The Last Sunday after Pentecost-Christ the King Sunday

The Last Sunday after Pentecost-Christ the King Sunday November 26, 2017 This past week, I learned that a good friend of mine had died very suddenly. His death was unexpected, as he was fairly young and in the prime of his life, and his death was both shocking and profoundly tragic for his family and his friends. I’ve really been wrestling with it, how to come to grips with it in my faith, especially in this week that has been so been so fiercely devoted to the practice of giving thanks. So I have been thankful this week to have the epistle reading from the letter to the Ephesians to wrestle with and to have the opportunity to reflect on this in the context of this faith community here. The letter to the Ephesians was thought to have been written by Paul, but it probably wasn’t. But it does contain elements similar to Paul’s letters. Many of Paul’s letters start with a thanksgiving for those to whom he is writing. The letter to the Ephesians is striking because the whole letter is really devoted to thanksgiving, but the thanksgiving of the writer isn’t focused so much on the community in Ephesus. Rather the writer’s thanksgiving is focused on God. Ephesians is really an extended hymn of praise to God. I was also struck by a particular line from this particular reading. “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…” So that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you… Exactly how does God enlighten the eyes of our hearts and what exactly is the hope to which he has called us? The writer of Ephesians suggests that the eyes of our hearts are enlightened as we come to know God more deeply, more fully. And the hope to which he has called us is to live our lives participating in the assurance that all things will be gathered back to Christ as a result of God using God’s power for the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Today, on week 3 of our Celebrate St. Thomas: Growing in Faith Together campaign, I am mindful of how you have talked about why you love St. Thomas, who has made a difference in your faith life here, and now today, what is your greatest dream for St. Thomas? Another way of saying this might be what is your hope for St. Thomas? In and through this campaign, I have seen in you your joy, your resilience, your stubborn clinging to hope, your love for each other, and an especial cherishing of children—both the ones who are here now and the ones who have grown up here. My brothers and sisters, these are unique gifts given to our particular community from God. And they are what makes us a resurrection community; a community of hope. My hope for St. Thomas is that we can grow more deeply into our identity as a resurrection community—those who seek out and find Christ in the littlest, the least, the lost, and the broken-hearted; those who cling stubbornly to our hope in the resurrection—that even though things seem fractured and broken and divided-- that all things will eventually be brought together in and through the resurrected Christ and that we will work to do our part in that as well. We have so much to offer people who may have lost sight of their hope, their joy. And it all starts with an invitation to come and see, with a hand extended in kindness, in a deeper looking- to see and encounter Christ who dwells in someone else. So your questions to consider this week are 1. How might you invite God to enlighten the eyes of your heart? 2. What is the hope to which God is calling you? 3. How are you being called to live out that hope both within this church and beyond the walls of this church? After my friend died this week, I kept thinking of a quote, which I thought was from scripture but it turns out it isn’t. It’s actually a quote based on the words of Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) who was a poet and philosopher, and it has been woven into a blessing or a benediction. I think it sums up beautifully the life of my friend and the hope to which God calls all of us: Life is short, And we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us. So… be swift to love, and make haste to be kind. And the blessing of God, who made us, who loves us, and who travels with us be with you now and forever. i i. https://www.episcopalcafe.com/be_swift_to_love/

24th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28A

24th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28A November 19, 2017 Back when I worked at the Stewpot Soup kitchen just prior to going to seminary, we had an annual event of handing out food for Thanksgiving dinners for people who were not able to provide it on their own. They would sign up ahead of time, so we would know how much food we needed to have on hand, and it was not uncommon for us to have over 100 families signed up. The lady who was over all the food services at Stewpot, a lady named Nancy Dennis, would usually start ringing her hands a week or so before the give out day, and she would go to the Executive Director (who was an Episcopal priest named Luther Ott), and she’d say to him, “Luther, we’re not going to have enough turkeys to give one to every family. There’s just no way. We’re going to have to do something different.” And Luther would say to her, “Now, Nancy, just wait. God gives us what God knows that we need in God’s time.” And Nancy would go away, still anxiously wondering what we were going to do. I watched this play out, year after year, in the three years, I worked at Stewpot. And it even became so regular that Luther began referring to it as “Nancy’s turkey dance.” And the amazing thing that happened year after year after year, is that usually just a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and unexpected pick-up truck or even 18 wheeler would pull into Stewpot’s driveway just in the nick of time delivering the number of turkeys that we needed. God gives us what God knows that we need in God’s time. In our parable for today, Jesus says that the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who prepares to go on a journey by giving his slaves varying degrees of wealth. To one slave, he gives 5 talents, to another he gives 3 talents, and to the third slave he gives one talent. Now remember that one talent is the equivalent of 15 years worth of wages for the average day laborer. So just take a moment and let the sheer abundance of what the man has given the slaves sink in. The first two take the money and multiply it accordingly, while the third takes his and buries his in the ground. When confronted by the man, the slave confesses: “I was afraid, so I went and hid it in the ground.” How much of our lives do we spend doing that? Doing the turkey dance? Being afraid that we are going to lose something valuable, so instead of using it, we hide it away where it is “safe.” (I can count on one hand the number of times I have used my “fine china” in the 13 years we have been married.) I think that, perhaps, there may be a better way to approach this conundrum. A few years ago, I read a blog post by Parker Palmer, who is a Quaker educator and writer. Palmer writes about a time of discernment in his life; around the time when he was 75, he began recognizing that he couldn’t do everything that he used to do and he couldn’t do things as fast as he used to. So he formulated a question that he wanted help in discernment with: “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?” Palmer took this question to a Quaker Clearness Committee, whose role is to help an individual in listening and discernment by asking questions. And when Palmer came out of that committee meeting, he had a new realization. It was that he had been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking: ““What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?” he should be asking: ““What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?” He explains the difference saying, “I now see that ‘hanging on’ is a fearful, needy, and clinging way to be in the world. But looking for what I want to give myself to transforms everything. It’s taking me to a place where I find energy, abundance, trust, and new life.”i My invitation to you this week is this. Take some time listening to your life. Identify what are the areas in which you find yourself anxious or afraid? Remind yourself of the refrain from Nancy’s turkey dance: God gives you what God knows that you need in God’s time. And then consider: “What in your life, in your faith, do you want to let go of, and what do you want to give yourself to?” https://onbeing.org/blog/the-choice-of-hanging-on-or-giving-to/7029/

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27A

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27A November 12, 2017 A couple of years ago, I was driving down the road and listening to a new cd from one of my favorite artists (yes, I still occasionally buy cd’s). Her name is Carrie Newcomer. Newcomer is both a poet and a musician and her music and lyrics on this cd had moved me to tears numerous different times as she spoke poetically and sublimely about different aspects of the spiritual life and human experience. As I was driving, the cd flipped over to the last track on the cd, and I was caught by surprise. It was a totally different style of song than all the rest on the cd, more like an old-time ditty that was almost campy. And the title was Please, don’t put me on hold!” Thank you for calling The lines are all busy Cause there are too many people like you Calling for answers and wanting them quickly Press zero for main menu English press 1 Spanish press 2 You’re 11th in line ‘til we can get to you I’m trying to be nice, not pushy or bold, just Please….don’t put me on hold! If we can’t help you, then don’t blame us We’re recording this call so you don’t cuss I’m trying to be nice, this is getting old Please….don’t put me on hold! She runs into a series of problems: wrong transfer, employee on vacation, what’s your pin….I didn’t hear that so, let’s try it again. I’m searching my wallet I’m tearing it apart Please…don’t make me restart She’s getting more and more agitated and engaging with the Hard Rock muzak that is playing… Finally a real person says, Can I help you out? I say…if you were in this room I’d kiss you on the mouth! You cough and say This is Customer service I backpedal and try to state my purpose I’m trying to be nice, not creepy or bold, just Please, don’t put me on hold! (x3)i At the end of a cd full of sublime songs, Newcomer pokes fun at all of us—waiting is hard, and we don’t do it well in our culture these days. (I don’t have to tell you about all the places we have to wait and how we grow impatient….you can probably name multiple experiences from just this past week…) Once, when I was in a season of waiting and discernment in my own life, my spiritual director shared with me the following quote: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”ii It’s an important reminder as we look at this challenging parable for today. The parable speaks to the reality that a. we don’t like to wait—we seem to be getting worse at it the more technologically advanced that we get and b sometimes we have to wait—because God’s timing is not our timing. But where the parable is helpful is that it teaches us how to wait. Note that at the beginning of the parable, the bridesmaids are all the same: they’re all carrying lamps, the all fall asleep waiting for the bridegroom who is delayed. The difference among them is that some of them are prepared to wait, bringing extra oil, and the others are not, and so they miss the party. So how might this parable speak to us? How do we prepare ourselves to wait—during those times when we must above all, trust in the slow work of God? (or even in those times like in Newcomer’s song, we find ourselves “on hold trying to get a solution for our problem.” Do you remember those 5 practices of discipleship that I spoke to you about my first Sunday here? 1. Pray daily 2. Worship weekly 3. Serve joyfully 4. Learn constantly 5. Give generously Those are the ways that we prepare to wait. By practicing discipleship in those tangible ways all the time. One of the women at the Wednesday healing service who I talked to about this parable suggested, “What if we prayed during the times that we had to wait? We could pray for the person we were on hold with, pray for the doctor whose waiting room we were sitting in and prayed for the people waiting with us….” Over the next four weeks you are going to be hearing stories of transformation from your fellow parishioners-stories about how the people in their lives and the members of this parish have shaped and formed them as disciples of Jesus and have given generously and made a positive effect on these individual lives. I hope that these will inspire you to think about some of the questions they are answering for themselves and to reflect on how the mission and ministry of the people of St. Thomas and other communities you have been a part of have nurtured and helped you as you grow in your following of Jesus—what all of us baptized have been called to. And this week, I invite you to examine how you wait. And when you find yourself in a time or even a season of waiting, to choose one of the 5 practices of discipleship to engage with to help you “above all, trust in the slow work of God.” i. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19qpcHv56vQ ii. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ excerpted from Hearts on Fire

The Sunday after All Saints' Day year A

The Sunday after All Saints’ Day Year A November 5, 2017 A letter to Hedges King upon the occasion of his baptism. Matthew 5:1-12 Dear Hedges, Today is a special day for three reasons. First, it is the day of your baptism, when your parents and godparents will accept for you that you are God’s beloved child, where you will be baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and become a part of his body in this world and the next. Second, it is a day when we will renew our own baptismal promises and when we will remember these truths for ourselves once again. And third it is the Sunday after All Saints’ Day when we remember all the Saints who have come before us who continue to surround us and uphold us as fellow members of the body of Christ, who support us on our life-long journeys of following Jesus. Someone once wrote about the Saints that “the Saints were men and women who understood the challenge of living the gospel in the context of their own place and time. They are remembered because they lived it with imagination and devotion. They used what they had been given to live their lives into the freedom of the kingdom.”i “Living the challenge of the gospel with imagination and devotion” is truly the call of the Christian life that you begin this day, Hedges. And you begin it here with us because it will not be easy. And you will need us. And we will need you. So how do we live the challenge of the gospel with imagination and devotion? We hold fast to certain truths. That death is not the end, but a change, and it is not to be feared. That Jesus’s death and resurrection has proven, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than anything we can and will encounter in this life, even death. That God’s kingdom is real and present, transformative and active. That how we live our lives matters because we are the body of Christ in this world. That we need each other to remember and to be the body of Christ, the church in the world in every moment of every day. That God’s blessing are often found in places where we would never think to see or to look: in poverty, mourning, meekness, in a hunger and thirst for righteousness, in mercy, in peacemaking, and in persecution. That we, together, as the body of Christ, the church, can create and imagine a kingdom, here and now, where exercising mercy transforms violence, where the children of God are known by the way we make peace, and we can imagine and create a place where every member of the body of Christ can respond to others from a place of belonging and from the assurance of their belovedness. But this work, this life, is not easy. Which is why we do it together. Following the way of Jesus can be difficult and demanding and lonely, and we need each other desperately. We need each other to understand things which don’t make sense to us at the time and to see things that we can’t see on our own. We need each other to offer comfort when we mourn, to offer solace when we are heartbroken, to offer kindness when we are weary beyond measure, to offer mercy when we have gone astray. We will do this for you and your family, Hedges, and you will do it for us. That is a part of the promises that we all make this day. Because that’s how we do all this, Hedges, this living the challenge of Jesus’s good news with imagination and devotion. We do it together, and we do it by helping each other remember, over and over again that you are God’s beloved, marked as Christ’s own forever. We will help you remember when you are afraid. We will help you remember when you are angry. We will help you remember when you are joyful. We will help you remember when you feel you have lost your way. And you will do this for us. Because that is what it means to be the body of Christ in this world. I am so glad that you have joined us. God loves you, and I love you too. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+ i. Br. Robert L'Esperance in “Brother, Give us a Word” for November 1, 2017 from the Society of St. John the Evangelist www.ssje.org