The Third Sunday of Advent_St. Mark's, Crossett

 The Rev. Canon Melanie Lemburg

The Third Sunday of Advent-Year A

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Crossett, AR

December 14, 2025

 

       “She might say no.”  This is the last line in Luci Shaw’s poem The Annunciatory Angel written about the Fra Angelica painting depicting the annunciation, when the angel Gabriel gives the news to Mary that she has been chosen by God to be the God-bearer, the mother of Jesus.  The poem is written from Gabriel’s perspective, and it ends with this haunting line: “She might say no.”  

       Of course, we know that Mary doesn’t say no.  Instead, she says “yes.”  First, she says, “Let it be unto me according to your word.”  And then she elaborates on her yes in the words we have spoken together this morning together in Canticle 15, what we in the church know of as the Magnificat.    

Listen again to how Mary says yes to God:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * 
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

The promise he made to our fathers, *
to Abraham and his children for ever.”

 

       I heard an excellent ordination sermon yesterday delivered by the Rev Mark Nabors of St. Luke’s Hot Springs.  In this sermon, Mark spoke about how almost all of the prophets, except Mary, at first tried to say no to God.  I was captivated by this statement-first in that he had likened Mary to one of the prophets, which is both true and a way that I had never thought of her before, and second- that unlike most of the prophets, Mary doesn’t say no.  She says yes immediately.  And in her yes, Mary knits together God’s saving work woven like a ribbon through our past, present, and future.  Her yes is full of hope and something else that I’ve only been able to identify as whimsy:  the mighty are cast down, and the lowly are lifted up; the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty

       This week I encountered another poem that has helped me reflect on this characteristic of whimsy in Mary’s yes.  The poem is by Lyndsay Rush.  She posts on Instagram under the handle “Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin”. 

Her poem is titled “Out on a Whim.” Here it is: 

Out On a Whim

Every morning I take a deep breath of hope / and horror / and exhale / My phone is full of hot air / and outside, it's worse / but still / I know we are not limited to either and or / outrage or apathy / histrionics or hibernation / all or nothing / we are knit for nuance / and hard-wired for joy / even in the face of atrocity / perhaps especially in the face of atrocity / look for the helpers, yes, / but look, too, for the dreamers / look for the hopeful / look for the artists and the noticers / those clawing their way towards peace / and even pleasure / amidst news that keeps breaking / and breaking / and breaking / if hatred is the hare, not the tortoise / if rage burns twice as bright but half as long / then let me be bolstered by whimsy / if empathy is extreme / and joy is an act of resistance / then dear god, let me be radicalized by whimsy / what could be finer fuel for our fight? / what could better remind us of our humanity? / what could possibly sustain us but this?

       What does it mean or look like to be bolstered by whimsy, to be radicalized by whimsy?   I think the opposite of whimsy is cynicism.  It’s a sort of weary practicality that often dwells under the surface of “but we’ve always done it that way.”  Or nothing will ever change, so why bother?  Underneath whimsy dwells hope, and it is hope that suffuses Mary’s “yes” and can inspire us in our own yeses to God and to others. Every yes we offer begins in curiosity (which is, perhaps, the sister to whimsy). 

       What are the ways we can connect with our whimsy this Advent in our own discernment to what God is inviting us into?  I’ve been reading a book for my Advent devotion by the writer Christine Valters Paintner titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year  It’s about the  practice of the early church mothers and fathers offering to pilgrims a word for them to meditate upon.  She writes of this ancient practice: “The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling.  It was part of a relationship that had developed with the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple, would be life-giving.  It was meant for this person in this moment and season in their lives.”  

       Paintner’s book is a set of spiritual exercises to support someone in seeking a word to reflect upon for a coming year or season. She continues, “When we receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to us or a sense of felt rightness.  I sometimes describe this process of listening as looking for shimmers.  Shimmering is a way to describe when something in the world is calling to you, beckoning you, sometimes even urging you to pay closer attention.  Sometimes what shimmers is challenging, but we know that wrestling with it will yield something bigger in our lives.  Sometimes what shimmers invokes wonder and awe.  We notice a felt response in our bodies and spirits that asks us to attune more deeply to what is being revealed.”[i]

       Looking for shimmers in our lives or in the world around us is a spiritual practice that we can employ to help us be more open to curiosity, to whimsy.  It’s a way of living out of a posture of “yes” to God and those around us as opposed to living out of a posture of “no”.    

       This week, I invite you to look for the shimmers, the places of whimsy in your lives and in the world.  Where are the places in your life or in the world that are inviting your curiosity?  How might whimsy be equipping you, bolstering you, radicalizing you to say “yes” to God’s call in your life?  

 

---

[i] Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, pp xi-xii.

The 2nd Sunday of Advent Year A_St. Mark's Jonesboro

St. Mark’s Jonesboro

The Second Sunday of Advent-Year A

December 7, 2025

       I’ve been thinking a lot about hope this week.  We had our inaugural Advent Teaching Mission and Lecture event for the diocese this weekend, where we got to hear the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, one of the preeminent theologians of our time, offer her reflections on Hope in Despairing Times.  She spoke in very specific ways about how hope is both a practice and an action, and she also spoke about how joy is an essential component to hope.  

       Also this week, I attended the gathering for the transition officers from Provinces 6, 7, and 8 at Mustang Island in Texas.  There were about 16 of us there, representing 18 dioceses, and the numbers of churches looking for clergy in comparison with the number of clergy looking were off-putting, to say the least.  Know that I presented you to my colleagues for their consideration for any priests in their dioceses looking for a new cure.  And then together, we all prayed for you.  It was such a touching and tender moment, as we presented churches like you who had been entrusted to our care, and we prayed that God would send you who you need (and someone who also needs you).   

       But, back to hope….So often we think of hope as optimism, and it so much more than that.  Friday night in her lecture, Dr. Douglas stated, “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.”  And she talked about hope in terms of Jesus’s resurrection, how he was dead and then he was not, and how there is even a sort of playful quality to the resurrection accounts that is essential to hope.  “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.”  I suspect this is something that we can identify in our lives as well.  How often have you been surprised by a mini (or large) resurrection moment in your own life or in your life of faith?  Have you ever had something that seemed dead that came to life in new and unexpected ways?

The reading from Isaiah for today speaks to this as it begins with the words, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,/ and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”  The passage goes on to talk about the peaceable kingdom that will be ushered in by God through this new kind of king.  It’s all about Israel’s future hope:  what it means to hope even when the future seems uncertain.  And it is also all about the connections between justice and peace.

       Because at this point in Israel’s history, things are really bad.  The once united kingdom has been divided into two; the king of the southern kingdom has sold out the northern kingdom to their mutual enemies, and the northern kingdom has fallen.  The people in the southern kingdom, including Isaiah, know that it’s only a matter of time until they, too, are conquered.  So they long for a new kind of king who will hold justice and peace together, a king who will be God’s agent in ushering in the peaceable kingdom where enemies, predators and prey will all lie down together and be at peace.  

       For Isaiah, he is looking at something that seems dead or dying, and he is hoping that new life will yet spring up from it. 

       This is not an unfounded hope.  It is, in fact, the hope of our calling as Christians, the resurrection hope.  It can be true for society, and it can be true for own lives as well.  As another writer puts it, “According to Isaiah, the transformation from a culture of fear to a world at peace begins with a stump.  Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left-behind, comes the sign of new life—a green sprig.  This is how hope gets its start-it emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.”[i]  

       But here is what is so interesting about this image from Isaiah for me today.  Hope is likened to tiny, green sprig of new life and tender persistence.  It is alarming to think how easily it could get trampled out of existence, and yet it doesn’t.  

       This week, I encountered a new poem by Denise Levertov titled Making Peace.  Listen to the first part of this poem:

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.[ii]

 

       So, a key part of this hope that springs up like a tender, green shoot, is that it invites us to engage our imaginations to discern what are the shoots of hope and what are just weeds.  What tiny green shoots do we give energy to protect and nurture that will grow into branches of a once again healthy tree and what parts do we leave for nature to take its course?  There is a sort of communal cultivation and practice of hope that must engage our imaginations.  

       And the final essential component that we see in this dance in Isaiah between peace and hope is that they are all bound together by justice.  In her talk on Saturday, Dr. Douglas shared, “If we want peace, we have to create justice.  Peace follows justice.  [We must] nurture the conditions that foster life.”  And in her explanation of justice, Douglas shared what she calls a “reverse golden rule”:  “do not withhold from others that which you would not want withheld from yourself.”  So peace, hope, justice are all interrelated.

       Where are the tiny, shoots of tender new life and hope in your lives; in your midst here?  Where are you being surprised by resurrection hope and being invited to imagine how you can nurture it and participate in it? What is the role of peace and justice in the practicing of your hope? 

       In closing, I’ll offer you a spiritual practice for this Advent season (and beyond) that is articulated in Christine Valters Paintner’s book titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year that has been helpful for me as a part of my own keeping of Advent this year.  You can do this reflection at the end of each day to reflect back over your day; or you can also do this to reflect back over the whole year.  You can also use this reflection to think about life here at St. Mark’s and your role in that.

       I invite you to close your eyes as I share this reflection with you if that would be helpful.

       Take a deep breath in and then out.  What are the most life-giving experiences for you?  When did you feel yourself most filled with love?  With hope?  Notice what comes to mind and stay with it.  Where are the tiny shoots of growth or new life in your life right now.  Is there anyone you want to offer gratitude for in these experiences?

Take another deep breath in and out.  What are the most life-draining experiences for you?  When did you feel most restless?  The least hopeful?  Notice what moments come to your mind and stay with them without judgement or trying to change them.  Is there anyone you want to offer forgiveness to for this experience?  Spend a few moments seeing if you are moved to extend forgiveness, even to yourself.  

Take another deep breath in and out.  How do you want to move forward?  What are your hopes?  How are you being invited to follow the Holy Spirit now?  How might you nurture the tiny, persistent, green shoots of hope and new life shared within you?  What do you want to ask from God to move more fully into your hopes?[iii]  

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak

---

[i] From Feasting of the Word for the Isaiah passage for this week. I don’t have the book with me to cite author and page.  Sorry!

[ii] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53900/making-peace

[iii] I made some modifications to what was presented in the following book: Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, Chapter 5. 

The Feast of St. Andrew_St. Andrew's Mountain Home

 The Feast of St. Andrew-transferred

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Mountain Home, AR

November 30, 2025

         Good morning!  I’m Melanie Lemburg, the new canon to the ordinary for the diocese, and I’m delighted to be here with you to celebrate your patronal feast day—the Feast of St. Andrew!  

      I’ve come here straight from our family Thanksgiving gathering at our family farm in Northeast Mississippi.  My parents and one brother have houses on the farm, and we were joined by my second brother and his family along with my husband and two kids.  And for one chaotic week, we all lived together again, all on top of each other (like puppies!).  Siblings sharing rooms, some even with their parents; all of us sharing bathrooms with a granddaughter’s boyfriend thrown into the mix. It has been an interesting week, being in such close quarters to those who are the nearest and dearest to my heart, and it has been both a gift and challenge to once again live so near to each other when we have been accustomed to being spread out around the country.     

      We have a number of factors coming together for us today:  it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and here, today, we also celebrate the life and ministry of Andrew the apostle and lift up how his witness inspires your witness here in this community. 

      And our readings for St. Andrew’s feast day have theme that winds through them like a ribbon that can speak to us today in this place, in this moment. 

      In the collect of the day, we ask God: “give us, who are called by your Holy Word, grace to follow [Jesus] without delay and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence…” In the Old Testament reading, we hear Moses saying to the people:  “Surely the commandment…is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away…No, the word is very near to you.”  In the epistle reading, we hear Paul writing to the Romans, “the word is very near to you.”  And in the gospel reading, we see Jesus walking near the brothers—Simon and Andrew- and he calls them to follow him, and immediately, they leave their nets and follow him.  

      In other stories of Andrew in the gospels, we see that Andrew has a particular gift of seeing what is nearby, and then bringing that person or resource to Jesus. He does this in the story of his call to follow Jesus in John’s gospel.  In that gospel, it is Andrew who encounters Jesus first, and then he goes and finds his brother Peter, saying to him, “We have found the Messiah,” and he brings Peter back to meet Jesus.  It is Andrew who brings the boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus, and it is also Andrew who brings two Greeks to Jesus so that even the Gentiles might be taught by Jesus.  

      Andrew has a knack for noticing what and who are near him, and then, through his gentle encouragement, bringing them into Jesus’s presence.  

      And into this mix, we add the season of Advent, which is a slow uncovering, a gradual revealing of God with us, of the Word who is already near us, as we light our candles in the darkness.  

      And I can’t help but wonder what does this mean, that the word is already near to us?  How is that Word already being revealed in our midst?  In our families?  In this community?  In the chaos of our common life as a nation?  Where have you, like Andrew, noticed that the Word is already so very near to you?  What does it mean for us to try to seek the Word that is already near?  

      I have just started reading a new book as a part of my Advent observance this year.  The book is titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year by Christine Valters Paintner, who is the online abbess at Abbey of the Arts, a virtual global monastery that offers resources to people to help nurture contemplative practice and creative expression.  In this book Paintner picks up the ancient monastic practice of identifying a word or phrase for reflection and spiritual nourishment for a season.  The seekers would often say to the desert mothers and fathers, “Give me a word.”  And this phrase is often repeated throughout the parables of the early church.  Paintner describes this word saying, “The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling.  It was part of a relationship that had developed with the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple, would be life-giving.  It was meant for this person in this moment and season in their lives.”  She continues, “When we receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to us or a sense of felt rightness.  I sometimes describe this process of listening as looking for shimmers.  Shimmering is a way to describe when something in the world is calling to you, beckoning you, sometimes even urging you to pay closer attention.  Sometimes what shimmers is challenging, but we know that wrestling with it will yield something bigger in our lives.  Sometimes what shimmers invokes wonder and awe.  We notice a felt response in our bodies and spirits that asks us to attune more deeply to what is being revealed.”[i]

      Advent is an appropriate season to be on the lookout for these shimmers, both in our individual lives as well as in our corporate life.  What in your individual life is invoking a sense of wonder or awe from the world near you?  Where are you as an individual being challenged?  

      And as you as a congregation allow yourselves to be inspired by Andrew, I wonder what shimmers near you all from the world nearby that beckon to your attention?  Who is near to you in this community who could be brought to Jesus by your kind and thoughtful witness?  

      Let us pray. Almighty God, who didst give such grace to thine apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of thy Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give unto us, who are called by thy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

---

[i] Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, pp xi-xii.

The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C-All Saints' Russellville

The Rev Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

All Saints’ Russellville

The 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C

November 16, 2025

      Good morning!  I’m Melanie Lemburg, the new Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Arkansas!  I’m delighted to be here with y’all this morning, and I’ve already appreciated the time I’ve gotten to spend working with your vestry and leadership, including Mercedes, as a part of this transition you are now in with her completion of her time here with y’all and your beginning wonderings of what is next for you as a community of faith.  

      I am here today both as a support for your services this morning, and also as an outward and visible sign that you are not in this alone.  The bishop will be walking along side you, much through my presence in support of you and your leadership as you all begin to discern together what’s next.  (Hopefully, he conveyed this to you also when he was with you last week!). I don’t think I need to name for you that transitions can be times of both trepidation and excitement, of anxiety and of hope for what’s next.  If you hear nothing else from me today, I hope that you will hear that you are not alone in this transition, and you have nothing to fear.

      This past week, I’ve been in Indiana facilitating a training for a group of clergy and lay leaders from around the Episcopal Church.  This training has been about conflict in the church and how to navigate it by managing our own individual anxiety and responses. As a part of this training, I share some of my own story about how I was forced out of my third parish as a result of a high level conflict.  It’s not an easy story to retell, and yet I do it every time we offer this training.  Through this story, I detail not only what happened, but also my own part in the conflict (because no matter how much we might want to believe it, none of us is every pure hero or pure villain, pure victim or pure oppressor.  We’re all always a complicated mix of both.  It’s the message that’s at the heart of the gospel).  And what I have found  is that in sharing my story of this utter failure in my ministry and how it has become the impetus for me to learn more about how conflict unfolds and can be managed by our own behaviors and interventions, it actually gives other people who are embroiled in conflict hope.  They find hope that healing can happen, even though it is often in the most of unexpected ways.  And that is the gift of the Holy Spirit’s continued presence in the Church and in the world.  

      Three of our readings for today give us hints of this hope, even through the bleakest of situations.  In the Old Testament reading, we see the prophet Malachi offering words of judgement on the present age, suggesting that God is going to purify what is impure through a righteous fire; but even in the midst of that, the faithful will find healing.  This is partnered with a psalm that invites God’s faithful to sing a new song:  a song to God’s victory and righteousness, and how we are invited to be participants in God’s equity.  

      Then we have the gospel reading from Luke where Jesus is teaching in the temple, promising his disciples and listeners that hard times are on the way, but he offers them the assurance of his presence and that they will have what they need to face these anxious times together.  The community that Luke is writing to has already experienced these occurrences, the destruction of the temple by the Romans, along with the dramatic divisions that the Roman occupation has wrought upon their homeland and their most intimate relationships. Our passage for today is one that is chock-full of anxiety and yet under the surface is the assurance that Jesus is with us and continues to provide what we need to persist.  Our gospel passage for today shows us how hope (and its practice) is the opposite of anxiety and can even be its antidote.   

Retired Episcopal Bishop and Native American elder Steven Charleston writes about how and where we find hope:  “What gives someone a positive outlook on life?  We might list things like faith, wisdom and love, but ironically one of the major sources of hope for many of us is our own brokenness.  It is not the absence of hurt in our lives, but just the opposite that gives us strength.  We have been through many struggles.  We have known loss, grief and fear.  We have experienced disappointment, betrayal, and confusion.  And because we have lived through these challenges, because we have come through to the other side, we believe in the power of the Spirit to bring us healing, reconciliation and renewal.  Hope is not a wish, but a lesson learned.”[i]  

      We find ourselves in world where it is so easy to become enslaved by the forces of anxiety that are currently running rampant through our public life and discourse:  the 24 hour news cycle; the entrenched divisions; the natural disasters and the seemingly, never-ending wars and conflicts.  And yet, each of us has the power to reengage with the lessons hope has taught us in difficult times and to become more deeply grounded in how we practice hope as the antidote to anxiety and fear.  

      This week, I invite you to contemplate what anxiety you are falling prey to these days?  Can you name that before God now and in the days to come and ask God for peace?    How is God inviting you to practice hope in your life and in the life of this community? What lessons can you recall from difficult times that can help you practice hope?

      In closing, I’ll share with you another quote from Bishop Charleston.  This is in the first chapter of his book Ladder to the Light:  An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage.   He writes, “Made for freedom.  We are not made for resignation.  Passive acceptance is not the code written into our spirit.  If that were true, as a species, we would have vanished long ago.  Instead, for millennia, we have shaken off the temptation to simply accept reality and the demand that we bend the knee, and we have stood up to struggle against the odds, to change the situation, and to find an answer and a healing.  Those deep drives are the energy we call hope.  Those active forces are what determine our future.  We are not made for resignation, but for freedom.”[ii]  

 

---

[i] Posted on his Facebook page August 7, 2018

[ii] Charleston, Steven. Ladder to the Light:  An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage. Broadleaf books: Minneapolis, 2021, Kindle location 224 or 1711.  

The Sunday after All Saints' Day-St. Paul's Batesville, AR

The Sunday after All Saints’ Day—St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Batesville, AR

November 2, 2025

 

       Good morning!  I’m Melanie Lemburg, the new canon to the ordinary for the diocese, and I’m delighted to be here with y’all on this All Saints’ Sunday!  I’ve already enjoyed your excellent hospitality, and I’ve really enjoyed working with your wardens, Sarah and Steve, since I arrived in the diocese.

       The Feast of All Saints is one of our seven major feast days in the life of the church.  It’s designated as a day that is especially good for baptisms (which is why we’ll renew our baptismal covenant together today), and it is such an important day that even though it happens on November 1^st, we are allowed to move it so it can be observed on the following Sunday.  

       The Celtic Christians had an understanding of All Saints and the days surrounding it as being a thin place, a threshold between what has come before and what will be.  They saw it as a time in the year when the veil between death and life feels thinner than it otherwise might feel.  

       And that’s helpful to lift up today and to mark, because we are no strangers to these thin spaces, these liminal spaces, these thresholds in our lives.  

       Not too long ago, I read the book How to Walk into a Room by Emily Freeman, and she uses the image of how our lives are like different rooms in a house, how we spend different seasons of life in different rooms, and sometimes we are forced out of a particular room, and sometimes we choose to walk out of our own accord.  There are even liminal, in-between times when we find ourselves hanging out in the hallway of our life, in between rooms.  All Saints’ and its surrounding three days (All Hallow’s Eve through All Soul’s Day, which is today) are a sort of liturgical hallway for us, connected deeply with the changing of the seasons.

       None of us is a stranger to this hanging out in the hallway.  These liminal spaces are a part of our human condition.  The shift from babyhood to toddler-hood, from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to adulthood.  There are transitions between being engaged and getting married, from leaving one job and starting another.  The transition from this life into the next is another liminal space in which we will all dwell eventually, and often accompany loved ones through.  

Some of us find comfort in these hallways, these transitions.  These liminal spaces can give us a break, a time-out for a reset, or even be a place of safety, a refuge where we build a nest of blankets and hunker down when the tornado sirens are going off. For others, the hallway is a place of risk, where we relinquish any sense of control over our goals or our destiny, a place of waiting and watching, and of discomfort. For many of us, these hallways are the portal between life before and life after—life before the diagnosis, the loss of our spouse, the job loss, a new relationship, a new job, or the birth of a child and the life after this transition that we sometimes choose and sometimes don’t. 

       These liminal spaces, these hallways, are opportunities for reflection on our life and our call, and they are spaces where God invites us to be open to uncertainty, the unknown, to mystery.  

       You find yourselves all together in one of these hallways, these liminal spaces, these in-between, already, not yet types of thin spaces, here at St. Paul’s. And it is not an easy or comfortable place to be, here in the hallway with your nest of blankets waiting for the tornado siren to stop going off.  

       So, what type of encouragement might this day that lifts up liminal spaces have to offer you in your liminal season?  

       In the reading from Ephesians for today, we have what is known as a “hinge section;” it is its own sort of threshold that comes between the opening salutation of the letter and the prayer that follows.  In the hinge section, the writer emphasizes the inheritance that the listeners have already received from God, reminding them of what God has already bestowed upon them.  And then there is the prayer.  Listen to it again:  “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”  

The writer is praying for his readers to have the eyes of their hearts enlightened, the knowledge of the hope to which God has called them, the riches of the inheritance of the saints (a gathering across time and space of those followers of Jesus past, present, and future), and the gift of God’s power to those who believe.  

       On this All Saints’ day, in what ways might you draw upon the inheritance of hope from all the saints who have lived and worshiped here at St. Paul’s in your rich history of over 150 years?  What are the ways God is inviting you to dig deeper into your hope together in the present?  How might your annual commitment campaign be an opportunity for you as individuals and for you as the collection of the saints to live more deeply into this hope to which God is calling you?  

       As people of faith, hope is our best companion and a gift from the Holy Spirit in these threshold, liminal, in-between thin places, these hallway seasons of our lives.  This week, I invite you to look for signs of hope in your life and in this community.  Reflect on the lives of the saints who have come before you, who have found hope in the face of incredibly trying times, and because of that hope, they were able to faithfully persist in living out the gospel.  I invite you to pray for the hope that is God’s good gift and a part of our inheritance as God’s people.  

       I’ll conclude with a blessing from the writer and theologian Kate Bowler.  (This was shared on her Facebook page a few months ago.). 

Blessing for Uncertainty.

“Blessed are you who live here. The space between simple categories and easy answers. You who wonder why this is your life, why you got this diagnosis, or why you still struggle with infertility, or why you haven't found your birth parents, or why you can't kick this addiction, or why your kids haven't come.

Blessed are you who built a home on uneasy ground, who, despite your trying, your asking, your searches haven't found the satisfying feeling of discovery and blessed are you who never will. This is not an easy place to live outside of certainty, outside of knowing, outside of the truth.

But blessed are you who realize that love and beauty and courage and meaning can still be found here amid the unease and frustration and sleepless nights.

May you be surprised by your capacity for ambiguity, for the way it makes you a great listener and a good friend for you or someone who knows how to feel your way around in the dark and squint for the stars. I wish it were easier, dear one, I wish I could have the answers you seek, but for now, may you find comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Here in the gray, we are all learning to live in the uncertainty of the unknowing.

So blessed are we who live here together.”[i]

 

       

 

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[i] Shared on Kate Bowler’s Facebook page on June 26, 2021  https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1FD8KjPGmy/.  

 

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C_baptismal letter for St. Mark’s Crossett

The Rev. Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Crossett, AR

The 20^th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C

October 26, 2025

 

A letter to Issac Cole Morman upon the occasion of his baptism.

Dear Issac,

       Today is an exciting day for you and for the Church!  It’s your baptism day, a day when you will stand before God and this congregation and make vows about how you will live your life, and we will make vows to support you in that. This is the next step in your life of faith, the next step on a journey that actually began at your birth.

       Because you see, Isaac, when you were born, you were already known and named and claimed by God as God’s beloved, just like all of us.  God creates us because God wants to be in relationship with us.  God cherishes us and claims us as God’s beloved at our creation.  

       In your baptism today, you are saying yes to being God’s beloved; to living life as God’s beloved.  It’s a beautiful life, a life full of meaning and purpose, to live your life as God’s beloved, and it is also not easy.  That’s why we live this life of the beloved here in community.  We need each other as companions on this way, and our tradition gives us a pathway to live out this life of the beloved in our baptismal covenant.  

       You will be making these promises for the first time officially today, but it will not be the last time.  Over the course of your life of faith, you and the rest of us who are God’s beloved will recommit ourselves again and again, to this path, this way of life. 

       Our gospel passage for today gives us one of Jesus’s parables that shows us a small glimpse into why we need these words of our baptismal covenant.  In a world where we are all so quick to judge and to be certain of our own righteousness, our baptismal covenant can hold up a mirror before us, a mirror both of how we are called to live as God’s beloved and also in all the ways that we fall short of doing this. 

       I once heard the line, years ago, “I am no better and no worse than anyone else;” and to me, this is what is at the heart of our baptismal covenant.  “All of us fall short of the glory of God,” is how the apostle Paul puts it.    But that’s not where we are left in this, always falling short of living into our life as the beloved.  It’s why you will answer today, not just “I will”. But “I will with God’s help.”  Because none of us can be truly faithful in this without God’s help and the support of each other.  

       And the gift of our baptismal covenant is that it gives us perspective.  We don’t need to so self-abasing as the tax collector, because we know we are created as God’s beloved, and we also shouldn’t be contemptuous and judgmental like the Pharisee because when seen in the honest light of our baptismal vows, each one of us can understand where our shortcomings are.  

       Reading this gospel parable alongside our baptismal vows today gives us the opportunity to truly reflect on our lives and to examine where are the places we have veered too much toward self-righteousness these days?  It doesn’t take much to get caught up in  and swept away by our culture’s knee-jerk reaction toward blaming others while protecting our own self-righteousness. We might also ask ourselves who we enjoy looking down on, even as our baptismal covenant holds up the mirror for us in the call to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  We might also examine the ways that we have made ourselves too small, where we have not lived into the full potential of our belovedness.  What does true humility in right relationship with God and others, within the framework of our baptismal covenant really look like in each of our lives in the midst of our current reality?  

       It’s no easy task, this living out life as God’s beloved.  There will be times when we need you, Isaac, to remind us of our belovedness, and there will be times when we can help you remember.  It’s the beautiful gift of Christian community, this reciprocity of remembering,  and we are all so glad that you are now on this journey with us!

Your sister in Christ, 

Melanie+

The 17th Sunday after Pentecost-the Feast of St. Francis-transferred

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Jonesboro, Arkansas

The 17^th Sunday after Pentecost-St. Francis of Assisi transferred

October 5, 2025

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where this 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. 

       Today we are celebrating the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, and this prayer we just prayed is a prayer attributed to him found on page 833 in our Book of Common Prayer. (We’ll actually pray it together at the end of the service today after we’ve had communion.). I’ve prayed this prayer over and over again in my time here with you this week, and I love the way it starts:  “Lord, make us instruments of your peace.”  

       Our prayer goes on to tell us all the ways that God invites us to be instruments of God’s peace—sowers of love where there is hate, of pardon where there is injury; of union where there is discord, of faith where there is doubt, of hope where there is despair, of light where there is darkness, and of joy where there is sadness. 

       It seems a simple enough formula, but we all know it is so much harder to practice.  

       In light of this call to be instruments of God’s peace today, I want to tell you a story.

       Once upon a time, there was a man named Francis.  Francis was raised in a wealthy, privileged family, and he had everything he ever needed or even wanted.  But at some point, Francis was no longer content with the way he was living.  He was chafing under the plans his father had made for him about how he would live his life, and he was becoming increasingly more concerned with the needs of the poor, especially as juxtaposed against his own great wealth and privilege.   So, he fought with his father, until one day, Francis’s father dragged him publicly before the bishop, and Francis knew that the time had come.  He stripped himself completely naked, standing there before the bishop, his father, and all the gathered witnesses, and gave all of his clothes and his possessions back to his father.  It was a moment of true conversion. 

       Listen to what this past Tuesday’s meditation from the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr’s daily meditation says about this moment in the life of St. Francis:

       “As Francis stood there naked, completely vulnerable … he divested himself of much more than just his clothes and belongings. In effect, he relinquished family identity and reputation and the security of his economic status.  

For Francis, divesting himself from privilege was a gospel-inspired action, one that we are invited to consider today.”

Rohr continues, “Relinquishment as a call and a gift means giving up prestige and privilege, learning to listen and to accept criticism, and learning how to use our power differently and ultimately to share our power….

And he concludes:  “The way of relinquishment is the lifelong process of removing the obstacles to loving and just relationships with our neighbors on this earth and of moving toward more genuine community among all of God’s children and indeed among all of earth’s creatures and elements, the kind of sisterhood and brotherhood envisioned by Francis. As we help remove the obstacles to the liberation of others, we are simultaneously removing obstacles to our own liberation….”[i]

       We at St. Mark’s Jonesboro have much to learn from this one moment in the life of St. Francis this week.  Because in this moment of relinquishment, Francis does two things.  First, he makes himself completely vulnerable before God and everyone.  In my conversations with y’all this weekend, I have seen how you all find yourself in a place together where you struggle with being vulnerable, for a number of valid reasons.  Some of you feel betrayed; some of your feel powerless; some of you feel defensive, needing to protect something that is important and valuable to you; some of you are grieving a way of being the church that no longer exists.  And in your hurt and in your fear and in your protectiveness, you have hurt each other.  Every single one of you.  None of you is blameless.  You know how I know this?  Because we are, every single one of us, human.  All of us have fallen short of the glory of God.  You, understandably, struggle to be vulnerable, and yet it is what you so desperately need, and it is what God is calling you into all together in this way of following Jesus here.

       The second thing Francis does is that he makes a clean break with his old way of life—offering full relinquishment of his identity and all the power and privilege and wealth that came with it.   Listen again to this statement about Francis’s relinquishment: “Relinquishment as a call and a gift means giving up prestige and privilege, learning to listen and to accept criticism, and learning how to use our power differently and ultimately to share our power.”  Here at St. Mark’s you are being called by God to several forms of relinquishment.  

First, the Holy Spirit, who brings new energy and new life, is calling you to relinquish your own ideas of how things are supposed to be here.  And to begin seeking together the kind of community God is calling you to be, listening carefully for the Holy Spirit who is already at work in, among, and through you in this place.  Second, God our creator who knows each of us intimately and loves us fully is inviting you to relinquish your assumptions about each other.  None of us really knows what another’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or motives are until we ask.  And we’ll really only begin to learn about each other when we are willing to show up and ask kind, curious questions that go below the surface of things.  Third, Jesus our incarnate healer, is inviting you to relinquish your woundedness and to begin to seek healing from him and from each other for all the ways that you have wounded each other.  He will not forsake you in this difficult work.  But in order to do it faithfully, it will require every single one of you to be vulnerable.    

It is so easy to pray the prayer attributed to St. Francis—“Lord, make us instruments of your peace”—and it is so hard to live it, to practice it, to try to embody it.  Being an instrument of God’s peace means doing our inner work—work that can take years or that can happen overnight in a flash of inspiration from the Holy Spirit.  But always, at its heart, being an instrument of God’s peace involves vulnerability and it involves relinquishment.

We are called to relinquish our old identities, our power, our wealth, our privilege.  We are called to relinquish our grievances—both the deeply legitimate and the petty.  We are called to relinquish our righteous anger and even our sense of righteousness all together.  We are called to relinquish our need to be right and our personal agendas for how we want things to be.  It’s the call of the Christian life, the way of discipleship, the way of Jesus who relinquished everything in his death on the cross.  

So how might you start?  Pray this prayer every day this week.  Or even just pray the first line: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”  Then ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you are being invited to be vulnerable and what you are being invited to relinquish. Every day.  And let’s see what happens.  

God desires for you to do this work.  The Church needs for you to do this work.  And if you look deeply in your hearts, I believe you long to do this work, as well.  “Lord, make us instruments of your peace.”  Amen. 

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[i] https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-invitation-to-relinquishment/