evangelist Luke is writing towards the end of the first century within the culture and context of the Roman Empire, a vast empire that stretched around the Mediterranean Sea from Europe to Asia. Trade routes and grand building projects flourished in large measure because Rome was very good at keeping the peace, quelling revolts which would disrupt the building of a great empire.
And at the heart of Rome’s desire to build an empire of peace and prosperity was the family, a social unit bound together to insure the well-being of its members. Stable families created stable Roman citizens; stable citizens created a stable empire. A stable empire enabled the flourishing of trade, prosperity and learning. And the Roman Emperor was very much like the head of the household of a Roman family – the paterfamilias – a man who held the power of life and death over his family.
Now Jesus crashes into a culture whose peace is predicated upon maintaining stable family units saying fathers will be divided from their sons and mothers from their daughters. Jesus is tearing at the very fabric that holds the Roman Empire together. Destroy the family and you destroy the Empire. Jesus is disturbing the peace.
As I read our gospel for this morning I was reminded of a young woman who in 202 A.D., was condemned by the Roman Empire for her conviction that Jesus and not the Roman Emperor was to be worshipped. Her name was Perpetua and she was the mother of a young child. Perpetua chose to die rather than renounce her faith and handed over her infant child to the care of her parents before being torn apart by lions. Perpetua’s story is gruesome and her father pleads with Perpetua to renounce her faith which Perpetua refuses to do. Perpetua’s faith called her to die and to give up mothering her newborn. Perpetua’s story is not “nice,” as we say. Most of us I daresay, recoil in horror at this story of martyrdom and wonder how following our faith could ever lead us to abandon the most basic of all relationships - that between a mother and her child. The story of Perpetua has always disturbed my peace.
As does the story of Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose resistance to Hitler cost him his life in 1945. As does the story of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in 1968, for trying to remove barriers of racial inequality. As does the story of Oscar Romero, a Roman Catholic priest who was shot in 1980, in El Salvador as he was celebrating communion after condemning the violence of government soldiers. As does the story of Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian who was killed in 1965, in Alabama for his participation in the civil rights movement. These folk all disturbed the peace and these folk got killed.
Killing was precisely the way the Roman Empire achieved the celebrated pax Romana. Conquered peoples, such as Israel, could continue to maintain their cultural traditions until or unless those practices brought chaos to the Empire. When Israel sought to keep Rome from interfering in their practice of worship, Rome responded by burning down the Temple in 70 A.D., and lining the roads with crosses. The peace and glory of the Roman Empire was accomplished at a terrible price.
Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate because Jesus was a troublemaker, a disrupter of the peace. Jesus was not crucified for being “nice.” Jesus challenged the Jewish religious authorities, broke bread with prostitutes and refused to take up arms against Rome. Jesus disturbed those who made easy compromises with Rome to keep the peace as well as those who sought to secure peace by overthrowing Rome with violence.
You and I are called to be peacemakers. But like Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of the bus, sometimes the way to peace is through conflict and disruption. Such disruption rarely comes without resistance, usually by those who are satisfied with the status quo and the way things are. But until that day when God brings to a close “this present age,” the world in which we live will need prophets and protestors, disturbing us and keeping us from becoming complacent or indifferent.
Prophets and protestors are rarely described as “nice,” but should always seek to be called “peaceful.” Have you ever wanted to protest an injustice but resisted for fear that folk would say you were not being “nice”? If being nice is what we seek, then honoring our baptismal promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being” is going to be incredibly difficult. Being nice is often understood as code that if we wish to “get along, we need to go along.” Sometimes, we do need to go along; sometimes going along serves only to perpetuate an injustice to our neighbor.
Faced by the cross, Jesus, this morning, is not at peace, but “under stress.” In the words of one commentator, “The road to God’s peace is not a detour around the cross but goes through it.” Many who have followed this crucified Messiah over the last two thousand years have suffered for their faith. We “are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” our reading from Hebrews tells us. Those witnesses include young Perpetua, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Jonathan Daniels, to name just a few. All of these folk challenged the status quo in the name of the Prince of Peace and they all suffered for it.
“Gospel” in Greek means good news and was used long before our gospels were written to announce the birth of a king or a victory in battle. Saint Paul, followed by the evangelist Mark, were the first to use the word “gospel” to speak about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul, Mark, and later Luke, from whom we hear this morning, were indeed sharing “good news,” but good news that was dangerously good news which would echo through the centuries in the words of the Magnificat, “scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” “bringing down the powerful from their thrones, and lifting up the lowly.”
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 1: 1, 10 - 20
Sunday, August 7, 2016 Hebrews 11: 1 –3, 8 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 12: 32 – 40
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We hear from the letter to the Hebrews this morning. We do not know who wrote this letter but believe the letter was written by a second generation Jewish Christian, sometime around 80 A.D. This letter is probably more accurately called a sermon, a sermon preached to fellow Christians struggling to hold on to the “good news” in the midst of persecution and a Roman culture that was suspicious of their beliefs.
In our reading, the author of Hebrews lifts up Abraham as a man who obeyed God by faith. God called Abraham to leave his home and his kindred and to go to a place God would show him. And God told Abraham that Abraham would have descendants “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”
So Abraham left his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and began a journey towards a land he could not see and about which he knew nothing. And when Abraham and his wife Sarah were well past child bearing age and still had no children, God gave them a son Isaac.
God had promised that through Abraham the whole world would be blessed and God was faithful to God’s promises. Abraham died before Abraham got to live in the “promised land,” a land flowing with milk and honey, but because Abraham was faithful, a people was born from whom would come a man called Jesus.
Now if faith is the assurance of things hoped for, our journey of faith begins with hope. I, like you, hope for many things. I hope my children and grandchildren will make a difference in this world; I hope the nations of this world will live in peace with one another; and I also hope on any given Sunday I do not suffer a flat tire on the way to church. I hope for many things, some of which, like not suffering a flat tire, would be surmountable, and some of which like the nations of the world living in peace, seem at this point in human history, wholly insurmountable.
Holding out hope that what appears to be impossible will happen seems foolish. And yet, that is exactly what Abraham did. Abraham was told by God that Abraham would father a great family but then Abraham kept getting older and nothing happened. And nothing happened and nothing happened. And then Sarah discovered she was pregnant.
Abraham also had hope that he would see the promised land. Abraham died before that hope was realized. Abraham got a taste of God’s faithfulness but not the full picture. Nor do any of we.
The vestry met this past Thursday. Since January, the vestry has sought to engage the six initiatives that resulted from our arduous Revision process last year. As a result of our Revision process, we said that we hoped to:
- Assess our capital needs
- Enhance worship and spiritual formation of our children and adults, within our church and in partnership with others in our community
- Improve communication
- Nurture the health and safety of our members
- Eliminate barriers to participation to our common life
- Support services for at-risk members of our community
We have, as a result, begun our First Tuesday lunch and meditation, accepted Jean Young’s call to serve as our Children’s Coordinator, Bill Thornton’s call to be our liaison with the community and the Caroline Progress in particular, and are now on the cusp of asking a task force to asses the capital needs we need to engage to accomplish these initiatives.
We have an opportunity next Sunday to partnership with another church. Next Sunday, Shiloh Baptist Church across the street is celebrating their 150th anniversary. Our sexton Yvonne Moffett is a congregant at Shiloh. At 3:00 p.m., Shiloh is hosting an anniversary celebration and we are all invited. I would urge you to consider to join our brothers and sisters in worship at Shiloh as a way of living into the initiatives this parish has embraced.
By all accounts, Abraham was settled and comfortable when God called Abraham to move on. Abraham was not looking to do something new. But God called Abraham to further God’s purposes in ways Abraham could not see. So when God said: “Go,” Abraham went. Maybe next Sunday is God’s way of saying to us: “Go.”
If you choose not to go across the street next Sunday to celebrate our neighbors’ 150th anniversary, I would urge you to contemplate why. You may have prior commitments, as we all often have. You may be tired; God knows I am ready for a nap on Sunday afternoon; or you may be afraid. You may be afraid of going into an unfamiliar place without knowing what is going to happen. Our neighbors are good folk who like us want to find ways to heal the divisions that plague us. Our neighbors do not expect us to worship as they do nor do they intend to change the way they worship as a result of our presence. But our neighbors have invited us and we have affirmed that worshiping with our neighbors is a hope we hold dear.
Abraham could have stayed put and, I suspect, God would have found someone else through whom God could work God’s good purposes. We can stay put. We did embrace some initiatives which suggest we do not want to stay put. But are we willing to get up and go?
Abraham went.
Abraham did not wait for the kingdom of God to come to him. Abraham went, seeking the kingdom that God had promised. Abraham did not receive the kingdom in full, but in part. And so will we, if we are willing to go.
At this year’s annual diocesan Council, now called Annual Convention, Bishop Goff noted that every church wants to be perceived as welcoming and hospitable. We are no different in that regard from every other church in the diocese. The challenge, Bishop Goff said, for us and for every other church in the diocese, is not finding ways to be welcoming to newcomers but rather to find ways to be newcomers ourselves, to go out and be the “strangers and foreigners on the earth,” as God called Abraham to be. The challenge is not to make newcomers feel welcome but rather to take the risk to be a newcomer ourselves. I can and I have entertained guests in my home and I try to be attentive to their needs. But when I am a guest in someone else’s home, the shoe is on the other foot. I am wont to observe their rituals which may not be my own and I am careful not to “put them out” by asking too much. Being a guest is demanding, much more so than being a host.
God calls Abraham to go and by faith Abraham goes. Abraham trusted that God would provide and God did. Abraham did not know where he was going and neither do we. What we know is that God begins to bring the world back round right after Eve ate an apple with a man named Abraham.
What we have today is an invitation and an initiative. Is God who is faithful repeating a call God made a long, long time ago? And if God is repeating a call made a long time ago, will we have the faith to be assured that the things we hope for will come to pass? And will we, like Abraham, get up and go across the street to celebrate 150 years of Christian witness with our brothers and sisters in the hope that the people of God may yet be one?
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Hosea 1: 2 – 10
Sunday, July 24, 2016 Colossians 2: 6 – 19
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 11: 1 – 13
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’
Luke 11: 1
‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’
Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray this morning in our reading from the gospel of Luke. The prayer Jesus teaches to his disciples is not exactly the same prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. Nor is the prayer in the gospel of Luke exactly the same as the form in the gospel of Matthew.
What Jesus teaches to his disciples, both in the gospel of Luke and the gospel of Matthew, however, is a prayer which uses a minimum of words to draw us into communion with God.
“Father,” Jesus begins. “Father” is an intimate form of address, expressing our desire in prayer to dwell in the presence of the One who created us and loves us. We are, in prayer, opening ourselves to God, listening for a word from God before we ask God to meet our needs.
“Hallowed be your name.” To hallow is to make holy, and in prayer we are asking God to hallow God’s name in and through our lives. In prayer, our desire is to glorify God, not ourselves.
“Your kingdom come.” When we pray, what we are seeking is the kingdom of God to be realized. God knows our needs and desires before we even ask; how God might use us to further God’s purposes we cannot say. In prayer, our desire is for the coming of God’s kingdom, for God’s will to be done and not, first and foremost, the granting of our petitions.
“Give us each day our daily bread.” The Greek is a bit awkward here, but Jesus is telling the disciples to trust in the providence of God to keep us from want and worry. The disciples are not to ask for themselves only but rather for all those whom God has created and dearly loves.
“Forgive us.” Only God can forgive sin but we cannot presume upon God’s forgiveness if we ourselves are unforgiving. Which leads former Archbishop of Canterbury Micheal Ramsey to ask: “What if our unforgivingness is what most needs God’s forgiveness? To acknowledge this may be the first step in our repentance.”
“Do not bring us to the time of trial.” Trial and tribulation is to be expected in this world. We can endure those trials and tribulations only by the grace of God. Those same trials and tribulations can, however, lead us not into greater holiness, but rather away from holiness into the unholy embrace of evil. Again in the words of Ramsey: “The grace of God can turn the pain and cost to wonderful account, and we pray that the evil one may not use them for his evil ends.”
What Jesus teaches his disciples to do with very few words, is to meditate on the glory and goodness of God. We can pray because God is good and as Jesus tells the disciples: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” In prayer, we entrust ourselves into the arms of a loving God who desires our well-being not our undoing.
Prayer, Ramsey notes, does not change God’s will or ways; prayer can change our will and ways as we seek first the kingdom of God with the desire to show forth in our lives the glory of God. Prayer, as our Catechism teaches, “is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.”
Most of us, I suspect, memorized the Lord’s Prayer at an early age. We learned to get the words right and the phrases in the right order. I got a large star on a “Star Memory Certificate” from Sunday School when I could recite the Lord’s Prayer correctly. I had little understanding back then about what I was saying but was proud that I got a star!
Learning the Lord’s Prayer is important but is only the beginning of a relationship that God desires to have with us. Getting the words right is far less important than is our desire to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. Loving God is the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, just as loving God was at the heart of all that Jesus said and did.
We do hear this morning a translation of the Lord’s Prayer that sounds a bit like the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer in our prayer book. Like some other options in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the contemporary form of the Lord’s Prayer has not always been received with enthusiasm. We take comfort from the traditional form of the Lord’s Prayer and repeating words we have said most of our lives. Comfort is good!
But getting beyond the words and seeking communion with God is an even greater good. If the traditional words invite you into communion with God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind, wonderful! If, on the other hand, the traditional words have become stale and repeated with no turning of spirit, I would encourage you to try a different discipline, which is the root of the word “disciple.”
You might pray the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer or pray the traditional form slowly, meditating on each petition, listening for a word from God for you. I memorized the Lord’s Prayer in Greek when I was in seminary and discovered that praying in a different language can lead us beyond the words, words that are now unfamiliar, and into the presence of God who desires to be our friend and not a stranger.
We do not know Jesus’ exact words to his disciples. The Lord’s Prayer is longer in the gospel of Matthew than are the recorded words in the gospel of Luke. Both forms omit the closing doxology – “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.” Ramsey and others believe that doxology was added later by the church.
So, if repeating the right words is of paramount importance, we will get no help from our evangelists. If communing with God is of paramount importance we will get all that we need not just from our four evangelists but also from Saint Paul and the vision of John of Patmos. We are taught to pray that “the bodily and spiritual needs of ourselves and of mankind are lifted into the orbit of God’s purpose with the conviction that the Kingdom and the glory are” God’s, writes Ramsey.
The title of the book by Micheal Ramsey which has informed my reflection this morning is Be Still and Know. Ultimately, all prayer, all spiritual disciplines, all worship is meant to draw us ever deeper into the love of God for all of us.
Does one size fit all? Absolutely not. My challenge as a priest is to be parochially minded and individually sensitive. I do not balance those responsibilities always with grace. And I was reminded of my need for grace when I announced to the vestry on Thursday night that our 2016 Christmas Eve service would be re-scheduled to 7:00 p.m. I did this because I have heard from our young families that coming to church at midnight on Christmas Eve is not doable. I did this because canonically I am responsible for worship and responsible to offer worship at times when the congregation can be present. Our young families cannot be with us at midnight on Christmas Eve.
What I wanted to do was to add an earlier Christmas Eve service. But we do not have the resources to do so and that is painful. I love the midnight Christmas Eve midnight service and really hope that in the years to come we will find the resources for a second service. But for now, enabling our young families with children to worship on Christmas Eve is critical because our young members need to be drawn into communion with God and not just memorize the Lord’s Prayer. Our young people need to experience the love of God made known to us in worship and especially to feel that love on the night God was born into our midst.
I pray that you will appreciate the needs and desires of our young families and remember that the purpose of all worship – whenever and wherever – is meant to draw us deeper into communion with God and one another.
Sunday, July 24, 2016 Colossians 2: 6 – 19
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 11: 1 – 13
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’
Luke 11: 1
‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’
Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray this morning in our reading from the gospel of Luke. The prayer Jesus teaches to his disciples is not exactly the same prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. Nor is the prayer in the gospel of Luke exactly the same as the form in the gospel of Matthew.
What Jesus teaches to his disciples, both in the gospel of Luke and the gospel of Matthew, however, is a prayer which uses a minimum of words to draw us into communion with God.
“Father,” Jesus begins. “Father” is an intimate form of address, expressing our desire in prayer to dwell in the presence of the One who created us and loves us. We are, in prayer, opening ourselves to God, listening for a word from God before we ask God to meet our needs.
“Hallowed be your name.” To hallow is to make holy, and in prayer we are asking God to hallow God’s name in and through our lives. In prayer, our desire is to glorify God, not ourselves.
“Your kingdom come.” When we pray, what we are seeking is the kingdom of God to be realized. God knows our needs and desires before we even ask; how God might use us to further God’s purposes we cannot say. In prayer, our desire is for the coming of God’s kingdom, for God’s will to be done and not, first and foremost, the granting of our petitions.
“Give us each day our daily bread.” The Greek is a bit awkward here, but Jesus is telling the disciples to trust in the providence of God to keep us from want and worry. The disciples are not to ask for themselves only but rather for all those whom God has created and dearly loves.
“Forgive us.” Only God can forgive sin but we cannot presume upon God’s forgiveness if we ourselves are unforgiving. Which leads former Archbishop of Canterbury Micheal Ramsey to ask: “What if our unforgivingness is what most needs God’s forgiveness? To acknowledge this may be the first step in our repentance.”
“Do not bring us to the time of trial.” Trial and tribulation is to be expected in this world. We can endure those trials and tribulations only by the grace of God. Those same trials and tribulations can, however, lead us not into greater holiness, but rather away from holiness into the unholy embrace of evil. Again in the words of Ramsey: “The grace of God can turn the pain and cost to wonderful account, and we pray that the evil one may not use them for his evil ends.”
What Jesus teaches his disciples to do with very few words, is to meditate on the glory and goodness of God. We can pray because God is good and as Jesus tells the disciples: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” In prayer, we entrust ourselves into the arms of a loving God who desires our well-being not our undoing.
Prayer, Ramsey notes, does not change God’s will or ways; prayer can change our will and ways as we seek first the kingdom of God with the desire to show forth in our lives the glory of God. Prayer, as our Catechism teaches, “is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.”
Most of us, I suspect, memorized the Lord’s Prayer at an early age. We learned to get the words right and the phrases in the right order. I got a large star on a “Star Memory Certificate” from Sunday School when I could recite the Lord’s Prayer correctly. I had little understanding back then about what I was saying but was proud that I got a star!
Learning the Lord’s Prayer is important but is only the beginning of a relationship that God desires to have with us. Getting the words right is far less important than is our desire to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. Loving God is the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, just as loving God was at the heart of all that Jesus said and did.
We do hear this morning a translation of the Lord’s Prayer that sounds a bit like the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer in our prayer book. Like some other options in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the contemporary form of the Lord’s Prayer has not always been received with enthusiasm. We take comfort from the traditional form of the Lord’s Prayer and repeating words we have said most of our lives. Comfort is good!
But getting beyond the words and seeking communion with God is an even greater good. If the traditional words invite you into communion with God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind, wonderful! If, on the other hand, the traditional words have become stale and repeated with no turning of spirit, I would encourage you to try a different discipline, which is the root of the word “disciple.”
You might pray the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer or pray the traditional form slowly, meditating on each petition, listening for a word from God for you. I memorized the Lord’s Prayer in Greek when I was in seminary and discovered that praying in a different language can lead us beyond the words, words that are now unfamiliar, and into the presence of God who desires to be our friend and not a stranger.
We do not know Jesus’ exact words to his disciples. The Lord’s Prayer is longer in the gospel of Matthew than are the recorded words in the gospel of Luke. Both forms omit the closing doxology – “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.” Ramsey and others believe that doxology was added later by the church.
So, if repeating the right words is of paramount importance, we will get no help from our evangelists. If communing with God is of paramount importance we will get all that we need not just from our four evangelists but also from Saint Paul and the vision of John of Patmos. We are taught to pray that “the bodily and spiritual needs of ourselves and of mankind are lifted into the orbit of God’s purpose with the conviction that the Kingdom and the glory are” God’s, writes Ramsey.
The title of the book by Micheal Ramsey which has informed my reflection this morning is Be Still and Know. Ultimately, all prayer, all spiritual disciplines, all worship is meant to draw us ever deeper into the love of God for all of us.
Does one size fit all? Absolutely not. My challenge as a priest is to be parochially minded and individually sensitive. I do not balance those responsibilities always with grace. And I was reminded of my need for grace when I announced to the vestry on Thursday night that our 2016 Christmas Eve service would be re-scheduled to 7:00 p.m. I did this because I have heard from our young families that coming to church at midnight on Christmas Eve is not doable. I did this because canonically I am responsible for worship and responsible to offer worship at times when the congregation can be present. Our young families cannot be with us at midnight on Christmas Eve.
What I wanted to do was to add an earlier Christmas Eve service. But we do not have the resources to do so and that is painful. I love the midnight Christmas Eve midnight service and really hope that in the years to come we will find the resources for a second service. But for now, enabling our young families with children to worship on Christmas Eve is critical because our young members need to be drawn into communion with God and not just memorize the Lord’s Prayer. Our young people need to experience the love of God made known to us in worship and especially to feel that love on the night God was born into our midst.
I pray that you will appreciate the needs and desires of our young families and remember that the purpose of all worship – whenever and wherever – is meant to draw us deeper into communion with God and one another.
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Amos 8: 1 – 12
Sunday, July 17, 2016 Colossians 1: 15 – 28
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 38 – 42
“Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.”
Luke 10: 38
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” Martha protests this morning. Martha’s sister Mary has found something better to do and left Martha with all the tasks involved in offering hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. Martha wants Mary to help her; Martha needs Mary to help her if Jesus is to be welcomed appropriately.
I have a sister and we shared a room growing up. When Mom told us to clean our room and my sister sat on her bed listening to the radio, I would protest: “Mom! Mary Ann is not helping and that’s not fair!” I knew an injustice when I saw one and, like Martha, appealed to a higher authority for justice. Children are quick to perceive injustice and I was not about to clean up “our” room all by myself.
Martha is protesting an injustice. Martha is doing all the work of entertaining while Mary sits at the Lord’s feet, listening “to what he was saying.” Mary is not helping Martha and that is not fair in a world in which two sisters ought to be sharing the burden of offering hospitality. “Lord,” Martha protests, “Do you not care?” In Martha’s world, the Lord is supposed to care.
Which makes Martha deeply Jewish. God, for the Jews, was a just God, the God who had delivered a band of slaves from their bondage in Egypt, righting a wrong, making just what was unjust. This God called the Jews to be just, to act justly both to Jews and to the non-Jews in their midst. This God was just and the Jews were to reflect justice towards all.
And when the Jews were taken into exile, some began to wonder if God was just. Such wonderings led the author of the book of Job to write about a man who had lost everything for no discernible reason. Job protests, demanding that God give Job a reason for the injustices Job has suffered. If God was just, God would not allow Job, a righteous man, to suffer injustice. Job, like Martha, was asking: “Lord, do you not care?”
Martha is doing what Jews have always done – calling upon God to be just. Martha’s protest is a mark of deep faith that Jesus does care, and cares about her. Martha is protesting because in the face of injustice, we want the just God we worship to make things right.
This past Wednesday I attended a community meeting at a local Baptist church which is predominately African-American. The meeting was called by their pastor to share conversation about the recent events in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas, events which left both young black men and white police officers fearful. What I heard that night was the language of protest. Why is this happening? How do we stop this violence? What does justice look like?
That the meeting was arranged is a sign that people do care and care deeply about the ways we treat one another. That the church was not packed is also a sign that we all care about a lot of things and our cares are not always the cares of our neighbors.
One especially helpful comment came from an African-American pastor, known to me through my association with a local pastors’ forum. He noted that, whereas we may be able to do some things differently, ultimately, we are confronting a spiritual issue. When we are baptized, we acknowledge that there are powers at work in the world that are actively seeking to oppose God. As a Baptist, this pastor is perhaps more comfortable talking about evil than are we, as Episcopalians. But that is the bottom line – evil is afoot as evil has always been afoot and ignoring that reality is simply inviting more evil.
The language of protest is hard to hear. We often want to do something, fix something, change something. Sometimes we can; sometimes we cannot.
The language of protest calls us to remember those times when we have protested against what we have perceived to be injustices in our lives. Such injustice may be a stolen credit card which can be remedied but may also be a diagnosis of lung cancer when we have never smoked or a child in trouble that we have only loved. The language of protest ultimately is a cry to a God who is just but does not appear to always be dealing justly with us.
Not protesting is suffering in silence. I could have cleaned up the room I shared with my sister without saying anything to my mother. I could have picked up her dirty clothes and vacuumed her half of the room and said nothing. I could have not protested. Suffering in silence is still suffering and eventually the lid will blow off the pot.
Liturgically, we often hear the language of protest in the psalms as we do today. Our psalm this morning is a psalm that laments the power of a tyrant to bring ruin upon a godly person. The psalmist ends trusting in the mercy of God to topple those who “love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth.” The psalmist knows what we so often forget - only God is good and only God can overcome evil. And the psalmist ends saying; “I will give you thanks for what you have done and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.”
Perhaps that is part of the truth that Mary is learning as she sits at the feet of Jesus. Perhaps Mary is learning that in the person of Jesus, God is bringing the world back ‘round right, healing the brokenness of this world, forgiving us our trespasses and delivering us from evil. Perhaps Mary is learning that the language of protest can and must end in thanksgiving to a God who does care and who has and will save us.
I and others would like to help heal the divisions that plague our community. And I also know that good folk are trying hard to identify the problem and find a solution. The “problem” is not easily defined and like Martha, confronts us with many tasks. Some folk the other night felt like the problem was rooted in homes that were failing to parent children or in schools that were unable to educate our children and some folk felt the problem was rooted in churches where we notoriously fail to love one another.
There are homes in our community in which children are left to their own devices; our schools are struggling to meet the challenges that are wrought by poverty, drug abuse and neglect; and our churches are plagued by gossip and dissension. We have a problem – that was brought home clearly in the events that we witnessed in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas. We are far less clear about what the problem is.
Martha this morning raises up the importance of lament: “Lord, do you not care?” Martha sees an injustice and cries out. Martha is not to be dismissed. But Mary, Jesus, says, “has chosen the better part.” Perhaps, what Mary has chosen is hope, hope that Jesus will somehow make all things right. What I heard the other night was hope, hope that somehow, some way, we can create community where there is no community now.
I heard the other night that this conversation will continue. My firm hope is that it does. But what I also know is that this community is most reluctant to engage in conversations about race or any conversation that might suggest that life in Caroline County is not O.K. What I know is that we do not want to hear the laments of others.
What I also know is that we have much to be grateful for in this community. We do have laments but we also have thanksgivings. We need Martha to remind us to lament and Mary to remind us to give thanks for the presence of a just God who does care. Thanksgiving without lament is glossing over life in this world. Lament without thanksgiving is giving up hope in God.
Jesus says Mary has chosen the “better part,” by sitting at his feet and “listening.” Maybe we too, are called to “listen” before we pontificate on the “problem” and the subsequent solution to the problem as we see it.
I know Jesus loved both Mary and Martha. I suspect Jesus was grateful for his dinner that night. Someone has to fix dinner. Thanks, Martha. Now that dinner is served, can you join us at the table and give thanks? Or will you continue to grumble against your sister?
Sunday, July 17, 2016 Colossians 1: 15 – 28
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 38 – 42
“Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.”
Luke 10: 38
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” Martha protests this morning. Martha’s sister Mary has found something better to do and left Martha with all the tasks involved in offering hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. Martha wants Mary to help her; Martha needs Mary to help her if Jesus is to be welcomed appropriately.
I have a sister and we shared a room growing up. When Mom told us to clean our room and my sister sat on her bed listening to the radio, I would protest: “Mom! Mary Ann is not helping and that’s not fair!” I knew an injustice when I saw one and, like Martha, appealed to a higher authority for justice. Children are quick to perceive injustice and I was not about to clean up “our” room all by myself.
Martha is protesting an injustice. Martha is doing all the work of entertaining while Mary sits at the Lord’s feet, listening “to what he was saying.” Mary is not helping Martha and that is not fair in a world in which two sisters ought to be sharing the burden of offering hospitality. “Lord,” Martha protests, “Do you not care?” In Martha’s world, the Lord is supposed to care.
Which makes Martha deeply Jewish. God, for the Jews, was a just God, the God who had delivered a band of slaves from their bondage in Egypt, righting a wrong, making just what was unjust. This God called the Jews to be just, to act justly both to Jews and to the non-Jews in their midst. This God was just and the Jews were to reflect justice towards all.
And when the Jews were taken into exile, some began to wonder if God was just. Such wonderings led the author of the book of Job to write about a man who had lost everything for no discernible reason. Job protests, demanding that God give Job a reason for the injustices Job has suffered. If God was just, God would not allow Job, a righteous man, to suffer injustice. Job, like Martha, was asking: “Lord, do you not care?”
Martha is doing what Jews have always done – calling upon God to be just. Martha’s protest is a mark of deep faith that Jesus does care, and cares about her. Martha is protesting because in the face of injustice, we want the just God we worship to make things right.
This past Wednesday I attended a community meeting at a local Baptist church which is predominately African-American. The meeting was called by their pastor to share conversation about the recent events in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas, events which left both young black men and white police officers fearful. What I heard that night was the language of protest. Why is this happening? How do we stop this violence? What does justice look like?
That the meeting was arranged is a sign that people do care and care deeply about the ways we treat one another. That the church was not packed is also a sign that we all care about a lot of things and our cares are not always the cares of our neighbors.
One especially helpful comment came from an African-American pastor, known to me through my association with a local pastors’ forum. He noted that, whereas we may be able to do some things differently, ultimately, we are confronting a spiritual issue. When we are baptized, we acknowledge that there are powers at work in the world that are actively seeking to oppose God. As a Baptist, this pastor is perhaps more comfortable talking about evil than are we, as Episcopalians. But that is the bottom line – evil is afoot as evil has always been afoot and ignoring that reality is simply inviting more evil.
The language of protest is hard to hear. We often want to do something, fix something, change something. Sometimes we can; sometimes we cannot.
The language of protest calls us to remember those times when we have protested against what we have perceived to be injustices in our lives. Such injustice may be a stolen credit card which can be remedied but may also be a diagnosis of lung cancer when we have never smoked or a child in trouble that we have only loved. The language of protest ultimately is a cry to a God who is just but does not appear to always be dealing justly with us.
Not protesting is suffering in silence. I could have cleaned up the room I shared with my sister without saying anything to my mother. I could have picked up her dirty clothes and vacuumed her half of the room and said nothing. I could have not protested. Suffering in silence is still suffering and eventually the lid will blow off the pot.
Liturgically, we often hear the language of protest in the psalms as we do today. Our psalm this morning is a psalm that laments the power of a tyrant to bring ruin upon a godly person. The psalmist ends trusting in the mercy of God to topple those who “love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth.” The psalmist knows what we so often forget - only God is good and only God can overcome evil. And the psalmist ends saying; “I will give you thanks for what you have done and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.”
Perhaps that is part of the truth that Mary is learning as she sits at the feet of Jesus. Perhaps Mary is learning that in the person of Jesus, God is bringing the world back ‘round right, healing the brokenness of this world, forgiving us our trespasses and delivering us from evil. Perhaps Mary is learning that the language of protest can and must end in thanksgiving to a God who does care and who has and will save us.
I and others would like to help heal the divisions that plague our community. And I also know that good folk are trying hard to identify the problem and find a solution. The “problem” is not easily defined and like Martha, confronts us with many tasks. Some folk the other night felt like the problem was rooted in homes that were failing to parent children or in schools that were unable to educate our children and some folk felt the problem was rooted in churches where we notoriously fail to love one another.
There are homes in our community in which children are left to their own devices; our schools are struggling to meet the challenges that are wrought by poverty, drug abuse and neglect; and our churches are plagued by gossip and dissension. We have a problem – that was brought home clearly in the events that we witnessed in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas. We are far less clear about what the problem is.
Martha this morning raises up the importance of lament: “Lord, do you not care?” Martha sees an injustice and cries out. Martha is not to be dismissed. But Mary, Jesus, says, “has chosen the better part.” Perhaps, what Mary has chosen is hope, hope that Jesus will somehow make all things right. What I heard the other night was hope, hope that somehow, some way, we can create community where there is no community now.
I heard the other night that this conversation will continue. My firm hope is that it does. But what I also know is that this community is most reluctant to engage in conversations about race or any conversation that might suggest that life in Caroline County is not O.K. What I know is that we do not want to hear the laments of others.
What I also know is that we have much to be grateful for in this community. We do have laments but we also have thanksgivings. We need Martha to remind us to lament and Mary to remind us to give thanks for the presence of a just God who does care. Thanksgiving without lament is glossing over life in this world. Lament without thanksgiving is giving up hope in God.
Jesus says Mary has chosen the “better part,” by sitting at his feet and “listening.” Maybe we too, are called to “listen” before we pontificate on the “problem” and the subsequent solution to the problem as we see it.
I know Jesus loved both Mary and Martha. I suspect Jesus was grateful for his dinner that night. Someone has to fix dinner. Thanks, Martha. Now that dinner is served, can you join us at the table and give thanks? Or will you continue to grumble against your sister?
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Amos 7: 7 – 17
Sunday, July 10, 2016 Colossians 1: 1 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 25 - 37
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10: 30
I would like to begin this morning by observing the obvious: each and everyone of us has, at one time or another, been a Good Samaritan. We have stopped to help someone change a flat tire or used our cell phone to assist someone in distress or held a door open for someone using a walker or taken dinner to a sick neighbor. No one of us has failed to be neighborly in some way.
We are, in other words, much like the lawyer who comes to Jesus this morning wanting to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. This lawyer is a devout Jew seeking to live in accord with God’s law. The lawyer knows the Ten Commandments, as do we, and strives to live his life accordingly. The lawyer knows that he is to love God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and his neighbor as himself. This lawyer, like all of us, is a good man who wants to be a better man.
Which leads this lawyer to ask Jesus: “Who is the neighbor I am to love with my whole heart?” Unfortunately, our text tells us that the lawyer was seeking “to justify himself” by asking that question. Seeking to justify oneself sounds a bit self-righteous to our ears. The lawyer sounds like he is telling Jesus his life is blameless. But the verb in Greek means to obey God and what the lawyer wants to know is how he can live an even more faithful life. What more can he do to obey God and God’s commandments?
The lawyer recognizes that he has lived a good life and wants to know how he can live an even better life. Are we not glad at the end of the day when we have done something “good” and hope we can do more good things tomorrow?
But then Jesus tells this lawyer a story. A man has been beaten, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite pass by without stopping. A Samaritan stops, binds up this man’s wounds and takes him to an innkeeper who is to spare no expense on caring for this half-dead man.
We do not know why the priest and the Levite pass by. We do know both the priest and the Levite would become ritually unclean if they touched this wounded man, no longer able to perform their functions in the Temple. We know both the priest and the Levite had obligations to perform which were commanded by God and which they would be unable to fulfill if they stopped.
We also know that if you show up in a hospital emergency room with the flu at the same time someone shows up with chest pains, you will not be treated first. Emergency room doctors are trained to triage and to treat the most critically ill patients first. Emergency room doctors will pass you by, at least for awhile, if your complaint is not life threatening and some other patient’s complaint is life threatening.
So the priest and the Levite are neither indifferent nor callous. The priest and the Levite do what we all must do from time to time – triage. If I am fixing dinner for my neighbor who has been sick and I notice my other neighbor has fallen while getting her mail out of the mailbox, dinner will be delayed. The priest and the Levite are simply doing what we all must do in a world in which we have to make choices.
On the other hand, the Samaritan stops, pours oil and wine onto the man’s wounds, bandages him, puts him on his animal and takes him to an inn. The Samaritan takes care of the man through the day and night, and then tells the innkeeper the next day to take care of the man and he will return and repay the innkeeper for whatever the innkeeper spends. The Samaritan is willing to spend all of his money to take care of a Jew, a people not known for their neighborliness towards Samaritans. Samaritans were viewed by Jews as a people who did not observe the commandments of God.
Now I might want to give you the shirt off my back, but I doubt seriously I would give you the last shirt I own. If I knew how to change a tire, I would stop to help you, but I would not simply give you my car and tell you I will take yours, flat tire and all. What the Samaritan does is extreme, even abnormal.
“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Jesus asks the lawyer. And the answer is obvious: “The one who showed him mercy.” From the perspective of the man left for dead on the side of the road, his neighbor was the Samaritan.
Who is our neighbor? The one who shows us mercy when we are lying on the side of the road, half dead. Don’t like thinking about yourself lying on the side of the road, beaten and robbed? Neither do I. I prefer thinking of myself as a good Samaritan who might become an even better Samaritan. I would prefer to think about the ways I have helped others, shown mercy, supported the work of Episcopal Relief and Development and folded clothes at Glory Outreach. I want to remember the ways I have reached out to my neighbors, presuming my neighbor to be anyone in need.
What if I cannot know and love my neighbor until I take my place on the side of the road with that man who was beaten and robbed? What if I have no idea what it means to show mercy until I have received the kind of unconditional mercy that the Samaritan demonstrated? What if the lawyer cannot love his neighbor as himself until the lawyer experiences life on the side of the road, in desperate need of a Good Samaritan?
Jesus did not live and die to make good people better. And we do not rack up brownie points in heaven for our “good deeds.” No one here this morning is callous or indifferent to the needs of others. And everyone here this morning has shown mercy to others in one way or another.
That we are here this morning is because, as we sing in the Gloria “For you alone are the Holy One.” We are here this morning because none of us are good enough, all of us are in need of the mercy of God and all of us, if we are honest, have experienced times when we felt just like that man who was beaten and robbed and left for half dead on the side of the road. Who among us has not felt out of control, powerless, wholly unable to help ourselves? Who among us has never uttered the prayer, “Please God help me”?
What I know is that just as most of us come to church in clean clothes, we also come to church with clean stories. We exchange pleasantries at the back of the church every Sunday and everybody is fine, including me. “I’m O.K. and you are O.K.” we say. We hug, we shake hands, we laugh. I make note of colorful ties and shoes; chide your absence from church by re-introducing myself; notice how your children are growing up; ask how you will celebrate your birthday or anniversary.
You often say that you enjoyed the service, found the sermon meaningful and maybe make brief note of a pastoral concern. And then you are out the door or downstairs to coffee hour. All in all, church often looks like a place where we are all well or at least coping. All in all, church often looks like a place where everybody except us is well and coping. Church rarely looks like a hospital for lost souls, a place where Jesus came to heal the sick, not those who did not need a physician.
The narthex is not a hospital. The altar rail is; at the altar Jesus feeds each one of us with bread and wine, binding up our wounds whatever they may be, assuring us of God’s presence in the midst of whatever we are experiencing.
Do I always feel the hand of God in the midst of the challenges of my life? Absolutely not. But I keep on feeding on the bread and the wine.
I have to wonder if the lawyer was sorry he asked Jesus that question about who was his neighbor. Jesus made that lawyer see through the eyes of a man left for half dead on the side of the road. I suspect that lawyer would have preferred to see through eyes that only saw the good in the world and not the bad; only our triumphs, not our struggles; only his strengths, not his weaknesses. I have to wonder if that lawyer, like all of us, would prefer to see himself as the good Samaritan and not the man left for dead on the side of the road.
Sunday, July 10, 2016 Colossians 1: 1 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 25 - 37
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10: 30
I would like to begin this morning by observing the obvious: each and everyone of us has, at one time or another, been a Good Samaritan. We have stopped to help someone change a flat tire or used our cell phone to assist someone in distress or held a door open for someone using a walker or taken dinner to a sick neighbor. No one of us has failed to be neighborly in some way.
We are, in other words, much like the lawyer who comes to Jesus this morning wanting to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. This lawyer is a devout Jew seeking to live in accord with God’s law. The lawyer knows the Ten Commandments, as do we, and strives to live his life accordingly. The lawyer knows that he is to love God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and his neighbor as himself. This lawyer, like all of us, is a good man who wants to be a better man.
Which leads this lawyer to ask Jesus: “Who is the neighbor I am to love with my whole heart?” Unfortunately, our text tells us that the lawyer was seeking “to justify himself” by asking that question. Seeking to justify oneself sounds a bit self-righteous to our ears. The lawyer sounds like he is telling Jesus his life is blameless. But the verb in Greek means to obey God and what the lawyer wants to know is how he can live an even more faithful life. What more can he do to obey God and God’s commandments?
The lawyer recognizes that he has lived a good life and wants to know how he can live an even better life. Are we not glad at the end of the day when we have done something “good” and hope we can do more good things tomorrow?
But then Jesus tells this lawyer a story. A man has been beaten, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite pass by without stopping. A Samaritan stops, binds up this man’s wounds and takes him to an innkeeper who is to spare no expense on caring for this half-dead man.
We do not know why the priest and the Levite pass by. We do know both the priest and the Levite would become ritually unclean if they touched this wounded man, no longer able to perform their functions in the Temple. We know both the priest and the Levite had obligations to perform which were commanded by God and which they would be unable to fulfill if they stopped.
We also know that if you show up in a hospital emergency room with the flu at the same time someone shows up with chest pains, you will not be treated first. Emergency room doctors are trained to triage and to treat the most critically ill patients first. Emergency room doctors will pass you by, at least for awhile, if your complaint is not life threatening and some other patient’s complaint is life threatening.
So the priest and the Levite are neither indifferent nor callous. The priest and the Levite do what we all must do from time to time – triage. If I am fixing dinner for my neighbor who has been sick and I notice my other neighbor has fallen while getting her mail out of the mailbox, dinner will be delayed. The priest and the Levite are simply doing what we all must do in a world in which we have to make choices.
On the other hand, the Samaritan stops, pours oil and wine onto the man’s wounds, bandages him, puts him on his animal and takes him to an inn. The Samaritan takes care of the man through the day and night, and then tells the innkeeper the next day to take care of the man and he will return and repay the innkeeper for whatever the innkeeper spends. The Samaritan is willing to spend all of his money to take care of a Jew, a people not known for their neighborliness towards Samaritans. Samaritans were viewed by Jews as a people who did not observe the commandments of God.
Now I might want to give you the shirt off my back, but I doubt seriously I would give you the last shirt I own. If I knew how to change a tire, I would stop to help you, but I would not simply give you my car and tell you I will take yours, flat tire and all. What the Samaritan does is extreme, even abnormal.
“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Jesus asks the lawyer. And the answer is obvious: “The one who showed him mercy.” From the perspective of the man left for dead on the side of the road, his neighbor was the Samaritan.
Who is our neighbor? The one who shows us mercy when we are lying on the side of the road, half dead. Don’t like thinking about yourself lying on the side of the road, beaten and robbed? Neither do I. I prefer thinking of myself as a good Samaritan who might become an even better Samaritan. I would prefer to think about the ways I have helped others, shown mercy, supported the work of Episcopal Relief and Development and folded clothes at Glory Outreach. I want to remember the ways I have reached out to my neighbors, presuming my neighbor to be anyone in need.
What if I cannot know and love my neighbor until I take my place on the side of the road with that man who was beaten and robbed? What if I have no idea what it means to show mercy until I have received the kind of unconditional mercy that the Samaritan demonstrated? What if the lawyer cannot love his neighbor as himself until the lawyer experiences life on the side of the road, in desperate need of a Good Samaritan?
Jesus did not live and die to make good people better. And we do not rack up brownie points in heaven for our “good deeds.” No one here this morning is callous or indifferent to the needs of others. And everyone here this morning has shown mercy to others in one way or another.
That we are here this morning is because, as we sing in the Gloria “For you alone are the Holy One.” We are here this morning because none of us are good enough, all of us are in need of the mercy of God and all of us, if we are honest, have experienced times when we felt just like that man who was beaten and robbed and left for half dead on the side of the road. Who among us has not felt out of control, powerless, wholly unable to help ourselves? Who among us has never uttered the prayer, “Please God help me”?
What I know is that just as most of us come to church in clean clothes, we also come to church with clean stories. We exchange pleasantries at the back of the church every Sunday and everybody is fine, including me. “I’m O.K. and you are O.K.” we say. We hug, we shake hands, we laugh. I make note of colorful ties and shoes; chide your absence from church by re-introducing myself; notice how your children are growing up; ask how you will celebrate your birthday or anniversary.
You often say that you enjoyed the service, found the sermon meaningful and maybe make brief note of a pastoral concern. And then you are out the door or downstairs to coffee hour. All in all, church often looks like a place where we are all well or at least coping. All in all, church often looks like a place where everybody except us is well and coping. Church rarely looks like a hospital for lost souls, a place where Jesus came to heal the sick, not those who did not need a physician.
The narthex is not a hospital. The altar rail is; at the altar Jesus feeds each one of us with bread and wine, binding up our wounds whatever they may be, assuring us of God’s presence in the midst of whatever we are experiencing.
Do I always feel the hand of God in the midst of the challenges of my life? Absolutely not. But I keep on feeding on the bread and the wine.
I have to wonder if the lawyer was sorry he asked Jesus that question about who was his neighbor. Jesus made that lawyer see through the eyes of a man left for half dead on the side of the road. I suspect that lawyer would have preferred to see through eyes that only saw the good in the world and not the bad; only our triumphs, not our struggles; only his strengths, not his weaknesses. I have to wonder if that lawyer, like all of us, would prefer to see himself as the good Samaritan and not the man left for dead on the side of the road.
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost 2 Kings 5: 1 – 14
Sunday, July 3, 2016 Galatians 6: 1 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 1 – 11, 16 - 20
“Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”
Luke 10: 3
Hospitality often smells like fried chicken in the South, tastes like country ham biscuits, looks like a clean tablecloth and sounds like a room full of people all talking at once. Hospitality in Ethiopia often smells like coffee, tastes like a thin round of bread called injera, looks like a host pouring water on the hands of his guests, and sounds like a room dominated by male voices. Hospitality in the South includes forks, knives and spoons; in Ethiopia, hospitality is offered by the large round sour-dough based bread injera which is used to pick up your food.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, hospitality often took the form of a cocktail party, replete with an open bar and hors d’oeuvres. One could expect scallops wrapped in bacon but no fried chicken. Hospitality meant finger food, not usually dinner. For sure, there were dinner parties but they were generally well orchestrated events crafted so that certain people met other certain people who, at the end of the dinner, were all beholden to the host.
Hospitality looks differently in different places and if you go to Ethiopia, do not expect silverware, at least among the locals.
Jesus sends seventy missionaries out this morning from our reading from the gospel of Luke. Those seventy are not to take anything with them – no purse, no bag, and no sandals. They are to stay wherever they are received, “eating and drinking whatever they provide.” Those seventy are to be completely dependent upon the hospitality of others.
Those missionaries were to emulate the life of the people of Israel who were originally nomads, clans like that of Abraham, who moved from place to place in search of water for their livestock and food for their families. Long before the days of hotels and restaurants, nomads depended upon the hospitality of others whenever their paths crossed. In a nomadic culture, the practice of hospitality was expected. And for the people of Israel, the people of God, the practice of hospitality was always a reminder that their ancestor Abraham was a wandering Aramean, a stranger whose descendants eventually wandered down into Egypt and were subsequently enslaved. The practice of hospitality to the stranger and the foreigner was written deep into the spirit of the people Israel for they had known well the necessity of hospitality as nomads and the absence of hospitality in Egypt.
Jesus anticipates that some of the time these missionaries will be welcomed and some of the time they will not. Jesus gives instructions to the seventy that when they are not welcomed, they are to shake off the dust from their feet, proclaiming “the kingdom of God has come near.” A lack of hospitality is a refusal to welcome the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is often revealed to us by strangers, leading the author of the letter to the Hebrews to write: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
While living in tents as nomads, Abraham and his wife Sarah welcomed three strangers only to learn from them that Sarah would give birth to a child in her old age. That child was Isaac, through whom God was continuing to fulfill God’s promise that through the family of Abraham, the whole world would be blessed.
The practice of hospitality obliged the people of Israel to embrace some pretty radical choices. Three verses are left out of our reading this morning. They are verses twelve through fifteen. In verse twelve, Jesus speaks of the towns who do not welcome the missionaries, saying: “I tell you, on that day, it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” Sodom was the home of a man named Lot. One evening two angels in the form of men came to Sodom and Lot offered them hospitality. When the men of Sodom heard of these strangers, they pressed Lot to give them up. Lot refused but offered his two daughters in their stead. Lot was willing to give up his daughters into the hands of men with no good intent rather than the two men to whom he had offered hospitality. Charity, for Lot, did not begin at home, but rather with the stranger.
We may find this story hard to swallow, but this story of Sodom does tell us that hospitality is a responsibility that will not always be easy to live out.
Not everyone in the first century was hospitable to Jesus. Israel was called to be hospitable but many found Jesus’ words and deeds beyond the pale. Jesus broke the Sabbath laws, overturned the tables in the sacred Temple and went to his death with no defense. Jesus was an odd, and not easily welcomed, Messiah. Practicing hospitality to this stranger was challenging.
We, in the twenty-first century, have our own challenges with hospitality. Extending hospitality to the stranger is no easier for us than it was for those towns into which the seventy missionaries go this morning. What does hospitality look like if the stranger wants a job or a hand out? What does hospitality look like if the stranger is strapped with a bomb? What does hospitality look like if the stranger has young children? What does hospitality look like here at St. Asaph’s for a newcomer who may be unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church? What does hospitality look like to those who wish to use our sanctuary, our undercroft or our pavilion?
I know I have shared this story with you all before. When I travelled to Ethiopia while I was in seminary, we were invited to the home of a fellow seminarian. We were a mixed group of men and women, led by an internationally known scholar of the New Testament who is a woman. Dinner was a buffet served from the dining room around which the women of the house kept a close watch to make sure we all had enough to eat. Our group gathered with our male hosts in the living room to share dinner. After dinner, the women continued to stay in the dining room or kitchen, never venturing into the living room. As the light slowly dawned, I realized that my presence in the living room with the men was an extraordinary act of hospitality and not one that was usually offered. In Ethiopia, men are separated from the women in social settings but not that night in deference to their guests.
Years before, soon after I was married, someone gave me a country ham as an act of hospitality. After I unwrapped that ham and discovered that it was covered in mold, I threw it into the garbage! Where I came from, mold was an indication that the subject of the mold had outlived its useful shelf life. The practice of hospitality challenges both the giver and the receiver. I had a lot to learn about hospitality and am still learning.
When Vicar Janet Roberts from Liverpool, England, stayed with me in May, I made haste the first morning to fix her a cup of tea. I took a mug, filled it with water, dropped in a tea bag and popped it into the microwave. Alas, I learned one can heat the water in the microwave but must not put in the tea bag until the water is boiling; otherwise, the tea foams and foaming is not good. I drink coffee and not tea and had not a clue.
The Church is a school in the practice of hospitality. Bound together by the water of baptism, we are called to welcome one another. I may not welcome you in the ways you expect and you may not welcome me in the way I expect. The ways we practice hospitality are different. But I pray we all might practice hospitality, speaking and acting in ways that draw us together and do not drive us apart.
I know now that a country ham needs to be washed; that a cup of tea requires boiling, not just hot water; and that I can enjoy dinner without touching either a knife, a spoon or a fork.
Sunday, July 3, 2016 Galatians 6: 1 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 10: 1 – 11, 16 - 20
“Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”
Luke 10: 3
Hospitality often smells like fried chicken in the South, tastes like country ham biscuits, looks like a clean tablecloth and sounds like a room full of people all talking at once. Hospitality in Ethiopia often smells like coffee, tastes like a thin round of bread called injera, looks like a host pouring water on the hands of his guests, and sounds like a room dominated by male voices. Hospitality in the South includes forks, knives and spoons; in Ethiopia, hospitality is offered by the large round sour-dough based bread injera which is used to pick up your food.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, hospitality often took the form of a cocktail party, replete with an open bar and hors d’oeuvres. One could expect scallops wrapped in bacon but no fried chicken. Hospitality meant finger food, not usually dinner. For sure, there were dinner parties but they were generally well orchestrated events crafted so that certain people met other certain people who, at the end of the dinner, were all beholden to the host.
Hospitality looks differently in different places and if you go to Ethiopia, do not expect silverware, at least among the locals.
Jesus sends seventy missionaries out this morning from our reading from the gospel of Luke. Those seventy are not to take anything with them – no purse, no bag, and no sandals. They are to stay wherever they are received, “eating and drinking whatever they provide.” Those seventy are to be completely dependent upon the hospitality of others.
Those missionaries were to emulate the life of the people of Israel who were originally nomads, clans like that of Abraham, who moved from place to place in search of water for their livestock and food for their families. Long before the days of hotels and restaurants, nomads depended upon the hospitality of others whenever their paths crossed. In a nomadic culture, the practice of hospitality was expected. And for the people of Israel, the people of God, the practice of hospitality was always a reminder that their ancestor Abraham was a wandering Aramean, a stranger whose descendants eventually wandered down into Egypt and were subsequently enslaved. The practice of hospitality to the stranger and the foreigner was written deep into the spirit of the people Israel for they had known well the necessity of hospitality as nomads and the absence of hospitality in Egypt.
Jesus anticipates that some of the time these missionaries will be welcomed and some of the time they will not. Jesus gives instructions to the seventy that when they are not welcomed, they are to shake off the dust from their feet, proclaiming “the kingdom of God has come near.” A lack of hospitality is a refusal to welcome the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is often revealed to us by strangers, leading the author of the letter to the Hebrews to write: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
While living in tents as nomads, Abraham and his wife Sarah welcomed three strangers only to learn from them that Sarah would give birth to a child in her old age. That child was Isaac, through whom God was continuing to fulfill God’s promise that through the family of Abraham, the whole world would be blessed.
The practice of hospitality obliged the people of Israel to embrace some pretty radical choices. Three verses are left out of our reading this morning. They are verses twelve through fifteen. In verse twelve, Jesus speaks of the towns who do not welcome the missionaries, saying: “I tell you, on that day, it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” Sodom was the home of a man named Lot. One evening two angels in the form of men came to Sodom and Lot offered them hospitality. When the men of Sodom heard of these strangers, they pressed Lot to give them up. Lot refused but offered his two daughters in their stead. Lot was willing to give up his daughters into the hands of men with no good intent rather than the two men to whom he had offered hospitality. Charity, for Lot, did not begin at home, but rather with the stranger.
We may find this story hard to swallow, but this story of Sodom does tell us that hospitality is a responsibility that will not always be easy to live out.
Not everyone in the first century was hospitable to Jesus. Israel was called to be hospitable but many found Jesus’ words and deeds beyond the pale. Jesus broke the Sabbath laws, overturned the tables in the sacred Temple and went to his death with no defense. Jesus was an odd, and not easily welcomed, Messiah. Practicing hospitality to this stranger was challenging.
We, in the twenty-first century, have our own challenges with hospitality. Extending hospitality to the stranger is no easier for us than it was for those towns into which the seventy missionaries go this morning. What does hospitality look like if the stranger wants a job or a hand out? What does hospitality look like if the stranger is strapped with a bomb? What does hospitality look like if the stranger has young children? What does hospitality look like here at St. Asaph’s for a newcomer who may be unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church? What does hospitality look like to those who wish to use our sanctuary, our undercroft or our pavilion?
I know I have shared this story with you all before. When I travelled to Ethiopia while I was in seminary, we were invited to the home of a fellow seminarian. We were a mixed group of men and women, led by an internationally known scholar of the New Testament who is a woman. Dinner was a buffet served from the dining room around which the women of the house kept a close watch to make sure we all had enough to eat. Our group gathered with our male hosts in the living room to share dinner. After dinner, the women continued to stay in the dining room or kitchen, never venturing into the living room. As the light slowly dawned, I realized that my presence in the living room with the men was an extraordinary act of hospitality and not one that was usually offered. In Ethiopia, men are separated from the women in social settings but not that night in deference to their guests.
Years before, soon after I was married, someone gave me a country ham as an act of hospitality. After I unwrapped that ham and discovered that it was covered in mold, I threw it into the garbage! Where I came from, mold was an indication that the subject of the mold had outlived its useful shelf life. The practice of hospitality challenges both the giver and the receiver. I had a lot to learn about hospitality and am still learning.
When Vicar Janet Roberts from Liverpool, England, stayed with me in May, I made haste the first morning to fix her a cup of tea. I took a mug, filled it with water, dropped in a tea bag and popped it into the microwave. Alas, I learned one can heat the water in the microwave but must not put in the tea bag until the water is boiling; otherwise, the tea foams and foaming is not good. I drink coffee and not tea and had not a clue.
The Church is a school in the practice of hospitality. Bound together by the water of baptism, we are called to welcome one another. I may not welcome you in the ways you expect and you may not welcome me in the way I expect. The ways we practice hospitality are different. But I pray we all might practice hospitality, speaking and acting in ways that draw us together and do not drive us apart.
I know now that a country ham needs to be washed; that a cup of tea requires boiling, not just hot water; and that I can enjoy dinner without touching either a knife, a spoon or a fork.
The Third Sunday after Pentecost I Kings 17: 8 – 24
Sunday, June 5, 2016 Galatians 1: 11 – 24
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 7: 11 - 17
Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’
Luke 7: 16
Summer has officially started. Memorial Day was this past Monday, school has ended, choir practice is over until September, weekends away are being enjoyed and vacations anticipated. Graduations and weddings are being celebrated as we welcome warmer weather and our yearly opportunity to be outside rather than inside.
Liturgically, we have entered into “ordinary time,” that long season of the Church year that follows the Day of Pentecost and continues all the way through until next Advent. During ordinary time, our altar hangings will be green and Sunday after Sunday I will wear the same stole. Summer is a fun time outside of the Church; in the Church, the season after Pentecost is well, ordinary.
We live out “ordinary time” without the highs of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Between now and November 20th, with the exception of All Saints’ Day on November 1, we will celebrate no great feasts, decorate the church for no special occasions and see the same green altar hangings on the altar for the next twenty-six Sundays.
I am glad we managed to sacrifice a couple of plastic chickens last Sunday and look forward to our next Children’s Sunday on July 31st. On Children’s Sunday we can get creative during a season when Sundays can get boring. Between those times, The Rev. Tom Holliday is coming to preach next Sunday when I will be away, and Tom is always an engaging preacher.
But for the most part, summer in the church is a sleepy time, a time unpunctuated by great high holy days. “Ordinary” time follows our celebrations of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ on Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and is the season in which you and I live – between the time when Christ came and lived as one of us and that time when Christ will come again. “Ordinary” time is our time, this time in which we live fairly ordinary lives doing pretty much the same thing day after day.
Outside of the Church, summer is the time we often try to escape the ordinary by taking a vacation, making time for a picnic or celebrating with friends. Summer is an opportunity for many of us to break our routines, enjoy something different, relax in the warmth of the sun. Inside the Church, ordinary time is a reminder that none of us can escape the reality of life in this world and we must work to keep body and soul together.
“Ordinary” time is the time following the Day of Pentecost, that day when we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life,” in the words of the Creed. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
This morning in our gospel reading from Luke, Jesus meets a grieving widow as she buries her only son. Widows in the first century were wholly dependent upon their husbands and their sons for support. This widow, therefore, is now facing a very uncertain future totally at the mercy of her neighbors for food, clothing and shelter. She has lost both her only son and any hope of security in the world. And Jesus has compassion, we hear, and with a word and a touch, restores the life of her only son.
Jesus’ actions mirror the actions of Elijah in our Old Testament reading from I Kings. Elijah meets a widow who is starving to death as a result of a drought. She is preparing to die along with her only son. Elijah assures this widow that her oil and meal will not run out until the rains come, but then her only son falls deathly ill. Elijah, like Jesus, restores life to this child, and returns this son to his mother.
On this third Sunday in ordinary time, we are hearing two extraordinary stories of the restoration of life in the midst of death. And the people say: “God has looked favorably on his people!” Those same words were spoken by Mary as Mary rejoices that she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Lord. Those words are also spoken by Zechariah after the birth of his son John the Baptist.
Into this ordinary world of toil, heartache and pain, God shows us God’s favor, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. All we need to do is to pay attention.
Long before I ever entertained the idea of being a priest, my family went to the beach one summer with my sister’s family. Between us, we had six almost teenage children. On the last night at our cottage, without telling anyone, I invited us all down to the beach and handed everyone a can of whipped cream. Mayhem, laughter and wild shouts of joy ensued. Most of us got nailed and all of us ended up in the water. When we gathered last summer to bury my brother-in-law, my nieces still remembered that night. We never forget times when something extra-ordinary happens and we are brought to life.
Not all on the beach that night grew up to be church-goers. But everyone on the beach that night got a taste of what “life” is like – a little crazy, a bit messy, and tinged with regret when the can of whipped cream is empty. God touched down that night long ago even if no one of us could say that. I do remember that the adults among us raised their eyebrows when I handed each child a can of whipped cream. Maybe that is why Jesus tells us we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.
I have yet to meet anyone who can raise the dead. I have met many folk who have given me life and some who have sapped the life out of me and mostly folk who have done both. I am painfully aware that I can be both a giver of life as well as a giver of death. I am headed back to Seminary next weekend to greet folk I have not seen for years and to meet new folk who I do not know. I am going ostensibly to improve my preaching; covertly I am going to find new life.
New life surrounds us. When the invitation to apply for this preaching fellowship crossed my desk last fall, I thought “I haven’t got time. It’s going to be a lot of work. Why bother?” I am really glad I bothered because I am already excited and my mentor will be a man who has taught preaching in four different seminaries and edited/and or authored eighteen books on preaching. What I hope to bring back to St.Asaph’s is nothing short of the joy of the Lord who wants to favor us!
Very little in the Church is ever ordinary. If ordinary is what you want, do not get baptized. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was anything but ordinary and in baptism we are plunged into that extraordinary story. In baptism, that extraordinary story becomes our story and we are transformed. We no longer live “ordinary” lives, but rather lives graced by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life always at work to bring life out of death, joy out of sadness, hope out of despair.
I do not know what new things you might do this summer. What I invite you to do, though, is to bring back your stories, stories of your extraordinary encounters in the midst of your otherwise ordinary lives. Tell us how, when and where you experienced the Spirit of the Risen Christ.
We have heard this day extraordinary stories. And we will hear more. And although the canon of the Bible is closed, unless we share our own stories with one another, our scriptures will not be real and full of life, but will rather be dusty old documents written by an unscientific people.
I discovered the favor of God in cans of whipped cream. Where will you discover God’s favor?
Sunday, June 5, 2016 Galatians 1: 11 – 24
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 7: 11 - 17
Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’
Luke 7: 16
Summer has officially started. Memorial Day was this past Monday, school has ended, choir practice is over until September, weekends away are being enjoyed and vacations anticipated. Graduations and weddings are being celebrated as we welcome warmer weather and our yearly opportunity to be outside rather than inside.
Liturgically, we have entered into “ordinary time,” that long season of the Church year that follows the Day of Pentecost and continues all the way through until next Advent. During ordinary time, our altar hangings will be green and Sunday after Sunday I will wear the same stole. Summer is a fun time outside of the Church; in the Church, the season after Pentecost is well, ordinary.
We live out “ordinary time” without the highs of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Between now and November 20th, with the exception of All Saints’ Day on November 1, we will celebrate no great feasts, decorate the church for no special occasions and see the same green altar hangings on the altar for the next twenty-six Sundays.
I am glad we managed to sacrifice a couple of plastic chickens last Sunday and look forward to our next Children’s Sunday on July 31st. On Children’s Sunday we can get creative during a season when Sundays can get boring. Between those times, The Rev. Tom Holliday is coming to preach next Sunday when I will be away, and Tom is always an engaging preacher.
But for the most part, summer in the church is a sleepy time, a time unpunctuated by great high holy days. “Ordinary” time follows our celebrations of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ on Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and is the season in which you and I live – between the time when Christ came and lived as one of us and that time when Christ will come again. “Ordinary” time is our time, this time in which we live fairly ordinary lives doing pretty much the same thing day after day.
Outside of the Church, summer is the time we often try to escape the ordinary by taking a vacation, making time for a picnic or celebrating with friends. Summer is an opportunity for many of us to break our routines, enjoy something different, relax in the warmth of the sun. Inside the Church, ordinary time is a reminder that none of us can escape the reality of life in this world and we must work to keep body and soul together.
“Ordinary” time is the time following the Day of Pentecost, that day when we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life,” in the words of the Creed. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
This morning in our gospel reading from Luke, Jesus meets a grieving widow as she buries her only son. Widows in the first century were wholly dependent upon their husbands and their sons for support. This widow, therefore, is now facing a very uncertain future totally at the mercy of her neighbors for food, clothing and shelter. She has lost both her only son and any hope of security in the world. And Jesus has compassion, we hear, and with a word and a touch, restores the life of her only son.
Jesus’ actions mirror the actions of Elijah in our Old Testament reading from I Kings. Elijah meets a widow who is starving to death as a result of a drought. She is preparing to die along with her only son. Elijah assures this widow that her oil and meal will not run out until the rains come, but then her only son falls deathly ill. Elijah, like Jesus, restores life to this child, and returns this son to his mother.
On this third Sunday in ordinary time, we are hearing two extraordinary stories of the restoration of life in the midst of death. And the people say: “God has looked favorably on his people!” Those same words were spoken by Mary as Mary rejoices that she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Lord. Those words are also spoken by Zechariah after the birth of his son John the Baptist.
Into this ordinary world of toil, heartache and pain, God shows us God’s favor, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. All we need to do is to pay attention.
Long before I ever entertained the idea of being a priest, my family went to the beach one summer with my sister’s family. Between us, we had six almost teenage children. On the last night at our cottage, without telling anyone, I invited us all down to the beach and handed everyone a can of whipped cream. Mayhem, laughter and wild shouts of joy ensued. Most of us got nailed and all of us ended up in the water. When we gathered last summer to bury my brother-in-law, my nieces still remembered that night. We never forget times when something extra-ordinary happens and we are brought to life.
Not all on the beach that night grew up to be church-goers. But everyone on the beach that night got a taste of what “life” is like – a little crazy, a bit messy, and tinged with regret when the can of whipped cream is empty. God touched down that night long ago even if no one of us could say that. I do remember that the adults among us raised their eyebrows when I handed each child a can of whipped cream. Maybe that is why Jesus tells us we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.
I have yet to meet anyone who can raise the dead. I have met many folk who have given me life and some who have sapped the life out of me and mostly folk who have done both. I am painfully aware that I can be both a giver of life as well as a giver of death. I am headed back to Seminary next weekend to greet folk I have not seen for years and to meet new folk who I do not know. I am going ostensibly to improve my preaching; covertly I am going to find new life.
New life surrounds us. When the invitation to apply for this preaching fellowship crossed my desk last fall, I thought “I haven’t got time. It’s going to be a lot of work. Why bother?” I am really glad I bothered because I am already excited and my mentor will be a man who has taught preaching in four different seminaries and edited/and or authored eighteen books on preaching. What I hope to bring back to St.Asaph’s is nothing short of the joy of the Lord who wants to favor us!
Very little in the Church is ever ordinary. If ordinary is what you want, do not get baptized. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was anything but ordinary and in baptism we are plunged into that extraordinary story. In baptism, that extraordinary story becomes our story and we are transformed. We no longer live “ordinary” lives, but rather lives graced by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life always at work to bring life out of death, joy out of sadness, hope out of despair.
I do not know what new things you might do this summer. What I invite you to do, though, is to bring back your stories, stories of your extraordinary encounters in the midst of your otherwise ordinary lives. Tell us how, when and where you experienced the Spirit of the Risen Christ.
We have heard this day extraordinary stories. And we will hear more. And although the canon of the Bible is closed, unless we share our own stories with one another, our scriptures will not be real and full of life, but will rather be dusty old documents written by an unscientific people.
I discovered the favor of God in cans of whipped cream. Where will you discover God’s favor?
First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday Proverbs 8: 1 – 4, 22 – 31
Sunday, May 22, 2016 Romans 5: 1 – 5
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 16: 12 – 15
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Collect for Trinity Sunday
This week the film “Loving” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France. The film tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving who were arrested in 1958, here in Caroline County, for their interracial marriage. Part of the film was shot here in Bowling Green. The film is poised to receive significant acclaim as moviegoers in Cannes watch a story that unfolds, in part, on our very own Main Street.
And last Sunday, Vicar Janet Roberts from Liverpool, England, visited us, preaching on Pentecost and sharing with us her experiences in the Church of England. Her delightful British accent and distinctive turns of phrase such as “chaps” and “mums,” reminded us that the English language comes in many flavors!
Moviegoers in Cannes now know something about Caroline County as does an English vicar from Liverpool. Relationships that did not exist two weeks ago have now been created by way of a film, on the one hand, and an unplanned visit, on the other. France, England and Caroline County became connected in new ways recently, drawing us all into a deeper appreciation of those with whom we share life in this world.
Every year on the Sunday following Pentecost we celebrate Trinity Sunday, a time when we remember that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit - One God and Three Persons. Most of the time, Trinity Sunday is a bit of a sleeper as most of us wonder how God can be both Three and One and what difference does it make anyway? For many, if Trinity Sunday was dropped from our liturgical calendar, no one would notice.
But today we do take notice, and we take notice because our understanding of God as a Trinity of Persons is what makes us Christians. That we believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is a very distinctive claim and one we confess in our creed every Sunday. And no, the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the New Testament but was rather prompted by the revelation of God in the person of Jesus. The Church would take three hundred years after the resurrection to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity amidst much conflict and bloodshed.
Our understanding of God is important because you and I have been created in the image of God. And if God is a Unity of Three Persons, then God is not a solitary being but rather a communion of love, a divine dance between God as Father and God as Son moving to the music of the Holy Spirit.
And that is what we are created to be – partners in a dance with all others, indeed all of creation, swaying to the music of the Holy Spirit. We are, in other words, created by a relationship of love for relationships of love. We can go further and say that absent relationship, we do not really exist at all, at least not as distinct persons.
What we all want is to be loved for who we are and not as someone else thinks we should be. And sometimes we find that kind of love, someone who will love us - the “me” God created. That kind of love sets us fee to become more of who I am and does not demand that I become like you. When we demand that others become like us we set ourselves up as God, believing that if only everyone was like us the world would be a better place.
If others were more like me, the world would for sure be an easier place to live within. We would not have differences of opinion, different ways of seeing things, conflicts and disagreements. If others were more like me, Vicar Janet would have called men “men” and not chaps.
But others are not like me, nor you. And every time we engage a relationship we begin to learn something about ourselves. I learned this week that I laugh a lot and my laughter was something another person found unusual in a priest. I guess laughing priests like flying nuns are not the norm. Sometimes I laugh when I want to cry and I need to be aware when my laughter is a cover. For sure I laugh because life is funny and my life in particular can be hysterical. At other times, I laugh to deflect a painful place from being exposed.
We cannot really know ourselves unless or until we are in relationship. And if those relationships are always with folk that think like us we will be impoverished. I do regret that those who saw the premier of the film “Loving” will assume that Caroline County is a bad place to live. But the film does remind me that just under sixty years ago, this community understood interracial marriages to be wrong.
Vicar Roberts was surprised by the racial divide she saw both here and in Richmond as well as by comments she heard in some quarters. She was quick to point out, however, that our history with slavery is still fresh, just a hundred and fifty years old. In Europe, a century and a half is like yesterday so we can have hope that in the next hundred and fifty years the divisions that haunt us now may be lessened, maybe even healed.
Being in relationship with others, especially others whose experiences of life are very different from our own, can open our eyes to who we are and what we are choosing to see and what we are not choosing to see. Just as the first disciples saw the face of God in Jesus, we too are called to see the face of Jesus in everyone we meet. To worship the God made known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to hope for the day when all the peoples of the earth will be one.
Relationships are demanding and relationships take time to develop. That is true for our blood relationships and absolutely true of our baptismal relationships. Relationships never just happen. Some relationships are for sure easier to engage than others but all relationships invite us to see ourselves as others see us, call us into places where we will learn how to give and receive forgiveness and will bring us both joy and sadness.
And all relationships are destined for death, if not by our own hand, than by our biological deaths. Obituaries offer us perhaps the clearest insight into the nature of relationship. Those who survive the deceased often describe their loved one in very personal ways, ways that make the deceased irreplaceable persons, the one-of-a-kind persons God created us to be. In death, we become what we all are in life but rarely acknowledge – dearly beloved. And that is true for the saint and the sinner, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. That is true for anyone who has been loved.
Relationships are not something we choose to have as we might choose a restaurant. Relationships are intrinsic to being human in this world. We do not choose those with whom we are in relationship; rather we are given by God folk who grace our path and with whom we are then called into relationship.
In the words of the theologian Karl Barth, absent a “you” there cannot be an “I.” For Barth, relationship is fundamental to being human. Just as God exists in relationship, we as humans exist only in and through our relationships. Without “you” there is no “I.” I need “you” to be “me.”
The connections that were made this week between Caroline County, the Cannes Film Festival and Liverpool, England, are yet one more reminder of the deep interconnectedness of all of creation. No one and no thing is dispensable in God’s very good creation. You and I are called to discover the unity within this world that appears so often to be little more than a battle ground as folk compete with others, striving for attention. We have failed to appropriate and appreciate the truth about human being. Human being is not what I have simply because my heart is beating; human being is what I have with you and because of you. Human being is nothing I can possess, but can only share in.
The doctrine of the Trinity was and is and will always be, a radical claim about God and just as radical a claim about who we are. May we never forget that the God we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a God that believed before the foundations of the world that “it was not good to be alone.”
Sunday, May 22, 2016 Romans 5: 1 – 5
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 16: 12 – 15
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Collect for Trinity Sunday
This week the film “Loving” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France. The film tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving who were arrested in 1958, here in Caroline County, for their interracial marriage. Part of the film was shot here in Bowling Green. The film is poised to receive significant acclaim as moviegoers in Cannes watch a story that unfolds, in part, on our very own Main Street.
And last Sunday, Vicar Janet Roberts from Liverpool, England, visited us, preaching on Pentecost and sharing with us her experiences in the Church of England. Her delightful British accent and distinctive turns of phrase such as “chaps” and “mums,” reminded us that the English language comes in many flavors!
Moviegoers in Cannes now know something about Caroline County as does an English vicar from Liverpool. Relationships that did not exist two weeks ago have now been created by way of a film, on the one hand, and an unplanned visit, on the other. France, England and Caroline County became connected in new ways recently, drawing us all into a deeper appreciation of those with whom we share life in this world.
Every year on the Sunday following Pentecost we celebrate Trinity Sunday, a time when we remember that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit - One God and Three Persons. Most of the time, Trinity Sunday is a bit of a sleeper as most of us wonder how God can be both Three and One and what difference does it make anyway? For many, if Trinity Sunday was dropped from our liturgical calendar, no one would notice.
But today we do take notice, and we take notice because our understanding of God as a Trinity of Persons is what makes us Christians. That we believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is a very distinctive claim and one we confess in our creed every Sunday. And no, the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the New Testament but was rather prompted by the revelation of God in the person of Jesus. The Church would take three hundred years after the resurrection to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity amidst much conflict and bloodshed.
Our understanding of God is important because you and I have been created in the image of God. And if God is a Unity of Three Persons, then God is not a solitary being but rather a communion of love, a divine dance between God as Father and God as Son moving to the music of the Holy Spirit.
And that is what we are created to be – partners in a dance with all others, indeed all of creation, swaying to the music of the Holy Spirit. We are, in other words, created by a relationship of love for relationships of love. We can go further and say that absent relationship, we do not really exist at all, at least not as distinct persons.
What we all want is to be loved for who we are and not as someone else thinks we should be. And sometimes we find that kind of love, someone who will love us - the “me” God created. That kind of love sets us fee to become more of who I am and does not demand that I become like you. When we demand that others become like us we set ourselves up as God, believing that if only everyone was like us the world would be a better place.
If others were more like me, the world would for sure be an easier place to live within. We would not have differences of opinion, different ways of seeing things, conflicts and disagreements. If others were more like me, Vicar Janet would have called men “men” and not chaps.
But others are not like me, nor you. And every time we engage a relationship we begin to learn something about ourselves. I learned this week that I laugh a lot and my laughter was something another person found unusual in a priest. I guess laughing priests like flying nuns are not the norm. Sometimes I laugh when I want to cry and I need to be aware when my laughter is a cover. For sure I laugh because life is funny and my life in particular can be hysterical. At other times, I laugh to deflect a painful place from being exposed.
We cannot really know ourselves unless or until we are in relationship. And if those relationships are always with folk that think like us we will be impoverished. I do regret that those who saw the premier of the film “Loving” will assume that Caroline County is a bad place to live. But the film does remind me that just under sixty years ago, this community understood interracial marriages to be wrong.
Vicar Roberts was surprised by the racial divide she saw both here and in Richmond as well as by comments she heard in some quarters. She was quick to point out, however, that our history with slavery is still fresh, just a hundred and fifty years old. In Europe, a century and a half is like yesterday so we can have hope that in the next hundred and fifty years the divisions that haunt us now may be lessened, maybe even healed.
Being in relationship with others, especially others whose experiences of life are very different from our own, can open our eyes to who we are and what we are choosing to see and what we are not choosing to see. Just as the first disciples saw the face of God in Jesus, we too are called to see the face of Jesus in everyone we meet. To worship the God made known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to hope for the day when all the peoples of the earth will be one.
Relationships are demanding and relationships take time to develop. That is true for our blood relationships and absolutely true of our baptismal relationships. Relationships never just happen. Some relationships are for sure easier to engage than others but all relationships invite us to see ourselves as others see us, call us into places where we will learn how to give and receive forgiveness and will bring us both joy and sadness.
And all relationships are destined for death, if not by our own hand, than by our biological deaths. Obituaries offer us perhaps the clearest insight into the nature of relationship. Those who survive the deceased often describe their loved one in very personal ways, ways that make the deceased irreplaceable persons, the one-of-a-kind persons God created us to be. In death, we become what we all are in life but rarely acknowledge – dearly beloved. And that is true for the saint and the sinner, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. That is true for anyone who has been loved.
Relationships are not something we choose to have as we might choose a restaurant. Relationships are intrinsic to being human in this world. We do not choose those with whom we are in relationship; rather we are given by God folk who grace our path and with whom we are then called into relationship.
In the words of the theologian Karl Barth, absent a “you” there cannot be an “I.” For Barth, relationship is fundamental to being human. Just as God exists in relationship, we as humans exist only in and through our relationships. Without “you” there is no “I.” I need “you” to be “me.”
The connections that were made this week between Caroline County, the Cannes Film Festival and Liverpool, England, are yet one more reminder of the deep interconnectedness of all of creation. No one and no thing is dispensable in God’s very good creation. You and I are called to discover the unity within this world that appears so often to be little more than a battle ground as folk compete with others, striving for attention. We have failed to appropriate and appreciate the truth about human being. Human being is not what I have simply because my heart is beating; human being is what I have with you and because of you. Human being is nothing I can possess, but can only share in.
The doctrine of the Trinity was and is and will always be, a radical claim about God and just as radical a claim about who we are. May we never forget that the God we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a God that believed before the foundations of the world that “it was not good to be alone.”
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 16: 9 – 15
Sunday, May 1, 2016 Revelation 21: 10, 22 – 22: 5
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 23 - 29
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
John 14: 27
Shalom. Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace and is often the way one Jew will greet another Jew. We greet one another every Sunday by saying, “The Peace of the of the Lord be always with you.” We greet one another on the street alternatively with the word “Hello” which seems to date back to an old cry to attract attention meaning to stop or to cease.
The greeting “hello” is etymologically related to the word “holler” and appears to have come into use as early as the fifteenth century. “Hello” became popularized as an American greeting with the advent of the telephone and the need to establish some means to answer a call. Alexander Graham Bell advocated the use of “Ahoy” rather than “Hello,” but obviously failed to garner support.
“Shalom” and “Hello” are strange bedfellows in the world of greetings. Shalom means in the words of theologian Frederick Buechner, “fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself.” Hello, on the other hand, seems to have originally sprung from a desire to gain recognition and to get a need met, originally being the way one would hail a ferryman or we might hail a taxicab. Maybe what we want is shalom and the only way to get to shalom is by way of hello.
Shalom for our Jewish brothers and sisters, including Jesus who was a Jew, meant everything had a place, every one of us had a place and that God’s desire was that we all would find our place. Shalom meant that tax collectors and prostitutes and fishermen and scribes and Pharisees all had a place in the kingdom of God’s peace. Shalom for our Jewish brothers and sisters meant everyone belongs.
The cry of “Hello,” on the other hand, seems to spring from the reality that unless we “holler” we can be overlooked by others, others who may not be aware that we need them to stop and give us their attention. I may be stretching the etymological roots of this familiar word, but I wonder if buried deep in this cry for attention is a reminder that we need one another for our well-being, for our sense of peace in this world.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Jesus tells his disciples this morning in the gospel of John. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus gives the disciples his peace. Jesus is at peace because in the gospel of John, Jesus is returning to his Father, to the Father who sent him into the world and to whom Jesus is now returning because Jesus’ work is finished as we hear in the story of the Passion.
“If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” Rejoicing will not, however, be what the disciples feel as they watch Jesus die on the cross. The disciples will not rejoice until Jesus suddenly appears first to Mary on the morning of Easter and then to the disciples first locked in fear on Easter evening and later on a beach preparing breakfast. And the first thing that Jesus says to his frightened disciples is “Peace be with you.”
Until Jesus shows up, the disciples are anything but at peace. After Jesus shows up following the crucifixion, the disciples come to know the peace of the Lord which passes all understanding. Jesus gives the disciples his peace but not before the disciples suffered through the crucifixion and the dis-ease of watching their hopes and dreams die on a cross.
Our Lord and savior does not only wish us peace but actually gives us the peace of His presence. The peace of our Lord’s presence is what we call the work of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life,” as we say in the words of the Nicene Creed. And what our Lord gives to us is not just for our sakes but for the sake of the whole world, a world ordained by God to become, in the words of our reading from Revelation, a city that “has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”
Saying “hello” to someone is as ordinary and familiar to us as sliced bread. Indeed, not saying hello is perceived to be bad manners. But I still remember my first visit to New York City as a teenager, when I was chastised by my chaperone for saying hello to a man slumped in a doorway. Saying hello to this man meant I was paying him attention and that might invite unwanted attention from him in return. The peace that the world gives to us is bought at the price of simply not paying attention to those who might disrupt our peace.
Shalom, on the other hand, recognizes and pays attention to others, knowing they, like us, have been created by God and have a place in the kingdom of God. Shalom understands that we are called to be like God who is one and whose life of love is made known to us through the relationship Jesus shared with his Father.
Buechner goes on to write: “For Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.” Struggle is inevitable; division is not. Division comes when we fear that God is not with us, really present by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the operative words are “with us,” and not just with me or with you. God is with us and wishes us all peace.
Many years ago, after Bishop Lee consented to the consecration of Gene Robinson, who was in a partnered relationship, Bishop Lee held a series of meetings throughout the diocese to talk about his decision. Bishop Lee met with a good bit of anger and after one particularly violent confrontation, Bishop Lee said: “I could be wrong; but you might be wrong, too.” Peace will be a struggle because none of us are God.
Which means we all are called to seek peace. Seeking peace absolutely does not mean avoiding struggle, disagreement and conflict. But we need not respond to struggle with a “flight or fight” mentality. We can actually and really trust that God is with us and that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in our midst. The Holy Spirit, in the words of the former Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is all about moving us to fall in love with God and with one another. Being in love, as we all know, is not always pretty but being in love is simply the greatest joy you and I will ever know.
Our baptism binds us to Jesus, to the baptized throughout the world and all those who seek the peace of God. The Bishop can inhibit me from performing my priestly duties but the Bishop cannot undo my baptism nor the laying on of hands I received when I was ordained a priest. I can be restricted for bad behavior but not dismissed from the kingdom of God. No one, in other words, can get voted off the island. Not in the kingdom of God. We can, and always will be able to leave this phenomenon we call Church. But we cannot leave God because God is always with us.
I disrupted our peace last Sunday when I announced the resignation of our Senior Warden John Nunnally. John did resign and you needed to know. But what you also need to know is that the presence of Christ, the life giving Holy Spirit, is not on vacation. The Holy Spirit, the presence of the Risen Christ, is at work in our midst, in our lives, and in ways we will never understand.
We are struggling at the moment. We are struggling to become the people God has called us to be. We are struggling to become a community of peace, of forgiveness and of truth telling. We are struggling but God is with us.
Sunday, May 1, 2016 Revelation 21: 10, 22 – 22: 5
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 23 - 29
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
John 14: 27
Shalom. Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace and is often the way one Jew will greet another Jew. We greet one another every Sunday by saying, “The Peace of the of the Lord be always with you.” We greet one another on the street alternatively with the word “Hello” which seems to date back to an old cry to attract attention meaning to stop or to cease.
The greeting “hello” is etymologically related to the word “holler” and appears to have come into use as early as the fifteenth century. “Hello” became popularized as an American greeting with the advent of the telephone and the need to establish some means to answer a call. Alexander Graham Bell advocated the use of “Ahoy” rather than “Hello,” but obviously failed to garner support.
“Shalom” and “Hello” are strange bedfellows in the world of greetings. Shalom means in the words of theologian Frederick Buechner, “fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself.” Hello, on the other hand, seems to have originally sprung from a desire to gain recognition and to get a need met, originally being the way one would hail a ferryman or we might hail a taxicab. Maybe what we want is shalom and the only way to get to shalom is by way of hello.
Shalom for our Jewish brothers and sisters, including Jesus who was a Jew, meant everything had a place, every one of us had a place and that God’s desire was that we all would find our place. Shalom meant that tax collectors and prostitutes and fishermen and scribes and Pharisees all had a place in the kingdom of God’s peace. Shalom for our Jewish brothers and sisters meant everyone belongs.
The cry of “Hello,” on the other hand, seems to spring from the reality that unless we “holler” we can be overlooked by others, others who may not be aware that we need them to stop and give us their attention. I may be stretching the etymological roots of this familiar word, but I wonder if buried deep in this cry for attention is a reminder that we need one another for our well-being, for our sense of peace in this world.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Jesus tells his disciples this morning in the gospel of John. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus gives the disciples his peace. Jesus is at peace because in the gospel of John, Jesus is returning to his Father, to the Father who sent him into the world and to whom Jesus is now returning because Jesus’ work is finished as we hear in the story of the Passion.
“If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” Rejoicing will not, however, be what the disciples feel as they watch Jesus die on the cross. The disciples will not rejoice until Jesus suddenly appears first to Mary on the morning of Easter and then to the disciples first locked in fear on Easter evening and later on a beach preparing breakfast. And the first thing that Jesus says to his frightened disciples is “Peace be with you.”
Until Jesus shows up, the disciples are anything but at peace. After Jesus shows up following the crucifixion, the disciples come to know the peace of the Lord which passes all understanding. Jesus gives the disciples his peace but not before the disciples suffered through the crucifixion and the dis-ease of watching their hopes and dreams die on a cross.
Our Lord and savior does not only wish us peace but actually gives us the peace of His presence. The peace of our Lord’s presence is what we call the work of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life,” as we say in the words of the Nicene Creed. And what our Lord gives to us is not just for our sakes but for the sake of the whole world, a world ordained by God to become, in the words of our reading from Revelation, a city that “has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”
Saying “hello” to someone is as ordinary and familiar to us as sliced bread. Indeed, not saying hello is perceived to be bad manners. But I still remember my first visit to New York City as a teenager, when I was chastised by my chaperone for saying hello to a man slumped in a doorway. Saying hello to this man meant I was paying him attention and that might invite unwanted attention from him in return. The peace that the world gives to us is bought at the price of simply not paying attention to those who might disrupt our peace.
Shalom, on the other hand, recognizes and pays attention to others, knowing they, like us, have been created by God and have a place in the kingdom of God. Shalom understands that we are called to be like God who is one and whose life of love is made known to us through the relationship Jesus shared with his Father.
Buechner goes on to write: “For Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.” Struggle is inevitable; division is not. Division comes when we fear that God is not with us, really present by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the operative words are “with us,” and not just with me or with you. God is with us and wishes us all peace.
Many years ago, after Bishop Lee consented to the consecration of Gene Robinson, who was in a partnered relationship, Bishop Lee held a series of meetings throughout the diocese to talk about his decision. Bishop Lee met with a good bit of anger and after one particularly violent confrontation, Bishop Lee said: “I could be wrong; but you might be wrong, too.” Peace will be a struggle because none of us are God.
Which means we all are called to seek peace. Seeking peace absolutely does not mean avoiding struggle, disagreement and conflict. But we need not respond to struggle with a “flight or fight” mentality. We can actually and really trust that God is with us and that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in our midst. The Holy Spirit, in the words of the former Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is all about moving us to fall in love with God and with one another. Being in love, as we all know, is not always pretty but being in love is simply the greatest joy you and I will ever know.
Our baptism binds us to Jesus, to the baptized throughout the world and all those who seek the peace of God. The Bishop can inhibit me from performing my priestly duties but the Bishop cannot undo my baptism nor the laying on of hands I received when I was ordained a priest. I can be restricted for bad behavior but not dismissed from the kingdom of God. No one, in other words, can get voted off the island. Not in the kingdom of God. We can, and always will be able to leave this phenomenon we call Church. But we cannot leave God because God is always with us.
I disrupted our peace last Sunday when I announced the resignation of our Senior Warden John Nunnally. John did resign and you needed to know. But what you also need to know is that the presence of Christ, the life giving Holy Spirit, is not on vacation. The Holy Spirit, the presence of the Risen Christ, is at work in our midst, in our lives, and in ways we will never understand.
We are struggling at the moment. We are struggling to become the people God has called us to be. We are struggling to become a community of peace, of forgiveness and of truth telling. We are struggling but God is with us.
The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 9: 1 – 20
Sunday, April 10, 2016 Revelation 5: 11 -14
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 21: 1 – 19
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’
John 21: 15
Jesus cooks breakfast for the disciples this morning in our reading from the gospel of John. After a long night of fishing during which the disciples catch nothing, a man on the shore tells them to cast their net to the right side of the boat and suddenly the disciples discover they have more fish than they can handle.
The amazing catch of fish prompts recognition that the man on the shore is Jesus who now appears for the third time following his death and resurrection. “Come and have breakfast,” Jesus says simply to the tired, yet excited disciples.
As always in the gospel of John, this story is iconic, a window onto a world beyond our world of space and time. This week, I had the joy of contemplating this story with several brothers and sisters in Christ. As we shared what we individually saw in the story, the view became dazzling.
Upon recognizing Jesus, Peter puts on clothes and jumps into the water. Could this be baptismal imagery, someone wondered? Are there echoes of the story of the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve cover their nakedness after they eat the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is Peter now a new creation in the presence of the Risen Christ?
And as Jesus feeds the disciples a breakfast of fish and bread, are we standing not just before a charcoal fire, but before an altar sharing the Eucharist? In the gospel of John we have no institution of the Eucharist, but rather a story of a miraculous feeding of thousands in the wilderness and now this story of breakfast on the beach. Is our evangelist John inviting us to see the body and blood of Christ in the grilled fish and bread?
And the fish are not the only things being grilled this morning, someone else noted. After Jesus feeds the disciples, Jesus grills Peter, asking Peter three times if Peter loves Jesus “more than these.” Peter, remember, denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion and now is invited to re-affirm his love three times. Is Jesus asking Peter if Peter loves Jesus more than the other disciples or more than his old way of life as a fisherman or perhaps more than a breakfast of grilled fish and bread?
And what might the other disciples be wondering as they overhear this conversation between Jesus and Peter? Would Jesus grill them as well? What would we say if Jesus asked us: “Do you love me more than anything else in this world?”
Suddenly a lovely story about breakfast on the beach after a fruitless night of fishing invites into a world transformed by our baptism to be a place of abundance nourished by the hand of the Risen Christ in which we are forever called to bear witness to that which we love before all things.
And the story begins as the disciples return to their old job of fishing even though Jesus has appeared to them twice before! Yes, they have seen the Risen Lord as they huddled in fear in a locked room; yes, they saw the Lord when the Lord invited Thomas to touch his wounds; but now those same disciples go back to their nets!
How often do we experience the Risen Lord and yet, return to our old way of doing things especially during times of anxiety? Peter and the other disciples knew how to fish; Peter and the other disciples did not yet know how to follow this Lord who asked to be loved above all else.
As I was sitting with this story, all I could see was our fire pit out at the pavilion. I could see the oysters and the chickens and the pig parts we routinely cook and wondered what it would be like if we acted out this story out there, with fish. I wondered what it would be like to stay up all night and as the sun rose, be doused with water and invited to breakfast. And after breakfast be asked what we loved the most in this world.
I wonder what would happen to us if we did that. I wonder, as another sister in Christ wondered this week, if God would get our attention in a way similar to the way God got the attention of those early disciples. And then I wondered why we probably would never do such a thing.
We probably would never do anything as crazy as staying up all night, getting wet, eating breakfast and confessing our loves because if we did we would at a minimum be uncomfortable and most certainly would be ridiculed by others. We would, in other words, be more worried about ourselves than about what God might do to us.
And therein lies the crux. Do we really want God mucking around in our lives? Do we really believe in the Risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring forth new life? Would we, like Peter, dare to cast our nets to the other side at the command of a stranger? Would we jump into the water? Would we, in other words, dare to believe that God really wants to give us abundant life?
What is crazy is believing that we can by ourselves make for ourselves a good life. What is crazy is believing that we can find life without the “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,” as we say in the Nicene Creed. What is crazy is believing our nets are full when in truth, our nets are empty and until we cast them to the other side, our nets will remain empty.
Albert Einstein observed that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the full expectation that the results are going to be different. But we seem to cling to insanity and resist mightily the truth that until we dare to do a new thing, to change our ways, nothing new will come to us.
What would casting your net to the other side look like for you? Would it mean to stop fishing in the waters of past hurts looking for revenge? Would it mean to stop fishing in the waters of yesterday looking for young people? Would it mean to stop fishing in warm comfortable water looking for the brace of new life? Cast your net to the other side and see what God can do!
New life, God’s life, is foisted upon no one. Peter when invited by Jesus to cast his net to the other side, could have simply said: “No, I’m tired and, in any event, I am a fisherman and know what I am doing while you are a carpenter and know nothing about fishing.” Peter could have said: “No thanks.”
And so can we. We can always say: “No” to God’s “Yes.” We can simply keep our nets on the left side of the boat and blame whoever and whatever on our poor catch.
Or we can cast our nets onto the other side and see what happens. We can put ourselves into the hands of the living Lord. We can be a bit wild and crazy hoping God will take us into a place of abundance and forgiveness.
As I sat in a small room this week, in a church in Oregon Hill, Richmond, in silence with companions in the faith, the world journeyed on, oblivious to our silence, our prayer and our insights. I know there are others in Richmond who gather quietly to pray and reflect. I know there are many who wish to cast their net onto the other side of the boat. I know there are many who long for Jesus to say to them: “Come and have breakfast.” Are we one of them?
Sunday, April 10, 2016 Revelation 5: 11 -14
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 21: 1 – 19
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’
John 21: 15
Jesus cooks breakfast for the disciples this morning in our reading from the gospel of John. After a long night of fishing during which the disciples catch nothing, a man on the shore tells them to cast their net to the right side of the boat and suddenly the disciples discover they have more fish than they can handle.
The amazing catch of fish prompts recognition that the man on the shore is Jesus who now appears for the third time following his death and resurrection. “Come and have breakfast,” Jesus says simply to the tired, yet excited disciples.
As always in the gospel of John, this story is iconic, a window onto a world beyond our world of space and time. This week, I had the joy of contemplating this story with several brothers and sisters in Christ. As we shared what we individually saw in the story, the view became dazzling.
Upon recognizing Jesus, Peter puts on clothes and jumps into the water. Could this be baptismal imagery, someone wondered? Are there echoes of the story of the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve cover their nakedness after they eat the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is Peter now a new creation in the presence of the Risen Christ?
And as Jesus feeds the disciples a breakfast of fish and bread, are we standing not just before a charcoal fire, but before an altar sharing the Eucharist? In the gospel of John we have no institution of the Eucharist, but rather a story of a miraculous feeding of thousands in the wilderness and now this story of breakfast on the beach. Is our evangelist John inviting us to see the body and blood of Christ in the grilled fish and bread?
And the fish are not the only things being grilled this morning, someone else noted. After Jesus feeds the disciples, Jesus grills Peter, asking Peter three times if Peter loves Jesus “more than these.” Peter, remember, denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion and now is invited to re-affirm his love three times. Is Jesus asking Peter if Peter loves Jesus more than the other disciples or more than his old way of life as a fisherman or perhaps more than a breakfast of grilled fish and bread?
And what might the other disciples be wondering as they overhear this conversation between Jesus and Peter? Would Jesus grill them as well? What would we say if Jesus asked us: “Do you love me more than anything else in this world?”
Suddenly a lovely story about breakfast on the beach after a fruitless night of fishing invites into a world transformed by our baptism to be a place of abundance nourished by the hand of the Risen Christ in which we are forever called to bear witness to that which we love before all things.
And the story begins as the disciples return to their old job of fishing even though Jesus has appeared to them twice before! Yes, they have seen the Risen Lord as they huddled in fear in a locked room; yes, they saw the Lord when the Lord invited Thomas to touch his wounds; but now those same disciples go back to their nets!
How often do we experience the Risen Lord and yet, return to our old way of doing things especially during times of anxiety? Peter and the other disciples knew how to fish; Peter and the other disciples did not yet know how to follow this Lord who asked to be loved above all else.
As I was sitting with this story, all I could see was our fire pit out at the pavilion. I could see the oysters and the chickens and the pig parts we routinely cook and wondered what it would be like if we acted out this story out there, with fish. I wondered what it would be like to stay up all night and as the sun rose, be doused with water and invited to breakfast. And after breakfast be asked what we loved the most in this world.
I wonder what would happen to us if we did that. I wonder, as another sister in Christ wondered this week, if God would get our attention in a way similar to the way God got the attention of those early disciples. And then I wondered why we probably would never do such a thing.
We probably would never do anything as crazy as staying up all night, getting wet, eating breakfast and confessing our loves because if we did we would at a minimum be uncomfortable and most certainly would be ridiculed by others. We would, in other words, be more worried about ourselves than about what God might do to us.
And therein lies the crux. Do we really want God mucking around in our lives? Do we really believe in the Risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring forth new life? Would we, like Peter, dare to cast our nets to the other side at the command of a stranger? Would we jump into the water? Would we, in other words, dare to believe that God really wants to give us abundant life?
What is crazy is believing that we can by ourselves make for ourselves a good life. What is crazy is believing that we can find life without the “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,” as we say in the Nicene Creed. What is crazy is believing our nets are full when in truth, our nets are empty and until we cast them to the other side, our nets will remain empty.
Albert Einstein observed that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the full expectation that the results are going to be different. But we seem to cling to insanity and resist mightily the truth that until we dare to do a new thing, to change our ways, nothing new will come to us.
What would casting your net to the other side look like for you? Would it mean to stop fishing in the waters of past hurts looking for revenge? Would it mean to stop fishing in the waters of yesterday looking for young people? Would it mean to stop fishing in warm comfortable water looking for the brace of new life? Cast your net to the other side and see what God can do!
New life, God’s life, is foisted upon no one. Peter when invited by Jesus to cast his net to the other side, could have simply said: “No, I’m tired and, in any event, I am a fisherman and know what I am doing while you are a carpenter and know nothing about fishing.” Peter could have said: “No thanks.”
And so can we. We can always say: “No” to God’s “Yes.” We can simply keep our nets on the left side of the boat and blame whoever and whatever on our poor catch.
Or we can cast our nets onto the other side and see what happens. We can put ourselves into the hands of the living Lord. We can be a bit wild and crazy hoping God will take us into a place of abundance and forgiveness.
As I sat in a small room this week, in a church in Oregon Hill, Richmond, in silence with companions in the faith, the world journeyed on, oblivious to our silence, our prayer and our insights. I know there are others in Richmond who gather quietly to pray and reflect. I know there are many who wish to cast their net onto the other side of the boat. I know there are many who long for Jesus to say to them: “Come and have breakfast.” Are we one of them?
The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 5: 27 – 32
Sunday, April 3, 2016 Revelation 1: 4 –8
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 - 31
Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
John 20: 29
Last Sunday, we heard the story of the empty tomb and the witness of Mary who proclaimed: “I have seen the Lord.” This morning, as we do every year on the Sunday following Easter Day, we hear the proclamation of the other disciples that they, too, “have seen the Lord.”
All except Thomas. Thomas has not seen the Lord and until Thomas does see the Lord and the “mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas cannot believe that “the Lord is risen, indeed.”
Saint Thomas is the patron saint of architects perhaps because, according to one website, Thomas was one of the twelve pillars upon which Jesus built his church or perhaps, according to another, because Thomas built churches in places where churches were new. In any event, Thomas, commonly called “Doubting Thomas,” was not going to believe until, like Mary and the other disciples, he “had seen the Lord.”
And Thomas does, a week after all the others, when Jesus presents himself in a body and invites Thomas to see his hands and touch his wounds.
We have met Thomas before in the gospel of John. The first time we meet Thomas is when Jesus is headed to Judea, into the place where Jesus’ life was previously threatened. Thomas pledges to go with Jesus, so that he may die with him. The next time we meet Thomas, Jesus has told his disciples he is going to a place where the disciples cannot go though they know the way and Thomas wonders: “How can we know the way?” Thomas would give his life for Jesus and wants to follow this man who was his Lord.
Thomas, in my opinion, is not so much a skeptic but rather a man in deep grief who refuses to allow his grief to be exacerbated by an idle tale that Jesus has risen from the dead. Thomas has loved his Lord and, following the crucifixion, will not be comforted by words that make no sense. Others may say: “I have seen the Lord,” but until Thomas sees this man he loved, Thomas will not believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
A long time ago, the fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich would write: “And all shall be well; all manner of things shall be well.” Julian wrote during a time when the plague threatened all manner of wellness in Europe but who was given to visions that persuaded her that she “had seen the Lord.” And all would be well.
I have visited enough families in grief to know that few of us who find ourselves in the epicenter of tragedy, crisis and grief, trust in that moment, that all shall be well. We are disoriented, confused, dazed, and simply trying to hang on. Comforting words are few and far between. I am exasperated by any attempt to “make things better” and find silence and honesty to be the most profound comfort we can offer. Sometimes all we can say is that things are awful.
I, like Thomas, need to see for myself, and sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. When my mother died just after my second child was born I saw nothing but despair. When A.G. died, I saw the Lord in large measure because of the ministrations of this parish. I have seen the Lord, but not always.
I always wonder on this Sunday after Easter Day, known affectionately as “Low Sunday,” what brings folk back after Easter, not all for sure, but some. I always wonder if folk come back after Easter because they have seen the Lord or are just hoping they might.
My gut tells me we all have the seen the Lord but are a bit reluctant to name that reality. My gut tells me that we all have had, for lack of a better way to say it, “spiritual experiences,” but are reticent to talk about them. And I think that is a good thing as PCP and other mind altering drugs can delude us into thinking we have come into the presence of the divine when we have only fallen into the grips of chemicals.
On the other hand, absent mind altering drugs, we do fall into the hands of the living God. Every now and again we are invited to “see the Lord.” “Seeing the Lord,” confronts us with a truth beyond facts, a reality that evades simple description and an experience that needs to be shared in the company of others.
Jesus breathes on the disciples today, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Saint Paul will tell us that the fruits of the Spirit are “ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I have seen those fruits and so have you. And so did Thomas, who according to some traditions, went to India where he died a martyr.
Bearing witness to the presence of the living Lord in our lives is, for most of us, not an easy thing to do. We could be deluded, we could be under the influence and we could be simply bearing witness to something we only wish to be true but is not. On the other hand, if we fail to bear witness to the joy and peace we have encountered, many who long to see the Lord, will remain in their longing and never know that they, too, are in the presence and the power of the Risen Christ, just like Thomas.
Over the centuries the phenomenon of the church has changed. Our Anglican incarnation of the church is relatively new, only some five hundred years old. And whereas, I do believe our Anglican tradition is faithful to the earliest incarnations of the church, I also know our Anglican tradition can at times privilege the way we do church over why we do church. We do church to proclaim the resurrection. And when we lose sight of our mission to proclaim the resurrection, we become yet one more social service agency or social club.
The church is changing. Our Episcopal church is changing. Attendance at all mainline churches is decreasing. And what folk are discovering is that for many people, mainline churches are not places where they encounter the living Lord. Mainline churchgoers are reluctant to say: “I have seen the Lord!” My parents would never make that claim and those that did, were demeaned as “Holy Rollers.” No wonder we have empty pews this morning.
The church will survive because the church is the body of Christ and Christ is alive! But the church in its present incarnation is reaping seeds sown long ago as well meaning folk who attended well meaning churches chose to be silent about the hope that is in us, in the words of The First Letter of Peter: “But in your hearts, sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.” For decades the church, our church, has failed miserably to give an account for our hope.
Our hope is the story of the empty tomb. Our hope is that Jesus “suffered death and was buried, and on the third day he rose again,” in the words of the Nicene Creed. Our hope is the only thing we have to give to this weary world. May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, April 3, 2016 Revelation 1: 4 –8
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 - 31
Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
John 20: 29
Last Sunday, we heard the story of the empty tomb and the witness of Mary who proclaimed: “I have seen the Lord.” This morning, as we do every year on the Sunday following Easter Day, we hear the proclamation of the other disciples that they, too, “have seen the Lord.”
All except Thomas. Thomas has not seen the Lord and until Thomas does see the Lord and the “mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas cannot believe that “the Lord is risen, indeed.”
Saint Thomas is the patron saint of architects perhaps because, according to one website, Thomas was one of the twelve pillars upon which Jesus built his church or perhaps, according to another, because Thomas built churches in places where churches were new. In any event, Thomas, commonly called “Doubting Thomas,” was not going to believe until, like Mary and the other disciples, he “had seen the Lord.”
And Thomas does, a week after all the others, when Jesus presents himself in a body and invites Thomas to see his hands and touch his wounds.
We have met Thomas before in the gospel of John. The first time we meet Thomas is when Jesus is headed to Judea, into the place where Jesus’ life was previously threatened. Thomas pledges to go with Jesus, so that he may die with him. The next time we meet Thomas, Jesus has told his disciples he is going to a place where the disciples cannot go though they know the way and Thomas wonders: “How can we know the way?” Thomas would give his life for Jesus and wants to follow this man who was his Lord.
Thomas, in my opinion, is not so much a skeptic but rather a man in deep grief who refuses to allow his grief to be exacerbated by an idle tale that Jesus has risen from the dead. Thomas has loved his Lord and, following the crucifixion, will not be comforted by words that make no sense. Others may say: “I have seen the Lord,” but until Thomas sees this man he loved, Thomas will not believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
A long time ago, the fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich would write: “And all shall be well; all manner of things shall be well.” Julian wrote during a time when the plague threatened all manner of wellness in Europe but who was given to visions that persuaded her that she “had seen the Lord.” And all would be well.
I have visited enough families in grief to know that few of us who find ourselves in the epicenter of tragedy, crisis and grief, trust in that moment, that all shall be well. We are disoriented, confused, dazed, and simply trying to hang on. Comforting words are few and far between. I am exasperated by any attempt to “make things better” and find silence and honesty to be the most profound comfort we can offer. Sometimes all we can say is that things are awful.
I, like Thomas, need to see for myself, and sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. When my mother died just after my second child was born I saw nothing but despair. When A.G. died, I saw the Lord in large measure because of the ministrations of this parish. I have seen the Lord, but not always.
I always wonder on this Sunday after Easter Day, known affectionately as “Low Sunday,” what brings folk back after Easter, not all for sure, but some. I always wonder if folk come back after Easter because they have seen the Lord or are just hoping they might.
My gut tells me we all have the seen the Lord but are a bit reluctant to name that reality. My gut tells me that we all have had, for lack of a better way to say it, “spiritual experiences,” but are reticent to talk about them. And I think that is a good thing as PCP and other mind altering drugs can delude us into thinking we have come into the presence of the divine when we have only fallen into the grips of chemicals.
On the other hand, absent mind altering drugs, we do fall into the hands of the living God. Every now and again we are invited to “see the Lord.” “Seeing the Lord,” confronts us with a truth beyond facts, a reality that evades simple description and an experience that needs to be shared in the company of others.
Jesus breathes on the disciples today, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Saint Paul will tell us that the fruits of the Spirit are “ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I have seen those fruits and so have you. And so did Thomas, who according to some traditions, went to India where he died a martyr.
Bearing witness to the presence of the living Lord in our lives is, for most of us, not an easy thing to do. We could be deluded, we could be under the influence and we could be simply bearing witness to something we only wish to be true but is not. On the other hand, if we fail to bear witness to the joy and peace we have encountered, many who long to see the Lord, will remain in their longing and never know that they, too, are in the presence and the power of the Risen Christ, just like Thomas.
Over the centuries the phenomenon of the church has changed. Our Anglican incarnation of the church is relatively new, only some five hundred years old. And whereas, I do believe our Anglican tradition is faithful to the earliest incarnations of the church, I also know our Anglican tradition can at times privilege the way we do church over why we do church. We do church to proclaim the resurrection. And when we lose sight of our mission to proclaim the resurrection, we become yet one more social service agency or social club.
The church is changing. Our Episcopal church is changing. Attendance at all mainline churches is decreasing. And what folk are discovering is that for many people, mainline churches are not places where they encounter the living Lord. Mainline churchgoers are reluctant to say: “I have seen the Lord!” My parents would never make that claim and those that did, were demeaned as “Holy Rollers.” No wonder we have empty pews this morning.
The church will survive because the church is the body of Christ and Christ is alive! But the church in its present incarnation is reaping seeds sown long ago as well meaning folk who attended well meaning churches chose to be silent about the hope that is in us, in the words of The First Letter of Peter: “But in your hearts, sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.” For decades the church, our church, has failed miserably to give an account for our hope.
Our hope is the story of the empty tomb. Our hope is that Jesus “suffered death and was buried, and on the third day he rose again,” in the words of the Nicene Creed. Our hope is the only thing we have to give to this weary world. May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day Acts 10: 34 – 43
Sunday, March 27, 2016 I Corinthians 15: 19 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 1 - 18
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Happy Easter and welcome to the madness of the Sunday of the Resurrection! All over the world today, folk in their finest are packing churches decked out in their finest, raising their voices in glad song, shouting “Alleluia! The Lord is risen!” All over the world folk are hearing once more that Jesus who was crucified and died and buried in a tomb is not in the tomb. Jesus is alive. Alleluia!
And so we pull out the stops and gather with family and friends and decorate the church with the glory of lilies and spring flowers and sing beautiful hymns of joy and enjoy helping our children hunt for Easter eggs. Even the earth seems to be singing “Alleluia!,” as spring bursts forth in all of spring’s glory.
The whole world seems to go mad with joy this day.
And “mad” would be the operative word because what we are celebrating this day is a story about a man who died and is now alive. Jesus died and was buried. And on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead. That is our confession and was the earliest confession of what we now call the church.
The idea of resurrection came late into the thought of our Jewish brothers and sisters. The idea of resurrection came about as folk who were faithful and true to the God of Israel were dying for their belief in God. Surely God would save them, raise them up, not leave them to suffer in the silence of the grave. God would restore them to life, in some way, one day. And then God did. But what God did was not the anticipated general resurrection. God raised up one man whose name was Jesus. No one expected that.
And as news of this “bodily resurrection” spread beyond the nation of Israel into the Greek speaking Roman Empire, “resurrection” came to be understood as the immortality of the soul. Thanks to the Greek philosopher Plato, the good news of Easter became our soul goes to heaven when we die. And slowly down through the centuries the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead in a body became the not so comforting claim that when we die, we will become disembodied spirits floating around for eternity with the clouds.
Mary this morning finds an empty tomb and then a Jesus she can recognize. Mary meets a man she knows is her Lord because this Lord calls her by name.
And that is resurrection, that is the good news – Jesus meets Mary after death in a real and very embodied way. Jesus’ body is no longer in the tomb! For sure, Mary initially mistakes Jesus to be the gardener. But after Jesus calls Mary by name, Mary recognizes this man who was her friend and Lord. Jesus’ body was clearly different from his earthly body but Mary meets a man, not a ghost.
The claim we make this morning that God raised Jesus from the dead is a mad claim and counters all of what we, as well as our ancestors in the faith, know to be true – dead bodies do not rise from the grave. But, as Saint Paul writes: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” If the good news of Easter is not true, when we go down to the grave, we will die with no hope.
The good news of Easter is that what happened to Jesus will happen to us – that one day God will create “a new heaven and a new earth,” in the words of Revelation, “and God himself will be with us; he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” The good news of Easter is God’s promise of new creation, creation no longer subject to death and decay. The good news of Easter is that life, not death, will have the last word.
New creation is not improved creation. New creation is beyond our wildest imaginings. New creation is life no longer lived under the shadow of death. And all you and I know is life haunted by suffering and death, pain and tears, mourning and crying and pain. New creation is nothing that we can make happen; new creation can only be brought about by the power of God.
Our celebration of the mad claim of Easter will continue beyond today, all through the great fifty days of Easter. Next Sunday, we will meet doubting Thomas, who like all of us, knew just how mad this claim of resurrection really is. The season of Easter will come to an end on the day of Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ, was set loose, transforming a band of disheartened disciples of a dead Messiah into what became the church. Those first disciples, beginning with Mary, continued to make the mad claim: “I have seen the Lord,” and soon became known as those crazy Christians.
The craziest Christians I have met are folk who dare to make this mad claim and just as daringly seek to understand what this claim means for us who are living our lives in this world and not the world to come. These crazy Christians use all the gifts God has given to us – our heads, our hearts and our hands – to ponder the mystery of faith as we say in our Eucharistic prayer: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Ultimately, the mad claim we make this morning is a mystery but as Saint Anselm said in the twelfth century: Faith seeks to understand. Beware of the madness that comes from the conviction we have nothing new to learn.
One of the many joys of this day for me is watching the delight of our children as they flower the cross, bring up their mite boxes and hunt for Easter eggs on the lawn after the service. Children seem more able to embrace the impossible possibility that bunnies lay Easter eggs than are we adults who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that bunnies do not lay eggs.
And so, in the hope that our children may be able to help us celebrate the impossible possibility that God raised Jesus from the dead, I want to invite all of our children to come and stand with me at the altar as we celebrate the Eucharist this morning. I want our children to be con-celebrants as we say in the church, joining me as I consecrate the bread and the wine. Now I may be inviting more craziness than is seemly and we may experience some confusion as we do a new thing. On the other hand, we may catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God, a kingdom not reigned over by the strong and the powerful but rather by the One who came and lived and died as one of us and who taught his disciples: “Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!!!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Sunday, March 27, 2016 I Corinthians 15: 19 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 1 - 18
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Happy Easter and welcome to the madness of the Sunday of the Resurrection! All over the world today, folk in their finest are packing churches decked out in their finest, raising their voices in glad song, shouting “Alleluia! The Lord is risen!” All over the world folk are hearing once more that Jesus who was crucified and died and buried in a tomb is not in the tomb. Jesus is alive. Alleluia!
And so we pull out the stops and gather with family and friends and decorate the church with the glory of lilies and spring flowers and sing beautiful hymns of joy and enjoy helping our children hunt for Easter eggs. Even the earth seems to be singing “Alleluia!,” as spring bursts forth in all of spring’s glory.
The whole world seems to go mad with joy this day.
And “mad” would be the operative word because what we are celebrating this day is a story about a man who died and is now alive. Jesus died and was buried. And on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead. That is our confession and was the earliest confession of what we now call the church.
The idea of resurrection came late into the thought of our Jewish brothers and sisters. The idea of resurrection came about as folk who were faithful and true to the God of Israel were dying for their belief in God. Surely God would save them, raise them up, not leave them to suffer in the silence of the grave. God would restore them to life, in some way, one day. And then God did. But what God did was not the anticipated general resurrection. God raised up one man whose name was Jesus. No one expected that.
And as news of this “bodily resurrection” spread beyond the nation of Israel into the Greek speaking Roman Empire, “resurrection” came to be understood as the immortality of the soul. Thanks to the Greek philosopher Plato, the good news of Easter became our soul goes to heaven when we die. And slowly down through the centuries the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead in a body became the not so comforting claim that when we die, we will become disembodied spirits floating around for eternity with the clouds.
Mary this morning finds an empty tomb and then a Jesus she can recognize. Mary meets a man she knows is her Lord because this Lord calls her by name.
And that is resurrection, that is the good news – Jesus meets Mary after death in a real and very embodied way. Jesus’ body is no longer in the tomb! For sure, Mary initially mistakes Jesus to be the gardener. But after Jesus calls Mary by name, Mary recognizes this man who was her friend and Lord. Jesus’ body was clearly different from his earthly body but Mary meets a man, not a ghost.
The claim we make this morning that God raised Jesus from the dead is a mad claim and counters all of what we, as well as our ancestors in the faith, know to be true – dead bodies do not rise from the grave. But, as Saint Paul writes: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” If the good news of Easter is not true, when we go down to the grave, we will die with no hope.
The good news of Easter is that what happened to Jesus will happen to us – that one day God will create “a new heaven and a new earth,” in the words of Revelation, “and God himself will be with us; he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” The good news of Easter is God’s promise of new creation, creation no longer subject to death and decay. The good news of Easter is that life, not death, will have the last word.
New creation is not improved creation. New creation is beyond our wildest imaginings. New creation is life no longer lived under the shadow of death. And all you and I know is life haunted by suffering and death, pain and tears, mourning and crying and pain. New creation is nothing that we can make happen; new creation can only be brought about by the power of God.
Our celebration of the mad claim of Easter will continue beyond today, all through the great fifty days of Easter. Next Sunday, we will meet doubting Thomas, who like all of us, knew just how mad this claim of resurrection really is. The season of Easter will come to an end on the day of Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ, was set loose, transforming a band of disheartened disciples of a dead Messiah into what became the church. Those first disciples, beginning with Mary, continued to make the mad claim: “I have seen the Lord,” and soon became known as those crazy Christians.
The craziest Christians I have met are folk who dare to make this mad claim and just as daringly seek to understand what this claim means for us who are living our lives in this world and not the world to come. These crazy Christians use all the gifts God has given to us – our heads, our hearts and our hands – to ponder the mystery of faith as we say in our Eucharistic prayer: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Ultimately, the mad claim we make this morning is a mystery but as Saint Anselm said in the twelfth century: Faith seeks to understand. Beware of the madness that comes from the conviction we have nothing new to learn.
One of the many joys of this day for me is watching the delight of our children as they flower the cross, bring up their mite boxes and hunt for Easter eggs on the lawn after the service. Children seem more able to embrace the impossible possibility that bunnies lay Easter eggs than are we adults who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that bunnies do not lay eggs.
And so, in the hope that our children may be able to help us celebrate the impossible possibility that God raised Jesus from the dead, I want to invite all of our children to come and stand with me at the altar as we celebrate the Eucharist this morning. I want our children to be con-celebrants as we say in the church, joining me as I consecrate the bread and the wine. Now I may be inviting more craziness than is seemly and we may experience some confusion as we do a new thing. On the other hand, we may catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God, a kingdom not reigned over by the strong and the powerful but rather by the One who came and lived and died as one of us and who taught his disciples: “Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!!!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Good Friday Isaiah 52: 13 – 53:12
Friday, March 25, 2016 Hebrews 10: 16 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 1 – 19: 42
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
John 18: 36
We hear the story of the passion tonight, the same story we heard last Sunday when we heard the story of the passion read dramatically, when we took our place with the crowds who shouted “Crucify him!” Not all four gospels tell the story in exactly the same way - they differ in the details – but all four gospels tell the story of the day Jesus died on a cross. The story of the passion is central to all four gospels; without the story of the passion we would have no gospel, no good news.
The story of the passion is not the bad news before we get to the good news of Easter. Easter is not God’s way of undoing all the awful things that happened on Good Friday. The events of Good Friday – Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, his condemnation on false charges and the mockery of the soldiers as well as the crowds – were awful, but not on that account simply a miscarriage of justice, an injustice that never should have happened.
The event of Good Friday – Jesus’ death on the cross – was mysteriously enfolded within God’s good purposes, ordained by God to be the way God was delivering God’s dearly beloved creation from evil and death.
Good Friday was divinely ordained. And, whereas the story of the passion is central to all four gospels, only in the gospel of John, from which we hear tonight, do we hear that the crucifixion was a revelation of the glory of God. On the cross, the Son of God glorifies his Father. Tonight, as we hear the passion according to John, we witness the story of the passion from above, from beyond this world of flesh and blood, from before time, when “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” as John tells us in the opening verse of his gospel.
In the gospel of John, Jesus is the Word of God sent into the world to do the will of the One who sent him. On the cross, at the moment of his death, in the gospel of John, Jesus’ last words are: “It is finished.” Jesus’ death is not a miscarriage of justice but the completion of the purpose for which he was sent into the world which was to reveal God to a world who did not know God. What Jesus reveals is a God whose very life is a communion of love between God as Father and God as Son. Jesus’ death is an offering of love from the Son who has received all that he has from the Father and, now, out of love, offers everything back.
All four gospels tell us that Jesus’ death was a voluntary death, that Jesus could have escaped death at the hands of Rome but did not. But only in the gospel of John are we invited to see Jesus’ death as an act of love, as the Son gives to the Father what the Father had given to him. Our evangelist John invites us to see what looks for all the world like a failure, a Messiah who saved others but was powerless to save himself, as an act of love, an intimate communion in which the Father gives all to the Son and the Son returns all to the Father. Perhaps the only way to understand this night is to think about your most intimate relationships and what you would and what you would not do to and for those you love. Tonight is very personal and very intimate.
On the cross, in the gospel of John, we are witnessing a divine dance of love.
The church would take centuries to grapple with the significance of the way our evangelist John understood the crucifixion. Prompted in large measure by this strange gospel, the church would eventually articulate the doctrine of the Trinity – that God is a communion of love between God as Father and God as Son. God is not a solitary “thing” that exists in splendid isolation but a dynamic communion of love between God as Father and God as Son, an eternal relationship of giving and receiving.
And this communion of love is the ground of our being, the power that brings us to life and keeps us in life. The glory of God is the love which binds the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father, made known to us as the Son offers himself completely to the Father on the cross. And you and I are invited to share in this glorious life of God.
And yet, we draw back, draw back at the sight of the cross, recoil at this picture of suffering and death, unable to see the glory of God as Jesus breathes his last. We cannot fathom how the power of love, which appears as weakness on the cross, can possibly be more powerful than the power which was able to put Jesus to death.
But the power that killed Jesus, the power of violence, is a pretentious power, not true power which belongs only God. “At the heart of Christian faith in Jesus,” writes theologian Arthur McGill, to whom I am indebted for my thoughts tonight, “is the knowledge that true power belongs only to God. The distinctive mark of God’s power is service and self-giving. And in this world such power belongs only to him who serves. In the light of such a faith, the Christian has no final fear before the pretentious claims of violent power.”
Jesus could have exercised the power of violence, overpowering his accusers and captors, reigning down fire on Rome and all her legions. But Jesus says to Pilate: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
The kingdom into which we are invited this night is a kingdom in which the power of violence no longer rules. The kingdom into which we are invited this night is a kingdom in which life flourishes, all of life, as we serve one another, giving to and receiving from one another all that we have and all that we are. In this kingdom, our needs and those of others are not opportunities for exploitation but reasons to serve, to love and to find life.
Saint Paul tells us of a “thorn in his side” which he prayed God would remove. In response, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Weakness is not something we generally admire in our culture. We value strength, not weakness. But as we gaze upon the cross this night, we are gazing upon a power made perfect in weakness.
You and I have the power to bring forth life; we also have the power to take life away. And we usually want to take life away from those who wish us harm, who seek to rob us of something we deem significant to the sustaining of our life. What we want, in other words, are our kingdoms to come and in those kingdoms we will be safe and secure, surrounded by folk who all love us. To lay down our lives for our enemies, to give up our kingdoms for the kingdom of God, to believe that the power of love is stronger than the power of death, is our prayer this night.
May we watch with Christ this night for to our Father in heaven belongs “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”
Friday, March 25, 2016 Hebrews 10: 16 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 1 – 19: 42
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
John 18: 36
We hear the story of the passion tonight, the same story we heard last Sunday when we heard the story of the passion read dramatically, when we took our place with the crowds who shouted “Crucify him!” Not all four gospels tell the story in exactly the same way - they differ in the details – but all four gospels tell the story of the day Jesus died on a cross. The story of the passion is central to all four gospels; without the story of the passion we would have no gospel, no good news.
The story of the passion is not the bad news before we get to the good news of Easter. Easter is not God’s way of undoing all the awful things that happened on Good Friday. The events of Good Friday – Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, his condemnation on false charges and the mockery of the soldiers as well as the crowds – were awful, but not on that account simply a miscarriage of justice, an injustice that never should have happened.
The event of Good Friday – Jesus’ death on the cross – was mysteriously enfolded within God’s good purposes, ordained by God to be the way God was delivering God’s dearly beloved creation from evil and death.
Good Friday was divinely ordained. And, whereas the story of the passion is central to all four gospels, only in the gospel of John, from which we hear tonight, do we hear that the crucifixion was a revelation of the glory of God. On the cross, the Son of God glorifies his Father. Tonight, as we hear the passion according to John, we witness the story of the passion from above, from beyond this world of flesh and blood, from before time, when “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” as John tells us in the opening verse of his gospel.
In the gospel of John, Jesus is the Word of God sent into the world to do the will of the One who sent him. On the cross, at the moment of his death, in the gospel of John, Jesus’ last words are: “It is finished.” Jesus’ death is not a miscarriage of justice but the completion of the purpose for which he was sent into the world which was to reveal God to a world who did not know God. What Jesus reveals is a God whose very life is a communion of love between God as Father and God as Son. Jesus’ death is an offering of love from the Son who has received all that he has from the Father and, now, out of love, offers everything back.
All four gospels tell us that Jesus’ death was a voluntary death, that Jesus could have escaped death at the hands of Rome but did not. But only in the gospel of John are we invited to see Jesus’ death as an act of love, as the Son gives to the Father what the Father had given to him. Our evangelist John invites us to see what looks for all the world like a failure, a Messiah who saved others but was powerless to save himself, as an act of love, an intimate communion in which the Father gives all to the Son and the Son returns all to the Father. Perhaps the only way to understand this night is to think about your most intimate relationships and what you would and what you would not do to and for those you love. Tonight is very personal and very intimate.
On the cross, in the gospel of John, we are witnessing a divine dance of love.
The church would take centuries to grapple with the significance of the way our evangelist John understood the crucifixion. Prompted in large measure by this strange gospel, the church would eventually articulate the doctrine of the Trinity – that God is a communion of love between God as Father and God as Son. God is not a solitary “thing” that exists in splendid isolation but a dynamic communion of love between God as Father and God as Son, an eternal relationship of giving and receiving.
And this communion of love is the ground of our being, the power that brings us to life and keeps us in life. The glory of God is the love which binds the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father, made known to us as the Son offers himself completely to the Father on the cross. And you and I are invited to share in this glorious life of God.
And yet, we draw back, draw back at the sight of the cross, recoil at this picture of suffering and death, unable to see the glory of God as Jesus breathes his last. We cannot fathom how the power of love, which appears as weakness on the cross, can possibly be more powerful than the power which was able to put Jesus to death.
But the power that killed Jesus, the power of violence, is a pretentious power, not true power which belongs only God. “At the heart of Christian faith in Jesus,” writes theologian Arthur McGill, to whom I am indebted for my thoughts tonight, “is the knowledge that true power belongs only to God. The distinctive mark of God’s power is service and self-giving. And in this world such power belongs only to him who serves. In the light of such a faith, the Christian has no final fear before the pretentious claims of violent power.”
Jesus could have exercised the power of violence, overpowering his accusers and captors, reigning down fire on Rome and all her legions. But Jesus says to Pilate: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
The kingdom into which we are invited this night is a kingdom in which the power of violence no longer rules. The kingdom into which we are invited this night is a kingdom in which life flourishes, all of life, as we serve one another, giving to and receiving from one another all that we have and all that we are. In this kingdom, our needs and those of others are not opportunities for exploitation but reasons to serve, to love and to find life.
Saint Paul tells us of a “thorn in his side” which he prayed God would remove. In response, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Weakness is not something we generally admire in our culture. We value strength, not weakness. But as we gaze upon the cross this night, we are gazing upon a power made perfect in weakness.
You and I have the power to bring forth life; we also have the power to take life away. And we usually want to take life away from those who wish us harm, who seek to rob us of something we deem significant to the sustaining of our life. What we want, in other words, are our kingdoms to come and in those kingdoms we will be safe and secure, surrounded by folk who all love us. To lay down our lives for our enemies, to give up our kingdoms for the kingdom of God, to believe that the power of love is stronger than the power of death, is our prayer this night.
May we watch with Christ this night for to our Father in heaven belongs “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”
Maundy Thursday Exodus 12: 1 – 14
Thursday, March 24, 2016 I Corinthians 11: 23 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 13: 1 – 17, 31b – 35
Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.
John 13: 1a
The ritual of washing feet, which we will observe this evening, has never packed an Episcopal Church. Episcopalians are not crazy about taking their shoes off and being asked to do so in the middle of the week is for many, unthinkable. So thank you for being here tonight!
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer invited us to do many things that were new including exchanging the Peace, being marked with ash on Ash Wednesday, celebrating the Great Vigil of Easter and, tonight, getting our feet wet. Most of these “new” things were met with resistance – some more and some less. Exchanging the Peace every Sunday now feels reasonably normal even though when the “new” prayer book was first used, many found this ritual to be out of keeping with a tradition that was reserved and which respected an individual’s decision to come to church and then leave quietly, greeting only the minister.
And even though the prayer book tells us that The Great Vigil of Easter is “the first service of Easter Day,” most folk show up on Easter morning and not Saturday night. We want to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and we want to celebrate Easter on Sunday morning and not Saturday night. We are a stubborn people! God help us when the prayer book is revised, yet one more revision in a long history of revisions.
But the ritual of foot-washing remains problematic and I always wonder if I will have to wash my own feet on this night because no one comes forward. Bishop Lee solved the problem by inviting four folk to have their feet washed at the Maundy Thursday liturgy for clergy. Bishop Lee usually invited four new priests to come prepared to have their feet washed and I can remember Bishop Lee washing my feet soon after ordination. Bishop Lee ordained me and when he washed my feet, I felt downright weird.
Of course that sense of “weirdness” is precisely what Peter felt that night when Jesus wanted to wash Peter’s feet. Peter could not abide Jesus washing his feet any more than I could abide the Bishop who had ordained me and knew more about me than most folk, kneeling before me pouring water over my feet. Had Bishop Lee not invited me to participate, I would have kept my socks on that day!
In our gospel reading from John tonight we hear: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and then tells those same disciples to love one another as Jesus has loved them. Tonight Jesus washes the disciples’ feet; tomorrow Jesus will die for them. Both are acts of love and one is an act of love that will cost Jesus his life. Jesus is loving his disciples tonight and tomorrow will love them to the end.
And Peter resists saying, “Lord, you will never wash my feet.” Peter cannot abide this kind of crazy love. And neither can we. We cannot abide the kind of love that would get on love’s knees for us, that would wash our feet, that would suffer death for us. We cannot abide a love that will stop at nothing to give us life and save us from death.
What we want is a God who wants us to be good and will punish us when we are bad. What we want is a God who will give us a law to follow and who, when we transgress that law, will throw us into hell. What we cannot abide is a God who simply refuses not to love us no matter what.
What we want is a God who does not bow down to us but to whom we can bow down. What we want is a God who is over us and not with us and our dirty feet. What we want is a God to rule over us and not a God who lives as one of us. What we want is a God who has the good horse sense not to ask us to get our feet wet.
But tonight is not about what we want; tonight is about God and what God wants and what God wants is to love us! Tonight is all about receiving the love of God. And whether you take off your shoes or choose not to, God loves you. Tonight is all about knowing that God loves you and will stop at nothing to show you that crazy love. All we have to do is to be open to being loved and that can be a challenge for us all. Tonight all we have to do is take our socks off and that feels “weird.”
Not long after we had moved to Caroline County, A.G. and I were sharing lunch together at the kitchen table. A.G. said to me that day: “You are the love of my life.” A.G. was not given to such declarations and I ascribed his declaration to the pain meds which he was taking. But the declaration made me uncomfortable as I knew I was anything other than the perfect wife and that my journey in the church had been difficult on our relationship. “You are the love of my life,” he said and all I wanted to do was change the subject.
Methinks we want to change the subject with God! God is saying to us all the time: “You are the love of my life,” and we are all the time saying, “Can we talk about something else?” We really have no idea how to live with that kind of crazy love. This Lent we took a journey during adult education with a monastic community called the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. We looked at growing a rule or rhythm of life that would keep us in touch with God’s love for us. About midway we were asked what it was about ourselves that we loved. That felt weird as most of us grew up knowing we all are sinners and “there is no health in us,” in the words of The 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
And yet, if as our baptismal covenant affirms, we are to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our ourselves,” then the first person we are called to love is ourselves. Before we can see Christ in others we need to seek and serve Christ in ourselves. In the words of our monastic brothers, “We have been created by the love of God, for the love of God, and in the love of God.”
After Peter refuses to have his feet washed, Jesus tells Peter: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In the gospel of John this story of the foot washing is a story about baptism, of that indissoluble bond we acknowledge at the font in which we are “baptized into the death of Jesus Christ” so that we might “live in the power of his resurrection,” in the words of the baptismal liturgy. Tomorrow Jesus will “die for us,” taking all that we have “done and left undone,” in the words of our confession, onto the cross. But tonight, in witness to Christ’s love for us, “Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”
Thursday, March 24, 2016 I Corinthians 11: 23 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 13: 1 – 17, 31b – 35
Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.
John 13: 1a
The ritual of washing feet, which we will observe this evening, has never packed an Episcopal Church. Episcopalians are not crazy about taking their shoes off and being asked to do so in the middle of the week is for many, unthinkable. So thank you for being here tonight!
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer invited us to do many things that were new including exchanging the Peace, being marked with ash on Ash Wednesday, celebrating the Great Vigil of Easter and, tonight, getting our feet wet. Most of these “new” things were met with resistance – some more and some less. Exchanging the Peace every Sunday now feels reasonably normal even though when the “new” prayer book was first used, many found this ritual to be out of keeping with a tradition that was reserved and which respected an individual’s decision to come to church and then leave quietly, greeting only the minister.
And even though the prayer book tells us that The Great Vigil of Easter is “the first service of Easter Day,” most folk show up on Easter morning and not Saturday night. We want to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and we want to celebrate Easter on Sunday morning and not Saturday night. We are a stubborn people! God help us when the prayer book is revised, yet one more revision in a long history of revisions.
But the ritual of foot-washing remains problematic and I always wonder if I will have to wash my own feet on this night because no one comes forward. Bishop Lee solved the problem by inviting four folk to have their feet washed at the Maundy Thursday liturgy for clergy. Bishop Lee usually invited four new priests to come prepared to have their feet washed and I can remember Bishop Lee washing my feet soon after ordination. Bishop Lee ordained me and when he washed my feet, I felt downright weird.
Of course that sense of “weirdness” is precisely what Peter felt that night when Jesus wanted to wash Peter’s feet. Peter could not abide Jesus washing his feet any more than I could abide the Bishop who had ordained me and knew more about me than most folk, kneeling before me pouring water over my feet. Had Bishop Lee not invited me to participate, I would have kept my socks on that day!
In our gospel reading from John tonight we hear: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and then tells those same disciples to love one another as Jesus has loved them. Tonight Jesus washes the disciples’ feet; tomorrow Jesus will die for them. Both are acts of love and one is an act of love that will cost Jesus his life. Jesus is loving his disciples tonight and tomorrow will love them to the end.
And Peter resists saying, “Lord, you will never wash my feet.” Peter cannot abide this kind of crazy love. And neither can we. We cannot abide the kind of love that would get on love’s knees for us, that would wash our feet, that would suffer death for us. We cannot abide a love that will stop at nothing to give us life and save us from death.
What we want is a God who wants us to be good and will punish us when we are bad. What we want is a God who will give us a law to follow and who, when we transgress that law, will throw us into hell. What we cannot abide is a God who simply refuses not to love us no matter what.
What we want is a God who does not bow down to us but to whom we can bow down. What we want is a God who is over us and not with us and our dirty feet. What we want is a God to rule over us and not a God who lives as one of us. What we want is a God who has the good horse sense not to ask us to get our feet wet.
But tonight is not about what we want; tonight is about God and what God wants and what God wants is to love us! Tonight is all about receiving the love of God. And whether you take off your shoes or choose not to, God loves you. Tonight is all about knowing that God loves you and will stop at nothing to show you that crazy love. All we have to do is to be open to being loved and that can be a challenge for us all. Tonight all we have to do is take our socks off and that feels “weird.”
Not long after we had moved to Caroline County, A.G. and I were sharing lunch together at the kitchen table. A.G. said to me that day: “You are the love of my life.” A.G. was not given to such declarations and I ascribed his declaration to the pain meds which he was taking. But the declaration made me uncomfortable as I knew I was anything other than the perfect wife and that my journey in the church had been difficult on our relationship. “You are the love of my life,” he said and all I wanted to do was change the subject.
Methinks we want to change the subject with God! God is saying to us all the time: “You are the love of my life,” and we are all the time saying, “Can we talk about something else?” We really have no idea how to live with that kind of crazy love. This Lent we took a journey during adult education with a monastic community called the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. We looked at growing a rule or rhythm of life that would keep us in touch with God’s love for us. About midway we were asked what it was about ourselves that we loved. That felt weird as most of us grew up knowing we all are sinners and “there is no health in us,” in the words of The 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
And yet, if as our baptismal covenant affirms, we are to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our ourselves,” then the first person we are called to love is ourselves. Before we can see Christ in others we need to seek and serve Christ in ourselves. In the words of our monastic brothers, “We have been created by the love of God, for the love of God, and in the love of God.”
After Peter refuses to have his feet washed, Jesus tells Peter: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In the gospel of John this story of the foot washing is a story about baptism, of that indissoluble bond we acknowledge at the font in which we are “baptized into the death of Jesus Christ” so that we might “live in the power of his resurrection,” in the words of the baptismal liturgy. Tomorrow Jesus will “die for us,” taking all that we have “done and left undone,” in the words of our confession, onto the cross. But tonight, in witness to Christ’s love for us, “Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday Isaiah 50: 4- 9a
Sunday, March 20, 2016 Philippians 2: 5 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 22: 14 – 23: 56
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.
We just heard the “passion” of our Lord Jesus Christ. “Passion” comes from a Latin word meaning “to suffer” and refers to the suffering and death of Jesus. Jesus’ suffering and death is what we remember every Sunday when I say in the Eucharist: “The gifts of God for the people of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.” Christ died for you and today as we enter into Holy Week we are invited to walk with Jesus through his suffering and death.
Now if you have ever walked with someone who is dying, you know that this is a journey we make with our whole selves – our minds, our hearts, and our bodies. Journeying with the dying engages all of us – our heads, hearts, and hands. No part of us is spared from walking in the way of death.
Usually someone who is dying is prescribed a regimen of medicines to relieve their suffering but about which we need our minds in order to understand the medications, their effects, and an appropriate dosing schedule. Our hearts struggle with compassion for the dying and compassion for ourselves who are not dying. Being with someone who is suffering is hard “heart work” and we can despair in the face of suffering that there is no joy in the world.
And finally, suffering engages our bodies, our physical selves, as we empty the bedside commode, wash someone who is no longer able to take a shower or a bath, dress someone who no longer has the strength to pull on a clean shirt.
To journey with someone who is suffering is not for the faint of heart. And in our culture, unlike previous generations, we can be spared from most of the tasks. We have hospitals that will care for the dying if we are unable; we have funeral homes who will care for the body after death; and we have countless ways to avoid or evade grieving, which is the human response to suffering in all of sufferings’ manifestations.
What we all resist is confronting the reality of death. What we all resist is that we live and move in bodies of flesh and blood and those bodies will die, as surely as the leaves fall off the trees every fall. What we all resist is that we are little more than just one part of God’s creation, which one way or another, is destined for death.
As we hear the story of the Passion I hope you hear the physicality of Jesus’ suffering – first the enjoyment of bread and wine, then the smell of sweat in the garden of Gethsemane, the sting of the cut to the slave of the high priest when his ear is cut off, the glow of the firelight in which Peter makes his denials, the burden of carrying the cross beam for Simon of Cyrene, the darkness that descended at noon. The passion of Christ is real and when I say: “Christ died for you,” I want you to remember all those times you have been with someone who is suffering and dying. This week I do not want you to think about the doctrine of the atonement or that we are all sinners who need to be forgiven. No, this week I want you to remember someone you have loved and with whom you journeyed as they suffered.
Maybe what you remember is a last meal or last conversation. Maybe what you remember is not a last breath but a last hug or perhaps a past hurt. I want you to remember the last things you did and shared with someone you loved. This week is all about remembering and I dare you to come on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday as we remember, as we remember that death is real and embodied and not always pretty.
Hearing our Lord’s passion depends upon our ability to hear our own passions – our capacity to feel our way into the suffering and deaths of our own lives. And we all have those passions, those sufferings and deaths, which may be the loss of a hope for one of our children, the loss of obtaining a dream job, or the loss of some aspect of our health. All of those sufferings and deaths are real and we experience those sufferings with our whole selves – in our minds, our bodies and our spirits.
Pay attention to the liturgies for Holy Week: our liturgies for today, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are liturgies that involve our whole selves – our minds and bodies and spirits. Today we wave palms and hear a dramatic reading; on Maundy Thursday we will wash one another’s feet; and on Good Friday, we will pray before a bare altar. These liturgies invite us to enter into the suffering of our Lord with our whole selves in the same way we enter into our own sufferings.
Suffering isolates us and we watch Jesus’ closest friends this morning move away from this man who is about to be crucified. We watch Peter deny Jesus three times. We hear at the moment of death, “all Jesus’ acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” Suffering separates us from others, a truth eloquently witnessed by an otherwise efficient practice of taking patients to hospitals rather than doctors calling on patients at home.
When these scriptures were first heard, this story of the passion of Jesus would have caused deep discomfort. The first hearers of this story of the passion would have included many Greeks who certainly believed in gods, but never would believe that a god could suffer. A suffering god was no god at all! And consequently, if you were in touch with the right God, you could avoid suffering altogether. Some, even now, in the Christian Church, hold that if you pray hard enough you can avoid the pains of life.
I have yet to meet anyone – Christian or not – that has not been touched by suffering in some way or another. And I have yet to meet anyone who has discovered some prayer or potion or practice that will eradicate their suffering. I have also met many folk who have experienced in the midst of their suffering the presence of the Risen Christ, the Holy Spirit. I have met folk who were dying and who had visions. I have met folk who wanted to die alone who suddenly had a change of heart. I have met folk who have suffered a loss of some kind who have turned that loss into a way to reach out to others. In short, I have met many folk who have experienced life in the midst of death.
I have also met a lot of folk who seem convinced that suffering is what we bring upon ourselves and, in line with our Greek ancestors, believe we can avoid suffering. I do believe we bring on ourselves much suffering but I also believe much of the suffering we experience is given to us and can only be borne and shared. None of the disciples asked to suffer with Christ. None of the disciples wanted Jesus to suffer. And when Jesus suffered, they all stood at a distance.
We, too, stand at a distance from Calvary. But we are invited to draw closer to the cross this week. We are invited to see in the suffering of Jesus something of our own sufferings, to see a God who does not draw back from suffering but who enters into suffering with words that plead: “remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” May this Holy Week be for you a time when you experience the presence of God in the midst of your suffering whatever that suffering might be but which is the glue that binds us all together.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent Isaiah 43: 16 – 21
Sunday, March 13, 2016 Philippians 3: 4b – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 1 - 8
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
John 12: 3
On the first Sunday of every month, our custom is to observe a rite for healing and I invite you to come to the altar rail to receive the laying on of hands and anointing with oil. We celebrated that rite of healing last Sunday. We also anoint with oil those who have just been baptized, marking the sign of the cross on their foreheads and saying: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
In the Old Testament, kings and priests were anointed with oil, symbolizing that they had been “set apart,” separated from the profane for holy work. And in the New Testament, Jesus is called the “Christ,” a Greek word meaning the “anointed One.” Anointing is a sign of new life, in the words of theologian Leonel Mitchell, whether that new life is received at baptism or in the midst of sickness and suffering. To be anointed is to be buried with Christ, the Anointed One, in his death and raised to new life, the new life we call resurrection.
Mary anoints the feet of Jesus this morning in our reading from the gospel of John. Mary takes a pound of costly perfume worth three hundred denarii or the equivalent of a year’s worth of wages for a laborer, and pours that perfume over the feet of Jesus. Judas objects; Jesus says Mary bought this perfume to anoint his body after he dies.
All of this takes place at dinner at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. We have met Mary and Martha and Lazarus before in the gospel of John. Lazarus was sick and his sisters, Mary and Martha, send for Jesus. But Jesus delays coming and Lazarus dies. When Jesus arrives Lazarus has been dead for four days. Jesus demands that the stone keeping the tomb shut be rolled away and Martha is aghast because by now the stench of a rotting body will be nauseating. But the stone is rolled away and with a word, Jesus calls out to Lazarus who walks out of his tomb, tearing off his grave clothes.
And now Lazarus sits at dinner with Jesus and Mary and Martha and Judas, six days before Jesus is to be crucified. And just as Mary would have anointed her dead brother’s body with sweet smelling oils and spices to stave off the stench of decaying flesh, she now pours perfume on Jesus’ feet. Was this an act of gratitude for the miracle of raising her dead brother Lazarus to life? Or was this one last act of mercy as Jesus prepares to go to his death? In the gospel of John we probably should say “Yes” and “Yes.”
Anointing a body after death was what happened when someone died in the first century. In the first century, death was a smelly affair and women would customarily cover the body with scents to mask the odor of death as long as possible. The body would be placed in a tomb and after the flesh had rotted away, the bones would be placed in an ossuary. In first century Palestine, death was real and death smelled bad.
But today, Mary overwhelms the stench of death with the sweet smell of perfume, a fragrance that literally fills the room. The oil I use for chrismation and healing has little smell because I fail to mix in any aromatic spices. Perhaps that will change after today! The oil is meant to remind us that we are one with Christ – one in his death and one in his resurrection – and the sweet smell would remind us that life and not death have the last word.
“The object of the rite of anointing,” writes liturgist Thomas Talley, “can be understood as renewal of the baptismal anointing by which each of us is christos so that the suffering and separation of sickness become identified as participation in the pascha Christos.” The rite of healing, in other words, reaffirms our belief in the paschal mystery or the “mystery of faith” as say in our Eucharistic prayer: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
When I was a chaplain at Mary Washington I once watched a young Catholic priest anoint a dying patient with oil. He touched the oil to her forehead, to her hands and to her feet. He performed this rite with great reverence as the patient was no longer responding. As I watched from the hall I wondered how many dying folk he had attended given his youth. I also wondered if I was as reverent when in the presence of death or preferred to be in the land of the living.
And I also remember a seminary professor who had been a parish priest tell a story about a time he went to anoint a patient in the hospital only to find that she responded to his touch and became responsive. We will never know what effect our ritual of anointing or, for that matter baptism, may have. All we know is that these rituals affirm life in the face of death. Mary, whether she knew it or not, was affirming life just days before Jesus would die.
That is what we are about in the church – affirming life not death, proclaiming a victory of life over death as we have seen that victory accomplished in the resurrection of Christ. And as we come to the climax of Lent beginning next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will be invited to walk through death’s dark door in our Holy Week liturgies before proclaiming “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” on Easter. Death is real and Jesus really died, taking with him all “the hopes and fears of all the years,” in the words of the Christmas hymn “O little town of Bethlehem.” Our Holy Week liturgies are meant to draw our hearts and minds further into the mystery of faith, a mystery we will never understand but can and do claim in our baptism and reclaim whenever we seek healing in the midst of sickness, hope in the midst of despair and joy in the midst of sorrow.
Now I know that the oil with which you were anointed last Sunday has been washed away. But you remain “anointed.” You are “the anointed.” Last Sunday I prayed in the name of Jesus that he might “uphold you and fill you with his grace, that you may know the healing power of his love.” As the anointed of God, we ourselves are to be instruments of healing in the world, and like Mary, fill whatever spaces and places we inhabit with the fragrance of perfume, the riches of God’s grace.
Or in the words of Saint Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Sunday, March 13, 2016 Philippians 3: 4b – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 1 - 8
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
John 12: 3
On the first Sunday of every month, our custom is to observe a rite for healing and I invite you to come to the altar rail to receive the laying on of hands and anointing with oil. We celebrated that rite of healing last Sunday. We also anoint with oil those who have just been baptized, marking the sign of the cross on their foreheads and saying: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
In the Old Testament, kings and priests were anointed with oil, symbolizing that they had been “set apart,” separated from the profane for holy work. And in the New Testament, Jesus is called the “Christ,” a Greek word meaning the “anointed One.” Anointing is a sign of new life, in the words of theologian Leonel Mitchell, whether that new life is received at baptism or in the midst of sickness and suffering. To be anointed is to be buried with Christ, the Anointed One, in his death and raised to new life, the new life we call resurrection.
Mary anoints the feet of Jesus this morning in our reading from the gospel of John. Mary takes a pound of costly perfume worth three hundred denarii or the equivalent of a year’s worth of wages for a laborer, and pours that perfume over the feet of Jesus. Judas objects; Jesus says Mary bought this perfume to anoint his body after he dies.
All of this takes place at dinner at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. We have met Mary and Martha and Lazarus before in the gospel of John. Lazarus was sick and his sisters, Mary and Martha, send for Jesus. But Jesus delays coming and Lazarus dies. When Jesus arrives Lazarus has been dead for four days. Jesus demands that the stone keeping the tomb shut be rolled away and Martha is aghast because by now the stench of a rotting body will be nauseating. But the stone is rolled away and with a word, Jesus calls out to Lazarus who walks out of his tomb, tearing off his grave clothes.
And now Lazarus sits at dinner with Jesus and Mary and Martha and Judas, six days before Jesus is to be crucified. And just as Mary would have anointed her dead brother’s body with sweet smelling oils and spices to stave off the stench of decaying flesh, she now pours perfume on Jesus’ feet. Was this an act of gratitude for the miracle of raising her dead brother Lazarus to life? Or was this one last act of mercy as Jesus prepares to go to his death? In the gospel of John we probably should say “Yes” and “Yes.”
Anointing a body after death was what happened when someone died in the first century. In the first century, death was a smelly affair and women would customarily cover the body with scents to mask the odor of death as long as possible. The body would be placed in a tomb and after the flesh had rotted away, the bones would be placed in an ossuary. In first century Palestine, death was real and death smelled bad.
But today, Mary overwhelms the stench of death with the sweet smell of perfume, a fragrance that literally fills the room. The oil I use for chrismation and healing has little smell because I fail to mix in any aromatic spices. Perhaps that will change after today! The oil is meant to remind us that we are one with Christ – one in his death and one in his resurrection – and the sweet smell would remind us that life and not death have the last word.
“The object of the rite of anointing,” writes liturgist Thomas Talley, “can be understood as renewal of the baptismal anointing by which each of us is christos so that the suffering and separation of sickness become identified as participation in the pascha Christos.” The rite of healing, in other words, reaffirms our belief in the paschal mystery or the “mystery of faith” as say in our Eucharistic prayer: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
When I was a chaplain at Mary Washington I once watched a young Catholic priest anoint a dying patient with oil. He touched the oil to her forehead, to her hands and to her feet. He performed this rite with great reverence as the patient was no longer responding. As I watched from the hall I wondered how many dying folk he had attended given his youth. I also wondered if I was as reverent when in the presence of death or preferred to be in the land of the living.
And I also remember a seminary professor who had been a parish priest tell a story about a time he went to anoint a patient in the hospital only to find that she responded to his touch and became responsive. We will never know what effect our ritual of anointing or, for that matter baptism, may have. All we know is that these rituals affirm life in the face of death. Mary, whether she knew it or not, was affirming life just days before Jesus would die.
That is what we are about in the church – affirming life not death, proclaiming a victory of life over death as we have seen that victory accomplished in the resurrection of Christ. And as we come to the climax of Lent beginning next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will be invited to walk through death’s dark door in our Holy Week liturgies before proclaiming “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” on Easter. Death is real and Jesus really died, taking with him all “the hopes and fears of all the years,” in the words of the Christmas hymn “O little town of Bethlehem.” Our Holy Week liturgies are meant to draw our hearts and minds further into the mystery of faith, a mystery we will never understand but can and do claim in our baptism and reclaim whenever we seek healing in the midst of sickness, hope in the midst of despair and joy in the midst of sorrow.
Now I know that the oil with which you were anointed last Sunday has been washed away. But you remain “anointed.” You are “the anointed.” Last Sunday I prayed in the name of Jesus that he might “uphold you and fill you with his grace, that you may know the healing power of his love.” As the anointed of God, we ourselves are to be instruments of healing in the world, and like Mary, fill whatever spaces and places we inhabit with the fragrance of perfume, the riches of God’s grace.
Or in the words of Saint Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
The Fourth Sunday in Lent Joshua 5: 9 – 12
Sunday, March 6, 2016 2 Corinthians 5: 16 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 15: 1 – 3, 11b – 32
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.”
Luke 15: 11
“There was a man who had two sons.” Two weeks before my eldest son was born, I bought an Encyclopedia Britannica anticipating that my first born would study hard and be a good student. I doubt Andrew used that encyclopedia more than a handful of times before the computer made encyclopedias obsolete. Forty years later, even Good Will was hesitant to take what was by then a white elephant. But I had been convinced before Andrew was born that an encyclopedia was essential to his education and his education was a responsibility I took seriously.
Ten years later, my youngest child was born. By the time Sarah started school, her brothers were on county soccer teams and Sarah did most of her homework on the sidelines of soccer fields during practice. I had relaxed a good bit by then and the rules that had framed Andrew’s early years were becoming less rigid and more accommodating. Andrew grew up mastering academics while Sarah grew up mastering the social arts. The boys to this day still marvel at the way Sarah could play her dad.
On this, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, we hear the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son of a man asks for, and receives, his inheritance before his father dies and squanders his inheritance on loose living. He decides to return to his father’s house, whereupon he is given a robe, a ring and a feast. And his older brother, who has remained steadfast and true, is miffed.
This parable is familiar to us and, depending upon our experiences and perhaps, order of birth, resonates deeply as we feel our way into the role of the prodigal son or that of his older brother. And because we are hearing this parable during Lent, a season of repentance, we often see the turning point in the parable to be that moment when the prodigal son “comes to himself,” as our text reads, that moment when the prodigal son has a change of heart and returns home.
But Lutheran theologian Richard Swanson is not convinced that the prodigal son ever really has a change of heart and prefers to call this parable the parable of the Prodigal Father. For Swanson, this youngest son probably had a long history of gaining favors from his father that his older brother never got and probably will not change after the fatted calf is killed.
Reading the parable this way invites us to consider that when the prodigal son “comes to himself,” he does so out of self-interest – he is starving to death and knows his father’s hired hands have more bread than they can eat. This prodigal son knows his father has never refused him in the past and will not refuse him now. He knows his father has more than enough bread and will not hesitate to share that bread with his son who is starving to death.
For Swanson, the one who squanders his property or carelessly throws away all that he has is not the youngest son, but rather the father who refuses to withhold his love, no matter what. And if, indeed, this father refuses to withhold his love, never demanding that this son change his ways, accepting him back into the bosom of his family, is not this father simply inviting more bad behavior?
Our evangelist Luke is the only evangelist to share this parable and we will never know for sure exactly why Luke included this parable in his gospel. What we also know is that the parable ends with an angry older brother refusing to join the family party. We never learn whether the older brother changes his mind and joins the party just as we never learn whether the younger brother actually did have a change of heart and ways.
The one constant in the parable is the prodigal father who first squanders a portion of his property on the younger son and then squanders a fatted calf in celebration that he has come home and then squanders his attention on his righteously indignant older son pleading with him to come in to the party.
The one constant in this parable is a father who just will not give up no matter the cost.
Unlike you and I who are forever assessing the cost of doing one thing or another. What is it worth to love someone who simply refuses to love you in return? What is it worth to help someone who seems unwilling to help themselves? What is it worth to welcome strangers into our midst when those strangers might ruffle our feathers? What is it worth to repair a broken relationship when you know you are right and the other person is wrong? What is it worth to work for justice and peace when you have never suffered injustice and always known peace?
Nothing is worth much of anything save that God loves us. And God loves us whether we deserve God’s love or not. God loves us even if we are wont not to believe in a god at all, much less a God who loves us. Because God is love, God can do nothing but love. God loves us with reckless abandon, the same kind of reckless abandon that welcomed a young son who may never change his ways and pleaded with an older son to join the party. God loves us like that father who had two sons, heedless as to whether or not either one of them would change their ways.
I suspect for many of us, receiving this reckless love of God is disquieting. Can you imagine God wrapping a robe around you, placing a ring on your finger and then throwing a huge party in your honor? Confronted by such reckless love, most of us would probably say something like: “No, no, I do not deserve this!” And we would be right: we do not.
But God does not love us because we deserve to be loved; God loves us because God chooses to love us.
The same way God chose to love a bunch of Egyptian slaves a long time ago, leading them out of Egypt and through the Sinai desert into a land flowing with milk and honey. Our forty day Lenten journey echoes the forty years those slaves wandered in the wilderness, testing God’s love for them, threatening to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. Sure God had unleashed ten plagues on the Egyptians, brought down Pharoah, the most powerful man on earth and parted the Red Sea, but would God feed them in this dry and desolate desert? And God did for forty years with manna that rained down from heaven every day for forty years until those slaves arrived in the land of Canaan, the promised land, when the manna ceased as we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading from the book of Joshua.
Lent is a time of self-examination and a part of that self-examination needs to include the ways God is loving you into life, wrapping you in a robe made out of the threads of your passions and joys, your gifts and talents, your friends and family or perhaps just the dawn of a new day; giving you a ring acknowledging your place in this world; and hosting a party simply because you are. Lent is a time to celebrate God’s love for us which none of us deserve but can acknowledge by saying: “Thank you.” “Thank you” comes from the Greek word for gratitude eucaristia and which we celebrate every Sunday in the Eucharist.
God seems to believe that by loving us at all times and in all places, we will become more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate. God seems to believe that if we cannot love ourselves as God loves us, we cannot love others. So what is it about you that you love? That was the question posed recently to those of us following the Lenten reflections offered by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist as we were invited to consider our relationship to ourselves. And for me, that question was a bit of show-stopper.
I have been the prodigal son and the older brother at various times in my life. And I am wont to claim more readily my sins and offenses than I am my gifts and graces. Sin, a seminary professor once taught me, makes no sense until or unless we appreciate the notion of grace – that absolutely undeserved love of God which brought us all into being and which keeps in being. Grace is what we fall from when we deny, dismiss, or ignore the truest parts of ourselves – our passions, our joys, the things that get us out of bed in the morning and burn in our hearts when we lay down at night. Sin is simply not trusting that God created you. And so, what is it about you that you love and what might that younger son and his older brother need to love about themselves in order to find their way home.
Sunday, March 6, 2016 2 Corinthians 5: 16 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 15: 1 – 3, 11b – 32
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.”
Luke 15: 11
“There was a man who had two sons.” Two weeks before my eldest son was born, I bought an Encyclopedia Britannica anticipating that my first born would study hard and be a good student. I doubt Andrew used that encyclopedia more than a handful of times before the computer made encyclopedias obsolete. Forty years later, even Good Will was hesitant to take what was by then a white elephant. But I had been convinced before Andrew was born that an encyclopedia was essential to his education and his education was a responsibility I took seriously.
Ten years later, my youngest child was born. By the time Sarah started school, her brothers were on county soccer teams and Sarah did most of her homework on the sidelines of soccer fields during practice. I had relaxed a good bit by then and the rules that had framed Andrew’s early years were becoming less rigid and more accommodating. Andrew grew up mastering academics while Sarah grew up mastering the social arts. The boys to this day still marvel at the way Sarah could play her dad.
On this, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, we hear the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son of a man asks for, and receives, his inheritance before his father dies and squanders his inheritance on loose living. He decides to return to his father’s house, whereupon he is given a robe, a ring and a feast. And his older brother, who has remained steadfast and true, is miffed.
This parable is familiar to us and, depending upon our experiences and perhaps, order of birth, resonates deeply as we feel our way into the role of the prodigal son or that of his older brother. And because we are hearing this parable during Lent, a season of repentance, we often see the turning point in the parable to be that moment when the prodigal son “comes to himself,” as our text reads, that moment when the prodigal son has a change of heart and returns home.
But Lutheran theologian Richard Swanson is not convinced that the prodigal son ever really has a change of heart and prefers to call this parable the parable of the Prodigal Father. For Swanson, this youngest son probably had a long history of gaining favors from his father that his older brother never got and probably will not change after the fatted calf is killed.
Reading the parable this way invites us to consider that when the prodigal son “comes to himself,” he does so out of self-interest – he is starving to death and knows his father’s hired hands have more bread than they can eat. This prodigal son knows his father has never refused him in the past and will not refuse him now. He knows his father has more than enough bread and will not hesitate to share that bread with his son who is starving to death.
For Swanson, the one who squanders his property or carelessly throws away all that he has is not the youngest son, but rather the father who refuses to withhold his love, no matter what. And if, indeed, this father refuses to withhold his love, never demanding that this son change his ways, accepting him back into the bosom of his family, is not this father simply inviting more bad behavior?
Our evangelist Luke is the only evangelist to share this parable and we will never know for sure exactly why Luke included this parable in his gospel. What we also know is that the parable ends with an angry older brother refusing to join the family party. We never learn whether the older brother changes his mind and joins the party just as we never learn whether the younger brother actually did have a change of heart and ways.
The one constant in the parable is the prodigal father who first squanders a portion of his property on the younger son and then squanders a fatted calf in celebration that he has come home and then squanders his attention on his righteously indignant older son pleading with him to come in to the party.
The one constant in this parable is a father who just will not give up no matter the cost.
Unlike you and I who are forever assessing the cost of doing one thing or another. What is it worth to love someone who simply refuses to love you in return? What is it worth to help someone who seems unwilling to help themselves? What is it worth to welcome strangers into our midst when those strangers might ruffle our feathers? What is it worth to repair a broken relationship when you know you are right and the other person is wrong? What is it worth to work for justice and peace when you have never suffered injustice and always known peace?
Nothing is worth much of anything save that God loves us. And God loves us whether we deserve God’s love or not. God loves us even if we are wont not to believe in a god at all, much less a God who loves us. Because God is love, God can do nothing but love. God loves us with reckless abandon, the same kind of reckless abandon that welcomed a young son who may never change his ways and pleaded with an older son to join the party. God loves us like that father who had two sons, heedless as to whether or not either one of them would change their ways.
I suspect for many of us, receiving this reckless love of God is disquieting. Can you imagine God wrapping a robe around you, placing a ring on your finger and then throwing a huge party in your honor? Confronted by such reckless love, most of us would probably say something like: “No, no, I do not deserve this!” And we would be right: we do not.
But God does not love us because we deserve to be loved; God loves us because God chooses to love us.
The same way God chose to love a bunch of Egyptian slaves a long time ago, leading them out of Egypt and through the Sinai desert into a land flowing with milk and honey. Our forty day Lenten journey echoes the forty years those slaves wandered in the wilderness, testing God’s love for them, threatening to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. Sure God had unleashed ten plagues on the Egyptians, brought down Pharoah, the most powerful man on earth and parted the Red Sea, but would God feed them in this dry and desolate desert? And God did for forty years with manna that rained down from heaven every day for forty years until those slaves arrived in the land of Canaan, the promised land, when the manna ceased as we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading from the book of Joshua.
Lent is a time of self-examination and a part of that self-examination needs to include the ways God is loving you into life, wrapping you in a robe made out of the threads of your passions and joys, your gifts and talents, your friends and family or perhaps just the dawn of a new day; giving you a ring acknowledging your place in this world; and hosting a party simply because you are. Lent is a time to celebrate God’s love for us which none of us deserve but can acknowledge by saying: “Thank you.” “Thank you” comes from the Greek word for gratitude eucaristia and which we celebrate every Sunday in the Eucharist.
God seems to believe that by loving us at all times and in all places, we will become more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate. God seems to believe that if we cannot love ourselves as God loves us, we cannot love others. So what is it about you that you love? That was the question posed recently to those of us following the Lenten reflections offered by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist as we were invited to consider our relationship to ourselves. And for me, that question was a bit of show-stopper.
I have been the prodigal son and the older brother at various times in my life. And I am wont to claim more readily my sins and offenses than I am my gifts and graces. Sin, a seminary professor once taught me, makes no sense until or unless we appreciate the notion of grace – that absolutely undeserved love of God which brought us all into being and which keeps in being. Grace is what we fall from when we deny, dismiss, or ignore the truest parts of ourselves – our passions, our joys, the things that get us out of bed in the morning and burn in our hearts when we lay down at night. Sin is simply not trusting that God created you. And so, what is it about you that you love and what might that younger son and his older brother need to love about themselves in order to find their way home.
The Third Sunday in Lent Exodus 3: 1 – 5
Sunday, February 28, 2016 I Corinthians 10: 1 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 1 - 9
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
Luke 13: 5
“Unless you repent, you will all perish.” Not long after A.G. and I were married, A.G. decided we needed to plant a vegetable garden. I liked the idea of a garden but had no experience in gardening. So A.G. had a neighbor plow up a small piece of our backyard, bought a tiller and handed me a pack of seeds that promised to grow into green beans.
Excited by the vision of ripe red tomatoes hanging from deep green vines, tender lacy carrot tops signaling the orange fruit growing under the dirt, mounds of potatoes to be discovered and zucchini squash gracing our dinner table, I set to work. I dug with enthusiasm and planted those seeds so far down in the ground they never sprouted.
My next adventure in gardening happened as I was helping the children carve out a pumpkin. We were sitting on the side of our carport, scooping out the pulp and seeds, carelessly casting the unwanted mess out into the yard. When spring came that year, we had a wanna-be pumpkin patch where what we wanted was just green grass.
Suffice it to say, I am not a gardener even though I love digging in the dirt and every spring have visions of glory for my yard. But I am impatient, detest weeding and bugs, and hate to see things die which is a part of the rhythm of gardening.
This morning Jesus tells us a parable about a barren fig tree. For three years the tree has not born fruit and the vineyard owner wants to cut it down, perhaps replace this worthless tree with another fig tree that will bear fruit. But the gardener persuades the vineyard owner to wait one more year; the gardener wants to dig around the fig tree and fertilize the tree.
Now I can relate to this vineyard owner – why keep a fig tree that is not bearing figs? If this vineyard supports this man and his family, he cannot afford to have a barren fig tree taking up space. And in the scheme of things, this one barren fig tree in an entire vineyard of fruitfulness is really not a big deal – “Cut it down!”
But the gardener intervenes. The gardener has a plan. The gardener is going to dig around the tree and put manure down. Maybe this is the first time this tree has received such attention; maybe the tree is just a bad fig tree and will never bear fruit. We never learn what happens. All we know is that a gardener intervenes in the hope of turning a barren fig tree into a fruitful one.
Jesus tells this parable after Jesus is told about certain Jews who were slaughtered by Pontius Pilate in the Temple. Folk want to know if these Jews died because they were sinful. No, Jesus, responds, those Jews were no more sinful than anyone else living in Jerusalem. Their suffering, like that of those who died when a tower fell on them or like that of the two men and young child who died when a tornado struck a trailer on Wednesday in Sussex County, is a part of the fabric of creation and no one is spared. Both saints and sinners suffer.
The difference between a saint and a sinner is not that a saint is spared from suffering, but that a saint is aware of, and responds to, the grace of God. Just as all of us suffer, so too, all of us are loved by God and called to respond to God’s love, which is always and everywhere calling us into new life, abundant life, life that flourishes and bears fruit.
What sin does is to keep us from flourishing like the barren fig tree. Sin robs us from the fullness of life God intends for us to have. Sin keeps us from being fully human, created to enjoy God and one another. Sin tempts us to believe that something other than God can give us life.
Sin from this perspective is an absence, as Saint Augustine taught. Sin is the absence of the truth, beauty and goodness that is God. In other words, God created fig trees to produce figs and the absence of figs is counter to the purposes of God. In like fashion, we were created in the image of God but now know ourselves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be anything but the image of God. “We misunderstand the depth of sin,” writes theologian Daniel Migliore, “if we see it only as a violation of a moral code; it is, instead, primarily the disruption of our relationship with God.”
The fig tree has done nothing “wrong,” but that fig tree will not bear fruit absent the ministrations of a patient gardener.
My gardening misadventures demonstrate such absence even if most of us would not call what I did “sin.” Green bean seeds are supposed to grow into green beans and when I planted the seeds too deep in the ground, I sabotaged the purpose of a green bean seed. Likewise, when I carelessly tossed the pumpkin pulp into the yard, I created chaos where order was meant to be.
This morning we ended The Great Litany asking God to “give us true repentance; forgive us our sins of negligence and ignorance and our deliberate sins; and grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to your word.” No, I have not robbed a bank, which would constitute a “deliberate” sin but I was ignorant about planting seeds and negligent when it came to putting pumpkin seeds where they belong.
Now right about now you might be thinking that if planting a green bean seed too deep in the ground constitutes sin, we have no hope. And you would be in good company. Saint Augustine would go on to say we cannot not sin. Absent the ministrations of a patient gardener or the grace of the Holy Spirit we can do nothing good.
Which brings us back full circle to our journey through Lent. These forty days are, for sure, an invitation to consider our deliberate sins. And, if you like to rob banks, Lent is a good time to remember what you already know – robbing banks is not a good thing. But Lent is more than just doing what you know you should be doing or not doing; Lent is more about discovering and appropriating the grace of God, the ministrations of the patient gardener, the work of the Holy Spirit blowing through our lives, at all times and in all places.
Now some of us may believe we can amend our lives by ourselves. Others may believe we are too far gone or too set in our ways or too old to learn a new trick. Either way, you do not need, much less want, a gardener. If, on the other hand, you know that you have some “amending” to do but cannot quite figure out what to do, then I would suggest you get in touch with the master gardener.
Getting in touch with the master gardener is really not all that hard. Indeed, simply acknowledging that our lives are not as fruitful as we would want is already a witness to the work of the Holy Spirit. And from that small seed, fruit will grow if we are patient.
The Church is not first and foremost, a place where barren fig trees are cut down. The Church is first and foremost, soil that needs the ministrations of a patient gardener in order to bear fruit. The Church, as the body of Christ, is a community drawn together by the Holy Spirit, shaped by the Holy Spirit and made fruitful by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And what we do in church is fairly straightforward – we pray, we sing, we hear scripture and we are fed with the body and blood of Christ. And we do all those things in the company of others, companions who will share our joys and sorrows, our celebrations and our disappointments, our gifts as well as our limitations. Or should I say, that is what the church ought to be. Even the church can frustrate the purposes of God.
God cultivates the soil in which we grow by giving us God’s Word to “hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,” in the words of one of our collects. God cultivates the soil in which we grow by moving us to pray, with or without words. And God cultivates the soil in which we grow by feeding us Sunday after Sunday with bread and wine.
Cutting down barren fig trees is not the ultimate desire of God; the ultimate desire of God is to bring forth fruit in us and among us.
Sunday, February 28, 2016 I Corinthians 10: 1 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 1 - 9
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
Luke 13: 5
“Unless you repent, you will all perish.” Not long after A.G. and I were married, A.G. decided we needed to plant a vegetable garden. I liked the idea of a garden but had no experience in gardening. So A.G. had a neighbor plow up a small piece of our backyard, bought a tiller and handed me a pack of seeds that promised to grow into green beans.
Excited by the vision of ripe red tomatoes hanging from deep green vines, tender lacy carrot tops signaling the orange fruit growing under the dirt, mounds of potatoes to be discovered and zucchini squash gracing our dinner table, I set to work. I dug with enthusiasm and planted those seeds so far down in the ground they never sprouted.
My next adventure in gardening happened as I was helping the children carve out a pumpkin. We were sitting on the side of our carport, scooping out the pulp and seeds, carelessly casting the unwanted mess out into the yard. When spring came that year, we had a wanna-be pumpkin patch where what we wanted was just green grass.
Suffice it to say, I am not a gardener even though I love digging in the dirt and every spring have visions of glory for my yard. But I am impatient, detest weeding and bugs, and hate to see things die which is a part of the rhythm of gardening.
This morning Jesus tells us a parable about a barren fig tree. For three years the tree has not born fruit and the vineyard owner wants to cut it down, perhaps replace this worthless tree with another fig tree that will bear fruit. But the gardener persuades the vineyard owner to wait one more year; the gardener wants to dig around the fig tree and fertilize the tree.
Now I can relate to this vineyard owner – why keep a fig tree that is not bearing figs? If this vineyard supports this man and his family, he cannot afford to have a barren fig tree taking up space. And in the scheme of things, this one barren fig tree in an entire vineyard of fruitfulness is really not a big deal – “Cut it down!”
But the gardener intervenes. The gardener has a plan. The gardener is going to dig around the tree and put manure down. Maybe this is the first time this tree has received such attention; maybe the tree is just a bad fig tree and will never bear fruit. We never learn what happens. All we know is that a gardener intervenes in the hope of turning a barren fig tree into a fruitful one.
Jesus tells this parable after Jesus is told about certain Jews who were slaughtered by Pontius Pilate in the Temple. Folk want to know if these Jews died because they were sinful. No, Jesus, responds, those Jews were no more sinful than anyone else living in Jerusalem. Their suffering, like that of those who died when a tower fell on them or like that of the two men and young child who died when a tornado struck a trailer on Wednesday in Sussex County, is a part of the fabric of creation and no one is spared. Both saints and sinners suffer.
The difference between a saint and a sinner is not that a saint is spared from suffering, but that a saint is aware of, and responds to, the grace of God. Just as all of us suffer, so too, all of us are loved by God and called to respond to God’s love, which is always and everywhere calling us into new life, abundant life, life that flourishes and bears fruit.
What sin does is to keep us from flourishing like the barren fig tree. Sin robs us from the fullness of life God intends for us to have. Sin keeps us from being fully human, created to enjoy God and one another. Sin tempts us to believe that something other than God can give us life.
Sin from this perspective is an absence, as Saint Augustine taught. Sin is the absence of the truth, beauty and goodness that is God. In other words, God created fig trees to produce figs and the absence of figs is counter to the purposes of God. In like fashion, we were created in the image of God but now know ourselves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be anything but the image of God. “We misunderstand the depth of sin,” writes theologian Daniel Migliore, “if we see it only as a violation of a moral code; it is, instead, primarily the disruption of our relationship with God.”
The fig tree has done nothing “wrong,” but that fig tree will not bear fruit absent the ministrations of a patient gardener.
My gardening misadventures demonstrate such absence even if most of us would not call what I did “sin.” Green bean seeds are supposed to grow into green beans and when I planted the seeds too deep in the ground, I sabotaged the purpose of a green bean seed. Likewise, when I carelessly tossed the pumpkin pulp into the yard, I created chaos where order was meant to be.
This morning we ended The Great Litany asking God to “give us true repentance; forgive us our sins of negligence and ignorance and our deliberate sins; and grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to your word.” No, I have not robbed a bank, which would constitute a “deliberate” sin but I was ignorant about planting seeds and negligent when it came to putting pumpkin seeds where they belong.
Now right about now you might be thinking that if planting a green bean seed too deep in the ground constitutes sin, we have no hope. And you would be in good company. Saint Augustine would go on to say we cannot not sin. Absent the ministrations of a patient gardener or the grace of the Holy Spirit we can do nothing good.
Which brings us back full circle to our journey through Lent. These forty days are, for sure, an invitation to consider our deliberate sins. And, if you like to rob banks, Lent is a good time to remember what you already know – robbing banks is not a good thing. But Lent is more than just doing what you know you should be doing or not doing; Lent is more about discovering and appropriating the grace of God, the ministrations of the patient gardener, the work of the Holy Spirit blowing through our lives, at all times and in all places.
Now some of us may believe we can amend our lives by ourselves. Others may believe we are too far gone or too set in our ways or too old to learn a new trick. Either way, you do not need, much less want, a gardener. If, on the other hand, you know that you have some “amending” to do but cannot quite figure out what to do, then I would suggest you get in touch with the master gardener.
Getting in touch with the master gardener is really not all that hard. Indeed, simply acknowledging that our lives are not as fruitful as we would want is already a witness to the work of the Holy Spirit. And from that small seed, fruit will grow if we are patient.
The Church is not first and foremost, a place where barren fig trees are cut down. The Church is first and foremost, soil that needs the ministrations of a patient gardener in order to bear fruit. The Church, as the body of Christ, is a community drawn together by the Holy Spirit, shaped by the Holy Spirit and made fruitful by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And what we do in church is fairly straightforward – we pray, we sing, we hear scripture and we are fed with the body and blood of Christ. And we do all those things in the company of others, companions who will share our joys and sorrows, our celebrations and our disappointments, our gifts as well as our limitations. Or should I say, that is what the church ought to be. Even the church can frustrate the purposes of God.
God cultivates the soil in which we grow by giving us God’s Word to “hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,” in the words of one of our collects. God cultivates the soil in which we grow by moving us to pray, with or without words. And God cultivates the soil in which we grow by feeding us Sunday after Sunday with bread and wine.
Cutting down barren fig trees is not the ultimate desire of God; the ultimate desire of God is to bring forth fruit in us and among us.
The Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 15: 1 – 12, 17 – 18
Sunday, February 21, 2016 Philippians 3: 17 – 4: 1
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 31 - 35
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Luke 13: 34
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” We hear the language of lament this morning in our reading from the gospel of Luke. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, a city that he loves but which will become the place of his death. And Jesus grieves for this city who will not receive him.
Jerusalem, the holy city of God, was a place of pilgrimage for all faithful Jews, including Jesus. Jerusalem was the place where God was most fully present, most real, for our ancestors in the faith. At the time of Jesus’ ministry, Jerusalem was politically governed by the Roman Empire and religiously structured to avoid disturbing the peace that was so precious to the maintenance of the Roman Empire.
The Herod mentioned in our reading this morning, whom Jesus calls a “fox,” was Herod Antipas, the grandson of Herod the Great who was appointed by Rome to be King of the Jews in 40 B.C. Now Herod the Great’s grandson rules over the territories of Galilee and Perea but not Jerusalem. And Jesus “must” go to Jerusalem and will not be thwarted by this minion of Rome.
Some, called Zealots, wanted to throw off Rome by revolution and threatened those who refused to resist. Others sought to collaborate with Rome, sometimes by collecting taxes for the Empire from the Jews, a lucrative practice in the days when you could name your own tip.
Faithful Jews were also caught up in varying interpretations of scripture – the Pharisees saying one thing, the Sadducees another and Jesus taking issue sometimes with the Pharisees and sometimes with the Sadducees. Jerusalem was not a peaceful city anymore than is Washington, D.C.
The language of lament is the language of loss. We do not grieve what we have; we grieve what we do not have. And Jesus is grieving the loss of peace for Jerusalem, the loss of wholeness, the loss that all of Jerusalem’s children are not gathered together.
The words Jesus speaks: “And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” are the words we will hear when Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday. After Jesus rides in as a king, Jesus is condemned as a criminal. Jesus has much to lament about Jerusalem, the holy city of God, the city “that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”
Jesus may not be the only one grieving. Life in Jerusalem was fraught with peril just as life in Washington D.C., is fraught with peril if not physically, which life is for many living on the streets, than intellectually as folk debate how to solve the problems that plague us in the halls of government.
That we live and move and have our being in that reality does not mean we are not to lament, to long for a different reality, a world in which we are gathered together as one brood under one very loving and protective mother hen.
And so every year, in the church, we set aside time, the forty days of Lent, in which we grieve the absence of the peace and wholeness God longs for us to have. This year we are beginning our Lenten Sunday services with the Great Litany, an ancient form of intercession. That litany is in many ways a litany of lament as we remember that the world in which we live is infected with evil and mischief, pride, vanity and hypocrisy; envy, hatred and malice; sloth, worldliness and love of money; hardness of heart, famine and disaster; violence and murder.
Before we can repent and change our ways, we need to acknowledge and lament that all is not right in the world in which we live nor in our own hearts and souls.
But like so many seasons in the church, Lent is counter cultural. We live in a culture that abhors grieving and “crying over spilled milk.” We want to “suck it up” and “get on with it.” What is the point of grieving when you cannot change what is? What good is grieving in a culture that values doing something rather than simply sitting with a miserable and most unwanted emotion such as grief?
Consider the language we use to describe what happens when we grieve. We say we “are falling apart” and “just cannot keep it together.” We think we will never stop crying. We are embarrassed by our tears and often by the tears of others. We love a good joke, we enjoy laughing and having fun; but grief and grieving; tears and sorrow are a downer.
You and I, created as we are to feel, have many feelings some of which we prefer and some, like sorrow, we wish to avoid. We feel grief and sorrow when we experience a loss and during Lent we are invited to grieve the loss of a world as God created this world to be.
Of course, if your world is perfect you will have nothing to grieve. And if your world is not perfect but you know how to fix what is wrong, you will have no need for a savior, a redeemer, who can take what is wrong and make it right. Either way, you will have no need for Lent and would be a fool to make a lament to a God you do not need. The word we use in the church to describe such thinking and behavior is hubris or pride, or more strongly, arrogance.
Jesus grieves over Jerusalem, the city that will kill him. Jesus does not seek to destroy Jerusalem. Jesus is sad, not mad. In much the same way, God grieves over God’s beloved creation and all of us, not seeking to destroy us but to redeem us, to save us, to buy us back from a life of misery and give us a life of joy and peace and wholeness. But God cannot rescue us if we do not believe that we are drowning in the first place.
That is the invitation of Lent – to be humble enough to acknowledge that we need help. And like grieving, asking for help in a culture that values independence and self-reliance is also counter-cultural. Asking for help makes us vulnerable and God knows, none of us wants to be vulnerable. Others may take advantage of us, may exploit our vulnerabilities and leave us vowing never again to ask them for help.
But God is not like anyone else. Indeed, God is not a “someone” but rather a communion of love whose life is a veritable dance of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And Lent is God’s invitation to join in that dance of love.
You may say you do not like to dance; you may say your dance card is already full; you may say you need to wait until you can dance without stepping on your partner’s feet. You and I can say a whole lot of things. God is only saying one thing: “May I have this dance?”
Sunday, February 21, 2016 Philippians 3: 17 – 4: 1
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 13: 31 - 35
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Luke 13: 34
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” We hear the language of lament this morning in our reading from the gospel of Luke. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, a city that he loves but which will become the place of his death. And Jesus grieves for this city who will not receive him.
Jerusalem, the holy city of God, was a place of pilgrimage for all faithful Jews, including Jesus. Jerusalem was the place where God was most fully present, most real, for our ancestors in the faith. At the time of Jesus’ ministry, Jerusalem was politically governed by the Roman Empire and religiously structured to avoid disturbing the peace that was so precious to the maintenance of the Roman Empire.
The Herod mentioned in our reading this morning, whom Jesus calls a “fox,” was Herod Antipas, the grandson of Herod the Great who was appointed by Rome to be King of the Jews in 40 B.C. Now Herod the Great’s grandson rules over the territories of Galilee and Perea but not Jerusalem. And Jesus “must” go to Jerusalem and will not be thwarted by this minion of Rome.
Some, called Zealots, wanted to throw off Rome by revolution and threatened those who refused to resist. Others sought to collaborate with Rome, sometimes by collecting taxes for the Empire from the Jews, a lucrative practice in the days when you could name your own tip.
Faithful Jews were also caught up in varying interpretations of scripture – the Pharisees saying one thing, the Sadducees another and Jesus taking issue sometimes with the Pharisees and sometimes with the Sadducees. Jerusalem was not a peaceful city anymore than is Washington, D.C.
The language of lament is the language of loss. We do not grieve what we have; we grieve what we do not have. And Jesus is grieving the loss of peace for Jerusalem, the loss of wholeness, the loss that all of Jerusalem’s children are not gathered together.
The words Jesus speaks: “And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” are the words we will hear when Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday. After Jesus rides in as a king, Jesus is condemned as a criminal. Jesus has much to lament about Jerusalem, the holy city of God, the city “that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”
Jesus may not be the only one grieving. Life in Jerusalem was fraught with peril just as life in Washington D.C., is fraught with peril if not physically, which life is for many living on the streets, than intellectually as folk debate how to solve the problems that plague us in the halls of government.
That we live and move and have our being in that reality does not mean we are not to lament, to long for a different reality, a world in which we are gathered together as one brood under one very loving and protective mother hen.
And so every year, in the church, we set aside time, the forty days of Lent, in which we grieve the absence of the peace and wholeness God longs for us to have. This year we are beginning our Lenten Sunday services with the Great Litany, an ancient form of intercession. That litany is in many ways a litany of lament as we remember that the world in which we live is infected with evil and mischief, pride, vanity and hypocrisy; envy, hatred and malice; sloth, worldliness and love of money; hardness of heart, famine and disaster; violence and murder.
Before we can repent and change our ways, we need to acknowledge and lament that all is not right in the world in which we live nor in our own hearts and souls.
But like so many seasons in the church, Lent is counter cultural. We live in a culture that abhors grieving and “crying over spilled milk.” We want to “suck it up” and “get on with it.” What is the point of grieving when you cannot change what is? What good is grieving in a culture that values doing something rather than simply sitting with a miserable and most unwanted emotion such as grief?
Consider the language we use to describe what happens when we grieve. We say we “are falling apart” and “just cannot keep it together.” We think we will never stop crying. We are embarrassed by our tears and often by the tears of others. We love a good joke, we enjoy laughing and having fun; but grief and grieving; tears and sorrow are a downer.
You and I, created as we are to feel, have many feelings some of which we prefer and some, like sorrow, we wish to avoid. We feel grief and sorrow when we experience a loss and during Lent we are invited to grieve the loss of a world as God created this world to be.
Of course, if your world is perfect you will have nothing to grieve. And if your world is not perfect but you know how to fix what is wrong, you will have no need for a savior, a redeemer, who can take what is wrong and make it right. Either way, you will have no need for Lent and would be a fool to make a lament to a God you do not need. The word we use in the church to describe such thinking and behavior is hubris or pride, or more strongly, arrogance.
Jesus grieves over Jerusalem, the city that will kill him. Jesus does not seek to destroy Jerusalem. Jesus is sad, not mad. In much the same way, God grieves over God’s beloved creation and all of us, not seeking to destroy us but to redeem us, to save us, to buy us back from a life of misery and give us a life of joy and peace and wholeness. But God cannot rescue us if we do not believe that we are drowning in the first place.
That is the invitation of Lent – to be humble enough to acknowledge that we need help. And like grieving, asking for help in a culture that values independence and self-reliance is also counter-cultural. Asking for help makes us vulnerable and God knows, none of us wants to be vulnerable. Others may take advantage of us, may exploit our vulnerabilities and leave us vowing never again to ask them for help.
But God is not like anyone else. Indeed, God is not a “someone” but rather a communion of love whose life is a veritable dance of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And Lent is God’s invitation to join in that dance of love.
You may say you do not like to dance; you may say your dance card is already full; you may say you need to wait until you can dance without stepping on your partner’s feet. You and I can say a whole lot of things. God is only saying one thing: “May I have this dance?”
The First Sunday in Lent Deuteronomy 26: 1 – 11
Sunday, February 14, 2016 Romans 10: 8b – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 4: 1 - 13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.
Luke 4: 1
Our forty day journey through Lent began this past Wednesday when we were marked with ashes and heard: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those words remind us that we all will one day die and ought to prepare for that day, leaving aside our selfish and self-indulgent ways.
In response to the Lenten exhortation for self-denial, many give up chocolate or alcohol or some other creature comfort for forty days, hoping to master our unruly and selfish wills, at least for forty days. And no sooner do we vow to abstain from all chocolate, we discover one evening while we are alone in the kitchen, one lone Hershey Kiss lurking in the cupboard – a hold out from Christmas. “Well,” we say to ourselves, “ who’s to know? And if I eat that lone Hershey Kiss, I am cleaning up the cupboard, which is a good thing, not breaking my vow not to eat chocolate.” And so we unwrap the forbidden chocolate, with maybe a slight twinge of guilt, pop it into our mouth, savoring the delight of chocolate which we have always loved but which we promised ourselves two weeks ago, would not pass our lips for forty days.
Welcome to the world of temptation!
On the First Sunday in Lent, every year, we hear the story of Jesus’ temptation from either the gospel of Matthew, Mark or Luke. In none of the accounts is Jesus tempted by chocolate; in all of the accounts Jesus is tempted by the Devil. And the Devil is not a Hershey Kiss.
Nor is the devil what medieval art would imagine as a scary creature dressed in red with horns holding a pitchfork. Nor is the devil what some would call today the embodiment of evil with a power equal to God. In the Old Testament, the devil was not an adversary of God, but rather was God’s prosecuting attorney, sent by God to determine if those who claimed to be faithful to God were really faithful or would crumble under pressure.
This morning Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit is led by that same Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted – tested is a better translation. Jesus has just been baptized and has yet to begin his public ministry. The devil is seeking to know if Jesus is worth his salt as God’s chosen Messiah. This testing is a little like a lawyer needing to pass the bar exam. This testing is a good thing for us in the same way knowing the person who is defending you in court has passed the bar exam is a good thing if you are on trial.
That Jesus is being tempted, in other words, is not an unwarranted intrusion in an otherwise blameless life. Jesus is being tempted in order to determine if Jesus will rescue the world on God’s terms or his own.
And so the devil begins inviting Jesus to turn stones into bread, which Jesus can do because Jesus has just been baptized as God’s Son, the Beloved. Jesus has eaten nothing and is hungry. And if Jesus does turn stones into bread not only will Jesus eat, but so too will all the hungry of the world. Jesus can turn stones into bread and if Jesus does, hunger would disappear. And Jesus refuses.
Next the devil invites Jesus to assume authority over all the kingdoms of the world. Think of what Jesus could do if he really ruled the world! No more political debates, no more tyrants, no more Presidents, Prime Ministers or military dictators. Just one world ruled over by Jesus. And Jesus refuses.
Finally the devil invites Jesus to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple. This temptation is religious. Jesus can “prove” himself to be the Son of God and if Jesus does, all the world would fall down in worship. Just one dashing leap off the Temple, one dramatic save and the whole world would be convinced. And Jesus refuses.
Jesus could feed the world with a word, do away with all of our national and international disputes and bring the whole world to our knees in worship. And Jesus refuses.
What Jesus does or rather refuses to do, is very different from what Eve chose to do in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Eve took the apple, the forbidden fruit, because Eve wanted to be “like God.” In that infamous exchange between Eve and the snake, Eve tells the snake that God told them not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden which was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or else they would die. And the snake responds: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Eve was tempted to be like God and we all know the rest of the story.
We human creatures have been blessed, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, “with memory, reason and skill” and we have used those blessings to travel to outer space, to cure disease, to build computers and establish relationships with folk on the other side of the world. We have amazing abilities and have used those abilities to enable us to live longer, learn more and meet people our ancestors never even knew existed.
But those same blessings can become curses when we fail to acknowledge that not all things we consider “good” are ultimately good. Later in Luke’s gospel Jesus will respond to a good man who calls Jesus a good teacher with the words: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Our judgments about what is good and what is not good are always haunted by our self-interests and distinguishing between the “good” we want and the “good” that God wants for us is never easy, always a matter of discernment both individually and in the company of trusted companions.
Jesus, because Jesus was the Son of God, could have done a lot of good in the world had he followed the pleadings of the devil, his tempter and tester. Jesus chose to do not his will but the will of Him who sent him.
Which makes our contest in the kitchen with a lone Hershey Kiss look a bit differently. We are tempted to eat that lone Hershey Kiss in the cupboard not because we have a weakness for chocolate but rather because we have the power to open the kitchen cupboard! We are never tempted by the things we cannot do but only by those things we can do.
But if we are able to open that kitchen cupboard, the question becomes: “Does God want for me to open that cupboard?” And when we ask that question, all of our presumptions about what may be good or not are thrown into question. Keeping our promises is a good thing; cleaning out cupboards is a good thing; eating chocolate during Lent is really not a bad thing. But what does God want me to do?
That is the invitation of Lent: “What does God want me to do?”
Now I trust that none of you will call me at midnight having found a Hershey Kiss in your kitchen cupboard and having vowed to give up chocolate for Lent, are looking for counsel. I will tell you now that I will tell you to eat the Hershey Kiss. Not because I believe we shouldn’t keep our promises nor clean out our cupboards but rather because I believe you have lost sight of what is important and should get a good night’s sleep before we meet to talk about what God may be calling you to do and to be, which most assuredly has nothing to with chocolate.
The way into Lent is the way of lament, the way of grief that we do not always know what to do and that the way of peace, love, joy and wholeness that God desires for us is often elusive. The way of Lent begins in a trail of tears.
Sunday, February 14, 2016 Romans 10: 8b – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 4: 1 - 13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.
Luke 4: 1
Our forty day journey through Lent began this past Wednesday when we were marked with ashes and heard: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those words remind us that we all will one day die and ought to prepare for that day, leaving aside our selfish and self-indulgent ways.
In response to the Lenten exhortation for self-denial, many give up chocolate or alcohol or some other creature comfort for forty days, hoping to master our unruly and selfish wills, at least for forty days. And no sooner do we vow to abstain from all chocolate, we discover one evening while we are alone in the kitchen, one lone Hershey Kiss lurking in the cupboard – a hold out from Christmas. “Well,” we say to ourselves, “ who’s to know? And if I eat that lone Hershey Kiss, I am cleaning up the cupboard, which is a good thing, not breaking my vow not to eat chocolate.” And so we unwrap the forbidden chocolate, with maybe a slight twinge of guilt, pop it into our mouth, savoring the delight of chocolate which we have always loved but which we promised ourselves two weeks ago, would not pass our lips for forty days.
Welcome to the world of temptation!
On the First Sunday in Lent, every year, we hear the story of Jesus’ temptation from either the gospel of Matthew, Mark or Luke. In none of the accounts is Jesus tempted by chocolate; in all of the accounts Jesus is tempted by the Devil. And the Devil is not a Hershey Kiss.
Nor is the devil what medieval art would imagine as a scary creature dressed in red with horns holding a pitchfork. Nor is the devil what some would call today the embodiment of evil with a power equal to God. In the Old Testament, the devil was not an adversary of God, but rather was God’s prosecuting attorney, sent by God to determine if those who claimed to be faithful to God were really faithful or would crumble under pressure.
This morning Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit is led by that same Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted – tested is a better translation. Jesus has just been baptized and has yet to begin his public ministry. The devil is seeking to know if Jesus is worth his salt as God’s chosen Messiah. This testing is a little like a lawyer needing to pass the bar exam. This testing is a good thing for us in the same way knowing the person who is defending you in court has passed the bar exam is a good thing if you are on trial.
That Jesus is being tempted, in other words, is not an unwarranted intrusion in an otherwise blameless life. Jesus is being tempted in order to determine if Jesus will rescue the world on God’s terms or his own.
And so the devil begins inviting Jesus to turn stones into bread, which Jesus can do because Jesus has just been baptized as God’s Son, the Beloved. Jesus has eaten nothing and is hungry. And if Jesus does turn stones into bread not only will Jesus eat, but so too will all the hungry of the world. Jesus can turn stones into bread and if Jesus does, hunger would disappear. And Jesus refuses.
Next the devil invites Jesus to assume authority over all the kingdoms of the world. Think of what Jesus could do if he really ruled the world! No more political debates, no more tyrants, no more Presidents, Prime Ministers or military dictators. Just one world ruled over by Jesus. And Jesus refuses.
Finally the devil invites Jesus to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple. This temptation is religious. Jesus can “prove” himself to be the Son of God and if Jesus does, all the world would fall down in worship. Just one dashing leap off the Temple, one dramatic save and the whole world would be convinced. And Jesus refuses.
Jesus could feed the world with a word, do away with all of our national and international disputes and bring the whole world to our knees in worship. And Jesus refuses.
What Jesus does or rather refuses to do, is very different from what Eve chose to do in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Eve took the apple, the forbidden fruit, because Eve wanted to be “like God.” In that infamous exchange between Eve and the snake, Eve tells the snake that God told them not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden which was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or else they would die. And the snake responds: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Eve was tempted to be like God and we all know the rest of the story.
We human creatures have been blessed, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, “with memory, reason and skill” and we have used those blessings to travel to outer space, to cure disease, to build computers and establish relationships with folk on the other side of the world. We have amazing abilities and have used those abilities to enable us to live longer, learn more and meet people our ancestors never even knew existed.
But those same blessings can become curses when we fail to acknowledge that not all things we consider “good” are ultimately good. Later in Luke’s gospel Jesus will respond to a good man who calls Jesus a good teacher with the words: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Our judgments about what is good and what is not good are always haunted by our self-interests and distinguishing between the “good” we want and the “good” that God wants for us is never easy, always a matter of discernment both individually and in the company of trusted companions.
Jesus, because Jesus was the Son of God, could have done a lot of good in the world had he followed the pleadings of the devil, his tempter and tester. Jesus chose to do not his will but the will of Him who sent him.
Which makes our contest in the kitchen with a lone Hershey Kiss look a bit differently. We are tempted to eat that lone Hershey Kiss in the cupboard not because we have a weakness for chocolate but rather because we have the power to open the kitchen cupboard! We are never tempted by the things we cannot do but only by those things we can do.
But if we are able to open that kitchen cupboard, the question becomes: “Does God want for me to open that cupboard?” And when we ask that question, all of our presumptions about what may be good or not are thrown into question. Keeping our promises is a good thing; cleaning out cupboards is a good thing; eating chocolate during Lent is really not a bad thing. But what does God want me to do?
That is the invitation of Lent: “What does God want me to do?”
Now I trust that none of you will call me at midnight having found a Hershey Kiss in your kitchen cupboard and having vowed to give up chocolate for Lent, are looking for counsel. I will tell you now that I will tell you to eat the Hershey Kiss. Not because I believe we shouldn’t keep our promises nor clean out our cupboards but rather because I believe you have lost sight of what is important and should get a good night’s sleep before we meet to talk about what God may be calling you to do and to be, which most assuredly has nothing to with chocolate.
The way into Lent is the way of lament, the way of grief that we do not always know what to do and that the way of peace, love, joy and wholeness that God desires for us is often elusive. The way of Lent begins in a trail of tears.
The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Isaiah 43: 1 – 7
Sunday, January 10, 2016 Acts 8: 14 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 3: 15 – 17, 21 – 22
and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Luke 3: 22
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” “Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and to bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.” “Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of Almighty God our heavenly Father, to set forth his praise, to hear his holy Word, and to ask, for ourselves and on behalf of others, those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation.”
Beloved is what Christ is and what we are called in The Book of Common Prayer in the liturgy of holy matrimony and in the invitation to confession in the service of morning prayer. Christ is the Beloved and through Christ, we also are beloved.
Dearly beloved, on this the First Sunday after the Epiphany as we remember the baptism of our Lord and celebrate the baptism of Riley Marie Denniston, know this: you are beloved.
In a few moments I will sprinkle a few drops of water on Riley’s head and say, “Riley, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And for the rest of Riley’s life, Riley will be marked as Christ’s own, beloved by Christ in this life and in the world to come.
Riley probably will not remember her baptism today, but Riley already knows what being loved looks like and tastes like. Riley is the beloved daughter of Catherine and David and beloved sister of Payton. Riley has felt the strong arms of her father holding her and the comfort of her mother’s beating heart lulling her to sleep. Riley has known the delight of watching her sister laugh and dance her way into life. Riley knows she is beloved even if Riley sleeps all the way through her baptism.
In baptism, we claim a truth given to us long ago and celebrated in the words of the prophet Isaiah in our Old Testament reading this morning:
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.
A long, long time ago, you and I were called by name to be God’s beloved.
Now if all goes according to plan, Riley will grow up and turn from a sweet little baby into an exasperating two year old and then into an elementary school student who may love to read but cannot abide numbers. Riley may push a few boundaries when she becomes a teenager and probably will need to break a few rules. Riley most likely will get either bored with church or just plain flummoxed by religion in general and will never remember that she was an honorary vestry member her first year of life! Riley typically accompanied her mother Catherine to vestry meetings these past months and by her presence lifted our spirits and kept our meetings short.
If all goes according to plan, Riley will not be the perfect child. And, if all goes according to plan, Riley will, at times, be hard to love.
Which is why we will baptize Riley in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in the name of the God who created us, redeemed us in Christ and sanctifies us by the power of this risen Christ. Riley will be baptized in the name of the God who died for her, because she is not perfect and will grow up to be exquisitely human and heartbreakingly fallen.
And because Christ died once for all, what we do here this day we will not repeat for Riley. The bond established in baptism between Riley and Christ is “indissoluble” in the words of the prayer book because what God has done is done and, even, and maybe especially when, Riley becomes unloveable, God will still be loving Riley into life.
Which leads me to say something about your part in our service today. Riley, Catherine, David, Payton and Riley’s sponsors, Michael Tingler and Jessica Fournier all are in the ready, prepared to come to the front of the church and be the focus of attention which is not anything I suspect they want.
But the focus of attention today is on God and what God has done and whether or not we as the people of God will honor what God has done. I will ask you: “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support this person in her life in Christ?” And then we all will re-affirm our Baptismal Covenant.
All of us who are here this day are participating in a once-in-a-lifetime, never- again-to-be-repeated event and you, all of us, are the witnesses. What you promise this day you will need to keep for the rest of your life. Do not take your promise lightly. Riley will need you. Riley will need your love, your support, and your counsel. Riley will need to hear your stories and for you to listen to hers. Riley will need your attention not just now but for the rest of her life. You are witnesses to God’s love for Riley and your presence here this morning commits you to that attentiveness. Like that pregnant pause in the marriage service when I ask if anyone knows of any reason these two persons should not be joined together, if you want to leave now I will understand.
My hope is that at some point probably years from now, Riley will begin to wonder about her baptism and what the promises made on her behalf today mean to her. My hope is that one day she will claim the truth of God’s love for her and ponder the ways God is at work in her life, disturbing her perhaps, chiding her perhaps, leading her to become the person God created her to be which will not be a clone, but a very distinctive one-of-a-kind person named Riley Marie Denniston. One day I hope Riley will confirm herself that she is beloved by God.
What we do this day is absolutely not about keeping Riley out of limbo if Riley were to die, God forbid, before adulthood. Nor is what we do this day a free pass into heaven no matter what. What we are doing today is claiming the truth that God loves us and is with us and for us and expecting us to acknowledge and return God’s love for us and all who God has created.
Last Sunday in adult education, I challenged those gathered to find and bring in their baptismal certificates and we shared this morning our experiences of baptism. I have my baptismal certificate because my father put it in his safety deposit box. My suspicion is that many folk can more readily find their Last Will and Testament, stock certificates, driver’s license and social security card than can they find evidence of their baptism. Baptismal certificates are not so important to rate such safe keeping. Knowing your social security number is important; knowing the date of your baptism not so much.
And for sure, dates are not really important; what is important is knowing you were and are and always shall be the beloved of God. No piece of paper will make that happen although I like to remember that one day a long time ago, my Mom and my Dad and my aunt and my uncle acknowledged that I was a child of God and dearly beloved.
Sunday, January 10, 2016 Acts 8: 14 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 3: 15 – 17, 21 – 22
and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Luke 3: 22
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” “Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and to bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.” “Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of Almighty God our heavenly Father, to set forth his praise, to hear his holy Word, and to ask, for ourselves and on behalf of others, those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation.”
Beloved is what Christ is and what we are called in The Book of Common Prayer in the liturgy of holy matrimony and in the invitation to confession in the service of morning prayer. Christ is the Beloved and through Christ, we also are beloved.
Dearly beloved, on this the First Sunday after the Epiphany as we remember the baptism of our Lord and celebrate the baptism of Riley Marie Denniston, know this: you are beloved.
In a few moments I will sprinkle a few drops of water on Riley’s head and say, “Riley, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And for the rest of Riley’s life, Riley will be marked as Christ’s own, beloved by Christ in this life and in the world to come.
Riley probably will not remember her baptism today, but Riley already knows what being loved looks like and tastes like. Riley is the beloved daughter of Catherine and David and beloved sister of Payton. Riley has felt the strong arms of her father holding her and the comfort of her mother’s beating heart lulling her to sleep. Riley has known the delight of watching her sister laugh and dance her way into life. Riley knows she is beloved even if Riley sleeps all the way through her baptism.
In baptism, we claim a truth given to us long ago and celebrated in the words of the prophet Isaiah in our Old Testament reading this morning:
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.
A long, long time ago, you and I were called by name to be God’s beloved.
Now if all goes according to plan, Riley will grow up and turn from a sweet little baby into an exasperating two year old and then into an elementary school student who may love to read but cannot abide numbers. Riley may push a few boundaries when she becomes a teenager and probably will need to break a few rules. Riley most likely will get either bored with church or just plain flummoxed by religion in general and will never remember that she was an honorary vestry member her first year of life! Riley typically accompanied her mother Catherine to vestry meetings these past months and by her presence lifted our spirits and kept our meetings short.
If all goes according to plan, Riley will not be the perfect child. And, if all goes according to plan, Riley will, at times, be hard to love.
Which is why we will baptize Riley in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in the name of the God who created us, redeemed us in Christ and sanctifies us by the power of this risen Christ. Riley will be baptized in the name of the God who died for her, because she is not perfect and will grow up to be exquisitely human and heartbreakingly fallen.
And because Christ died once for all, what we do here this day we will not repeat for Riley. The bond established in baptism between Riley and Christ is “indissoluble” in the words of the prayer book because what God has done is done and, even, and maybe especially when, Riley becomes unloveable, God will still be loving Riley into life.
Which leads me to say something about your part in our service today. Riley, Catherine, David, Payton and Riley’s sponsors, Michael Tingler and Jessica Fournier all are in the ready, prepared to come to the front of the church and be the focus of attention which is not anything I suspect they want.
But the focus of attention today is on God and what God has done and whether or not we as the people of God will honor what God has done. I will ask you: “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support this person in her life in Christ?” And then we all will re-affirm our Baptismal Covenant.
All of us who are here this day are participating in a once-in-a-lifetime, never- again-to-be-repeated event and you, all of us, are the witnesses. What you promise this day you will need to keep for the rest of your life. Do not take your promise lightly. Riley will need you. Riley will need your love, your support, and your counsel. Riley will need to hear your stories and for you to listen to hers. Riley will need your attention not just now but for the rest of her life. You are witnesses to God’s love for Riley and your presence here this morning commits you to that attentiveness. Like that pregnant pause in the marriage service when I ask if anyone knows of any reason these two persons should not be joined together, if you want to leave now I will understand.
My hope is that at some point probably years from now, Riley will begin to wonder about her baptism and what the promises made on her behalf today mean to her. My hope is that one day she will claim the truth of God’s love for her and ponder the ways God is at work in her life, disturbing her perhaps, chiding her perhaps, leading her to become the person God created her to be which will not be a clone, but a very distinctive one-of-a-kind person named Riley Marie Denniston. One day I hope Riley will confirm herself that she is beloved by God.
What we do this day is absolutely not about keeping Riley out of limbo if Riley were to die, God forbid, before adulthood. Nor is what we do this day a free pass into heaven no matter what. What we are doing today is claiming the truth that God loves us and is with us and for us and expecting us to acknowledge and return God’s love for us and all who God has created.
Last Sunday in adult education, I challenged those gathered to find and bring in their baptismal certificates and we shared this morning our experiences of baptism. I have my baptismal certificate because my father put it in his safety deposit box. My suspicion is that many folk can more readily find their Last Will and Testament, stock certificates, driver’s license and social security card than can they find evidence of their baptism. Baptismal certificates are not so important to rate such safe keeping. Knowing your social security number is important; knowing the date of your baptism not so much.
And for sure, dates are not really important; what is important is knowing you were and are and always shall be the beloved of God. No piece of paper will make that happen although I like to remember that one day a long time ago, my Mom and my Dad and my aunt and my uncle acknowledged that I was a child of God and dearly beloved.
The Second Sunday after Christmas Jeremiah 31: 7 – 14
Sunday, January 3, 2015 Ephesians 1: 3 – 6, 15 –19a
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 2: 13 – 15, 19 - 23
Now after the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’
Matthew 2: 13
Christmastide is not yet over and already this child that was born in a manger just ten days ago is on the run. The wise men have alerted King Herod that a new king has been born and Herod is searching for this child to destroy him. So after an angel in a dream warns Joseph that Jesus’ life is at risk, Joseph takes his family and flees to Egypt, not returning until after King Herod is dead.
The story we hear this morning from the gospel of Matthew echoes another story we hear from the Old Testament in the book of Exodus. Moses, like Jesus, was also endangered as a child when Pharoah ordered the death of all male Hebrew children only to be saved by his mother in a basket set in the river Nile and discovered by the Pharoah’s daughter who raised Moses as her own. Later, after Moses grows up, Moses kills an Egyptian for mistreating a Hebrew slave and flees to Midian, knowing Pharoah wants to kill him for that act.
Moses later returns and leads the Hebrew slaves through the Red Sea in the story of the Exodus. Our evangelist Matthew wants us to hear that what is happening to the child Jesus has happened before – specifically to Moses, the one God called to lead the Hebrew slaves out of slavery into freedom.
Moses had to take flight to save his life and now Jesus must take flight to save his. Moses returns to Egypt and leads the Hebrews through the Red Sea but not before Moses’ life was threatened. Jesus will also return to Israel and lead the people of God into a new and final Exodus but not before Jesus’ life is threatened and Jesus and his family must flee to Egypt.
Our evangelist Matthew wants us to see a pattern in the plan of God’s salvation. God will rescue God’s people but not before the life of God’s chosen deliverer is threatened. Those threats result in a flight into exile, much like the people of Israel were taken into exile after arriving in the promised land, first by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians. Later, Jesus is thrust into the wilderness following his baptism to be tempted by Satan. Salvation only comes after exodus and exile and never before. The Exodus was the story of the birth of the people of Israel; the visit of the magi is the story of the birth of a king for all the people of the world; and in both accounts, the light God has sent into the world is immediately threatened by exile.
Exodus is liberating; exile is frustrating.
The Exodus was always understood by Israel as an act of liberation, an event that transformed slaves of Pharoah into a free people. For sure not nearly as dramatic, I experienced a bit of an exodus when I got my driver’s license, voted for the first time, went away to college and then got my first job. All those events signaled my transformation from a child to an adult and felt liberating.
My exile I suppose came in the form of wondering what I was supposed to be about in this world, of doing what I needed to do while discovering those things I loved to do. Exile can be a time of restlessness as we move away from “the flesh pots” of Egypt and into a promised land we cannot see. Some of us may never experience that sense of exile; for others, that sense of exile can last a lifetime. And some of us experience that exile in episodic fashion – everything is going fine until we hit mid-life and begin to wonder: “What now?” Or we begin to suffer health issues and realize our lives are changing and not in the ways we expected.
Sure we want to return, we want to turn the clocks back but we all know that is not possible. So we wonder what return to some promised land might look like and even more how to get there.
And that is the moment when I need to remember the way God has worked in history and in my life in particular – exodus, exile and return. Return always comes after exile. And never before.
And always by God’s grace. Joseph is given two dreams this morning – one to flee and one to return. God told Joseph to go and then told Joseph to come back. God called Joseph into and then out of exile. I am not given to dreams of angels and am not always sure that calls to come and go are from God. What I absolutely do not like, though, is being in the wilderness, in exile, feeling like I am not at home.
Exodus is freeing; exile is being thirsty and finding yourself in a desert.
We have no idea how long Joseph sojourned in Egypt with Jesus and Mary but eventually King Herod died and they were able to return. And when they returned, they learned that after they left, King Herod had slaughtered all the children in and around Bethlehem who were under two, hoping to kill Jesus. Those are the verses that are skipped in our reading this morning but does tells us that when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned to Israel, the social landscape had changed and many families were awash with grief at the loss of their children. Jesus had been saved; many children were not so fortunate.
But return they did after an angel of the Lord told Joseph to go back to Israel and settle in Nazareth.
I, for one, would have sent an angel of the Lord to the wise men telling them not to go to King Herod alerting him that the King of the Jews had been born; and if that was not possible then at least bring about the death of King Herod before he slaughters all the children in Bethlehem under two hoping to be rid of this infant king. But God’s ways are not my ways and God’s plan seems to be to lead us from Exodus into exile and finally to bring us home.
Christmastide is an icon in many ways, an icon of home, of return, of the ways life is supposed to be – life lived with loved ones with good food and fine wine and gifts given and received. Today is the tenth day of the twelve days of Christmas and we are reminded by our lectionary framers that the twelve days of Christmas will be over soon and God will be calling us away from the manger in Bethlehem and into exile into Egypt looking forward to our return next year to the manger and the birth of the Prince of Peace.
New Year’s resolutions will not keep you out of exile nor will they bring you home. New Year’s resolutions may give you a measure of patience as you sojourn in a land of overweight or procrastination or indecision or physical therapy or addiction to work. But New Year’s resolutions will never bring you home. Only God can do that. And on this day, in light of the testimony of thousands of witnesses over a period of thousands of year, I want to say, God will.
When I was a child I dreamed of being a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall and then a spy for the C.I.A. and then, as a teenager, a volunteer for Mother Teresa at her Sisters of Charity Hospitals. Time passed and I did none of those things until one day, years later, I found myself in seminary, invited to take a mission trip to Ethiopia. While there, we volunteered at one of Mother Teresa’s hospitals in Addis Ababa. Before leaving, at the government run souvenir shop, I bought this painting of the flight to Egypt and carried it carefully and awkwardly home. I doubt this laser icon is worth a lot of money but it reminds me of my trip to Ethiopia and more than that, of a dream fulfilled. God brought me home and I was stunned.
Notice as you are able the eyes in this painting. They are shaped as almonds or mandorlas, windows into heaven. Mandorlas represent the intersection of heaven and earth, the kind of intersection that happened to Joseph in his dream. The kind of intersection that happens to all of us when something unexpected takes us by surprise. That something may be good or bad, something desired or something not, but comes to us unbidden as if out of nowhere. Whatever comes to us, as it did to Joseph, pulling us away from where we are into some new place, the mandalora is unbroken and we will find return.
The promise of return is why I bought this picture. I am not sure whether Mary and Joseph are going away from Israel or returning from Egypt. The Greek word for coming and going is curiously the same. What I do see are eyes that can see the intersection of heaven and earth, our world and God’s world, the same intersection that took place when Jesus was born, eyes that not only are given to the angel, Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but the donkey as well.
Sunday, January 3, 2015 Ephesians 1: 3 – 6, 15 –19a
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 2: 13 – 15, 19 - 23
Now after the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’
Matthew 2: 13
Christmastide is not yet over and already this child that was born in a manger just ten days ago is on the run. The wise men have alerted King Herod that a new king has been born and Herod is searching for this child to destroy him. So after an angel in a dream warns Joseph that Jesus’ life is at risk, Joseph takes his family and flees to Egypt, not returning until after King Herod is dead.
The story we hear this morning from the gospel of Matthew echoes another story we hear from the Old Testament in the book of Exodus. Moses, like Jesus, was also endangered as a child when Pharoah ordered the death of all male Hebrew children only to be saved by his mother in a basket set in the river Nile and discovered by the Pharoah’s daughter who raised Moses as her own. Later, after Moses grows up, Moses kills an Egyptian for mistreating a Hebrew slave and flees to Midian, knowing Pharoah wants to kill him for that act.
Moses later returns and leads the Hebrew slaves through the Red Sea in the story of the Exodus. Our evangelist Matthew wants us to hear that what is happening to the child Jesus has happened before – specifically to Moses, the one God called to lead the Hebrew slaves out of slavery into freedom.
Moses had to take flight to save his life and now Jesus must take flight to save his. Moses returns to Egypt and leads the Hebrews through the Red Sea but not before Moses’ life was threatened. Jesus will also return to Israel and lead the people of God into a new and final Exodus but not before Jesus’ life is threatened and Jesus and his family must flee to Egypt.
Our evangelist Matthew wants us to see a pattern in the plan of God’s salvation. God will rescue God’s people but not before the life of God’s chosen deliverer is threatened. Those threats result in a flight into exile, much like the people of Israel were taken into exile after arriving in the promised land, first by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians. Later, Jesus is thrust into the wilderness following his baptism to be tempted by Satan. Salvation only comes after exodus and exile and never before. The Exodus was the story of the birth of the people of Israel; the visit of the magi is the story of the birth of a king for all the people of the world; and in both accounts, the light God has sent into the world is immediately threatened by exile.
Exodus is liberating; exile is frustrating.
The Exodus was always understood by Israel as an act of liberation, an event that transformed slaves of Pharoah into a free people. For sure not nearly as dramatic, I experienced a bit of an exodus when I got my driver’s license, voted for the first time, went away to college and then got my first job. All those events signaled my transformation from a child to an adult and felt liberating.
My exile I suppose came in the form of wondering what I was supposed to be about in this world, of doing what I needed to do while discovering those things I loved to do. Exile can be a time of restlessness as we move away from “the flesh pots” of Egypt and into a promised land we cannot see. Some of us may never experience that sense of exile; for others, that sense of exile can last a lifetime. And some of us experience that exile in episodic fashion – everything is going fine until we hit mid-life and begin to wonder: “What now?” Or we begin to suffer health issues and realize our lives are changing and not in the ways we expected.
Sure we want to return, we want to turn the clocks back but we all know that is not possible. So we wonder what return to some promised land might look like and even more how to get there.
And that is the moment when I need to remember the way God has worked in history and in my life in particular – exodus, exile and return. Return always comes after exile. And never before.
And always by God’s grace. Joseph is given two dreams this morning – one to flee and one to return. God told Joseph to go and then told Joseph to come back. God called Joseph into and then out of exile. I am not given to dreams of angels and am not always sure that calls to come and go are from God. What I absolutely do not like, though, is being in the wilderness, in exile, feeling like I am not at home.
Exodus is freeing; exile is being thirsty and finding yourself in a desert.
We have no idea how long Joseph sojourned in Egypt with Jesus and Mary but eventually King Herod died and they were able to return. And when they returned, they learned that after they left, King Herod had slaughtered all the children in and around Bethlehem who were under two, hoping to kill Jesus. Those are the verses that are skipped in our reading this morning but does tells us that when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned to Israel, the social landscape had changed and many families were awash with grief at the loss of their children. Jesus had been saved; many children were not so fortunate.
But return they did after an angel of the Lord told Joseph to go back to Israel and settle in Nazareth.
I, for one, would have sent an angel of the Lord to the wise men telling them not to go to King Herod alerting him that the King of the Jews had been born; and if that was not possible then at least bring about the death of King Herod before he slaughters all the children in Bethlehem under two hoping to be rid of this infant king. But God’s ways are not my ways and God’s plan seems to be to lead us from Exodus into exile and finally to bring us home.
Christmastide is an icon in many ways, an icon of home, of return, of the ways life is supposed to be – life lived with loved ones with good food and fine wine and gifts given and received. Today is the tenth day of the twelve days of Christmas and we are reminded by our lectionary framers that the twelve days of Christmas will be over soon and God will be calling us away from the manger in Bethlehem and into exile into Egypt looking forward to our return next year to the manger and the birth of the Prince of Peace.
New Year’s resolutions will not keep you out of exile nor will they bring you home. New Year’s resolutions may give you a measure of patience as you sojourn in a land of overweight or procrastination or indecision or physical therapy or addiction to work. But New Year’s resolutions will never bring you home. Only God can do that. And on this day, in light of the testimony of thousands of witnesses over a period of thousands of year, I want to say, God will.
When I was a child I dreamed of being a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall and then a spy for the C.I.A. and then, as a teenager, a volunteer for Mother Teresa at her Sisters of Charity Hospitals. Time passed and I did none of those things until one day, years later, I found myself in seminary, invited to take a mission trip to Ethiopia. While there, we volunteered at one of Mother Teresa’s hospitals in Addis Ababa. Before leaving, at the government run souvenir shop, I bought this painting of the flight to Egypt and carried it carefully and awkwardly home. I doubt this laser icon is worth a lot of money but it reminds me of my trip to Ethiopia and more than that, of a dream fulfilled. God brought me home and I was stunned.
Notice as you are able the eyes in this painting. They are shaped as almonds or mandorlas, windows into heaven. Mandorlas represent the intersection of heaven and earth, the kind of intersection that happened to Joseph in his dream. The kind of intersection that happens to all of us when something unexpected takes us by surprise. That something may be good or bad, something desired or something not, but comes to us unbidden as if out of nowhere. Whatever comes to us, as it did to Joseph, pulling us away from where we are into some new place, the mandalora is unbroken and we will find return.
The promise of return is why I bought this picture. I am not sure whether Mary and Joseph are going away from Israel or returning from Egypt. The Greek word for coming and going is curiously the same. What I do see are eyes that can see the intersection of heaven and earth, our world and God’s world, the same intersection that took place when Jesus was born, eyes that not only are given to the angel, Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but the donkey as well.
The First Sunday after Christmas Isaiah 61: 10 – 62: 3
Sunday, December 27, 2015 Galatians 3: 23 – 25; 4: 4 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 1 - 18
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1: 1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So begins the gospel according to John, a gospel very much like a cathedral, with arches that soar heavenward and whose sheer majesty takes our breath away. Reading the gospel of John is a little like pushing open the huge oak doors of Notre Dame and discovering yourself in a vast space, dimly lit by the light coming through the stained glass windows, barely able to see the high altar far in front of you or the apex of the roof hundreds of feet above your head.
We are no longer in Bethlehem this morning, in a stable with angels and shepherds and a manger, but somewhere else altogether. With his opening words, John takes us back to the beginning of creation, when “in the beginning” God created the heavens and the earth” and “the earth was a formless void and darkness coveted the face of the deep.” And then God spoke, saying: “Let there be light” and there was light. God said let there be land and there was land. God said let there be plants and animals and fish in the sea and so it was. With a word, God spoke all of creation into being.
With a word, God brought forth everything that is and for our evangelist John, this creative life giving Word of God is Jesus.
On Christmas Eve as we heard the familiar story of the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph, we could picture what was happening – we can imagine a stable and a manger, a young woman and a man who gaze upon a small child. Indeed, in our Christmas pageants, we dramatize this story of Jesus’ birth, bringing the Christmas story to life. But now, in the gospel of John, John bids us to enter a strange new world, a world which for us is as different as is a modest white clapboard New England church on a town green from a cathedral built from stone over several generations, carefully and intricately carved everywhere you look, large enough to accommodate literally thousands of people.
For John, words are terribly important and John uses words like “bread,” “water,” “light,” “life,” “shepherd,” and “door” to proclaim the Christian message. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is “the light of the world,” “the gate,” “the good shepherd,” “the way, the truth and the life.” Words are significant and have depths of meaning that challenge us to look beyond their common concrete associations. For John, water is not simply that substance created by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but is rather that which sustains all of life and without which, life will die.
Indeed, the word which we translate as Word, with a capital W, is the Greek word “logos,” and can mean a word or reason itself, rationality, the capacity to make sense of things. For the Greeks, the world turned with an internal logic, a kind of governing principle, which we humans are able to perceive and by which we can then live. Living in accord with this divine design, would enable us humans to live well. In other words, once we know about the law of gravity, we can avoid jumping off tall buildings and live longer more fulfilled lives.
So when John calls Jesus the Word of God, John is appealing to those who are searching for this divine design and saying that in the person of Jesus, the will of God for the world has been revealed. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” In Jesus, God’s plan for the world and us humans in particular, has been given to us.
This divine design is a little like a keystone at the apex of an arch that enables the arch to bear the weight of the stones. Without keystones, we would not have those majestic medieval cathedrals such as Notre Dame. And so, like the soaring arches of a grand cathedral, Jesus is the keystone at the apex of the arches through which all of life came in being.
But then John tells us “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” For the Greeks who sought to understand the will of the gods, this divine logic could never take on human form – God or the gods were divine and we are human. The divine and the human cannot be mixed. We may be able to perceive the wisdom of the gods, but we cannot become gods. The Incarnation was a category mistake, a mistake as grave as saying that something can be both at the same time, round and square. The Greeks would acknowledge there is a “logos” but could never affirm that the “logos” could take on flesh.
John is writing his gospel toward the end of the first century to a mixed community of Jews and Greeks. And John is exploding the worldviews of both the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks would be flummoxed by a divine design that became human. The Jews would have been flummoxed by this Word who was God, because God was One and John sounds a lot like John is saying there are two Gods.
The gospel of John was a challenge to both Jews and Greeks and almost did not make it into our cannon because this gospel is so very different from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And we who hear this prologue this morning may be wishing the early church had forgotten about this gospel which opens by saying:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
We are, although heirs of Greek philosophy, still challenged by John’s words and his interpretation of Jesus. A babe in a manger we get; the Word who was “in the beginning” and who “was with” and is God is a horse of a completely different color!
On the other hand, our evangelist John is saying that Jesus is God’s creative Word from “the beginning.” “All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being.” All of life somehow is enfolded in Christ for John. All of our lives are enfolded in Christ; all of the vast space like a cathedral that make up what we call our life is mysteriously “in God.” In the words of the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, “everything belongs.” And everything means all of our joys and sorrows, our successes and heartbreaks, our good days and bad days and all the days in between. We are being brought to life through Christ always and everywhere, a veritable cathedral of Christ’s making.
And if nothing is outside of Christ and everything belongs, everything that we experience is revelatory, filled with a word and the Word, with a capital W. Our task is to discern what that word to us might be. We, like Nicodemus who shows up later in the gospel of John, are always being born from above. Our Christian journey is not, in other words, about following a prescribed set of rules, as is our journey about discerning God’s hand in all that we do or is done to us.
I wonder if we always hear the opening words of the gospel of John on the First Sunday after Christmas to lead us away from the manger and into the mangers of our hearts, that place where we can so often fail to see the coming of Christ at all times and in all places.
God is bringing us to life this day maybe not in the ways we want but in the ways the God who loves us seeks to be born in us. Look for God at all times and in all places because, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
Sunday, December 27, 2015 Galatians 3: 23 – 25; 4: 4 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 1 - 18
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1: 1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So begins the gospel according to John, a gospel very much like a cathedral, with arches that soar heavenward and whose sheer majesty takes our breath away. Reading the gospel of John is a little like pushing open the huge oak doors of Notre Dame and discovering yourself in a vast space, dimly lit by the light coming through the stained glass windows, barely able to see the high altar far in front of you or the apex of the roof hundreds of feet above your head.
We are no longer in Bethlehem this morning, in a stable with angels and shepherds and a manger, but somewhere else altogether. With his opening words, John takes us back to the beginning of creation, when “in the beginning” God created the heavens and the earth” and “the earth was a formless void and darkness coveted the face of the deep.” And then God spoke, saying: “Let there be light” and there was light. God said let there be land and there was land. God said let there be plants and animals and fish in the sea and so it was. With a word, God spoke all of creation into being.
With a word, God brought forth everything that is and for our evangelist John, this creative life giving Word of God is Jesus.
On Christmas Eve as we heard the familiar story of the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph, we could picture what was happening – we can imagine a stable and a manger, a young woman and a man who gaze upon a small child. Indeed, in our Christmas pageants, we dramatize this story of Jesus’ birth, bringing the Christmas story to life. But now, in the gospel of John, John bids us to enter a strange new world, a world which for us is as different as is a modest white clapboard New England church on a town green from a cathedral built from stone over several generations, carefully and intricately carved everywhere you look, large enough to accommodate literally thousands of people.
For John, words are terribly important and John uses words like “bread,” “water,” “light,” “life,” “shepherd,” and “door” to proclaim the Christian message. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is “the light of the world,” “the gate,” “the good shepherd,” “the way, the truth and the life.” Words are significant and have depths of meaning that challenge us to look beyond their common concrete associations. For John, water is not simply that substance created by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but is rather that which sustains all of life and without which, life will die.
Indeed, the word which we translate as Word, with a capital W, is the Greek word “logos,” and can mean a word or reason itself, rationality, the capacity to make sense of things. For the Greeks, the world turned with an internal logic, a kind of governing principle, which we humans are able to perceive and by which we can then live. Living in accord with this divine design, would enable us humans to live well. In other words, once we know about the law of gravity, we can avoid jumping off tall buildings and live longer more fulfilled lives.
So when John calls Jesus the Word of God, John is appealing to those who are searching for this divine design and saying that in the person of Jesus, the will of God for the world has been revealed. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” In Jesus, God’s plan for the world and us humans in particular, has been given to us.
This divine design is a little like a keystone at the apex of an arch that enables the arch to bear the weight of the stones. Without keystones, we would not have those majestic medieval cathedrals such as Notre Dame. And so, like the soaring arches of a grand cathedral, Jesus is the keystone at the apex of the arches through which all of life came in being.
But then John tells us “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” For the Greeks who sought to understand the will of the gods, this divine logic could never take on human form – God or the gods were divine and we are human. The divine and the human cannot be mixed. We may be able to perceive the wisdom of the gods, but we cannot become gods. The Incarnation was a category mistake, a mistake as grave as saying that something can be both at the same time, round and square. The Greeks would acknowledge there is a “logos” but could never affirm that the “logos” could take on flesh.
John is writing his gospel toward the end of the first century to a mixed community of Jews and Greeks. And John is exploding the worldviews of both the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks would be flummoxed by a divine design that became human. The Jews would have been flummoxed by this Word who was God, because God was One and John sounds a lot like John is saying there are two Gods.
The gospel of John was a challenge to both Jews and Greeks and almost did not make it into our cannon because this gospel is so very different from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And we who hear this prologue this morning may be wishing the early church had forgotten about this gospel which opens by saying:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
We are, although heirs of Greek philosophy, still challenged by John’s words and his interpretation of Jesus. A babe in a manger we get; the Word who was “in the beginning” and who “was with” and is God is a horse of a completely different color!
On the other hand, our evangelist John is saying that Jesus is God’s creative Word from “the beginning.” “All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being.” All of life somehow is enfolded in Christ for John. All of our lives are enfolded in Christ; all of the vast space like a cathedral that make up what we call our life is mysteriously “in God.” In the words of the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, “everything belongs.” And everything means all of our joys and sorrows, our successes and heartbreaks, our good days and bad days and all the days in between. We are being brought to life through Christ always and everywhere, a veritable cathedral of Christ’s making.
And if nothing is outside of Christ and everything belongs, everything that we experience is revelatory, filled with a word and the Word, with a capital W. Our task is to discern what that word to us might be. We, like Nicodemus who shows up later in the gospel of John, are always being born from above. Our Christian journey is not, in other words, about following a prescribed set of rules, as is our journey about discerning God’s hand in all that we do or is done to us.
I wonder if we always hear the opening words of the gospel of John on the First Sunday after Christmas to lead us away from the manger and into the mangers of our hearts, that place where we can so often fail to see the coming of Christ at all times and in all places.
God is bringing us to life this day maybe not in the ways we want but in the ways the God who loves us seeks to be born in us. Look for God at all times and in all places because, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
The Nativity of Our Lord Isaiah 9: 2 – 7
Thursday, December 24, 2015 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”
Luke 2: 14
All over the world this night a story is being told and a message proclaimed. The story being told is about a child that was born in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn and who was wrapped by his mother in swaddling cloths. The child was born to a man named Joseph and a woman named Mary and the child was, in the words of the angels, the Savior of the world. This child was the “glory of the Lord” who was and is and will be “the peace of God” on earth.
In churches and cathedrals, in orphanages and prisons and around family dinner tables, in word and in song, the good news that God has given us the gift of peace on this most holy night is being shared with family, friends and strangers. All over the world tonight the most glorious words ever written are being heard and shared “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” Tonight, we celebrate as the faithful have done for over two thousand years, the night the peace of God was born to us.
Being at peace means knowing deep in our bones that is all is right with the world. And tonight, for a moment, in the midst of a world that is very much not at peace, we will remember and celebrate the night when the peace of God was born as a child, a child whose first breaths were taken in a manger, a feeding trough for animals.
The peace of God, we often hear on Sunday mornings, is beyond our understanding. And try as we will, we will never understand how the peace of God took flesh as a babe in a manger much less how that peace in just a few short years, caused so much trouble that this babe was killed. The peace of God which comes to us this night is a strange peace and not the kind of peace television advertisers tell us we can find with the right beer on an island in the Caribbean. The peace of God which comes to us this holy night is a peace that led martyrs to die in the Roman Coliseum rather than renounce their faith, a peace that moved churches to establish hospitals to care for folk otherwise abandoned, and to open schools to educate children when children were consigned to work houses. This peace of God is a kind of peace that, while filling us with joy, also unsettles and disquiets us at the lack of peace in this world.
If being at peace means knowing deep in our bones that is all is right with the world, then I for one, want to confess I have not had that experience very often. More often I experience a sense that the world is not alright and that my world in particular is out of order. Most of the time I am not at peace. I was not at peace this past Monday as I worried about tonight’s sermon, tomorrow’s sermon and then the sermon for Sunday. And I worried about finding a gift for my eleven year old grandson who lives in a world whose very vocabulary is foreign to me! Who knew that something called “3DS” was a gadget that could bring delight to a young boy and not the name for some exotic experimental drug? I love Connor but Connor has disturbed my peace simply by growing up in a different generation.
My experience tells me that the peace of God is often elusive or perhaps just overshadowed by our anxieties about life in this world. What I believe is that the peace of God is always given to us but often hidden from us by our faithless fears.
Putting aside concerns about my sermon tonight, I went to visit another Episcopal priest this week who is bedbound but who described the Christmas cards she had sent out, a visit with her daughter and the gifts she had ordered for her grandchildren from the confines of her bed. Before she was bedbound, she had served as a hospital chaplain and recalled the folk she had encountered in that ministry and the gifts of peace they had given to her. She will never walk again but her world, though now limited to her bed, is alright.
My world is strangely made alright when our young people come to the altar rail on Sunday and grab the bread often with hands turned green or purple with paint from a project in Sunday School. I love that these young folk come with dirty hands to receive the body and blood of Christ because we all do, but only those fresh from Sunday School evidence that truth.
What I have learned is that the peace of God does not show up on demand. Much like the experience of those shepherds in the fields, the peace of God comes suddenly and without warning. The shepherds were simply doing what they always did – “living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Those shepherds never expected to see a heavenly host “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’”
God took those shepherds by surprise as God does us.
My experiences of the peace of God have come definitely from heaven but also out of the blue. I came to know a peculiar peace when a friend invited me to be a hospital chaplain just as I was poised to study for a Ph.D. in theology; I came to know peace when I celebrated an Ash Wednesday service here in 2010, as a supply priest; I often experience peace when Lydia Carmine brings her doll Victoria to the altar rail or Charlie Spencer tells his Dad Tony he is in God’s house. I will never understand how these events happen but I can and will to my dying day give thanks for all these and many other witnesses that God wishes us peace not just this night but all the days of our lives.
And when God graces us with God’s peace, we are then sent into the world to bear that peace which we have received and to offer that peace to others, others who like us, are desperate to know some measure of that peace which passes all understanding.
We in the Episcopal Church exchange the peace every Sunday morning. “The peace of the Lord be always with you,” I say every Sunday and every Sunday, in response, I hear, “And also with you.” And then some in the choir share a group hug, while others are more reserved, extending a hand and the word, “Peace.” Sometimes I simply lift up two fingers to indicate peace to those whose hands I cannot reach. I am not sure what happens in the back of the church as I am always reluctant to extend the exchange of the peace beyond reasonable limits because I am an Episcopal priest and like to do things decently and in good order.
So our acolyte and crucifer get a handshake as does Xiang and then I try to break into the group hug on the left side of the choir and usually flip the peace sign to the right side of the choir. And then I hurry to the altar for the Eucharist. I want to exchange the peace, but I do not want that exchange to disrupt or prolong our service. Exchanging the peace in some churches can simply last forever and I would not want to be the reason for keeping us in church past the expected hour. God knows exchanging the peace can take forever and none of us have time to do that!
But tonight as we remember when the peace of God was born among us, we will tarry over the peace. Tonight I invite you to get up and bid God’s peace to all who are here be they friend or family or stranger. Tonight, I want the exchange of the peace to disrupt us, to disrupt us in the way the peace of God has always disrupted the church and the world. I promise you will all be home in time for Christmas morning!
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’”
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding be with us all not just this night but forever.
Thursday, December 24, 2015 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”
Luke 2: 14
All over the world this night a story is being told and a message proclaimed. The story being told is about a child that was born in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn and who was wrapped by his mother in swaddling cloths. The child was born to a man named Joseph and a woman named Mary and the child was, in the words of the angels, the Savior of the world. This child was the “glory of the Lord” who was and is and will be “the peace of God” on earth.
In churches and cathedrals, in orphanages and prisons and around family dinner tables, in word and in song, the good news that God has given us the gift of peace on this most holy night is being shared with family, friends and strangers. All over the world tonight the most glorious words ever written are being heard and shared “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” Tonight, we celebrate as the faithful have done for over two thousand years, the night the peace of God was born to us.
Being at peace means knowing deep in our bones that is all is right with the world. And tonight, for a moment, in the midst of a world that is very much not at peace, we will remember and celebrate the night when the peace of God was born as a child, a child whose first breaths were taken in a manger, a feeding trough for animals.
The peace of God, we often hear on Sunday mornings, is beyond our understanding. And try as we will, we will never understand how the peace of God took flesh as a babe in a manger much less how that peace in just a few short years, caused so much trouble that this babe was killed. The peace of God which comes to us this night is a strange peace and not the kind of peace television advertisers tell us we can find with the right beer on an island in the Caribbean. The peace of God which comes to us this holy night is a peace that led martyrs to die in the Roman Coliseum rather than renounce their faith, a peace that moved churches to establish hospitals to care for folk otherwise abandoned, and to open schools to educate children when children were consigned to work houses. This peace of God is a kind of peace that, while filling us with joy, also unsettles and disquiets us at the lack of peace in this world.
If being at peace means knowing deep in our bones that is all is right with the world, then I for one, want to confess I have not had that experience very often. More often I experience a sense that the world is not alright and that my world in particular is out of order. Most of the time I am not at peace. I was not at peace this past Monday as I worried about tonight’s sermon, tomorrow’s sermon and then the sermon for Sunday. And I worried about finding a gift for my eleven year old grandson who lives in a world whose very vocabulary is foreign to me! Who knew that something called “3DS” was a gadget that could bring delight to a young boy and not the name for some exotic experimental drug? I love Connor but Connor has disturbed my peace simply by growing up in a different generation.
My experience tells me that the peace of God is often elusive or perhaps just overshadowed by our anxieties about life in this world. What I believe is that the peace of God is always given to us but often hidden from us by our faithless fears.
Putting aside concerns about my sermon tonight, I went to visit another Episcopal priest this week who is bedbound but who described the Christmas cards she had sent out, a visit with her daughter and the gifts she had ordered for her grandchildren from the confines of her bed. Before she was bedbound, she had served as a hospital chaplain and recalled the folk she had encountered in that ministry and the gifts of peace they had given to her. She will never walk again but her world, though now limited to her bed, is alright.
My world is strangely made alright when our young people come to the altar rail on Sunday and grab the bread often with hands turned green or purple with paint from a project in Sunday School. I love that these young folk come with dirty hands to receive the body and blood of Christ because we all do, but only those fresh from Sunday School evidence that truth.
What I have learned is that the peace of God does not show up on demand. Much like the experience of those shepherds in the fields, the peace of God comes suddenly and without warning. The shepherds were simply doing what they always did – “living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Those shepherds never expected to see a heavenly host “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’”
God took those shepherds by surprise as God does us.
My experiences of the peace of God have come definitely from heaven but also out of the blue. I came to know a peculiar peace when a friend invited me to be a hospital chaplain just as I was poised to study for a Ph.D. in theology; I came to know peace when I celebrated an Ash Wednesday service here in 2010, as a supply priest; I often experience peace when Lydia Carmine brings her doll Victoria to the altar rail or Charlie Spencer tells his Dad Tony he is in God’s house. I will never understand how these events happen but I can and will to my dying day give thanks for all these and many other witnesses that God wishes us peace not just this night but all the days of our lives.
And when God graces us with God’s peace, we are then sent into the world to bear that peace which we have received and to offer that peace to others, others who like us, are desperate to know some measure of that peace which passes all understanding.
We in the Episcopal Church exchange the peace every Sunday morning. “The peace of the Lord be always with you,” I say every Sunday and every Sunday, in response, I hear, “And also with you.” And then some in the choir share a group hug, while others are more reserved, extending a hand and the word, “Peace.” Sometimes I simply lift up two fingers to indicate peace to those whose hands I cannot reach. I am not sure what happens in the back of the church as I am always reluctant to extend the exchange of the peace beyond reasonable limits because I am an Episcopal priest and like to do things decently and in good order.
So our acolyte and crucifer get a handshake as does Xiang and then I try to break into the group hug on the left side of the choir and usually flip the peace sign to the right side of the choir. And then I hurry to the altar for the Eucharist. I want to exchange the peace, but I do not want that exchange to disrupt or prolong our service. Exchanging the peace in some churches can simply last forever and I would not want to be the reason for keeping us in church past the expected hour. God knows exchanging the peace can take forever and none of us have time to do that!
But tonight as we remember when the peace of God was born among us, we will tarry over the peace. Tonight I invite you to get up and bid God’s peace to all who are here be they friend or family or stranger. Tonight, I want the exchange of the peace to disrupt us, to disrupt us in the way the peace of God has always disrupted the church and the world. I promise you will all be home in time for Christmas morning!
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’”
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding be with us all not just this night but forever.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent Micah 5: 2 – 5a
Sunday, December 20, 2015 Hebrews 10: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 1: 39 - 55
Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Luke 1: 42
On this Fourth and last Sunday of Advent, it’s all about Mary. Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist and breaks into the magnificent words of the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit in rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” Elizabeth has pronounced Mary “blessed” and Mary praises God who has lifted up a young unwed woman to be the mother of God.
Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is to conceive and bear a son, a holy child, the Son of God. Mary is perplexed as she is a virgin but is assured by Gabriel that “nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary responds to this unbelievable news with the words: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” and then hurries off to visit her older cousin Elizabeth who also finds herself pregnant in her old age, soon to be the mother of John the Baptist.
We can only imagine this encounter between these two impossibly pregnant women. Elizabeth has been barren all of her life and is now old enough to be a grandmother, yet discovers she is about to be a mother! Mary, on the other hand, is young, engaged, but still a virgin, and now discovers that she, too, is with child. Moved by a swift kick from the child in her womb, Elizabeth cries out: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
I have to wonder if Mary felt blessed after the angel Gabriel told her she would be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and would conceive the Son of God! Mary’s untoward pregnancy was grounds for stoning to death in first century Palestine. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is overjoyed that God has given her a child after so many years of childlessness. Elizabeth feels blessed and now blesses Mary.
Once Mary is blessed by Elizabeth, Mary breaks forth into a song of praise, praising God for doing great things for her, for lifting up the lowly and bringing the powerful down from their thrones. Mary now understands that what God has done for her, God intends to do through her son, for the whole world – to lift up the lowly.
Mary no longer sees herself as an unwed mother poised to lose her intended husband and maybe her life, but as a young woman favored by God to bear God’s Son into the world. The angel Gabriel left Mary willing but perplexed; Elizabeth’s blessing left Mary rejoicing. The lowly have been lifted up and Elizabeth named the truth Mary could not see.
This month at our First Tuesday lunch and meditation, we heard the words of the Magnificat and I reflected on lowliness and lowly things. I had wandered around my house gathering up what I would call “lowly things” which included a paper clip, a rubber band, and a Food Lion plastic bag. What I realized is that if my house were burning down, I would care less if I lost all my paper clips, all my rubber bands and all my plastic Food Lion shopping bags. None of those things have any intrinsic worth for me are and easily replaced. All of those things are “lowly” and of no account.
Mary was, once pregnant, of no account, damaged goods in a culture where blood line meant everything and conception by the power of the Holy Spirit too incredible to believe. Mary was disposable in a culture that saw no value in a woman who was pregnant outside of wedlock. Joseph, hoping to spare Mary’s life, wanted to quietly dismiss her; like the lowly things I found around my house, Mary was, once pregnant, “dismissable” and “disposable.”
When Elizabeth blessed Mary, Elizabeth accorded Mary a value that Mary’s community could not affirm. Elizabeth was the first person to call Mary “blessed.” Scholars continue to debate the veracity of the virgin birth; what is not up for debate is that Mary does not break into her song of praise until after Elizabeth’s blessing. Today may not be so much about Mary as is today about the blessing Elizabeth pronounces upon a young expectant unmarried woman.
Ever tried to bless a paper clip? That was my challenge to those who came on our December First Tuesday. And why, one might wonder, would anyone want to spend time with a paper clip? Because, Jesus tells us, even the least of these are important in the eyes of God.
Of course Jesus was not talking about paper clips. But sometimes I feel we talk about others as if they were paper clips, easily identified and, depending upon your perspective, easily dismissed. The papers are full of stories about immigrants and about Muslims and evangelicals and conservatives and liberals as if these very human folk fit neatly into these categories we can then either value or demean. The papers rarely print stories of people, their particular stories and their unique God given souls. Elizabeth knew the worth of Mary’s soul and her womb and blessed both Mary and the fruit of her womb. Elizabeth blessed what others cursed.
Growing up in New Jersey, I consigned country music and pick up trucks to a culture that was less enlightened than mine. And then I fell in love with a Virginia born boy. I never have liked country music but have appreciated my pick up truck. And I loved my Virginia gentleman! Some few years before I met A.G., Christmas was a time of parties when young girls were presented and I remember dressing for for those parties and delighting in the news the following day in the paper about who had come “out” when ”coming out” meant you were young and sixteen and eligible to be married.
I was years away from understanding that the most holy night that we celebrate on Christmas, is a night when we, in the words of that lovely hymn, O holy night,” affirm that “we lay in sin and error pining till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” I assumed my worth lay in the roots of the industrial revolution and the railroads in particular of my father’s family and the purity of my mother’s family who came to this country on the Mayflower. I never presumed I was unworthy. I never thought of myself as “lowly.” If anything, coming to the south was a cultural accommodation I made to further my education.
And then I met the Baptists. The Baptists could care less where I came from and were convinced that I was sinner. My father’s family loved to dance and play the ponies and that was forbidden; my mother’s family would never deign to speak up in church and that made impossible all altar calls. Either I or the Baptist Church was lowly. I chose the Baptist Church.
What I came to appreciate, courtesy of the Baptists, is that my history is both a blessing and a curse. My history is a blessing because I was able to go to college and never went to bed hungry; my history is a curse because I was able to go to college and never went to bed hungry. I could easily dismiss theological views I did not share, folk with “funny” accents, which of course I did not have, and behaviors rooted in having to survive in a hostile world, a world I never inhabited. I continue to struggle to affirm who I am and where I came from but not privilege my way of being in a world peopled by millions of folk who each have very personal ways of being in this world.
My soul has worth because God deigned to come and live as one of us. Your soul and the souls of all who live on this fragile planet has worth for the same reason. My job is not to value this or that way of being in the world; my job, like that of Elizabeth, is to bless and not curse all those who share life in this world with me.
Elizabeth blesses Mary because Elizabeth is “filled with the Holy Spirit” we hear this morning. May the Holy Spirit in this holy season be with us all.
Sunday, December 20, 2015 Hebrews 10: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 1: 39 - 55
Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Luke 1: 42
On this Fourth and last Sunday of Advent, it’s all about Mary. Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist and breaks into the magnificent words of the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit in rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” Elizabeth has pronounced Mary “blessed” and Mary praises God who has lifted up a young unwed woman to be the mother of God.
Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is to conceive and bear a son, a holy child, the Son of God. Mary is perplexed as she is a virgin but is assured by Gabriel that “nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary responds to this unbelievable news with the words: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” and then hurries off to visit her older cousin Elizabeth who also finds herself pregnant in her old age, soon to be the mother of John the Baptist.
We can only imagine this encounter between these two impossibly pregnant women. Elizabeth has been barren all of her life and is now old enough to be a grandmother, yet discovers she is about to be a mother! Mary, on the other hand, is young, engaged, but still a virgin, and now discovers that she, too, is with child. Moved by a swift kick from the child in her womb, Elizabeth cries out: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
I have to wonder if Mary felt blessed after the angel Gabriel told her she would be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and would conceive the Son of God! Mary’s untoward pregnancy was grounds for stoning to death in first century Palestine. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is overjoyed that God has given her a child after so many years of childlessness. Elizabeth feels blessed and now blesses Mary.
Once Mary is blessed by Elizabeth, Mary breaks forth into a song of praise, praising God for doing great things for her, for lifting up the lowly and bringing the powerful down from their thrones. Mary now understands that what God has done for her, God intends to do through her son, for the whole world – to lift up the lowly.
Mary no longer sees herself as an unwed mother poised to lose her intended husband and maybe her life, but as a young woman favored by God to bear God’s Son into the world. The angel Gabriel left Mary willing but perplexed; Elizabeth’s blessing left Mary rejoicing. The lowly have been lifted up and Elizabeth named the truth Mary could not see.
This month at our First Tuesday lunch and meditation, we heard the words of the Magnificat and I reflected on lowliness and lowly things. I had wandered around my house gathering up what I would call “lowly things” which included a paper clip, a rubber band, and a Food Lion plastic bag. What I realized is that if my house were burning down, I would care less if I lost all my paper clips, all my rubber bands and all my plastic Food Lion shopping bags. None of those things have any intrinsic worth for me are and easily replaced. All of those things are “lowly” and of no account.
Mary was, once pregnant, of no account, damaged goods in a culture where blood line meant everything and conception by the power of the Holy Spirit too incredible to believe. Mary was disposable in a culture that saw no value in a woman who was pregnant outside of wedlock. Joseph, hoping to spare Mary’s life, wanted to quietly dismiss her; like the lowly things I found around my house, Mary was, once pregnant, “dismissable” and “disposable.”
When Elizabeth blessed Mary, Elizabeth accorded Mary a value that Mary’s community could not affirm. Elizabeth was the first person to call Mary “blessed.” Scholars continue to debate the veracity of the virgin birth; what is not up for debate is that Mary does not break into her song of praise until after Elizabeth’s blessing. Today may not be so much about Mary as is today about the blessing Elizabeth pronounces upon a young expectant unmarried woman.
Ever tried to bless a paper clip? That was my challenge to those who came on our December First Tuesday. And why, one might wonder, would anyone want to spend time with a paper clip? Because, Jesus tells us, even the least of these are important in the eyes of God.
Of course Jesus was not talking about paper clips. But sometimes I feel we talk about others as if they were paper clips, easily identified and, depending upon your perspective, easily dismissed. The papers are full of stories about immigrants and about Muslims and evangelicals and conservatives and liberals as if these very human folk fit neatly into these categories we can then either value or demean. The papers rarely print stories of people, their particular stories and their unique God given souls. Elizabeth knew the worth of Mary’s soul and her womb and blessed both Mary and the fruit of her womb. Elizabeth blessed what others cursed.
Growing up in New Jersey, I consigned country music and pick up trucks to a culture that was less enlightened than mine. And then I fell in love with a Virginia born boy. I never have liked country music but have appreciated my pick up truck. And I loved my Virginia gentleman! Some few years before I met A.G., Christmas was a time of parties when young girls were presented and I remember dressing for for those parties and delighting in the news the following day in the paper about who had come “out” when ”coming out” meant you were young and sixteen and eligible to be married.
I was years away from understanding that the most holy night that we celebrate on Christmas, is a night when we, in the words of that lovely hymn, O holy night,” affirm that “we lay in sin and error pining till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” I assumed my worth lay in the roots of the industrial revolution and the railroads in particular of my father’s family and the purity of my mother’s family who came to this country on the Mayflower. I never presumed I was unworthy. I never thought of myself as “lowly.” If anything, coming to the south was a cultural accommodation I made to further my education.
And then I met the Baptists. The Baptists could care less where I came from and were convinced that I was sinner. My father’s family loved to dance and play the ponies and that was forbidden; my mother’s family would never deign to speak up in church and that made impossible all altar calls. Either I or the Baptist Church was lowly. I chose the Baptist Church.
What I came to appreciate, courtesy of the Baptists, is that my history is both a blessing and a curse. My history is a blessing because I was able to go to college and never went to bed hungry; my history is a curse because I was able to go to college and never went to bed hungry. I could easily dismiss theological views I did not share, folk with “funny” accents, which of course I did not have, and behaviors rooted in having to survive in a hostile world, a world I never inhabited. I continue to struggle to affirm who I am and where I came from but not privilege my way of being in a world peopled by millions of folk who each have very personal ways of being in this world.
My soul has worth because God deigned to come and live as one of us. Your soul and the souls of all who live on this fragile planet has worth for the same reason. My job is not to value this or that way of being in the world; my job, like that of Elizabeth, is to bless and not curse all those who share life in this world with me.
Elizabeth blesses Mary because Elizabeth is “filled with the Holy Spirit” we hear this morning. May the Holy Spirit in this holy season be with us all.
The Last Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 23: 1 – 7
Sunday, November 22, 2015 Revelation 1: 4b – 8
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 33 – 37
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
John 18: 33
“Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus this morning. And Jesus responds, “My kingdom is not from this world.” Kings and kingdoms from this world are all that Pilate knows and all that the people of Israel wanted to have and to be twelve hundred years earlier.
Israel began life as twelve tribes brought together in times of crisis by charismatic judges who then vanished from the scene until the next crisis and a new judge appeared. The judges were sent by God to gather the people together in times of crisis but were never invested with any permanent power. Samuel was the last of such judges and when Samuel got old, the twelve tribes demanded a king so that they would be like the other nations. God told Samuel to “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” But warn them, God told Samuel, warn the people about the ways of kings.
And Samuel did, telling the people:
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
So Israel got a king, first Saul, then David, then Solomon and then a host of kings both good and bad. Israel became a nation like the other nations for better and for worse. Israel got a king but not one of them was God.
And now Jesus stands before Pilate as a king but one whose kingdom is not from this world.
This week nations have been rising up decrying the violence of other would-be nations. Calls for safety by restricting immigrants are pitted against calls for compassion for those fleeing nations in which they are no longer safe. The kingdoms of this world are struggling under the power of terrorism to wreck utter and complete havoc.
Have we arrived at this place because not all in the world acknowledge Jesus Christ as the “ruler of the kings of the earth,” in the words from our reading from Revelation? No; we most probably have arrived at this place because we that do acknowledge Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on this Last Sunday after Pentecost have not always acted as a kingdom of priests serving his God and Father.
We have allowed others to “go out before us and fight our battles,” just as Israel did. We have allowed some Christian voices to speak for all Christians and failed to proclaim the good news in ways that reach out to others and do not push them away. We have failed to welcome the stranger and to learn from them, rather than attempting to make the stranger someone “like us.” We have become citizens of this world and forgotten we are citizens of heaven.
Our journey of discipleship begins at the baptismal font, continues with our coming to church every Sunday, is complicated by the people with whom we are called into fellowship and issues in works of service to all – believer and non-believer alike. The church is simply a crucible in which our hard edges are slowly smoothed down and we begin to get the truth that none of us are God. We are all fallible, limited human beings who need God to govern us because we seem to botch things up.
Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea for ten years and was removed in 36 A.D., for misgovernment. Pilate was cruel and cruel to the Jews. Jesus was nothing more than one more Jew Pilate could torture. Pilate, like so many others with power, had the power to dehumanize, to take what God had created and to destroy it. That is what happened in Paris a week ago; that is what is happening now as immigrants are labeled either a burden or potential terrorists. And that is what is happening as we characterize a young woman who blew herself up, as a terrorist and not as a desperate woman used like a pawn by someone with power over her.
I want to feel safe in this world, know I have the power to keep myself safe in most ways but not all, and also know that I worship a King and a kingdom that is not of this world. Our new Presiding Bishop Michael Curry wrote the following this week:
Refugees from places like Syria seek to escape the precise same ideological and religious extremism that gave birth to the attacks in Paris. They seek entry into our communities because their lives are imprisoned by daily fear for their existence. Just as Jesus bids us not to be afraid, we must, in turn, pass those words of comfort to those who turn to us for help.
But Jesus calls us to go even further: not just to love our neighbors and our kin, but to love our enemies. This is particularly difficult when we are afraid. But even in the midst of our fear we stand on the solid ground of our faith and proclaim the faith in Christ crucified and risen from the dead. In practical terms, this may mean finding strength in prayer, or in our neighbors, or in our churches, or in acts of solidarity with others who live in fear. This is the hope that casts out fear.
The fear is real. So we pray. We go to church. We remember who we are in Jesus. Our resurrection hope is larger than fear. Let nothing keep us from that hope, that faith, that security in Gods dream for all of humanity.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks this morning. Is Jesus our king or is some other king like the king of fear or the king of cultural identity or the king of silence moving us about like pawns on a chess board?
Jesus was and is and will be king. But Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and that is our call if we follow this King who died on a cross. I have no desire to put myself or my family nor any of those I love, which includes all of you, in harm’s way. I do have a desire to be a disciple and do believe that we have the means and the gifts to tell the truth to a world that continues to live under an illusion that we can overpower evil with evil. We cannot and only give that power more power when we do.
Sunday, November 22, 2015 Revelation 1: 4b – 8
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 33 – 37
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
John 18: 33
“Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus this morning. And Jesus responds, “My kingdom is not from this world.” Kings and kingdoms from this world are all that Pilate knows and all that the people of Israel wanted to have and to be twelve hundred years earlier.
Israel began life as twelve tribes brought together in times of crisis by charismatic judges who then vanished from the scene until the next crisis and a new judge appeared. The judges were sent by God to gather the people together in times of crisis but were never invested with any permanent power. Samuel was the last of such judges and when Samuel got old, the twelve tribes demanded a king so that they would be like the other nations. God told Samuel to “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” But warn them, God told Samuel, warn the people about the ways of kings.
And Samuel did, telling the people:
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
So Israel got a king, first Saul, then David, then Solomon and then a host of kings both good and bad. Israel became a nation like the other nations for better and for worse. Israel got a king but not one of them was God.
And now Jesus stands before Pilate as a king but one whose kingdom is not from this world.
This week nations have been rising up decrying the violence of other would-be nations. Calls for safety by restricting immigrants are pitted against calls for compassion for those fleeing nations in which they are no longer safe. The kingdoms of this world are struggling under the power of terrorism to wreck utter and complete havoc.
Have we arrived at this place because not all in the world acknowledge Jesus Christ as the “ruler of the kings of the earth,” in the words from our reading from Revelation? No; we most probably have arrived at this place because we that do acknowledge Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on this Last Sunday after Pentecost have not always acted as a kingdom of priests serving his God and Father.
We have allowed others to “go out before us and fight our battles,” just as Israel did. We have allowed some Christian voices to speak for all Christians and failed to proclaim the good news in ways that reach out to others and do not push them away. We have failed to welcome the stranger and to learn from them, rather than attempting to make the stranger someone “like us.” We have become citizens of this world and forgotten we are citizens of heaven.
Our journey of discipleship begins at the baptismal font, continues with our coming to church every Sunday, is complicated by the people with whom we are called into fellowship and issues in works of service to all – believer and non-believer alike. The church is simply a crucible in which our hard edges are slowly smoothed down and we begin to get the truth that none of us are God. We are all fallible, limited human beings who need God to govern us because we seem to botch things up.
Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea for ten years and was removed in 36 A.D., for misgovernment. Pilate was cruel and cruel to the Jews. Jesus was nothing more than one more Jew Pilate could torture. Pilate, like so many others with power, had the power to dehumanize, to take what God had created and to destroy it. That is what happened in Paris a week ago; that is what is happening now as immigrants are labeled either a burden or potential terrorists. And that is what is happening as we characterize a young woman who blew herself up, as a terrorist and not as a desperate woman used like a pawn by someone with power over her.
I want to feel safe in this world, know I have the power to keep myself safe in most ways but not all, and also know that I worship a King and a kingdom that is not of this world. Our new Presiding Bishop Michael Curry wrote the following this week:
Refugees from places like Syria seek to escape the precise same ideological and religious extremism that gave birth to the attacks in Paris. They seek entry into our communities because their lives are imprisoned by daily fear for their existence. Just as Jesus bids us not to be afraid, we must, in turn, pass those words of comfort to those who turn to us for help.
But Jesus calls us to go even further: not just to love our neighbors and our kin, but to love our enemies. This is particularly difficult when we are afraid. But even in the midst of our fear we stand on the solid ground of our faith and proclaim the faith in Christ crucified and risen from the dead. In practical terms, this may mean finding strength in prayer, or in our neighbors, or in our churches, or in acts of solidarity with others who live in fear. This is the hope that casts out fear.
The fear is real. So we pray. We go to church. We remember who we are in Jesus. Our resurrection hope is larger than fear. Let nothing keep us from that hope, that faith, that security in Gods dream for all of humanity.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks this morning. Is Jesus our king or is some other king like the king of fear or the king of cultural identity or the king of silence moving us about like pawns on a chess board?
Jesus was and is and will be king. But Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and that is our call if we follow this King who died on a cross. I have no desire to put myself or my family nor any of those I love, which includes all of you, in harm’s way. I do have a desire to be a disciple and do believe that we have the means and the gifts to tell the truth to a world that continues to live under an illusion that we can overpower evil with evil. We cannot and only give that power more power when we do.
All Saints’ Day Isaiah 25: 6 – 9
Sunday, November 1, 2015 Revelation 21: 1 – 6a
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 11: 32 – 44
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
Collect for All Saints’ Day
Today is November 1, All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is an important day in the life of the church, joining Christmas and Easter as days of special significance. Unfortunately, the observance of All Saints’ Day tends to be overshadowed by our celebration of Halloween on October 31. Halloween is the night before All Saints’ Day or All Hallows Day, as this day used to be called. As All Hallows Eve morphed into Halloween, costumes and candy trumped remembering dead saints.
Yet, All Saints’ Day continues to be important in the life of the church because on All Saints’ Day we remember all the saints, all the holy people of God, in the hope that their witness may encourage us as we continue to live out our lives of faith.
The tradition of remembering the saints has roots in the early church who desired to keep alive the memory of the early martyrs. The witness of the martyrs gave hope to those who struggled to live out their faith in a world that resisted the gospel and persecuted those who believed. In time, as Marion Hatchett, commentator on The Book of Common Prayer notes, “The saints came to represent intercessors and protectors rather than witnesses for the faith.”
By the sixteenth century, saints were not only remembered but had become the object of prayer. Many in the church prayed to various saints, believing that a saint could advocate for them before God. But for the reformers, Christ is our sole mediator and advocate and the practice of invoking the name of a saint was unscriptural and blasphemous.
So, whereas, we in the Episcopal Church, continue to remember saints, we do not worship them. And in The Book of Common Prayer, we have a calendar that designates particular days of the year when we remember the lives of those throughout all generations who have born witness to their faith in their lives and sometimes by their deaths. That calendar has now been greatly enriched by a supplemental text called Holy Women, Holy Men, which offers for our edification the lives of hundreds of men and women who throughout the centuries, in the words of our former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, have born “witness to Christ’s death-defying love, in service, in holiness of life, and in challenge to existing practices within both the church and society.”
“Saint” comes from the word “sanctus” and means holy. “Holy” is what God is. And what we, who are made in God’s image, are called to be. Holy is what the people of Israel were called to be, a people set apart by God and for God. Holy is what Christ was and is, the image of God, a perfect and complete manifestation of who God is and what God desires. To be holy is to be like Christ.
You and I are made one with Christ in baptism. In baptism, we are joined to Christ forever. In baptism, we are united with Christ for all time and beyond time. In baptism, we are deemed holy because Christ is holy. In baptism, we become saints.
Sainthood is not an achievement, a designation God confers upon us if we live a life of moral perfection. Sainthood is a gift God gives us in and through Christ at baptism and then calls us to live out, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are all saints by virtue of our baptism, not by virtue of our morality.
In baptism, we are baptized into the death of Christ and raised to new life, Christ’s risen life, the life of the world to come, life as God intends life to be, life lived no longer under the shadow of death. In baptism, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God to enable us to live this new life, this resurrection life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live no longer for ourselves, but for Christ and for all those for whom Christ died.
Baptism is the beginning of a journey, a journey with God who leads us from the font out into the world, by the power of the Holy Spirit to go where God would have us go and do what God would have us do. For some, like Mother Teresa, the Spirit called her to spend her life on the streets of Calcutta, India, with the poorest of the poor. For others, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Spirit called him to oppose Adolph Hitler, resulting in his death by the Nazis for Bonhoeffer’s participation in an assassination attempt. For Martin Luther King, the Spirit led him to oppose racial segregation which also led to his death. Baptism for the church is not a quiet and quaint ritual but a revolution, a revolution of the heart and mind in and through which we are called to live as Christ lived, empowered to do so by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The revolution that is baptism is nothing short of a battle against “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” as we will hear in a few minutes.
In baptism, we take our place within the communion of saints, a great cloud of witnesses, who in every generation have looked to God with hope, have seen God’s hope for the world enfleshed in Jesus and sought to follow the pleadings of the Risen Christ, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. Each witness is different - we are not all called to be martyrs or to live out our lives on the streets of Calcutta. But we are all called and graced by the Holy Spirit to become witnesses to the new life God gives to us in baptism and to the kind of death-defying love Jesus manifested when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
In a moment, Ella Price Gravatt will be baptized into this new life, into the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Ella will become one with the saints in heaven and the saints on earth, the newest member of a great cloud of witnesses which includes the familiar figures of Mary and Joseph, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Peter and Paul, and thousands of others Ella will come to meet as Ella continues her life of faith in the church.
And that is the expectation of the church that Ella will continue “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,” as we all will promise later. Ella will need to grow into her baptism as we all do, to come to church, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Bible and to share fellowship with other Christians. Baptism is, for us Episcopalians, full initiation into the church, an indissoluble bond established by God which can never be repeated but that does not mean Ella is about to be magically transformed. Baptism is a mystery but is never magic. We expect that one day the promises made on Ella’s behalf today by her parents and sponsors, Ella will embrace as her own.
Baptism always recognizes two wills at work in the world– that of God drawing us to Godself and our own will, often drawing us away from God and one another. What we recognize this day is the primacy of God’s will which has led Ella’s parents this day to want Ella baptized. As Ella grows up, Ella will need to make her own choices which, we all hope, will affirm the promises her parents and sponsors are making for her this day.
The church is divided on infant baptism; some understand infant baptism as a way to keep innocent children out of hell; others want children to come of age before they embrace the daunting demands of baptism. The Episcopal Church wants to say that it is only by God’s grace that any of us are here this morning and that we all need to grow into that grace of God which saved us all on the cross. We baptize infants who we then expect to confirm; others confirm and then baptize. What we all appreciate is that baptism without formation is empty and meaningless.
And that brings us back to the communion of saints. All of us who are here this morning will promise to support Ella in her life with Christ. We all are a microcosm of this great cloud of witnesses. Look around and what do you see? Some of us like Ella are young and cute and sweet and just beginning life in this world. And some of us are old and have experienced many things, some bitter and some sweet. And we all will need to share our stories with Ella as she grows up. I hope you, the saints, will build Ella up as you share your stories of the ways God’s death-defying love has broken into your life, of the goodness, truth and beauty you have discovered, and your prayers, both those that have been answered and those that have not been answered.
Tell Ella your stories, all of your stories. Be honest with Ella. Be a witness to Ella and tell the truth. Ella will know if you say anything less. What Ella will need from this moment on is, what we all need and that is hope as we follow our crucified and risen Lord.
Sunday, November 1, 2015 Revelation 21: 1 – 6a
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 11: 32 – 44
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
Collect for All Saints’ Day
Today is November 1, All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is an important day in the life of the church, joining Christmas and Easter as days of special significance. Unfortunately, the observance of All Saints’ Day tends to be overshadowed by our celebration of Halloween on October 31. Halloween is the night before All Saints’ Day or All Hallows Day, as this day used to be called. As All Hallows Eve morphed into Halloween, costumes and candy trumped remembering dead saints.
Yet, All Saints’ Day continues to be important in the life of the church because on All Saints’ Day we remember all the saints, all the holy people of God, in the hope that their witness may encourage us as we continue to live out our lives of faith.
The tradition of remembering the saints has roots in the early church who desired to keep alive the memory of the early martyrs. The witness of the martyrs gave hope to those who struggled to live out their faith in a world that resisted the gospel and persecuted those who believed. In time, as Marion Hatchett, commentator on The Book of Common Prayer notes, “The saints came to represent intercessors and protectors rather than witnesses for the faith.”
By the sixteenth century, saints were not only remembered but had become the object of prayer. Many in the church prayed to various saints, believing that a saint could advocate for them before God. But for the reformers, Christ is our sole mediator and advocate and the practice of invoking the name of a saint was unscriptural and blasphemous.
So, whereas, we in the Episcopal Church, continue to remember saints, we do not worship them. And in The Book of Common Prayer, we have a calendar that designates particular days of the year when we remember the lives of those throughout all generations who have born witness to their faith in their lives and sometimes by their deaths. That calendar has now been greatly enriched by a supplemental text called Holy Women, Holy Men, which offers for our edification the lives of hundreds of men and women who throughout the centuries, in the words of our former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, have born “witness to Christ’s death-defying love, in service, in holiness of life, and in challenge to existing practices within both the church and society.”
“Saint” comes from the word “sanctus” and means holy. “Holy” is what God is. And what we, who are made in God’s image, are called to be. Holy is what the people of Israel were called to be, a people set apart by God and for God. Holy is what Christ was and is, the image of God, a perfect and complete manifestation of who God is and what God desires. To be holy is to be like Christ.
You and I are made one with Christ in baptism. In baptism, we are joined to Christ forever. In baptism, we are united with Christ for all time and beyond time. In baptism, we are deemed holy because Christ is holy. In baptism, we become saints.
Sainthood is not an achievement, a designation God confers upon us if we live a life of moral perfection. Sainthood is a gift God gives us in and through Christ at baptism and then calls us to live out, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are all saints by virtue of our baptism, not by virtue of our morality.
In baptism, we are baptized into the death of Christ and raised to new life, Christ’s risen life, the life of the world to come, life as God intends life to be, life lived no longer under the shadow of death. In baptism, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God to enable us to live this new life, this resurrection life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live no longer for ourselves, but for Christ and for all those for whom Christ died.
Baptism is the beginning of a journey, a journey with God who leads us from the font out into the world, by the power of the Holy Spirit to go where God would have us go and do what God would have us do. For some, like Mother Teresa, the Spirit called her to spend her life on the streets of Calcutta, India, with the poorest of the poor. For others, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Spirit called him to oppose Adolph Hitler, resulting in his death by the Nazis for Bonhoeffer’s participation in an assassination attempt. For Martin Luther King, the Spirit led him to oppose racial segregation which also led to his death. Baptism for the church is not a quiet and quaint ritual but a revolution, a revolution of the heart and mind in and through which we are called to live as Christ lived, empowered to do so by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The revolution that is baptism is nothing short of a battle against “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” as we will hear in a few minutes.
In baptism, we take our place within the communion of saints, a great cloud of witnesses, who in every generation have looked to God with hope, have seen God’s hope for the world enfleshed in Jesus and sought to follow the pleadings of the Risen Christ, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. Each witness is different - we are not all called to be martyrs or to live out our lives on the streets of Calcutta. But we are all called and graced by the Holy Spirit to become witnesses to the new life God gives to us in baptism and to the kind of death-defying love Jesus manifested when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
In a moment, Ella Price Gravatt will be baptized into this new life, into the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Ella will become one with the saints in heaven and the saints on earth, the newest member of a great cloud of witnesses which includes the familiar figures of Mary and Joseph, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Peter and Paul, and thousands of others Ella will come to meet as Ella continues her life of faith in the church.
And that is the expectation of the church that Ella will continue “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,” as we all will promise later. Ella will need to grow into her baptism as we all do, to come to church, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Bible and to share fellowship with other Christians. Baptism is, for us Episcopalians, full initiation into the church, an indissoluble bond established by God which can never be repeated but that does not mean Ella is about to be magically transformed. Baptism is a mystery but is never magic. We expect that one day the promises made on Ella’s behalf today by her parents and sponsors, Ella will embrace as her own.
Baptism always recognizes two wills at work in the world– that of God drawing us to Godself and our own will, often drawing us away from God and one another. What we recognize this day is the primacy of God’s will which has led Ella’s parents this day to want Ella baptized. As Ella grows up, Ella will need to make her own choices which, we all hope, will affirm the promises her parents and sponsors are making for her this day.
The church is divided on infant baptism; some understand infant baptism as a way to keep innocent children out of hell; others want children to come of age before they embrace the daunting demands of baptism. The Episcopal Church wants to say that it is only by God’s grace that any of us are here this morning and that we all need to grow into that grace of God which saved us all on the cross. We baptize infants who we then expect to confirm; others confirm and then baptize. What we all appreciate is that baptism without formation is empty and meaningless.
And that brings us back to the communion of saints. All of us who are here this morning will promise to support Ella in her life with Christ. We all are a microcosm of this great cloud of witnesses. Look around and what do you see? Some of us like Ella are young and cute and sweet and just beginning life in this world. And some of us are old and have experienced many things, some bitter and some sweet. And we all will need to share our stories with Ella as she grows up. I hope you, the saints, will build Ella up as you share your stories of the ways God’s death-defying love has broken into your life, of the goodness, truth and beauty you have discovered, and your prayers, both those that have been answered and those that have not been answered.
Tell Ella your stories, all of your stories. Be honest with Ella. Be a witness to Ella and tell the truth. Ella will know if you say anything less. What Ella will need from this moment on is, what we all need and that is hope as we follow our crucified and risen Lord.
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Job 42: 1 – 6, 10 – 17
Sunday, October 25, 2015 Hebrews 7: 23 – 28
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 46 – 52
When he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Mark 10: 47
Four centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote a treatise called Timaeus. The Timaeus is a “discourse of the nature of the universe” and seeks to discern from the orderly movement of the sun, moon and stars, an orderly life, a life lived in accordance with the “absolutely unerring courses of God.” By observing “the planets in their courses,” as we say in one of our Eucharistic prayers, the wise man (and it was only men who could attain to wisdom for Plato) could discover how to live a good life.
This morning we meet a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, who begs Jesus to show him mercy. For theologian Gordon Lathrop, the name of this blind beggar is significant and most probably is far more than just a name. By naming this blind beggar a son of Timaeus, our evangelist Mark, for Lathrop, is taking aim at Plato and the wisdom of Greek philosophy which presumed that we humans could discern the way to live a good life.
Thus far, in the gospel of Mark, we have heard other healing stories and other miracles, but today, the story we hear about blind Bartimaeus is different, different because this healing is the last one Jesus performs before Jesus dies. And, as Mark is forever telling us, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This is the last story Mark wants us to remember as we follow Jesus to the cross because Bartimaeus represents the way of discipleship as Bartimaeus moves from blindness to sight. This is the story Mark wants us to remember because we, like Bartimaeus and all heirs of Greek philosophy including our own western civilization, are groping in the dark, at the mercy of God to lead us.
From the beginning, we humans have not liked groping in the dark and have wanted to know about this world in which we live – how it began, what keeps it going and where we are heaed. The creation story on the book of Genesis was the way our ancestors in the faith answered those questions and the answers rested in the mercy and power of God who brought forth the world and everything in it and called it “very good.”
And the world would remain “very good” so long as we humans did not overreach our limits and eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which, unfortunately, Eve could not resist. And so began a long and painful journey to figure out what was good and what was evil.
Thousands of years after the creation story was written, the people we call Greeks brought into being a highly sophisticated culture that sought answers to the same questions our Jewish ancestors had asked. And folk like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, the great Greek philosophers, believed we could discern what was good from the order of nature and the good ordering that brought the sun up in the morning and the moon out at night, day after day, year after year. If we humans could find a way to live well-ordered lives in the way that nature was well-ordered, we would be able to live good lives.
You and I are heirs to Greek philosophy, whether we appreciate it or not, and still believe there is such a thing as the “good life” and that we know how to achieve it. Achieving the good life is at the heart of advertising which bids us to find a beach and a good beer because, “it just doesn’t get any better than this.” Achieving the good life is also at the heart of our political debates as each side proposes plans and programs to make our lives better while condemning the plans and programs of their opponents. The debate over what constitutes the good life is far from over.
Bartimaeus for all the world had a miserable life. He was blind and wholly dependent upon others for his well-being. Bartimaeus, because of his blindness, would have been ostracized in the first century. Bartimaeus’ blindness would have been understood as a curse from God. And, whereas we no longer subscribe to such beliefs, we cling to the belief that we know what is good and what is not and if we order our lives along certain lines, all will go well. And that for our evangelist Mark is our fundamental condition. We think we can “see,” when in reality we are all like blind Bartimaeus.
My father worked all of his life for the same company and when he retired he was looking forward to the “golden years.” My Mom died just shortly after Dad retired and Dad’s notion of the “good life” was turned upside down. This week my sister-in-law, Mary Bo, died, just eighteen months after her brother and my husband, died. My kids are wondering if there is any rhyme or reason to life in this world and, if there is a God, what is God thinking to visit yet another tragedy upon our family?
Our ways of seeing the world in which we live have been disturbed, and like blind Bartimaeus, we find ourselves groping in the dark. As I was visiting with Bo on the day she died, her daughter, my niece, made a remarkable observation. She told me that the words offered by others often began with: “I am so sorry.” Elizabeth noted that apologizing for what was happening was a bit silly as none of us caused her mother to have cancer. “I wish things were different,” was a much more comforting consolation in the face of her mother’s circumstances. Yes, I do wish things were different as I know many of you do too and if any one needs to apologize it would be God not any of us.
While I was visiting Mary Bo a chaplain showed up. I am wary of chaplains because I was one and I know how hurtful and harmful some chaplains can be. When I turned to greet this chaplain I recognized her as a friend with whom I had trained at MCV and who I knew to be not just a good friend but an honest companion. Turns out my good friend had a better handle on my family than I did and was instrumental in getting my family to “see” what was happening and move us from denial to acceptance.
Nobody knew I knew the chaplain and when we hugged one another at Bo’s bedside I wondered how this all how taken place. It was a weird encounter and wholly unexpected. Mary Bo’s cancer was unexpected but so too was the presence of this friend. What was of God was of a piece. There was tragedy and triumph, joy as well as sorrow, all dancing together to some divine melody some never hear and those who do, hear only very faintly.
Lathrop speaks about God “tearing a hole in the heavens” in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, in other words, pierced all notions of the “good” life, the well ordered life. And if indeed, in Jesus we come face to face with God, then we who follow, can expect to meet God in the holes that are torn in our neatly ordered lives, in those times when our lives are disrupted and our dreams of the “good life” come undone.
Those are the times all of us seek to avoid, times of uncertainty when the way forward is not clear. Those are the times when we, like Bartimaeus, are left with only one prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus ends up following “on the way,” we hear. Presumably Bartimaeus will see this man who gave him back his sight, crucified on a cross. Bartimaeus will remember what Jesus did for him and then watch as Jesus who saved Bartimaeus refuses to save himself. And just as Bartimaeus put himself at the mercy of Jesus, Jesus will put himself at the mercy of God, an innocent man crucified for crimes he did not commit.
The gospel of Mark ends with an empty tomb, with the mercy of God undoing the most basic fact of human existence – death itself. The empty tomb negates everything we know about this world – that we all die and do not leave the grave. The empty tomb is blinding, leaving all of our presumptions about this world and what constitutes the “good life” wanting, inadequate – partial truths given our limited vision.
What we want, like blind Bartimaus, is to be able to see and to understand. And that for our evangelist Mark will only be given to us, and even then only partially, as we follow “on the way.”
Sunday, October 25, 2015 Hebrews 7: 23 – 28
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 46 – 52
When he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Mark 10: 47
Four centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote a treatise called Timaeus. The Timaeus is a “discourse of the nature of the universe” and seeks to discern from the orderly movement of the sun, moon and stars, an orderly life, a life lived in accordance with the “absolutely unerring courses of God.” By observing “the planets in their courses,” as we say in one of our Eucharistic prayers, the wise man (and it was only men who could attain to wisdom for Plato) could discover how to live a good life.
This morning we meet a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, who begs Jesus to show him mercy. For theologian Gordon Lathrop, the name of this blind beggar is significant and most probably is far more than just a name. By naming this blind beggar a son of Timaeus, our evangelist Mark, for Lathrop, is taking aim at Plato and the wisdom of Greek philosophy which presumed that we humans could discern the way to live a good life.
Thus far, in the gospel of Mark, we have heard other healing stories and other miracles, but today, the story we hear about blind Bartimaeus is different, different because this healing is the last one Jesus performs before Jesus dies. And, as Mark is forever telling us, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This is the last story Mark wants us to remember as we follow Jesus to the cross because Bartimaeus represents the way of discipleship as Bartimaeus moves from blindness to sight. This is the story Mark wants us to remember because we, like Bartimaeus and all heirs of Greek philosophy including our own western civilization, are groping in the dark, at the mercy of God to lead us.
From the beginning, we humans have not liked groping in the dark and have wanted to know about this world in which we live – how it began, what keeps it going and where we are heaed. The creation story on the book of Genesis was the way our ancestors in the faith answered those questions and the answers rested in the mercy and power of God who brought forth the world and everything in it and called it “very good.”
And the world would remain “very good” so long as we humans did not overreach our limits and eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which, unfortunately, Eve could not resist. And so began a long and painful journey to figure out what was good and what was evil.
Thousands of years after the creation story was written, the people we call Greeks brought into being a highly sophisticated culture that sought answers to the same questions our Jewish ancestors had asked. And folk like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, the great Greek philosophers, believed we could discern what was good from the order of nature and the good ordering that brought the sun up in the morning and the moon out at night, day after day, year after year. If we humans could find a way to live well-ordered lives in the way that nature was well-ordered, we would be able to live good lives.
You and I are heirs to Greek philosophy, whether we appreciate it or not, and still believe there is such a thing as the “good life” and that we know how to achieve it. Achieving the good life is at the heart of advertising which bids us to find a beach and a good beer because, “it just doesn’t get any better than this.” Achieving the good life is also at the heart of our political debates as each side proposes plans and programs to make our lives better while condemning the plans and programs of their opponents. The debate over what constitutes the good life is far from over.
Bartimaeus for all the world had a miserable life. He was blind and wholly dependent upon others for his well-being. Bartimaeus, because of his blindness, would have been ostracized in the first century. Bartimaeus’ blindness would have been understood as a curse from God. And, whereas we no longer subscribe to such beliefs, we cling to the belief that we know what is good and what is not and if we order our lives along certain lines, all will go well. And that for our evangelist Mark is our fundamental condition. We think we can “see,” when in reality we are all like blind Bartimaeus.
My father worked all of his life for the same company and when he retired he was looking forward to the “golden years.” My Mom died just shortly after Dad retired and Dad’s notion of the “good life” was turned upside down. This week my sister-in-law, Mary Bo, died, just eighteen months after her brother and my husband, died. My kids are wondering if there is any rhyme or reason to life in this world and, if there is a God, what is God thinking to visit yet another tragedy upon our family?
Our ways of seeing the world in which we live have been disturbed, and like blind Bartimaeus, we find ourselves groping in the dark. As I was visiting with Bo on the day she died, her daughter, my niece, made a remarkable observation. She told me that the words offered by others often began with: “I am so sorry.” Elizabeth noted that apologizing for what was happening was a bit silly as none of us caused her mother to have cancer. “I wish things were different,” was a much more comforting consolation in the face of her mother’s circumstances. Yes, I do wish things were different as I know many of you do too and if any one needs to apologize it would be God not any of us.
While I was visiting Mary Bo a chaplain showed up. I am wary of chaplains because I was one and I know how hurtful and harmful some chaplains can be. When I turned to greet this chaplain I recognized her as a friend with whom I had trained at MCV and who I knew to be not just a good friend but an honest companion. Turns out my good friend had a better handle on my family than I did and was instrumental in getting my family to “see” what was happening and move us from denial to acceptance.
Nobody knew I knew the chaplain and when we hugged one another at Bo’s bedside I wondered how this all how taken place. It was a weird encounter and wholly unexpected. Mary Bo’s cancer was unexpected but so too was the presence of this friend. What was of God was of a piece. There was tragedy and triumph, joy as well as sorrow, all dancing together to some divine melody some never hear and those who do, hear only very faintly.
Lathrop speaks about God “tearing a hole in the heavens” in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, in other words, pierced all notions of the “good” life, the well ordered life. And if indeed, in Jesus we come face to face with God, then we who follow, can expect to meet God in the holes that are torn in our neatly ordered lives, in those times when our lives are disrupted and our dreams of the “good life” come undone.
Those are the times all of us seek to avoid, times of uncertainty when the way forward is not clear. Those are the times when we, like Bartimaeus, are left with only one prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus ends up following “on the way,” we hear. Presumably Bartimaeus will see this man who gave him back his sight, crucified on a cross. Bartimaeus will remember what Jesus did for him and then watch as Jesus who saved Bartimaeus refuses to save himself. And just as Bartimaeus put himself at the mercy of Jesus, Jesus will put himself at the mercy of God, an innocent man crucified for crimes he did not commit.
The gospel of Mark ends with an empty tomb, with the mercy of God undoing the most basic fact of human existence – death itself. The empty tomb negates everything we know about this world – that we all die and do not leave the grave. The empty tomb is blinding, leaving all of our presumptions about this world and what constitutes the “good life” wanting, inadequate – partial truths given our limited vision.
What we want, like blind Bartimaus, is to be able to see and to understand. And that for our evangelist Mark will only be given to us, and even then only partially, as we follow “on the way.”
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost Job 38: 1 – 7, 34 – 41
Sunday, October 18, 2015 Hebrews 5: 1 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 35 – 45
But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.
Mark 10: 43
Several years ago, I made an overnight visit to my son and his family in northern Virginia. My son’s guest room is in the basement of his home and is a space that is used not only for guests but also for the storage of surplus toys which are quietly taken out of service from the upstairs playroom, sequestered in the basement and ultimately re-cycled – returning either upstairs or to someone else’s playroom.
My then four year old granddaughter Naomi accompanied me to the guest room and discovered, on this rare visit to the basement which is usually off limits to the children, a toy that she had not seen for awhile on a shelf and which she brought upstairs.
Naomi was playing happily with her new found treasure when her then two year old sister Miriam surmised, that she, too, wanted to play with it. So, at an opportune moment, Miriam spirited the toy away. Naomi was undone and squealed and cried and said the toy was hers and tried mightily to wrest the toy away from her younger sister, who tried just as hard to keep the toy in her hands. All parental calls to share and to take turns were met with cries of injustice and Naomi’s demand: “Tell her to give it to me! Tell her to give it back!” As far as Naomi was concerned the toy belonged to her and she had been robbed by a little sister with no rights and no claim on this treasure.
What unfolded that day between a four year old and a two year old in my son’s living room was about as predictable as death and taxes. Indeed, had anything other than what happened taken place, I would have wondered about my granddaughters. Naomi knew “what’s mine is mine and what’s mine is not yours.” That Naomi would gladly relinquish her treasure to her younger sister without protest, was simply beyond imagining. Confronted with a hostile takeover, Naomi predictably used all of her four year old power to resist – stomping her feet, wailing loudly and demanding in all the ways she could that the toy be returned to her.
My grandchildren, for better and for worse, have an uncanny way of reminding me of my humanity and the picture is not always pretty! And what seems to be universally true of us humans is that we can get pretty indignant when someone tries to take something away from us such as our comfort, our security or our happiness. None of us likes to feel overpowered as if we were being held hostage by the power of someone else. When we feel overpowered, we, like Naomi, usually react, using whatever power we have at our disposal to meet what we see as a threat to our well-being.
Which brings us to our gospel reading this morning.
In our gospel reading James and John look a bit childish as they as Jesus: “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.” And what they want is for Jesus to give them cabinet positions in the new administration. James and John understand that Jesus is launching a campaign to bring in the kingdom of God and presume Jesus will win. Clearly Jesus will need some top aides when Jesus comes into power and James and john would like to be seated on his left and on his right. James and John are looking ahead and making plans. In this season as we anticipate electing a new President next year, I daresay our reading is being played out a thousand different ways. James and John want authority and the power that comes with having authority, when Jesus is elected king of Israel.
Unfortunately, Jesus’ inauguration will be on a cross and those on his right and on his left will be criminals, suffering a painful and agonizing death by crucifixion. And Jesus tells them: “You do not know what you are asking.” But James and John are convinced they know what they are asking and can only see their new offices in the Executive Office Building with big windows, mahagony desks and comfy leather chairs.
And predictably, the rest of the disciples react, becoming angry with James and John and their assumption that they should “rule over them.” Like kids playing “King of the Mountain,” trying to throw everyone but themselves off the top, none of the disciples “get it.” None of the disciples understand that authority and power in God’s kingdom comes through suffering and the keys of the kingdom are given to those who use their power to serve others, to lift others to the top of the mountain, not throw them off.
We are able, but most unwilling, to give up what we perceive belongs to us. We all seek to maintain what we have and resist others taking anything from us. And when we come to the words of Jesus this morning: “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” we are left wanting, because we humans really want to be lords, to use our power in ways that dominate rather than serve.
Few of us actually get into a tug of war as did Naomi and Miriam. But all of us have ways of using our power to control and to dominate rather than to serve others. And we all have power. I have power because I wear a collar; our senior members have power because they hold our corporate history; our vestry members have power because they ultimately decide what we will do with our money; those among us with advanced degrees have power because in our culture, education is valued; those who understand computers or who can play the piano or those who can prepare spreadsheets have power because some us cannot do those things; those of us who can change a tire or a fan belt or who are young and good looking or little or cute have power. Even those among us who are not so abled have power, if only by virtue of what we do not have. We all have power in all kinds of ways and we all can choose to use our power for good or for ill.
Using our power for good, given the witness of Jesus, is exercising our power so that others may be helped. Our power, in other words, can be used to keep ourselves safe and comfortable or to build up others, literally giving others power. Naomi used her power to protect herself and her toy. Naomi did what most of us do instinctively, using her power to keep herself and her world safe and free from intrusions. Naomi could have used her power to help her sister but Naomi was more concerned about herself.
And so are we, for the most part. We are worried about keeping ourselves safe and comfortable and happy and usually use whatever power we have, to protect ourselves and our treasures, whatever they may be. We are, on the one hand, oftentimes afraid to name and claim the power we do have, and, on the other hand, afraid to use that power to serve others rather than ourselves. James and John already have power, as do the other disciples, and at the end of the day, when Jesus was faced with a trail and a sentence of death, all of the disciples jumped ship. Not one of the disciples used whatever power they had to help Jesus. They all sought to save their own skins.
That to me is not bad but encouraging news as I remember that the disciples were not perfect but rather exquisitely human, as human as was the exchange between my granddaughters. Do I wish I were not human and not subject to what seem to be the immutable laws of human nature? All the time.
But I have hope. And my hope comes from the past, from our sacred story, and those who have reflected upon it. And I want to end this day with a story written by a rabbi, a Jew who knew something about God’s will and God’s ways.
Rabbi Haim of Romshishok was an itinerant preacher. He traveled from town to town delivering religious sermons that stressed the importance of respect for one’s fellow man. He often began his talks with the following story: "I once ascended to the firmaments. I first went to see Hell and the sight was horrifying. Row after row of tables were laden with platters of sumptuous food, yet the people seated around the tables were pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As I came closer, I understood their predicament. "Every person held a full spoon, but both arms were splinted with wooden slats so he could not bend either elbow to bring the food to his mouth. It broke my heart to hear the tortured groans of these poor people as they held their food so near but could not consume it.
"Next I went to visit Heaven. I was surprised to see the same setting I had witnessed in Hell – row after row of long tables laden with food. But in contrast to Hell, the people here in Heaven were sitting contentedly talking with each other, obviously sated from their sumptuous meal. "As I came closer, I was amazed to discover that here, too, each person had his arms splinted on wooden slats that prevented him from bending his elbows. How, then, did they manage to eat? "As I watched, a man picked up his spoon and dug it into the dish before him. Then he stretched across the table and fed the person across from him! The recipient of this kindness thanked him and returned the favor by leaning across the table to feed his benefactor.
I suddenly understood. Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The critical difference is in the way the people treat each other. I ran back to Hell to share this solution with the poor souls trapped there. I whispered in the ear of one starving man, "You do not have to go hungry. Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, and he will surely return the favor and feed you." "'You expect me to feed the detestable man sitting across the table?' said the man angrily. 'I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of eating!' "I then understood God’s wisdom in choosing who is worthy to go to Heaven and who deserves to go to Hell."
Sunday, October 18, 2015 Hebrews 5: 1 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 35 – 45
But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.
Mark 10: 43
Several years ago, I made an overnight visit to my son and his family in northern Virginia. My son’s guest room is in the basement of his home and is a space that is used not only for guests but also for the storage of surplus toys which are quietly taken out of service from the upstairs playroom, sequestered in the basement and ultimately re-cycled – returning either upstairs or to someone else’s playroom.
My then four year old granddaughter Naomi accompanied me to the guest room and discovered, on this rare visit to the basement which is usually off limits to the children, a toy that she had not seen for awhile on a shelf and which she brought upstairs.
Naomi was playing happily with her new found treasure when her then two year old sister Miriam surmised, that she, too, wanted to play with it. So, at an opportune moment, Miriam spirited the toy away. Naomi was undone and squealed and cried and said the toy was hers and tried mightily to wrest the toy away from her younger sister, who tried just as hard to keep the toy in her hands. All parental calls to share and to take turns were met with cries of injustice and Naomi’s demand: “Tell her to give it to me! Tell her to give it back!” As far as Naomi was concerned the toy belonged to her and she had been robbed by a little sister with no rights and no claim on this treasure.
What unfolded that day between a four year old and a two year old in my son’s living room was about as predictable as death and taxes. Indeed, had anything other than what happened taken place, I would have wondered about my granddaughters. Naomi knew “what’s mine is mine and what’s mine is not yours.” That Naomi would gladly relinquish her treasure to her younger sister without protest, was simply beyond imagining. Confronted with a hostile takeover, Naomi predictably used all of her four year old power to resist – stomping her feet, wailing loudly and demanding in all the ways she could that the toy be returned to her.
My grandchildren, for better and for worse, have an uncanny way of reminding me of my humanity and the picture is not always pretty! And what seems to be universally true of us humans is that we can get pretty indignant when someone tries to take something away from us such as our comfort, our security or our happiness. None of us likes to feel overpowered as if we were being held hostage by the power of someone else. When we feel overpowered, we, like Naomi, usually react, using whatever power we have at our disposal to meet what we see as a threat to our well-being.
Which brings us to our gospel reading this morning.
In our gospel reading James and John look a bit childish as they as Jesus: “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.” And what they want is for Jesus to give them cabinet positions in the new administration. James and John understand that Jesus is launching a campaign to bring in the kingdom of God and presume Jesus will win. Clearly Jesus will need some top aides when Jesus comes into power and James and john would like to be seated on his left and on his right. James and John are looking ahead and making plans. In this season as we anticipate electing a new President next year, I daresay our reading is being played out a thousand different ways. James and John want authority and the power that comes with having authority, when Jesus is elected king of Israel.
Unfortunately, Jesus’ inauguration will be on a cross and those on his right and on his left will be criminals, suffering a painful and agonizing death by crucifixion. And Jesus tells them: “You do not know what you are asking.” But James and John are convinced they know what they are asking and can only see their new offices in the Executive Office Building with big windows, mahagony desks and comfy leather chairs.
And predictably, the rest of the disciples react, becoming angry with James and John and their assumption that they should “rule over them.” Like kids playing “King of the Mountain,” trying to throw everyone but themselves off the top, none of the disciples “get it.” None of the disciples understand that authority and power in God’s kingdom comes through suffering and the keys of the kingdom are given to those who use their power to serve others, to lift others to the top of the mountain, not throw them off.
We are able, but most unwilling, to give up what we perceive belongs to us. We all seek to maintain what we have and resist others taking anything from us. And when we come to the words of Jesus this morning: “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” we are left wanting, because we humans really want to be lords, to use our power in ways that dominate rather than serve.
Few of us actually get into a tug of war as did Naomi and Miriam. But all of us have ways of using our power to control and to dominate rather than to serve others. And we all have power. I have power because I wear a collar; our senior members have power because they hold our corporate history; our vestry members have power because they ultimately decide what we will do with our money; those among us with advanced degrees have power because in our culture, education is valued; those who understand computers or who can play the piano or those who can prepare spreadsheets have power because some us cannot do those things; those of us who can change a tire or a fan belt or who are young and good looking or little or cute have power. Even those among us who are not so abled have power, if only by virtue of what we do not have. We all have power in all kinds of ways and we all can choose to use our power for good or for ill.
Using our power for good, given the witness of Jesus, is exercising our power so that others may be helped. Our power, in other words, can be used to keep ourselves safe and comfortable or to build up others, literally giving others power. Naomi used her power to protect herself and her toy. Naomi did what most of us do instinctively, using her power to keep herself and her world safe and free from intrusions. Naomi could have used her power to help her sister but Naomi was more concerned about herself.
And so are we, for the most part. We are worried about keeping ourselves safe and comfortable and happy and usually use whatever power we have, to protect ourselves and our treasures, whatever they may be. We are, on the one hand, oftentimes afraid to name and claim the power we do have, and, on the other hand, afraid to use that power to serve others rather than ourselves. James and John already have power, as do the other disciples, and at the end of the day, when Jesus was faced with a trail and a sentence of death, all of the disciples jumped ship. Not one of the disciples used whatever power they had to help Jesus. They all sought to save their own skins.
That to me is not bad but encouraging news as I remember that the disciples were not perfect but rather exquisitely human, as human as was the exchange between my granddaughters. Do I wish I were not human and not subject to what seem to be the immutable laws of human nature? All the time.
But I have hope. And my hope comes from the past, from our sacred story, and those who have reflected upon it. And I want to end this day with a story written by a rabbi, a Jew who knew something about God’s will and God’s ways.
Rabbi Haim of Romshishok was an itinerant preacher. He traveled from town to town delivering religious sermons that stressed the importance of respect for one’s fellow man. He often began his talks with the following story: "I once ascended to the firmaments. I first went to see Hell and the sight was horrifying. Row after row of tables were laden with platters of sumptuous food, yet the people seated around the tables were pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As I came closer, I understood their predicament. "Every person held a full spoon, but both arms were splinted with wooden slats so he could not bend either elbow to bring the food to his mouth. It broke my heart to hear the tortured groans of these poor people as they held their food so near but could not consume it.
"Next I went to visit Heaven. I was surprised to see the same setting I had witnessed in Hell – row after row of long tables laden with food. But in contrast to Hell, the people here in Heaven were sitting contentedly talking with each other, obviously sated from their sumptuous meal. "As I came closer, I was amazed to discover that here, too, each person had his arms splinted on wooden slats that prevented him from bending his elbows. How, then, did they manage to eat? "As I watched, a man picked up his spoon and dug it into the dish before him. Then he stretched across the table and fed the person across from him! The recipient of this kindness thanked him and returned the favor by leaning across the table to feed his benefactor.
I suddenly understood. Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The critical difference is in the way the people treat each other. I ran back to Hell to share this solution with the poor souls trapped there. I whispered in the ear of one starving man, "You do not have to go hungry. Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, and he will surely return the favor and feed you." "'You expect me to feed the detestable man sitting across the table?' said the man angrily. 'I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of eating!' "I then understood God’s wisdom in choosing who is worthy to go to Heaven and who deserves to go to Hell."
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Job 23: 1 – 9, 16 – 17
Sunday, October 11, 2015 Hebrews 4: 12 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 17 – 31
Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”
Mark 10: 18
We meet an interesting man in our gospel reading from Mark this morning. This man has kept all of the ten commandments God gave to the Jews and is clearly blessed by his many possessions. But for reasons we are not told, this man seeks out Jesus, running up to him, kneeling before him and asks: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
This man has done all that God commanded all Jews to do but seems unconvinced that his future relationship with God is assured. For whatever reason, there seems to be something missing for this man and he seeks out Jesus wanting to know if there is something he has not done, something that will assure him of a life with God into the ages of ages.
And Jesus loves him; loves him for his earnestness, perhaps, his desire to be a righteous man, his desire to do what God would have him do.
Then Jesus says what is perhaps one of the hardest sayings we hear in the gospels: “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come follow me.” And the man walks away shocked and grieving, for he had, we are told, “many possessions.”
What Jesus asks of this man is to follow him. And that would mean this man would have to let go of his possessions, just as James and John had done when they left their boats, their nets and their father to follow Jesus. This man cannot abide that command and with good reason.
If this man sells all that he owns and gives the money to the poor, he will be destitute. And he would not be the only one to be reduced to poverty – his wife, children and servants will also become impoverished. When James and John left their fishing nets to follow Jesus, James and John left behind their father Zebedee to maintain the family business without the help of his sons. Responsible people do not simply walk away from those who depend upon them for their physical well-being.
Indeed, were this man to let go of all that he owned, he would likely be turned down were he to appear before our present diocesan Commission on the Ministry as a suitable candidate for Holy Orders. An important consideration for anyone discerning a call to the ordained ministry is the way that call is going to impact others, especially their families. Candidates for holy orders are required to pay for seminary and must demonstrate they have the means to do so, without putting their families out on the streets. And once ordained, families may be required to re-locate which means spouses may need to find new jobs.
No, this man would definitely not make it through the ordination process in the diocese of Virginia if he does what Jesus asks.
On the other hand, in the liturgy of ordination, after the Bishop examines the candidate for holy orders, the Bishop concludes with these words: “May the Lord who has given you the will to do these things give you the grace and power to perform them.” In other words, absent the grace and power of God, no call, no matter how lofty, can be accomplished.
What this man lacked was trust – trust that God would provide, that God would make a way even if he could not, at the moment, see how. We hear nothing more of this man after he walks away grieving and never know what he decides to do.
You and I and this man often can only see what is possible for us and not what is possible for God. We cling to whatever makes us feel safe and secure and are reluctant to take risks – risks that may indeed, leave us bereft of some comfort and control. Following the ten commandments was, apparently, not especially difficult for this man; what was difficult was to consider leaving behind a life that was, by all accounts, worthy, reasonable and responsible.
And yet, something was stirred in his soul by this man named Jesus. Something provoked this righteous man to seek Jesus out, to determine if there was something more to life than simply following the law, the ancient ethical code that continues to shape western culture. This man was not a liar, a cheat, nor an adulterer. But could he be a disciple? Could he follow Jesus, a man who told him to sell everything he owned?
And, that is the question to us this morning. We, too, I suspect, are not liars, cheats and thieves. We are, or so we like to think, basically good people. But are we disciples? Are we willing to follow a man who calls us to leave everything behind and went to his death without any defense? Without Jesus, being good is not terribly difficult; with Jesus, “No one is good but God alone” and we are left without a playbook.
“Come, follow me.” Discipleship, following Jesus, means responding to God’s love for us. God’s love for us is made known to us in many ways, through our families and friends, the changing color of the leaves this time of year, and the delight we experience through music, art and literature. We naturally respond when the choir sings a moving anthem, wanting to clap! I naturally wrap my grandchildren in my arms when they say: “Grandmommy, I love you.” And I naturally laugh when I hear a good joke.
We are created to respond, to be responsible, and we do all the time whenever we taste something of the goodness of God. Discipleship means following after that goodness, investing in that goodness, and yearning for more. And yes, you may have to decide whether to come to church or stay home on Sunday mornings to pay your bills – we all have a variety of responsibilities. But our text this morning invites us to consider our first responsibility and that responsibility is to chase after the goodness that is God wherever and whenever that goodness crosses our path.
There will be costs. I cannot hug all of my six grandchildren at the same time and once the glorious blaze of autumn is over, the leaves will turn brown, fall from the trees and need to be raked. Chasing after goodness will have its consequences but given the choice between being good and chasing after goodness, I will choose the latter.
Our text comes crashing into the season of the church year when we begin to think about stewardship. And I often think that I could use this text to invite you to throw your wallets, check books and credit cards into the collection plate. I will not because that would be irresponsible. On the other hand, I will invite you to consider why you are here this morning, why this place is important to you, what you have found here and hope to find here. What are you following? If you are chasing after goodness, we have much work to do and we will need to invest; if you simply want to be good, you already are because God created you and God called all that he had created “very good.” You can go home satisfied and justified and sanctified and will have no need to be here in this place among these people. If, on the other hand, you have tasted something of the goodness of God in this place and among these people, we do not take Pay Pal but will look forward to receiving your pledge.
Sunday, October 11, 2015 Hebrews 4: 12 – 16
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 17 – 31
Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”
Mark 10: 18
We meet an interesting man in our gospel reading from Mark this morning. This man has kept all of the ten commandments God gave to the Jews and is clearly blessed by his many possessions. But for reasons we are not told, this man seeks out Jesus, running up to him, kneeling before him and asks: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
This man has done all that God commanded all Jews to do but seems unconvinced that his future relationship with God is assured. For whatever reason, there seems to be something missing for this man and he seeks out Jesus wanting to know if there is something he has not done, something that will assure him of a life with God into the ages of ages.
And Jesus loves him; loves him for his earnestness, perhaps, his desire to be a righteous man, his desire to do what God would have him do.
Then Jesus says what is perhaps one of the hardest sayings we hear in the gospels: “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come follow me.” And the man walks away shocked and grieving, for he had, we are told, “many possessions.”
What Jesus asks of this man is to follow him. And that would mean this man would have to let go of his possessions, just as James and John had done when they left their boats, their nets and their father to follow Jesus. This man cannot abide that command and with good reason.
If this man sells all that he owns and gives the money to the poor, he will be destitute. And he would not be the only one to be reduced to poverty – his wife, children and servants will also become impoverished. When James and John left their fishing nets to follow Jesus, James and John left behind their father Zebedee to maintain the family business without the help of his sons. Responsible people do not simply walk away from those who depend upon them for their physical well-being.
Indeed, were this man to let go of all that he owned, he would likely be turned down were he to appear before our present diocesan Commission on the Ministry as a suitable candidate for Holy Orders. An important consideration for anyone discerning a call to the ordained ministry is the way that call is going to impact others, especially their families. Candidates for holy orders are required to pay for seminary and must demonstrate they have the means to do so, without putting their families out on the streets. And once ordained, families may be required to re-locate which means spouses may need to find new jobs.
No, this man would definitely not make it through the ordination process in the diocese of Virginia if he does what Jesus asks.
On the other hand, in the liturgy of ordination, after the Bishop examines the candidate for holy orders, the Bishop concludes with these words: “May the Lord who has given you the will to do these things give you the grace and power to perform them.” In other words, absent the grace and power of God, no call, no matter how lofty, can be accomplished.
What this man lacked was trust – trust that God would provide, that God would make a way even if he could not, at the moment, see how. We hear nothing more of this man after he walks away grieving and never know what he decides to do.
You and I and this man often can only see what is possible for us and not what is possible for God. We cling to whatever makes us feel safe and secure and are reluctant to take risks – risks that may indeed, leave us bereft of some comfort and control. Following the ten commandments was, apparently, not especially difficult for this man; what was difficult was to consider leaving behind a life that was, by all accounts, worthy, reasonable and responsible.
And yet, something was stirred in his soul by this man named Jesus. Something provoked this righteous man to seek Jesus out, to determine if there was something more to life than simply following the law, the ancient ethical code that continues to shape western culture. This man was not a liar, a cheat, nor an adulterer. But could he be a disciple? Could he follow Jesus, a man who told him to sell everything he owned?
And, that is the question to us this morning. We, too, I suspect, are not liars, cheats and thieves. We are, or so we like to think, basically good people. But are we disciples? Are we willing to follow a man who calls us to leave everything behind and went to his death without any defense? Without Jesus, being good is not terribly difficult; with Jesus, “No one is good but God alone” and we are left without a playbook.
“Come, follow me.” Discipleship, following Jesus, means responding to God’s love for us. God’s love for us is made known to us in many ways, through our families and friends, the changing color of the leaves this time of year, and the delight we experience through music, art and literature. We naturally respond when the choir sings a moving anthem, wanting to clap! I naturally wrap my grandchildren in my arms when they say: “Grandmommy, I love you.” And I naturally laugh when I hear a good joke.
We are created to respond, to be responsible, and we do all the time whenever we taste something of the goodness of God. Discipleship means following after that goodness, investing in that goodness, and yearning for more. And yes, you may have to decide whether to come to church or stay home on Sunday mornings to pay your bills – we all have a variety of responsibilities. But our text this morning invites us to consider our first responsibility and that responsibility is to chase after the goodness that is God wherever and whenever that goodness crosses our path.
There will be costs. I cannot hug all of my six grandchildren at the same time and once the glorious blaze of autumn is over, the leaves will turn brown, fall from the trees and need to be raked. Chasing after goodness will have its consequences but given the choice between being good and chasing after goodness, I will choose the latter.
Our text comes crashing into the season of the church year when we begin to think about stewardship. And I often think that I could use this text to invite you to throw your wallets, check books and credit cards into the collection plate. I will not because that would be irresponsible. On the other hand, I will invite you to consider why you are here this morning, why this place is important to you, what you have found here and hope to find here. What are you following? If you are chasing after goodness, we have much work to do and we will need to invest; if you simply want to be good, you already are because God created you and God called all that he had created “very good.” You can go home satisfied and justified and sanctified and will have no need to be here in this place among these people. If, on the other hand, you have tasted something of the goodness of God in this place and among these people, we do not take Pay Pal but will look forward to receiving your pledge.
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Job 1: 1; 2: 1 – 10
Sunday, October 4, 2015 Hebrews 1: 1 – 4; 2: 5 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 2 – 16
Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
Mark 10: 9
Previously preached October 5, 2003.
Marriage is made in heaven. Did you know that this maxim was actually coined by a Jewish rabbi in the sixth century as he was studying the book of Genesis? Amazing is it not that after fifteen centuries we still use this proverbial piece of our past? When I hear “That marriage was made in heaven” I think of God playing match maker up in heaven, finding us the perfect blind date, setting us up for an eternally enchanting evening. Nice thought, I suppose, but not very realistic. On the other hand, I know love is God’s gift to us.
Jesus tells the Pharisees, the religious authorities, of first century Israel, in our gospel reading this morning, “What God has joined together let no one separate.” Sounds like Jesus and the rabbi were thinking the same thing: marriage is made in heaven.
The picture Mark paints for us this morning is like a scene from a courtroom drama. Jesus is on the witness stand. The courtroom is packed with spectators. The prosecutor rises slowly from his chair behind a long table covered with legal pads and approaches the witness.
“What about divorce?” he demands. “What do you say about that?”
“You know the teachings of Moses,” Jesus answers.
“And we know a man can divorce his wife,” the prosecutor says. He
knows the law.
“And you also know that God created man and woman to be helpers
one to another,” Jesus returns. “What God has joined together let no
one separate.”
The interrogation is over. Jesus steps down from the witness stand. The prosecutor returns to his legal pads. The jury is excused. And the spectators wait.
At the time Mark is writing, the Pharisees are caught on the heels of a dilemma; the people of God have a problem. Torah, the law of Moses, allows a man to divorce his wife. In the book of Deuteronomy we can still read what a man had to do to divorce his wife. Divorcing a wife was not complicated – he wrote her a bill of divorce, pretty much handed her a piece of paper. That part was clear.
The problem was not how to do it, but when a man could do it. The rabbis are divided about the grounds of divorce. Some rabbis think a man – and it was only a man who could divorce a wife – could dismiss his wife only for adultery, others believe dismissal could follow for other reasons, like emotional cruelty.
Every man, woman and child in our imagined courtroom knws Torah, knows the law of Moses knows divorce is allowed. The prosecutor knows, the spectators know, and the jury knows. The prosecutor is not asking Jesus what he thinks about the Mosaic law allowing divorce; that law came from Moses and is beyond question. No, the issue on trial is not divorce; the issue on trial is under what circumstances can a man divorce his wife. Can he dismiss his wife when she makes him unhappy or when she fails to take care of his children or when she squanders his money? Or can he only dismiss her when she is unfaithful? These are the questions on the table, not “Can a man divorce his wife?”
And so they ask Jesus, “What about divorce?” And Jesus says, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” In other words, love is a gift from God. Don’t get in the way!
Two thousand years later the jury is still out, continuing to wrestle with the question, “Are marriages made in heaven?” The Church has struggled mightily with this question through the centuries. For the most part, the Church has recognized the inevitability of divorce and the debate has centered on re-marriage. At present, the Episcopal Church recognizes both divorce and re-marriage.
Our text this morning raises an issue with which all of us are familiar. Divorced or married, single or widowed, separated or engaged, parents or children, male or female, young or old, step-parents or step-children, we all know something about marriage and divorce. Divorce, like the weather, happens everyday: 43% of first marriages end in separation or divorce within fifteen years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
And depending upon what your experiences have been, we have feelings, lots of them, about marriage and divorce. You and I hear the gospel reading this morning while swimming in a sea of emotions, floating on happiness, fighting the turbulence of anger, or drowning in sadness. We have no trouble this day getting in touch with the topic, for better or for worse. We know something about marriage and divorce, we have feelings about marriage and divorce. Marriage and divorce are not mysteries to us. Maybe that is why Mark only takes seven verses to share this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. Maybe Mark knew we would have no trouble finding more things to say.
Truth be told, we all find ourselves from time to time trapped in relationships that make us feel like we are on trial. Nothing we say is right, nothing we do is right. Everything we say is wrong, everything we do is wrong; we feel stuck, trapped like an animal in a cage, at the mercy of our captor. We go to bed worrying about the next day and we wake up fearful about what we have to face. Life is a living hell. And for those in in physically or emotionally abusive relationships, life is your worst nightmare.
Sometimes we can simply walk away – we can walk away from the nasty checker at the grocery store and deal with someone else; we can find a more honest car mechanic the next time we take our car in to be fixed. Sometimes we have to hang in there for awhile, finding ways to cope with a difficult teacher for instance until the end of the school year. And sometimes because the relationship is created by promises like marriage, ending the relationship is complicated. Some relationships can never really be abandoned like those between a father and a son, or between a mother and a daughter, or between a sister and a brother. Life in this world means life with others and oftentimes that can be miserable. No mystery here.
Recently, National Public Radio showcased folk music from around the world. With uncomplicated instruments like guitar, mandolins and dulcimers, the songs told the complicated stories of ordinary people, people all over the world living ordinary lives. A folk song from New Zealand was played which was titled “Farewell to the Gold.” The song tells the story of a young man who leaves his home to pan for gold. Moving from place to place in search of the elusive treasure, one summer day he is panning for gold with a friend in a dry river canyon. It begins to rain and after several days, the water is high and flowing fast. Refusing to give up their quest, they continue their work in spite of the rising water. The force of the water overwhelms them and his friend drowns. The cost of looking for gold is too high and the young man decides to go back home. The haunting melody expresses grief, the sadness of saying goodbye to dreams gone cold, and vexation, the frustration that comes with knowing that a dream is just a dream. The first verse goes like this:
Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For its only when dreaming that I see you gleaming
Down in the dark underground
Farewell to the gold that I never found.
The gold miner and you and I dream of finding gold, that treasure beyond our wildest imaginings. We yearn for the delight and comfort and consolation of companionship, for the breath taking beauty of love. The bitterness of a broken relationship reminds us just how elusive love can be. Yet, the mystery of love continues to beckon.
Love between human beings is a gift from God. Jesus tells us God joined us together at the very moment of creation. God brought into being the sun and the moon stars and two human beings. God created tow human beings, not just one, because God did bot want us to be alone. God wants us to have companions, partners, helpers. Tested by the religious authorities of the day on divorce, Jesus reminds them that when God created human being God made them partners. Partners, not adversaries; helpers, not stumbling blocks, a lover and a beloved.
God’s desire is that others will help us, not hurt us. God’s desire is that others will support us, not use us. God’s desire is that being with others will set us free, not trap us. God does want us to be alone. Relationship with others is God’s gift to us.
God joins us together because God loves us. God joins us together because it is not good to be alone. God joins us together because God knows that being together is how we learn to love. Love is something we cannot learn by ourselves. We perhaps can learn how to program our computer from reading a manual or change a tire by looking at a diagram or make an angel food cake by following a recipe. But we cannot learn how to love without another. And we never master the task. We are always students, always learning something new.
Jesus knew that separating ourselves from one another was something we have no trouble doing. No point in talking about divorce. We know when we are uncomfortable and move quickly to find a more comfortable place. No mystery here.
The mystery is love. The mystery is that we are able to experience a sense of deep and intimate connection with another human being. The mystery is that we can experience a mutuality with another human being that delights us. The mystery is that we can dance together, giving and receiving in response to a song that we both hear. This is a gift to us from God.
The music of the dance is God. That is what Jesus is saying in our text today. When we experience love – the mutuality of giving and receiving that defes being captured in words we are in God’s presence. We long to dance because God created us to dance, we saw the dance in the life of Jesus, and we can dance even now when the Holy Spirit is singing.
Human love is God’s gift to us. Whenever we experience love, God just gave us a Christmas present. We can no more make someone love us than we can make a two year old stand still. And while we might be kind and compassionate, loving someone is a little like climbing into the basket of a hot air balloon on a crystal clear day without knowing the weather forecast or how to operate the burner.
Love – the bond that can exist between two human beings – is a gift. Love is not something we can will. Love means God is close by. And love will forever remain a mystery.
That is why the Church calls marriage a sacramental rite. Like the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, somehow by coming and kneeling at the altar, eating a piece of bread and drinking wine we come to know God a little bit better, we feel God’s love for us in ways that language cannot hold. A sacrament is not magic. Sharing in the Eucharist will not make us saints. God’s presence in the act of breaking bread and sharing wine remains a mystery. So, too, with marriage. Marriages are not made in heaven; what is made in heaven is the love of God which breaks into our loves filling us with a sense of wonder and joy. Our job is to give God the opportunity t love us, to listen for the music of the dance.
Marriage, in other words, is a little like going stag to the school prom. You look spectacular, the school gym is filled with balloons and your curfew is after midnight. But none of this means you are going to have a good time. The problem is, you won’t know unless you go.
The Holy Spirit was present one night long ago in a small hospital not far from here. That night the hospital was quiet on the floor where those who are dying are offered the only comfort we know – relief from their physical pain. Ina room darkened by the evening shadows and without light, a man sits in a chair beside a bed. In the bed is a woman with closed eyes – she wears no obvious expression on her face and her body is concealed from view by a blanket. She could be anyone, from anywhere – her only distinction is that she is lying wordless and very still in a bed. The man is holding her hand. The night nurse comes in to check on the patient and the man says this woman is his wife of sixty-two years. She has cancer, he says. The doctors told him today that there is nothing more they can do; she is dying. He continues to hold her hand. He tells of the past months, about hearing the diagnosis and then all the trips to the doctors. He tells of their hope that they could beat this thing. He has tears in his eyes as he speaks, still holding her hand. He recalls how they met, where they lived and about their children. He shares who visited today and when they will be back. He says he is going to stay with her tonight. He does not want her to be alone. He does not want to be alone. Yes, it is hard to be here with her; but it is harder not to be. And he wants to make sure that the nurses keep her from pain. It isn’t much but it is all he can do. He cannot imagine living without her. But he cannot think about that now. Now he just wants to make sure she is comfortable. He is still holding her hand when the nurse leaves the room.
The dream of God was made real that night, breaking into our world of loneliness, of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, reminding us of what we hope for and yearn for, of the gift of relationship that God has given to each of us by our very wondrous creation.
For sure, this side of heaven, we will only see glimpses of the kingdom God, a place where
by loving, we discover we are loved;
by helping, we too find help;
by giving, we realize we have something we need to receive;
A place where your joys are my joy, and your sorrows are my sorrow;
A place where, if it were not for you, I would not want to be; but, because of you I cannot imagine being anywhere else.
For its only when dreaming that I see You gleaming. I pray that our dreams of gold, of the kingdom of God, will not leave us. I pray that the Holy Spirit will come often to give us glimpses of this precious place of love. And I pray that we may ever be grateful for one another and the opportunity to love.
Sunday, October 4, 2015 Hebrews 1: 1 – 4; 2: 5 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 10: 2 – 16
Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
Mark 10: 9
Previously preached October 5, 2003.
Marriage is made in heaven. Did you know that this maxim was actually coined by a Jewish rabbi in the sixth century as he was studying the book of Genesis? Amazing is it not that after fifteen centuries we still use this proverbial piece of our past? When I hear “That marriage was made in heaven” I think of God playing match maker up in heaven, finding us the perfect blind date, setting us up for an eternally enchanting evening. Nice thought, I suppose, but not very realistic. On the other hand, I know love is God’s gift to us.
Jesus tells the Pharisees, the religious authorities, of first century Israel, in our gospel reading this morning, “What God has joined together let no one separate.” Sounds like Jesus and the rabbi were thinking the same thing: marriage is made in heaven.
The picture Mark paints for us this morning is like a scene from a courtroom drama. Jesus is on the witness stand. The courtroom is packed with spectators. The prosecutor rises slowly from his chair behind a long table covered with legal pads and approaches the witness.
“What about divorce?” he demands. “What do you say about that?”
“You know the teachings of Moses,” Jesus answers.
“And we know a man can divorce his wife,” the prosecutor says. He
knows the law.
“And you also know that God created man and woman to be helpers
one to another,” Jesus returns. “What God has joined together let no
one separate.”
The interrogation is over. Jesus steps down from the witness stand. The prosecutor returns to his legal pads. The jury is excused. And the spectators wait.
At the time Mark is writing, the Pharisees are caught on the heels of a dilemma; the people of God have a problem. Torah, the law of Moses, allows a man to divorce his wife. In the book of Deuteronomy we can still read what a man had to do to divorce his wife. Divorcing a wife was not complicated – he wrote her a bill of divorce, pretty much handed her a piece of paper. That part was clear.
The problem was not how to do it, but when a man could do it. The rabbis are divided about the grounds of divorce. Some rabbis think a man – and it was only a man who could divorce a wife – could dismiss his wife only for adultery, others believe dismissal could follow for other reasons, like emotional cruelty.
Every man, woman and child in our imagined courtroom knws Torah, knows the law of Moses knows divorce is allowed. The prosecutor knows, the spectators know, and the jury knows. The prosecutor is not asking Jesus what he thinks about the Mosaic law allowing divorce; that law came from Moses and is beyond question. No, the issue on trial is not divorce; the issue on trial is under what circumstances can a man divorce his wife. Can he dismiss his wife when she makes him unhappy or when she fails to take care of his children or when she squanders his money? Or can he only dismiss her when she is unfaithful? These are the questions on the table, not “Can a man divorce his wife?”
And so they ask Jesus, “What about divorce?” And Jesus says, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” In other words, love is a gift from God. Don’t get in the way!
Two thousand years later the jury is still out, continuing to wrestle with the question, “Are marriages made in heaven?” The Church has struggled mightily with this question through the centuries. For the most part, the Church has recognized the inevitability of divorce and the debate has centered on re-marriage. At present, the Episcopal Church recognizes both divorce and re-marriage.
Our text this morning raises an issue with which all of us are familiar. Divorced or married, single or widowed, separated or engaged, parents or children, male or female, young or old, step-parents or step-children, we all know something about marriage and divorce. Divorce, like the weather, happens everyday: 43% of first marriages end in separation or divorce within fifteen years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
And depending upon what your experiences have been, we have feelings, lots of them, about marriage and divorce. You and I hear the gospel reading this morning while swimming in a sea of emotions, floating on happiness, fighting the turbulence of anger, or drowning in sadness. We have no trouble this day getting in touch with the topic, for better or for worse. We know something about marriage and divorce, we have feelings about marriage and divorce. Marriage and divorce are not mysteries to us. Maybe that is why Mark only takes seven verses to share this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. Maybe Mark knew we would have no trouble finding more things to say.
Truth be told, we all find ourselves from time to time trapped in relationships that make us feel like we are on trial. Nothing we say is right, nothing we do is right. Everything we say is wrong, everything we do is wrong; we feel stuck, trapped like an animal in a cage, at the mercy of our captor. We go to bed worrying about the next day and we wake up fearful about what we have to face. Life is a living hell. And for those in in physically or emotionally abusive relationships, life is your worst nightmare.
Sometimes we can simply walk away – we can walk away from the nasty checker at the grocery store and deal with someone else; we can find a more honest car mechanic the next time we take our car in to be fixed. Sometimes we have to hang in there for awhile, finding ways to cope with a difficult teacher for instance until the end of the school year. And sometimes because the relationship is created by promises like marriage, ending the relationship is complicated. Some relationships can never really be abandoned like those between a father and a son, or between a mother and a daughter, or between a sister and a brother. Life in this world means life with others and oftentimes that can be miserable. No mystery here.
Recently, National Public Radio showcased folk music from around the world. With uncomplicated instruments like guitar, mandolins and dulcimers, the songs told the complicated stories of ordinary people, people all over the world living ordinary lives. A folk song from New Zealand was played which was titled “Farewell to the Gold.” The song tells the story of a young man who leaves his home to pan for gold. Moving from place to place in search of the elusive treasure, one summer day he is panning for gold with a friend in a dry river canyon. It begins to rain and after several days, the water is high and flowing fast. Refusing to give up their quest, they continue their work in spite of the rising water. The force of the water overwhelms them and his friend drowns. The cost of looking for gold is too high and the young man decides to go back home. The haunting melody expresses grief, the sadness of saying goodbye to dreams gone cold, and vexation, the frustration that comes with knowing that a dream is just a dream. The first verse goes like this:
Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For its only when dreaming that I see you gleaming
Down in the dark underground
Farewell to the gold that I never found.
The gold miner and you and I dream of finding gold, that treasure beyond our wildest imaginings. We yearn for the delight and comfort and consolation of companionship, for the breath taking beauty of love. The bitterness of a broken relationship reminds us just how elusive love can be. Yet, the mystery of love continues to beckon.
Love between human beings is a gift from God. Jesus tells us God joined us together at the very moment of creation. God brought into being the sun and the moon stars and two human beings. God created tow human beings, not just one, because God did bot want us to be alone. God wants us to have companions, partners, helpers. Tested by the religious authorities of the day on divorce, Jesus reminds them that when God created human being God made them partners. Partners, not adversaries; helpers, not stumbling blocks, a lover and a beloved.
God’s desire is that others will help us, not hurt us. God’s desire is that others will support us, not use us. God’s desire is that being with others will set us free, not trap us. God does want us to be alone. Relationship with others is God’s gift to us.
God joins us together because God loves us. God joins us together because it is not good to be alone. God joins us together because God knows that being together is how we learn to love. Love is something we cannot learn by ourselves. We perhaps can learn how to program our computer from reading a manual or change a tire by looking at a diagram or make an angel food cake by following a recipe. But we cannot learn how to love without another. And we never master the task. We are always students, always learning something new.
Jesus knew that separating ourselves from one another was something we have no trouble doing. No point in talking about divorce. We know when we are uncomfortable and move quickly to find a more comfortable place. No mystery here.
The mystery is love. The mystery is that we are able to experience a sense of deep and intimate connection with another human being. The mystery is that we can experience a mutuality with another human being that delights us. The mystery is that we can dance together, giving and receiving in response to a song that we both hear. This is a gift to us from God.
The music of the dance is God. That is what Jesus is saying in our text today. When we experience love – the mutuality of giving and receiving that defes being captured in words we are in God’s presence. We long to dance because God created us to dance, we saw the dance in the life of Jesus, and we can dance even now when the Holy Spirit is singing.
Human love is God’s gift to us. Whenever we experience love, God just gave us a Christmas present. We can no more make someone love us than we can make a two year old stand still. And while we might be kind and compassionate, loving someone is a little like climbing into the basket of a hot air balloon on a crystal clear day without knowing the weather forecast or how to operate the burner.
Love – the bond that can exist between two human beings – is a gift. Love is not something we can will. Love means God is close by. And love will forever remain a mystery.
That is why the Church calls marriage a sacramental rite. Like the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, somehow by coming and kneeling at the altar, eating a piece of bread and drinking wine we come to know God a little bit better, we feel God’s love for us in ways that language cannot hold. A sacrament is not magic. Sharing in the Eucharist will not make us saints. God’s presence in the act of breaking bread and sharing wine remains a mystery. So, too, with marriage. Marriages are not made in heaven; what is made in heaven is the love of God which breaks into our loves filling us with a sense of wonder and joy. Our job is to give God the opportunity t love us, to listen for the music of the dance.
Marriage, in other words, is a little like going stag to the school prom. You look spectacular, the school gym is filled with balloons and your curfew is after midnight. But none of this means you are going to have a good time. The problem is, you won’t know unless you go.
The Holy Spirit was present one night long ago in a small hospital not far from here. That night the hospital was quiet on the floor where those who are dying are offered the only comfort we know – relief from their physical pain. Ina room darkened by the evening shadows and without light, a man sits in a chair beside a bed. In the bed is a woman with closed eyes – she wears no obvious expression on her face and her body is concealed from view by a blanket. She could be anyone, from anywhere – her only distinction is that she is lying wordless and very still in a bed. The man is holding her hand. The night nurse comes in to check on the patient and the man says this woman is his wife of sixty-two years. She has cancer, he says. The doctors told him today that there is nothing more they can do; she is dying. He continues to hold her hand. He tells of the past months, about hearing the diagnosis and then all the trips to the doctors. He tells of their hope that they could beat this thing. He has tears in his eyes as he speaks, still holding her hand. He recalls how they met, where they lived and about their children. He shares who visited today and when they will be back. He says he is going to stay with her tonight. He does not want her to be alone. He does not want to be alone. Yes, it is hard to be here with her; but it is harder not to be. And he wants to make sure that the nurses keep her from pain. It isn’t much but it is all he can do. He cannot imagine living without her. But he cannot think about that now. Now he just wants to make sure she is comfortable. He is still holding her hand when the nurse leaves the room.
The dream of God was made real that night, breaking into our world of loneliness, of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, reminding us of what we hope for and yearn for, of the gift of relationship that God has given to each of us by our very wondrous creation.
For sure, this side of heaven, we will only see glimpses of the kingdom God, a place where
by loving, we discover we are loved;
by helping, we too find help;
by giving, we realize we have something we need to receive;
A place where your joys are my joy, and your sorrows are my sorrow;
A place where, if it were not for you, I would not want to be; but, because of you I cannot imagine being anywhere else.
For its only when dreaming that I see You gleaming. I pray that our dreams of gold, of the kingdom of God, will not leave us. I pray that the Holy Spirit will come often to give us glimpses of this precious place of love. And I pray that we may ever be grateful for one another and the opportunity to love.
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Esther 7: 1 – 6, 9 – 10; 9: 20 – 22
Sunday, September 27, 2015 James 5: 13 – 20
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 38 - 50
Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
Esther 9 : 20 - 22
In the spring of every year, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate a holy day called the feast of Purim. On the feast of Purim gifts are exchanged, there are carnival parades and much merrymaking, and on that one day of the year, getting drunk is permissible. In the morning and in the evening on the feast of Purim, Jews hear the story of Esther, a story from which we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading.
The story of Esther is a story of deliverance that takes place in the Persian Empire during the reign of King Ahasuerus. After the King’s wife, Queen Vashti, refuses an order of the king, King Ahasuerus dismisses her and searches for a new queen among the beautiful young women in the empire. A certain Esther captures his attention.
Esther is Jewish and is cared for by her cousin Mordecai. Esther and Mordecai are two of many Jews now living in exile in the Persian Empire. And when King Ahasuerus falls in love with Esther, Mordecai cautions Esther not to reveal her identity as a Jew.
And then we meet Haman, a man who has found favor with the King and enjoys a tremendous amount of power and prestige. Accordingly, everyone is expected to bow down before him and when Mordecai refuses, Haman hatches a plan to kill all the Jews living within the empire. Haman chooses a day by casting lots and the King issues the decree which is announced throughout the kingdom.
When Esther learns of the fate that is about to befall her people, Esther risks her life to approach the king. Even the queen had to wait to be summoned by the king and not presume to “drop in.” Anyone approaching the king without a summons could be put to death. But the king receives her and Esther invites both the king and Haman to a banquet. After the banquet, the king could not sleep, and began reading a journal of the news of the past weeks. The king discovers that a certain Mordecai, whom he does not know, thwarted an assassination attempt on the king’s life and wants to honor his service. The King consults with Haman on what should be done without revealing who the king wishes to honor and Haman presumes the King wants to honor him.
When Haman learns that it is Mordecai that the king wishes to honor, Haman knows he is doomed and Haman is, in short order accused by Esther of being an enemy of the Jews, confessing to the king that she, too, is Jewish, and Haman is hanged as the king is outraged by this treachery against the woman he loves.
But, the decree to kill all the Jews within the Empire cannot be revoked and Esther begs the king to issue a new decree – this time a decree that all Jews are to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their women and children, and to plunder their goods.” And the King issued the order resulting in the death of seventy-five thousand Persians which caused great rejoicing among the Jews who now remember that day of deliverance every year.
The book of Esther is notable for several reasons, chief of which is that nowhere in the book is the God of Israel ever mentioned. And the bloodlust and vengeance are counter to the spirit of kindness, compassion and mercy that Israel was called upon to show to the strangers in their midst. Esther was written late in Jewish history, probably a century and a half before the birth of Christ, but was contested for a full four hundred years after Christ’s birth.
The central character is a woman which is unusual in a patriarchal culture and that woman demonstrates tremendous courage in order to save her people. In the words Mordecai speaks to Esther on the eve before Esther risks her life to approach the King: “ Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Esther is in the right place at the right time, if Esther is willing to risk her life.
But Esther initially conceals her identity as a Jew, transgressing the laws of the Torah. Esther initially pretends to be someone she is not and only comes clean when her life and the life of her people are at risk. Mordecai seems to be more faithful and observant – refusing to bow to Haman and sharing what he has learned about the plot to kill the king. Mordecai seems to be a necessary goad to help Esther do what only Esther could do.
But then Mordecai does pen the decree that resulted in the death of seventy-five thousand Persians.
No one leaves this story without blood on their hands, but the Jews do survive, making this story one of hope especially for the Jews interred in the death camps during World War II.
The commandment given to Jews for the feast of Purim reads: “He shall drink until he no longer knows whether Mordecai is to be blessed or cursed, or whether Haman is to be cursed or blessed.” On Purim, it sounds to me like a Jew drinks himself into oblivion because in this story of deliverance, victims become oppressors and oppressors become victims.
Haman, early in the story, points out to the king, “There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them.” Haman spoke the truth – the Jews observed different laws, one of which Mordecai observed and that was bowing down before no one, including Haman. The Jews were a source of irritation for every empire that tried to assimilate different cultures into one nation.
Which continues to be a problem even now as we seek to offer hospitality both nationally, locally and even in our parish, to folk from different traditions and cultures. On Thursday, when Pope Francis addressed a joint meeting of Congress, the Pope noted our responsibility to care for everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable. The Pope spoke of the inherent dignity of each and every human being regardless of their religion, cultural practice or even the crimes they commit.
And the Pope drew upon a classical understanding of how we are to steward our common life, be it as a nation, a town, or a church. We are to seek “the common good.” What privileges some is to be avoided; what benefits all is to be embraced.
What does that mean to us here at St. Asaph’s? Well, for a start, all of us are not on email and that means we need to seek ways to communicate with one another that does not exclude those among us who do not use computers. If you remember, improving the way we communicate is one of our first year initiatives adopted in our Revision plan. And, whereas we all desire to grow spiritually, at present, opportunities for bible study are limited to Sunday and Tuesday mornings. We cannot, at present, do all things, but we are going to try something we are calling “First Tuesday’s” and invite anyone who is able, including children, on the first Tuesday of the month for a free lunch and brief meditation.
We all have a need to know what’s going on and we all have a need to feed our spirits. Those desires came forth loudly from our reflection sessions and we are exploring ways we can meet those needs. And lest our children be left behind, we are hoping that our fifth Sunday “Children’s Sunday” will lead us to wonder how we can engage our children in the service of the church at other times and in other places.
In short, what is good, is good for all of us and, no one is left behind. That means that we need to see the absence of computers as an opportunity and not a handicap, children as a gift and not a disruption, and calls for bible study at a time other than Sunday and Tuesday morning as an invitation and not one more thing on a to do list.
Sunday, September 27, 2015 James 5: 13 – 20
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 38 - 50
Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
Esther 9 : 20 - 22
In the spring of every year, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate a holy day called the feast of Purim. On the feast of Purim gifts are exchanged, there are carnival parades and much merrymaking, and on that one day of the year, getting drunk is permissible. In the morning and in the evening on the feast of Purim, Jews hear the story of Esther, a story from which we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading.
The story of Esther is a story of deliverance that takes place in the Persian Empire during the reign of King Ahasuerus. After the King’s wife, Queen Vashti, refuses an order of the king, King Ahasuerus dismisses her and searches for a new queen among the beautiful young women in the empire. A certain Esther captures his attention.
Esther is Jewish and is cared for by her cousin Mordecai. Esther and Mordecai are two of many Jews now living in exile in the Persian Empire. And when King Ahasuerus falls in love with Esther, Mordecai cautions Esther not to reveal her identity as a Jew.
And then we meet Haman, a man who has found favor with the King and enjoys a tremendous amount of power and prestige. Accordingly, everyone is expected to bow down before him and when Mordecai refuses, Haman hatches a plan to kill all the Jews living within the empire. Haman chooses a day by casting lots and the King issues the decree which is announced throughout the kingdom.
When Esther learns of the fate that is about to befall her people, Esther risks her life to approach the king. Even the queen had to wait to be summoned by the king and not presume to “drop in.” Anyone approaching the king without a summons could be put to death. But the king receives her and Esther invites both the king and Haman to a banquet. After the banquet, the king could not sleep, and began reading a journal of the news of the past weeks. The king discovers that a certain Mordecai, whom he does not know, thwarted an assassination attempt on the king’s life and wants to honor his service. The King consults with Haman on what should be done without revealing who the king wishes to honor and Haman presumes the King wants to honor him.
When Haman learns that it is Mordecai that the king wishes to honor, Haman knows he is doomed and Haman is, in short order accused by Esther of being an enemy of the Jews, confessing to the king that she, too, is Jewish, and Haman is hanged as the king is outraged by this treachery against the woman he loves.
But, the decree to kill all the Jews within the Empire cannot be revoked and Esther begs the king to issue a new decree – this time a decree that all Jews are to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their women and children, and to plunder their goods.” And the King issued the order resulting in the death of seventy-five thousand Persians which caused great rejoicing among the Jews who now remember that day of deliverance every year.
The book of Esther is notable for several reasons, chief of which is that nowhere in the book is the God of Israel ever mentioned. And the bloodlust and vengeance are counter to the spirit of kindness, compassion and mercy that Israel was called upon to show to the strangers in their midst. Esther was written late in Jewish history, probably a century and a half before the birth of Christ, but was contested for a full four hundred years after Christ’s birth.
The central character is a woman which is unusual in a patriarchal culture and that woman demonstrates tremendous courage in order to save her people. In the words Mordecai speaks to Esther on the eve before Esther risks her life to approach the King: “ Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Esther is in the right place at the right time, if Esther is willing to risk her life.
But Esther initially conceals her identity as a Jew, transgressing the laws of the Torah. Esther initially pretends to be someone she is not and only comes clean when her life and the life of her people are at risk. Mordecai seems to be more faithful and observant – refusing to bow to Haman and sharing what he has learned about the plot to kill the king. Mordecai seems to be a necessary goad to help Esther do what only Esther could do.
But then Mordecai does pen the decree that resulted in the death of seventy-five thousand Persians.
No one leaves this story without blood on their hands, but the Jews do survive, making this story one of hope especially for the Jews interred in the death camps during World War II.
The commandment given to Jews for the feast of Purim reads: “He shall drink until he no longer knows whether Mordecai is to be blessed or cursed, or whether Haman is to be cursed or blessed.” On Purim, it sounds to me like a Jew drinks himself into oblivion because in this story of deliverance, victims become oppressors and oppressors become victims.
Haman, early in the story, points out to the king, “There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them.” Haman spoke the truth – the Jews observed different laws, one of which Mordecai observed and that was bowing down before no one, including Haman. The Jews were a source of irritation for every empire that tried to assimilate different cultures into one nation.
Which continues to be a problem even now as we seek to offer hospitality both nationally, locally and even in our parish, to folk from different traditions and cultures. On Thursday, when Pope Francis addressed a joint meeting of Congress, the Pope noted our responsibility to care for everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable. The Pope spoke of the inherent dignity of each and every human being regardless of their religion, cultural practice or even the crimes they commit.
And the Pope drew upon a classical understanding of how we are to steward our common life, be it as a nation, a town, or a church. We are to seek “the common good.” What privileges some is to be avoided; what benefits all is to be embraced.
What does that mean to us here at St. Asaph’s? Well, for a start, all of us are not on email and that means we need to seek ways to communicate with one another that does not exclude those among us who do not use computers. If you remember, improving the way we communicate is one of our first year initiatives adopted in our Revision plan. And, whereas we all desire to grow spiritually, at present, opportunities for bible study are limited to Sunday and Tuesday mornings. We cannot, at present, do all things, but we are going to try something we are calling “First Tuesday’s” and invite anyone who is able, including children, on the first Tuesday of the month for a free lunch and brief meditation.
We all have a need to know what’s going on and we all have a need to feed our spirits. Those desires came forth loudly from our reflection sessions and we are exploring ways we can meet those needs. And lest our children be left behind, we are hoping that our fifth Sunday “Children’s Sunday” will lead us to wonder how we can engage our children in the service of the church at other times and in other places.
In short, what is good, is good for all of us and, no one is left behind. That means that we need to see the absence of computers as an opportunity and not a handicap, children as a gift and not a disruption, and calls for bible study at a time other than Sunday and Tuesday morning as an invitation and not one more thing on a to do list.
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Proverbs 1: 20 – 33
Sunday, September 13, 2015 James 3: 1 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 27 - 38
Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
Proverbs 1: 20
“Wisdom cries out in the streets,” this morning in our Old Testament reading from Proverbs. And that wisdom admonishes us that “waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread or disaster.” Disaster, we are told, will come upon all those who do not choose the fear of the Lord.
The book of Proverbs is a part of a body of literature known as wisdom literature and which includes the Old Testament books of Ecclesiastes and the book of Job, a book we are looking at in adult education. Wisdom literature seeks to find the meaning of human life and the classical way of understanding the meaning of life was to see the world as a morally ordered universe in which God would reward the wise and leave the simple to suffer the consequences of their foolish actions.
“The beginning of wisdom,” for those who wish to live a good life, “is the fear of the Lord,” the book of Proverbs tells us. True wisdom comes only to those “who trust in the Lord with their whole heart and do not rely on their own insight.” The wise acknowledge the sovereignty of God and understand that God and not anyone of us, is in charge.
This morning in our gospel reading, the disciple Peter makes his famous confession that Jesus is the Messiah and then immediately rebukes Jesus for saying that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected and killed. Peter is an heir to the tradition of wisdom and cannot fathom that the Messiah of God, God’s anointed, will be cursed rather than blessed, rejected rather than received, killed and not crowned. For Peter, Jesus is simply not being wise and ought not consider such a foolish course of action.
To wit, Jesus responds: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In other words, Peter has forgotten that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Jesus must suffer for so has God ordained. That Jesus’ suffering and death make no sense to Peter is not just irrelevant but serves as an instrument of Satan attempting to dissuade Jesus from following his call.
I personally would like to avoid suffering. I would love to find a way to live that keeps “calamity and the dread of disaster,” in the words of our reading from Proverbs, from happening to me. And when I experience some disaster, bearing up under the weight of that cross often feels impossible. At those times, trusting in the goodness and mercy of God to bring life out of death is a blind faith that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is my Father too.
We call such blind faith in the goodness and mercy of God hope. “For by hope we were saved,” writes Saint Paul, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” You and I were saved by hope, the hope of Jesus that his heavenly Father would bring good out of evil and life out of death even though the only thing Jesus could see was the calamity of the cross.
Many years ago, during my sojourn as a hospital chaplain, I encountered a time when I realized I was losing hope. I was becoming overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of suffering and struggling to find some light in the darkness that seemed to fill every room I entered. I knew a chaplain without hope was about as worthless as a doctor without a medical degree and left the hospital for a parish.
Life in a parish is very different from life in the hospital. For the first time I baptized a baby who was not doomed to die immediately following the baptism and to enjoy the rhythm of a common life replete with both joy and sorrow and not endless calls to be with the victim of a random drive-by shooting or a woman who was alone and who had just suffered a miscarriage or a prisoner shackled to his bed taking his last breath with no known next of kin. What I realized is that our experiences of suffering can blind us to joy – that sheer undeserved delight in this world. What I realized is that just as suffering is often undeserved, so, too, is joy.
Maybe that is why Jesus was accused as a partier - we all need a good party now and again. P.S., we are throwing one today after the service! Hope and joy seem to feed off of one another and are the light in the darkness. None of us are spared from suffering and all of us have something to celebrate. Suffering can isolate us one from another as we all struggle to carry whatever cross with which we have been burdened, often with resolute determination that we will not fall under it’s weight. In the occasional service we call Stations of the Cross, Jesus falls not once but three times.
We can become overwhelmed by suffering and many folk succumb to despair. Despair blinds us to truth, goodness and beauty and robs us of hope. This week I learned that A.G.’s sister is critically ill and I am heart sick. Heart sickness is not fatal; despair can be. I am looking forward to our celebration this Sunday and then will join my family in Richmond as we journey together through a most untimely visitation, yet again, of suffering. I am loathe to share this news with you all as I, as I have heard so many times from many of you, hate to burden you with my angst. (Which is most contrary to our Christian tradition which invites us to share one another’s burdens.) But I need your support as I journey with my family in the coming days.
Suffering unfortunately is cumulative and each new suffering resurrects prior sufferings. I know this in my head but not in my heart. Being with A.G.’s sister now resurrects for me all of my journey with A.G. – a journey that was painful and difficult and still raw. There is nothing to be done; there is a lot to be said for just being there. I have leaned on you all for your companionship and friendship before and I am going to lean on that again.
As I was penning these words this past Friday, I noticed a deer on the side of my driveway enjoying some unknown delight. I have not seen a lot of deer in the months I have sojourned in Caroline County. But this morning, after a week of bad news, I wondered what that deer was eating and hoping it was good.
As I watched that deer, I remembered a time long ago when I was a child visiting my grandparents in Vermont. On rare nights, my mother and grandmother would wake us up after we had been put to bed to watch the deer feeding at dusk in the lower mowing of my grandparents’ farm. That invitation was always a joy. And I have to wonder, given the name with which my mother blessed me, if deer were not a symbol of hope for my mother.
That deer in my driveway was completely unexpected and I could have easily missed seeing it. That I did not was a gift from God in the midst of my angst. That deer is not necessarily a sign that my sister-in-law will be physically healed. But noticing that deer is a sign that I still have hope and can, perhaps, offer hope to others.
The Saturday after A.G. came home on hospice care, all of the kids and grandkids came to visit. We cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and Lynn Lenahan brought ice cream cones with all the fixings for the kids. In the midst of the chaos the phone rang and a colleague, knowing our circumstances, said with surprise: “Sounds like you are having a party.” And I responded: “We are.” He was a bit flummoxed as ours was a house of death and death demanded quiet and reserve. But this day was filled with laughter and chaos and was a day which continues to fill me with joy even as I remember the days that followed.
A.G. was not able that day to grill the hamburgers nor chastise the children for letting their ice cream cones drip all over the kitchen floor. None of that mattered anymore as we gathered one last time to enjoy one another, in all of our messiness. Kind of like the way God enjoys us, in all of our messiness, hoping we all will know we have been called to enjoy God and one another, not in fear but in hope.
Sunday, September 13, 2015 James 3: 1 – 12
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 27 - 38
Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
Proverbs 1: 20
“Wisdom cries out in the streets,” this morning in our Old Testament reading from Proverbs. And that wisdom admonishes us that “waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread or disaster.” Disaster, we are told, will come upon all those who do not choose the fear of the Lord.
The book of Proverbs is a part of a body of literature known as wisdom literature and which includes the Old Testament books of Ecclesiastes and the book of Job, a book we are looking at in adult education. Wisdom literature seeks to find the meaning of human life and the classical way of understanding the meaning of life was to see the world as a morally ordered universe in which God would reward the wise and leave the simple to suffer the consequences of their foolish actions.
“The beginning of wisdom,” for those who wish to live a good life, “is the fear of the Lord,” the book of Proverbs tells us. True wisdom comes only to those “who trust in the Lord with their whole heart and do not rely on their own insight.” The wise acknowledge the sovereignty of God and understand that God and not anyone of us, is in charge.
This morning in our gospel reading, the disciple Peter makes his famous confession that Jesus is the Messiah and then immediately rebukes Jesus for saying that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected and killed. Peter is an heir to the tradition of wisdom and cannot fathom that the Messiah of God, God’s anointed, will be cursed rather than blessed, rejected rather than received, killed and not crowned. For Peter, Jesus is simply not being wise and ought not consider such a foolish course of action.
To wit, Jesus responds: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In other words, Peter has forgotten that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Jesus must suffer for so has God ordained. That Jesus’ suffering and death make no sense to Peter is not just irrelevant but serves as an instrument of Satan attempting to dissuade Jesus from following his call.
I personally would like to avoid suffering. I would love to find a way to live that keeps “calamity and the dread of disaster,” in the words of our reading from Proverbs, from happening to me. And when I experience some disaster, bearing up under the weight of that cross often feels impossible. At those times, trusting in the goodness and mercy of God to bring life out of death is a blind faith that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is my Father too.
We call such blind faith in the goodness and mercy of God hope. “For by hope we were saved,” writes Saint Paul, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” You and I were saved by hope, the hope of Jesus that his heavenly Father would bring good out of evil and life out of death even though the only thing Jesus could see was the calamity of the cross.
Many years ago, during my sojourn as a hospital chaplain, I encountered a time when I realized I was losing hope. I was becoming overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of suffering and struggling to find some light in the darkness that seemed to fill every room I entered. I knew a chaplain without hope was about as worthless as a doctor without a medical degree and left the hospital for a parish.
Life in a parish is very different from life in the hospital. For the first time I baptized a baby who was not doomed to die immediately following the baptism and to enjoy the rhythm of a common life replete with both joy and sorrow and not endless calls to be with the victim of a random drive-by shooting or a woman who was alone and who had just suffered a miscarriage or a prisoner shackled to his bed taking his last breath with no known next of kin. What I realized is that our experiences of suffering can blind us to joy – that sheer undeserved delight in this world. What I realized is that just as suffering is often undeserved, so, too, is joy.
Maybe that is why Jesus was accused as a partier - we all need a good party now and again. P.S., we are throwing one today after the service! Hope and joy seem to feed off of one another and are the light in the darkness. None of us are spared from suffering and all of us have something to celebrate. Suffering can isolate us one from another as we all struggle to carry whatever cross with which we have been burdened, often with resolute determination that we will not fall under it’s weight. In the occasional service we call Stations of the Cross, Jesus falls not once but three times.
We can become overwhelmed by suffering and many folk succumb to despair. Despair blinds us to truth, goodness and beauty and robs us of hope. This week I learned that A.G.’s sister is critically ill and I am heart sick. Heart sickness is not fatal; despair can be. I am looking forward to our celebration this Sunday and then will join my family in Richmond as we journey together through a most untimely visitation, yet again, of suffering. I am loathe to share this news with you all as I, as I have heard so many times from many of you, hate to burden you with my angst. (Which is most contrary to our Christian tradition which invites us to share one another’s burdens.) But I need your support as I journey with my family in the coming days.
Suffering unfortunately is cumulative and each new suffering resurrects prior sufferings. I know this in my head but not in my heart. Being with A.G.’s sister now resurrects for me all of my journey with A.G. – a journey that was painful and difficult and still raw. There is nothing to be done; there is a lot to be said for just being there. I have leaned on you all for your companionship and friendship before and I am going to lean on that again.
As I was penning these words this past Friday, I noticed a deer on the side of my driveway enjoying some unknown delight. I have not seen a lot of deer in the months I have sojourned in Caroline County. But this morning, after a week of bad news, I wondered what that deer was eating and hoping it was good.
As I watched that deer, I remembered a time long ago when I was a child visiting my grandparents in Vermont. On rare nights, my mother and grandmother would wake us up after we had been put to bed to watch the deer feeding at dusk in the lower mowing of my grandparents’ farm. That invitation was always a joy. And I have to wonder, given the name with which my mother blessed me, if deer were not a symbol of hope for my mother.
That deer in my driveway was completely unexpected and I could have easily missed seeing it. That I did not was a gift from God in the midst of my angst. That deer is not necessarily a sign that my sister-in-law will be physically healed. But noticing that deer is a sign that I still have hope and can, perhaps, offer hope to others.
The Saturday after A.G. came home on hospice care, all of the kids and grandkids came to visit. We cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and Lynn Lenahan brought ice cream cones with all the fixings for the kids. In the midst of the chaos the phone rang and a colleague, knowing our circumstances, said with surprise: “Sounds like you are having a party.” And I responded: “We are.” He was a bit flummoxed as ours was a house of death and death demanded quiet and reserve. But this day was filled with laughter and chaos and was a day which continues to fill me with joy even as I remember the days that followed.
A.G. was not able that day to grill the hamburgers nor chastise the children for letting their ice cream cones drip all over the kitchen floor. None of that mattered anymore as we gathered one last time to enjoy one another, in all of our messiness. Kind of like the way God enjoys us, in all of our messiness, hoping we all will know we have been called to enjoy God and one another, not in fear but in hope.
The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost 2 Samuel 11: 1 – 15
Sunday, July 26, 2015 Ephesians 3: 14 - 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 6: 1 - 21
When the people saw the sign that Jesus had done , they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet, who is to come into the world.”
John 6: 14
Some years ago an elementary school teacher was teaching his class about road signs. He first held up a red octagon and asked what the sign meant. The class responded in unison: “Stop.” He then held up a yellow circle with a black X running through it and the letter “R” in two of the quadrants and most of the class said “Railroad crossing.” Finally he held up a yellow square with an image of a car and driver in the middle. Two squiggly lines ran out from behind the car. “Does anyone know what this sign means?” he queried. No one in the class said anything for awhile until one young boy offered: “Watch out! Snakes following behind.” We can only hope that by the time that young man learns to drive he will learn squiggly lines mean slippery roads not snakes.
Signs are a kind of short hand, pointing beyond themselves to a deeper level of meaning. Some signs, like road signs, have a single meaning – we all know that a red octagon means “Stop.” But other signs, like the American flag or a wedding ring, carry multiple layers of meaning. The American flag can mean the land that lies between Mexico to the south and Canada to the north; the flag can also mean freedom and democracy and a particular way of life. A wedding ring can mean that I am entitled by law to make decisions on behalf of another in the event they cannot make decisions for themselves; a wedding ring can also be a sign of faithfulness and love. Flags and wedding rings are signs that evoke more than one meaning.
In the gospel of John, Jesus performs seven signs beginning with the wedding at Cana where Jesus turns water into wine and ending with the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In our gospel reading this morning, we hear two of those signs – the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness and Jesus walking on water. Our evangelist John wants us to understand these stories as revelations of glory – the glory of God made known to us in Jesus.
This morning, Jesus feeds five thousand folk with five barley loaves and two fish. And once the crowd is satisfied, they want to take Jesus by force and make him their king. Jesus has given the crowds a sign but the crowds understand the sign to mean God has sent God’s promised Messiah to free Israel from the oppression of Roman domination. That is true but is not the whole truth as Jesus will be crucified and raised from the dead and by the power of the resurrection Israel will not just be free but will be given new life.
In the gospel of John, we have no story in which Jesus and the disciples share a last supper together during which Jesus calls the bread his body and the wine his blood. We have in the gospel of John, no institution of the eucharist. On the night before Jesus dies in the gospel of John, Jesus washes the feet of the disciples and tells them to love one another as he has loved them.
But the story of the feeding of the five thousand is clearly Eucharistic as Jesus takes five barley loaves and two fish, gives thanks and distributes the bread and the fish to the crowds. For our evangelist John, the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness reveals the glory of God made known to us in the Eucharist.
And what is being revealed? First, abundance. Not only are five barley loaves and two fish enough to feed five thousand folk, but there was food leftover, twelve baskets of food! Second, hospitality. Everyone who had followed after Jesus because Jesus was healing the sick were fed. Many of those folk probably thought Jesus was a miracle worker, and there were many miracle workers in first century Palestine. But Jesus did not ask if they believed he was the Son of God. Jesus fed them, one and all. And all were satisfied, we hear.
The eucharist, if we take our evangelist John as a guide, is first a meal, a meal shared with others. And like any dinner with friends, we are fed not just by what’s on our plate but also by the fellowship created by sharing a meal together. At the ECM meeting this past Wednesday, Gary Gravatt fed us with barbecue and macaroni and cheese. The food was great but greater still was the laughter we shared as Micheal Lenahan shared a video clip of a boys’ choir in France singing nothing but “meow.” And that was prompted when I said I had bought a new computer and Micheal, ever hopeful, hoped I was now spending time on Facebook, which I am not.
Our president of ECM, Hunter Gravatt, runs a mean meeting, and we have adjourned the past two months just minutes after being called to order. But new and old business is not the heart of ECM; at the heart of ECM and ECW and coffee hour and whenever we get together is the life we are given through our relationships one with another. We can eat alone and stay alive; we can eat with others and be brought to life. Our evangelist John does not want us to eat alone.
One night a couple of months ago, I invited some friends to dinner. I had never hosted them before and so I asked about their food preferences. Turned out, the wife was gluten intolerant and her husband disliked anything that came from a cow or a chicken. Oh my, I thought, remembering my growing up when you ate what was on your plate or did not eat at all. Eating was a moral discipline for my mother who often reminded us of those who were starving and individual preferences were simply not tolerated. That was long before we became aware that folk are biologically different and can actually become sick if they eat certain foods. I am not convinced that the husband’s dislike of beef or chicken had anything to do with his constitution but rather with his cultural sensibilities but I honored them nonetheless. We had salmon and baked potatoes - and a fine evening, an evening I would have missed if I had played my hand the way my mother had played hers and not asked what my guests wanted to eat.
In the gospel of John, Jesus prays before he goes to his death that the disciples may be one as Jesus and the Father are one. For our evangelist, being with others is the sign of our faith. And for our evangelist John, as others before him, a shared meal was a sign of hospitality and friendship. We all need to eat in order to live but we do not need to eat with others. Eating with others maintains not only our biological needs but invites us into conversation, to share ourselves with others, to pontificate and negotiate, to review our days and make plans for the day to come, to give advice and get advice, to laugh and to cry, to pass along to the next generation the traditions of our families and to hear from the next generation that eating together is boring, better replaced by spending time on Facebook and Twitter. A shared meal is a sign, a sign of our desire to be with others around our common need to eat.
So, our Sunday Eucharist is a meal shared with others, a very token meal for sure, but bread and wine nonetheless. Our eucharist is a sign of hospitality and friendship in much the same way every invitation to dinner (or lunch) is a sign of a desire not just to eat but to include others in our life, a sign of our desire to be with others.
The Eucharist is supremely a sign of a divine mystery – that God desires to be with us and not without us. In Christ, God reaches out to us, inviting us to find our life not alone, but with God and one another. In Christ, God reveals a world in which people are not just nice to each other but love each other, loving to the point of suffering for one another. In the Eucharist, this world is no longer a place in which we are afraid of one another, fearful that if we really share ourselves with others we will be ridiculed or dismissed or possibly exploited.
The Eucharist is a sign of a kingdom yet to come, a kingdom God, not us, will bring into being. In Christ, God reveals God’s kingdom to us and human being as God created humanity to be, a way of being together you and I can only imagine. The Eucharist is a foretaste and always is celebrated under the shadow of the cross. Christ was crucified not because people were not being nice to each other but because folk were afraid of losing something if they loved one another as Christ loved them. And we take part in this holy eucharist so that we might become signs - bread and wine to the whole world, instruments of God’s love, mercy and peace, signs of Christ to others.
One day we will not need signs and sacraments. One day, God will be all in all and the whole world will be gathered together as one, fed by the hand of God, satisfied to the full. “For now, we see in a mirror, dimly,” writes Paul, “but then we will see face to face. Now I only know in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” For now, we must use signs – a sanctuary, a bit of bread, a sip of wine, an empty cross, a baptismal font, a holy table. For now, breaking bread together is the sign of the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.
Sunday, July 26, 2015 Ephesians 3: 14 - 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 6: 1 - 21
When the people saw the sign that Jesus had done , they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet, who is to come into the world.”
John 6: 14
Some years ago an elementary school teacher was teaching his class about road signs. He first held up a red octagon and asked what the sign meant. The class responded in unison: “Stop.” He then held up a yellow circle with a black X running through it and the letter “R” in two of the quadrants and most of the class said “Railroad crossing.” Finally he held up a yellow square with an image of a car and driver in the middle. Two squiggly lines ran out from behind the car. “Does anyone know what this sign means?” he queried. No one in the class said anything for awhile until one young boy offered: “Watch out! Snakes following behind.” We can only hope that by the time that young man learns to drive he will learn squiggly lines mean slippery roads not snakes.
Signs are a kind of short hand, pointing beyond themselves to a deeper level of meaning. Some signs, like road signs, have a single meaning – we all know that a red octagon means “Stop.” But other signs, like the American flag or a wedding ring, carry multiple layers of meaning. The American flag can mean the land that lies between Mexico to the south and Canada to the north; the flag can also mean freedom and democracy and a particular way of life. A wedding ring can mean that I am entitled by law to make decisions on behalf of another in the event they cannot make decisions for themselves; a wedding ring can also be a sign of faithfulness and love. Flags and wedding rings are signs that evoke more than one meaning.
In the gospel of John, Jesus performs seven signs beginning with the wedding at Cana where Jesus turns water into wine and ending with the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In our gospel reading this morning, we hear two of those signs – the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness and Jesus walking on water. Our evangelist John wants us to understand these stories as revelations of glory – the glory of God made known to us in Jesus.
This morning, Jesus feeds five thousand folk with five barley loaves and two fish. And once the crowd is satisfied, they want to take Jesus by force and make him their king. Jesus has given the crowds a sign but the crowds understand the sign to mean God has sent God’s promised Messiah to free Israel from the oppression of Roman domination. That is true but is not the whole truth as Jesus will be crucified and raised from the dead and by the power of the resurrection Israel will not just be free but will be given new life.
In the gospel of John, we have no story in which Jesus and the disciples share a last supper together during which Jesus calls the bread his body and the wine his blood. We have in the gospel of John, no institution of the eucharist. On the night before Jesus dies in the gospel of John, Jesus washes the feet of the disciples and tells them to love one another as he has loved them.
But the story of the feeding of the five thousand is clearly Eucharistic as Jesus takes five barley loaves and two fish, gives thanks and distributes the bread and the fish to the crowds. For our evangelist John, the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness reveals the glory of God made known to us in the Eucharist.
And what is being revealed? First, abundance. Not only are five barley loaves and two fish enough to feed five thousand folk, but there was food leftover, twelve baskets of food! Second, hospitality. Everyone who had followed after Jesus because Jesus was healing the sick were fed. Many of those folk probably thought Jesus was a miracle worker, and there were many miracle workers in first century Palestine. But Jesus did not ask if they believed he was the Son of God. Jesus fed them, one and all. And all were satisfied, we hear.
The eucharist, if we take our evangelist John as a guide, is first a meal, a meal shared with others. And like any dinner with friends, we are fed not just by what’s on our plate but also by the fellowship created by sharing a meal together. At the ECM meeting this past Wednesday, Gary Gravatt fed us with barbecue and macaroni and cheese. The food was great but greater still was the laughter we shared as Micheal Lenahan shared a video clip of a boys’ choir in France singing nothing but “meow.” And that was prompted when I said I had bought a new computer and Micheal, ever hopeful, hoped I was now spending time on Facebook, which I am not.
Our president of ECM, Hunter Gravatt, runs a mean meeting, and we have adjourned the past two months just minutes after being called to order. But new and old business is not the heart of ECM; at the heart of ECM and ECW and coffee hour and whenever we get together is the life we are given through our relationships one with another. We can eat alone and stay alive; we can eat with others and be brought to life. Our evangelist John does not want us to eat alone.
One night a couple of months ago, I invited some friends to dinner. I had never hosted them before and so I asked about their food preferences. Turned out, the wife was gluten intolerant and her husband disliked anything that came from a cow or a chicken. Oh my, I thought, remembering my growing up when you ate what was on your plate or did not eat at all. Eating was a moral discipline for my mother who often reminded us of those who were starving and individual preferences were simply not tolerated. That was long before we became aware that folk are biologically different and can actually become sick if they eat certain foods. I am not convinced that the husband’s dislike of beef or chicken had anything to do with his constitution but rather with his cultural sensibilities but I honored them nonetheless. We had salmon and baked potatoes - and a fine evening, an evening I would have missed if I had played my hand the way my mother had played hers and not asked what my guests wanted to eat.
In the gospel of John, Jesus prays before he goes to his death that the disciples may be one as Jesus and the Father are one. For our evangelist, being with others is the sign of our faith. And for our evangelist John, as others before him, a shared meal was a sign of hospitality and friendship. We all need to eat in order to live but we do not need to eat with others. Eating with others maintains not only our biological needs but invites us into conversation, to share ourselves with others, to pontificate and negotiate, to review our days and make plans for the day to come, to give advice and get advice, to laugh and to cry, to pass along to the next generation the traditions of our families and to hear from the next generation that eating together is boring, better replaced by spending time on Facebook and Twitter. A shared meal is a sign, a sign of our desire to be with others around our common need to eat.
So, our Sunday Eucharist is a meal shared with others, a very token meal for sure, but bread and wine nonetheless. Our eucharist is a sign of hospitality and friendship in much the same way every invitation to dinner (or lunch) is a sign of a desire not just to eat but to include others in our life, a sign of our desire to be with others.
The Eucharist is supremely a sign of a divine mystery – that God desires to be with us and not without us. In Christ, God reaches out to us, inviting us to find our life not alone, but with God and one another. In Christ, God reveals a world in which people are not just nice to each other but love each other, loving to the point of suffering for one another. In the Eucharist, this world is no longer a place in which we are afraid of one another, fearful that if we really share ourselves with others we will be ridiculed or dismissed or possibly exploited.
The Eucharist is a sign of a kingdom yet to come, a kingdom God, not us, will bring into being. In Christ, God reveals God’s kingdom to us and human being as God created humanity to be, a way of being together you and I can only imagine. The Eucharist is a foretaste and always is celebrated under the shadow of the cross. Christ was crucified not because people were not being nice to each other but because folk were afraid of losing something if they loved one another as Christ loved them. And we take part in this holy eucharist so that we might become signs - bread and wine to the whole world, instruments of God’s love, mercy and peace, signs of Christ to others.
One day we will not need signs and sacraments. One day, God will be all in all and the whole world will be gathered together as one, fed by the hand of God, satisfied to the full. “For now, we see in a mirror, dimly,” writes Paul, “but then we will see face to face. Now I only know in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” For now, we must use signs – a sanctuary, a bit of bread, a sip of wine, an empty cross, a baptismal font, a holy table. For now, breaking bread together is the sign of the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 7: 1 – 14a
Sunday, July 19, 2015 Ephesians 2: 11 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 30 – 34, 53 – 56
“As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had a compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”
Mark 6: 34
Just fifty miles south of Bowling Green, an endless battle wages, day in and day out, 365 days of the year. The battleground is the trauma room in the emergency department of MCV and the battle is between life and death. Every day and every night, folk are brought into the trauma room who have been shot, stabbed, and raped; folk who have suffered heart attacks at home and brain injuries sustained in car crashes; children who have drowned and prisoners found unconscious in their cells.
Every trauma is different but all traumas are life threatening. And once in the trauma room, a team of doctors and nurses and chaplains gathers to respond. Some folk are healed and some are not and the warriors for life frequently succumb to what we now call “compassion fatigue.” One afternoon, a six year old boy came into the trauma room after being mauled by a pit bull. This child died in the trauma room, his small body torn asunder by the dog and the chaplain who responded finally had to step away and ask for another chaplain to be with the family and the staff as his grief was more than he could handle.
Compassion comes with a price and this morning we hear that Jesus had compassion for the crowds and resisting his desire for rest and refreshment, continued to teach and to heal. Jesus would not let death have the last word. The folk at MCV do not want death to have the last word either, but much of the time, death wins.
Death wins ultimately because we are limited and finite creatures and not because we are bad or uneducated or driving under the influence. In this world, death will have the last word because we are not all-powerful creatures and we are vulnerable to powers beyond our control, powers that seek to destroy life, to take life away. We can blame the parents of that poor six year old for not keeping a closer eye or the owners of the dog or the manufacturers of the fence that failed. Days before, a child was born with unanticipated abnormalities and died. I am all for good parenting, responsible dog ownership and reliable fences, but you and I cannot keep bad things from happening.
In the New Testament, folk were more willing than we to call a spade a spade and folk called bad things that happen to us like sickness and death, evil. Folk knew in first century Palestine that we often encourage bad things coming our way by the friends we make, the habits we practice or the places we frequent. But the folk of first century Palestine also knew that bad things happen to good people. And the folk of first century Palestine called the power to wreck havoc in the lives of good and righteous folk, evil. Our ancestors knew that they “were subject to evil and death,” in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer.
Our subjugation to the power of evil and death is what Jesus came to deliver us from. In the gospel according to Mark, a cosmic battle is waged between the power of the evil one and the power of God, embodied in Jesus. Immediately, after Jesus is baptized, Jesus is driven into the wilderness to be confronted by Satan who tempts Jesus to worship Satan’s power rather than the power of God. Satan can give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus will worship him.
The power of evil is rooted in our createdness, our constitution as limited and mortal human beings who can suffer violence, whose bodies do get sick and who can die. We are not all powerful but can suffer at the hands of others as well as within a natural order that includes disease, tornadoes and tsunamis. We are vulnerable and strive to keep ourselves safe.
Evil exploits our vulnerabilities, tempting us to dominate others, others who may hurt us. And the ultimate domination of another is murder, the taking of another’s life. The power of evil is the power to kill.
In 1982, theologian Arthur McGill wrote an essay entitled Suffering: A Test of Theological Method. In this essay, McGill describes demonic power as the power to dominate, to subjugate, to attain mastery over someone else. And McGill contrasts this power of domination with the power that Jesus exhibits which is the power of service. “The Son of Man came not to be served,” Jesus says in the gospel of Mark, “but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” This morning Jesus serves the crowds upon whom he has compassion by teaching and healing.
Compassion means “to suffer with” and describes a relationship with one another that is the polar opposite of domination. To suffer with another bids us to take our place beside, not over, another, to be with another not fearing our neediness but opening ourselves to the needs of another. Compassion bids us to give ourselves away, to abandon ourselves to the very power of God.
After contrasting demonic power which seeks to dominate with the power of God which is self-giving love, McGill bids us to wonder which power we worship. Do we really believe that self-giving love has the power to transform the world or do we put our trust in arms, armies and secure borders? Are we willing to risk losing our lives as Jesus lost his, not condemning his enemies but forgiving them?
For McGill, “we are as the power that rules us” and writes:
Men partake of evil whenever they live as if the power of domination had real power to hurt or bless them. Evil is the man who builds up treasure for himself, in order to enhance his own life. Evil is the gentile king who finds fulfillment by lording his authority over his people. And evil also are his citizens who honor him and imagine that his kind of power can give them security. All these people, whether they are aware of it or not, are declaring that the kind of power that rules them is that of domination.
We do not need a hand gun to do violence against others. We do violence whenever we speak to one another in ways that dominate a conversation or resist hearing the voices of others; we do violence whenever we use the internet to blame and to curse rather than to heal and to help; we do violence whenever my need to feel safe and secure in an unsafe and insecure world is bought at your expense.
In the trauma room of MCV, the onslaught of evil is legion and even if you and I could keep folk from being shot, stabbed and raped, the trauma room would still be fighting to save the life of a diabetic in a coma, a woman with cancer who is struggling to breathe and a child who has suffered a head trauma after a bicycle accident. The trauma room at MCV will remain a necessary part of our common life until the kingdom of God comes.
Until the kingdom of God comes, the battle for life and well-being will continue to be opposed by powers that seek to destroy, dominate and oppress, to return God’s very good creation into a dark and meaningless void. Those powers, like the snake in the garden of Eden, are knit into the very fabric of creation and draw life from our fears that we are either alone in a morally neutral universe or subject to a God whose power is not “almighty.” We can deny our weaknesses, worship our desire to overcome our insecurities and destroy whatever seeks to threaten our existence.
Or we can “lay down our life” as Christ laid down his life, convicted in the power of God to raise us, like Christ, to new life, not in spite of, but rather because of, our weaknesses.
As we prayed earlier, may we pray again:
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our
necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have
compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those
things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our
blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday, July 19, 2015 Ephesians 2: 11 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 30 – 34, 53 – 56
“As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had a compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”
Mark 6: 34
Just fifty miles south of Bowling Green, an endless battle wages, day in and day out, 365 days of the year. The battleground is the trauma room in the emergency department of MCV and the battle is between life and death. Every day and every night, folk are brought into the trauma room who have been shot, stabbed, and raped; folk who have suffered heart attacks at home and brain injuries sustained in car crashes; children who have drowned and prisoners found unconscious in their cells.
Every trauma is different but all traumas are life threatening. And once in the trauma room, a team of doctors and nurses and chaplains gathers to respond. Some folk are healed and some are not and the warriors for life frequently succumb to what we now call “compassion fatigue.” One afternoon, a six year old boy came into the trauma room after being mauled by a pit bull. This child died in the trauma room, his small body torn asunder by the dog and the chaplain who responded finally had to step away and ask for another chaplain to be with the family and the staff as his grief was more than he could handle.
Compassion comes with a price and this morning we hear that Jesus had compassion for the crowds and resisting his desire for rest and refreshment, continued to teach and to heal. Jesus would not let death have the last word. The folk at MCV do not want death to have the last word either, but much of the time, death wins.
Death wins ultimately because we are limited and finite creatures and not because we are bad or uneducated or driving under the influence. In this world, death will have the last word because we are not all-powerful creatures and we are vulnerable to powers beyond our control, powers that seek to destroy life, to take life away. We can blame the parents of that poor six year old for not keeping a closer eye or the owners of the dog or the manufacturers of the fence that failed. Days before, a child was born with unanticipated abnormalities and died. I am all for good parenting, responsible dog ownership and reliable fences, but you and I cannot keep bad things from happening.
In the New Testament, folk were more willing than we to call a spade a spade and folk called bad things that happen to us like sickness and death, evil. Folk knew in first century Palestine that we often encourage bad things coming our way by the friends we make, the habits we practice or the places we frequent. But the folk of first century Palestine also knew that bad things happen to good people. And the folk of first century Palestine called the power to wreck havoc in the lives of good and righteous folk, evil. Our ancestors knew that they “were subject to evil and death,” in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer.
Our subjugation to the power of evil and death is what Jesus came to deliver us from. In the gospel according to Mark, a cosmic battle is waged between the power of the evil one and the power of God, embodied in Jesus. Immediately, after Jesus is baptized, Jesus is driven into the wilderness to be confronted by Satan who tempts Jesus to worship Satan’s power rather than the power of God. Satan can give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus will worship him.
The power of evil is rooted in our createdness, our constitution as limited and mortal human beings who can suffer violence, whose bodies do get sick and who can die. We are not all powerful but can suffer at the hands of others as well as within a natural order that includes disease, tornadoes and tsunamis. We are vulnerable and strive to keep ourselves safe.
Evil exploits our vulnerabilities, tempting us to dominate others, others who may hurt us. And the ultimate domination of another is murder, the taking of another’s life. The power of evil is the power to kill.
In 1982, theologian Arthur McGill wrote an essay entitled Suffering: A Test of Theological Method. In this essay, McGill describes demonic power as the power to dominate, to subjugate, to attain mastery over someone else. And McGill contrasts this power of domination with the power that Jesus exhibits which is the power of service. “The Son of Man came not to be served,” Jesus says in the gospel of Mark, “but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” This morning Jesus serves the crowds upon whom he has compassion by teaching and healing.
Compassion means “to suffer with” and describes a relationship with one another that is the polar opposite of domination. To suffer with another bids us to take our place beside, not over, another, to be with another not fearing our neediness but opening ourselves to the needs of another. Compassion bids us to give ourselves away, to abandon ourselves to the very power of God.
After contrasting demonic power which seeks to dominate with the power of God which is self-giving love, McGill bids us to wonder which power we worship. Do we really believe that self-giving love has the power to transform the world or do we put our trust in arms, armies and secure borders? Are we willing to risk losing our lives as Jesus lost his, not condemning his enemies but forgiving them?
For McGill, “we are as the power that rules us” and writes:
Men partake of evil whenever they live as if the power of domination had real power to hurt or bless them. Evil is the man who builds up treasure for himself, in order to enhance his own life. Evil is the gentile king who finds fulfillment by lording his authority over his people. And evil also are his citizens who honor him and imagine that his kind of power can give them security. All these people, whether they are aware of it or not, are declaring that the kind of power that rules them is that of domination.
We do not need a hand gun to do violence against others. We do violence whenever we speak to one another in ways that dominate a conversation or resist hearing the voices of others; we do violence whenever we use the internet to blame and to curse rather than to heal and to help; we do violence whenever my need to feel safe and secure in an unsafe and insecure world is bought at your expense.
In the trauma room of MCV, the onslaught of evil is legion and even if you and I could keep folk from being shot, stabbed and raped, the trauma room would still be fighting to save the life of a diabetic in a coma, a woman with cancer who is struggling to breathe and a child who has suffered a head trauma after a bicycle accident. The trauma room at MCV will remain a necessary part of our common life until the kingdom of God comes.
Until the kingdom of God comes, the battle for life and well-being will continue to be opposed by powers that seek to destroy, dominate and oppress, to return God’s very good creation into a dark and meaningless void. Those powers, like the snake in the garden of Eden, are knit into the very fabric of creation and draw life from our fears that we are either alone in a morally neutral universe or subject to a God whose power is not “almighty.” We can deny our weaknesses, worship our desire to overcome our insecurities and destroy whatever seeks to threaten our existence.
Or we can “lay down our life” as Christ laid down his life, convicted in the power of God to raise us, like Christ, to new life, not in spite of, but rather because of, our weaknesses.
As we prayed earlier, may we pray again:
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our
necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have
compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those
things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our
blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 6: 1 – 5, 12b – 19
Sunday, July 12, 2015 Ephesians 1: 3 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 14 –29
“The king was deeply grieved; yet put f regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.”
Mark 6: 26
This summer, the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama, are remembering a painful moment in their history. Fifty years ago on March 14, 1965, the ushers of St. Paul’s refused to seat those who had come to worship that Sunday who were black. The group included Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels who was murdered in Selma later that summer for his participation in the civil rights movement. Daniels and those with him wanted to worship in an Episcopal church that was historically opposed to integration.
The next two weeks were fraught with tension as the rector, the vestry and the Bishop of Alabama, all sought to respond to the crisis with which they had been confronted. Initially, the vestry agreed that black clergy could be admitted to worship but the admission of anyone else was left to the discretion of the ushers. Reminded of the canons of the church which stated that no communicant or baptized member of the church could be excluded from worship, the vestry met three times in two weeks before opening their doors to people of color, a decision that moved some on the vestry to resign.
The Rev. Jack Alvey, current rector of St. Paul’s Church, wrote recently:
I 've had a chance to read some of the first hand accounts of what happened at the church I now serve, and I've been struck by the efforts of my distant predecessor, the Rev. T. Franklin Mathews, and Bishop Carpenter to find a middle path for St. Paul's, to allow black people to worship at the church without endorsing non-violent civil disobedience or alienating Episcopalians in Selma. It is encouraging to watch the tide slowly turn against segregation in these records, but it's also instructive to watch middle ground disappear, and realize that sometimes people in positions of authority can't avoid making all-or-nothing choices.
All–or–nothing choices are risky for sure and I, for one, prefer the middle ground. But then I hear the words of our gospel reading this morning and realize that Herod was seeking the middle ground and ended up killing a man he knew to be “holy and righteous.” Herod this morning is caught by an oath he makes to his daughter and orders John the Baptist, a man he knows to be holy, to be beheaded. Herod is caught in the middle, trapped between what he knows about John the Baptist and his desire to keep a promise. What Herod did not know was how much his wife Herodias hated John the Baptist. Herodias was smart and she played Herod for all he was worth.
Herod anticipates the same kind of middle muddle that Pilate will display when Jesus is handed over. Pilate finds nothing wrong in what Jesus has done but succumbs to the pressure of the crowds and crucifies Jesus. The religious leaders are satisfied but Pilate has the blood of an innocent man on his hands.
What neither Herod not Pilate could do was claim the truth they knew to be true. Back in 1965, the Rev. Franklin Mathews and Bishop Carpenter were in the same position, trying to hold a church together in the midst of a sea change. Neither the Rev. Mathews nor Bishop Carpenter were liking what Jonathan Daniels was doing. On the Sunday following Jonathan’s death, there were no prayers offered for the repose of his soul. Jonathan Daniels was a trouble maker and all would have preferred Jonathan Daniels would just go back to seminary in Boston and leave Selma alone.
Jonathan Daniels, by the by, was the valedictorian of VMI class of 1961. After graduation, Daniels entered Harvard for a graduate degree in English literature. And then Daniels discerned a call to the priesthood and started studies at the Episcopal Theological School in 1963. While there, Daniels accepted Dr. King’s invitation to all clergy and seminarians to participate in non-violent protests against segregation.
Daniels went to Selma at a time when the Episcopal Church was deeply divided on the issue of race and was hoping to avoid a schism between those churches who wanted to remain segregated and those who did not. Today the issue is not segregation but sexuality and we are struggling to maintain unity amidst a landscape wherein some feel homosexuality is beyond the pale and which others affirm.
Jonathan Daniels, like John the Baptist, was not the problem. The problem is injustice and whenever we are reminded of being unjust, we prefer to kill the prophet rather than acknowledge our culpability. We believe silencing the messenger will silence the message.
Daniels was not a saint and in in his writings we learn that on one occasion he stood face to face with a police officer during a demonstration. The officer was young, like Daniels, and the officer took Daniels to task for trying to persuade another demonstrator to come up front and stand with him. Daniels was standing in a large mud puddle, and the police officer chided Daniels for asking a young girl to get her feet wet. Daniels was oblivious to the puddle in which he was standing and wholly oblivious of what he was asking of the young woman who stood behind him on dry ground. Daniels was quick to perceive the merit of his position but not so quick to perceive the cost to others to take up his cause, to stand in his place.
John the Baptist and Jonathon Daniels were killed because they spoke the truth and the truth was hard to bear. Herod was engaged in an illicit marriage and when John the Baptist confronts Herod, saying: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife,” Herod’s wife, Herodias, becomes enraged and wants to kill John the Baptist. Herod, on the other hand, knows John the Baptist is “holy and righteous” and seeks to protect him. But after Herod makes an oath to his daughter to give her anything she wants, she consults her mother and asks for John’s head.
Pontius Pilate will act in a similar way. Pilate finds no crime against Jesus but is loathe to anger the crowds who call for Jesus’ death. Pilate knows that Jesus has been handed over by the chief priests out of jealousy and that those chief priests have stirred up the crowds. Pilate knows Jesus is innocent but succumbs under the pressure of the shouts to “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Jonathan Daniels learned an important lesson during his sojourn in Selma. Daniels came to realize how easily a desire for justice can become a desire to be right. As Daniels stood face to face with that young police officer, Daniels wanted to be right and that meant the officer had to be wrong. When the officer pointed out that Daniels was asking a young lady to stand in a mud puddle, Daniels heard truth, truth from a man Daniels wanted to be wrong.
None of us has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And whenever we seek to silence the voices of others, we deprive ourselves from learning something new, of seeing a bigger truth beyond that which, by ourselves, we cannot see. We are called to seek the truth not become self-righteous.
Truth was not what St. Paul’s Church was seeking in 1965. In 1965, St. Paul’s wanted to avoid conflict and keep strangers from disturbing their peace. The Roman Empire sought to do the same two thousand years earlier.
On the entrance of the Bishop Payne Library at Virginia Seminary are the words: "Seek the Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will." Those words were first offered as counsel to students by the Rev. William Sparrow who was a member of the faculty from 1841 to 1874, and Dean of the Seminary from 1868 to 1874. Almost one hundred and fifty years later Rev. Sparrow’s words continue to inspire visitors to Virginia Seminary’s Library.
But Rev. Sparrow’s words are not to be taken lightly. Jonathan Daniels sought truth and he was killed at the age of twenty-six. And as Jonathan sought truth, Jonathan discovered that the truth he sought would “come whence it may” and one day it came from a young police officer named Charlie who was blocking Jonathan’s protest against injustice. Sometimes our common humanity is the hardest truth we will ever come to know.
Sunday, July 12, 2015 Ephesians 1: 3 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 14 –29
“The king was deeply grieved; yet put f regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.”
Mark 6: 26
This summer, the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama, are remembering a painful moment in their history. Fifty years ago on March 14, 1965, the ushers of St. Paul’s refused to seat those who had come to worship that Sunday who were black. The group included Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels who was murdered in Selma later that summer for his participation in the civil rights movement. Daniels and those with him wanted to worship in an Episcopal church that was historically opposed to integration.
The next two weeks were fraught with tension as the rector, the vestry and the Bishop of Alabama, all sought to respond to the crisis with which they had been confronted. Initially, the vestry agreed that black clergy could be admitted to worship but the admission of anyone else was left to the discretion of the ushers. Reminded of the canons of the church which stated that no communicant or baptized member of the church could be excluded from worship, the vestry met three times in two weeks before opening their doors to people of color, a decision that moved some on the vestry to resign.
The Rev. Jack Alvey, current rector of St. Paul’s Church, wrote recently:
I 've had a chance to read some of the first hand accounts of what happened at the church I now serve, and I've been struck by the efforts of my distant predecessor, the Rev. T. Franklin Mathews, and Bishop Carpenter to find a middle path for St. Paul's, to allow black people to worship at the church without endorsing non-violent civil disobedience or alienating Episcopalians in Selma. It is encouraging to watch the tide slowly turn against segregation in these records, but it's also instructive to watch middle ground disappear, and realize that sometimes people in positions of authority can't avoid making all-or-nothing choices.
All–or–nothing choices are risky for sure and I, for one, prefer the middle ground. But then I hear the words of our gospel reading this morning and realize that Herod was seeking the middle ground and ended up killing a man he knew to be “holy and righteous.” Herod this morning is caught by an oath he makes to his daughter and orders John the Baptist, a man he knows to be holy, to be beheaded. Herod is caught in the middle, trapped between what he knows about John the Baptist and his desire to keep a promise. What Herod did not know was how much his wife Herodias hated John the Baptist. Herodias was smart and she played Herod for all he was worth.
Herod anticipates the same kind of middle muddle that Pilate will display when Jesus is handed over. Pilate finds nothing wrong in what Jesus has done but succumbs to the pressure of the crowds and crucifies Jesus. The religious leaders are satisfied but Pilate has the blood of an innocent man on his hands.
What neither Herod not Pilate could do was claim the truth they knew to be true. Back in 1965, the Rev. Franklin Mathews and Bishop Carpenter were in the same position, trying to hold a church together in the midst of a sea change. Neither the Rev. Mathews nor Bishop Carpenter were liking what Jonathan Daniels was doing. On the Sunday following Jonathan’s death, there were no prayers offered for the repose of his soul. Jonathan Daniels was a trouble maker and all would have preferred Jonathan Daniels would just go back to seminary in Boston and leave Selma alone.
Jonathan Daniels, by the by, was the valedictorian of VMI class of 1961. After graduation, Daniels entered Harvard for a graduate degree in English literature. And then Daniels discerned a call to the priesthood and started studies at the Episcopal Theological School in 1963. While there, Daniels accepted Dr. King’s invitation to all clergy and seminarians to participate in non-violent protests against segregation.
Daniels went to Selma at a time when the Episcopal Church was deeply divided on the issue of race and was hoping to avoid a schism between those churches who wanted to remain segregated and those who did not. Today the issue is not segregation but sexuality and we are struggling to maintain unity amidst a landscape wherein some feel homosexuality is beyond the pale and which others affirm.
Jonathan Daniels, like John the Baptist, was not the problem. The problem is injustice and whenever we are reminded of being unjust, we prefer to kill the prophet rather than acknowledge our culpability. We believe silencing the messenger will silence the message.
Daniels was not a saint and in in his writings we learn that on one occasion he stood face to face with a police officer during a demonstration. The officer was young, like Daniels, and the officer took Daniels to task for trying to persuade another demonstrator to come up front and stand with him. Daniels was standing in a large mud puddle, and the police officer chided Daniels for asking a young girl to get her feet wet. Daniels was oblivious to the puddle in which he was standing and wholly oblivious of what he was asking of the young woman who stood behind him on dry ground. Daniels was quick to perceive the merit of his position but not so quick to perceive the cost to others to take up his cause, to stand in his place.
John the Baptist and Jonathon Daniels were killed because they spoke the truth and the truth was hard to bear. Herod was engaged in an illicit marriage and when John the Baptist confronts Herod, saying: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife,” Herod’s wife, Herodias, becomes enraged and wants to kill John the Baptist. Herod, on the other hand, knows John the Baptist is “holy and righteous” and seeks to protect him. But after Herod makes an oath to his daughter to give her anything she wants, she consults her mother and asks for John’s head.
Pontius Pilate will act in a similar way. Pilate finds no crime against Jesus but is loathe to anger the crowds who call for Jesus’ death. Pilate knows that Jesus has been handed over by the chief priests out of jealousy and that those chief priests have stirred up the crowds. Pilate knows Jesus is innocent but succumbs under the pressure of the shouts to “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Jonathan Daniels learned an important lesson during his sojourn in Selma. Daniels came to realize how easily a desire for justice can become a desire to be right. As Daniels stood face to face with that young police officer, Daniels wanted to be right and that meant the officer had to be wrong. When the officer pointed out that Daniels was asking a young lady to stand in a mud puddle, Daniels heard truth, truth from a man Daniels wanted to be wrong.
None of us has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And whenever we seek to silence the voices of others, we deprive ourselves from learning something new, of seeing a bigger truth beyond that which, by ourselves, we cannot see. We are called to seek the truth not become self-righteous.
Truth was not what St. Paul’s Church was seeking in 1965. In 1965, St. Paul’s wanted to avoid conflict and keep strangers from disturbing their peace. The Roman Empire sought to do the same two thousand years earlier.
On the entrance of the Bishop Payne Library at Virginia Seminary are the words: "Seek the Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will." Those words were first offered as counsel to students by the Rev. William Sparrow who was a member of the faculty from 1841 to 1874, and Dean of the Seminary from 1868 to 1874. Almost one hundred and fifty years later Rev. Sparrow’s words continue to inspire visitors to Virginia Seminary’s Library.
But Rev. Sparrow’s words are not to be taken lightly. Jonathan Daniels sought truth and he was killed at the age of twenty-six. And as Jonathan sought truth, Jonathan discovered that the truth he sought would “come whence it may” and one day it came from a young police officer named Charlie who was blocking Jonathan’s protest against injustice. Sometimes our common humanity is the hardest truth we will ever come to know.
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 1: 1, 17 – 27
Sunday, June 28, 2015 2 Corinthians 8: 7 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 5: 21 – 43
She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”
Mark 5: 27 - 28
This morning in our gospel reading from Mark, Jesus restores two daughters to the household of Israel, but Jesus does so by breaking the social rules of first century Palestinian Judaism. Our reading begins as a leader of the synagogue named Jairus pleads with Jesus to come and lay hands upon Jairus’ young daughter, who is on the verge of death. Jairus, as head of a household as well as a leader of the synagogue, has a good bit of social capital and a place of honor within the community. And Jesus sets out to accompany Jairus to his home.
But suddenly, Jesus becomes aware that he has been touched and stops. “Who touched my clothes?” Jesus asks and turns around in the pressing crowd to find the person who had touched his cloak. A woman comes forward and we learn that this woman has been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, has suffered under many physicians, has spent all of her means, and is now worse, not better. What we also know is that because this woman has a flow of blood, this woman is considered “unclean,” by Jewish law and not welcome in the synagogue. Moreover, her “uncleanness” was considered contagious so others would keep her at a distance for fear they, too, might be rendered “unclean.”
This woman has no name and no one to plead her case, as did Jairus’ daughter. In desperation, this woman pushes her way through the crowds to touch Jesus’ cloak. This woman touches Jesus in a patriarchal culture that frowned upon women initiating encounters with men and knowing that once she touched Jesus, Jesus, like herself, would become “unclean.” But this woman has heard about Jesus and says: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And she does.
And Jesus stops, much against the desires of his disciples who know that time is of the essence if Jairus’ daughter is to be cured and the impossibility of discovering who had touched Jesus in the press of the crowd. “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” the disciples query, trying to persuade Jesus to keep walking to Jairus’ home.
But Jesus does not keep walking and this unnamed woman comes forward, in fear and trembling, falls down at Jesus’ feet and tells Jesus the “whole truth.” And, calling her “daughter,” Jesus says to this woman, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of our disease.”
This woman has broken the rules of social conduct and is healed. But her healing has been costly because we then learn that Jairus’ daughter has now died. Now Jesus has broken the rules, apparently no longer able to honor the promise Jesus made to Jairus, a promise made to a man of honor because Jesus stopped to affirm the faith of a woman without honor.
“You daughter is dead,” friends tell Jairus, as Jesus is still speaking with the unnamed woman. “Why trouble the teacher any further?” Jairus had approached Jesus as a man of considerable social standing and falling at Jesus’ feet, accords Jesus a similar honor, “a proper granting of honor prior to asking a favor,” in the words of commentator Ched Myers. “But,” Myers continues, “this delay results in the apparent failure of the original mission and violation of the agreement of honor that has been made.”
“Do not fear,” Jesus tells Jairus, “only believe.” Jairus now must act as the unnamed woman acted – in trust that Jesus will heal Jairus’ daughter, not as a matter of honor but rather because Jairus believes Jesus has the power to heal and to restore life. Jairus has just witnessed the healing of a woman who had suffered for twelve years; now Jairus is asked to believe that Jesus can restore life to his twelve year old daughter.
Jairus and the unnamed woman are on opposite ends of the social spectrum in first century Judaism. Jairus is a man, the head of a household and a leader in the synagogue. The unnamed woman is a woman, without male protection in a patriarchal culture, destitute and ostracized by her community because of her disease. Socially and economically, Jairus is somewhere near the top rung of the social ladder whereas this woman is clearly on a bottom rung. Had Jesus honored the social rules of first century Judaism, Jesus would have gone straightway to Jairus’ home, leaving the faith of an unnamed woman unacknowledged, sparing a young girl from dying and leaving Jairus without faith in the power of a living God.
By disturbing the status quo, Jesus restored a woman to her community and family of faith and brought Jairus to trust in the power of God and not in the claims of honor.
But not without the impatience of the disciples urging Jesus to go on to Jairus’ home and not stop to find this unnamed woman who had touched him, not without the friends of Jairus who insisted that Jesus could no longer be of help and not without the laughter of the mourners who ridiculed Jesus for saying “this child is not dead but sleeping.” Jesus was disturbing the status quo in all kinds of way and was met with incredulity and ridicule.
I was in high school when I first heard country music on the radio. I grew up in New Jersey and the music sounded foreign to anything I had heard before. I became aware of such things as pick-up trucks which I had never seen. And I began to laugh at the twang and a culture that seemed to me to be unsophisticated and insistent upon carrying things around in vehicles designed to carry people not stuff.
Redemption began when I went off to college, seeking an affordable education that would broaden my horizons. My desires were realized at Mary Washington in Virginia. And then I fell in love with a man who had always lived in Virginia, who loved country music, and who, yes, drove a pick-up truck. My Yankee stereotypes of the south were falling apart because I had fallen in love. Other stereotypes were falling away as well, as A.G. was Baptist and I was an Episcopalian. We had each grown up with a different status quo and they both were disrupted as we built a common life across our cultural divides of North and South, and ecclesiastical divides of a Baptist church and the Episcopal church.
But not before I had ridiculed (dishonored) a culture with which I was unfamiliar.
Jesus disrupts the status quo this morning because the status quo at the time left some folk out. In the words of Myers, “Mark’s Jesus was subverting the status quo in order to create new possibilities of human community.” The possibilities for human community are endless, but we may need to leave the comfort of home to realize them. God commanded us to love one another not to turn others into clones of ourselves.
We no longer live within a culture bound together by codes of honor but we continue to suffer in a culture in which some are “in” and some are “out.” Those who are “in” are usually able-bodied, educated, and have access to money. Those who are “out” are often disabled, uneducated, with little or no access to money. Consider life in this world if you could not read, needed a wheel chair in order to be mobile or had no rainy day fund. Barriers to full participation in our civic life would face you every day – every time you could not read a piece of mail or a ballot, every time you went to the grocery store but could not reach a box of cereal on the top shelf, and every time you got sick and could not go to work.
The only status quo that will never need to be questioned is the one we call the kingdom of God. Until then, that the status quo is working for us does mean that the status quo is working for all. And if our gospel reading this morning is true, then those on the outside like the unnamed woman are the ones who will lead those of us on the inside like Jairus to a deeper understanding of what it means to trust in the power of God. “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Before this woman touched Jesus’ cloak, she clearly knew she was not well. Earlier in the gospel of Mark, Jesus says: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus lived and died because all was not right with world - not then and not now.
Sunday, June 28, 2015 2 Corinthians 8: 7 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 5: 21 – 43
She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”
Mark 5: 27 - 28
This morning in our gospel reading from Mark, Jesus restores two daughters to the household of Israel, but Jesus does so by breaking the social rules of first century Palestinian Judaism. Our reading begins as a leader of the synagogue named Jairus pleads with Jesus to come and lay hands upon Jairus’ young daughter, who is on the verge of death. Jairus, as head of a household as well as a leader of the synagogue, has a good bit of social capital and a place of honor within the community. And Jesus sets out to accompany Jairus to his home.
But suddenly, Jesus becomes aware that he has been touched and stops. “Who touched my clothes?” Jesus asks and turns around in the pressing crowd to find the person who had touched his cloak. A woman comes forward and we learn that this woman has been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, has suffered under many physicians, has spent all of her means, and is now worse, not better. What we also know is that because this woman has a flow of blood, this woman is considered “unclean,” by Jewish law and not welcome in the synagogue. Moreover, her “uncleanness” was considered contagious so others would keep her at a distance for fear they, too, might be rendered “unclean.”
This woman has no name and no one to plead her case, as did Jairus’ daughter. In desperation, this woman pushes her way through the crowds to touch Jesus’ cloak. This woman touches Jesus in a patriarchal culture that frowned upon women initiating encounters with men and knowing that once she touched Jesus, Jesus, like herself, would become “unclean.” But this woman has heard about Jesus and says: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And she does.
And Jesus stops, much against the desires of his disciples who know that time is of the essence if Jairus’ daughter is to be cured and the impossibility of discovering who had touched Jesus in the press of the crowd. “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” the disciples query, trying to persuade Jesus to keep walking to Jairus’ home.
But Jesus does not keep walking and this unnamed woman comes forward, in fear and trembling, falls down at Jesus’ feet and tells Jesus the “whole truth.” And, calling her “daughter,” Jesus says to this woman, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of our disease.”
This woman has broken the rules of social conduct and is healed. But her healing has been costly because we then learn that Jairus’ daughter has now died. Now Jesus has broken the rules, apparently no longer able to honor the promise Jesus made to Jairus, a promise made to a man of honor because Jesus stopped to affirm the faith of a woman without honor.
“You daughter is dead,” friends tell Jairus, as Jesus is still speaking with the unnamed woman. “Why trouble the teacher any further?” Jairus had approached Jesus as a man of considerable social standing and falling at Jesus’ feet, accords Jesus a similar honor, “a proper granting of honor prior to asking a favor,” in the words of commentator Ched Myers. “But,” Myers continues, “this delay results in the apparent failure of the original mission and violation of the agreement of honor that has been made.”
“Do not fear,” Jesus tells Jairus, “only believe.” Jairus now must act as the unnamed woman acted – in trust that Jesus will heal Jairus’ daughter, not as a matter of honor but rather because Jairus believes Jesus has the power to heal and to restore life. Jairus has just witnessed the healing of a woman who had suffered for twelve years; now Jairus is asked to believe that Jesus can restore life to his twelve year old daughter.
Jairus and the unnamed woman are on opposite ends of the social spectrum in first century Judaism. Jairus is a man, the head of a household and a leader in the synagogue. The unnamed woman is a woman, without male protection in a patriarchal culture, destitute and ostracized by her community because of her disease. Socially and economically, Jairus is somewhere near the top rung of the social ladder whereas this woman is clearly on a bottom rung. Had Jesus honored the social rules of first century Judaism, Jesus would have gone straightway to Jairus’ home, leaving the faith of an unnamed woman unacknowledged, sparing a young girl from dying and leaving Jairus without faith in the power of a living God.
By disturbing the status quo, Jesus restored a woman to her community and family of faith and brought Jairus to trust in the power of God and not in the claims of honor.
But not without the impatience of the disciples urging Jesus to go on to Jairus’ home and not stop to find this unnamed woman who had touched him, not without the friends of Jairus who insisted that Jesus could no longer be of help and not without the laughter of the mourners who ridiculed Jesus for saying “this child is not dead but sleeping.” Jesus was disturbing the status quo in all kinds of way and was met with incredulity and ridicule.
I was in high school when I first heard country music on the radio. I grew up in New Jersey and the music sounded foreign to anything I had heard before. I became aware of such things as pick-up trucks which I had never seen. And I began to laugh at the twang and a culture that seemed to me to be unsophisticated and insistent upon carrying things around in vehicles designed to carry people not stuff.
Redemption began when I went off to college, seeking an affordable education that would broaden my horizons. My desires were realized at Mary Washington in Virginia. And then I fell in love with a man who had always lived in Virginia, who loved country music, and who, yes, drove a pick-up truck. My Yankee stereotypes of the south were falling apart because I had fallen in love. Other stereotypes were falling away as well, as A.G. was Baptist and I was an Episcopalian. We had each grown up with a different status quo and they both were disrupted as we built a common life across our cultural divides of North and South, and ecclesiastical divides of a Baptist church and the Episcopal church.
But not before I had ridiculed (dishonored) a culture with which I was unfamiliar.
Jesus disrupts the status quo this morning because the status quo at the time left some folk out. In the words of Myers, “Mark’s Jesus was subverting the status quo in order to create new possibilities of human community.” The possibilities for human community are endless, but we may need to leave the comfort of home to realize them. God commanded us to love one another not to turn others into clones of ourselves.
We no longer live within a culture bound together by codes of honor but we continue to suffer in a culture in which some are “in” and some are “out.” Those who are “in” are usually able-bodied, educated, and have access to money. Those who are “out” are often disabled, uneducated, with little or no access to money. Consider life in this world if you could not read, needed a wheel chair in order to be mobile or had no rainy day fund. Barriers to full participation in our civic life would face you every day – every time you could not read a piece of mail or a ballot, every time you went to the grocery store but could not reach a box of cereal on the top shelf, and every time you got sick and could not go to work.
The only status quo that will never need to be questioned is the one we call the kingdom of God. Until then, that the status quo is working for us does mean that the status quo is working for all. And if our gospel reading this morning is true, then those on the outside like the unnamed woman are the ones who will lead those of us on the inside like Jairus to a deeper understanding of what it means to trust in the power of God. “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Before this woman touched Jesus’ cloak, she clearly knew she was not well. Earlier in the gospel of Mark, Jesus says: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus lived and died because all was not right with world - not then and not now.
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost I Samuel 17: 1a, 4 – 11, 19 – 23, 32 – 49
Sunday, June 21, 2015 2 Corinthians 6: 1- 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 4: 35 – 41
A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
Mark 4: 37
“Pure concentrated evil,” “unfathomable and unspeakable,” were words used this week to describe the slaughter of nine people gathered for a Wednesday night Bible study in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter is white and twenty-one and was welcomed into the midst of an historic African Methodist Episcopal Church. An hour later, nine people were dead.
“Pure concentrated evil,” “unfathcharlestonomable and unspeakable,” are words that can describe the massacre at Emmanuel AME Church this week as well as the Holocaust, the Arminian genocide and the massacre of the innocents by King Herod after Herod learns of Jesus’ birth. The face of evil is legion and this week that face became the face of a young man named Dylann Roof.
No one knows exactly why this young man targeted a black Bible study group. News on the street is that Dylann Roof felt disenfranchised as a white male and blamed blacks who he said, “were taking over the country.” Was Dylann raised to believe white people were superior to blacks? Was Dylann on drugs? Nobody knows at this point and I suspect we will hear in the months to come that the problem is guns or drugs or education.
The problem is evil and that problem has been with us since the dawn of human being. For reasons we cannot fathom, God created a beautiful garden and placed a man and a woman in the garden to “till it and keep it.” God also put a snake in that garden, a snake that tricked Adam and Eve into believing God did not have their best interests at heart.
Before Eve took a bite of that infamous apple, God had created a beautiful world out of the chaos of a dark and formless void, a nothingness imaged in the book of Genesis as deep and dark water. Out of these lifeless dark waters God brought forth life – the day and the night, the sun and the moon, the plants and human being. God created an ordered and beautiful cosmos out of the chaos of dark waters that existed “in the beginning” and the snake in the garden wanted to unravel what God had done, to return God’s beautiful world back into a formless and lifeless void.
Evil is a part of the fabric of life for reasons we cannot understand and evil is what God in Christ came to redeem us from. Every now and again, as happened this week, we come face to face with the reality of evil but that does not mean that evil is not at work both within us and without us seeking to unravel God’s very good creation. Denying the reality of evil simply gives evil more power; presuming we have the power to overpower evil turns us into gods and makes Christ’s death on the cross completely unnecessary.
The sea, in Jewish imagination, represented all the forces of chaos and destruction, a fury once unleashed took pity on no one. In our gospel reading this morning, the violence of the sea threatens to overwhelm the disciples. Battling high winds and rough water, the disciples struggle to keep from drowning in the waters of the sea of Galilee. Desperate to save themselves, the disciples wake up Jesus who is asleep, screaming: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus calms the sea, rescuing the disciples from a watery grave so that they can continue their journey “across to the other side” of the Sea of Galilee. The sea will not defeat God’s purposes.
Up until now in the gospel of Mark, Jesus has been preaching, teaching and healing in Galilee, a predominately Jewish environment, amazing the crowds and threatening the status quo. Now, for the first time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus takes his message to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, into gentile territory, into a land deemed unclean and beyond the pale of God’s love. When Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, Jesus breaks down the barrier between Jew and gentile, between the chosen people and the not-so-chosen people, between those who are “in” and those who are “out,” proclaiming his message of the advent of the kingdom of God to all people, not just to the people of Israel. The disciples are on a mission, a mission to reconcile the world to God and strangers to one another.
And the mission is almost swamped by the sea.
The sea threatens to thwart the mission of God to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the Jew first and then also to the whole world. So Jesus rebukes the wind, and says to the sea: “’Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.”
And in that dead calm, Jesus accuses the disciples of cowardice, saying: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” The disciples, on that night in the Sea of Galilee, were blinded by their fear, seeking only to preserve their own lives, unable to see themselves as a part of the mission of God which not even the sea could overcome. The sea threatened them and they drew back in fear.
The disciples respond to Jesus’ rebuke but not in the way our translation would lead us to think. Our translation reads: “And they were filled with great awe.” The Greek reads: “And they were afraid with a terrible fear.” The disciples are not struck dumb in the presence of this man who has authority even over the sea; rather the disciples are filled with terror that Jesus may be asking of them more than they want to give.
Our gospel reading this morning is not primarily a story about a miracle rescue in the midst of stormy seas. Our gospel reading is an exhortation for courage in the face of the inevitable challenges we will face as we take our place in the mission of God. As we work for justice, freedom and peace, the seas will rise up against us. Whenever we challenge the status quo, speak truth to power, and labor on behalf of the poor, we will meet storms on many fronts, some without and some within. But the sea will not thwart the mission of God.
On Tuesday, I joined other local pastors both black and white at Shiloh Church just across the street. After our meeting the pastor of Shiloh, Arnett Rogiers, and I pondered the idea of a shared bible study. He was excited and so was I. But that was before Wednesday. Now I have to wonder if being together will put us at risk as we seek to break down barriers that others wish to keep in place.
Perhaps the greatest temptation than any of us face is the temptation to believe all is right with the world in which we live. All is not right with the world nor is all right within our own hearts. We live and move and have our being within a fallen world and until God’s kingdom comes, evil will continue to try to thwart God’s good purposes and trouble the waters. What happened in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday was evil but so is every ethnic joke and any thought, word or deed that ridicules others because of their gender, the color of their skin, their faith, their age, their sexual orientation or their mental status. We do not need a 45 – caliber Glock pistol to be rude and crude and every time we seek to privilege our way of being by diminishing that of others, we are colluding with evil.
What I have come to appreciate in the church is how very different our experiences of life in this world really are. For some of us, life in this world has been reasonably pleasant and uneventful. For others, life in this world has been marked by poverty, injustice and a lack of real and authentic love. And, for better and worse, our experiences color the way we see things. We cannot simply step out of our lives nor change what we have experienced. We can however recognize how what we have experienced has shaped us and what others have experienced have shaped them. We can, in other words, listen to others whose experiences of life in this world may be very different from ours.
Dylann Roof has been apprehended and will no longer be a threat. Evil has not been apprehended and continues to haunt this world in which we live. And if we think we are somehow immune from the power of evil, we already in the grasp of evil. The disciples this morning are in a boat, an ancient symbol for the church, struggling to save themselves. When they realize they cannot, they wake up Jesus. Oh, that today we might hearken to his voice!
Sunday, June 21, 2015 2 Corinthians 6: 1- 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 4: 35 – 41
A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
Mark 4: 37
“Pure concentrated evil,” “unfathomable and unspeakable,” were words used this week to describe the slaughter of nine people gathered for a Wednesday night Bible study in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter is white and twenty-one and was welcomed into the midst of an historic African Methodist Episcopal Church. An hour later, nine people were dead.
“Pure concentrated evil,” “unfathcharlestonomable and unspeakable,” are words that can describe the massacre at Emmanuel AME Church this week as well as the Holocaust, the Arminian genocide and the massacre of the innocents by King Herod after Herod learns of Jesus’ birth. The face of evil is legion and this week that face became the face of a young man named Dylann Roof.
No one knows exactly why this young man targeted a black Bible study group. News on the street is that Dylann Roof felt disenfranchised as a white male and blamed blacks who he said, “were taking over the country.” Was Dylann raised to believe white people were superior to blacks? Was Dylann on drugs? Nobody knows at this point and I suspect we will hear in the months to come that the problem is guns or drugs or education.
The problem is evil and that problem has been with us since the dawn of human being. For reasons we cannot fathom, God created a beautiful garden and placed a man and a woman in the garden to “till it and keep it.” God also put a snake in that garden, a snake that tricked Adam and Eve into believing God did not have their best interests at heart.
Before Eve took a bite of that infamous apple, God had created a beautiful world out of the chaos of a dark and formless void, a nothingness imaged in the book of Genesis as deep and dark water. Out of these lifeless dark waters God brought forth life – the day and the night, the sun and the moon, the plants and human being. God created an ordered and beautiful cosmos out of the chaos of dark waters that existed “in the beginning” and the snake in the garden wanted to unravel what God had done, to return God’s beautiful world back into a formless and lifeless void.
Evil is a part of the fabric of life for reasons we cannot understand and evil is what God in Christ came to redeem us from. Every now and again, as happened this week, we come face to face with the reality of evil but that does not mean that evil is not at work both within us and without us seeking to unravel God’s very good creation. Denying the reality of evil simply gives evil more power; presuming we have the power to overpower evil turns us into gods and makes Christ’s death on the cross completely unnecessary.
The sea, in Jewish imagination, represented all the forces of chaos and destruction, a fury once unleashed took pity on no one. In our gospel reading this morning, the violence of the sea threatens to overwhelm the disciples. Battling high winds and rough water, the disciples struggle to keep from drowning in the waters of the sea of Galilee. Desperate to save themselves, the disciples wake up Jesus who is asleep, screaming: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus calms the sea, rescuing the disciples from a watery grave so that they can continue their journey “across to the other side” of the Sea of Galilee. The sea will not defeat God’s purposes.
Up until now in the gospel of Mark, Jesus has been preaching, teaching and healing in Galilee, a predominately Jewish environment, amazing the crowds and threatening the status quo. Now, for the first time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus takes his message to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, into gentile territory, into a land deemed unclean and beyond the pale of God’s love. When Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, Jesus breaks down the barrier between Jew and gentile, between the chosen people and the not-so-chosen people, between those who are “in” and those who are “out,” proclaiming his message of the advent of the kingdom of God to all people, not just to the people of Israel. The disciples are on a mission, a mission to reconcile the world to God and strangers to one another.
And the mission is almost swamped by the sea.
The sea threatens to thwart the mission of God to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the Jew first and then also to the whole world. So Jesus rebukes the wind, and says to the sea: “’Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.”
And in that dead calm, Jesus accuses the disciples of cowardice, saying: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” The disciples, on that night in the Sea of Galilee, were blinded by their fear, seeking only to preserve their own lives, unable to see themselves as a part of the mission of God which not even the sea could overcome. The sea threatened them and they drew back in fear.
The disciples respond to Jesus’ rebuke but not in the way our translation would lead us to think. Our translation reads: “And they were filled with great awe.” The Greek reads: “And they were afraid with a terrible fear.” The disciples are not struck dumb in the presence of this man who has authority even over the sea; rather the disciples are filled with terror that Jesus may be asking of them more than they want to give.
Our gospel reading this morning is not primarily a story about a miracle rescue in the midst of stormy seas. Our gospel reading is an exhortation for courage in the face of the inevitable challenges we will face as we take our place in the mission of God. As we work for justice, freedom and peace, the seas will rise up against us. Whenever we challenge the status quo, speak truth to power, and labor on behalf of the poor, we will meet storms on many fronts, some without and some within. But the sea will not thwart the mission of God.
On Tuesday, I joined other local pastors both black and white at Shiloh Church just across the street. After our meeting the pastor of Shiloh, Arnett Rogiers, and I pondered the idea of a shared bible study. He was excited and so was I. But that was before Wednesday. Now I have to wonder if being together will put us at risk as we seek to break down barriers that others wish to keep in place.
Perhaps the greatest temptation than any of us face is the temptation to believe all is right with the world in which we live. All is not right with the world nor is all right within our own hearts. We live and move and have our being within a fallen world and until God’s kingdom comes, evil will continue to try to thwart God’s good purposes and trouble the waters. What happened in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday was evil but so is every ethnic joke and any thought, word or deed that ridicules others because of their gender, the color of their skin, their faith, their age, their sexual orientation or their mental status. We do not need a 45 – caliber Glock pistol to be rude and crude and every time we seek to privilege our way of being by diminishing that of others, we are colluding with evil.
What I have come to appreciate in the church is how very different our experiences of life in this world really are. For some of us, life in this world has been reasonably pleasant and uneventful. For others, life in this world has been marked by poverty, injustice and a lack of real and authentic love. And, for better and worse, our experiences color the way we see things. We cannot simply step out of our lives nor change what we have experienced. We can however recognize how what we have experienced has shaped us and what others have experienced have shaped them. We can, in other words, listen to others whose experiences of life in this world may be very different from ours.
Dylann Roof has been apprehended and will no longer be a threat. Evil has not been apprehended and continues to haunt this world in which we live. And if we think we are somehow immune from the power of evil, we already in the grasp of evil. The disciples this morning are in a boat, an ancient symbol for the church, struggling to save themselves. When they realize they cannot, they wake up Jesus. Oh, that today we might hearken to his voice!
The Third Sunday after Pentecost I Samuel 15: 34 – 16: 13
Sunday, June 14, 2015 2 Corinthians 5: 6 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 4: 26 -34
Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
I Samuel 15: 35
I ended my sermon last Sunday saying “God’s will will be done,” and after reading our lessons for this morning, want to begin where I left off. This morning we hear two parables about the kingdom of God from the gospel of Mark and in our Old Testament reading from I Samuel, we hear the story of the election of David to be the king of Israel. In both our reading from the gospel of Mark and that of I Samuel, God’s will is done but not in a way we can understand.
The story of King David is familiar to anyone who went to Sunday School. David took down Goliath with a sling shot, brought the ark of God to Jerusalem and fell in love with Bathsheba. Jesus was descended from the line of David and Mary and Joseph travelled to the city of David to give birth to their first born son.
What may not be familiar to us is that David was the second king of Israel, following the kingship of Saul. And Saul was anointed king by the charismatic judge Samuel after Israel said they wanted a king so that they could be like the other nations. Prior to Saul, judges like Samuel would be raised up to lead the then twelve tribes of Israel, usually at times when the twelve tribes needed to defend themselves and then the judge would disappear until the next crisis called them into action. But Israel got tired of these judges and wanted a king.
God did not think a king was in their best interests but succumbed to their request and Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel. Saul did alright for awhile but then lost it, as we say, no longer able or willing to obey God. And now God tells Samuel God has rejected Saul and found a new king.
The king God has chosen is the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, the youngest of eight sons and this morning we hear how each of the sons came before Samuel only to be passed over until, at last the youngest son David is brought in from the fields and God tells Samuel: “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”
What we do not usually learn in Sunday School is that Saul’s son Jonathan became David’s dearest friend and Saul’s daughter Michal fell in love in David. We usually do not hear that Saul came to hate David and sought to kill him. And we rarely hear that when David had the chance to kill Saul, David spares him, and not just once.
What we also do not usually hear is that after David assumes the throne following Saul’s death, David brings the ark of God to Jerusalem with great rejoicing. David dances before the ark scantily dressed and his wife Michal is horrified by his behavior. We also do not usually hear that David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband. Upon seeing the beautiful Bathsheba, David cannot resist and then later orders her husband Uriah the Hittite to be killed in the line of battle. “The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David,” we hear this morning after David is anointed, “from that day forward,” and we begin a story that is filled with exploits fitting for a made for T.V. movie.
And this is the man God has picked and through whom Israel will become a great nation. This is the man from whose line will come Joseph who will raise Jesus who will meet Paul on the road to Damascus, who will go out and preach to the gentiles, fulfilling God’s promise of long ago to Abraham that one day Abraham’s family would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
God’s will will be done but not in any way that we can understand. David was an adulterer and a murderer as well as a fine soldier and a man of compassion. David was not a model of righteousness although David had many enduring characteristics. But God chose David to play a part in God’s unfolding drama and apparently whatever character flaws David had were not an issue.
In other words, this was not about David but was all about God. And God used David to accomplish God’s purposes, flaws and all, purposes that David could not even begin to imagine when David’s story was unfolding.
In our reading from the gospel of Mark this morning we hear two parables about the kingdom of God. In one, a seed grows secretly and in the other a small seed becomes a large bush. Both parables suggest that the kingdom of God is brought forth irresistibly by a power other than our own. God’s kingdom will come as assuredly as the natural process of germination.
We are not pawns in the hand of God and we know all seeds do not germinate. We are free to make choices and some of the choices we make will bring us heartache and pain rather than the fullness of life God desires for us. But we are limited and do not have the power to thwart God’s will. The Bible is an eloquent witness to the truth that God will bring in God’s kingdom through us and often in spite of us. That we cannot always understand why events unfold as they do, is yet but a reminder that you and I only see “in part,” in the words of Saint Paul. The big picture is not ours to see.
The Bible is full of characters like David, very human folk who were anything but saints. Delilah tricks Samson to reveal the secret of his strength so Samson’s enemies can kill him; Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, is so notorious we continue to use her name to this day to describe a wicked woman; Saul, before Saul becomes Paul, participates in the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr; King Herod orders the massacre of all children under the age of two when he learns of the birth of Jesus; Judas betrays Jesus; and Pontius Pilate is too weak to release an innocent man. God uses all of them to further God’s plan of salvation.
That God’s will will be done is good news for all of us who fret over making a mistake, agonize over decisions and fear being wrong. King David was just plain wrong on any number of occasions but continued, nonetheless, to be an instrument through whom God was working out God’s will to reconcile us to God and one another. Scoundrels abound in the Bible and not one of them was able to thwart God from raising Jesus from the dead.
Our Revision reflection sessions have ended and in July the vestry will go on retreat with the Revision Task Force to consider if and how this parish might reflect more brightly the “good news.” I want to thank everyone who filled out a survey or attended any of the reflection sessions. And I want to allay any concerns we may have about where all of our surveying and reflecting might lead. That is yet to be determined but we can be assured that no matter what the vestry decides to do or not do, none of us has the power to thwart God’s will. God’s will will be done, regardless of the decisions we make. I trust that prayerful and considered decisions will be made but also know that God will remain faithful to us no matter what. Wherever this Revision process takes us, God is for us and not against us, enfolding us in a great drama to make known the glory of God in all the world.
Which means we can risk making mistakes, change direction if we need to, try on some new ideas, celebrate our strengths and not fear our limitations. Be assured God will use us to accomplish God’s good purposes and already knows the sort of tools God is working with! If you have participated in this journey of revisioning, I suspect you have come to realize that we are all different and do not all see things the same way. That is the way God created us to be.
But like any family taking a long road trip, (and our Revision process has been a bit of a road trip) the trip will be colored by all sorts of adventures. “Oh, no,” Mom exclaims from the passenger seat, “I forgot to stop the mail!” “Not to worry,” says Dad, “Did you remember to lock the basement door?” “You said you would do that,” she responds. “I’m hungry,” come from the lips of a five year old in the back seat, minutes after leaving the driveway, way too soon to justify a stop. But when the words, “I need to go the bathroom,” are voiced by his three year old sister, the journey detours into the nearest way station. Meanwhile the dog is throwing up and the GPS is suggesting a detour to avoid heavy traffic. Add to all of that an over heated engine or a flat tire and the family trip has become a veritable test of endurance. And then comes the prayer uttered by a tired child who asks: “Are we there yet?”
The life of faith both for us and perhaps even for God is an act of trust. For our part, we need to trust God is leading us; for God’s part, God is trusting our very frail and limited human natures to accomplish God’s purposes. The Kingdom of God has yet to come. We are not there yet. God is faithful; may we be so inclined.
Sunday, June 14, 2015 2 Corinthians 5: 6 – 17
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 4: 26 -34
Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
I Samuel 15: 35
I ended my sermon last Sunday saying “God’s will will be done,” and after reading our lessons for this morning, want to begin where I left off. This morning we hear two parables about the kingdom of God from the gospel of Mark and in our Old Testament reading from I Samuel, we hear the story of the election of David to be the king of Israel. In both our reading from the gospel of Mark and that of I Samuel, God’s will is done but not in a way we can understand.
The story of King David is familiar to anyone who went to Sunday School. David took down Goliath with a sling shot, brought the ark of God to Jerusalem and fell in love with Bathsheba. Jesus was descended from the line of David and Mary and Joseph travelled to the city of David to give birth to their first born son.
What may not be familiar to us is that David was the second king of Israel, following the kingship of Saul. And Saul was anointed king by the charismatic judge Samuel after Israel said they wanted a king so that they could be like the other nations. Prior to Saul, judges like Samuel would be raised up to lead the then twelve tribes of Israel, usually at times when the twelve tribes needed to defend themselves and then the judge would disappear until the next crisis called them into action. But Israel got tired of these judges and wanted a king.
God did not think a king was in their best interests but succumbed to their request and Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel. Saul did alright for awhile but then lost it, as we say, no longer able or willing to obey God. And now God tells Samuel God has rejected Saul and found a new king.
The king God has chosen is the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, the youngest of eight sons and this morning we hear how each of the sons came before Samuel only to be passed over until, at last the youngest son David is brought in from the fields and God tells Samuel: “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”
What we do not usually learn in Sunday School is that Saul’s son Jonathan became David’s dearest friend and Saul’s daughter Michal fell in love in David. We usually do not hear that Saul came to hate David and sought to kill him. And we rarely hear that when David had the chance to kill Saul, David spares him, and not just once.
What we also do not usually hear is that after David assumes the throne following Saul’s death, David brings the ark of God to Jerusalem with great rejoicing. David dances before the ark scantily dressed and his wife Michal is horrified by his behavior. We also do not usually hear that David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband. Upon seeing the beautiful Bathsheba, David cannot resist and then later orders her husband Uriah the Hittite to be killed in the line of battle. “The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David,” we hear this morning after David is anointed, “from that day forward,” and we begin a story that is filled with exploits fitting for a made for T.V. movie.
And this is the man God has picked and through whom Israel will become a great nation. This is the man from whose line will come Joseph who will raise Jesus who will meet Paul on the road to Damascus, who will go out and preach to the gentiles, fulfilling God’s promise of long ago to Abraham that one day Abraham’s family would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
God’s will will be done but not in any way that we can understand. David was an adulterer and a murderer as well as a fine soldier and a man of compassion. David was not a model of righteousness although David had many enduring characteristics. But God chose David to play a part in God’s unfolding drama and apparently whatever character flaws David had were not an issue.
In other words, this was not about David but was all about God. And God used David to accomplish God’s purposes, flaws and all, purposes that David could not even begin to imagine when David’s story was unfolding.
In our reading from the gospel of Mark this morning we hear two parables about the kingdom of God. In one, a seed grows secretly and in the other a small seed becomes a large bush. Both parables suggest that the kingdom of God is brought forth irresistibly by a power other than our own. God’s kingdom will come as assuredly as the natural process of germination.
We are not pawns in the hand of God and we know all seeds do not germinate. We are free to make choices and some of the choices we make will bring us heartache and pain rather than the fullness of life God desires for us. But we are limited and do not have the power to thwart God’s will. The Bible is an eloquent witness to the truth that God will bring in God’s kingdom through us and often in spite of us. That we cannot always understand why events unfold as they do, is yet but a reminder that you and I only see “in part,” in the words of Saint Paul. The big picture is not ours to see.
The Bible is full of characters like David, very human folk who were anything but saints. Delilah tricks Samson to reveal the secret of his strength so Samson’s enemies can kill him; Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, is so notorious we continue to use her name to this day to describe a wicked woman; Saul, before Saul becomes Paul, participates in the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr; King Herod orders the massacre of all children under the age of two when he learns of the birth of Jesus; Judas betrays Jesus; and Pontius Pilate is too weak to release an innocent man. God uses all of them to further God’s plan of salvation.
That God’s will will be done is good news for all of us who fret over making a mistake, agonize over decisions and fear being wrong. King David was just plain wrong on any number of occasions but continued, nonetheless, to be an instrument through whom God was working out God’s will to reconcile us to God and one another. Scoundrels abound in the Bible and not one of them was able to thwart God from raising Jesus from the dead.
Our Revision reflection sessions have ended and in July the vestry will go on retreat with the Revision Task Force to consider if and how this parish might reflect more brightly the “good news.” I want to thank everyone who filled out a survey or attended any of the reflection sessions. And I want to allay any concerns we may have about where all of our surveying and reflecting might lead. That is yet to be determined but we can be assured that no matter what the vestry decides to do or not do, none of us has the power to thwart God’s will. God’s will will be done, regardless of the decisions we make. I trust that prayerful and considered decisions will be made but also know that God will remain faithful to us no matter what. Wherever this Revision process takes us, God is for us and not against us, enfolding us in a great drama to make known the glory of God in all the world.
Which means we can risk making mistakes, change direction if we need to, try on some new ideas, celebrate our strengths and not fear our limitations. Be assured God will use us to accomplish God’s good purposes and already knows the sort of tools God is working with! If you have participated in this journey of revisioning, I suspect you have come to realize that we are all different and do not all see things the same way. That is the way God created us to be.
But like any family taking a long road trip, (and our Revision process has been a bit of a road trip) the trip will be colored by all sorts of adventures. “Oh, no,” Mom exclaims from the passenger seat, “I forgot to stop the mail!” “Not to worry,” says Dad, “Did you remember to lock the basement door?” “You said you would do that,” she responds. “I’m hungry,” come from the lips of a five year old in the back seat, minutes after leaving the driveway, way too soon to justify a stop. But when the words, “I need to go the bathroom,” are voiced by his three year old sister, the journey detours into the nearest way station. Meanwhile the dog is throwing up and the GPS is suggesting a detour to avoid heavy traffic. Add to all of that an over heated engine or a flat tire and the family trip has become a veritable test of endurance. And then comes the prayer uttered by a tired child who asks: “Are we there yet?”
The life of faith both for us and perhaps even for God is an act of trust. For our part, we need to trust God is leading us; for God’s part, God is trusting our very frail and limited human natures to accomplish God’s purposes. The Kingdom of God has yet to come. We are not there yet. God is faithful; may we be so inclined.
The Second Sunday After Pentecost I Samuel 8: 4 – 20, 11: 14 – 15
Sunday, June 7, 2015 2 Corinthians 4: 13 – 5: 1
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 3: 20 – 35
When Jesus’ family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”
Mark 3: 21
In 1862, a novel was published called Les Miserables, a story written by Victor Hugo which depicts the struggles of the working class in nineteenth century Paris. Many folk are familiar with the story through the musical by the same name which opened on Broadway in 1987, the longest running musical, according to their website. Les Miserables is a story about sin and redemption, about the hope of freedom and the cost of revolution.
The hero of Les Miserables is a man named Jean Valjean who is sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He escapes and is hunted for the next twenty years by his antagonist, a French police inspector named Javert. Jean Valjean leads an exemplary life, reaching out to others but never disclosing his real identity as an escaped convict. Inspector Javert never gives up hope of finding this escaped convict and returning him to prison for his crime.
Meanwhile a revolution is brewing and Jean ValJean joins the revolutionaries. Inspector Javert, on the other hand, believes the revolutionaries are lawless bandits and infiltrates their ranks in an attempt to thwart the revolution. Once his rouse is exposed, Javert comes face to face with his nemesis, who now must decide the fate of a man who has hunted him for years.
The tables have turned and the revolutionaries believe Inspector Javert deserves to die for his crime against them. But Jean Valjean encourages the revolutionaries to spare Javert, to simply send him away rather than take his life. Inspector Javert, who has devoted his life to enforcing the law, has no way to understand this mad act of redemption and commits suicide.
In Javert’s world, such an act of forgiveness makes no sense. Crimes cannot be simply forgiven but rather must be paid for in accordance with the rule of law. Jean Valjean should have killed Inspector Javert and when he spared his life, Javert’s world fell apart, a world predicated on law and punishment. Javert deserved to be punished, not set free. Inspector Javert had been redeemed and he could not live with that.
Redemption means to buy back, to be released from a debt. And in the gospel of Mark, redemption is what Jesus came to do, to be “a ransom for many.” In the gospel of Mark, the power that rules this world is the power of evil, the power of Satan, and it is from this power Jesus came to redeem us, to deliver us from. But just as Inspector Javert’s world was thrown into confusion by Jan Valjean’s act of redemption, so too was the world of first century Judaism into which Jesus came, proclaiming that the “kingdom of God has come near.”
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus’ family thinks he is mad and the religious leaders think Jesus is possessed by demons. The kingdom of God has come near but those who have watched Jesus grow up and those who have religiously guarded the commandments of God to the Jewish people, are now accusing Jesus of either being deranged or in the grip of Satan. What began as good news, has now, very quickly in the gospel of Mark, turned into bad news.
The scribes accuse Jesus, who has been healing the sick, casting out demons, and breaking certain Jewish laws, of being in league with Satan – that the power which is enabling Jesus to do these things comes not from God but from the devil. And Jesus responds by saying that a house divided cannot stand – if Satan is casting out demons, then Satan is destroying Satan’s own kingdom from within and the scribes should be celebrating.
But, rather than celebrate these healings and to see those healings as a sign of God’s power at work, the scribes see only a threat to their way of life – a life predicated upon laws designed to keep Israel “holy,” – laws which included not working on the Sabbath which Jesus had done, not sharing table fellowship with sinners which Jesus had done and fasting on certain occasions which Jesus has not done. Jesus has broken the law – how can the power at work in Jesus be from God?
The kingdom of God has come near, but that reality becomes a source of conflict and consternation rather than celebration. Jesus is not behaving according to the rules that had been laid down, rules that were meant to keep the people of Israel set apart, to make Israel “holy” as God is holy. And folk, good righteous folk, do not know what to do. That God is rescuing them, redeeming them, is not clear and they would prefer to hang on to the old world and its ways rather than be free.
Jesus is offering to lead Israel into a new and final exodus, but the scribes and his family this morning do not believe they are captives, in need of redemption and see Jesus as the one in chains, in bondage to Satan. Like Inspector Javert, the scribes and Jesus’ family know the rules and redemption would come from following those rules, not breaking them.
What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is to take what is holy and call it unholy. What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is to turn the Redeemer into someone who needs to be redeemed. What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is insist that Jesus is the problem, not the power of unholy spirits blowing through their midst.
From time to time in our gatherings, the question has been raised: “What would we do if Jesus suddenly showed up in our midst?” Our gospel reading this morning suggests that we might think him mad or possessed and seek to restrain him. At a minimum, we might find ourselves unsettled and disturbed. We might prefer to remain with what we know rather than to follow a man who calls us into a strange new world, a redeemed world, a world in which we have been set free to be the persons God created us to be.
In our Old Testament reading this morning from First Samuel we hear how the people Israel wanted a king so that they might be governed “like the other nations.” Up until this point in their history, Israel had been governed by charismatic judges who, filled with the Spirit of God, came and went as God chose. These free spirits arrived on the scene after Israel had made it to the Promised Land, led there by God with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Being guided by pillars of cloud and fire and later by charismatics, was less than satisfying for Israel. Now they want a king, like the other nations. A king would insure some predictability to life, something God refused to promise. God had promised deliverance, but refused to give Israel a game plan.
So Israel got a king, indeed many kings, some of whom were good and some of whom were not. And Israel became like the other nations for better and for worse. What Israel got was predictability; what Israel lost was a sense that Israel’s life was dependent upon God and not on a king.
And then Jesus shows up bearing the Spirit of God, doing new things, breaking the rules, ushering in a new day by the power of the Holy Spirit, that same unpredictable Spirit of God that had delivered (redeemed) a bunch of Egyptian slaves from the bondage of Pharoah. God was offering deliverance again, but Israel would have to give up her certainty that she knew the ways of God.
Two weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended upon a bunch of simple fisher folk and transformed them into the Church. We are a people governed, as Israel had been, by the Spirit of God. That Spirit is, we confess in the Creed, life giving, but as Israel knew all too well, nothing we can control. The Spirit was fictionally present when Jean Valjean released Inspector Javert. And when that happened Javert lost his way, not knowing what to do in a world governed by a free God who prefers to redeem rather than to keep folk in bondage to ways of living that consistently assign holiness to some and deny holiness to others.
That we all are unholy was the great Reformation insight of Martin Luther. We are saved by grace through faith and not by how well we follow the rules whatever they may be. We are all in need of redemption and not just once, but throughout our lives, both in this world as well as the world to come. To be redeemed means to be bought back and that means we are all held in some sort of bondage, some captivity from which Jesus wants to free us. Our task is to live into the reality of our redemption and recognize when unholy spirits are holding us captive. God has redeemed us and God will continue to redeem us because in the end, God’s will will be done.
Sunday, June 7, 2015 2 Corinthians 4: 13 – 5: 1
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 3: 20 – 35
When Jesus’ family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”
Mark 3: 21
In 1862, a novel was published called Les Miserables, a story written by Victor Hugo which depicts the struggles of the working class in nineteenth century Paris. Many folk are familiar with the story through the musical by the same name which opened on Broadway in 1987, the longest running musical, according to their website. Les Miserables is a story about sin and redemption, about the hope of freedom and the cost of revolution.
The hero of Les Miserables is a man named Jean Valjean who is sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He escapes and is hunted for the next twenty years by his antagonist, a French police inspector named Javert. Jean Valjean leads an exemplary life, reaching out to others but never disclosing his real identity as an escaped convict. Inspector Javert never gives up hope of finding this escaped convict and returning him to prison for his crime.
Meanwhile a revolution is brewing and Jean ValJean joins the revolutionaries. Inspector Javert, on the other hand, believes the revolutionaries are lawless bandits and infiltrates their ranks in an attempt to thwart the revolution. Once his rouse is exposed, Javert comes face to face with his nemesis, who now must decide the fate of a man who has hunted him for years.
The tables have turned and the revolutionaries believe Inspector Javert deserves to die for his crime against them. But Jean Valjean encourages the revolutionaries to spare Javert, to simply send him away rather than take his life. Inspector Javert, who has devoted his life to enforcing the law, has no way to understand this mad act of redemption and commits suicide.
In Javert’s world, such an act of forgiveness makes no sense. Crimes cannot be simply forgiven but rather must be paid for in accordance with the rule of law. Jean Valjean should have killed Inspector Javert and when he spared his life, Javert’s world fell apart, a world predicated on law and punishment. Javert deserved to be punished, not set free. Inspector Javert had been redeemed and he could not live with that.
Redemption means to buy back, to be released from a debt. And in the gospel of Mark, redemption is what Jesus came to do, to be “a ransom for many.” In the gospel of Mark, the power that rules this world is the power of evil, the power of Satan, and it is from this power Jesus came to redeem us, to deliver us from. But just as Inspector Javert’s world was thrown into confusion by Jan Valjean’s act of redemption, so too was the world of first century Judaism into which Jesus came, proclaiming that the “kingdom of God has come near.”
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus’ family thinks he is mad and the religious leaders think Jesus is possessed by demons. The kingdom of God has come near but those who have watched Jesus grow up and those who have religiously guarded the commandments of God to the Jewish people, are now accusing Jesus of either being deranged or in the grip of Satan. What began as good news, has now, very quickly in the gospel of Mark, turned into bad news.
The scribes accuse Jesus, who has been healing the sick, casting out demons, and breaking certain Jewish laws, of being in league with Satan – that the power which is enabling Jesus to do these things comes not from God but from the devil. And Jesus responds by saying that a house divided cannot stand – if Satan is casting out demons, then Satan is destroying Satan’s own kingdom from within and the scribes should be celebrating.
But, rather than celebrate these healings and to see those healings as a sign of God’s power at work, the scribes see only a threat to their way of life – a life predicated upon laws designed to keep Israel “holy,” – laws which included not working on the Sabbath which Jesus had done, not sharing table fellowship with sinners which Jesus had done and fasting on certain occasions which Jesus has not done. Jesus has broken the law – how can the power at work in Jesus be from God?
The kingdom of God has come near, but that reality becomes a source of conflict and consternation rather than celebration. Jesus is not behaving according to the rules that had been laid down, rules that were meant to keep the people of Israel set apart, to make Israel “holy” as God is holy. And folk, good righteous folk, do not know what to do. That God is rescuing them, redeeming them, is not clear and they would prefer to hang on to the old world and its ways rather than be free.
Jesus is offering to lead Israel into a new and final exodus, but the scribes and his family this morning do not believe they are captives, in need of redemption and see Jesus as the one in chains, in bondage to Satan. Like Inspector Javert, the scribes and Jesus’ family know the rules and redemption would come from following those rules, not breaking them.
What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is to take what is holy and call it unholy. What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is to turn the Redeemer into someone who needs to be redeemed. What the scribes and Jesus’ family do this day is insist that Jesus is the problem, not the power of unholy spirits blowing through their midst.
From time to time in our gatherings, the question has been raised: “What would we do if Jesus suddenly showed up in our midst?” Our gospel reading this morning suggests that we might think him mad or possessed and seek to restrain him. At a minimum, we might find ourselves unsettled and disturbed. We might prefer to remain with what we know rather than to follow a man who calls us into a strange new world, a redeemed world, a world in which we have been set free to be the persons God created us to be.
In our Old Testament reading this morning from First Samuel we hear how the people Israel wanted a king so that they might be governed “like the other nations.” Up until this point in their history, Israel had been governed by charismatic judges who, filled with the Spirit of God, came and went as God chose. These free spirits arrived on the scene after Israel had made it to the Promised Land, led there by God with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Being guided by pillars of cloud and fire and later by charismatics, was less than satisfying for Israel. Now they want a king, like the other nations. A king would insure some predictability to life, something God refused to promise. God had promised deliverance, but refused to give Israel a game plan.
So Israel got a king, indeed many kings, some of whom were good and some of whom were not. And Israel became like the other nations for better and for worse. What Israel got was predictability; what Israel lost was a sense that Israel’s life was dependent upon God and not on a king.
And then Jesus shows up bearing the Spirit of God, doing new things, breaking the rules, ushering in a new day by the power of the Holy Spirit, that same unpredictable Spirit of God that had delivered (redeemed) a bunch of Egyptian slaves from the bondage of Pharoah. God was offering deliverance again, but Israel would have to give up her certainty that she knew the ways of God.
Two weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended upon a bunch of simple fisher folk and transformed them into the Church. We are a people governed, as Israel had been, by the Spirit of God. That Spirit is, we confess in the Creed, life giving, but as Israel knew all too well, nothing we can control. The Spirit was fictionally present when Jean Valjean released Inspector Javert. And when that happened Javert lost his way, not knowing what to do in a world governed by a free God who prefers to redeem rather than to keep folk in bondage to ways of living that consistently assign holiness to some and deny holiness to others.
That we all are unholy was the great Reformation insight of Martin Luther. We are saved by grace through faith and not by how well we follow the rules whatever they may be. We are all in need of redemption and not just once, but throughout our lives, both in this world as well as the world to come. To be redeemed means to be bought back and that means we are all held in some sort of bondage, some captivity from which Jesus wants to free us. Our task is to live into the reality of our redemption and recognize when unholy spirits are holding us captive. God has redeemed us and God will continue to redeem us because in the end, God’s will will be done.
The Day of Pentecost Acts 2:1 – 21
Sunday, May 24, 2015 Romans 8: 22 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 26 - 27; 16: 4b – 15
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Acts 2: 2
Today is the feast of Pentecost and on this day we give thanks to God for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God now poured out upon all flesh. In our reading from Acts, the disciples are baptized by the Holy Spirit with “the rush of a violent wind” and tongues of fire. “Filled with the Holy Spirit,” they begin to speak in languages other than their own, so that peoples from all over the known world could hear about “God’s deeds of power.” Fifty days after Easter, God lets the Spirit loose, enabling people from every nation under heaven to hear a fresh word from God in their own language.
“In the last days, it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Peter quotes from the prophet Joel this morning, seeing in the events of Pentecost the beginning of the last days, the inauguration of a new age, an age that will come to a close when “God is all in all.”
In the beginning, the spirit of God “brooded” over the primeval waters, hovering above the formless lifeless earth, like a power waiting to be unleashed, a dam about to be broken. And then God spoke, and this Spirit, this life giving power, brought forth the moon and the sun and the whale and the aardvark and the daffodil and you and me. From nothing, God brought forth everything that is, by the power of God’s Spirit, the power of God to bring forth life. And when life went awry, when human beings thought they had the power to bring forth life without God’s help, the Spirit of God was given to Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob and then Moses and then to a holy host of prophets who all were graced by the Spirit of God to do what God had done – bring life to the world.
And now, in an amazing and wholly unexpected act, God lets the Spirit loose, giving God’s Spirit to the disciples, sending them out into the world to bring life to the world, anointing them all without exception with the gift of God’s Spirit, the same Spirit that was given by God to Christ at his baptism. You and I, dear friends, have the power to bring life to this world, the same life giving power that set the stars in the sky. And those stars are all brilliant and all different.
We dramatized the experience of Pentecost this morning as we heard the reading from Acts in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Swahili. Read simultaneously in these different languages, what you and I heard was babbling, “a confusing murmur,” according to Webster’s Dictionary. The confusion that is wrought by different languages was brought about by God when God confused the language of peoples in the story of the Tower of Babel about which we read in the book of Genesis. God wrought that confusion of language in response to a people who said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Unfortunately, what God wanted from this primeval people was exactly that – that they be spread abroad “to till and to keep” the whole world, the world God had made and into which God placed humans to care for the world God loved. So now God confuses their language so that “they will not understand one another’s speech.”
But now on the day of Pentecost, Jews “from every nation under heaven” hear of God’s mighty deeds of power each in their own language. What once was scattered is now brought together by the Holy Spirit, brought together not by eliminating the differences in their languages but brought together as they heard the same Word, the Word of God.
“Perhaps,” writes Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann, “the miracle of Pentecost concerns a new gift of speech,” “a fresh capacity to listen because the word of God blows over the chaos one more time.” At the Tower of Babel, the people were only hearing their voice, their language, their culture and their customs and no one was listening to God.
When we presume we speak the same language we are apt to presume that others are like us – that others think the way we do, like what we like and want to do what we we are wont to do. We are apt to presume that God speaks to us only and not to others. That was the presumption of those gathered to build a Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel was meant to build a monument to human homogeneity that was never intended by God. What God wanted was a world peopled by different people who all were able to hear God’s voice, each in their own language. God changes the game on Pentecost and invites us into fellowship with folk who speak, both literally and figuratively, a different language.
But what the disciples encounter this morning are rushing winds and tongues of fire. Rushing winds and tongues of fire are images that can be frightening. Several years ago I met with a Sunday School class just before Pentecost and one of those young people said she wasn’t so sure she wanted the Holy Spirit. “Violent winds” and “tongues of fire” sound a bit unsettling, like being swept away by a hurricane rather than soothed by the waters of a Calgon bath. She was right to be wary of the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the gospels, the first thing that the Spirit of God does is to send Jesus out into the desert. No sooner do we read that the Spirit, like a dove, descended upon Christ, then we hear that this very same Spirit, “drives” or “leads” Jesus into the desert (in the gospel of Mark the Spirit “drives” Jesus into the desert; in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Spirit “leads” Jesus into the desert.) The first act of the Spirit landed Jesus in the desert, a place where Jesus had to discern who he was, what he was sent by God to do, and which spirits were of God. In the desert, Jesus had to listen because in the desert the voices were legion, voices tempting Jesus to do and to be what Jesus was not called to do or to be.
We don’t, though, for the most part identify the work of the Spirit as a push into the desert. We, more often, see the Spirit at work when we feel “lifted up,” when our worship is heartfelt and joyous, when, in the moment, we know in our bones, this is the way God meant for the world to be. We, like Paul, know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and this fruit is hard to miss. We want to get up and dance when the glory of God breaks through into our world awash as our world is in doom and gloom, lovelessness and joylessness. When the Spirit breaks in upon us, we, like our more charismatic brothers and sisters, want to lift our hands in praise and thanksgiving.
But the Spirit of God hovers among us not just some of the time but all of the time. God is faithful and does not withdraw his Spirit from us. We, on the other hand, are often reluctant to get in touch with the Spirit of God. Maybe intuitively we fear the power of this Spirit which drove Jesus into the wilderness and the early church to face persecution. We would prefer that the Spirit baptize our plans and projects rather than admit that it is we who are baptized by the Spirit into God’s plans and projects.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans which we hear this morning, Paul tells us that “God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit.” God knows our deepest longings, even if we do not or cannot name them. God longs for us to know the fullness of joy, to know we have a place in God’s kingdom and to be witnesses in all the world that no one is beyond the reach of God’s love. The Holy Spirit is God’s desire to be with us and for us, so that we can be with and for others.
But having your heart searched can seem a little like major surgery. The Spirit will never force itself upon us. The Spirit will never “make” us do anything. But we do not have power to get rid of the Spirit. And that Spirit will nudge us and goad us and sometimes trouble us, bidding us this way rather than that way, to do one thing rather than another, inviting us to do and to be what God would have us do and be.
And sometimes, just like those in our reading from Acts who thought the disciples were drunk at nine o’clock in the morning, some folk will think you are crazy. God’s ways do not always make sense to us. What seems good for others may not be good for you. Discerning the spirits, distinguishing the Holy Spirit from all the other spirits that live in our hearts means we need spiritual companions who will listen to our rumblings and ruminations, help us sift and sort through our hopes and fears and give us encouragement to follow where the Spirit leads. We need, in short, people who will pray with us and for us.
I like to think that the principal work of the church is discernment, the seeking out of the Holy Spirit, distinguishing between the Spirit of God and all the other spirits that keep us from following this God who loves us. Both individually and collectively, the church should be that place where we seek to follow the will of God. Individually, our worth ought not be measured by our bank accounts or the number of degrees that we hold. Collectively, our success as a parish ought not be measured by how many members we have or how big our budget is. Individually and collectively, our highest calling is to be faithful and to follow the Spirit of God wherever God, in God’s wisdom, deems to lead us.
In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Could we possibly want for anything more?
Sunday, May 24, 2015 Romans 8: 22 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 26 - 27; 16: 4b – 15
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Acts 2: 2
Today is the feast of Pentecost and on this day we give thanks to God for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God now poured out upon all flesh. In our reading from Acts, the disciples are baptized by the Holy Spirit with “the rush of a violent wind” and tongues of fire. “Filled with the Holy Spirit,” they begin to speak in languages other than their own, so that peoples from all over the known world could hear about “God’s deeds of power.” Fifty days after Easter, God lets the Spirit loose, enabling people from every nation under heaven to hear a fresh word from God in their own language.
“In the last days, it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Peter quotes from the prophet Joel this morning, seeing in the events of Pentecost the beginning of the last days, the inauguration of a new age, an age that will come to a close when “God is all in all.”
In the beginning, the spirit of God “brooded” over the primeval waters, hovering above the formless lifeless earth, like a power waiting to be unleashed, a dam about to be broken. And then God spoke, and this Spirit, this life giving power, brought forth the moon and the sun and the whale and the aardvark and the daffodil and you and me. From nothing, God brought forth everything that is, by the power of God’s Spirit, the power of God to bring forth life. And when life went awry, when human beings thought they had the power to bring forth life without God’s help, the Spirit of God was given to Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob and then Moses and then to a holy host of prophets who all were graced by the Spirit of God to do what God had done – bring life to the world.
And now, in an amazing and wholly unexpected act, God lets the Spirit loose, giving God’s Spirit to the disciples, sending them out into the world to bring life to the world, anointing them all without exception with the gift of God’s Spirit, the same Spirit that was given by God to Christ at his baptism. You and I, dear friends, have the power to bring life to this world, the same life giving power that set the stars in the sky. And those stars are all brilliant and all different.
We dramatized the experience of Pentecost this morning as we heard the reading from Acts in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Swahili. Read simultaneously in these different languages, what you and I heard was babbling, “a confusing murmur,” according to Webster’s Dictionary. The confusion that is wrought by different languages was brought about by God when God confused the language of peoples in the story of the Tower of Babel about which we read in the book of Genesis. God wrought that confusion of language in response to a people who said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Unfortunately, what God wanted from this primeval people was exactly that – that they be spread abroad “to till and to keep” the whole world, the world God had made and into which God placed humans to care for the world God loved. So now God confuses their language so that “they will not understand one another’s speech.”
But now on the day of Pentecost, Jews “from every nation under heaven” hear of God’s mighty deeds of power each in their own language. What once was scattered is now brought together by the Holy Spirit, brought together not by eliminating the differences in their languages but brought together as they heard the same Word, the Word of God.
“Perhaps,” writes Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann, “the miracle of Pentecost concerns a new gift of speech,” “a fresh capacity to listen because the word of God blows over the chaos one more time.” At the Tower of Babel, the people were only hearing their voice, their language, their culture and their customs and no one was listening to God.
When we presume we speak the same language we are apt to presume that others are like us – that others think the way we do, like what we like and want to do what we we are wont to do. We are apt to presume that God speaks to us only and not to others. That was the presumption of those gathered to build a Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel was meant to build a monument to human homogeneity that was never intended by God. What God wanted was a world peopled by different people who all were able to hear God’s voice, each in their own language. God changes the game on Pentecost and invites us into fellowship with folk who speak, both literally and figuratively, a different language.
But what the disciples encounter this morning are rushing winds and tongues of fire. Rushing winds and tongues of fire are images that can be frightening. Several years ago I met with a Sunday School class just before Pentecost and one of those young people said she wasn’t so sure she wanted the Holy Spirit. “Violent winds” and “tongues of fire” sound a bit unsettling, like being swept away by a hurricane rather than soothed by the waters of a Calgon bath. She was right to be wary of the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the gospels, the first thing that the Spirit of God does is to send Jesus out into the desert. No sooner do we read that the Spirit, like a dove, descended upon Christ, then we hear that this very same Spirit, “drives” or “leads” Jesus into the desert (in the gospel of Mark the Spirit “drives” Jesus into the desert; in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Spirit “leads” Jesus into the desert.) The first act of the Spirit landed Jesus in the desert, a place where Jesus had to discern who he was, what he was sent by God to do, and which spirits were of God. In the desert, Jesus had to listen because in the desert the voices were legion, voices tempting Jesus to do and to be what Jesus was not called to do or to be.
We don’t, though, for the most part identify the work of the Spirit as a push into the desert. We, more often, see the Spirit at work when we feel “lifted up,” when our worship is heartfelt and joyous, when, in the moment, we know in our bones, this is the way God meant for the world to be. We, like Paul, know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and this fruit is hard to miss. We want to get up and dance when the glory of God breaks through into our world awash as our world is in doom and gloom, lovelessness and joylessness. When the Spirit breaks in upon us, we, like our more charismatic brothers and sisters, want to lift our hands in praise and thanksgiving.
But the Spirit of God hovers among us not just some of the time but all of the time. God is faithful and does not withdraw his Spirit from us. We, on the other hand, are often reluctant to get in touch with the Spirit of God. Maybe intuitively we fear the power of this Spirit which drove Jesus into the wilderness and the early church to face persecution. We would prefer that the Spirit baptize our plans and projects rather than admit that it is we who are baptized by the Spirit into God’s plans and projects.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans which we hear this morning, Paul tells us that “God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit.” God knows our deepest longings, even if we do not or cannot name them. God longs for us to know the fullness of joy, to know we have a place in God’s kingdom and to be witnesses in all the world that no one is beyond the reach of God’s love. The Holy Spirit is God’s desire to be with us and for us, so that we can be with and for others.
But having your heart searched can seem a little like major surgery. The Spirit will never force itself upon us. The Spirit will never “make” us do anything. But we do not have power to get rid of the Spirit. And that Spirit will nudge us and goad us and sometimes trouble us, bidding us this way rather than that way, to do one thing rather than another, inviting us to do and to be what God would have us do and be.
And sometimes, just like those in our reading from Acts who thought the disciples were drunk at nine o’clock in the morning, some folk will think you are crazy. God’s ways do not always make sense to us. What seems good for others may not be good for you. Discerning the spirits, distinguishing the Holy Spirit from all the other spirits that live in our hearts means we need spiritual companions who will listen to our rumblings and ruminations, help us sift and sort through our hopes and fears and give us encouragement to follow where the Spirit leads. We need, in short, people who will pray with us and for us.
I like to think that the principal work of the church is discernment, the seeking out of the Holy Spirit, distinguishing between the Spirit of God and all the other spirits that keep us from following this God who loves us. Both individually and collectively, the church should be that place where we seek to follow the will of God. Individually, our worth ought not be measured by our bank accounts or the number of degrees that we hold. Collectively, our success as a parish ought not be measured by how many members we have or how big our budget is. Individually and collectively, our highest calling is to be faithful and to follow the Spirit of God wherever God, in God’s wisdom, deems to lead us.
In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Could we possibly want for anything more?
The Seventh Sunday of Easter Acts 1: 15 – 17, 21 – 26
Sunday, May 17, 2015 I John 5: 9 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 17: 6 – 19
“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
John 17: 18
Today is the Seventh Sunday in Easter and next Sunday on Pentecost, we will mark the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we remember the appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples, appearances that ended when, in the words of the Creed, “Christ ascended into heaven.” Ascension Day was this past Thursday and so today is the Sunday after the Ascension.
On this Sunday, we hear Jesus pray for the disciples as Jesus prepares to leave the disciples and return to his Father in heaven. Jesus prays that God will guard and protect the disciples as Jesus has done during his time with them. The disciples, Jesus says, “do not belong to the world” just as Jesus “did not belong to the world,” and the disciples will be threatened by the world, a world that crucified Jesus.
The words we hear this morning from the gospel of John were first heard by a community at the turn of the first century living in Ephesus, a port town in what is now Turkey. This community included both gentiles and Jews, who proclaimed that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah promised by God and who had been crucified and raised from the dead. This community had begun life as a sect within Judaism, but now at the end of the first century was no longer welcome in the synagogues. For the Jews in the community, this meant leaving behind a way of life that was shaped by special foods and festivals, ritual practices and perhaps members of their own families who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.
This community was also threatened by the Roman Empire because they would not worship the Roman Emperor. When the gospel of John was written, we know Christians were persecuted and put to death under the reigns of both the Roman Emperor Domitian and later the Emperor Trajan. In a world in which John’s community was no longer considered Jewish and considered a threat to Roman culture and practice, it comes as no surprise that this community would feel as though they “did not belong,” as our gospel reading says, and that the world “hated” them.
Yet, into this world the disciples are sent, prays Jesus prays to his Father on the eve of his crucifixion: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Jesus sends his followers into the world to continue Jesus’ mission, a world that in the first century would have preferred that those crazy Christians just go away.
So today we all are commissioned, sent into a world that although very different from the world of the first century, still needs to hear and see “good news.” We are sent, on this Sunday following the Ascension, to continue Jesus’ mission in the world – “to bring good news to the poor,” “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” in the words of the prophet Isaiah. You have been given a mission by God and sent out into the world “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” in the words of the Catechism.
Feeling overwhelmed? Take heart; next Sunday is Pentecost and we will receive the Holy Spirit to guide, encourage and comfort us along the way.
On Ascension Day, I joined the people of St. George’s Church in Fredericksburg as they welcomed their twenty-seventh rector, the Reverend Joe Hensley. The preacher, Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple of North Carolina, spoke about what it means to be “sent” by a God who sent Abraham to a land God would show him, sent Moses to free a band of slaves in Egypt, sent those same slaves to wander in a wilderness for forty years, sent Israel into and out of exile and sent Jesus, the very Word of God, to take on human flesh and to live and die as one of us. Bishop Anne noted that God had sent Joe to St. George’s and sent all of us gathered there Thursday night to share in this celebration, a celebration that brought together parishioners of St. George’s, Joe’s friends and family, members of his former parish and clergy colleagues.
Joe and I were in seminary together before God sent me to Richmond and Joe to North Carolina. Then God sent me to Bowling Green and now Joe to Fredericksburg and as our paths crossed after so many years, I marveled at the mystery of God’s sendings which always are for the fulfillment of God’s purposes in the world, purposes that are meant to be life-giving. When I met Joe some months back at a Region I meeting, Joe, new to Virginia, was glad to see a familiar face.
We worship a God who is on a mission and who is always sending us out to do the work God would have us do. God sent you to church this morning with a mission and whether you know it or not, God has work for you to do this very day. God may have sent you to welcome a stranger, bind up the broken-hearted, encourage a child, heal what is broken, bridge barriers that divide, bear another’s burdens or share in someone else’s joy. God sent you here this morning to further God’s work in the world.
When I was a young girl, my Mom, unable to find a parking space, sent me one day into the grocery store to buy a zucchini squash while she circled the block. Glad to oblige, I went into the store and came out with a cucumber! Mom gently explained that while cucumbers and zucchinis look a lot alike, they are different and made a tossed salad rather than her intended zucchini casserole. We do not always get our mission right!
But our crucified and risen Lord will keep sending us out, just like those first disciples, not for our sakes but for the sake of the world. Those first disciples were sent out into a hostile world and should have vanished from history. They did not and our gathering here this morning is the fruit of God’s mission accomplished through them. What we know is that we and the whole world abide in God’s love and we this day are invited to share in that grand adventure of God, to bring the world back round right.
This morning we are saying goodbye to Karis, Rob, James and Robby White as they take leave of St. Asaph’s, moving from Richmond closer to Charlottesville and Rob’s new job. Karis has taught Sunday School for several years, Rob has shared his culinary skills with us and James and Robby have helped me preach, most notably on Ash Wednesday last year. God sent this family to us and now is sending this family to a new place. I have absolutely no doubt that God will continue to send these four lovely folk into the world to be “good news.” They certainly have been “good news” for us and I will miss them.
On Thursday, at St. George’s, just before the readings, we sang the Torah Song, which we have sung here from time to time. Mark Sullivan has been known to shake a tambourine as we sing: “Open your eyes, O faithful people.” As we sang, our Bishop Susan, Bishop Anne from North Carolina, the deacon at St. George’s and Joe joined hands and danced around the altar. The dance was spontaneous, inspired by the Holy Spirit and brought surprise and joy to all of us gathered in that place. God sends us out to bring joy to the world and that unexpected moment gave life to all of us – those who danced and those who watched the dancing. When was the last time you saw not one, but two bishops dance around an altar?
One last word about sendings – when I was in seminary God sent me to a church in New Carrollton, Maryland as a seminarian. The church was multi-cultural with folk from over a hundred different nations. One Sunday, our African choir led us in our offertory, moving folk to dance around the altar with their gifts. I had been raised on The 1928 Book of Common Prayer and was not so sure about this dancing. I hesitated and then I got up and I danced. That is, to date, the only time I have danced around an altar in church and when I returned to my seat I felt free. Maybe what keeps us oppressed is the evil one, as Jesus says this morning, the power of afoot in the world that keeps us from trying something new, going new places, tempting us not to dance with God and with one another.
Sunday, May 17, 2015 I John 5: 9 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 17: 6 – 19
“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
John 17: 18
Today is the Seventh Sunday in Easter and next Sunday on Pentecost, we will mark the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we remember the appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples, appearances that ended when, in the words of the Creed, “Christ ascended into heaven.” Ascension Day was this past Thursday and so today is the Sunday after the Ascension.
On this Sunday, we hear Jesus pray for the disciples as Jesus prepares to leave the disciples and return to his Father in heaven. Jesus prays that God will guard and protect the disciples as Jesus has done during his time with them. The disciples, Jesus says, “do not belong to the world” just as Jesus “did not belong to the world,” and the disciples will be threatened by the world, a world that crucified Jesus.
The words we hear this morning from the gospel of John were first heard by a community at the turn of the first century living in Ephesus, a port town in what is now Turkey. This community included both gentiles and Jews, who proclaimed that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah promised by God and who had been crucified and raised from the dead. This community had begun life as a sect within Judaism, but now at the end of the first century was no longer welcome in the synagogues. For the Jews in the community, this meant leaving behind a way of life that was shaped by special foods and festivals, ritual practices and perhaps members of their own families who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.
This community was also threatened by the Roman Empire because they would not worship the Roman Emperor. When the gospel of John was written, we know Christians were persecuted and put to death under the reigns of both the Roman Emperor Domitian and later the Emperor Trajan. In a world in which John’s community was no longer considered Jewish and considered a threat to Roman culture and practice, it comes as no surprise that this community would feel as though they “did not belong,” as our gospel reading says, and that the world “hated” them.
Yet, into this world the disciples are sent, prays Jesus prays to his Father on the eve of his crucifixion: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Jesus sends his followers into the world to continue Jesus’ mission, a world that in the first century would have preferred that those crazy Christians just go away.
So today we all are commissioned, sent into a world that although very different from the world of the first century, still needs to hear and see “good news.” We are sent, on this Sunday following the Ascension, to continue Jesus’ mission in the world – “to bring good news to the poor,” “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” in the words of the prophet Isaiah. You have been given a mission by God and sent out into the world “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” in the words of the Catechism.
Feeling overwhelmed? Take heart; next Sunday is Pentecost and we will receive the Holy Spirit to guide, encourage and comfort us along the way.
On Ascension Day, I joined the people of St. George’s Church in Fredericksburg as they welcomed their twenty-seventh rector, the Reverend Joe Hensley. The preacher, Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple of North Carolina, spoke about what it means to be “sent” by a God who sent Abraham to a land God would show him, sent Moses to free a band of slaves in Egypt, sent those same slaves to wander in a wilderness for forty years, sent Israel into and out of exile and sent Jesus, the very Word of God, to take on human flesh and to live and die as one of us. Bishop Anne noted that God had sent Joe to St. George’s and sent all of us gathered there Thursday night to share in this celebration, a celebration that brought together parishioners of St. George’s, Joe’s friends and family, members of his former parish and clergy colleagues.
Joe and I were in seminary together before God sent me to Richmond and Joe to North Carolina. Then God sent me to Bowling Green and now Joe to Fredericksburg and as our paths crossed after so many years, I marveled at the mystery of God’s sendings which always are for the fulfillment of God’s purposes in the world, purposes that are meant to be life-giving. When I met Joe some months back at a Region I meeting, Joe, new to Virginia, was glad to see a familiar face.
We worship a God who is on a mission and who is always sending us out to do the work God would have us do. God sent you to church this morning with a mission and whether you know it or not, God has work for you to do this very day. God may have sent you to welcome a stranger, bind up the broken-hearted, encourage a child, heal what is broken, bridge barriers that divide, bear another’s burdens or share in someone else’s joy. God sent you here this morning to further God’s work in the world.
When I was a young girl, my Mom, unable to find a parking space, sent me one day into the grocery store to buy a zucchini squash while she circled the block. Glad to oblige, I went into the store and came out with a cucumber! Mom gently explained that while cucumbers and zucchinis look a lot alike, they are different and made a tossed salad rather than her intended zucchini casserole. We do not always get our mission right!
But our crucified and risen Lord will keep sending us out, just like those first disciples, not for our sakes but for the sake of the world. Those first disciples were sent out into a hostile world and should have vanished from history. They did not and our gathering here this morning is the fruit of God’s mission accomplished through them. What we know is that we and the whole world abide in God’s love and we this day are invited to share in that grand adventure of God, to bring the world back round right.
This morning we are saying goodbye to Karis, Rob, James and Robby White as they take leave of St. Asaph’s, moving from Richmond closer to Charlottesville and Rob’s new job. Karis has taught Sunday School for several years, Rob has shared his culinary skills with us and James and Robby have helped me preach, most notably on Ash Wednesday last year. God sent this family to us and now is sending this family to a new place. I have absolutely no doubt that God will continue to send these four lovely folk into the world to be “good news.” They certainly have been “good news” for us and I will miss them.
On Thursday, at St. George’s, just before the readings, we sang the Torah Song, which we have sung here from time to time. Mark Sullivan has been known to shake a tambourine as we sing: “Open your eyes, O faithful people.” As we sang, our Bishop Susan, Bishop Anne from North Carolina, the deacon at St. George’s and Joe joined hands and danced around the altar. The dance was spontaneous, inspired by the Holy Spirit and brought surprise and joy to all of us gathered in that place. God sends us out to bring joy to the world and that unexpected moment gave life to all of us – those who danced and those who watched the dancing. When was the last time you saw not one, but two bishops dance around an altar?
One last word about sendings – when I was in seminary God sent me to a church in New Carrollton, Maryland as a seminarian. The church was multi-cultural with folk from over a hundred different nations. One Sunday, our African choir led us in our offertory, moving folk to dance around the altar with their gifts. I had been raised on The 1928 Book of Common Prayer and was not so sure about this dancing. I hesitated and then I got up and I danced. That is, to date, the only time I have danced around an altar in church and when I returned to my seat I felt free. Maybe what keeps us oppressed is the evil one, as Jesus says this morning, the power of afoot in the world that keeps us from trying something new, going new places, tempting us not to dance with God and with one another.
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 10: 44 – 48
Sunday, May 10, 2015 I John 5: 1 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 9 – 17
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
John 15: 14
Her name was Mary Beth and we met in the eighth grade during gym class. Mary Beth, like me, loved gym class and we connected immediately. Mary Beth was my first best friend and we stayed best friends all through high school and college, until marriage took me to Virginia and keeping up with each other was more difficult.
Mary Beth and I both loved sports and we both were active in our churches – I in the Episcopal Church and Mary Beth in the Catholic Church. We shared our secrets with each other, commiserated over boyfriends and parents, and created a shared story that began one day after playing field hockey as we were returning from the field to the school. We were racing each other and came to a chain about a foot off the ground, draped across the road. Mary Beth jumped over the chain just seconds before me and I caught the chain on the upswing landing face first on the asphalt, breaking my nose.
And that was just the beginning. Later, Mary Beth confessed to me that after a church youth group meeting, she had snuck into the sacristry and drunk some of the communion wine. She had added water to the wine so that no one would know and was surprised the following Sunday when she heard rumblings that the wine did not taste the same.
Mary Beth was a bridesmaid when I was married. The week before the wedding Mary Beth hurt her knee and had to be on crutches. Mary Beth’s mother thought that crutches were unbecoming for a bridesmaid and tried to dissuade Mary Beth from standing with me. I could not even imagine getting married without Mary Beth and so Mary Beth came down the aisle the day of my wedding leaning on her crutches rather than the arm of a groomsman.
My friendship with Mary Beth shaped me in wondrous ways. Mary Beth was a good bit bolder than I and encouraged me to take some risks – some good and some not so good – that helped me move out of my comfort zone. In Mary Beth’s company I could be me, not needing to put on a mask to impress or curry favor. And the longer we knew each other, the more we were able to hold one another to account for thoughts or behaviors that were not true to the people we knew each other to be. When I determined to marry A.G., the meeting with Mary Beth when he was introduced was every bit as significant as was A.G.’s meeting with my Mom and Dad.
I thought about Mary Beth and our friendship as I read today’s gospel in which Jesus calls us his friends. And I invite you to remember your first best friend as I remember mine. As I remembered Mary Beth, I was profoundly struck by the audacity our evangelist John takes when he images our relationship with God in terms of friendship. Friendship is intimate, joyous, mutual and trusting and I am not always sure my relationship with God can be always be couched in those terms.
On the other hand, I thought about what Mary Beth and I did. Mostly, we hung out, enjoying one another’s company. That is what we do when we pray when we get right down to the heart of prayer. We hang out with God, enjoying God’s company as God enjoys ours.
Mary Beth and I shared our secrets with one another, secrets we would never tell another soul. That is what we do in confession, is it not, as we share our secrets with God, secrets we want no one else to know. And then what Mary Beth and I created was a shared story, a story filled with particular events, much like the story of the Bible, the story of God’s friendship with the people of Israel.
What I realized is that my friendship with Mary Beth was a school in which I was learning what it meant to be befriended and what it meant to be a friend. Mostly what I remember is that with Mary Beth I experienced joy, a joy wholly different from anything I experienced in any of my other relationships.
I am not sure the Church has always done a very good job in describing our relationship with God in terms of friendship. Consider your first best friend and what that was like. Do you think of your relationship with God in the same way? Is God your best friend or your worst enemy? Do you find joy in your relationship with God like you did with your best friend or only condemnation and maybe worse, simply silence?
I lost Mary Beth for a goodly while but found her not too long ago and called her. Her voice was the same, she was excited to hear from me and I realized the lapse of years had done nothing to erode our bond of affection. I was amazed that something born in eighth grade and badly nurtured for forty years could still abide. But abide our friendship does.
Friendships are mysterious in many ways. I really do not know what brought Mary Beth and I together. We both loved field hockey and laughed about the girls in our eighth grade gym class who insisted upon wearing their panty hose under their gym suits (Oh, yes, back then we had gym suits!). But then Mary Beth laughed at me when I showed up for Catholic Church complete with gloves and dipped my gloved hand into the holy water as I entered. We both had a lot to learn and we were learning from each other.
Human friendship is iconic, a window onto our relationship with God. Like human friendship, we enjoy friendship with God by hanging out together, moments spent in prayer or meditation or simply sitting quietly. We can be ourselves before God much like we can be ourselves with our friends. We do not need to pretend before God anymore than we need to pretend when we are with a good friend. And yes, because God loves us, God will hold us to account when we fail to live up to the person God created us to be, just as Mary Beth wanted to know I had chosen a partner in A.G. and not just a handsome face.
Over time, friends create a shared story, much like the story we have in the Bible, a story of God’s friendship with a band of slaves in Egypt. The story friends create together are punctuated with times of significance, times we came to know something about ourselves or the world in which we live, more truly. Are we not, when meeting a long lost friend, apt to say something like: “Do you remember when….”? Those memories are important and we often re-live them, just as we re-live our history when we hear the Sunday’s readings.
This morning we are saying goodbye to Michael Thomas and Patrick DeCrane who are moving to Greer, South Carolina. Michael has sung in the choir for many years and most recently served as our treasurer. Patrick has encouraged those with artistic gifts to grow and bloom and to share their gifts with the wider Caroline County community. They both are amazing cooks and hospitable in the extreme, running a Bed and Breakfast for many years.
I will remember Michael’s obsession with our money and his concern that every penny be accounted for. And I will remember his good humor when the eyes of those who served on the vestry glazed over as he shared with us Profit and Loss accountings, Balance sheets, and Year–To-Date accountings. Michael always wanted the vestry to know the state of our finances and Michael always knew, uncomfortably, we trusted him implicitly.
Patrick forever has called me a young lady. “Good morning, young lady,” Patrick will exclaim as he leaves the church on Sunday. Recently I have not felt young and sometimes not much of a lady and Patrick recalls me, holds me accountable to the truth that I am not on my last legs and may have a few more years of useful shelf life. That Patrick calls me “a lady” is an affirmation I will miss but into which I want to continue to grow. I will miss Michael and Patrick immensely because they have become friends.
I will miss Michael and Patrick because they are friends and through them I have gleaned something about friendship, something about what it means for God to say to us: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
Sunday, May 10, 2015 I John 5: 1 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 9 – 17
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
John 15: 14
Her name was Mary Beth and we met in the eighth grade during gym class. Mary Beth, like me, loved gym class and we connected immediately. Mary Beth was my first best friend and we stayed best friends all through high school and college, until marriage took me to Virginia and keeping up with each other was more difficult.
Mary Beth and I both loved sports and we both were active in our churches – I in the Episcopal Church and Mary Beth in the Catholic Church. We shared our secrets with each other, commiserated over boyfriends and parents, and created a shared story that began one day after playing field hockey as we were returning from the field to the school. We were racing each other and came to a chain about a foot off the ground, draped across the road. Mary Beth jumped over the chain just seconds before me and I caught the chain on the upswing landing face first on the asphalt, breaking my nose.
And that was just the beginning. Later, Mary Beth confessed to me that after a church youth group meeting, she had snuck into the sacristry and drunk some of the communion wine. She had added water to the wine so that no one would know and was surprised the following Sunday when she heard rumblings that the wine did not taste the same.
Mary Beth was a bridesmaid when I was married. The week before the wedding Mary Beth hurt her knee and had to be on crutches. Mary Beth’s mother thought that crutches were unbecoming for a bridesmaid and tried to dissuade Mary Beth from standing with me. I could not even imagine getting married without Mary Beth and so Mary Beth came down the aisle the day of my wedding leaning on her crutches rather than the arm of a groomsman.
My friendship with Mary Beth shaped me in wondrous ways. Mary Beth was a good bit bolder than I and encouraged me to take some risks – some good and some not so good – that helped me move out of my comfort zone. In Mary Beth’s company I could be me, not needing to put on a mask to impress or curry favor. And the longer we knew each other, the more we were able to hold one another to account for thoughts or behaviors that were not true to the people we knew each other to be. When I determined to marry A.G., the meeting with Mary Beth when he was introduced was every bit as significant as was A.G.’s meeting with my Mom and Dad.
I thought about Mary Beth and our friendship as I read today’s gospel in which Jesus calls us his friends. And I invite you to remember your first best friend as I remember mine. As I remembered Mary Beth, I was profoundly struck by the audacity our evangelist John takes when he images our relationship with God in terms of friendship. Friendship is intimate, joyous, mutual and trusting and I am not always sure my relationship with God can be always be couched in those terms.
On the other hand, I thought about what Mary Beth and I did. Mostly, we hung out, enjoying one another’s company. That is what we do when we pray when we get right down to the heart of prayer. We hang out with God, enjoying God’s company as God enjoys ours.
Mary Beth and I shared our secrets with one another, secrets we would never tell another soul. That is what we do in confession, is it not, as we share our secrets with God, secrets we want no one else to know. And then what Mary Beth and I created was a shared story, a story filled with particular events, much like the story of the Bible, the story of God’s friendship with the people of Israel.
What I realized is that my friendship with Mary Beth was a school in which I was learning what it meant to be befriended and what it meant to be a friend. Mostly what I remember is that with Mary Beth I experienced joy, a joy wholly different from anything I experienced in any of my other relationships.
I am not sure the Church has always done a very good job in describing our relationship with God in terms of friendship. Consider your first best friend and what that was like. Do you think of your relationship with God in the same way? Is God your best friend or your worst enemy? Do you find joy in your relationship with God like you did with your best friend or only condemnation and maybe worse, simply silence?
I lost Mary Beth for a goodly while but found her not too long ago and called her. Her voice was the same, she was excited to hear from me and I realized the lapse of years had done nothing to erode our bond of affection. I was amazed that something born in eighth grade and badly nurtured for forty years could still abide. But abide our friendship does.
Friendships are mysterious in many ways. I really do not know what brought Mary Beth and I together. We both loved field hockey and laughed about the girls in our eighth grade gym class who insisted upon wearing their panty hose under their gym suits (Oh, yes, back then we had gym suits!). But then Mary Beth laughed at me when I showed up for Catholic Church complete with gloves and dipped my gloved hand into the holy water as I entered. We both had a lot to learn and we were learning from each other.
Human friendship is iconic, a window onto our relationship with God. Like human friendship, we enjoy friendship with God by hanging out together, moments spent in prayer or meditation or simply sitting quietly. We can be ourselves before God much like we can be ourselves with our friends. We do not need to pretend before God anymore than we need to pretend when we are with a good friend. And yes, because God loves us, God will hold us to account when we fail to live up to the person God created us to be, just as Mary Beth wanted to know I had chosen a partner in A.G. and not just a handsome face.
Over time, friends create a shared story, much like the story we have in the Bible, a story of God’s friendship with a band of slaves in Egypt. The story friends create together are punctuated with times of significance, times we came to know something about ourselves or the world in which we live, more truly. Are we not, when meeting a long lost friend, apt to say something like: “Do you remember when….”? Those memories are important and we often re-live them, just as we re-live our history when we hear the Sunday’s readings.
This morning we are saying goodbye to Michael Thomas and Patrick DeCrane who are moving to Greer, South Carolina. Michael has sung in the choir for many years and most recently served as our treasurer. Patrick has encouraged those with artistic gifts to grow and bloom and to share their gifts with the wider Caroline County community. They both are amazing cooks and hospitable in the extreme, running a Bed and Breakfast for many years.
I will remember Michael’s obsession with our money and his concern that every penny be accounted for. And I will remember his good humor when the eyes of those who served on the vestry glazed over as he shared with us Profit and Loss accountings, Balance sheets, and Year–To-Date accountings. Michael always wanted the vestry to know the state of our finances and Michael always knew, uncomfortably, we trusted him implicitly.
Patrick forever has called me a young lady. “Good morning, young lady,” Patrick will exclaim as he leaves the church on Sunday. Recently I have not felt young and sometimes not much of a lady and Patrick recalls me, holds me accountable to the truth that I am not on my last legs and may have a few more years of useful shelf life. That Patrick calls me “a lady” is an affirmation I will miss but into which I want to continue to grow. I will miss Michael and Patrick immensely because they have become friends.
I will miss Michael and Patrick because they are friends and through them I have gleaned something about friendship, something about what it means for God to say to us: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 8: 26 – 40
Sunday, May 3, 2015 I John 4: 7 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 1 – 8
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
John 15: 4
Anyone seeking holy orders in the Episcopal Church is required to meet with a diocesan commission. Those meetings determine whether or not you are recommended to the Bishop for ordination or not. The Bishop, of course, can do whatever the Bishop wants, but in the diocese of Virginia, the Bishop takes seriously the counsel of the commissions.
The commission with whom I met was composed of lay and clergy people. The first question I was asked was how I intended to pay for seminary; the second, what I thought about Jesus; and the third, what sermon I most wanted to preach. A.G. and I had already discussed how we would pay for seminary; Jesus reveals most fully who God is, I said; and the third question left me flummoxed. I had no idea what sermon I most wanted to preach but offered that I would not want anyone to leave church without hearing that God loves them.
My answer was born out of a long personal and professional journey that left me believing that of all the many truths of the Bible, the one truth we have the hardest time trusting is that God loves us. “God loves you,” are words we teach to our children in Sunday School but not always embraced as we grow up and into a world which is not always loving and within which we quickly learn, neither are we. That God loves us and loves us deeply, is often dismissed as a mere religious platitude and not deeply inhaled, the very air that we need in order to live. That God loves us seems not to stick, not to sink into the deepest parts of our spirits, not become the breath of life those words are intended to be.
“Abide in me as I abide in you,” we hear this morning from the gospel of John. Using an image of a vine and branches intended to bear fruit, Jesus describes a relationship between the vine and the branches that is intended to bring forth good things and apart from a branch cannot bear fruit. Immediately after the verses we hear this morning, Jesus will say: “Abide in my love.” The vinedresser desires only one thing and that is that the branches bear fruit. Abiding in Jesus’ love is fruitful and life-giving.
Abiding is a bit of a quaint sounding verb which can alternatively be translated as “remaining,” “continuing,” or “dwelling.” Abiding is not difficult when all is going well; abiding is a good bit more difficult when all is not going so well. And that is what makes us different from God – we do not always want to abide; God’s love always abides.
We abide in God’s love in the midst of a world this week that was wracked by a huge earthquake in Nepal and horrific violence in Baltimore. If God loves us, we query, why did an earthquake kill thousands in Nepal this week and racial tensions continue to ignite violence? Minds greater than mine are asking those same questions and as yet, we have no answers. But the truth still stands: God loves you and the people of Nepal and all the folk who live in Baltimore.
What is it like to be loved by God? From our human experiences of love, we know that being loved is the loveliest and the hardest experience any of us will endure. For one thing, when we are loved, we are seen for who we are and not who we wish we were nor think we are. Love sees us clearly and most of us have places we would rather not be seen. And, yet, love loves us anyway!
Being loved also means that when we stumble, and we all do, our lover will pick us up, take care of us, bind up our wounds like the good Samaritan. When we are loved we are not alone, left to make our way in this world as best as we can. When we are loved we have a companion, a helpmate, a partner. But having a companion means we are no longer free agents, able to do whatever we want whenever we want.
We know from scripture that Jesus was loved by his Father. And Jesus was led to the cross and through death into resurrected life, new life. The Father’s love did not spare Jesus from suffering but led Jesus through death into life. Being loved, truly loved, by someone leads us down a similar road, a road upon which we are exposed but not abandoned, able to continue walking down the road with the hope of seeing something new.
Being loved is a fearsome thing and God loves us fearlessly. And God’s love abides even when our human attempts at loving and being loved fall apart, go awry, or simply whither and grow cold. We cannot always abide; God will always abide.
Today we celebrate our patron Saint Asaph. When Bishop David Jones visited in February, Bishop Jones noted that this parish was the fruit of prayers prayed long ago by folk who lived in Bowling Green and who longed to establish an Episcopal congregation. That longing was grounded in the knowledge that St. Asaph’s parish dated back to 1780, and was the last parish to be established by the General Assembly of Virginia. The parish of St. Asaph’s had a “fitful” start in the words of our narrated history. Then in 1834, the parish was able to erect a building to use for worship, only to be forced to sell that building forty years later. In other words, the parish almost died and more than once. But folk kept praying and in 1954, this building was dedicated.
The love of God abided but not without leading our forebears through tears and trials. Many of those who prayed for this parish never lived to see their prayers answered. But they abided in God’s love, trusting fruit would be born. And fruit has been born, abundant fruit, and I can bear witness as one new to you all, that the fruit is very sweet indeed.
“Abide in me as I abide in you.” Five years before I met with that diocesan commission seeking ordination, I was convinced I had reached a dead end. I had just finished six years of classes at Virginia Seminary as a lay student seeking to understand the claims of faith I confessed every Sunday. I had loved my studies, was not inclined to seek ordination but now had no clue what to do or where to go. I despaired that those six years of joy were about to end with no possibilities in sight.
I later described those six years at Seminary as an experience of falling in love with the wonder and mystery of God made known to us in Christ. When those years ended, I did wonder if I had been abandoned by the object of my love. I had not been abandoned by the God whose love always abides even though the way forward at the time was shrouded in darkness.
“Abide in me as I abide in you.” “I am the vine, you are the branches.” We must abide because we are branches who are dependent upon the vine for life. Yet, we live in a culture that loathes dependence and seeks whenever possible to be independent. Being told we are branches who, apart from the vine, can do nothing, are not words we want to hear. What we want to hear is that we can do and be anything we want, and need only God to bless our plans. Being dependent upon the vinegrower to plant the vine and then prune the branches as necessary to bring forth more fruit is countercultural.
In the end, God seeks to bring forth fruit, fruit that will feed the hungry. And the hungry abound, physically and spiritually, longing to abide in a difficult world. What we have to give is our own stories of crucifixion and resurrection, our journeys through despair to hope, the times we have abided in and under difficult circumstances. What we have to offer is hope and the truth that God’s love abides.
Last Sunday after coffee hour, Xiang was asked to play the piano in the undercroft. And Xiang obliged, her fingers flying over the keys, transfixing those who listened, spell bound as we were by the sheer beauty of the music Xiang was able to bring forth. Xiang is a classical pianist and for a moment, a small gathering in a small town was given a glimpse of something majestic, something wondrous and something exquisitely beautiful.
I suspect Xiang did not just wake up one morning knowing how to do that. At some point, though, Xiang realized she had a passion for playing the piano. I would be surprised if Xiang’s passion spared her from times of abiding, of waiting, of continuing in spite of not knowing where the journey would lead. I am deeply grateful that her journey has led her here into our midst and into the undercroft last Sunday where the fruit was not only sweet but absolutely thrilling.
Sunday, May 3, 2015 I John 4: 7 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 1 – 8
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
John 15: 4
Anyone seeking holy orders in the Episcopal Church is required to meet with a diocesan commission. Those meetings determine whether or not you are recommended to the Bishop for ordination or not. The Bishop, of course, can do whatever the Bishop wants, but in the diocese of Virginia, the Bishop takes seriously the counsel of the commissions.
The commission with whom I met was composed of lay and clergy people. The first question I was asked was how I intended to pay for seminary; the second, what I thought about Jesus; and the third, what sermon I most wanted to preach. A.G. and I had already discussed how we would pay for seminary; Jesus reveals most fully who God is, I said; and the third question left me flummoxed. I had no idea what sermon I most wanted to preach but offered that I would not want anyone to leave church without hearing that God loves them.
My answer was born out of a long personal and professional journey that left me believing that of all the many truths of the Bible, the one truth we have the hardest time trusting is that God loves us. “God loves you,” are words we teach to our children in Sunday School but not always embraced as we grow up and into a world which is not always loving and within which we quickly learn, neither are we. That God loves us and loves us deeply, is often dismissed as a mere religious platitude and not deeply inhaled, the very air that we need in order to live. That God loves us seems not to stick, not to sink into the deepest parts of our spirits, not become the breath of life those words are intended to be.
“Abide in me as I abide in you,” we hear this morning from the gospel of John. Using an image of a vine and branches intended to bear fruit, Jesus describes a relationship between the vine and the branches that is intended to bring forth good things and apart from a branch cannot bear fruit. Immediately after the verses we hear this morning, Jesus will say: “Abide in my love.” The vinedresser desires only one thing and that is that the branches bear fruit. Abiding in Jesus’ love is fruitful and life-giving.
Abiding is a bit of a quaint sounding verb which can alternatively be translated as “remaining,” “continuing,” or “dwelling.” Abiding is not difficult when all is going well; abiding is a good bit more difficult when all is not going so well. And that is what makes us different from God – we do not always want to abide; God’s love always abides.
We abide in God’s love in the midst of a world this week that was wracked by a huge earthquake in Nepal and horrific violence in Baltimore. If God loves us, we query, why did an earthquake kill thousands in Nepal this week and racial tensions continue to ignite violence? Minds greater than mine are asking those same questions and as yet, we have no answers. But the truth still stands: God loves you and the people of Nepal and all the folk who live in Baltimore.
What is it like to be loved by God? From our human experiences of love, we know that being loved is the loveliest and the hardest experience any of us will endure. For one thing, when we are loved, we are seen for who we are and not who we wish we were nor think we are. Love sees us clearly and most of us have places we would rather not be seen. And, yet, love loves us anyway!
Being loved also means that when we stumble, and we all do, our lover will pick us up, take care of us, bind up our wounds like the good Samaritan. When we are loved we are not alone, left to make our way in this world as best as we can. When we are loved we have a companion, a helpmate, a partner. But having a companion means we are no longer free agents, able to do whatever we want whenever we want.
We know from scripture that Jesus was loved by his Father. And Jesus was led to the cross and through death into resurrected life, new life. The Father’s love did not spare Jesus from suffering but led Jesus through death into life. Being loved, truly loved, by someone leads us down a similar road, a road upon which we are exposed but not abandoned, able to continue walking down the road with the hope of seeing something new.
Being loved is a fearsome thing and God loves us fearlessly. And God’s love abides even when our human attempts at loving and being loved fall apart, go awry, or simply whither and grow cold. We cannot always abide; God will always abide.
Today we celebrate our patron Saint Asaph. When Bishop David Jones visited in February, Bishop Jones noted that this parish was the fruit of prayers prayed long ago by folk who lived in Bowling Green and who longed to establish an Episcopal congregation. That longing was grounded in the knowledge that St. Asaph’s parish dated back to 1780, and was the last parish to be established by the General Assembly of Virginia. The parish of St. Asaph’s had a “fitful” start in the words of our narrated history. Then in 1834, the parish was able to erect a building to use for worship, only to be forced to sell that building forty years later. In other words, the parish almost died and more than once. But folk kept praying and in 1954, this building was dedicated.
The love of God abided but not without leading our forebears through tears and trials. Many of those who prayed for this parish never lived to see their prayers answered. But they abided in God’s love, trusting fruit would be born. And fruit has been born, abundant fruit, and I can bear witness as one new to you all, that the fruit is very sweet indeed.
“Abide in me as I abide in you.” Five years before I met with that diocesan commission seeking ordination, I was convinced I had reached a dead end. I had just finished six years of classes at Virginia Seminary as a lay student seeking to understand the claims of faith I confessed every Sunday. I had loved my studies, was not inclined to seek ordination but now had no clue what to do or where to go. I despaired that those six years of joy were about to end with no possibilities in sight.
I later described those six years at Seminary as an experience of falling in love with the wonder and mystery of God made known to us in Christ. When those years ended, I did wonder if I had been abandoned by the object of my love. I had not been abandoned by the God whose love always abides even though the way forward at the time was shrouded in darkness.
“Abide in me as I abide in you.” “I am the vine, you are the branches.” We must abide because we are branches who are dependent upon the vine for life. Yet, we live in a culture that loathes dependence and seeks whenever possible to be independent. Being told we are branches who, apart from the vine, can do nothing, are not words we want to hear. What we want to hear is that we can do and be anything we want, and need only God to bless our plans. Being dependent upon the vinegrower to plant the vine and then prune the branches as necessary to bring forth more fruit is countercultural.
In the end, God seeks to bring forth fruit, fruit that will feed the hungry. And the hungry abound, physically and spiritually, longing to abide in a difficult world. What we have to give is our own stories of crucifixion and resurrection, our journeys through despair to hope, the times we have abided in and under difficult circumstances. What we have to offer is hope and the truth that God’s love abides.
Last Sunday after coffee hour, Xiang was asked to play the piano in the undercroft. And Xiang obliged, her fingers flying over the keys, transfixing those who listened, spell bound as we were by the sheer beauty of the music Xiang was able to bring forth. Xiang is a classical pianist and for a moment, a small gathering in a small town was given a glimpse of something majestic, something wondrous and something exquisitely beautiful.
I suspect Xiang did not just wake up one morning knowing how to do that. At some point, though, Xiang realized she had a passion for playing the piano. I would be surprised if Xiang’s passion spared her from times of abiding, of waiting, of continuing in spite of not knowing where the journey would lead. I am deeply grateful that her journey has led her here into our midst and into the undercroft last Sunday where the fruit was not only sweet but absolutely thrilling.
The Fourth Sunday in Easter Acts 4: 5 – 12
Sunday, April 26, 2015 I John 3: 16 – 24
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 10: 11 - 18
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
John 10: 16
“I am the good shepherd,” we hear on this Fourth Sunday of Easter. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep unlike the hired hand who leaves the sheep when the wolf comes. Jesus is the good shepherd who will not leave the sheep to be snatched and scattered by the wolf. And Jesus is the good shepherd who has “other sheep that do not belong to this fold” which he must bring into the fold.
This morning we are given an image of Jesus as a shepherd who keeps the sheep safe by gathering them together and protecting the sheep against the wolves that threaten to separate the sheep, leaving them vulnerable. And the fold continues to grow as other sheep come into the fold, all “so there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Verb tenses are important as we all know and saying: “There will be one flock” is not the same as saying: “There is one flock.” “There will be one flock,” our evangelist John tells us, a future reality that does not exist now. For now, some sheep are already in the fold and others remain outside the fold waiting to be gathered in. Some sheep are in and some sheep are out and the one flock that Jesus will shepherd remains a promise yet to be fulfilled. For John, we are anticipating a unity yet to be achieved, a flock yet to be established, a community yet to be born.
For John “being one” is grounded in the witness of Jesus who, as the Beloved Son of his Father, was one with God. Such oneness or union was revealed as the Son laid down his life, returning to the Father in glory. Now, seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus the good shepherd continues to shepherd the sheep by the power of the Holy Spirit, making us one as he and the Father are one.
We are, in other words, always becoming one, always becoming a communion of love like the communion of love shared between God as Father and God as Son. We are not one like the Father and the Son are one, yet. The good shepherd continues to call us into a fold that the shepherd is still gathering together.
Anticipating a future unity means whatever community we do share is not yet complete. Most of us, I trust, do indeed enjoy a measure of community with our family, friends and neighbors. We have been given a taste of what community looks like and feels like. That taste of community is a gift to us from God who wishes that the whole world, all God’s many sheep, might be one flock. But becoming one, building community beyond our closest friends, is hard work.
Building community is hard work because we are all different, graced with different ways of perceiving the world, different passions and different experiences. Soon after A.G. and I began our common life as husband and wife, someone gave us a country ham. I had never received a ham in a cloth bag and when I opened the bag and discovered the ham was covered in mold, I promptly threw the ham into the trash can. Where I grew up, hams did not come in bags and moldy food was not good food. The ham was given to us not long after our phone had been turned off. When I asked A.G. if he had paid the bill, A.G. said, no, he assumed that I had. His mother had paid all the household bills while in my family, my father had paid all of those bills. We had a lot to work through in order to build a common life together, not because we did not love each other but rather because we were different people. And that truth confronted us all the years we were married in one form or another.
This past Thursday, I and several others from St. Asaph’s, journeyed down to Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center in Richmond to learn something about the Taize community in France and to participate in a service of worship that is very different from the way we worship here on Sunday mornings. The Taize community is an intentional community, a community of a hundred brothers from all over the world and from many different Christian denominations who pray together, work together, and offer hospitality to the thousands of pilgrims who come knocking on their doors every year. When asked how they are able to forge a common life among so many different folk, one of the brothers said that he received all encounters with the anticipation of learning something new! Do we come to our common life hoping to learn something new or simply expecting that our way of seeing things will be confirmed?
While at Richmond Hill, I bumped into a colleague who is working with a group in Richmond to establish a L’Arche community, a group with which I worked until I left Richmond. L’Arche is also an intentional community, a community that seeks to forge a common life between the disabled and the abled, to create a space and a home within which those who can live independently and those who cannot live independently, can live and learn together. L’Arche holds fast to the truth we all have something to give and something to receive even, and maybe especially when, some among us suffer from physical or emotional limitations.
Richmond Hill, the Taize and the L’Arche communities are all intentional communities, consciously welcoming differences, very aware that our differences are a gift to us from God to be embraced and not to be dismissed nor dismayed. Intentional communities are not easy to live in because intentional communities do not shy away from our differences. Intentional communities “name it and claim it” as they say and what these communities want to name is that we are not all the same and that we have much to learn about ourselves in and through our differences.
Our evangelist John has a strong sense of community grounded in a soaringly beautiful theology that reaches back to the very beginning of the world when “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” And so I will say in our Eucharistic Prayer this morning: “Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself.” Each and every one of us has been brought to life by the Word of God, the Beloved Son of God, and we all have something to give and something to receive as we make our way into the fold that gives us life.
Whenever we dismiss others, fail to hear the voice of others, or arrogantly presume others have nothing to say that we need to hear, we put ourselves outside the fold that Christ is gathering together. Christ longs to draw us into the fold and for the brothers of Taize, the way in is by prayer, work and hospitality.
The brothers pray three times a day as do those living in residence at Richmond Hill; the brothers work together to sustain their common life as do those at Richmond Hill, cleaning bathrooms, preparing meals and cleaning up, manning the front desk and managing the garden. Hospitality is central to most intentional communities as welcoming the stranger was constitutive of our ancestors in the faith and continues to be formative for us now.
But every stranger will be different and every stranger will ask something different from us. Some will be seeking solitude, some will be seeking solace, some are seeking meaning in a world that does not always make much sense. We all are seeking something and God has given us one to another toward the end we will all find what we need to make our way home, back to God, back into the fold.
One day, “there will be one flock, one shepherd.” That day is not this day. For now, although we know in our heads that we are all different, living with our differences can be exasperating, frustrating and sometimes, even painful. We will, like the good shepherd, be called upon to lay down our lives, to set aside our expectations and assumptions, our fears, our desires and maybe even some of our dreams, in order to make room for those who are different from us. But can you even begin to imagine the joy of living in a world in which everyone is your BBF – bestest best friend?
Sunday, April 26, 2015 I John 3: 16 – 24
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 10: 11 - 18
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
John 10: 16
“I am the good shepherd,” we hear on this Fourth Sunday of Easter. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep unlike the hired hand who leaves the sheep when the wolf comes. Jesus is the good shepherd who will not leave the sheep to be snatched and scattered by the wolf. And Jesus is the good shepherd who has “other sheep that do not belong to this fold” which he must bring into the fold.
This morning we are given an image of Jesus as a shepherd who keeps the sheep safe by gathering them together and protecting the sheep against the wolves that threaten to separate the sheep, leaving them vulnerable. And the fold continues to grow as other sheep come into the fold, all “so there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Verb tenses are important as we all know and saying: “There will be one flock” is not the same as saying: “There is one flock.” “There will be one flock,” our evangelist John tells us, a future reality that does not exist now. For now, some sheep are already in the fold and others remain outside the fold waiting to be gathered in. Some sheep are in and some sheep are out and the one flock that Jesus will shepherd remains a promise yet to be fulfilled. For John, we are anticipating a unity yet to be achieved, a flock yet to be established, a community yet to be born.
For John “being one” is grounded in the witness of Jesus who, as the Beloved Son of his Father, was one with God. Such oneness or union was revealed as the Son laid down his life, returning to the Father in glory. Now, seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus the good shepherd continues to shepherd the sheep by the power of the Holy Spirit, making us one as he and the Father are one.
We are, in other words, always becoming one, always becoming a communion of love like the communion of love shared between God as Father and God as Son. We are not one like the Father and the Son are one, yet. The good shepherd continues to call us into a fold that the shepherd is still gathering together.
Anticipating a future unity means whatever community we do share is not yet complete. Most of us, I trust, do indeed enjoy a measure of community with our family, friends and neighbors. We have been given a taste of what community looks like and feels like. That taste of community is a gift to us from God who wishes that the whole world, all God’s many sheep, might be one flock. But becoming one, building community beyond our closest friends, is hard work.
Building community is hard work because we are all different, graced with different ways of perceiving the world, different passions and different experiences. Soon after A.G. and I began our common life as husband and wife, someone gave us a country ham. I had never received a ham in a cloth bag and when I opened the bag and discovered the ham was covered in mold, I promptly threw the ham into the trash can. Where I grew up, hams did not come in bags and moldy food was not good food. The ham was given to us not long after our phone had been turned off. When I asked A.G. if he had paid the bill, A.G. said, no, he assumed that I had. His mother had paid all the household bills while in my family, my father had paid all of those bills. We had a lot to work through in order to build a common life together, not because we did not love each other but rather because we were different people. And that truth confronted us all the years we were married in one form or another.
This past Thursday, I and several others from St. Asaph’s, journeyed down to Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center in Richmond to learn something about the Taize community in France and to participate in a service of worship that is very different from the way we worship here on Sunday mornings. The Taize community is an intentional community, a community of a hundred brothers from all over the world and from many different Christian denominations who pray together, work together, and offer hospitality to the thousands of pilgrims who come knocking on their doors every year. When asked how they are able to forge a common life among so many different folk, one of the brothers said that he received all encounters with the anticipation of learning something new! Do we come to our common life hoping to learn something new or simply expecting that our way of seeing things will be confirmed?
While at Richmond Hill, I bumped into a colleague who is working with a group in Richmond to establish a L’Arche community, a group with which I worked until I left Richmond. L’Arche is also an intentional community, a community that seeks to forge a common life between the disabled and the abled, to create a space and a home within which those who can live independently and those who cannot live independently, can live and learn together. L’Arche holds fast to the truth we all have something to give and something to receive even, and maybe especially when, some among us suffer from physical or emotional limitations.
Richmond Hill, the Taize and the L’Arche communities are all intentional communities, consciously welcoming differences, very aware that our differences are a gift to us from God to be embraced and not to be dismissed nor dismayed. Intentional communities are not easy to live in because intentional communities do not shy away from our differences. Intentional communities “name it and claim it” as they say and what these communities want to name is that we are not all the same and that we have much to learn about ourselves in and through our differences.
Our evangelist John has a strong sense of community grounded in a soaringly beautiful theology that reaches back to the very beginning of the world when “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” And so I will say in our Eucharistic Prayer this morning: “Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself.” Each and every one of us has been brought to life by the Word of God, the Beloved Son of God, and we all have something to give and something to receive as we make our way into the fold that gives us life.
Whenever we dismiss others, fail to hear the voice of others, or arrogantly presume others have nothing to say that we need to hear, we put ourselves outside the fold that Christ is gathering together. Christ longs to draw us into the fold and for the brothers of Taize, the way in is by prayer, work and hospitality.
The brothers pray three times a day as do those living in residence at Richmond Hill; the brothers work together to sustain their common life as do those at Richmond Hill, cleaning bathrooms, preparing meals and cleaning up, manning the front desk and managing the garden. Hospitality is central to most intentional communities as welcoming the stranger was constitutive of our ancestors in the faith and continues to be formative for us now.
But every stranger will be different and every stranger will ask something different from us. Some will be seeking solitude, some will be seeking solace, some are seeking meaning in a world that does not always make much sense. We all are seeking something and God has given us one to another toward the end we will all find what we need to make our way home, back to God, back into the fold.
One day, “there will be one flock, one shepherd.” That day is not this day. For now, although we know in our heads that we are all different, living with our differences can be exasperating, frustrating and sometimes, even painful. We will, like the good shepherd, be called upon to lay down our lives, to set aside our expectations and assumptions, our fears, our desires and maybe even some of our dreams, in order to make room for those who are different from us. But can you even begin to imagine the joy of living in a world in which everyone is your BBF – bestest best friend?
The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 3: 12 – 19
Sunday, April 19, 2015 I John 3: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 24: 36b – 48
“‘Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’”
Luke 24: 39
On this Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus appears to the disciples who are gathered together following the crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb. The disciples are initially startled and terrified, thinking they are seeing a ghost. After Jesus invites those frightened disciples “to touch me and see,” the disciples are brought to joy, disbelief and wonder, we hear. And Jesus responds by asking for something to eat.
Our evangelist Luke shares two stories with us about the appearance of Jesus to the disciples following the discovery of the empty tomb. The first is the story of the encounter between Jesus and two disciples on the Emmaus Road. In that story, those two disciples meet a stranger who they do not know but who they suddenly recognize as Jesus during dinner when Jesus takes bread, blesses the bread, and then breaks the bread to share with the disciples.
The gospel reading we hear this morning follows the story of the encounter on the Emmaus Road. Now Jesus comes a second time and the disciples at first think they are seeing a ghost and are terrified. “Touch me and see,” Jesus invites them, “for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” As on the road to Emmaus, the disciples once again are unable at first to recognize the risen Christ in their midst. And even after the disciples do this morning, “they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
“Open the eyes of our faith,” we prayed in our collect today, “that we may behold him in all his redeeming work.” The crucified and risen Christ wants to open our eyes, to redeem us from our illusions about ourselves and the world in which we live and to set us free to be the people God created us to be. But we, like those first disciples can only be redeemed if we recognize that we need to be redeemed, if we recognize that our eyes need to be opened and if we recognize that we may not at first see the presence of the Risen Christ within us and among us.
On the Emmaus Road, the disciples see a stranger; in our text this morning the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. No one at first recognized Christ. No one at first recognized Christ in their midst. No one initially was seeing rightly; in both stories, what the disciples saw was not Christ but something other than Christ – a stranger on the Emmaus Road, a ghost in our reading this morning.
“Seeing” and seeing rightly seems to be the challenge of Easter. You and I, for the most part, see what we want to see and can be deluded into thinking that what we see is what God wants us to see. We can privilege our way of seeing over God’s way of seeing. God’s way of seeing sees us all as dearly beloved children of God as our reading from the First Letter of John says. God’s way of seeing sees our imperfections and weaknesses, the same imperfections and weaknesses that crucified Christ as our reading from Acts tells us.
God sees us as we are and we often see ourselves as we wish we were. Easter invites us to see ourselves as God see us, dearly beloved children of God in need of redemption.
A week ago yesterday, I was invited to lead a group in the diocese into deeper ways of seeing. After spending two hours doing business, I invited us to reflect upon what we had experienced – what we saw, felt and thought. I wanted us to step away from the “issues” or “tasks” with which we were dealing and reflect upon what God was inviting us to see – about ourselves, about others and about the way we perceive the world around us. When the invitation came to do this, I immediately felt a good bit of anxiety as the group was wrestling with some difficult stuff and I was not so sure I was the one to lead us. I learned right at the beginning that at base, I am an anxious person.
My eyes were being opened.
Later, I confirmed that most of us see the world in which we live in “either-or” terms and not “both-and” terms. We are quick to agree or disagree and less willing to see the truth that is being shared with us in the voices of others. We are quick to dismiss and to persuade and to want to win. We are less willing to open ourselves to the possibility that God might be leading us to see some new thing.
Seeing a new thing was exactly what those first disciples were being tasked to do. And our “Revision” process is asking us to do the same thing. Our Revision Process is asking us to see anew, personally and corporately. We are being asked to open our eyes to the possibility that God may be doing a new thing in our midst. But we cannot do that if we do not acknowledge that God has nothing new for us to see. If all is alright, we have nothing new to see.
And that invitation extends to all of us – new comers, come here’s, and always been here’s.
We have just journeyed through Lent and acknowledged, at least liturgically, that is all is not alright within and without out us. I almost declined the invitation to lead that diocesan group. I was afraid. I was afraid of being with deeply spiritual people in a deeply spiritual way. I was afraid of being cast out, of being ridiculed, of being found wanting. I, like those first disciples, was simply unable to see that God was leading me into the place I needed to go – a place of risk and trust in God’s mercy. I came away grateful and glad and we all learned new things.
This week I was given a poem written by a faculty member at Virginia Seminary:
The first word was love.
Then the mistakes, the hurts
Done to us and to others,
Every good thing,
Every lost love,
Every good intention ended badly,
Every bad choice redeemed,
Every step in the dark toward
An unknown destination:
Love had already arrived.
And the last word is love.
That is all there is.
And I remembered the words of Saint Paul who wrote to a divided church in Corinth two thousand years ago:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Love is the beginning and the end in this season of Easter. Can we abide in God’s love and see the new things God wants us to see?
Sunday, April 19, 2015 I John 3: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 24: 36b – 48
“‘Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’”
Luke 24: 39
On this Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus appears to the disciples who are gathered together following the crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb. The disciples are initially startled and terrified, thinking they are seeing a ghost. After Jesus invites those frightened disciples “to touch me and see,” the disciples are brought to joy, disbelief and wonder, we hear. And Jesus responds by asking for something to eat.
Our evangelist Luke shares two stories with us about the appearance of Jesus to the disciples following the discovery of the empty tomb. The first is the story of the encounter between Jesus and two disciples on the Emmaus Road. In that story, those two disciples meet a stranger who they do not know but who they suddenly recognize as Jesus during dinner when Jesus takes bread, blesses the bread, and then breaks the bread to share with the disciples.
The gospel reading we hear this morning follows the story of the encounter on the Emmaus Road. Now Jesus comes a second time and the disciples at first think they are seeing a ghost and are terrified. “Touch me and see,” Jesus invites them, “for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” As on the road to Emmaus, the disciples once again are unable at first to recognize the risen Christ in their midst. And even after the disciples do this morning, “they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
“Open the eyes of our faith,” we prayed in our collect today, “that we may behold him in all his redeeming work.” The crucified and risen Christ wants to open our eyes, to redeem us from our illusions about ourselves and the world in which we live and to set us free to be the people God created us to be. But we, like those first disciples can only be redeemed if we recognize that we need to be redeemed, if we recognize that our eyes need to be opened and if we recognize that we may not at first see the presence of the Risen Christ within us and among us.
On the Emmaus Road, the disciples see a stranger; in our text this morning the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. No one at first recognized Christ. No one at first recognized Christ in their midst. No one initially was seeing rightly; in both stories, what the disciples saw was not Christ but something other than Christ – a stranger on the Emmaus Road, a ghost in our reading this morning.
“Seeing” and seeing rightly seems to be the challenge of Easter. You and I, for the most part, see what we want to see and can be deluded into thinking that what we see is what God wants us to see. We can privilege our way of seeing over God’s way of seeing. God’s way of seeing sees us all as dearly beloved children of God as our reading from the First Letter of John says. God’s way of seeing sees our imperfections and weaknesses, the same imperfections and weaknesses that crucified Christ as our reading from Acts tells us.
God sees us as we are and we often see ourselves as we wish we were. Easter invites us to see ourselves as God see us, dearly beloved children of God in need of redemption.
A week ago yesterday, I was invited to lead a group in the diocese into deeper ways of seeing. After spending two hours doing business, I invited us to reflect upon what we had experienced – what we saw, felt and thought. I wanted us to step away from the “issues” or “tasks” with which we were dealing and reflect upon what God was inviting us to see – about ourselves, about others and about the way we perceive the world around us. When the invitation came to do this, I immediately felt a good bit of anxiety as the group was wrestling with some difficult stuff and I was not so sure I was the one to lead us. I learned right at the beginning that at base, I am an anxious person.
My eyes were being opened.
Later, I confirmed that most of us see the world in which we live in “either-or” terms and not “both-and” terms. We are quick to agree or disagree and less willing to see the truth that is being shared with us in the voices of others. We are quick to dismiss and to persuade and to want to win. We are less willing to open ourselves to the possibility that God might be leading us to see some new thing.
Seeing a new thing was exactly what those first disciples were being tasked to do. And our “Revision” process is asking us to do the same thing. Our Revision Process is asking us to see anew, personally and corporately. We are being asked to open our eyes to the possibility that God may be doing a new thing in our midst. But we cannot do that if we do not acknowledge that God has nothing new for us to see. If all is alright, we have nothing new to see.
And that invitation extends to all of us – new comers, come here’s, and always been here’s.
We have just journeyed through Lent and acknowledged, at least liturgically, that is all is not alright within and without out us. I almost declined the invitation to lead that diocesan group. I was afraid. I was afraid of being with deeply spiritual people in a deeply spiritual way. I was afraid of being cast out, of being ridiculed, of being found wanting. I, like those first disciples, was simply unable to see that God was leading me into the place I needed to go – a place of risk and trust in God’s mercy. I came away grateful and glad and we all learned new things.
This week I was given a poem written by a faculty member at Virginia Seminary:
The first word was love.
Then the mistakes, the hurts
Done to us and to others,
Every good thing,
Every lost love,
Every good intention ended badly,
Every bad choice redeemed,
Every step in the dark toward
An unknown destination:
Love had already arrived.
And the last word is love.
That is all there is.
And I remembered the words of Saint Paul who wrote to a divided church in Corinth two thousand years ago:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Love is the beginning and the end in this season of Easter. Can we abide in God’s love and see the new things God wants us to see?
The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 4: 32 – 35
Sunday, April 12, 2015 I John 1: 1 – 2: 2
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 – 31
“When Jesus had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
John 20: 22
Last Sunday on Easter, we celebrated an empty tomb and the absence of a body. This Sunday, we are celebrating the presence of a body, the body of the Risen Christ, who appears to the disciples following the crucifixion, breathing on them the Holy Spirit, creating the community we call church.
Our evangelist John does not wait fifty days for Pentecost to unleash the Spirit, but rather tells us that the crucified and risen Christ appears to the disciples the evening of the day of resurrection and again, a week later. The community is sent into the world to bear witness to the Risen Christ, a witness that many will doubt as does Thomas this morning.
Thomas needs to see a body before Thomas can believe that the Lord is risen. Thomas needs to know that the body the other disciples have seen is the same body that died on the cross and which bears the marks of the nails and the wound from the sword that pierced Jesus’ side. Thomas needs assurance that the crucified Lord is now the risen Lord. And the risen Christ obliges, inviting Thomas to touch his wounds.
The risen Christ comes to the disciples this morning in ways they can perceive – the disciples can see Christ, hear Christ, and touch Christ. What brings the disciples to faith in the resurrection is a palpable presence, a real presence, not a spiritual insight. And when the Risen Christ breathes out the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, the Risen Christ is creating a new body, a new community in which all members can see, hear and touch the “word of life” in the words of John.
Many years ago, I met a woman nearing the end of her earthly life and who suffered from dementia. Her name was Sarah and Sarah’s daughter began to bring her mother to church. I learned that Sarah had not been in a church for over seventy years. When Sarah was a young girl, Sarah had visited a Catholic Church and upon entering, raised her hand to dip into the holy water just inside the front door. Before her fingers touched the water, someone admonished her from doing so as Sarah was a Unitarian and would “poison” the holy water she was told.
Now, decades later, Sarah wanted to come to church because she liked the music. In time, Sarah asked to be baptized which she was, at the age of 85, a year before she died. Sarah, unable for so many years, to see, touch and hear the Risen Christ in the church was finally able to do so through music.
Our bodies are the means through which we discover the world in which we live. We come to know the world first through our hands and feet, eyes and ears, noses and mouths. Only later, do we begin to “think” our way into the world. We are not born knowing the words of the Nicene Creed but we are born with a need to be loved and we quickly feel our way into love, often at our mother’s breast. Our bodies direct our ways long before our heads start to make sense of things.
The same is true for the body we call church. Long before we can follow the service in The Book of Common Prayer or find the right hymn in the hymnal, before we can say the collect of the day or even walk by ourselves to the communion rail, we are hearing and seeing, tasting and touching. And what we hear and see, taste and touch makes a difference – either giving us life or taking life away from us. Our children, in other words, know in their bodies, when we, in the words of our collect his morning, are “showing forth in our lives what we profess by our faith.”
Children and newcomers. Newcomers are quick to sense the presence or absence of what Saint Paul called the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We may have the best choir in the diocese, which I believe we do, but if no one speaks to a newcomer at coffee hour, we may not see them again.
Bodies are important – our bodies and this body we call church. In and through our bodies we discover the world and in and through the body we call Church we come to discover the presence of the Risen Christ. And when we die and commit our bodies to the ground we say something remarkable in the opening anthems of our funeral liturgy:
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.
We do and we will, we affirm, meet God in our bodies. How else could we experience the love of God except through our bodies? Now, in the words of Saint Paul, “we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” One day we will see God and be seen by God, not as a stranger but a friend, a friend whose only desire is that we come to life in this world and continue in the life of the world to come.
For now, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we pray, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, that the Risen Christ might be known to us in the breaking of bread. In the Eucharist we literally feed on the body of Christ, the very bread of heaven.
Some number of years ago, we began using real bread in the Eucharist. I made that change to bread from wafers for lofty theological reasons, never fully appreciating the consequence of the change. Regrettably, the bread is messier than wafers and sometimes crumbs fall into the chalice, creating challenges for our Eucharistic ministers.
What I did not see coming, however, was how children could relate to real bread in a way they could not relate to a round white wafer. When I hold up a piece of bread to a child, they immediately know they are being fed and do not hesitate to take the bread. A child has no idea that a sacrament “is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace,” in the words of The Catechism. What the child knows is that when they come to the altar, they get fed. May the church always be for these young people a place where they are fed!
Last Sunday on Easter, we used wafers for convenience and I understand that Peyton Denniston returned from communion telling her Mom, Bambi had given her a “white treat.” A “treat” sounds like something special, like dessert if you finish your dinner, and not the very bread of life. Peyton knows bread when she sees bread and what she got last Sunday was not bread! Our children have much to teach us about what is real and what is not real and a round white wafer is not bread no matter what we call it.
What is also real is the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst, a presence our children may be able to sense more readily than we grown-ups. We grown-ups are, well, grown up, and not always able to embrace “the mystery of faith” and the sheer wonder of life. We say: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” but are often unable or perhaps reluctant to name those times when we have experienced the presence of the Risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit giving us life.
I felt the Spirit blowing among us last Sunday as our children dashed out of church and onto the front lawn to gather Easter eggs as Mary Frances Coleman noted that our Easter Egg hunt is not really a “hunt” at all, as all the eggs are “hidden” in plain sight! The children did not seem to care, filling their baskets and bags within minutes. Those eggs “hidden in plain sight” brought joy to our children as well as to those who watched, and I wondered if those eggs which were hidden in plain sight might not be a little like the presence of the Risen Christ – hidden in plain sight in bread and wine, in the water of baptism and in the oil of anointing, in the words of scripture and the beauty of music.
To all of us who may doubt that Christ is alive and is made known to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, I recommend you join a child at the altar rail or in Sunday School or at next year’s Easter Egg hunt. Ask them what happened downstairs in Sunday School or upstairs at the altar rail. You may be taken by surprise by what they say.
Charlie Spencer asked his mother Danielle if Jesus lived at my house and I told Charlie that yes, Jesus did live at my house and Jesus lived at Charlie’s house, too. Charlie was a bit flummoxed by that news and may need a little time to take that in. But Charlie seems to like being here in church, and is quick with his “Amen’s” and “Alleluia’s.” That is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing not just Charlie but all of us to life. Amen and alleluia!
Sunday, April 12, 2015 I John 1: 1 – 2: 2
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 – 31
“When Jesus had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
John 20: 22
Last Sunday on Easter, we celebrated an empty tomb and the absence of a body. This Sunday, we are celebrating the presence of a body, the body of the Risen Christ, who appears to the disciples following the crucifixion, breathing on them the Holy Spirit, creating the community we call church.
Our evangelist John does not wait fifty days for Pentecost to unleash the Spirit, but rather tells us that the crucified and risen Christ appears to the disciples the evening of the day of resurrection and again, a week later. The community is sent into the world to bear witness to the Risen Christ, a witness that many will doubt as does Thomas this morning.
Thomas needs to see a body before Thomas can believe that the Lord is risen. Thomas needs to know that the body the other disciples have seen is the same body that died on the cross and which bears the marks of the nails and the wound from the sword that pierced Jesus’ side. Thomas needs assurance that the crucified Lord is now the risen Lord. And the risen Christ obliges, inviting Thomas to touch his wounds.
The risen Christ comes to the disciples this morning in ways they can perceive – the disciples can see Christ, hear Christ, and touch Christ. What brings the disciples to faith in the resurrection is a palpable presence, a real presence, not a spiritual insight. And when the Risen Christ breathes out the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, the Risen Christ is creating a new body, a new community in which all members can see, hear and touch the “word of life” in the words of John.
Many years ago, I met a woman nearing the end of her earthly life and who suffered from dementia. Her name was Sarah and Sarah’s daughter began to bring her mother to church. I learned that Sarah had not been in a church for over seventy years. When Sarah was a young girl, Sarah had visited a Catholic Church and upon entering, raised her hand to dip into the holy water just inside the front door. Before her fingers touched the water, someone admonished her from doing so as Sarah was a Unitarian and would “poison” the holy water she was told.
Now, decades later, Sarah wanted to come to church because she liked the music. In time, Sarah asked to be baptized which she was, at the age of 85, a year before she died. Sarah, unable for so many years, to see, touch and hear the Risen Christ in the church was finally able to do so through music.
Our bodies are the means through which we discover the world in which we live. We come to know the world first through our hands and feet, eyes and ears, noses and mouths. Only later, do we begin to “think” our way into the world. We are not born knowing the words of the Nicene Creed but we are born with a need to be loved and we quickly feel our way into love, often at our mother’s breast. Our bodies direct our ways long before our heads start to make sense of things.
The same is true for the body we call church. Long before we can follow the service in The Book of Common Prayer or find the right hymn in the hymnal, before we can say the collect of the day or even walk by ourselves to the communion rail, we are hearing and seeing, tasting and touching. And what we hear and see, taste and touch makes a difference – either giving us life or taking life away from us. Our children, in other words, know in their bodies, when we, in the words of our collect his morning, are “showing forth in our lives what we profess by our faith.”
Children and newcomers. Newcomers are quick to sense the presence or absence of what Saint Paul called the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We may have the best choir in the diocese, which I believe we do, but if no one speaks to a newcomer at coffee hour, we may not see them again.
Bodies are important – our bodies and this body we call church. In and through our bodies we discover the world and in and through the body we call Church we come to discover the presence of the Risen Christ. And when we die and commit our bodies to the ground we say something remarkable in the opening anthems of our funeral liturgy:
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.
We do and we will, we affirm, meet God in our bodies. How else could we experience the love of God except through our bodies? Now, in the words of Saint Paul, “we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” One day we will see God and be seen by God, not as a stranger but a friend, a friend whose only desire is that we come to life in this world and continue in the life of the world to come.
For now, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we pray, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, that the Risen Christ might be known to us in the breaking of bread. In the Eucharist we literally feed on the body of Christ, the very bread of heaven.
Some number of years ago, we began using real bread in the Eucharist. I made that change to bread from wafers for lofty theological reasons, never fully appreciating the consequence of the change. Regrettably, the bread is messier than wafers and sometimes crumbs fall into the chalice, creating challenges for our Eucharistic ministers.
What I did not see coming, however, was how children could relate to real bread in a way they could not relate to a round white wafer. When I hold up a piece of bread to a child, they immediately know they are being fed and do not hesitate to take the bread. A child has no idea that a sacrament “is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace,” in the words of The Catechism. What the child knows is that when they come to the altar, they get fed. May the church always be for these young people a place where they are fed!
Last Sunday on Easter, we used wafers for convenience and I understand that Peyton Denniston returned from communion telling her Mom, Bambi had given her a “white treat.” A “treat” sounds like something special, like dessert if you finish your dinner, and not the very bread of life. Peyton knows bread when she sees bread and what she got last Sunday was not bread! Our children have much to teach us about what is real and what is not real and a round white wafer is not bread no matter what we call it.
What is also real is the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst, a presence our children may be able to sense more readily than we grown-ups. We grown-ups are, well, grown up, and not always able to embrace “the mystery of faith” and the sheer wonder of life. We say: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” but are often unable or perhaps reluctant to name those times when we have experienced the presence of the Risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit giving us life.
I felt the Spirit blowing among us last Sunday as our children dashed out of church and onto the front lawn to gather Easter eggs as Mary Frances Coleman noted that our Easter Egg hunt is not really a “hunt” at all, as all the eggs are “hidden” in plain sight! The children did not seem to care, filling their baskets and bags within minutes. Those eggs “hidden in plain sight” brought joy to our children as well as to those who watched, and I wondered if those eggs which were hidden in plain sight might not be a little like the presence of the Risen Christ – hidden in plain sight in bread and wine, in the water of baptism and in the oil of anointing, in the words of scripture and the beauty of music.
To all of us who may doubt that Christ is alive and is made known to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, I recommend you join a child at the altar rail or in Sunday School or at next year’s Easter Egg hunt. Ask them what happened downstairs in Sunday School or upstairs at the altar rail. You may be taken by surprise by what they say.
Charlie Spencer asked his mother Danielle if Jesus lived at my house and I told Charlie that yes, Jesus did live at my house and Jesus lived at Charlie’s house, too. Charlie was a bit flummoxed by that news and may need a little time to take that in. But Charlie seems to like being here in church, and is quick with his “Amen’s” and “Alleluia’s.” That is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing not just Charlie but all of us to life. Amen and alleluia!
Easter Day: The Sunday of the Resurrection Acts 10: 34 – 43
Sunday, April 5, 2015 I Corinthians 15: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 1 – 18
Mary Magdelene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
John 20: 18
Alleluiah! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Grace and peace to each of you on this beautiful Easter morning from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I am able to say that to you because today is Easter, the Sunday of the Resurrection and Christ is alive and in our midst. Today we come together to proclaim and to celebrate the Resurrection, the one claim upon which everything else we do and we say in the Church depends. If Christ was not raised from the dead, you and I had better all go home because the Church has nothing to say and the world has nothing new to hear.
Christ is risen! Not even Mary Magdelene believed that at first. When Mary found the tomb was empty, she thought someone had stolen the body. Mary, like all of us, know dead bodies do not disappear by themselves. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary tells Peter. When Mary encounters the empty tomb, Mary does not cry out with joy “Alleluiah! Christ is risen!” Rather, Mary is absolutely overwhelmed by grief - first she watched as her Lord suffered a horrific death and now she cannot even take comfort in burying his body. Someone has stolen the body. So, if the Easter acclamation “Christ is risen!” is hard for you to say, take heart; Mary couldn’t believe it either.
“Christ is risen!” is a mad claim, an impossible claim, an incredible claim. “Christ is risen!” is no easier for you and I to say than was it for the first disciples. Those first Jewish disciples never anticipated the empty tomb. What we know from the gospels is that the Pharisees believed in the idea of a general resurrection, which we first hear about in the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Isaiah, when God will give life to a valley of dry bones. This hope of resurrection developed during a time of great persecution and suffering, and signified a trust that God would indeed vindicate Israel and not leave Israel to become simply a footnote of history, extinguished by more powerful empires. And in the New Testament, we hear the Sadducees and the Pharisees questioning Jesus about what he believes about this idea of Resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in this idea of resurrection. Jesus appears to have agreed with the Pharisees. But no one expected that only one would be raised and no one expected resurrection now.
As the Christian claim “Christ is risen!” spread into the Greek speaking world, the Greeks found the whole idea of a bodily resurrection abhorrent. The body, which obviously decays after death, is clearly not the part of us that really matters. What matters is the “soul,” the part of us destined for immortality, according to Plato. The risen Christ, all the gospel accounts tells us had a body that could be recognized. To believe in the immortality of the soul is not the same as believing in a bodily resurrection.
Whoa, preacher… Isn’t the resurrection about going to heaven when we die? Not if we take the gospel narratives seriously. If we take the gospel accounts seriously, and I would suggest we do, we must honor the claim that Jesus appeared after death in a body that could be recognized as his body but was also at the same time not like the body he had before he died. And this only happened once and to Jesus. And we are back to incredible! How can that be true?
Welcome to the Church! We cannot “explain” the Resurrection any more than we can “explain” Christ’s death on the cross. Not that we haven’t tried. “Christ is risen!” was no more believable in the first century than it is in the twenty-first. Unfortunately, we often demean our ancient ancestors for their “primitiveness.” They knew madness when they saw it and the claim “Christ is risen!” was madness. And yet they said it anyway! Some recent scholars in an attempt to make Christianity more “plausible” have argued that the presence of the risen Christ was an “experience” those first disciples had, not a one time act of God, but an emotional response to the crucifixion. If that were true, why didn’t all this nonsense die quietly away after those first witnesses died off? Just the opposite happened; the community grew and the proclamation continued in spite of persecution and significant efforts to get those crazy Christians to go away.
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Those are the words we say every Sunday in the Nicene Creed and which embody our hope as Christians. One day God will bring this world in which suffering and death continue to reign to a close and will usher in a new age, the kingdom of God, an age that will not be ruled by sin and evil but will be ruled by God. The Resurrection of Christ is our assurance that God can and will be victorious over evil and death. The Risen Christ is a foretaste of things to come.
In the meantime, we live with the promise of a coming kingdom, called to bear witness in all that we say and all that we do to the glory of that kingdom and God’s reign of justice, freedom and peace. Until God brings this age to a close, we live and work and pray and worship, all in the midst of a world in which we know when people die, their bodies decay, we know that when death comes to a person we love, the person we love is gone – really, really gone, never to be with us again - and we know with all of our hearts and minds and souls, we want them to be with us and not dead. Dear friends, God knows better than any of us what love wants and God has raised Jesus from the dead!
What we look forward to, in the words of the book of Revelation, is a “new heaven and a new earth,” when “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Real joy for me would be life in a world where I can feel the sun on my face, hear the laughter of a child, hold the hands of those I love, a world in which no one goes hungry and we live together in peace. Taking up eternal residence on a cloud with wings and a harp is not a vision that makes me want to shout for joy.
Rejoice this day in the madness of Easter.
Alleluiah! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Sunday, April 5, 2015 I Corinthians 15: 1 – 11
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 1 – 18
Mary Magdelene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
John 20: 18
Alleluiah! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Grace and peace to each of you on this beautiful Easter morning from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I am able to say that to you because today is Easter, the Sunday of the Resurrection and Christ is alive and in our midst. Today we come together to proclaim and to celebrate the Resurrection, the one claim upon which everything else we do and we say in the Church depends. If Christ was not raised from the dead, you and I had better all go home because the Church has nothing to say and the world has nothing new to hear.
Christ is risen! Not even Mary Magdelene believed that at first. When Mary found the tomb was empty, she thought someone had stolen the body. Mary, like all of us, know dead bodies do not disappear by themselves. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary tells Peter. When Mary encounters the empty tomb, Mary does not cry out with joy “Alleluiah! Christ is risen!” Rather, Mary is absolutely overwhelmed by grief - first she watched as her Lord suffered a horrific death and now she cannot even take comfort in burying his body. Someone has stolen the body. So, if the Easter acclamation “Christ is risen!” is hard for you to say, take heart; Mary couldn’t believe it either.
“Christ is risen!” is a mad claim, an impossible claim, an incredible claim. “Christ is risen!” is no easier for you and I to say than was it for the first disciples. Those first Jewish disciples never anticipated the empty tomb. What we know from the gospels is that the Pharisees believed in the idea of a general resurrection, which we first hear about in the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Isaiah, when God will give life to a valley of dry bones. This hope of resurrection developed during a time of great persecution and suffering, and signified a trust that God would indeed vindicate Israel and not leave Israel to become simply a footnote of history, extinguished by more powerful empires. And in the New Testament, we hear the Sadducees and the Pharisees questioning Jesus about what he believes about this idea of Resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in this idea of resurrection. Jesus appears to have agreed with the Pharisees. But no one expected that only one would be raised and no one expected resurrection now.
As the Christian claim “Christ is risen!” spread into the Greek speaking world, the Greeks found the whole idea of a bodily resurrection abhorrent. The body, which obviously decays after death, is clearly not the part of us that really matters. What matters is the “soul,” the part of us destined for immortality, according to Plato. The risen Christ, all the gospel accounts tells us had a body that could be recognized. To believe in the immortality of the soul is not the same as believing in a bodily resurrection.
Whoa, preacher… Isn’t the resurrection about going to heaven when we die? Not if we take the gospel narratives seriously. If we take the gospel accounts seriously, and I would suggest we do, we must honor the claim that Jesus appeared after death in a body that could be recognized as his body but was also at the same time not like the body he had before he died. And this only happened once and to Jesus. And we are back to incredible! How can that be true?
Welcome to the Church! We cannot “explain” the Resurrection any more than we can “explain” Christ’s death on the cross. Not that we haven’t tried. “Christ is risen!” was no more believable in the first century than it is in the twenty-first. Unfortunately, we often demean our ancient ancestors for their “primitiveness.” They knew madness when they saw it and the claim “Christ is risen!” was madness. And yet they said it anyway! Some recent scholars in an attempt to make Christianity more “plausible” have argued that the presence of the risen Christ was an “experience” those first disciples had, not a one time act of God, but an emotional response to the crucifixion. If that were true, why didn’t all this nonsense die quietly away after those first witnesses died off? Just the opposite happened; the community grew and the proclamation continued in spite of persecution and significant efforts to get those crazy Christians to go away.
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Those are the words we say every Sunday in the Nicene Creed and which embody our hope as Christians. One day God will bring this world in which suffering and death continue to reign to a close and will usher in a new age, the kingdom of God, an age that will not be ruled by sin and evil but will be ruled by God. The Resurrection of Christ is our assurance that God can and will be victorious over evil and death. The Risen Christ is a foretaste of things to come.
In the meantime, we live with the promise of a coming kingdom, called to bear witness in all that we say and all that we do to the glory of that kingdom and God’s reign of justice, freedom and peace. Until God brings this age to a close, we live and work and pray and worship, all in the midst of a world in which we know when people die, their bodies decay, we know that when death comes to a person we love, the person we love is gone – really, really gone, never to be with us again - and we know with all of our hearts and minds and souls, we want them to be with us and not dead. Dear friends, God knows better than any of us what love wants and God has raised Jesus from the dead!
What we look forward to, in the words of the book of Revelation, is a “new heaven and a new earth,” when “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Real joy for me would be life in a world where I can feel the sun on my face, hear the laughter of a child, hold the hands of those I love, a world in which no one goes hungry and we live together in peace. Taking up eternal residence on a cloud with wings and a harp is not a vision that makes me want to shout for joy.
Rejoice this day in the madness of Easter.
Alleluiah! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Good Friday Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12
Friday, April 3, 2015 Hebrews 10: 1 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 1 – 19: 37
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
John 18: 36
Christ is on trial tonight. In the passion according to John which we just heard, Jesus is first betrayed by Judas and arrested and then taken first to Annas, then Caiaphas, both high priests, and finally to the Roman governor Pilate. In between, Peter denies Jesus and in the end, Pilate turns to the crowds to pronounce their verdict upon Jesus. Jesus is arrested, accused, and convicted, even though Pilate can find no case against him. Jesus is tried and found guilty but does nothing to save himself from the death penalty. Jesus makes no attempt to save himself while everyone else in our narrative is desperately trying to save themselves.
When Jesus is brought before Pilate, Pilate asks Jesus what he has done. And Jesus answers: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” In the kingdom of this world, those who stand accused defend themselves. And Jesus refuses.
On trial tonight is the kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world, a kingdom characterized not by self defense but by self giving. And in the gospel of John, no one, not even the disciples, are prepared to live in a kingdom that will ask you to give up your life. No one, in other words, wants to be where Christ is tonight.
“All the trial narratives of the Gospels,” writes the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, “come to place one single charge against us: we choose to be somewhere other than where Christ is.” Christ is crucified tonight because his kingdom is not of this world; Christ is crucified because Christ refuses to save himself and in this world, that is foolish.
In this world, all of our instincts lead us to want to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves safe and free from harm. Nations guard their borders and we lock our doors. We do not take kindly to intruders, to anyone who might take something from us. We are careful and cautious in what we give and who we give it to. We are kind and compassionate but we all have our limits, boundaries beyond which we will not go. And for us this all sounds “normal;” to do otherwise would be crazy.
This is the truth that confronts us this awful night. This is the blinding truth about ourselves that confronts us at the cross. Christ did not save himself and each of us, in ways large and small seek to save ourselves. No, we may not greet the stranger at our door with a loaded gun, but consider how we “defend” ourselves when faced with a challenge. We move quickly to “justify” our position; we rationalize our actions to make ourselves less blameworthy; we “do the best we can” and never wonder if that might not be enough. And when life does not turn out the way we expect, when we have done “the best we can do” and our world falls apart, we wonder what went wrong.
What is wrong is a world created to be very good and which is not much of the time. What is a wrong is a world that eludes our control and which can threaten our existence. What is wrong is a world that teaches us to fear for our safety and to protect ourselves against others who might harm us. We live in an inhospitable world and we learn quickly how to survive.
We cannot the change the world in which we live. But we can, in the words of the gospel of John, choose to be “in the world but not of the world.” We can choose to be hospitable in this inhospitable world. We can choose to welcome the stranger and not be suspicious; we can choose to listen to others rather than defend our positions; we can choose not to return evil for evil even, and maybe most especially when, we know we are right. As soon as we begin to believe that we are “right,” that we are the bearers of all truth, we become our own gods.
There are no rewards for living hospitably in an inhospitable world, no feeling “good” because you have done a “good” thing. Indeed, the more hospitable we are, the more the world will take from us.
I am indebted tonight to the reflections of Rowan Williams in his essay Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement. Williams includes in his essay a chapter on the early martyrs which he calls “God’s Spies: Believers on Trial.” Williams writes: “The power that counts for the martyr is a power that bestows life, not a power that simply commands. God’s will can be done, and the martyr can maintain loyalty to Jesus under the most appalling threats, because something has been imparted (not ordered) – a new depth of truthful living, a new and deeper center to the self relocated in the life of Jesus, or standing in the place where Jesus stands.”
As I read Williams words I was reminded of the story of a young woman named Jean Donovan. In 1977, just two years after graduating from Mary Washington College with a degree in economics and political science, Jean Donovan left a prestigious position with the Arthur Anderson Company in Cleveland to work with homeless children in El Salvador. Three years later, Donovan was raped and murdered along with three nuns by five Salvordoran national guardsman.
Jean Donovan was a devout Catholic laywoman and her tragic death was the direct result of her desire to do mission work, to stand in the place where Jesus stands. Jean was offering hospitality in an inhospitable world and she got killed.
Tonight the light of the world is put to death. May the terrifying truth of the cross be forever before our eyes.
Friday, April 3, 2015 Hebrews 10: 1 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 18: 1 – 19: 37
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
John 18: 36
Christ is on trial tonight. In the passion according to John which we just heard, Jesus is first betrayed by Judas and arrested and then taken first to Annas, then Caiaphas, both high priests, and finally to the Roman governor Pilate. In between, Peter denies Jesus and in the end, Pilate turns to the crowds to pronounce their verdict upon Jesus. Jesus is arrested, accused, and convicted, even though Pilate can find no case against him. Jesus is tried and found guilty but does nothing to save himself from the death penalty. Jesus makes no attempt to save himself while everyone else in our narrative is desperately trying to save themselves.
When Jesus is brought before Pilate, Pilate asks Jesus what he has done. And Jesus answers: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” In the kingdom of this world, those who stand accused defend themselves. And Jesus refuses.
On trial tonight is the kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world, a kingdom characterized not by self defense but by self giving. And in the gospel of John, no one, not even the disciples, are prepared to live in a kingdom that will ask you to give up your life. No one, in other words, wants to be where Christ is tonight.
“All the trial narratives of the Gospels,” writes the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, “come to place one single charge against us: we choose to be somewhere other than where Christ is.” Christ is crucified tonight because his kingdom is not of this world; Christ is crucified because Christ refuses to save himself and in this world, that is foolish.
In this world, all of our instincts lead us to want to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves safe and free from harm. Nations guard their borders and we lock our doors. We do not take kindly to intruders, to anyone who might take something from us. We are careful and cautious in what we give and who we give it to. We are kind and compassionate but we all have our limits, boundaries beyond which we will not go. And for us this all sounds “normal;” to do otherwise would be crazy.
This is the truth that confronts us this awful night. This is the blinding truth about ourselves that confronts us at the cross. Christ did not save himself and each of us, in ways large and small seek to save ourselves. No, we may not greet the stranger at our door with a loaded gun, but consider how we “defend” ourselves when faced with a challenge. We move quickly to “justify” our position; we rationalize our actions to make ourselves less blameworthy; we “do the best we can” and never wonder if that might not be enough. And when life does not turn out the way we expect, when we have done “the best we can do” and our world falls apart, we wonder what went wrong.
What is wrong is a world created to be very good and which is not much of the time. What is a wrong is a world that eludes our control and which can threaten our existence. What is wrong is a world that teaches us to fear for our safety and to protect ourselves against others who might harm us. We live in an inhospitable world and we learn quickly how to survive.
We cannot the change the world in which we live. But we can, in the words of the gospel of John, choose to be “in the world but not of the world.” We can choose to be hospitable in this inhospitable world. We can choose to welcome the stranger and not be suspicious; we can choose to listen to others rather than defend our positions; we can choose not to return evil for evil even, and maybe most especially when, we know we are right. As soon as we begin to believe that we are “right,” that we are the bearers of all truth, we become our own gods.
There are no rewards for living hospitably in an inhospitable world, no feeling “good” because you have done a “good” thing. Indeed, the more hospitable we are, the more the world will take from us.
I am indebted tonight to the reflections of Rowan Williams in his essay Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement. Williams includes in his essay a chapter on the early martyrs which he calls “God’s Spies: Believers on Trial.” Williams writes: “The power that counts for the martyr is a power that bestows life, not a power that simply commands. God’s will can be done, and the martyr can maintain loyalty to Jesus under the most appalling threats, because something has been imparted (not ordered) – a new depth of truthful living, a new and deeper center to the self relocated in the life of Jesus, or standing in the place where Jesus stands.”
As I read Williams words I was reminded of the story of a young woman named Jean Donovan. In 1977, just two years after graduating from Mary Washington College with a degree in economics and political science, Jean Donovan left a prestigious position with the Arthur Anderson Company in Cleveland to work with homeless children in El Salvador. Three years later, Donovan was raped and murdered along with three nuns by five Salvordoran national guardsman.
Jean Donovan was a devout Catholic laywoman and her tragic death was the direct result of her desire to do mission work, to stand in the place where Jesus stands. Jean was offering hospitality in an inhospitable world and she got killed.
Tonight the light of the world is put to death. May the terrifying truth of the cross be forever before our eyes.
Maundy Thursday Exodus 12: 1 – 14
Thursday, April 2, 2015 I Corinthians 11: 23 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 13: 1 – 17, 31b- 35
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them: ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’
John 13: 12
Tonight marks the beginning of what the church calls “the sacred three days,” Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. During these sacred three days we remember the Last Supper, the Passion of Christ upon the cross and Christ’s death and burial. These sacred three days invite us to watch and to wait as Jesus bids goodbye to his disciples and goes to his death. For three days, we wait, wait as did those first disciples, who had no idea that after those three days, the tomb would be empty.
This night, Maundy Thursday, is the beginning of a long wait. And of course we know the end of the story – Jesus is raised from the dead – so our “waiting” is always a bit forced, liturgically anyway. But for those first disciples, these three days were dark and very uncertain days as they watched Jesus suffer and die.
We begin this time of waiting tonight, remembering Jesus “waiting” upon the disciples at the Last Supper, washing their feet. Jesus assumes the role of a servant, someone who waits upon us, who serves us. And then Jesus commands the disciples to do the same, to wait upon one another through the hours and days that lie ahead.
We all have waited at one time or another – waited in line at the grocery store, waited in traffic, waited for our number to be called at the social security office. Waiting much of the time is more of a nuisance than anything else, an unpleasant intrusion that delays us from doing those things we want to do.
But what about those times we wait for the doctor to tell us if the biopsy is cancerous, or wait to see if the interview landed us the job, or wait to see if the troublesome teenager will become a contributing member of society, or wait to see if the bank account that is slowly diminishing will be enough to sustain us? What is it like to be a patient in a hospital and wait for the doctors to do tests, wait for the medicine to take effect, wait for meals, wait for someone to answer your call bell, wait for discharge papers to be signed? What is it like to wait in a surgical waiting room for someone you love, having no idea what’s going on, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell you something, answering phone calls from concerned family members wanting to know if you have heard anything, reading the same paragraph in the book you brought ten times over and still not remembering what you read?
At those times, waiting is excruciatingly difficult, difficult because we have no idea what the outcome of our waiting will be. We wait with uncertainty much like those early disciples did during those three long days at the end of Jesus’ life. Waiting, like loving, is hard because we do not know what is going to happen.
Tonight Jesus waits upon Peter, who will deny Jesus after Jesus is arrested, and Judas, who will betray him. Jesus waits upon the very folk who will fail to love Jesus as Jesus had loved them. Jesus waits upon Peter and Judas and all the disciples, washing their feet, without knowing what will happen to these, his friends, following his death. Jesus is leaving them and they cannot follow. Jesus waits upon the disciples and then tells those disciples they, too, must wait upon one another, washing one another’s feet.
In a moving essay entitled The Stature of Waiting, W.H. Vanstone explores the Greek word we translate “betray.” The word παραδιδωμι can mean “to betray” but can also mean simply “to hand over.” When my granddaughter Addy starts to cry I often hand her over to her mother so she might be comforted. Παραδιδωμι, in other words, does not necessarily carry a negative or malevolent connotation. Παραδιδωμι can mean simply to give someone into someone else’s care.
In the context of what Judas did, “betray” is a good word to use. But in the context of God’s providence, “betray” does not compute. As Vanstone points out, the religious authorities did not need Judas to do the deed. Jesus was not keeping himself hidden away after his entry in Jerusalem; the authorities clearly could have arrested Jesus without the help of Judas.
Jesus’ death on the cross, in other words, is somehow mysteriously enfolded in God’s way of being with the world. Jesus’ death, in other words, was not simply the result of an act of betrayal, but truly was a “handing over.” Tonight, Jesus hands himself over to the mercy of God and reminds the disciples that they, too, will have to hand themselves over to God and to one another, to wait upon God and one another, trusting in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Our evangelist John, in particular, sees Jesus’ death as his glorification, the means whereby God’s love for the world was revealed. Jesus was not simply betrayed; Jesus was “handed over” to God. And on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead.
But between now and Sunday, between the Last Supper and the discovery of the empty tomb, the world of the disciples will be ripped apart as their friend and teacher, a man in whose presence they encountered the very fullness of God, will suffer and die. God had come but what was happening now? Had God come in the person of Jesus only to abandon them on the cross? Tonight the disciples are being called to wait, to wait together, and waiting is an act of faith and trust.
When we wait, we are not in control. When we wait, we are at the mercy of others. And waiting, for the most part, is not what we do best.
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks the disciples tonight. I am about to go to my death, I am about to suffer, I am handing myself over to the mercy of God. Can you do this for one another? Can you trust that God, in God’s good time, will bring everything round right? Can you not rush to fix or change things? Can you acknowledge there will be times when you will be powerless and trust that God has not fallen asleep on the job? Can you rest in the love of God even when your whole world is falling apart? Can you keep faith even when keeping faith seems pointless or fruitless? Can you wait upon God who promises to be faithful?
If we follow the way of the cross into Good Friday, we will watch a very passive Jesus choose not to save himself. And we will watch most of his friends leave him to suffer his fate alone. Tomorrow when we hear the passion according to John, only four folk are standing at the foot of the cross, waiting – Jesus’ mother, her sister, Mary Magdalene and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved.” Standing at the foot of the cross is for all of us an excruciating place to be as we wait in the midst of suffering – both our own and that of those we love – for God to act.
God did act, but not in any way anyone expected. Easter was not a happy ending but a new beginning as God showed forth for all the world to see that love is stronger than death. “Love one another as I have I have loved you,” because love, not death, will have the last word. What the disciples came to learn after those long days of waiting was, in the powerful words of Saint Paul, “that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Thursday, April 2, 2015 I Corinthians 11: 23 – 26
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 13: 1 – 17, 31b- 35
After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them: ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’
John 13: 12
Tonight marks the beginning of what the church calls “the sacred three days,” Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. During these sacred three days we remember the Last Supper, the Passion of Christ upon the cross and Christ’s death and burial. These sacred three days invite us to watch and to wait as Jesus bids goodbye to his disciples and goes to his death. For three days, we wait, wait as did those first disciples, who had no idea that after those three days, the tomb would be empty.
This night, Maundy Thursday, is the beginning of a long wait. And of course we know the end of the story – Jesus is raised from the dead – so our “waiting” is always a bit forced, liturgically anyway. But for those first disciples, these three days were dark and very uncertain days as they watched Jesus suffer and die.
We begin this time of waiting tonight, remembering Jesus “waiting” upon the disciples at the Last Supper, washing their feet. Jesus assumes the role of a servant, someone who waits upon us, who serves us. And then Jesus commands the disciples to do the same, to wait upon one another through the hours and days that lie ahead.
We all have waited at one time or another – waited in line at the grocery store, waited in traffic, waited for our number to be called at the social security office. Waiting much of the time is more of a nuisance than anything else, an unpleasant intrusion that delays us from doing those things we want to do.
But what about those times we wait for the doctor to tell us if the biopsy is cancerous, or wait to see if the interview landed us the job, or wait to see if the troublesome teenager will become a contributing member of society, or wait to see if the bank account that is slowly diminishing will be enough to sustain us? What is it like to be a patient in a hospital and wait for the doctors to do tests, wait for the medicine to take effect, wait for meals, wait for someone to answer your call bell, wait for discharge papers to be signed? What is it like to wait in a surgical waiting room for someone you love, having no idea what’s going on, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell you something, answering phone calls from concerned family members wanting to know if you have heard anything, reading the same paragraph in the book you brought ten times over and still not remembering what you read?
At those times, waiting is excruciatingly difficult, difficult because we have no idea what the outcome of our waiting will be. We wait with uncertainty much like those early disciples did during those three long days at the end of Jesus’ life. Waiting, like loving, is hard because we do not know what is going to happen.
Tonight Jesus waits upon Peter, who will deny Jesus after Jesus is arrested, and Judas, who will betray him. Jesus waits upon the very folk who will fail to love Jesus as Jesus had loved them. Jesus waits upon Peter and Judas and all the disciples, washing their feet, without knowing what will happen to these, his friends, following his death. Jesus is leaving them and they cannot follow. Jesus waits upon the disciples and then tells those disciples they, too, must wait upon one another, washing one another’s feet.
In a moving essay entitled The Stature of Waiting, W.H. Vanstone explores the Greek word we translate “betray.” The word παραδιδωμι can mean “to betray” but can also mean simply “to hand over.” When my granddaughter Addy starts to cry I often hand her over to her mother so she might be comforted. Παραδιδωμι, in other words, does not necessarily carry a negative or malevolent connotation. Παραδιδωμι can mean simply to give someone into someone else’s care.
In the context of what Judas did, “betray” is a good word to use. But in the context of God’s providence, “betray” does not compute. As Vanstone points out, the religious authorities did not need Judas to do the deed. Jesus was not keeping himself hidden away after his entry in Jerusalem; the authorities clearly could have arrested Jesus without the help of Judas.
Jesus’ death on the cross, in other words, is somehow mysteriously enfolded in God’s way of being with the world. Jesus’ death, in other words, was not simply the result of an act of betrayal, but truly was a “handing over.” Tonight, Jesus hands himself over to the mercy of God and reminds the disciples that they, too, will have to hand themselves over to God and to one another, to wait upon God and one another, trusting in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Our evangelist John, in particular, sees Jesus’ death as his glorification, the means whereby God’s love for the world was revealed. Jesus was not simply betrayed; Jesus was “handed over” to God. And on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead.
But between now and Sunday, between the Last Supper and the discovery of the empty tomb, the world of the disciples will be ripped apart as their friend and teacher, a man in whose presence they encountered the very fullness of God, will suffer and die. God had come but what was happening now? Had God come in the person of Jesus only to abandon them on the cross? Tonight the disciples are being called to wait, to wait together, and waiting is an act of faith and trust.
When we wait, we are not in control. When we wait, we are at the mercy of others. And waiting, for the most part, is not what we do best.
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks the disciples tonight. I am about to go to my death, I am about to suffer, I am handing myself over to the mercy of God. Can you do this for one another? Can you trust that God, in God’s good time, will bring everything round right? Can you not rush to fix or change things? Can you acknowledge there will be times when you will be powerless and trust that God has not fallen asleep on the job? Can you rest in the love of God even when your whole world is falling apart? Can you keep faith even when keeping faith seems pointless or fruitless? Can you wait upon God who promises to be faithful?
If we follow the way of the cross into Good Friday, we will watch a very passive Jesus choose not to save himself. And we will watch most of his friends leave him to suffer his fate alone. Tomorrow when we hear the passion according to John, only four folk are standing at the foot of the cross, waiting – Jesus’ mother, her sister, Mary Magdalene and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved.” Standing at the foot of the cross is for all of us an excruciating place to be as we wait in the midst of suffering – both our own and that of those we love – for God to act.
God did act, but not in any way anyone expected. Easter was not a happy ending but a new beginning as God showed forth for all the world to see that love is stronger than death. “Love one another as I have I have loved you,” because love, not death, will have the last word. What the disciples came to learn after those long days of waiting was, in the powerful words of Saint Paul, “that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Fifth Sunday in Lent Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34
Sunday, March 22, 2015 Hebrews 5: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 20 - 33
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12: 24
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I have relished digging in the dirt this past week and watching with curiosity the new life that is beginning to grow. I am not always sure what is appearing but am grateful that something is growing. I discovered with joy that a small cluster of miniature daffodils I had planted last spring had returned to grace my garden even though I had planted them in late spring rather than early fall.
I know in my head that the warmth of the sun is luring what has laid dormant all winter to spring into life but every spring I feel a little giddy as I watch what appeared to have died to return with new life. This time of year, each new day brings yet another surprise as shoots and buds appear out of nowhere. The sheer fruitfulness of the earth after a long, dark and cold winter continues to amaze me.
Jesus draws upon this miracle of nature to teach us something about his impending death. Following the crucifixion, in the gospel of John, the risen Christ will breathe the Holy Spirit onto a group of frightened disciples, enabling those disciples to be the “body of Christ” in the world. Jesus’ death will bring forth the fruit of a community bound together by the Holy Spirit. By Jesus’ death, we, the church, are brought to life. We are the fruit of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus died so that we might live.
In the Christ event, God brings forth life out of death, just as God brought the world into being out of nothing “in the beginning.” And each year we witness this same economy of grace as plants “die” and then spring into new life. Death is the doorway into new life, for Jesus, for nature and for all of us.
But not always a doorway we wish to pass through. Jesus, we hear this morning, is “troubled.” Our translators have chosen “troubled” to interpret a Greek word that can also mean “disturbed,” “upset,” “terrified,” and “frightened.” I am troubled when I lose my glasses; I would be terrified if I lost my sight. Jesus is not just mildly discomforted that he is about to die; Jesus is frightened. Jesus may know that all grains of wheat must die to bear fruit; Jesus may not have wanted to be that seed that must die.
We all know in our heads that we will one day die, but few of us in our hearts actually want to die. What we want is to live and we take great pains to insure that we live as long as possible. That outer physical reality mirrors an inner and spiritual reality which leads us to want to protect ourselves against threats to our well-being and those threats are legion. We can of course be threatened physically but we can also be threatened by not being loved and valued and treated as the sacred creatures God created us to be – creatures made in God’s image. We can and often do, lock ourselves away from others for fear of being hurt.
We can also be threatened by our weaknesses, our mistakes, our vulnerabilities and strive to be “perfect” which usually simply leads to more and not less mistakes. We can obsess about ourselves and fail to remember that God did not create us to be perfect but rather because God wanted someone to love.
You and I rail against death, both our physical death and the death of our spirits which happens when we recognize we are not perfect nor all-powerful nor omniscient but rather frail, limited and very vulnerable creatures who can suffer and die. Those are the moments in which God does God’s best work, bringing us through death into life - if we are willing to die to our assumptions and presumptions about ourselves. And those assumptions can take the form of thinking better of ourselves than we ought or not thinking as highly of ourselves as we ought. We are created and not divine and we are created in God’s image alone of all of God’s creation.
We must be willing to die in order for God to bring us to life.
One of my profoundest Lenten experiences this year has been the cancellation of two services. Our senior warden was deeply appreciative of my desire to keep the church open come hell or high water. My death came in the form of realizing I cannot overcome nature, that I can no longer cavarlierly presume I can get to church safely under all conditions and that if I fall on the ice on the steps of my house, no one is inside the house to help me. I realized this Lent I can be overly responsible. Taking responsibility is a good thing; taking on more responsibility than we can handle simply deprives others from assuming their fair share. And of course, I felt guilty when folk came to church without knowing we had cancelled at the last minute. God was giving me something I needed to learn but the learning was painful, troubling, maybe even frightening.
During World War II, a Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a promising career and was offered a job at Union Seminary in New York. Bonhoeffer determined he needed to be with the church in Germany and left America for Germany amidst the trials of the war. Bonhoeffer was hanged in 1945, in Germany, for treason for Bonhoeffer’s participation in the resistance movement against Hitler. The night before Bonhoeffer left New York for Germany, colleagues remember Bonhoeffer sequestered in a closet, chain smoking, agonizing over his decision to leave America for the perils of Europe. Bonhoeffer was also engaged to be married. Bonhoeffer knew he needed to be in Germany but Bonhoeffer was also deeply troubled.
We all need to die to something and my desire to over function bears little resemblance to Bonhoeffer’s desire to literally save his life. But dying we all must do and Jesus cautions us against waiting until we are on hospice care. Problem is none us of us wants to die, maybe not even Jesus.
Hospice folk remark about the truth telling that often takes place at the end of life. Regrets are named, love is expressed and apologies are offered. Somehow we are often able to expose ourselves fully to others and perhaps to ourselves when we know time is short. For our evangelist John, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Truth and Truth is not always what we want. What we want often is something a bit less disturbing, a bit more affirming, a bit less disquieting. Claiming the truth about ourselves means dying to some of our fondly held presumptions about who we are and about the world in which we live.
Lent, which is coming to a close, is a season of truth telling. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with the truth that we are all mortal and will one day die. During Lent we are invited to tell the truth about ourselves first to ourselves and then to others as necessary. During Lent we are invited to see and know ourselves as God sees and knows us – deeply flawed and deeply loved creatures of God. The temptation of Lent is to falsely believe that we must “clean up our act” before God will love us. God loves us no matter what and simply wants us to learn from the dirt out of which God will bring forth new life. God loves digging in the dirt!
Bringing forth new life does mean we must die – die to our assumptions and presumptions, our desire for control, our desire to return to last spring rather than rejoicing in this spring as well as our desire to blame others for our misery. Bringing forth new life might mean appropriating our own unique and irreplaceable beauty, a beauty God dearly wants to bloom and to grow. God calls us to life through and not around death.
My spiritual discipline during Lent I have noticed for many years is raking up the leftover leaves, weeding the early onslaught of weeds, laying down mulch and finally planting something beautiful like daffodils. This is a discipline I enjoy immensely. I am only now becoming aware of how iconic this discipline is for my spiritual life. Every year I really must rake away the leaves, the angsts of the year past and remove the weeds of hurt and pain. Every year I must once more remind myself that I am loved deeply by God and lay down more mulch. And every year I must once more plant something beautiful in God’s garden.
Every spring, as I celebrate the end of winter and the emergence of new life, I forget the dark and the cold, the frustration of last spring and the bulbs I have lost to the moles and the voles. I seem to be drawn to new hope, taking the trowel in my hand like that of a long lost friend. Every year spring fills me with the desire to plant a garden, a beautiful garden, and over the years I have put a lot of stuff in the ground.
But I dislike the heat of summer and the gnats and round about June I leave my garden. I am also impatient and want what I plant to burst forth gloriously immediately which my plants never do. I have a hard time with gnats and a hard time waiting. My garden has much to teach me about me and very little of that teaching is about the right time to plant daffodils.
I have no idea where Lent has taken you this year. I know Lent has taken us all somewhere. Lent began with snow, a cancelled Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and a rescheduled Ash Wednesday service followed by two cancelled Sunday services. John Lane quipped he had given up church for Lent. Lent this year has been different. How has Lent this year made a difference to you?
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” What needs to die in you so both you and others might live?
Sunday, March 22, 2015 Hebrews 5: 5 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 12: 20 - 33
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12: 24
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I have relished digging in the dirt this past week and watching with curiosity the new life that is beginning to grow. I am not always sure what is appearing but am grateful that something is growing. I discovered with joy that a small cluster of miniature daffodils I had planted last spring had returned to grace my garden even though I had planted them in late spring rather than early fall.
I know in my head that the warmth of the sun is luring what has laid dormant all winter to spring into life but every spring I feel a little giddy as I watch what appeared to have died to return with new life. This time of year, each new day brings yet another surprise as shoots and buds appear out of nowhere. The sheer fruitfulness of the earth after a long, dark and cold winter continues to amaze me.
Jesus draws upon this miracle of nature to teach us something about his impending death. Following the crucifixion, in the gospel of John, the risen Christ will breathe the Holy Spirit onto a group of frightened disciples, enabling those disciples to be the “body of Christ” in the world. Jesus’ death will bring forth the fruit of a community bound together by the Holy Spirit. By Jesus’ death, we, the church, are brought to life. We are the fruit of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus died so that we might live.
In the Christ event, God brings forth life out of death, just as God brought the world into being out of nothing “in the beginning.” And each year we witness this same economy of grace as plants “die” and then spring into new life. Death is the doorway into new life, for Jesus, for nature and for all of us.
But not always a doorway we wish to pass through. Jesus, we hear this morning, is “troubled.” Our translators have chosen “troubled” to interpret a Greek word that can also mean “disturbed,” “upset,” “terrified,” and “frightened.” I am troubled when I lose my glasses; I would be terrified if I lost my sight. Jesus is not just mildly discomforted that he is about to die; Jesus is frightened. Jesus may know that all grains of wheat must die to bear fruit; Jesus may not have wanted to be that seed that must die.
We all know in our heads that we will one day die, but few of us in our hearts actually want to die. What we want is to live and we take great pains to insure that we live as long as possible. That outer physical reality mirrors an inner and spiritual reality which leads us to want to protect ourselves against threats to our well-being and those threats are legion. We can of course be threatened physically but we can also be threatened by not being loved and valued and treated as the sacred creatures God created us to be – creatures made in God’s image. We can and often do, lock ourselves away from others for fear of being hurt.
We can also be threatened by our weaknesses, our mistakes, our vulnerabilities and strive to be “perfect” which usually simply leads to more and not less mistakes. We can obsess about ourselves and fail to remember that God did not create us to be perfect but rather because God wanted someone to love.
You and I rail against death, both our physical death and the death of our spirits which happens when we recognize we are not perfect nor all-powerful nor omniscient but rather frail, limited and very vulnerable creatures who can suffer and die. Those are the moments in which God does God’s best work, bringing us through death into life - if we are willing to die to our assumptions and presumptions about ourselves. And those assumptions can take the form of thinking better of ourselves than we ought or not thinking as highly of ourselves as we ought. We are created and not divine and we are created in God’s image alone of all of God’s creation.
We must be willing to die in order for God to bring us to life.
One of my profoundest Lenten experiences this year has been the cancellation of two services. Our senior warden was deeply appreciative of my desire to keep the church open come hell or high water. My death came in the form of realizing I cannot overcome nature, that I can no longer cavarlierly presume I can get to church safely under all conditions and that if I fall on the ice on the steps of my house, no one is inside the house to help me. I realized this Lent I can be overly responsible. Taking responsibility is a good thing; taking on more responsibility than we can handle simply deprives others from assuming their fair share. And of course, I felt guilty when folk came to church without knowing we had cancelled at the last minute. God was giving me something I needed to learn but the learning was painful, troubling, maybe even frightening.
During World War II, a Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a promising career and was offered a job at Union Seminary in New York. Bonhoeffer determined he needed to be with the church in Germany and left America for Germany amidst the trials of the war. Bonhoeffer was hanged in 1945, in Germany, for treason for Bonhoeffer’s participation in the resistance movement against Hitler. The night before Bonhoeffer left New York for Germany, colleagues remember Bonhoeffer sequestered in a closet, chain smoking, agonizing over his decision to leave America for the perils of Europe. Bonhoeffer was also engaged to be married. Bonhoeffer knew he needed to be in Germany but Bonhoeffer was also deeply troubled.
We all need to die to something and my desire to over function bears little resemblance to Bonhoeffer’s desire to literally save his life. But dying we all must do and Jesus cautions us against waiting until we are on hospice care. Problem is none us of us wants to die, maybe not even Jesus.
Hospice folk remark about the truth telling that often takes place at the end of life. Regrets are named, love is expressed and apologies are offered. Somehow we are often able to expose ourselves fully to others and perhaps to ourselves when we know time is short. For our evangelist John, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Truth and Truth is not always what we want. What we want often is something a bit less disturbing, a bit more affirming, a bit less disquieting. Claiming the truth about ourselves means dying to some of our fondly held presumptions about who we are and about the world in which we live.
Lent, which is coming to a close, is a season of truth telling. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with the truth that we are all mortal and will one day die. During Lent we are invited to tell the truth about ourselves first to ourselves and then to others as necessary. During Lent we are invited to see and know ourselves as God sees and knows us – deeply flawed and deeply loved creatures of God. The temptation of Lent is to falsely believe that we must “clean up our act” before God will love us. God loves us no matter what and simply wants us to learn from the dirt out of which God will bring forth new life. God loves digging in the dirt!
Bringing forth new life does mean we must die – die to our assumptions and presumptions, our desire for control, our desire to return to last spring rather than rejoicing in this spring as well as our desire to blame others for our misery. Bringing forth new life might mean appropriating our own unique and irreplaceable beauty, a beauty God dearly wants to bloom and to grow. God calls us to life through and not around death.
My spiritual discipline during Lent I have noticed for many years is raking up the leftover leaves, weeding the early onslaught of weeds, laying down mulch and finally planting something beautiful like daffodils. This is a discipline I enjoy immensely. I am only now becoming aware of how iconic this discipline is for my spiritual life. Every year I really must rake away the leaves, the angsts of the year past and remove the weeds of hurt and pain. Every year I must once more remind myself that I am loved deeply by God and lay down more mulch. And every year I must once more plant something beautiful in God’s garden.
Every spring, as I celebrate the end of winter and the emergence of new life, I forget the dark and the cold, the frustration of last spring and the bulbs I have lost to the moles and the voles. I seem to be drawn to new hope, taking the trowel in my hand like that of a long lost friend. Every year spring fills me with the desire to plant a garden, a beautiful garden, and over the years I have put a lot of stuff in the ground.
But I dislike the heat of summer and the gnats and round about June I leave my garden. I am also impatient and want what I plant to burst forth gloriously immediately which my plants never do. I have a hard time with gnats and a hard time waiting. My garden has much to teach me about me and very little of that teaching is about the right time to plant daffodils.
I have no idea where Lent has taken you this year. I know Lent has taken us all somewhere. Lent began with snow, a cancelled Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and a rescheduled Ash Wednesday service followed by two cancelled Sunday services. John Lane quipped he had given up church for Lent. Lent this year has been different. How has Lent this year made a difference to you?
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” What needs to die in you so both you and others might live?
The Fourth Sunday in Lent Numbers 21: 4 – 9
Sunday, March 15, 2015 Ephesians 2: 1 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 3: 14 - 21
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
John 3: 16
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Our evangelist John looks back to an Old Testament story this morning and forward to the crucifixion, telling us the Son of Man must be “lifted up.” The cross, for John, is not a place of shame and humiliation, but a place of honor, the place where God glorifies Christ. On the cross, Christ offers himself back to the Father, revealing the glory of God as the sacrifice of love.
In the book of Numbers, we learn that the Israelites grow weary of the desolation of the wilderness and take God to task, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” God, who has brought the Israelites out of slavery and would like a bit more gratitude for parting the red Sea, sends poisonous snakes among the people. The Israelites get a grip and realize that staying alive is really want they want and manna is better than nothing. So God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a pole so that those who have been bitten can look at the snake on the pole and live.
This snake on the pole became a later embarrassment to the Israelites who were told by God not to make any graven images. And we read in Second Kings that King Hezekiah destroyed what had become an object of worship in the seventh century. But our evangelist John uses this Old Testament story to help us understand what happened on Calvary. John tells us that the Son of Man must be “lifted up” just like Moses lifted up the snake on the pole to save the Israelites who were dying. On Calvary, Jesus was literally lifted up after being nailed to the cross, lifted up so that those who passed by might be deterred from doing what Jesus did which was to threaten the power of Rome.
But just as the snake on the pole brought healing to the Israelites who were dying, John wants us to see the crucifixion as a saving act, an act of healing, an act of love that gives life to those who are dying.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Just as God “gave” his Son to be in the world, now Christ gives himself back to God on the cross. The crucifixion is the consummation of a divine love affair, the sacrificial love of the Father and the responding sacrificial love of the Son.
The gospel of John is unique among the four gospels. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the divine Son of God who reveals a relationship of love between God as Father and God as Son. In this communion of love, the Father gives up the Son, sending the Son into the world. On the cross, the Son returns to the Father in glory. In the gospel of John, the love of God is revealed to be a sacrificial love, a love that withholds nothing and gives up everything.
“Sacrifice” is a word that for many of us, conjures up images of violent killings either of animals or humans, to appease the wrath of angry gods. Offering bulls or virgins to assure a good harvest is beyond our enlightened imaginations, the magical thinking of primitive peoples. And in a world where women and minorities are often exploited, the idea that “we all must make sacrifices” is sometimes used to mask injustice.
Yet, unless we dismiss a large portion of the Old Testament, the act of making sacrifices was constitutive of the people of Israel. Making a sacrifice renewed Israel’s relationship with God. In the book of Leviticus, we can read detailed instructions for making grain offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings and burnt offerings.
Israel offered sacrifices to God because Israel herself was to be a sacrifice. Called to be “holy, as God is holy,” Israel was set a apart, made holy by God, to be God’s witness in the world. God elected Israel of all the peoples of the world to bear God’s light into the world, to bring the whole world into the praise of the God who brought the world into being.
“Holiness” for Israel was a constant struggle. Being holy meant being clean, free from defilement and impurity, being like God. Sin was contamination and was never simply personal but always communal. The sin of one was the sin of all, infecting the whole community. We regrettably often forget the social dimension of sin, preferring to think of sin as something personal and private and “nobody else’s business.” Sin for Israel disordered the whole community and was never simply a personal transgression. When Israel made sacrifices, Israel was affirming a relationship with God, a relationship initiated by God when God said, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”
In the gospel of John, in our text this morning, God is the giver of the sacrifice. God gives up God’s Son. For John, the crucifixion is the self-offering of God. In the gospel of John, Christ comes from God and returns to God. The crucifixion is the “lifting up” of the Son of Man, the glorification of the Son of God, the exaltation of Christ, “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,” in the words of one our eucharistic prayers. The cross is the sacrifice God makes for us.
The crucifixion was an act of love and a gift. At the cross, in the gospel of John, God is revealed to be a communion of love, a relationship between God as Father and God as Son in which the Father gives all to the Son and the Son gives all back to the Father. The cross is a revelation of God’s love, the desire of God to be with us and not without us. At the cross, God himself offers the sacrifice that enables us to be with God.
“Being with God” is the work of the Holy Spirit. We are with God whenever we experience truth or beauty or goodness. At those times, God is offering Godself to us, loving us into life. We are brought to life by the Holy Spirit whenever we embrace the hard truths of our humanity, the great beauty of our spirits which we so often keep hidden from those around us, and the goodness of life which is both bitter and sweet. The Holy Spirit is constantly in motion, nudging us always into God’s embrace. We need only to be aware and not afraid.
“Lift up your hearts,” I say every Sunday in the Eucharistic prayer. Lift up your hearts and be aware of God’s love for you every hour of every day. Lift up your hearts and do not be afraid of your warts; God usually teaches us more though our shortcomings than through our successes. Lift up your hearts and do not despair that your spirit is unique and not like anyone else’s; God did not create clones but particular irreplaceable persons. Lift up your hearts and experience the goodness of life – let your tears fall freely when you have lost a great love and laugh from the belly when you realize you had no idea you had GFI switches in your house; God did not create you knowing everything and that was on purpose! In other words, allow God to love you in and through life, your life, the life you are living right now.
We have journeyed more than halfway through Lent; Easter is three weeks away. We still have opportunities to come clean with God and to allow God to come clean with us. Coming clean with God we call confession; allowing God to come clean with us means being attentive to the mystery of love that surrounds us on all sides. We cannot do one without the other. So, if you are having a hard time coming clean with God, make a list of your loves, your joys and passions, the people you have loved and the times you have felt loved.
After a while, make another list. This time list those things you hate to do, what makes for boredom, who in your life is difficult to be with and when you have felt unloved or even hurt. After a while bring the two lists into conversation. See what happens. That was of course what our ancestors in the faith did as they journeyed in the wilderness; they remembered with gratitude all that God had done but could only see the misery of their present existence. God got their attention by putting a snake on a stick. Maybe we too, need to put our snakes on a stick, or at least a sheet of paper, and remembering what God has given us, allow God to love us into life.
Sunday, March 15, 2015 Ephesians 2: 1 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 3: 14 - 21
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
John 3: 16
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Our evangelist John looks back to an Old Testament story this morning and forward to the crucifixion, telling us the Son of Man must be “lifted up.” The cross, for John, is not a place of shame and humiliation, but a place of honor, the place where God glorifies Christ. On the cross, Christ offers himself back to the Father, revealing the glory of God as the sacrifice of love.
In the book of Numbers, we learn that the Israelites grow weary of the desolation of the wilderness and take God to task, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” God, who has brought the Israelites out of slavery and would like a bit more gratitude for parting the red Sea, sends poisonous snakes among the people. The Israelites get a grip and realize that staying alive is really want they want and manna is better than nothing. So God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a pole so that those who have been bitten can look at the snake on the pole and live.
This snake on the pole became a later embarrassment to the Israelites who were told by God not to make any graven images. And we read in Second Kings that King Hezekiah destroyed what had become an object of worship in the seventh century. But our evangelist John uses this Old Testament story to help us understand what happened on Calvary. John tells us that the Son of Man must be “lifted up” just like Moses lifted up the snake on the pole to save the Israelites who were dying. On Calvary, Jesus was literally lifted up after being nailed to the cross, lifted up so that those who passed by might be deterred from doing what Jesus did which was to threaten the power of Rome.
But just as the snake on the pole brought healing to the Israelites who were dying, John wants us to see the crucifixion as a saving act, an act of healing, an act of love that gives life to those who are dying.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Just as God “gave” his Son to be in the world, now Christ gives himself back to God on the cross. The crucifixion is the consummation of a divine love affair, the sacrificial love of the Father and the responding sacrificial love of the Son.
The gospel of John is unique among the four gospels. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the divine Son of God who reveals a relationship of love between God as Father and God as Son. In this communion of love, the Father gives up the Son, sending the Son into the world. On the cross, the Son returns to the Father in glory. In the gospel of John, the love of God is revealed to be a sacrificial love, a love that withholds nothing and gives up everything.
“Sacrifice” is a word that for many of us, conjures up images of violent killings either of animals or humans, to appease the wrath of angry gods. Offering bulls or virgins to assure a good harvest is beyond our enlightened imaginations, the magical thinking of primitive peoples. And in a world where women and minorities are often exploited, the idea that “we all must make sacrifices” is sometimes used to mask injustice.
Yet, unless we dismiss a large portion of the Old Testament, the act of making sacrifices was constitutive of the people of Israel. Making a sacrifice renewed Israel’s relationship with God. In the book of Leviticus, we can read detailed instructions for making grain offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings and burnt offerings.
Israel offered sacrifices to God because Israel herself was to be a sacrifice. Called to be “holy, as God is holy,” Israel was set a apart, made holy by God, to be God’s witness in the world. God elected Israel of all the peoples of the world to bear God’s light into the world, to bring the whole world into the praise of the God who brought the world into being.
“Holiness” for Israel was a constant struggle. Being holy meant being clean, free from defilement and impurity, being like God. Sin was contamination and was never simply personal but always communal. The sin of one was the sin of all, infecting the whole community. We regrettably often forget the social dimension of sin, preferring to think of sin as something personal and private and “nobody else’s business.” Sin for Israel disordered the whole community and was never simply a personal transgression. When Israel made sacrifices, Israel was affirming a relationship with God, a relationship initiated by God when God said, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”
In the gospel of John, in our text this morning, God is the giver of the sacrifice. God gives up God’s Son. For John, the crucifixion is the self-offering of God. In the gospel of John, Christ comes from God and returns to God. The crucifixion is the “lifting up” of the Son of Man, the glorification of the Son of God, the exaltation of Christ, “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,” in the words of one our eucharistic prayers. The cross is the sacrifice God makes for us.
The crucifixion was an act of love and a gift. At the cross, in the gospel of John, God is revealed to be a communion of love, a relationship between God as Father and God as Son in which the Father gives all to the Son and the Son gives all back to the Father. The cross is a revelation of God’s love, the desire of God to be with us and not without us. At the cross, God himself offers the sacrifice that enables us to be with God.
“Being with God” is the work of the Holy Spirit. We are with God whenever we experience truth or beauty or goodness. At those times, God is offering Godself to us, loving us into life. We are brought to life by the Holy Spirit whenever we embrace the hard truths of our humanity, the great beauty of our spirits which we so often keep hidden from those around us, and the goodness of life which is both bitter and sweet. The Holy Spirit is constantly in motion, nudging us always into God’s embrace. We need only to be aware and not afraid.
“Lift up your hearts,” I say every Sunday in the Eucharistic prayer. Lift up your hearts and be aware of God’s love for you every hour of every day. Lift up your hearts and do not be afraid of your warts; God usually teaches us more though our shortcomings than through our successes. Lift up your hearts and do not despair that your spirit is unique and not like anyone else’s; God did not create clones but particular irreplaceable persons. Lift up your hearts and experience the goodness of life – let your tears fall freely when you have lost a great love and laugh from the belly when you realize you had no idea you had GFI switches in your house; God did not create you knowing everything and that was on purpose! In other words, allow God to love you in and through life, your life, the life you are living right now.
We have journeyed more than halfway through Lent; Easter is three weeks away. We still have opportunities to come clean with God and to allow God to come clean with us. Coming clean with God we call confession; allowing God to come clean with us means being attentive to the mystery of love that surrounds us on all sides. We cannot do one without the other. So, if you are having a hard time coming clean with God, make a list of your loves, your joys and passions, the people you have loved and the times you have felt loved.
After a while, make another list. This time list those things you hate to do, what makes for boredom, who in your life is difficult to be with and when you have felt unloved or even hurt. After a while bring the two lists into conversation. See what happens. That was of course what our ancestors in the faith did as they journeyed in the wilderness; they remembered with gratitude all that God had done but could only see the misery of their present existence. God got their attention by putting a snake on a stick. Maybe we too, need to put our snakes on a stick, or at least a sheet of paper, and remembering what God has given us, allow God to love us into life.
The Third Sunday in Lent Exodus 20 1 – 17
Sunday, March 8, 2015 I Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 2: 13 – 22
“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”
John 2: 13
As temperatures soared into the fifties this past Monday and I enjoyed the warmth of the sun, I read the lessons for this morning and saw Jesus brandishing a whip of cords, driving out the sheep and the cattle from the Temple and overturning the tables of the money changers. I thought to myself: “Dear Jesus: we have not been together for worship in two weeks. Can’t you wait to rant and rave? Why are you picking this Sunday to clean house? This Sunday, all I want is something that feels “normal,” and you are brandishing a whip!
Jesus this morning is bent upon destroying a Temple that was doing what the Temple was supposed to do – providing the appropriate sacrifices commanded by God - the doves and the sheep and the cattle that were appointed by God to expiate the sins of the people. The Temple, with the Temple’s appointed sacrifices, was the place the people of God met God. And the money changers were simply providing a necessary service –enabling folk who needed to buy an animal to sacrifice to exchange coins of the realm for the Temple currency. Money changers had to be in the Temple if the people of God were going to be able to make their commanded sacrifices. The money changers were a necessary part of worship.
And now, Jesus strides into the Temple, setting loose the animals, overturning tables and claiming to rebuild the Temple in three days. All of this happens we are told near Passover. Passover is the time Jews remember the Exodus, their liberation from slavery in Egypt. We get a taste of that celebration at our Seder supper. Before the Temple was actually destroyed by Rome in 70 A.D., Jews would sacrifice a lamb on Passover, remembering a time when God called them to smear lamb’s blood on their doors. That night God killed all the first born in Egypt but “passed over” the houses of those with blood on their doors. The next day, God led them out of slavery into freedom.
We are hearing from the second chapter of the gospel of John; in the first chapter, John the Baptist declares that Jesus is “the lamb of God.” The lamb that is to be slain is Jesus. The cattle and the sheep and the money changers are no longer needed.
Jesus is not “cleansing” the Temple as this story is often described, not ridding the Temple of corrupt business practices and certainly not counseling us against talking about money in the church. Jesus is revealing a new Temple, the Temple of his body, a body that would spring forth following his death and resurrection. Saint Paul would call the church “the body of Christ.”
God’s timing this Lent seems perfect to me. As I have agonized over the ice and snow and two cancelled services, I and many of you, have felt the absence of our weekly fellowship. We have missed being together in worship. We are, I believe, being led by God into a deeper understanding of our first baptismal promise: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” Something is missing when we do not meet for worship.
On this Third Sunday in Lent, 2015, we are aware once more, of the significance of our community, that we are the body of Christ, and being together is important. And not just for us as individuals. Being together enables us to taste and see the goodness of God in our midst, the power of the Holy Spirit urging us to “be one as the Father and I are one,” Jesus will say in the gospel of John. I never know what exactly what will happen on any given Sunday; most Sundays something does happen. News is exchanged for sure and we catch up with one another. On some Sundays other more mysterious things happen as when the choir sings an anthem and we want to clap or a child brings a doll to the communion rail to receive a blessing or a stranger comes among us, needing help navigating the prayer book, and someone assists. Most Sundays, while “ordinary,” are also “extraordinary.” The extraordinary is the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of God making us one in Christ. With two cancelled services, I have been living in ordinary time far too long, longing for the extraordinary that so often happens when we are together in worship.
Jesus is raising up a new Temple and that Temple is extraordinary, guided by the Holy Spirit, filled with the presence of God as was the Temple, but no longer needing to make sacrifices, as that sacrifice was made once and for all, according to our evangelist John, on the cross. We now offer a sacrifice of “praise and thanksgiving,” in the words of one of our eucharistic prayers. And when we are not able to offer that sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, something is amiss.
If this Lent has taught us something, I pray that part of what we have learned is that we are creatures made to be together, created as partners and helpmates to fellowship with one another and with God. The people of Israel were called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and the Temple embodied that call. We, like the people of Israel, are following the same call, but now as the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We were created to pray, to give thanks, to enjoy one another’s company and to celebrate the presence of God in our midst. Thanks be to God we are together this day!
And yet, we all know that our common life can become stressed and strained. We all are aware that being together is not always easy and sometimes downright hard. I will submit that, whereas I see the power of God at work in our midst, I also affirm, as we acknowledge at our baptism, that there are spiritual forces that rebel against God. Those forces seek to divide and separate us. Those unholy spirits want to work against God’s good purposes and none of us are immune. We can choose to collude or not with those spirits. But those spirits will abide until Christ comes again. Cherish our common life and be attentive to both the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst drawing us together and the power of unholy spirits seeking to drive us apart.
At the Passover, remembering God’s great act of liberation in the Exodus, Jews would sacrifice a lamb in the Temple and then eat the lamb at a family meal. You and I, during the Eucharist, eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, the lamb of God, according to our evangelist John. And we do so remembering Christ’s death and resurrection until Christ comes again. If, as popular wisdom tells us, we are what we eat, then in some small way, sharing eucharist together makes us all “the lamb of God.” We are the sacrifice God is making for the sake of the world. What you and I do together is really important.
Worship is at root a fundamental gratitude for what God has done for us – always giving us new life, forgiving us when we have done wrong and guiding us to know ourselves as God knows us. This Lent I have grumbled and mumbled a lot, been grateful I did not lose power in our three storms, regretted mightily we cancelled two services in a row, realized how much I miss our fellowship and made a bit of peace with my newfound estate of widowhood. Lent has worked on me this year in ways Lent never has; I pray Lent has worked on you as well during our time apart.
Lent calls us into solitude, of which we have had a fair amount of late, in order to make us more attentive to what is important to us, to what is missing in our lives, to the deep desires of our hearts. I am radically aware how important this community is to me, how very different this Lent feels than Lent pasts, how my anxieties and uncertainties can blind me to the grace of God and how very much more I prefer the warmth of the sun to the dark of the night and the cold.
Lent also calls us forward to a day when, as on that day God led the Hebrew slaves out of slavery into freedom, we, too will be freed from our faithless fears and all assaults on our bodies and souls, a day when the sun will shine forever.
“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” The sun is shining as I write these words and I know spring is on the horizon. But the snow is still on the ground and I know I continue to wrestle with a new way of being, with doubts and uncertainties about the future. I also know how much I have missed our common life. When our evangelist John wrote his gospel, Christians and Jews were beginning to separate in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. Our evangelist was calling a community to “be one as the Father and I are one.” Being one was incredibly hard at that time and threatened in many ways.
You and I have it easy by comparison but the desire persists. We desire to be together, we desire to be in the house of the Lord, and we desire to learn and to grow in the ways of the Lord and appreciate more deeply the devices and desires of our own hearts. We are following an ancient path, a path this year illuminated by snow and ice. I yearn for the sun and for the snow to melt but am glad for what these weeks of cancellations and rescheduling have taught me.
Sunday, March 8, 2015 I Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 2: 13 – 22
“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”
John 2: 13
As temperatures soared into the fifties this past Monday and I enjoyed the warmth of the sun, I read the lessons for this morning and saw Jesus brandishing a whip of cords, driving out the sheep and the cattle from the Temple and overturning the tables of the money changers. I thought to myself: “Dear Jesus: we have not been together for worship in two weeks. Can’t you wait to rant and rave? Why are you picking this Sunday to clean house? This Sunday, all I want is something that feels “normal,” and you are brandishing a whip!
Jesus this morning is bent upon destroying a Temple that was doing what the Temple was supposed to do – providing the appropriate sacrifices commanded by God - the doves and the sheep and the cattle that were appointed by God to expiate the sins of the people. The Temple, with the Temple’s appointed sacrifices, was the place the people of God met God. And the money changers were simply providing a necessary service –enabling folk who needed to buy an animal to sacrifice to exchange coins of the realm for the Temple currency. Money changers had to be in the Temple if the people of God were going to be able to make their commanded sacrifices. The money changers were a necessary part of worship.
And now, Jesus strides into the Temple, setting loose the animals, overturning tables and claiming to rebuild the Temple in three days. All of this happens we are told near Passover. Passover is the time Jews remember the Exodus, their liberation from slavery in Egypt. We get a taste of that celebration at our Seder supper. Before the Temple was actually destroyed by Rome in 70 A.D., Jews would sacrifice a lamb on Passover, remembering a time when God called them to smear lamb’s blood on their doors. That night God killed all the first born in Egypt but “passed over” the houses of those with blood on their doors. The next day, God led them out of slavery into freedom.
We are hearing from the second chapter of the gospel of John; in the first chapter, John the Baptist declares that Jesus is “the lamb of God.” The lamb that is to be slain is Jesus. The cattle and the sheep and the money changers are no longer needed.
Jesus is not “cleansing” the Temple as this story is often described, not ridding the Temple of corrupt business practices and certainly not counseling us against talking about money in the church. Jesus is revealing a new Temple, the Temple of his body, a body that would spring forth following his death and resurrection. Saint Paul would call the church “the body of Christ.”
God’s timing this Lent seems perfect to me. As I have agonized over the ice and snow and two cancelled services, I and many of you, have felt the absence of our weekly fellowship. We have missed being together in worship. We are, I believe, being led by God into a deeper understanding of our first baptismal promise: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” Something is missing when we do not meet for worship.
On this Third Sunday in Lent, 2015, we are aware once more, of the significance of our community, that we are the body of Christ, and being together is important. And not just for us as individuals. Being together enables us to taste and see the goodness of God in our midst, the power of the Holy Spirit urging us to “be one as the Father and I are one,” Jesus will say in the gospel of John. I never know what exactly what will happen on any given Sunday; most Sundays something does happen. News is exchanged for sure and we catch up with one another. On some Sundays other more mysterious things happen as when the choir sings an anthem and we want to clap or a child brings a doll to the communion rail to receive a blessing or a stranger comes among us, needing help navigating the prayer book, and someone assists. Most Sundays, while “ordinary,” are also “extraordinary.” The extraordinary is the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of God making us one in Christ. With two cancelled services, I have been living in ordinary time far too long, longing for the extraordinary that so often happens when we are together in worship.
Jesus is raising up a new Temple and that Temple is extraordinary, guided by the Holy Spirit, filled with the presence of God as was the Temple, but no longer needing to make sacrifices, as that sacrifice was made once and for all, according to our evangelist John, on the cross. We now offer a sacrifice of “praise and thanksgiving,” in the words of one of our eucharistic prayers. And when we are not able to offer that sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, something is amiss.
If this Lent has taught us something, I pray that part of what we have learned is that we are creatures made to be together, created as partners and helpmates to fellowship with one another and with God. The people of Israel were called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and the Temple embodied that call. We, like the people of Israel, are following the same call, but now as the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We were created to pray, to give thanks, to enjoy one another’s company and to celebrate the presence of God in our midst. Thanks be to God we are together this day!
And yet, we all know that our common life can become stressed and strained. We all are aware that being together is not always easy and sometimes downright hard. I will submit that, whereas I see the power of God at work in our midst, I also affirm, as we acknowledge at our baptism, that there are spiritual forces that rebel against God. Those forces seek to divide and separate us. Those unholy spirits want to work against God’s good purposes and none of us are immune. We can choose to collude or not with those spirits. But those spirits will abide until Christ comes again. Cherish our common life and be attentive to both the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst drawing us together and the power of unholy spirits seeking to drive us apart.
At the Passover, remembering God’s great act of liberation in the Exodus, Jews would sacrifice a lamb in the Temple and then eat the lamb at a family meal. You and I, during the Eucharist, eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, the lamb of God, according to our evangelist John. And we do so remembering Christ’s death and resurrection until Christ comes again. If, as popular wisdom tells us, we are what we eat, then in some small way, sharing eucharist together makes us all “the lamb of God.” We are the sacrifice God is making for the sake of the world. What you and I do together is really important.
Worship is at root a fundamental gratitude for what God has done for us – always giving us new life, forgiving us when we have done wrong and guiding us to know ourselves as God knows us. This Lent I have grumbled and mumbled a lot, been grateful I did not lose power in our three storms, regretted mightily we cancelled two services in a row, realized how much I miss our fellowship and made a bit of peace with my newfound estate of widowhood. Lent has worked on me this year in ways Lent never has; I pray Lent has worked on you as well during our time apart.
Lent calls us into solitude, of which we have had a fair amount of late, in order to make us more attentive to what is important to us, to what is missing in our lives, to the deep desires of our hearts. I am radically aware how important this community is to me, how very different this Lent feels than Lent pasts, how my anxieties and uncertainties can blind me to the grace of God and how very much more I prefer the warmth of the sun to the dark of the night and the cold.
Lent also calls us forward to a day when, as on that day God led the Hebrew slaves out of slavery into freedom, we, too will be freed from our faithless fears and all assaults on our bodies and souls, a day when the sun will shine forever.
“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” The sun is shining as I write these words and I know spring is on the horizon. But the snow is still on the ground and I know I continue to wrestle with a new way of being, with doubts and uncertainties about the future. I also know how much I have missed our common life. When our evangelist John wrote his gospel, Christians and Jews were beginning to separate in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. Our evangelist was calling a community to “be one as the Father and I are one.” Being one was incredibly hard at that time and threatened in many ways.
You and I have it easy by comparison but the desire persists. We desire to be together, we desire to be in the house of the Lord, and we desire to learn and to grow in the ways of the Lord and appreciate more deeply the devices and desires of our own hearts. We are following an ancient path, a path this year illuminated by snow and ice. I yearn for the sun and for the snow to melt but am glad for what these weeks of cancellations and rescheduling have taught me.
The Second Sunday in Lent Genesis 17: 1 – 7, 15 – 16
Sunday, March 1. 2015 Romans 4: 13 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 31 - 38
“Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Mark 8: 31
“Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” This morning, after two snow storms, no Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, a rescheduled Ash Wednesday service and a cancelled service last Sunday, we are now back in church and back in Lent. Life for many of us held a few extra challenges these past two weeks and this morning we meet Peter this morning who is challenged by Jesus’ words. Lent did not begin as we anticipated; perhaps God is giving us a window into our gospel reading this morning.
This morning, Jesus predicts his suffering, his rejection and that he will be killed. And Peter is horrified, rebuking Jesus for saying such things. In the verses just before those we hear this morning, Peter has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. Messiahs conquer and deliver; Messiahs do not get killed. Peter, who dropped his fishing net to follow Jesus, has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, is now rebuked by Jesus, who tells Peter, Peter is setting his mind on “human things.”
Peter’s human way of seeing things had no room for a crucified Messiah. Peter knew his Old Testament better than any of us and Peter knew God had promised a Messiah who would bring peace and justice to God’s people and through those people, to the whole world. The Messiah had a job to do and getting killed was not a part of that job description. Indeed, if the Messiah was killed, that could only mean that person was not the Messiah. In fairness to Peter, Peter had no other way to see things; Peter had only a very human way of seeing. Peter could not possibly see the way God sees.
Lent, into which we have been dropped a bit late, is a journey into our human ways of seeing things. And we, like Peter, have trouble with things that do not make sense like a savior who cannot save himself or with a world created by a good and loving God but in which a baby can die hours after birth. We have trouble making sense of untimely deaths, natural disasters and folk who feel called to violence in the name of religion. And in our age of enlightenment – yet one more human way of seeing things – we are apt to believe that we can, given enough time or education or money, understand and fix all the problems of life in this world. For those with ears to hear, that would make us God, and we are the creatures, not the Creator.
Jesus says he “must” suffer.” Jesus does not say he “may” suffer or “ought” to suffer or “should” suffer. Jesus says he “must” suffer. Jesus “must” suffer because that was what God had ordained. Peter saw Jesus healing the sick and turning over tables in the Temple; Peter saw a man who was rescuing God’s people from all that kept them in bondage, the very promised Messiah of God. Peter was horrified this man would suffer and be killed. But Jesus said he “must undergo great suffering.”
Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, speaks of “the tragic sense of life” in this world, an aspect of our existence that resists our ideas of progress and that we can fix all ills. Part of being human includes the reality that we all suffer “necessarily,” in Rohr’s words. Necessary suffering is a part of a wisdom we will never understand but which is written into the world in which we live - a world in which tragedies befall us - babies are born with no chance for life, lightning strikes a home and the home is destroyed, the people we love say and do things that hurt us. We live in a world in which we can be hurt and in which we suffer. None of us wants to suffer, but all of us do. We suffer because we are not God and cannot control all that happens to us. We suffer simply because we are human.
Peter was about to suffer horribly as he watched Jesus be arrested and crucified. And Peter would suffer even more when Peter denied knowing Jesus in the courtyard before the high priest. In Rohr’s words: “The refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run.” Peter could not accept that his friend must die; Peter’s denial of Jesus at the last hour caused Peter even greater suffering and he wept we are told.
Peter “kicked against the goad,” in Fr. Rohr’s words. Peter resisted the way God had ordained Jesus’ life to be and we kick against the goad whenever we attempt to gloss over our suffering, rather than plummeting the depths of our suffering to learn what those experiences have to teach us.
Lent is an opportunity to reflect upon the necessary suffering that comes with being human, not divine. And Lent is an opportunity to reflect upon the unnecessary suffering we bring upon ourselves when we chafe against our human finitude and limits, grasping for control over things we have no control over. Lent is a season when we look our “sins and offenses” in the eye, wondering if what have we have done or not done is rooted somewhere in our desire to change what we cannot change.
An old Jewish story sets out our human dilemma eloquently:
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk was asked by a disciple how one should pray for forgiveness. He told him to observe the behavior of a certain innkeeper before Yom Kippur. The disciple took lodging at the inn and observed the proprietor for several days, but could see nothing relevant to his quest. Then, on the night before Yom Kippur, he saw the innkeeper open two large ledgers. From the first book he read off a list of all the sins he had committed throughout the past year. When he was finished, he opened the second book and proceeded to recite all the bad things that had occurred to him during the past year. When he had finished reading both books, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “Dear G-d, it is true I have sinned against You. But You have done many distressful things to me too. However, we are now beginning a new year. Let us wipe the slate clean. I will forgive You, and You forgive me.”
And so a Jewish innkeeper found forgiveness by forgiving God.
Lent is an opportunity to open two ledgers – the book in which we take note of our sins and the book in which we take note of the “distressful things” we have been given, things which we did not ask for but which we can neither evade nor control. Unless we open both books, Lent will become a test of wills as we set our will against the will of God who, for reasons we cannot know, has ordained human life to be limited, finite and without the capacity to avoid suffering.
Saint Paul, in his letters, would speak of a “thorn” in his flesh; scholars do not know to what he was referring but Paul would write in his second letter to the Corinthians:
Therefore, to keep me from being too elated (by his visions and revelations), a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Saint Paul found within the “thorn in his side,” a rose, the grace of Christ.
How many of us would much prefer to rid ourselves of whatever thorns are in our side rather than to embrace those thorns as icons into our own hearts? How many of us see strength in our weaknesses but would prefer to get rid of our weaknesses and celebrate our strengths? How many of us are content with hardships and insults, preferring rather to just make them go away? How many of us really believe that the grace of God is made perfect in weakness, in our weakness?
One of the thorns in my side at present is solitude. For the first time in my life, I am living alone. What I am realizing is that solitude is not the same as quiet. Indeed, the solitude invites my mind to wander in all kinds of unpredictable ways, into all kinds of worries and anxieties and imaginary conversations. I am better appreciating the wisdom of the desert mothers and fathers who sought solitude in order to confront their inner demons, demons tempting us to be anxious, fearful and doubtful of experiencing God’s love for us.
Peter is brought low this morning by a man he loves and who he believes to be the promised Messiah of God. Peter is not quite ready to trust this odd Messiah, not quite ready to follow. Peter is being asked to die – to die to Peter’s human way of seeing things. And Peter’s human way of seeing things is, like Paul and ours, to get rid of the thorns that make our life troublesome. Lent is an invitation to feel the sharpness of those thorns and what they might have to teach us.
Sunday, March 1. 2015 Romans 4: 13 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 8: 31 - 38
“Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Mark 8: 31
“Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” This morning, after two snow storms, no Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, a rescheduled Ash Wednesday service and a cancelled service last Sunday, we are now back in church and back in Lent. Life for many of us held a few extra challenges these past two weeks and this morning we meet Peter this morning who is challenged by Jesus’ words. Lent did not begin as we anticipated; perhaps God is giving us a window into our gospel reading this morning.
This morning, Jesus predicts his suffering, his rejection and that he will be killed. And Peter is horrified, rebuking Jesus for saying such things. In the verses just before those we hear this morning, Peter has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. Messiahs conquer and deliver; Messiahs do not get killed. Peter, who dropped his fishing net to follow Jesus, has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, is now rebuked by Jesus, who tells Peter, Peter is setting his mind on “human things.”
Peter’s human way of seeing things had no room for a crucified Messiah. Peter knew his Old Testament better than any of us and Peter knew God had promised a Messiah who would bring peace and justice to God’s people and through those people, to the whole world. The Messiah had a job to do and getting killed was not a part of that job description. Indeed, if the Messiah was killed, that could only mean that person was not the Messiah. In fairness to Peter, Peter had no other way to see things; Peter had only a very human way of seeing. Peter could not possibly see the way God sees.
Lent, into which we have been dropped a bit late, is a journey into our human ways of seeing things. And we, like Peter, have trouble with things that do not make sense like a savior who cannot save himself or with a world created by a good and loving God but in which a baby can die hours after birth. We have trouble making sense of untimely deaths, natural disasters and folk who feel called to violence in the name of religion. And in our age of enlightenment – yet one more human way of seeing things – we are apt to believe that we can, given enough time or education or money, understand and fix all the problems of life in this world. For those with ears to hear, that would make us God, and we are the creatures, not the Creator.
Jesus says he “must” suffer.” Jesus does not say he “may” suffer or “ought” to suffer or “should” suffer. Jesus says he “must” suffer. Jesus “must” suffer because that was what God had ordained. Peter saw Jesus healing the sick and turning over tables in the Temple; Peter saw a man who was rescuing God’s people from all that kept them in bondage, the very promised Messiah of God. Peter was horrified this man would suffer and be killed. But Jesus said he “must undergo great suffering.”
Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, speaks of “the tragic sense of life” in this world, an aspect of our existence that resists our ideas of progress and that we can fix all ills. Part of being human includes the reality that we all suffer “necessarily,” in Rohr’s words. Necessary suffering is a part of a wisdom we will never understand but which is written into the world in which we live - a world in which tragedies befall us - babies are born with no chance for life, lightning strikes a home and the home is destroyed, the people we love say and do things that hurt us. We live in a world in which we can be hurt and in which we suffer. None of us wants to suffer, but all of us do. We suffer because we are not God and cannot control all that happens to us. We suffer simply because we are human.
Peter was about to suffer horribly as he watched Jesus be arrested and crucified. And Peter would suffer even more when Peter denied knowing Jesus in the courtyard before the high priest. In Rohr’s words: “The refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run.” Peter could not accept that his friend must die; Peter’s denial of Jesus at the last hour caused Peter even greater suffering and he wept we are told.
Peter “kicked against the goad,” in Fr. Rohr’s words. Peter resisted the way God had ordained Jesus’ life to be and we kick against the goad whenever we attempt to gloss over our suffering, rather than plummeting the depths of our suffering to learn what those experiences have to teach us.
Lent is an opportunity to reflect upon the necessary suffering that comes with being human, not divine. And Lent is an opportunity to reflect upon the unnecessary suffering we bring upon ourselves when we chafe against our human finitude and limits, grasping for control over things we have no control over. Lent is a season when we look our “sins and offenses” in the eye, wondering if what have we have done or not done is rooted somewhere in our desire to change what we cannot change.
An old Jewish story sets out our human dilemma eloquently:
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk was asked by a disciple how one should pray for forgiveness. He told him to observe the behavior of a certain innkeeper before Yom Kippur. The disciple took lodging at the inn and observed the proprietor for several days, but could see nothing relevant to his quest. Then, on the night before Yom Kippur, he saw the innkeeper open two large ledgers. From the first book he read off a list of all the sins he had committed throughout the past year. When he was finished, he opened the second book and proceeded to recite all the bad things that had occurred to him during the past year. When he had finished reading both books, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “Dear G-d, it is true I have sinned against You. But You have done many distressful things to me too. However, we are now beginning a new year. Let us wipe the slate clean. I will forgive You, and You forgive me.”
And so a Jewish innkeeper found forgiveness by forgiving God.
Lent is an opportunity to open two ledgers – the book in which we take note of our sins and the book in which we take note of the “distressful things” we have been given, things which we did not ask for but which we can neither evade nor control. Unless we open both books, Lent will become a test of wills as we set our will against the will of God who, for reasons we cannot know, has ordained human life to be limited, finite and without the capacity to avoid suffering.
Saint Paul, in his letters, would speak of a “thorn” in his flesh; scholars do not know to what he was referring but Paul would write in his second letter to the Corinthians:
Therefore, to keep me from being too elated (by his visions and revelations), a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Saint Paul found within the “thorn in his side,” a rose, the grace of Christ.
How many of us would much prefer to rid ourselves of whatever thorns are in our side rather than to embrace those thorns as icons into our own hearts? How many of us see strength in our weaknesses but would prefer to get rid of our weaknesses and celebrate our strengths? How many of us are content with hardships and insults, preferring rather to just make them go away? How many of us really believe that the grace of God is made perfect in weakness, in our weakness?
One of the thorns in my side at present is solitude. For the first time in my life, I am living alone. What I am realizing is that solitude is not the same as quiet. Indeed, the solitude invites my mind to wander in all kinds of unpredictable ways, into all kinds of worries and anxieties and imaginary conversations. I am better appreciating the wisdom of the desert mothers and fathers who sought solitude in order to confront their inner demons, demons tempting us to be anxious, fearful and doubtful of experiencing God’s love for us.
Peter is brought low this morning by a man he loves and who he believes to be the promised Messiah of God. Peter is not quite ready to trust this odd Messiah, not quite ready to follow. Peter is being asked to die – to die to Peter’s human way of seeing things. And Peter’s human way of seeing things is, like Paul and ours, to get rid of the thorns that make our life troublesome. Lent is an invitation to feel the sharpness of those thorns and what they might have to teach us.
The First Sunday in Lent Genesis 9: 8 – 17
Sunday, February 22, 2015 I Peter 3: 18 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 9 - 15
“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
Mark 1: 13
Jesus is driven into the wilderness on this First Sunday in Lent. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” We hear from the gospel of Mark this morning and Mark’s rendering of the temptation is very brief and very unlike the story of the temptation in the gospels of Mathew and Luke. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread, to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple and to worship Satan in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world.
In the gospel of Mark, we never hear how Satan tempts Jesus, but only that Satan does. And only in the gospel of Mark do we hear that Jesus was with wild beasts.
Our custom at vestry meetings is to begin by contemplating a bit of the gospel for the following Sunday and this past Thursday at our meeting, I offered up these verses for our reflection. Your vestry are not only good stewards of the treasures of this parish but also insightful companions in prayer. For John Nunnally, the wilderness was a space he sought to sort things out; Virginia Scher noted Jesus was hearing many voices – the voice of God at his baptism naming Jesus “the Beloved,” the voices of angels bringing him comfort and hope and the voices of wild beasts threatening to tear him apart; Micheal Lenahan noted the strange opposites that confronted Jesus in the wilderness – wild beasts and angels. I would have liked to have heard more but, alas, an agenda waited our attention.
But those brief moments we spent reflecting on our text were powerful as our various reflections highlighted for me the drama of Lent – we are driven into a wilderness to be confronted by wild beasts and angels.
The wilderness for our ancestors in the faith was a place of trial and tribulation as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years after they were freed from slavery in Egypt and before they entered the promised land. The wilderness was a place of trial and tribulation as they sought food in a desolate place, shelter in an unforgiving environment, and leaders to guide them. Tensions ran high in the wilderness and the Israelites often grumbled that they wanted to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt – slavery was better than what they faced in the wilderness.
That was a long time ago and you and I are not wandering around in a wilderness looking for food and water. Indeed, the Greek word έρημον we translate as “wilderness” may strike us as a pleasant place we might even seek out, a place apart from shopping malls and convenience stores. But the word also means desert and that translation helps us to better understand the wilderness as a desolate place, inhospitable to human life. The wilderness was not a place most folk sought; in the wilderness you could die.
The wilderness then and the wilderness now is that place of wild beasts and angels for those who have the courage go there. Lent is an invitation to go into the wilderness. The wilderness was the place where Israel was formed by the mercy of God and learned how to trust this God who had brought them out of slavery into freedom. The wilderness was the place Israel learned she was limited and vulnerable, a people dependent upon a promise God made long ago that God would lead Israel into a land flowing with milk and honey.
So the drama of Lent invites us into a place that is both threatening, populated by wild beasts, and also a place in which we will meet angels. The drama of Lent invites us into the secret room of our hearts, the wilderness within, in which wild beasts threaten to destroy us and angels give us the strength and hope to hold fast to God’s promise to bring us to the promised land.
The wild beasts are legion and can take many forms. Wild beasts also do not always look wild and threatening in the beginning. Righteous anger at injustice is not a wild beast; vengeful anger that seeks to be rid of the other is a wild and insatiable beast. Being proud of what you have done well is not a wild beast; being so proud that you cannot hear criticism is a wild beast. Enjoying our creature comforts is not a wild beast; exploiting others in order to have those creature comforts is a wild beast. Striving for truth is not a wild beast; believing you already have hold of all truth is a wild beast. Grieving the loss of something or someone you have loved is not a wild beast; despairing of ever knowing joy again is a wild and often desperate beast. Naming and claiming our gifts is not a wild beast; refusing to receive the gifts that others have to share is a wild beast.
We all have our wild beasts and a good way to get in touch with our wild beasts is to note where and when you have been disquieted, disturbed, not altogether at ease, at peace. Those times, those times when we are troubled, are signs we are in the wilderness, caught in a place between wild beasts and angels. We are vulnerable at those times, at risk of being devoured by the wild beast of anger or self-indulgence or hypocrisy or despair or pride, to name a few. But we also at those times meet angels, voices calling us to hope, encouraging us not to be afraid of the wild beasts and to trust in the promise of God that God will bring forth life even in those desolate places.
Wild beasts want to destroy us and all that makes life human – community, relationships, and celebrations. Wild beasts want to poison the well of water we all need to live. Our evangelist Mark does not tell us that Jesus slayed the wild beasts; our evangelist only tells us that Jesus made his way out of the wilderness. And so will we.
This past Friday night I and my children went to a funeral, a funeral for a woman who died suddenly at the age of 44, leaving behind a husband and three young children. Kris was not only the choir director at Christ Church in Spotsylvania but also involved with the Maranatha Choir, the Fredericksburg Chamber Chorale and the Spotsylvania High School Marching Band and many of the mourners were young people, struggling to make sense of a senseless and tragic death. The Rev. Jeff Packard, rector of Christ Church, courageously journeyed into a wilderness of desolation and grief and loss. In his sermon, Jeff affirmed resoundingly that Kris’ death was not the will of God, that whereas we cannot make sense of her death, we can make sense of her life, a life that made a difference to everyone gathered in that church. And then Jeff spoke directly to Kris’ three pre-adolescent children.
Jeff told them no parent wants to leave their children and wants only to protect them, to support them, to guide them and to love them. Their mother was no longer here but that was not Kris’ desire. And then Jeff went on to say that their mother had left them a great gift, for she had planted a garden for them, a garden of family and friends to love and care for them.
Jeff did what many of us do not want to do and that is to go into the wilderness, that place where there are no answers, only wild beasts and angels. Jeff named the beast these young children were confronting for the first time with a good bit of fear I would imagine. And Jeff also named the angels surrounding them – their family and friends, a garden cultivated by their mother – who did not leave them to face those beasts alone. The wilderness is a scary place for sure but Jeff told those three very young, very vulnerable children, they were surrounded by angels.
The work we do in Lent, the work of journeying into the wilderness to be confronted by our wild beasts and the angels of God, is not for our sakes but for the sake of others. If we bow down to the wild beasts, we will become a wild beast; if we bow down to the angels, we will become an angel.
Jesus emerged from his forty days proclaiming: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Looks like the angels won. I suspect Kris’ children are not so sure what life without a mother is going to look like or be like. I hope the angels win. And I hope that your Lenten journey and mine will invite us to consider our wild beasts that threaten to destroy us and to receive the angels of God that surround us on all sides, giving us hope and encouragement as we continue our journey though the wilderness.
Sunday, February 22, 2015 I Peter 3: 18 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 9 - 15
“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”
Mark 1: 13
Jesus is driven into the wilderness on this First Sunday in Lent. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” We hear from the gospel of Mark this morning and Mark’s rendering of the temptation is very brief and very unlike the story of the temptation in the gospels of Mathew and Luke. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread, to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple and to worship Satan in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world.
In the gospel of Mark, we never hear how Satan tempts Jesus, but only that Satan does. And only in the gospel of Mark do we hear that Jesus was with wild beasts.
Our custom at vestry meetings is to begin by contemplating a bit of the gospel for the following Sunday and this past Thursday at our meeting, I offered up these verses for our reflection. Your vestry are not only good stewards of the treasures of this parish but also insightful companions in prayer. For John Nunnally, the wilderness was a space he sought to sort things out; Virginia Scher noted Jesus was hearing many voices – the voice of God at his baptism naming Jesus “the Beloved,” the voices of angels bringing him comfort and hope and the voices of wild beasts threatening to tear him apart; Micheal Lenahan noted the strange opposites that confronted Jesus in the wilderness – wild beasts and angels. I would have liked to have heard more but, alas, an agenda waited our attention.
But those brief moments we spent reflecting on our text were powerful as our various reflections highlighted for me the drama of Lent – we are driven into a wilderness to be confronted by wild beasts and angels.
The wilderness for our ancestors in the faith was a place of trial and tribulation as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years after they were freed from slavery in Egypt and before they entered the promised land. The wilderness was a place of trial and tribulation as they sought food in a desolate place, shelter in an unforgiving environment, and leaders to guide them. Tensions ran high in the wilderness and the Israelites often grumbled that they wanted to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt – slavery was better than what they faced in the wilderness.
That was a long time ago and you and I are not wandering around in a wilderness looking for food and water. Indeed, the Greek word έρημον we translate as “wilderness” may strike us as a pleasant place we might even seek out, a place apart from shopping malls and convenience stores. But the word also means desert and that translation helps us to better understand the wilderness as a desolate place, inhospitable to human life. The wilderness was not a place most folk sought; in the wilderness you could die.
The wilderness then and the wilderness now is that place of wild beasts and angels for those who have the courage go there. Lent is an invitation to go into the wilderness. The wilderness was the place where Israel was formed by the mercy of God and learned how to trust this God who had brought them out of slavery into freedom. The wilderness was the place Israel learned she was limited and vulnerable, a people dependent upon a promise God made long ago that God would lead Israel into a land flowing with milk and honey.
So the drama of Lent invites us into a place that is both threatening, populated by wild beasts, and also a place in which we will meet angels. The drama of Lent invites us into the secret room of our hearts, the wilderness within, in which wild beasts threaten to destroy us and angels give us the strength and hope to hold fast to God’s promise to bring us to the promised land.
The wild beasts are legion and can take many forms. Wild beasts also do not always look wild and threatening in the beginning. Righteous anger at injustice is not a wild beast; vengeful anger that seeks to be rid of the other is a wild and insatiable beast. Being proud of what you have done well is not a wild beast; being so proud that you cannot hear criticism is a wild beast. Enjoying our creature comforts is not a wild beast; exploiting others in order to have those creature comforts is a wild beast. Striving for truth is not a wild beast; believing you already have hold of all truth is a wild beast. Grieving the loss of something or someone you have loved is not a wild beast; despairing of ever knowing joy again is a wild and often desperate beast. Naming and claiming our gifts is not a wild beast; refusing to receive the gifts that others have to share is a wild beast.
We all have our wild beasts and a good way to get in touch with our wild beasts is to note where and when you have been disquieted, disturbed, not altogether at ease, at peace. Those times, those times when we are troubled, are signs we are in the wilderness, caught in a place between wild beasts and angels. We are vulnerable at those times, at risk of being devoured by the wild beast of anger or self-indulgence or hypocrisy or despair or pride, to name a few. But we also at those times meet angels, voices calling us to hope, encouraging us not to be afraid of the wild beasts and to trust in the promise of God that God will bring forth life even in those desolate places.
Wild beasts want to destroy us and all that makes life human – community, relationships, and celebrations. Wild beasts want to poison the well of water we all need to live. Our evangelist Mark does not tell us that Jesus slayed the wild beasts; our evangelist only tells us that Jesus made his way out of the wilderness. And so will we.
This past Friday night I and my children went to a funeral, a funeral for a woman who died suddenly at the age of 44, leaving behind a husband and three young children. Kris was not only the choir director at Christ Church in Spotsylvania but also involved with the Maranatha Choir, the Fredericksburg Chamber Chorale and the Spotsylvania High School Marching Band and many of the mourners were young people, struggling to make sense of a senseless and tragic death. The Rev. Jeff Packard, rector of Christ Church, courageously journeyed into a wilderness of desolation and grief and loss. In his sermon, Jeff affirmed resoundingly that Kris’ death was not the will of God, that whereas we cannot make sense of her death, we can make sense of her life, a life that made a difference to everyone gathered in that church. And then Jeff spoke directly to Kris’ three pre-adolescent children.
Jeff told them no parent wants to leave their children and wants only to protect them, to support them, to guide them and to love them. Their mother was no longer here but that was not Kris’ desire. And then Jeff went on to say that their mother had left them a great gift, for she had planted a garden for them, a garden of family and friends to love and care for them.
Jeff did what many of us do not want to do and that is to go into the wilderness, that place where there are no answers, only wild beasts and angels. Jeff named the beast these young children were confronting for the first time with a good bit of fear I would imagine. And Jeff also named the angels surrounding them – their family and friends, a garden cultivated by their mother – who did not leave them to face those beasts alone. The wilderness is a scary place for sure but Jeff told those three very young, very vulnerable children, they were surrounded by angels.
The work we do in Lent, the work of journeying into the wilderness to be confronted by our wild beasts and the angels of God, is not for our sakes but for the sake of others. If we bow down to the wild beasts, we will become a wild beast; if we bow down to the angels, we will become an angel.
Jesus emerged from his forty days proclaiming: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Looks like the angels won. I suspect Kris’ children are not so sure what life without a mother is going to look like or be like. I hope the angels win. And I hope that your Lenten journey and mine will invite us to consider our wild beasts that threaten to destroy us and to receive the angels of God that surround us on all sides, giving us hope and encouragement as we continue our journey though the wilderness.
Last Sunday after the Epiphany 2 Kings 2: 1 – 12
Sunday, February 15, 2015 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 2 - 9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them.
Mark 9: 2
Peter, James and John receive a vision this morning, a mystical vision of Jesus clothed in dazzling white accompanied by Moses and Elijah, a vision that terrifies Peter we are told. Jesus has been transformed from an ordinary human being into an extraordinary being radiant with the glory of God. And we hear a voice that sounds a lot like the voice we heard when Jesus was baptized proclaim: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Just before receiving this vision, our evangelist Mark shares the story of Peter’s confession, that moment when, in answer to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah. Immediately, Jesus tells Peter Jesus must suffer and be killed and Peter discreetly takes Jesus aside and chides Jesus for saying such a thing! Now Peter receives a vision and hears a voice. And Peter chides Jesus no more.
On the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, every year, we hear the story of the Transfiguration, that mystical vision of Jesus clothed in dazzling white accompanied by Moses and Elijah, a vision in which Jesus is transformed, changed from a man of flesh and blood into something our evangelist can only describe as “dazzling.” The season of Epiphany, this season of revelation and surprise ends this morning with a mystical vision and the next time we will come together for worship is this coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.
Epiphany always ends with this mystical vision and I believe we are to carry this vision of glory into Lent. Lent, for many, is a somber season in which we remember our sins and offenses and strive to do better. How would Lent change if we remembered this vision of a blindingly beautiful Christ, “bathed in, the love, power and kingdom of God,” in the words of Bishop N.T. Wright? How would Lent change if we journey through the forty days of Lent seeking the glory of God rather than vainly trying to purify ourselves by giving up chocolate?
Peter has just confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, chided Jesus for thinking the Messiah will be killed and will, we know, deny Jesus after Jesus is arrested. In between, God gave Peter a vision, a vision of the very glory of God and told Peter to “listen.” Peter saw Jesus radiant with the glory of God, yet Peter still misunderstands the mission of this Messiah and will deny he ever knew this man when Jesus is arrested for crimes against the state.
Most of us are not given to visions. But all of us have seen the glory of God. And Peter, like all of us, even though he saw God’s glory, was hesitant to trust in that power when times got tough. Maybe Lent is a good time to get in touch with your experiences of God’s glory. Maybe Lent is an opportunity for us to be transformed, not by ridding ourselves of our sins but by appreciating the ways God has broken into our world, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope, making whole what was broken.
Last Thursday morning, the sun was shining and my thermometer was registering a balmy 57 degrees. By noon, the sun was gone, the clouds had rolled in and the temperature had dropped ten degrees. The sudden change was mildly unsettling and I wondered what the rest of the day would look like. Setting aside such preoccupations with the weather, I sat down to ponder my sermon for this morning, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany.
Before the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped, I received an answer to a prayer along with the warmth of the sun. But within hours, under darkening skies, I learned of the sudden deaths of two friends, tragic and unexpected deaths which, like the clouds, came out of nowhere, leaving me unsettled in a world that is anything but glorious much of the time. I thought how glorious it would be to be given a vision such as the vision Peter, James and John are given this morning. And then I remembered that Peter, while strengthened by that vision, had still faltered at the end. I knew that I, like Peter and all of us, have glimpsed the glory of God, perhaps not in visions, but by way of more mundane happenings such as a warm morning or the love of a spouse or friend or the healing of a broken relationship. Perhaps visions, like miracles, surround us on all sides if we only have eyes to see.
Lent is all about vision and seeing correctly. If all we see in Lent is our shortcomings, Lent will be dreary. If all we do in Lent is give up chocolate, Lent will be a battle. If Lent invites us to remember where and when and how we have seen the glory of God and God’s many epiphanies in our lives we have a chance of discovering anew the glory God wants for us.
Between this Sunday and Ash Wednesday we will share a pancake supper and our first Fat Tuesday talent show. I trust the pancakes will be good, the fellowship even better and the laughter at the talent show over the top. Given that we worship a Lord who was accused of partying with sinners, I do believe Jesus would bless our frivolity. But Jesus would not want us to stop there; Jesus wants us to see in our partying the very glory and joy of God, a joy we can block whenever we close ourselves off from God and one another. Lent invites us to welcome the light of God made known to us in Epiphany into the darkness of our hearts, so that we might bear light and not darkness into this world. Remember, what we do in Lent is not for our sakes but for the sake of the world.
I would submit that a good beginning would be showing up on Ash Wednesday. Something dramatic happens when we are marked with ash and told we are but dust. Our Ash Wednesday liturgy levels the playing field, reminding us all that we are, like birds of the air and the grass of the field, destined for death. On the other hand, our Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us that unlike the birds of the air and the grass of the field, we alone of all of God’s very good creation are created in God’s image and called to bear that image into the world. Peter was given a vision of that image and it was “dazzling.”
Peter is given a vision this morning and Peter stumbles, a good bit unsure as to what to do. Peter quickly offers to build three dwellings, an almost comical response. Peter, like all of us, wants to “do” something when the only thing Peter can do is “be,” be with a man who now is clothed in dazzling white. Peter does not know what to do and Peter wants to do something.
I had the same impulse Thursday when I called the widow of a man who had died suddenly and unexpectedly following surgery. I bit my tongue because I have been where she is and I know there is nothing we can do; I know we can only “be” and “being with” is far harder than “doing.” My heart broke for her, for me and for all of us who have tasted of a world not yet filled with the glory of God.
After I hung up the phone I remembered the night A.G. died. I remembered Karen and John Nunnally sitting with me beside A.G.’s bed. I remembered those gathered at Roma’s coming to be with me and singing hymns in my kitchen. I remembered Micheal Lenahan saying we do not get to choose the places God takes us, and I remembered Bishop Susan and her husband Tom showing up in my driveway within hours. That night I was given a vision and that vision was dazzling.
"The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God,” wrote Saint Irenaeus in the second century. What we seek during Lent is life, abundant life, the kind of life that Peter found by following Jesus, the kind of life the blind man from Bethsaida found when Jesus put saliva on his eyes and made him see, the kind of life thousands found in the wilderness when Jesus fed them with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. What we affirm during Lent is that God wants to bring us to life; what we need to do, like Peter is “Listen to him!” Appropriate the glory of God who wants to glorify you.
Sunday, February 15, 2015 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 9: 2 - 9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them.
Mark 9: 2
Peter, James and John receive a vision this morning, a mystical vision of Jesus clothed in dazzling white accompanied by Moses and Elijah, a vision that terrifies Peter we are told. Jesus has been transformed from an ordinary human being into an extraordinary being radiant with the glory of God. And we hear a voice that sounds a lot like the voice we heard when Jesus was baptized proclaim: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Just before receiving this vision, our evangelist Mark shares the story of Peter’s confession, that moment when, in answer to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah. Immediately, Jesus tells Peter Jesus must suffer and be killed and Peter discreetly takes Jesus aside and chides Jesus for saying such a thing! Now Peter receives a vision and hears a voice. And Peter chides Jesus no more.
On the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, every year, we hear the story of the Transfiguration, that mystical vision of Jesus clothed in dazzling white accompanied by Moses and Elijah, a vision in which Jesus is transformed, changed from a man of flesh and blood into something our evangelist can only describe as “dazzling.” The season of Epiphany, this season of revelation and surprise ends this morning with a mystical vision and the next time we will come together for worship is this coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.
Epiphany always ends with this mystical vision and I believe we are to carry this vision of glory into Lent. Lent, for many, is a somber season in which we remember our sins and offenses and strive to do better. How would Lent change if we remembered this vision of a blindingly beautiful Christ, “bathed in, the love, power and kingdom of God,” in the words of Bishop N.T. Wright? How would Lent change if we journey through the forty days of Lent seeking the glory of God rather than vainly trying to purify ourselves by giving up chocolate?
Peter has just confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, chided Jesus for thinking the Messiah will be killed and will, we know, deny Jesus after Jesus is arrested. In between, God gave Peter a vision, a vision of the very glory of God and told Peter to “listen.” Peter saw Jesus radiant with the glory of God, yet Peter still misunderstands the mission of this Messiah and will deny he ever knew this man when Jesus is arrested for crimes against the state.
Most of us are not given to visions. But all of us have seen the glory of God. And Peter, like all of us, even though he saw God’s glory, was hesitant to trust in that power when times got tough. Maybe Lent is a good time to get in touch with your experiences of God’s glory. Maybe Lent is an opportunity for us to be transformed, not by ridding ourselves of our sins but by appreciating the ways God has broken into our world, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope, making whole what was broken.
Last Thursday morning, the sun was shining and my thermometer was registering a balmy 57 degrees. By noon, the sun was gone, the clouds had rolled in and the temperature had dropped ten degrees. The sudden change was mildly unsettling and I wondered what the rest of the day would look like. Setting aside such preoccupations with the weather, I sat down to ponder my sermon for this morning, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany.
Before the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped, I received an answer to a prayer along with the warmth of the sun. But within hours, under darkening skies, I learned of the sudden deaths of two friends, tragic and unexpected deaths which, like the clouds, came out of nowhere, leaving me unsettled in a world that is anything but glorious much of the time. I thought how glorious it would be to be given a vision such as the vision Peter, James and John are given this morning. And then I remembered that Peter, while strengthened by that vision, had still faltered at the end. I knew that I, like Peter and all of us, have glimpsed the glory of God, perhaps not in visions, but by way of more mundane happenings such as a warm morning or the love of a spouse or friend or the healing of a broken relationship. Perhaps visions, like miracles, surround us on all sides if we only have eyes to see.
Lent is all about vision and seeing correctly. If all we see in Lent is our shortcomings, Lent will be dreary. If all we do in Lent is give up chocolate, Lent will be a battle. If Lent invites us to remember where and when and how we have seen the glory of God and God’s many epiphanies in our lives we have a chance of discovering anew the glory God wants for us.
Between this Sunday and Ash Wednesday we will share a pancake supper and our first Fat Tuesday talent show. I trust the pancakes will be good, the fellowship even better and the laughter at the talent show over the top. Given that we worship a Lord who was accused of partying with sinners, I do believe Jesus would bless our frivolity. But Jesus would not want us to stop there; Jesus wants us to see in our partying the very glory and joy of God, a joy we can block whenever we close ourselves off from God and one another. Lent invites us to welcome the light of God made known to us in Epiphany into the darkness of our hearts, so that we might bear light and not darkness into this world. Remember, what we do in Lent is not for our sakes but for the sake of the world.
I would submit that a good beginning would be showing up on Ash Wednesday. Something dramatic happens when we are marked with ash and told we are but dust. Our Ash Wednesday liturgy levels the playing field, reminding us all that we are, like birds of the air and the grass of the field, destined for death. On the other hand, our Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us that unlike the birds of the air and the grass of the field, we alone of all of God’s very good creation are created in God’s image and called to bear that image into the world. Peter was given a vision of that image and it was “dazzling.”
Peter is given a vision this morning and Peter stumbles, a good bit unsure as to what to do. Peter quickly offers to build three dwellings, an almost comical response. Peter, like all of us, wants to “do” something when the only thing Peter can do is “be,” be with a man who now is clothed in dazzling white. Peter does not know what to do and Peter wants to do something.
I had the same impulse Thursday when I called the widow of a man who had died suddenly and unexpectedly following surgery. I bit my tongue because I have been where she is and I know there is nothing we can do; I know we can only “be” and “being with” is far harder than “doing.” My heart broke for her, for me and for all of us who have tasted of a world not yet filled with the glory of God.
After I hung up the phone I remembered the night A.G. died. I remembered Karen and John Nunnally sitting with me beside A.G.’s bed. I remembered those gathered at Roma’s coming to be with me and singing hymns in my kitchen. I remembered Micheal Lenahan saying we do not get to choose the places God takes us, and I remembered Bishop Susan and her husband Tom showing up in my driveway within hours. That night I was given a vision and that vision was dazzling.
"The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God,” wrote Saint Irenaeus in the second century. What we seek during Lent is life, abundant life, the kind of life that Peter found by following Jesus, the kind of life the blind man from Bethsaida found when Jesus put saliva on his eyes and made him see, the kind of life thousands found in the wilderness when Jesus fed them with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. What we affirm during Lent is that God wants to bring us to life; what we need to do, like Peter is “Listen to him!” Appropriate the glory of God who wants to glorify you.
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Isaiah 40: 21 – 31
Sunday, February 8, 2015 I Corinthians 9: 16 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 29 – 39
Jesus answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”
Mark 1: 38
“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” After a day of curing many who were sick and casting out demons in the city of Capernaum, Jesus leaves, moving on throughout Galilee, announcing that the kingdom of God had come near. But when Jesus leaves the city of Capernaum, Jesus leaves behind many who had hoped Jesus would heal them as well.
In our text this morning, we meet Jesus in the home of Simon and Andrew, and learn that Simon’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever. With a touch, Jesus raises her up from the bed and the fever leaves her. That evening, the entire town comes to Simon’s home, wanting Jesus to cure their sick and Jesus heals many, we are told.
The following morning, while it was still dark, Jesus goes off by himself to pray. Simon hunts him down, and when Simon finds Jesus, Simon tells Jesus: “Everyone is searching for you.” In other words, Jesus is needed back in the city of Capernaum to perform more healings and cast out more demons. In response, Jesus tells Simon: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And before the sun comes up in Capernaum, Jesus is gone. What is not gone is a continuing need in Capernaum for healing.
Jesus is on a mission and Jesus’ mission is to proclaim a message – the message that the kingdom of God has come near. That message compels Jesus to leave Capernaum even though “everyone was searching for him” and wanted Jesus to stay. I can only wonder how folk felt in Capernaum when they learned Jesus had moved on, leaving some cured and some still sick. What message had they heard?
Earlier in the gospel of Mark, we learn after Jesus was baptized and tempted by Satan that “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” With those words, Jesus began an itinerant ministry of teaching, preaching and healing which would last roughly three years and end with his crucifixion. Capernaum was the first place that heard that message, proclaimed in word and deed as Jesus taught in the synagogue and healed the sick. The kingdom of God had come close to Capernaum. When Jesus left Capernaum, what did the people think about this kingdom?
Some, I suppose, focused on the miracles of healing. Miracle workers were not unheard of in first century Palestine and Jesus’ capacity to heal the sick and cast out demons would not have been received with the same skepticism that we often bring to the miracle stories. But, unlike other miracle workers, the miracles that Jesus performed were intended to reveal a kingdom, a kingdom reigned over by God in which no one suffered and all were well.
Others, I suppose, focused on Jesus’ leave-taking, wondering why, if the kingdom of God had come near, that kingdom had not lingered in their midst, bringing healing to some and leaving others still in need of healing. What kind of kingdom brings good gifts to some but not to others?
Jesus comes to Capernaum this morning with a message that the kingdom of God has come near and then leaves. Did the kingdom come to Capernaum or is the kingdom yet to come to that city? Were you one of the many that Jesus cured, what would you be thinking? And if you were one of the many Jesus had not healed, what would you be thinking?
Jesus went to Capernaum with a message, the same message we who follow this crucified and risen Lord are to proclaim, as we promise in the words of our baptismal covenant to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” And yet, our text this morning leaves me wondering what the good folk of Capernaum might be proclaiming over breakfast the morning they learned Jesus had left town before the sun came up.
I am not sure what your week looked like but mine started last Sunday watching Lydia Carmine bring her doll to the altar rail, place her on the kneeler, and carefully cross her doll’s hands in anticipation I would give bread to her doll, whose name I learned later, was Victoria. On Monday, I learned that the faculty of Virginia Seminary is anxious to find ways to teach and to preach far from the Holy Hill in Alexandria and would welcome opportunities to meet us in Fredericksburg or Spotsylvania or Caroline. On Monday night, I lit a candle for A.G. at St. Peter’s, as we celebrated a Candlemas on The Feast of the Presentation. On Wednesday I folded clothes at Glory Outreach and listened as Susan White wondered if one particular bag of clothes were the clothes of a man who had died. Wednesday night, Dale Brittle and I drove to a meeting for Region I where Dale received financial support to attend the ECW’s Triennial meeting in Salt Lake City this summer, which took her by surprise. On Thursday, I went to my clergy group and listened as we shared the pains and pleasures of our priesthood. Yesterday, I plunged into Lake Land’Or delighting in Susan Hafey’s craziness and Sarah Wood’s faithfulness as she and her Mom sold an assortment of goodies at the event. I am mindful that others this week struggled with family concerns, health issues and paying the bills.
I saw, like those folk in Capernaum, the in-breaking of God’s kingdom this week, but also, like those folk in Capernaum, was left wondering if God’s kingdom has come near, why folk still battle cancer; why some of the clothes we fold at Glory Outreach are not gently used but brand new, purchased but never worn; why in the same month, we learned the Bishop Suffragan of Maryland while under the influence of alcohol killed a man and Pope Francis is about to make an historic first visit to the joint houses of Congress in September.
God’s kingdom has come near, and we need to proclaim loudly all the many ways we have witnessed the healing power of God in our midst. On the other hand, although God’s kingdom has come near, God’s kingdom is not here in all fullness. The message we proclaim is a message of “both – and” – I have seen God’s hand at work among us and I long to see God’s hand at work among us.
In many ways, this is the work we are embracing in our Revision Process. St. Asaph’s has been an instrument of God’s love and compassion for years. We need to celebrate, proclaim and continue that good work. On the other hand, we have to wonder what more we might do, knowing that the kingdom has come near to us but is not here in all of it’s fullness. We need to be like those folk in Capernaum, some of whom knew God’s love firsthand and others who could only wait for God to come again.
Jesus did return to Capernaum some days later, our evangelist Mark tells us, healing a paralytic and a man with a withered hand, only to leave for the second and final time after the religious leaders took issue with Jesus healing the sick on the Sabbath. The kingdom of God had come near but not in the way anyone expected. Ultimately, Jesus was cast out - by his friends, his family and all the good people of Galilee, including those in Capernaum. And our evangelist ends his gospel with three women discovering an empty tomb and then fleeing, “for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”
What I trust is that we will not be afraid as we begin to wonder what God would have us do in the coming years. God has begun a good work here among us and is not about to bail ship. What I hope is that together we can find ways to continue to preach the good news, ways that value both our gifts and the needs of our neighbors. I would hope that coming together in our reflective sessions would be a little like coming together in Capernaum with Simon’s mother–in-law as well as those waiting to be healed after Jesus left the building.
Sunday, February 8, 2015 I Corinthians 9: 16 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 29 – 39
Jesus answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”
Mark 1: 38
“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” After a day of curing many who were sick and casting out demons in the city of Capernaum, Jesus leaves, moving on throughout Galilee, announcing that the kingdom of God had come near. But when Jesus leaves the city of Capernaum, Jesus leaves behind many who had hoped Jesus would heal them as well.
In our text this morning, we meet Jesus in the home of Simon and Andrew, and learn that Simon’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever. With a touch, Jesus raises her up from the bed and the fever leaves her. That evening, the entire town comes to Simon’s home, wanting Jesus to cure their sick and Jesus heals many, we are told.
The following morning, while it was still dark, Jesus goes off by himself to pray. Simon hunts him down, and when Simon finds Jesus, Simon tells Jesus: “Everyone is searching for you.” In other words, Jesus is needed back in the city of Capernaum to perform more healings and cast out more demons. In response, Jesus tells Simon: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And before the sun comes up in Capernaum, Jesus is gone. What is not gone is a continuing need in Capernaum for healing.
Jesus is on a mission and Jesus’ mission is to proclaim a message – the message that the kingdom of God has come near. That message compels Jesus to leave Capernaum even though “everyone was searching for him” and wanted Jesus to stay. I can only wonder how folk felt in Capernaum when they learned Jesus had moved on, leaving some cured and some still sick. What message had they heard?
Earlier in the gospel of Mark, we learn after Jesus was baptized and tempted by Satan that “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” With those words, Jesus began an itinerant ministry of teaching, preaching and healing which would last roughly three years and end with his crucifixion. Capernaum was the first place that heard that message, proclaimed in word and deed as Jesus taught in the synagogue and healed the sick. The kingdom of God had come close to Capernaum. When Jesus left Capernaum, what did the people think about this kingdom?
Some, I suppose, focused on the miracles of healing. Miracle workers were not unheard of in first century Palestine and Jesus’ capacity to heal the sick and cast out demons would not have been received with the same skepticism that we often bring to the miracle stories. But, unlike other miracle workers, the miracles that Jesus performed were intended to reveal a kingdom, a kingdom reigned over by God in which no one suffered and all were well.
Others, I suppose, focused on Jesus’ leave-taking, wondering why, if the kingdom of God had come near, that kingdom had not lingered in their midst, bringing healing to some and leaving others still in need of healing. What kind of kingdom brings good gifts to some but not to others?
Jesus comes to Capernaum this morning with a message that the kingdom of God has come near and then leaves. Did the kingdom come to Capernaum or is the kingdom yet to come to that city? Were you one of the many that Jesus cured, what would you be thinking? And if you were one of the many Jesus had not healed, what would you be thinking?
Jesus went to Capernaum with a message, the same message we who follow this crucified and risen Lord are to proclaim, as we promise in the words of our baptismal covenant to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” And yet, our text this morning leaves me wondering what the good folk of Capernaum might be proclaiming over breakfast the morning they learned Jesus had left town before the sun came up.
I am not sure what your week looked like but mine started last Sunday watching Lydia Carmine bring her doll to the altar rail, place her on the kneeler, and carefully cross her doll’s hands in anticipation I would give bread to her doll, whose name I learned later, was Victoria. On Monday, I learned that the faculty of Virginia Seminary is anxious to find ways to teach and to preach far from the Holy Hill in Alexandria and would welcome opportunities to meet us in Fredericksburg or Spotsylvania or Caroline. On Monday night, I lit a candle for A.G. at St. Peter’s, as we celebrated a Candlemas on The Feast of the Presentation. On Wednesday I folded clothes at Glory Outreach and listened as Susan White wondered if one particular bag of clothes were the clothes of a man who had died. Wednesday night, Dale Brittle and I drove to a meeting for Region I where Dale received financial support to attend the ECW’s Triennial meeting in Salt Lake City this summer, which took her by surprise. On Thursday, I went to my clergy group and listened as we shared the pains and pleasures of our priesthood. Yesterday, I plunged into Lake Land’Or delighting in Susan Hafey’s craziness and Sarah Wood’s faithfulness as she and her Mom sold an assortment of goodies at the event. I am mindful that others this week struggled with family concerns, health issues and paying the bills.
I saw, like those folk in Capernaum, the in-breaking of God’s kingdom this week, but also, like those folk in Capernaum, was left wondering if God’s kingdom has come near, why folk still battle cancer; why some of the clothes we fold at Glory Outreach are not gently used but brand new, purchased but never worn; why in the same month, we learned the Bishop Suffragan of Maryland while under the influence of alcohol killed a man and Pope Francis is about to make an historic first visit to the joint houses of Congress in September.
God’s kingdom has come near, and we need to proclaim loudly all the many ways we have witnessed the healing power of God in our midst. On the other hand, although God’s kingdom has come near, God’s kingdom is not here in all fullness. The message we proclaim is a message of “both – and” – I have seen God’s hand at work among us and I long to see God’s hand at work among us.
In many ways, this is the work we are embracing in our Revision Process. St. Asaph’s has been an instrument of God’s love and compassion for years. We need to celebrate, proclaim and continue that good work. On the other hand, we have to wonder what more we might do, knowing that the kingdom has come near to us but is not here in all of it’s fullness. We need to be like those folk in Capernaum, some of whom knew God’s love firsthand and others who could only wait for God to come again.
Jesus did return to Capernaum some days later, our evangelist Mark tells us, healing a paralytic and a man with a withered hand, only to leave for the second and final time after the religious leaders took issue with Jesus healing the sick on the Sabbath. The kingdom of God had come near but not in the way anyone expected. Ultimately, Jesus was cast out - by his friends, his family and all the good people of Galilee, including those in Capernaum. And our evangelist ends his gospel with three women discovering an empty tomb and then fleeing, “for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”
What I trust is that we will not be afraid as we begin to wonder what God would have us do in the coming years. God has begun a good work here among us and is not about to bail ship. What I hope is that together we can find ways to continue to preach the good news, ways that value both our gifts and the needs of our neighbors. I would hope that coming together in our reflective sessions would be a little like coming together in Capernaum with Simon’s mother–in-law as well as those waiting to be healed after Jesus left the building.
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany Jonah 3: 1 – 5, 10
Sunday, January 25, 2015 I Corinthians 7; 29 – 31
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 14 – 20
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Jonah 3: 10
“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you,” God says to Jonah in our Old Testament reading this morning. God uses Jonah to preach a message of destruction to a sinful city and when Jonah does, Nineveh changes it’s mind and so too does God. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” God tells Jonah to say to Nineveh. And Jonah does and Nineveh is not overthrown.
God uses Jonah and Jonah, we learn in the verse that immediately follows our reading, is not happy. The next verse, which we do not hear this morning, reads: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.”
The book of Jonah is a short story about a prophet called by God to preach a message of destruction to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Assyria was Israel’s enemy and Jonah was understandably reluctant. So Jonah gets on a ship heading in the opposite direction. A storm comes up, the ship is threatened, and the crew tosses Jonah overboard after learning Jonah is running away from God. The seas are calmed, the pagan sailors are brought to faith in the God of the Jews and Jonah ends up inside the belly of a whale. After three days, the whale spits Jonah out and God tells Jonah a second time: Go to Nineveh. And Jonah goes. And Nineveh repents. And so too does God, sparing the city from destruction.
And Jonah gets angry. I knew you would spare Nineveh, Jonah says to God. I knew you were a God of love and compassion and would not destroy Nineveh. I knew you would be gracious to these people. What did you need me for? You have used me. I have preached the message of destruction you gave me and now you have changed your mind and destruction has not come to pass. How dare you use me! And Jonah goes outside of the city to sulk.
And God makes a great bush, a castor oil plant, to grow to shade Jonah as he sits in the blistering heat and then God makes the bush die, leaving Jonah to sweat and wishing he would die. And God confronts Jonah with the mystery of God’s freedom to do what God will do through us.
The book of Jonah was written late in the history of Israel, probably sometime during the fifth century B.C., on the eve, historically speaking, of the Incarnation. The book of Jonah was written after the Babylonian exile as the Jews were rebuilding a life for themselves as the people of God back in Palestine. The great Persian Empire enabled the Jews to live in relative peace from hostile invaders and this time afforded the Jews with the possibility of grappling with questions of faith – the book of Job, which struggles to understand innocent suffering, was authored around the same time. In the book of Jonah, God’s freedom to do what God will do is pitted against Jonah’s desire to do what Jonah wants to do.
God uses Jonah; God uses Jonah first to bring pagan sailors to the knowledge of the God of the Jews and then God uses Jonah to bring a change of heart to a wicked city. God uses Jonah to accomplish God’s purposes – to bring light to a world floundering in darkness.
But Jonah can only see his own dismay. Jonah knows he has tried to flee God’s call to him and when the lives are others are threatened, Jonah tells the pagan sailors to throw him overboard. And then, when Jonah does finally walk into the enemy city of Nineveh, Jonah is risking, for a second time, his very life. Jonah did what God asked Jonah to do, albeit reluctantly, and Jonah got nothing but grief in return.
Ultimately, Jonah’s call is at risk. When Nineveh repents and is not destroyed, Jonah is faced with a problem – did God really call Jonah to preach a message of doom to Nineveh or was Jonah just hearing voices? And we hear echoes of the snake in the garden of Eden who said to Eve: “Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” What, the serpent asks Eve, exactly did God say?
Old Testament theologian Gerhard Von Rad notes that in the book of Jonah, the “hero” of the story is God, who “is here glorified not through his ambassador, but in spite of his ambassador’s complete refusal. “The ridiculous, stubborn Jonah,” Von Rad continues, “grudging God’s mercy to the heathen, but filled with joy at the shade of the castor oil plant, and then wanting to die when he sees it withering away, is unable to impede God’s saving thoughts – they achieve their goal in spite of everything.” God uses Jonah as a king might a subject, leading pagan sailors to faith and the city of Nineveh to repentance. What we learn through Jonah is that God’s will will be done, in spite of us if necessary.
When we are baptized, we acknowledge the authority of God’s will and are baptized into God’s saving purposes for the whole world. In Baptism, we are called out by God to co-operate with God’s desire to bring the whole world to a knowledge and love of God. In Baptism we take our place in a drama, a drama destined to show forth God’s glory, not ours.
Neither you nor I nor anyone else can ever know fully the mind of God. And as we live out our lives under the shade of God’s love, we will inevitably find ourselves in circumstances that make no sense, caught up into events we wish we could change, confronted with the mystery of God’s will. What we know, and what the book of Jonah bears witness to, is that God’s will is for the salvation of the world and that includes us. That we cannot see God’s loving hand in any given situation does not mean God has given us up to destruction.
To say God uses us is to understand that our life – all of our joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, celebrations and sufferings – are all under the pale of God’s love for the whole world. You and I, because we are human, cannot see beyond our own limited and limiting vision. We cannot see beyond our own frustrations or our own problems or our own accomplishments and even begin to imagine what God may be doing with us and through us. We all pray that God will strengthen us, heal us, mend our broken spirits. How often do we ask God to use us? How often do we pray, God’s will be done, not ours?
Nothing we do is far from the eye of God. Scary thought I know. God sees what we cannot see. God has in the words of the gospel hymn “the whole world in his hands;” you and I have only a little piece. God is not absent when we lose our job or are diagnosed with cancer or lose the money we had planned for retirement or are wholly frustrated with our work or dissatisfied with the way we spend our days. At those times we want to pray: “Heal me hands of Jesus.” Maybe what we should be praying is: “Use me hands of Jesus.”
Jonah felt cheated and in all the ways I would call reasonable, Jonah was cheated. Jonah did what Jonah thought God called him to do and God changed his mind. Jonah was left with a prophecy without fulfillment, a call that went nowhere. Jonah was left holding the bag so to speak and Jonah was angry. Jonah, like us, simply could not know what God was doing.
I caught a glimpse of God’s freedom in these past days at our annual Diocesan Council which met in Richmond from Thursday through Saturday. During our time together we recognized the closing of Trinity Church, Highland Springs. Trinity Church, Highland Springs, is no longer able to sustain their ministry and will close their doors on February 8. An older parishioner who had grown up in that parish noted from the podium that the members of Trinity would now have to find new church homes. “Watch out world! Here we come!” were her closing words. Can you imagine the courage and the faith of this woman who was now tasked with closing her church but looking forward anew to becoming a part of a new parish and a new beginning.
And then we welcomed Immanuel Church, Rapidan, from mission to parish status. Immanuel’s church had been a parish but suffered devastation by floods of the Rapidan River most recently in 1995. Following the flood Immanuel became a mission, unable to support themselves. Immanuel is now able to support themselves and with a mighty celebration, we welcomed Immanuel into our midst as a parish.
As we lamented the closing of one church and celebrated the renewal of another, I was reminded that we, like Jonah, are all caught up in a mystery that is beyond anything we can understand. Our individual laments and celebrations, our parish laments and celebrations, are all being woven into a tapestry (a “crazy quilt” in Bishop Susan’s words) that we cannot see but which God is using to bring about God’s good purposes. What happens to us and among us is not about us at all, but rather about the way God chooses to reveal God’s glory through us.
As we, in the words of our collect this morning, ask for grace to answer the call of our Savior, may we not become distracted by our personal pains and pleasures but rather trust that “all things work together for good for those who love God,” in the words of Saint Paul.
Sunday, January 25, 2015 I Corinthians 7; 29 – 31
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 14 – 20
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Jonah 3: 10
“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you,” God says to Jonah in our Old Testament reading this morning. God uses Jonah to preach a message of destruction to a sinful city and when Jonah does, Nineveh changes it’s mind and so too does God. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” God tells Jonah to say to Nineveh. And Jonah does and Nineveh is not overthrown.
God uses Jonah and Jonah, we learn in the verse that immediately follows our reading, is not happy. The next verse, which we do not hear this morning, reads: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.”
The book of Jonah is a short story about a prophet called by God to preach a message of destruction to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Assyria was Israel’s enemy and Jonah was understandably reluctant. So Jonah gets on a ship heading in the opposite direction. A storm comes up, the ship is threatened, and the crew tosses Jonah overboard after learning Jonah is running away from God. The seas are calmed, the pagan sailors are brought to faith in the God of the Jews and Jonah ends up inside the belly of a whale. After three days, the whale spits Jonah out and God tells Jonah a second time: Go to Nineveh. And Jonah goes. And Nineveh repents. And so too does God, sparing the city from destruction.
And Jonah gets angry. I knew you would spare Nineveh, Jonah says to God. I knew you were a God of love and compassion and would not destroy Nineveh. I knew you would be gracious to these people. What did you need me for? You have used me. I have preached the message of destruction you gave me and now you have changed your mind and destruction has not come to pass. How dare you use me! And Jonah goes outside of the city to sulk.
And God makes a great bush, a castor oil plant, to grow to shade Jonah as he sits in the blistering heat and then God makes the bush die, leaving Jonah to sweat and wishing he would die. And God confronts Jonah with the mystery of God’s freedom to do what God will do through us.
The book of Jonah was written late in the history of Israel, probably sometime during the fifth century B.C., on the eve, historically speaking, of the Incarnation. The book of Jonah was written after the Babylonian exile as the Jews were rebuilding a life for themselves as the people of God back in Palestine. The great Persian Empire enabled the Jews to live in relative peace from hostile invaders and this time afforded the Jews with the possibility of grappling with questions of faith – the book of Job, which struggles to understand innocent suffering, was authored around the same time. In the book of Jonah, God’s freedom to do what God will do is pitted against Jonah’s desire to do what Jonah wants to do.
God uses Jonah; God uses Jonah first to bring pagan sailors to the knowledge of the God of the Jews and then God uses Jonah to bring a change of heart to a wicked city. God uses Jonah to accomplish God’s purposes – to bring light to a world floundering in darkness.
But Jonah can only see his own dismay. Jonah knows he has tried to flee God’s call to him and when the lives are others are threatened, Jonah tells the pagan sailors to throw him overboard. And then, when Jonah does finally walk into the enemy city of Nineveh, Jonah is risking, for a second time, his very life. Jonah did what God asked Jonah to do, albeit reluctantly, and Jonah got nothing but grief in return.
Ultimately, Jonah’s call is at risk. When Nineveh repents and is not destroyed, Jonah is faced with a problem – did God really call Jonah to preach a message of doom to Nineveh or was Jonah just hearing voices? And we hear echoes of the snake in the garden of Eden who said to Eve: “Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” What, the serpent asks Eve, exactly did God say?
Old Testament theologian Gerhard Von Rad notes that in the book of Jonah, the “hero” of the story is God, who “is here glorified not through his ambassador, but in spite of his ambassador’s complete refusal. “The ridiculous, stubborn Jonah,” Von Rad continues, “grudging God’s mercy to the heathen, but filled with joy at the shade of the castor oil plant, and then wanting to die when he sees it withering away, is unable to impede God’s saving thoughts – they achieve their goal in spite of everything.” God uses Jonah as a king might a subject, leading pagan sailors to faith and the city of Nineveh to repentance. What we learn through Jonah is that God’s will will be done, in spite of us if necessary.
When we are baptized, we acknowledge the authority of God’s will and are baptized into God’s saving purposes for the whole world. In Baptism, we are called out by God to co-operate with God’s desire to bring the whole world to a knowledge and love of God. In Baptism we take our place in a drama, a drama destined to show forth God’s glory, not ours.
Neither you nor I nor anyone else can ever know fully the mind of God. And as we live out our lives under the shade of God’s love, we will inevitably find ourselves in circumstances that make no sense, caught up into events we wish we could change, confronted with the mystery of God’s will. What we know, and what the book of Jonah bears witness to, is that God’s will is for the salvation of the world and that includes us. That we cannot see God’s loving hand in any given situation does not mean God has given us up to destruction.
To say God uses us is to understand that our life – all of our joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, celebrations and sufferings – are all under the pale of God’s love for the whole world. You and I, because we are human, cannot see beyond our own limited and limiting vision. We cannot see beyond our own frustrations or our own problems or our own accomplishments and even begin to imagine what God may be doing with us and through us. We all pray that God will strengthen us, heal us, mend our broken spirits. How often do we ask God to use us? How often do we pray, God’s will be done, not ours?
Nothing we do is far from the eye of God. Scary thought I know. God sees what we cannot see. God has in the words of the gospel hymn “the whole world in his hands;” you and I have only a little piece. God is not absent when we lose our job or are diagnosed with cancer or lose the money we had planned for retirement or are wholly frustrated with our work or dissatisfied with the way we spend our days. At those times we want to pray: “Heal me hands of Jesus.” Maybe what we should be praying is: “Use me hands of Jesus.”
Jonah felt cheated and in all the ways I would call reasonable, Jonah was cheated. Jonah did what Jonah thought God called him to do and God changed his mind. Jonah was left with a prophecy without fulfillment, a call that went nowhere. Jonah was left holding the bag so to speak and Jonah was angry. Jonah, like us, simply could not know what God was doing.
I caught a glimpse of God’s freedom in these past days at our annual Diocesan Council which met in Richmond from Thursday through Saturday. During our time together we recognized the closing of Trinity Church, Highland Springs. Trinity Church, Highland Springs, is no longer able to sustain their ministry and will close their doors on February 8. An older parishioner who had grown up in that parish noted from the podium that the members of Trinity would now have to find new church homes. “Watch out world! Here we come!” were her closing words. Can you imagine the courage and the faith of this woman who was now tasked with closing her church but looking forward anew to becoming a part of a new parish and a new beginning.
And then we welcomed Immanuel Church, Rapidan, from mission to parish status. Immanuel’s church had been a parish but suffered devastation by floods of the Rapidan River most recently in 1995. Following the flood Immanuel became a mission, unable to support themselves. Immanuel is now able to support themselves and with a mighty celebration, we welcomed Immanuel into our midst as a parish.
As we lamented the closing of one church and celebrated the renewal of another, I was reminded that we, like Jonah, are all caught up in a mystery that is beyond anything we can understand. Our individual laments and celebrations, our parish laments and celebrations, are all being woven into a tapestry (a “crazy quilt” in Bishop Susan’s words) that we cannot see but which God is using to bring about God’s good purposes. What happens to us and among us is not about us at all, but rather about the way God chooses to reveal God’s glory through us.
As we, in the words of our collect this morning, ask for grace to answer the call of our Savior, may we not become distracted by our personal pains and pleasures but rather trust that “all things work together for good for those who love God,” in the words of Saint Paul.
First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Genesis 1: 1 – 5
Sunday, January 11, 2015 Acts 19: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 4 – 11
And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dive on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark: 1: 10 - 11
Last Sunday I called Epiphany the season of surprise and on this the First Sunday after the Epiphany, Jesus is baptized and just after Jesus is baptized the Spirit descends like a dove and a voice from heaven announces: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” We have heard this story many times before and I am inclined to suspect that Jesus’ baptism and the descent of the Spirit following his baptism, does not take us by surprise. We know John the Baptizer proclaimed a baptism of repentance and that many Jews, including Jesus, went to the River Jordan to confess their sins and be baptized by John.
And, yet, Jesus was a Jew and Jews did not get baptized; Jews were born into the faith. If your mother was Jewish, you were Jewish. Jews baptized folk who were not born of Jewish mothers and who wished to become Jews. But Jesus was born of a Jewish mother and did not need to be baptized. But Jesus, this day, is baptized. Surprise number one.
Surprise number two comes when the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus. People from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem came out to be baptized by John but the heavens were only torn apart for one; only one was named the Beloved, the Son with whom God was well pleased.
All of the holy people of God come out to be baptized as if they were not the holy people of God and one is set apart by the Spirit. Surprises abound this day.
Only one thing took me by surprise the day I was baptized. I was baptized in 1961, at the age of ten one afternoon in a semi dark church. I stood at the font with my parents, my brother and sister and my aunt and uncle. After the minister sprinkled me with water, we left. What surprised me was that no one could tell me why what had just happened was important or significant or meaningful. I never asked of course, because in those days you did what your parents told you to do and my parents told me I was going to be baptized and so I was.
I was confirmed two years later and confirmation class helped me to appreciate that I had been baptized into a most confusing world reigned over by a Father and a Son and a Holy Spirit in which what was important was memorizing a creed and Ten Commandments and something called the Beatitudes for good measure. At ten, I did what I was told to do; at twelve, I did the same thing, faithfully attending confirmation class; round about eighteen, I went off to college and stopped going to church.
By God’s grace my math professor at Mary Washington was the rector of Trinity Church in Fredericksburg at the time. He was the first adult theologian I had ever met and routinely sat cross legged on the desk in his collar waxing on about abstract math. His was also the only class I ever dropped – a class on typology – which I could not fathom.
One day he needed a ride to Germanna to speak with the nursing students about death and dying and I offered to take him. I do not remember what we talked about on the drive but I do remember that he died suddenly not long thereafter. I was entering into a mystery of life and death, a mystery given to me at baptism but which was only then becoming real.
I was surprised that a priest and theologian was also a professor of mathematics; I was surprised that an otherwise perfectly normal day could suddenly become something I would remember for the rest of my life; I was surprised that death can often take us by surprise.
Jesus this morning submits to the baptism of John and is anointed with the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, into the mystery of a crucified and risen Lord and then sealed by the Holy Spirit. Baptism is the beginning of a life filled with surprises as we awake to the power of the Holy Spirit nudging us to see God’s hand in all things. Baptism does not save us; God saves us by gracing us with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which led Jesus to heal and to teach and to die as a criminal on a cross and then raised Jesus from death into life. No one told me when I was baptized that God wanted to open my eyes to the power of God at work in the world, the same power that created a beautiful world out of nothing and that raised Jesus from the dead. No one told me when I was baptized that life in the Spirit would lead me into the greatest of joys and the deepest of sorrows, into confusion and uncertainty and doubt as well as clarity and certainty and hope. No one told me and that was probably a good thing as I daresay I might have protested being baptized with water into that kind of power!
Next Sunday when Bishop Gulick visits we will be receiving into the Episcopal Church Mark DePollo, Patrick DeCrane, Dawn Harris and Dara Gravatt. They are coming into the Episcopal Church from other Christian traditions. They have each found their way into the Episcopal Church by different roads and are following the nudgings of the Spirit. They all are continuing a journey they started a long time ago when they were baptized. And when Bishop Gulick confirms Elisa Eakin, Elisa is confirming for herself the power of the Spirit as she has come to see the workings of the Spirt in her own life. Next Sunday we will celebrate the power of the Spirit at work in these five lives and in each of our own.
There are other ways to understand what will happen next Sunday. We could see next Sunday as a witness to a wonderful parish that is simply so attractive, folk cannot resist coming among us. Or we could see next Sunday as increasing the number of names on our parish registry. Or we could see next Sunday as an opportunity to enjoy an exceptional reception. We can see next Sunday in all kinds of ways; I would encourage you to see next Sunday haunted by the power of the Holy Spirit and marvel at the mystery that has led these five folk to be received and confirmed.
Baptism plunges us into a mystery and bids us to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit, a power we cannot control but about which we can marvel. You and I, children of the enlightenment as we are, have all been robbed of our capacity to marvel and to be taken by surprise. We have grown up assuming we can make sense of all things, every question has an answer, and every problem a solution. Many things make no sense, not all questions have answers and sometimes problems cannot be solved but only lived with. Baptism invites us to submit to the power of God who brings something out of nothing and life out of death.
One of the most surprising realizations for me after I was ordained was that folk assumed I had all the answers. Altar Guild assumed I knew the difference between a corporal and a purificator which I did. Adults sometimes assumed I knew the Thirty-Nine Articles by heart which I did not. Children assumed that I could change water into wine which would be lovely but is nothing I can number among my skill set to date. And most everyone presumed that my preaching was not heretical which may or may not be a good assumption.
I have been trained and I have been formed by vastly different communities and by vastly different experiences just as you have been. What has become significant to me is not what I know but what I do not know, what can only learned by falling in love or undergoing great suffering. Life and love, death and grief, are the crucibles of faith, not memorizing creeds and knowing that we Protestants observe two sacraments and not the seven of the Roman Catholic Church. What is important is not what we can see and understand but rather what we do not see and cannot understand. I am learning that questions are usually more helpful than answers, opening up possibilities for reflection rather than closing down a conversation. I am learning that my desire to be right often gets in the way of finding truth. I am learning that silence can be a far better way to enter into the kingdom of God than words and acts. I am learning. I am learning that God wants to lead us if we are willing and not willful.
The heavens are torn apart this morning when Jesus is baptized. The boundary between heaven and earth, God’s space and our space, has been breached. The Holy Spirit of God has been set loose in the world through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That Spirit blows where it will and is always and everywhere beyond our control. We can marvel or scoff; be attentive to the nudgings of the Spirit or ignore the work of the Spirit altogether. What we cannot do, though, is stop the Spirit from moving both within us and among us.
Sunday, January 11, 2015 Acts 19: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 4 – 11
And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dive on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark: 1: 10 - 11
Last Sunday I called Epiphany the season of surprise and on this the First Sunday after the Epiphany, Jesus is baptized and just after Jesus is baptized the Spirit descends like a dove and a voice from heaven announces: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” We have heard this story many times before and I am inclined to suspect that Jesus’ baptism and the descent of the Spirit following his baptism, does not take us by surprise. We know John the Baptizer proclaimed a baptism of repentance and that many Jews, including Jesus, went to the River Jordan to confess their sins and be baptized by John.
And, yet, Jesus was a Jew and Jews did not get baptized; Jews were born into the faith. If your mother was Jewish, you were Jewish. Jews baptized folk who were not born of Jewish mothers and who wished to become Jews. But Jesus was born of a Jewish mother and did not need to be baptized. But Jesus, this day, is baptized. Surprise number one.
Surprise number two comes when the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus. People from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem came out to be baptized by John but the heavens were only torn apart for one; only one was named the Beloved, the Son with whom God was well pleased.
All of the holy people of God come out to be baptized as if they were not the holy people of God and one is set apart by the Spirit. Surprises abound this day.
Only one thing took me by surprise the day I was baptized. I was baptized in 1961, at the age of ten one afternoon in a semi dark church. I stood at the font with my parents, my brother and sister and my aunt and uncle. After the minister sprinkled me with water, we left. What surprised me was that no one could tell me why what had just happened was important or significant or meaningful. I never asked of course, because in those days you did what your parents told you to do and my parents told me I was going to be baptized and so I was.
I was confirmed two years later and confirmation class helped me to appreciate that I had been baptized into a most confusing world reigned over by a Father and a Son and a Holy Spirit in which what was important was memorizing a creed and Ten Commandments and something called the Beatitudes for good measure. At ten, I did what I was told to do; at twelve, I did the same thing, faithfully attending confirmation class; round about eighteen, I went off to college and stopped going to church.
By God’s grace my math professor at Mary Washington was the rector of Trinity Church in Fredericksburg at the time. He was the first adult theologian I had ever met and routinely sat cross legged on the desk in his collar waxing on about abstract math. His was also the only class I ever dropped – a class on typology – which I could not fathom.
One day he needed a ride to Germanna to speak with the nursing students about death and dying and I offered to take him. I do not remember what we talked about on the drive but I do remember that he died suddenly not long thereafter. I was entering into a mystery of life and death, a mystery given to me at baptism but which was only then becoming real.
I was surprised that a priest and theologian was also a professor of mathematics; I was surprised that an otherwise perfectly normal day could suddenly become something I would remember for the rest of my life; I was surprised that death can often take us by surprise.
Jesus this morning submits to the baptism of John and is anointed with the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, into the mystery of a crucified and risen Lord and then sealed by the Holy Spirit. Baptism is the beginning of a life filled with surprises as we awake to the power of the Holy Spirit nudging us to see God’s hand in all things. Baptism does not save us; God saves us by gracing us with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which led Jesus to heal and to teach and to die as a criminal on a cross and then raised Jesus from death into life. No one told me when I was baptized that God wanted to open my eyes to the power of God at work in the world, the same power that created a beautiful world out of nothing and that raised Jesus from the dead. No one told me when I was baptized that life in the Spirit would lead me into the greatest of joys and the deepest of sorrows, into confusion and uncertainty and doubt as well as clarity and certainty and hope. No one told me and that was probably a good thing as I daresay I might have protested being baptized with water into that kind of power!
Next Sunday when Bishop Gulick visits we will be receiving into the Episcopal Church Mark DePollo, Patrick DeCrane, Dawn Harris and Dara Gravatt. They are coming into the Episcopal Church from other Christian traditions. They have each found their way into the Episcopal Church by different roads and are following the nudgings of the Spirit. They all are continuing a journey they started a long time ago when they were baptized. And when Bishop Gulick confirms Elisa Eakin, Elisa is confirming for herself the power of the Spirit as she has come to see the workings of the Spirt in her own life. Next Sunday we will celebrate the power of the Spirit at work in these five lives and in each of our own.
There are other ways to understand what will happen next Sunday. We could see next Sunday as a witness to a wonderful parish that is simply so attractive, folk cannot resist coming among us. Or we could see next Sunday as increasing the number of names on our parish registry. Or we could see next Sunday as an opportunity to enjoy an exceptional reception. We can see next Sunday in all kinds of ways; I would encourage you to see next Sunday haunted by the power of the Holy Spirit and marvel at the mystery that has led these five folk to be received and confirmed.
Baptism plunges us into a mystery and bids us to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit, a power we cannot control but about which we can marvel. You and I, children of the enlightenment as we are, have all been robbed of our capacity to marvel and to be taken by surprise. We have grown up assuming we can make sense of all things, every question has an answer, and every problem a solution. Many things make no sense, not all questions have answers and sometimes problems cannot be solved but only lived with. Baptism invites us to submit to the power of God who brings something out of nothing and life out of death.
One of the most surprising realizations for me after I was ordained was that folk assumed I had all the answers. Altar Guild assumed I knew the difference between a corporal and a purificator which I did. Adults sometimes assumed I knew the Thirty-Nine Articles by heart which I did not. Children assumed that I could change water into wine which would be lovely but is nothing I can number among my skill set to date. And most everyone presumed that my preaching was not heretical which may or may not be a good assumption.
I have been trained and I have been formed by vastly different communities and by vastly different experiences just as you have been. What has become significant to me is not what I know but what I do not know, what can only learned by falling in love or undergoing great suffering. Life and love, death and grief, are the crucibles of faith, not memorizing creeds and knowing that we Protestants observe two sacraments and not the seven of the Roman Catholic Church. What is important is not what we can see and understand but rather what we do not see and cannot understand. I am learning that questions are usually more helpful than answers, opening up possibilities for reflection rather than closing down a conversation. I am learning that my desire to be right often gets in the way of finding truth. I am learning that silence can be a far better way to enter into the kingdom of God than words and acts. I am learning. I am learning that God wants to lead us if we are willing and not willful.
The heavens are torn apart this morning when Jesus is baptized. The boundary between heaven and earth, God’s space and our space, has been breached. The Holy Spirit of God has been set loose in the world through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That Spirit blows where it will and is always and everywhere beyond our control. We can marvel or scoff; be attentive to the nudgings of the Spirit or ignore the work of the Spirit altogether. What we cannot do, though, is stop the Spirit from moving both within us and among us.
