The Third Sunday of Easter Year B

The Third Sunday of Easter Year B April 18, 2021 I’ve been reading the Presiding Bishop’s book that our whole diocese is reading for Eastertide. It is titled Love is the Way: Holding On To Hope in Troubling Times. I’ve been listening to Bishop Curry read it through audible as I go on my daily walks around the beautiful Isle of Hope. Because I didn’t start it until we got home from our college tour and trip to see family last week, I’m a week behind, and I’ve been thinking about the questions for reflection from the diocese for last week. In the early part of the book, Bishop Curry talks about a lady named Josie Robinson who stepped into their family soon after his mother became ill when he was still young. Before she’d even met the children, Josie ironed stacks of their clothes, and Bishop Curry talks about all the ways that she loved them sacrificially, even as she poured her love in action into the world through her vocation as a principal at a local high school whose purpose was to help teenage mothers continue their education. One of the questions for reflection for these early chapters is: “Josie Robbins embodied the love this book is about in her care for the Curry Family after Mrs. Curry's illness. Who has made sacrificial, self-giving love real to you?” I’ve been thinking about this, even as I’ve been going through some things my mom saved for me to go through as she and my dad have been cleaning out their home that we grew up in. Among the items my mom saved was a little placard I had forgotten I had. The front says, “I love you.” And the back is a handwritten portion that says, “My very special friend Melanie.” This placard was given to me when I was a young child by my friend whose name was Jane Schutt. Jane was my grandparents’ age when I knew her, and my mom and I would go over to Jane’s house where Jane would entertain me with such mystical items as her autoharp and her cheese board with it’s own wire cheese slicer attached. (She actually gave me a cheese board of my own for Christmas one year because I loved it so much.) Jane always called me her special friend, on birthday and Christmas cards, in book inscriptions, and she was the first adult I can remember being true friends with beyond the relationship of family. I knew Jane’s love in action as a small child as she loved me and treated me like an equal despite the differences in our ages. It wasn’t until I got to seminary after Jane had died that I learned about the way she had loved in a much broader context. As I was reading one of our books for our Church History class, I was startled to come across Jane’s name. The book was titled Episcopalians and Race, and I learned in that book that my special friend Jane had had a cross burned in her yard by the KKK when she was working for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Bishop Curry offers this definition of love: “Love is a firm commitment to act for the well being of someone other than yourself. It can be personal or political, individual or communal, intimate or public. Love will not be segregated to the private, personal precincts of life. Love, as I read it in the Bible, is ubiquitous. It affects all aspects of life.” i He writes later in the chapter: “If love looks outward to the good of the other, then its opposite isn’t hate. Its opposite is selfishness! It’s a life completely centered on the self. Dr. King referred to this as the ‘reverse Copernican revolution.’ To be selfish is to put yourself in the place of the sun, the whole universe revolving around you. Forget morality -at that point you’ve left reason behind. Life becomes a living lie. Because no amount of smarts, money, or accomplishments puts any one human at the center of existence.”ii I’ve been thinking about all of this, about love being an action and both including and expanding beyond personal relationships, about how the opposite of love isn’t hate but it is selfishness. And then I read part of our Epistle reading for today from First John: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” And I see Jesus’s encounter with is disciples after his resurrection, his continuation of his self-giving love for them and for all of creation. I can’t help but think about the first line of Mary Oliver’s poem The Messenger which says, “My work is loving the world.” The poem goes on to talk about nature and creation and the delight and wonder found there and how it serves as a source of gratitude. But I can’t help but wonder what it would mean to love the world not just through creation but to try to live selflessly for all the other people of the world and for creation? What would it mean to give the same level of care and consideration for strangers across the country or across the globe that we would for our special friends, our spouses, our parents, our children, and other members of our family? What does it mean that we are all God’s children? How does that tie with others’ claim on us and affect our very thoughts and actions in every moment of every day? Any love for others that we might be called to offer is only rooted in and through the love that God offers us which is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ and continues to be experienced through the workings of the Holy Spirit. All love comes from God, and we are able to love because God first loved us. Sometimes we are already full to the brim of God’s love, and it isn’t as difficult to let that love spill out and over to love others. And other times, we need to take time and space to be filled up ourselves with God’s love before we can go out and love others. As I offer this prayerful meditation on the passage from First John in closing today, I invite you to close your eyes and ask God for what you need today. When we shall be Praying 1 John 3.2-3 Beloved, we are God’s children now; I am your child, I am beloved, I am yours, I am of you. I am. what we will be has not yet been revealed. I am not done. I am becoming. As you will. What we do know is this: I seek knowing deeper than thinking. Christ, when you are revealed, I open my eyes, I dare to imagine. we will be like you, beloved, made in your image, divine, breathing your breath. for we will see you as you are. See you in all things, see through the eyes of love. All who have this hope in you trust even in the dark. What is is becoming. purify themselves, just as you are pure. Raised to new life, full of your light, pure love.iii Curry, Michael with Sarah Grace. Love is the Way: Holding On To Hope in Troubling Times. Avery: New York, 2020, p 14. Ibid. p 18. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. www.unfoldinglight.net; April 15, 2021

Easter Day 2021

Easter Day 2021 April 4, 2021 Those of you who know me or have heard just a few of my sermons know that I’m an avid reader. I read lots of different types of books—books of poetry, books on religion, leadership, and psychology, the occasional work of non-fiction, but mostly, I read novels. I’ll confess that I’m one of those people who, when about mid-way into a novel, will occasionally flip to the last page and take a peek at how it ends. Because I love a good happy ending, with all loose ends tied up not too neatly but just neatly enough. Which could explain why I find the gospel of Mark to be so unsettling. Imagine sitting down to read this short, action packed gospel, where Jesus is constantly on the move, constantly irritated and frustrated with the denseness and ineptitude of his disciples. So about half-way through, say about at the Transfiguration, when God has revealed God’s glory through Jesus and Jesus predicts his death for the first time and the disciples misunderstand it all spectacularly, imagine that you flip to the end to see if you find a happy ending, some nice, clear resolution. And you get the reading from today’s gospel with the very last line of Mark being: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Now, if those of you who are extra-curious about Mark’s gospel go home and look up the end in your Bibles, I should tell you that there are other verses included that scholars believe were not a part of the original gospel and were written by someone else.) “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” It’s definitely not the most satisfactory closing line of a story and other gospel accounts give us appearances of the Resurrected Christ who speaks a good word to his confused and frightened disciples. So what does Mark’s version of the resurrection have to offer us? Once the sabbath is over, the two women make their way to Jesus’ tomb with spices to anoint his body. Along the way, they are fretting about how they will roll away the heavy stone that blocks the tomb’s entrance, but when they arrive, they discover that the stone has already been rolled back. As they enter the tomb to investigate, they see a young man dressed in white seated on the right side. And they are understandably alarmed. He says to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” The strange messenger gives them the good news that Jesus has been raised, and he gives the women a task—to go tell Jesus’s disciples and Peter (the one who denied him) that he is going ahead of you to Galilee and there you will see him. He’s going home, where the story all began, and you should go there too. And Mark tells us that the women’s first response to this astonishing news is to be seized by terror and amazement, fleeing from the tomb and being silent about what they had seen. And we get that don’t we? We who have lived through the events of the last year. We’ve learned about the unpredictability of life and death. We are starting to understand that resurrection doesn’t mean resuscitation, that though we may long for things to “go back to normal,” the way they were before we were all faced with a global pandemic that our lives won’t just be resuscitated to resume at some magical point in time in the future. We have learned that resurrection, that new life is mysterious and unpredictable, that we often have to rely on strange, unrecognizable messengers who we only understand and recognize later, and that there is a certain amount of terror involved when facing resurrection. [And the good news of Mark’s gospel is that, despite its unsatisfactory ending, Jesus’s resurrection did, in fact occur, and the disciples eventually overcome their terror and their silence to spread the good news that God’s love is stronger even than death and that we, as Jesus’s followers, get to participate in that victory both in this life and in the next.] Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we approach your Son’s resurrection with joy and with fear. It is, as birth always is, filled with delight and danger. Bring resurrection to our lives in spite of us. May we allow you to roll the stones away from all that entombs us, to set us free to liberate those around us. Help us to surrender to you that we may be victorious through him who loved us and gave himself for us. Amen.

Easter Vigil 2021

Easter Vigil 2021 My dad is a gifted storyteller, so my memories of my childhood are woven through with stories. In the daytime, he’d tell stories to entertain, creating imaginary characters who would do ridiculous things, and he’d also share humorous anecdotes from his daily life and his past. (His most famous story hales from his early teenage years (1965), and it is the tale of how Lamar Gene Fortenberry wrestled the monkey at the Marion County fair in Columbia, MS.) At night after we’d read books before we’d say our prayers, he’d turn off the lights and tell me stories of his childhood-stories with lessons he had learned. But my favorite story would happen once a year. On the eve of my birthday, my dad would tell me the story of the day I was born. He’d put all of his storytelling gifts and flair to work, so that even to this day, I can picture the events of the day I was born, even though I can’t authentically remember them for myself. It became an annual event, this holy remembering accomplished through story. In the church, we have a fancy liturgical word for this holy remembering. It is anamnesis, and it means that we remember and in that remembering we also, in some mysterious way, participate in the events of the past in this present moment. It is at the heart of what we do as we gather on this holiest of nights. We retell the stories that have been told thousands of times, passed down through the centuries from those who witnessed them first-hand to those of us who now participate in the events as if we had been there. We hear the proclamation of God at creation—so good! We feel the fear of the former slaves as their oppressors are bearing down on them and then the guilty relief as we see the walls of water crashing down upon those who would seek to enslave us. We feel the rattling of the dry bones of Ezekiel’s graveyard in our very bones and breathe in the breath of God that gives us all life. And we participate with the women in the shock and awe and joy and confusion of the resurrection, still to this day, wondering what it means for us. My dad’s annual retelling of the story of my birth would help me reconnect with the events and people from my past, and it would also help me be reconnected to my own identity. So our gathering here tonight recalls us, who have been scattered throughout time and distance, and re-members us as the resurrected body of the Christ, the people whom God has chosen to create, protect and defend, reconstitute, redeem, and resurrect from sin and death. As we tell these stories this night, we reconnect with our own identity as beloved children of God as we reaffirm our baptismal covenant and feel the splatter of holy water upon us once again to remember our baptism. Tonight, the past and the future collapse into only the present, and we’ll greet the Lord’s resurrection as participants in this very real present. The good news of tonight is that the story continues, and we have our part in it.

Maundy Thursday 2021

Maundy Thursday 2021 On this Maundy Thursday, since we are not able to offer the foot washing, I’d like to offer a contemplative practice based on our gospel reading for today. This contemplative reading is modeled on Ignatian prayer practice in approaching scripture. I invite you to close your eyes and listen as I read the gospel again. Imagine that you are present at the scene. Think about the sights, the smells, the sounds, the feelings that this scene evokes in you. After I read the gospel through again, I’ll share different phrases again with you and offer questions for you to engage in this contemplative practice. “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 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? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Imagine you are seated at the table with Jesus for supper. You are among those who are friends, with whom you have walked for many seasons. Conversation is flowing naturally as it does when we sit together around table with those we know well. Some are making jokes. Some are talking quietly. You are pleasantly full from supper. You notice Jesus has stood up. He takes off his outer robe and ties a towel around his waist like an apron. Then he pours water into a basin and begins to wash the feet of everyone at the table and to wipe them with the towel that is tied around him. What are you feeling as you watch this unfolding? He comes to Simon Peter, who says to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answers, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand. Peter says to him, “You will never wash my feet.” And Jesus answers, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Do you share some of Simon Peter’s resistance to receiving Jesus’s love in this act? Examine what is underneath that resistance? Is it fear of that intimacy? Is it discomfort with the vulnerability? Is it a feeling of unworthiness to see Jesus kneeling before you at your feet? What do you think Jesus means when he tells you, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”? Simon Peter proclaims, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” And Jesus responds, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him. What parts of your body and soul feel dusty and weary from the road? What parts of you feel clean? What parts of you would you ask Jesus to cleanse and refresh? As you watch the scene continue to unfold, you realize that Jesus has washed Judas’s feet, too. Jesus washes the one who will betray him. How does that awareness make you feel? Then you hear Jesus speak to you and all who are gathered: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you….I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” How might Jesus be calling you to show love to others? Can you name before him those who you struggle to love: those who have betrayed you, those with whom you disagree, those among your friends and acquaintances who are just a little harder to love? Take a few moments and ask Jesus for what you need as you walk this way with him over the next three days.

Palm Sunday Year B

Palm Sunday 2021 March 28, 2021 Hosanna By Steve Garnaas-Holmes Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ —Mark 11.9-10 “Hosanna“ doesn’t mean “Hooray!” It means “Save us!“ It’s not a cry of triumph, it’s a plea in desperation. Of course, aimed at a leader who can protect us, it becomes an affirmation. Our Hosannas signify victory only because Jesus has saved us in our desperate weakness. This is no time to strut but to kneel, to bare our tender need, in honest pleading that we still need saving, and in awe and gratitude for the grace we are continually given. Maybe “Hosanna” is more like “Wow! Thanks. We needed that” on steroids.i Today we move through two different dramatic stories. We begin with a triumphant procession and proclamation of Jesus as King. And we end with Jesus’s death on the cross as if he were a criminal. We begin with cries of “Hosanna”, the triumphant plea to save us; and we end with cries of “Crucify him”, slipping away in silence and sorrow. Today marks the beginning of the holiest time of our church year, which culminates in Easter. As we move through this service today or as we move through the week to come, each one of us is offered the invitation: that this is the time to kneel, to bare our tender need, in honest pleading that we still need saving, and in awe and gratitude for the grace we are continually given. Hosanna, Lord. Save us. i. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net, March 23, 2021

The 5th Sunday in Lent-Year B

The 5th Sunday in Lent-Year B March 21, 2021 We’ve got our seedlings from our Lenten bag growing in two pots in the window near our dinner table, so every day, I get to watch the progress of our little seeds. This week, I was struck by the appearance of one of our little green shoots, so I had to take a closer look. As I leaned in, I discovered what had looked so odd from a distance. One of our little green shoots was wearing a sunflower seed hat. The sunflower shoot, in its growth out of the dark earth of the soil had cracked the seed wide open, and it was still recognizable but also completely transformed into new life, new growth. Our gospel reading from John today is Jesus’s last public teaching in that gospel. Tensions have been rising. Passover approaches. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead and the religious authorities have set in motion their plot to kill Jesus. Jesus has entered Jerusalem triumphantly (which we’ll see next Sunday in our Palm Sunday liturgy). And then we have this rather strange scene from today of two Greeks who want to see Jesus, Jesus’s two flummoxed disciples who don’t really know what to do with them, Jesus’s teaching about a grain of wheat that must fall to the earth and die in order to bear much fruit, his prayer to God and God’s response so that the gathered crowd hears, and Jesus’s promise that when he is lifted up, he will draw all people to him. On this last Sunday in Lent, it may be helpful for us to look back at this image of growth that happens in the darkness of the soil, the new life and resurrection that happens when the seed dies, or in the case of my sunflower plant, gets cracked open so that it is no longer entirely recognizable. In my Ash Wednesday sermon, I quoted the Benedictine Joan Chittister who writes, “Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” How might you be grateful for the darkness of this Lent in which you have been invited to grow this season? And if you haven’t had this experience, well, we still have one week left in Lent and of course, Holy Week is coming. As a part of my Lenten practice this year, I’ve been reading a book of Lenten devotions titled A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent by the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. In his offering for this past Thursday, which is titled The Future, he writes, “The long history of faith, with all the saints, is the story of walking into the future given by God. Lent is a time for sorting this out. Popular Lent is too much preoccupied with guilt and repentance. But not here. Lent is rather seeing how to take steps into God’s future so that we are no longer defined by what is past and no longer distracted by what we have treasured or feared about the present. Lent is for embracing the baby given to old people [like Sarah and Abraham]; resurrection to new life in Easter; and the offer of a new world made by God from nothing….You will find verification [of God’s promises kept] among the daily performances of the trusting ones who live out their trust in ways the world terms foolish…So imagine, in this Lenten season, moving beyond treasured pasts, moving beyond precious present tense arrangements to new God-given prospects.” i In what ways has this Lenten season cracked you open, offered you a small d death so that new life can break forth in you like a shoot breaks forth from the earth? What treasured pasts might God be inviting you to move beyond to embrace new God-given prospects? In closing, I offer this poem prayer by Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Invite you to close your eyes and by still why I pray. Soil 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 You have tilled the soil of my grave, Beloved. Scatter me. Let me slip through your fingers. Drop me. Let me fall into the earth of you, disappear into you, great, fertile Source, womb-globe, garden tomb, holy darkness. Let the little me-ness of me die for love of you. My husk will fail, a broken heart; what is within, given, urged, born by your unseeable mystery, will emerge, fragile, green, tender, muscular— later. But first let me fall into you and die in you, Beloved Soil of love.ii i. Brueggemann, Walter. A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent. Compiled by Richard Floyd. WJK: Louisville, 2017, pp46-48 (Kindle version). ii. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Unfolding Ligh:t www.unfoldinglight.net March 15, 2021

The Third Sunday in Lent-Year B

Lent 3 B 2021 March 7, 2021 One of the greatest technological gifts to the parents of young drivers is Apple’s Find My Friends app. With the touch of my finger, I can see a map with dots for each member of my family suggesting the general location of each one of their phones. I use this app multiple times a day just to check on my people. They, on the other hand, like to call me a stalker for this practice. The other day, Mary Margaret was headed to school in some nasty weather. I asked her to text me when she got there, but I told her that if she forgot, it would be ok. “I’ll be watching you,” I told her, meaning that I’d be watching her little blue dot travel downtown on my app. Her brother immediately started laughing and then repeating my lovingly parental words in a creepy, stalker voice: “I’ll be watching you!” Our Old Testament reading for today is the passage from Exodus which gives us the 10 Commandments. Throughout the centuries of our faith, the 10 commandments have taken on a life of their own, and at times they seem to point to a God who ominously, threateningly punitive. If you step a toe out of line and break any of these 10 rules, then I’m going to get you. I’ll be watching you! The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes about how these are really more like the 10 teachings; how the 10 teachings were originally given to the Children of Israel while wandering in the wilderness, and they are about how they are to live corporately. Rather than thinking of them as a check-list for individuals, we should think of them as a road map for what it means for a whole people to be faithful to God and to live together in community. The passage begins: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery…” And these 10 teachings are to help the people to keep from being enslaved by other things. These are 10 teachings to help the people continue to live in freedom. The 10 commandments are not so much about obedience and punishment; they are about how we can live meaningful lives in community with each other and with God. And then there’s Psalm 19. One of my seminary colleagues reflected this week that she had heard Ellen Davis, who is an Old Testament professor at Duke, speak on today’s psalm. Davis told this group that Psalm 19 is a psalm about integrity that is written in 3 parts; and the 3 parts are about the cosmos, the Torah, and me. In the first part, the psalm talks about how you stay in sync with the cosmos. The second part talks about how you stay in sync with Torah or scripture. The third part talks about how you stay in sync with yourself. Psalm 19 talks about the life-giving quality of God’s law or teachings, how they “revive the soul,” “give wisdom to the innocent,” “rejoice the heart,” and “gives light to the eyes.” Finally, in our gospel reading for today, we have John’s version of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple. Unlike the other gospel writers, John situates this episode at the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry. At first glance, it may be difficult to discern how this angry Jesus fits in with our other two readings for today. But I think it points to the freedom offered in following Jesus, freedom within a new-visioning of the original teachings or commandments of God. The Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite has written a sonnet on the cleansing of the temple that has helped me engage this gospel passage in new ways. Cleansing the Temple by Malcolm Guite Come to your Temple here with liberation And overturn these tables of exchange Restore in me my lost imagination Begin in me for good, the pure change. Come as you came, an infant with your mother, That innocence may cleanse and claim this ground Come as you came, a boy who sought his father With questions asked and certain answers found, Come as you came this day, a man in anger Unleash the lash that drives a pathway through Face down for me the fear the shame the danger Teach me again to whom my love is due. Break down in me the barricades of death And tear the veil in two with your last breath.i Your invitation this week is to think about the freedom that comes both through the law and through Jesus’s re-visioning of the law. To invite Jesus to restore in each one of us our lost imagination and to restore us to the fully loving presence of relationship with God. (reread sonnet) i. https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/the-cleansing-of-the-temple/