Christmas Eve 2020

Christmas Eve 2020 A letter to Vanessa, Lillian, and Becky upon the occasion of your baptism. Dear Vanessa, Lillian, and Becky, Today, after a really long wait, you are going to be baptized into the body of Christ in this, your faith community. This is not how any of us expected it to be when we first planned your baptism. It was supposed to happen months ago at Easter. It was supposed to be inside the church surrounded by those most important to you with the sweet fragrance of Easter lilies wafting around you. It was supposed to be different. No other year has taught us how our faith must grow and change in the face of the unexpected, the disappointing, the difficult. We all have known some dark times this year, and you girls are no different in that. We all continue to learn that things don’t always work out the way we think they are supposed to. But even in the midst of darkness, difficulty, uncertainty, God does not abandon us. Today/tonight, we gather to remember the ancient truth and wisdom of Emmanual—which means God with us. We remember that God chose to be born into this world as a testament to God’s love for us and that Jesus, God with us, proves that God does not abandon us, even when things seem their darkest. Today, you are being baptized into that God who is with us, “a long-sought withness for a world without.” i You have, ever since your creation, been claimed as God’s beloved and “marked as Christ’s own forever.” In and through your baptism today, you are saying “yes” to your belovedness and you are promising to live your life as one of God’s beloved; you are promising to set your life and to follow the path of faith as one who lives as a part of “God with us.” And we do this with you as we renew our own baptismal vows. It is a joyfully daunting task, this year more than ever. And the good news is that no matter how dark or difficult the way may be, you are not alone. God is with us. We are all in this together. Today/tonight, we remember that the church is so much more than a building. We, the church, are the people for whom God is with us. And when we the church are at our very best, we take turns lighting the way in the dark for each other; we take turns holding up the light of Christ for one another when one or many of us feel too weary or heart-broken or disappointed to go on. We take turns carrying each other through the seasons of darkness and doubt and disbelief. Because that is the truth of this night: that God is with us and that God’s love is stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than the darkness of this world. God’s love is stronger than plague or pestilence. God’s love is stronger than our daily disappointments or our loneliness. God’s love is stronger than the worst things we can do to each other. God is with us and the light of God’s love that shines forth in the person of Jesus Christ is stronger than absolutely anything we may have to face in this life. Even death. And so, on this day of your baptism which is also the eve of the birth of God with us, may you each be given some of the gifts of those who first knew and experienced God with us on this night so many years ago. May the gift of the bold courage of Mary be yours to light your path. May the gift of the quiet faithfulness of Joseph be yours to steady your heart. May the clear vision of the angels be yours, along with their song of joy. And may you also know the shepherds willingness to be dazzled by a light that will always shine for you, even in the darkest of nights. God is with us. And we are with you. Now and always. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+ i. This line is from the poet Malcolm Guite’s poem “O Emmanuel”

4th Sunday of Advent Year B

The 4th Sunday of Advent Year B December 20, 2020 This week, I learned of a spiritual construct that I’ve never heard of before. I am now calling it Holy Indifference. I was listening to a podcast with a spiritual director and writer named Ruth Haley Barton, and she was talking about this spiritual gift of indifference and the importance of indifference in personal and communal discernment and in accepting God’s will for your life. But here’s the thing. Often when we talk about indifference, we mean apathy; not being too hot or cold about particular issues. Indifference often has the suggestion of a coldness or an uncaring. But Ruth Haley Barton’s definition of indifference is not apathy; it’s actually very different. She says, “In the language of spiritual formation [this holy indifference] speaks to being indifferent [or not attached] to anything but the will of God, so it means that we’re indifferent [or not attached] to matters of our own comfort or safety; we’re not thinking so much about ego gratification; we’re giving up appearances. We’re indifferent to that. We’re indifferent [or not attached] to our own pleasure, and we’re even indifferent [or not attached] to what our own personal preferences are, and what it is we think we want. It is a state of wide-openness to God in which we are free from undue attachment to outcomes, and we have the capacity to relinquish anything that might keep us from choosing for God and God’s will and God’s loving plan. Outside of Jesus himself, Mary is the clearest expression of this spiritual indifference.”i So, let’s look at our readings for today because they give us two different glimpses, one of someone who is not practicing holy indifference and one who is. First, we have King David in our Old Testament reading for today. David has this great idea that now that he is established as king in Israel, he is going to build a house for the Lord. He gets buy in for his plan from the prophet Nathan, but then God lets them know God’s indifference to this plan in a lovely, playful way. “Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" David’s plan is somewhat self-serving (but cloaked in piety, which is a temptation we all face) because if he builds God a house, then that will not only confer some status on the king who houses the Lord, but it also means that David can always know exactly where to find God when David gets in a pinch. But God reminds David that up until this point, God has been at large, loose and wild and free, working in the world. God does not want to inhabit a temple or a building but rather God wants to inhabit a people. And we get this, don’t we? We who have had to struggle with not being able to come into this space, this building, where we are accustomed to connecting with God. But this is an important reminder for all of us that God is not and will not be bound to this building or any building. One of my colleagues was talking about this and about how she has grown and changed in her faith over the years. “For many years,” she said, “the church and the liturgy were the container for my faith. It was like going to the gym. I would go to the gym to work out. I would go to church to pray and to work on my faith.” Now, she quotes another writer who says that “faith is in the mutable and messy processes of our lives.”ii My friend is learning to look for God in the change, in the mess of her life, and that has shaped her faith in ways she could not have imagined before. And then there’s Mary. She offers the model of holy indifference for us in her response to the angel’s perplexing news: “let it be unto me according to your word.” In that one prayer of indifference, Mary shows that she is willing to embrace the invitation of God, even though it is going to completely blow up the plans that she and her parents have for her life—marriage to a good man who will take care of her. In embracing God’s invitation, in living into that holy indifference, Mary sacrifices her own vision of her life and gives it up with complete trust of God and God’s work in the world. In and through her indifference, she puts herself completely at God’s mercy, and she seems completely composed about that. One of my other friends talked about how normally this week, she would be preparing her guest room for her mom to come and stay. But because her mom isn’t traveling this year, her guestroom is full of so many things: her husband’s guitars, all of her supplies for her knitting, so many other aspects of the detritus of their lives that have accumulated in that room over the year. She noticed that our collect for the day has us praying that God will purify our consciences by God’s daily visitation so that when Christ comes, he may find in us “a mansion prepared for himself…” and my friend confessed that she would most frequently maybe invite Christ into the cluttered guest room of her heart to stay when it was convenient but that she didn’t think that she had made the room of a spacious and lovely mansion for him where he could stay always. And I resonate with that, too. For me, I think it is because I am nowhere near where Mary was. Most of the time, I do not practice holy indifference. I struggle to hand my life over to God and to relinquish my attachment to my preferences, my comfort, my ego, and what I think I want. But fortunately, Ruth Haley Barton reminded me in her podcast that coming to indifference isn’t like flipping a switch. There is a process to coming to indifference to anything but the will of God, and we are not alone in that process; for Mary it was the angel who accompanied her; for us it is the Holy Spirit and, I would say, the communion of the saints and all believers—the Church that isn’t the building. The first step in this process is to pray the prayer for indifference; this means acknowledging our attachments, our preferences, our commitment to keeping up appearances and our egos and asking God to free us from all that. It has been eye opening for me this week to realize that I really need to do that work around Christmas and what that experience is going to be and feel like for us this year. So, your invitation this week is to join me in praying the prayer for holy indifference, for an openness to God’s will and the willingness to embrace God’s invitation. If you find that you have attained indifference at some point, then your prayer may shift to a prayer of indifference: “let it be unto me according to your word.” If you are struggling with the connection of your faith with this building or in gathering together, then I invite you to not only pray for holy indifference but also to begin looking for God who will never be contained to this building but who is found out loose and wild and at work in the world and in the “mutable and messy process of our lives.” i. From the podcast Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership. The Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B ii. Wiman, Christian. My Bright Abyss: Meditations on a Modern Believer.

The Third Sunday of Advent Year B

Third Sunday of Advent-Year B December 13, 2020 Last week, I read an opinion article that was titled, “What if instead of calling people out, we called them in?”. This article talks about a college class that is being taught at Smith College by a woman named Professor Loretta J. Ross. It highlights the cultural phenomenon of “calling out”: “the act of publicly shaming another person for behavior deemed unacceptable”. This behavior is frequently seen on social media, and Professor Ross says that the call out culture is toxic because it alienates people and makes them fearful of speaking up. She also thinks that call-out culture has taken conversations that could have once been learning opportunities and turned them into mud wrestling on message boards, YouTube comments, and Twitter… In her class, Professor Ross tells her students, “I think [calling out] is also related to something I just discovered called doom scrolling…I think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger. And I have to honestly ask: Why are you making choices to make the world crueler than it needs to be…?” “The antidote to that outrage cycle, Professor Ross believes, is “calling in.” Calling in is like calling out, but done privately and with respect. ‘It’s a call out done with love,” she said. That may mean simply sending someone a private message, or even ringing them on the telephone (!) to discuss the matter, or simply taking a breath before commenting, screen-shotting or demanding one “do better” without explaining how.” i. After I read the article, I realized that it doesn’t really explain further how to do this “calling in” that Professor Ross is referring to (and perhaps that is intentional because the article does say that she has a book on this subject forthcoming). But as I’ve been pondering it over the last couple of weeks, I have realized that our scriptures for this week actually give us some indication of what not to do and what to do. In our gospel passage from John’s gospel today, we see John the Baptist coming on to the scene, but he is not our typical wild-eyed, angry John the Baptist. He is someone who is clear in his calling: one who has come “to testify to the light.” And where, in other gospels, John the Baptist is the one who is usually doing the “calling out” of the religious authorities (“You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!”), in John’s gospel, it is the religious authorities who are actually “calling out” John the Baptist; just listen to the questions they ask him and how they ask them: “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” In our Isaiah passage, we see the children of Israel returning home to the promised land after being in exile for many years. There are three voices in this passage: the voice of the prophet, the Divine voice, and the voice of Zion, who is being restored. In all three of these voices, we see a calling in of the people back to their special relationship with Yahweh, a promise of the restoration of grace and good things in the midst of hardship and suffering. And there is an added layer of significance in this Isaiah passage for today; Jesus’s first public act of ministry in Luke’s gospel, after coming off his baptism and wilderness temptations, is to go to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolls it to this portion from today and reads: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bring release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Then he rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It is both the ultimate calling out of those who are in power and the ultimate calling in, inviting everyone into the reign of God’s kingdom that is being brought to fulfillment in and through the person of Jesus. So, what does all that have to do with us? What if instead of calling people out, we called them in? When I am being truthful, I am much more like the religious authorities calling out John the Baptist than I am like John, unwavering in my commitment to testifying to the light. I am much more likely to “doom scroll” and to become indignant over what I see on the news or on social media than I am to invite someone into a conversation that challenges us both to go deeper, to learn more, to practice kindness and empathy. I’m much more ready to assume the worst about someone than to assume the best, and to give them the chance to live into their better selves. So my invitation to myself (and to anyone else who resonates with this) for this week is to commit to being a witness to the light; to look for ways to seek out the light of Christ who has come to draw the whole world to himself in each and every person I come into contact with—stranger and friend and family member. And to be like the John the Baptist, unwavering in my commitment to testify to the light. I. What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

First Sunday of Advent Year B 2020

First Sunday of Advent Year B November 29, 2020 This past week, one of my friends shared a bunch of music on Facebook, and I’ve been listening to one of the songs, over and over. It’s call “Dark Turn of Mind” by the singer Gillian Welch. The song is about how the singer has been treated unkindly by a lover in the past, and this has opened up for her a new way of seeing the world that at first appears to be a burden but turns out to be a gift. Her way of seeing the world with “a dark turn of mind” opens her up to seeing beauty that is found in melancholy, in sorrow, in the shadows. Welch sings: “Now I see the bones in the river And I feel the wind through the pine And I hear the shadows a-calling To a girl with a dark turn of mind But oh ain't the nighttime so lovely to see? Don't all the night birds sing sweetly? You'll never know how happy I'll be When the sun's going down And leave me if I'm feeling too lonely Full as the fruit on the vine You know some girls are bright as the morning And some have a dark turn of mind You know some girls are bright as the morning And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind”i Today is the first day of the new year for the church. It is the beginning of Advent, a season of longing and of expectation, a season where we are invited to have a dark turn of mind, for at least a little while. Our readings for today certainly offer us this lens to look through. Isaiah gives us a song of lament from a people in exile who are longing for God to break into their reality and to restore them to their rightful place in the promised land, to once again give them the gift of peace and hope and belonging. And today, we begin in Mark’s gospel, not at the beginning, but near to the end. Jesus is approaching his crucifixion, and he invites his disciples and us to dwell with him for a while under the shadow of the cross that is looming over him. While the disciples may not fully grasp the dark clouds that are gathering, the original hearers of Mark’s gospel are no stranger to them. The earliest of all the gospels, Mark was written right after a Jewish uprising brought down the full wrath of the Romans upon Jerusalem, and these early followers of the Way are living in the rubble of the destruction of their city and, perhaps even more grievously, the temple. This Advent season, in the midst of chaos and disease and turmoil, we are invited to recognize the longing of this season by seeing the shadows of despair, war, sorrow, and hate, in our own hearts and in the world around us, even as we are actively waiting for Jesus to come, lighting candles of hope, peace, joy, and love. “Likewise, to really hear what Mark is saying, we first need to enter the shadows, those places where all hope seems lost. Roman armies desecrate and destroy the temple, ruining the sacred heart of the world — not just in first-century Palestine, but also here and now. And in a time of pandemic, many people are already in the shadows of suffering, anxiety, exhaustion, and grief. A key message of Advent and Christmas is that such shadows are precisely the place where Jesus comes, and where the church is called to go.” ii One of the commentaries that I read this week had this to say about seeing the world through a dark turn of mind this season and dwelling in an among the shadows this Advent: “I recall a comment that our country has changed over the past years from one that wanted to be good to one that wants to feel good. We see some of this desire every Christmas season as people run from store to store… searching for the things that will bring them and their families some sort of fulfillment and happiness. Peace, the kind of peace that the world is hungering for, will not come from trying to fill ourselves up with material things. We try to stem our hurt and pride by running away from pain and caring only about what is ours. We cannot create peace through selfishness, but by opening ourselves to hope. Hope is what is left when all your worst fears have been realized and you are no longer optimistic about the future. Hope is what comes with a broken heart willing to be mended.” iii So many of us are longing for peace that we often try to create it, to manufacture peace ourselves. But Advent is an invitation to all of us to dwell for a bit in the darkness, to come along-side the suffering, the longing, the heartbreak until we can become friends with it. When we allow this world to break our hearts, then we create space for God to fill us with hope, and it is only then that we discover true peace. Your invitation this week is to spend some time with the shadows, to open your heart to the suffering that you feel or that you encounter in the world around you, and then offer that to God in prayer. And as you begin to make friends with the shadows, to see the world through a dark turn of mind, may you also begin to look for signs of hope. i. Dark Turn of Mind by Songwriters: David Todd Rawlings / Gillian Howard Welch; https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=57ms9XDjs64; ii. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2017/11/27/keep-awake-lectionary-commentary-advent-week-one iii. Feasting on the Word Year B Vol 1. Ed Bartlett and Brown. WJK: 2008. Pastoral Perspective: Isaiah 64:1-9 by Patricia E. De Jong. P 4.

24th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28 A 2020

24th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 28A November 15, 2020 A few years ago, I read a blog post by the Quaker spiritual writer Parker Palmer. Palmer was writing about his own discernment work that he was doing as he move further into his 70’s. He had been pondering the question: “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to hold onto?” But, he realized that he needed help in this discernment process, and so he assembled a group of trusted friends whose work was not to answer the question for him but to help him see the issue with a greater clarity. He writes, “Their role was not to advise or ‘fix’ me, but to ask honest, open questions and simply listen to me respond, giving me a chance to hear my own inner wisdom more clearly. He continues, “I emerged from that little gathering with something more important than an answer. I emerged with a better question. I’m no longer asking, ‘What do I want to let go of and what do I want to hang onto?’ Instead I’m asking, ‘What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?’” Palmer concludes, “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 There are many different ways we can read Jesus’s parable for this Sunday of a harsh but generous master who gives three servants three different astounding amounts of money. For me, during this strange, fearful season, it is helpful for me to use the parable as a lens for my own life, to examine the places where I have been so fearful that I buried gifts and to examine the places where I have stepped out in faith with bold daring to brave a new venture through the gifts or resources God has given me. And truthfully, we are all a strange mix of the fearful and the bold, the daring and the overly-cautious. This is why Parker Palmer’s question is helpful for me these days. It is a way that I can look at my life through a different lens and seek to discern where I am putting my energy and if there are better places, better ways to share my energy, my attention, my time, my money, my resources. “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?” We can’t hold on to everything, and we need to hold on to some things, to give ourselves whole-heartedly to God, to each other, to causes greater than ourselves. Your invitation this week is to spend some time in discernment with Parker Palmer’s question: “What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?” Are there things that you have been holding on to that you can ask God to help you relinquish? Are there things you need to take up, to give yourself to, that you can ask God to give you courage and daring to do? I’m going to conclude with one my favorite poems by Mary Oliver. It is titled In Blackwater Woods. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.ii i. https://onbeing.org/blog/the-choice-of-hanging-on-or-giving-to/ ii. Oliver, Mary. American Primitive. Back Bay Books: 1983.

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27A

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27A November 8, 2020 When I was going through the process to become a priest, I had to answer a series of questions about my personality and my theology. One of these questions that I’ve been thinking about lately is “How are you with uncertainty?” It’s really a horrible question, and I have no idea how I even answered it in all my 25-year old glory. How are you with uncertainty? Over the years, I’ve pondered why they would even ask us this question: How are you with uncertainty? And the older I get, the more I realize they ask us this question: “how are you with uncertainty?” because nothing, really, is ever certain. Our readings highlight that for us today. The community in Thessolonika are upset because they had expected Jesus’s imminent return, and yet some of their community have died before Jesus has returned. Paul seeks to reassure them in their uncertainty. And Jesus, near the end of his earthly ministry, tells a parable that is all about uncertainty and about how different people deal with it. Some people, who he calls “wise,” try to be as prepared as possible for uncertainty, while others, who he calls “foolish,” find themselves unprepared for uncertainty, and as a result, end up being locked out of the party. We who are no strangers to uncertainty, this week, this last 7 months….We might wonder what we must do to be prepared for uncertainty? And really that’s the better question, isn’t it? Not so much “how are you with uncertainty?” (“Fine?” she says uncertainly?) But really how do you prepare for uncertainty, in your life, in the world around you? What are the spiritual practices that you deploy during times of uncertainty, and what are the spiritual practices that you normally access to strengthen your spiritual muscles for when you must face uncertainty? Jesus parable has a hint for us there, too. One of the spiritual practices we can deploy in both uncertain and in more stable times is to be surprised by joy. Because that’s what the wedding banquet is; it’s an invitation to be surprised by the joyful, unexpected, and long-awaited presence of the bridegroom. It is the invitation that all, the wise and the foolish, have received to the joyful occasion that is the wedding banquet, and it is the reminder that we must position ourselves so that we are fully present when the party starts, and not racing around looking for that which is unimportant to try to stave off our own anxiety and uncertainty and unpreparedness. So, what are ways that we might be surprised by joy? One of those is through a regular practice of thanksgiving. A few weeks ago, we began the annual giving campaign here at St. Thomas which is titled: Sheltering St. Thomas: Giving in Gratitude. It has been such a gift to me to listen to how different parishioners are grateful for the life and ministry of this place, and their stories continue to feed and nurture my own gratitude. Also, for the rest of this month, we’ll be doing the litany of thanksgiving that is found in our BCP to help us strengthen our gratitude muscles. It’s something that you could make as a daily practice during this season if you are so inclined. Another way to be surprised by joy is to do something creative. The creative process is chock-full of uncertainty. You never know exactly how the creative process is going to turn out, and for me this week, I’ve found creative outlets in the humble and mundane practices of singing and cooking. I was also delighted this week with Peggy V’s video where she talks about how they’ve been surprised by joy through creatively connecting with St. Thomas during this past summer. The third way is by paying attention to what is going on around you. When we are fully present in the moment (as opposed to be checked out in our own worries or on our phones, we are more likely to be surprised by the goodness of what is in our immediate vicinity. And the fourth and final way to be open to being surprised by joy in the midst of uncertainty is in remembering and giving thanks for joyful moments from the past. This past week, Jim Joyce has offered me a wonderful example of this in his Facebook series “Project Spread Joy” where he’s been sharing photos that are chock full of the joy from their life together. Your invitation this week, in the face of uncertainty, is to reflect on how you prepare for uncertainty and how you deal with it in the moment, and to create space for you to be surprised by joy.

All Saint's Day-Year A

All Saints’ Day Year A November 1, 2020 A letter to all the faithful of St. Thomas Isle of Hope on this All Saint’s Day Dear Beloved of God, It’s our first day in over 7 months to be back in worship in person together, and yet still, we are spread out-in our pews and chairs and in our homes--among three services, one of which is virtual. It is 2 days until the most difficult and contentious election of my lifetime. We all need some good news. It is my usual custom when we have a baptism to write a letter to the baptismal candidate or candidates about what we believe we are doing when we baptize them. Since All Saints’ day is one of 7 major feasts of the church when baptism is especially appropriate and when it is also appropriate to renew our baptismal covenant when we don’t have a baptism, I thought we all might benefit from a letter to all of us who will be renewing our baptismal promises today. Our epistle reading for today reminds us of the truth of our baptism: that each one of us is God’s beloved child; that we claim that belovedness in and through our baptism and we recommit ourselves to living as God’s beloved every time we renew our baptismal covenant. It is a reminder that “we are the people who love one another” whether that is the strangers we meet, the people in our lives or in our households, and especially those we know too well and don’t like very much or disagree with. Our gospel reading for today is the portion of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount that is known as the Beatitudes. It is an unorthodox list of blessings that Jesus promises to his disciples who have gathered near to listen to him on the mountain. It is both “a description of and a summons to a new kind of life, kingdom-life…Jesus is trying to help his disciples and us envision what life will look like when we live according to God’s will and rule.”i It is also an important reminder for us that “when God is present and we live according to the logic of the kingdom, all is not as it seems. Note that the list of those ‘blessed’ does not align even remotely with a typical list of the blessed:” those who are wealthy, powerful, independent, beautiful, charismatic, healthy, happy. Instead, Jesus lists as those who are blessed those whom the world would consider to be cursed: “those who are mourning or are humble, or [those who] extend mercy rather than exact revenge, or [those who] strive for peace rather than exert their will through violence, just to name a few.”ii And today, on this All Saint’s Day, especially, we remember and lift up this kingdom notion that all is not always as it seems as we remember and believe that those who have died are still near us, surrounding us, upholding us with their prayers and presence. We remember and hold fast to the hope that is woven throughout our burial liturgy: that death is not the end but a change and that when our mortal body lies in death, Jesus goes before us through death into the resurrection to prepare a place for us there in God’s kingdom that is both already and not yet alongside the vast company of all the faithful who have come before us. This sermon on the mount and our renewal of our baptismal covenant this day both serve to invite us to transform our vision of where God is at work in the world in and through us. God is alongside and at work in the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. And God is alongside and at work in and through us when we renounce evil and proclaim the good news of God in Christ; when we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves and strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. Beloved, this week will be difficult, and it will probably be divisive. One news source reports that 70% of Americans are anxious about the election. The renewal of our baptismal vows and the reading from the Beatitudes on this All Saints’ Day are timely reminders of a truth articulated by Richard Rohr: “voting is a deeply moral act-a decisive statement of Christian faith that I matter, that justice matter, and that other people matter.”iii As followers of Jesus, we are called to live out the principals of our baptismal covenant and to vote for leaders who will lead us to be our very best selves. Today, it is also important to remember, through the glorious example of the saints in light, those who have come through their own ordeals of their own times and entered fully into God’s kingdom; may they remind us of the hope of our calling: through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, God has shown, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything. God’s love is stronger than Covid-19. God’s love is stronger than partisan politics and a deeply divided nation. God’s love is stronger than the forces of anxiety, grief, and fear that threaten to overwhelm us. God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. As we renew our baptismal covenant today, let us recommit ourselves to following the way of God’s beloved, to following the way of self-giving love. And may the Holy Spirit renew in us the faith, hope, and love that we need to face the days ahead. i.David Lose in his blog post for Nov 1, 2020: http://www.davidlose.net/2020/10/all-saints-a-transformation/ ii.Ibid. iii.Adapted from Richard Rohr, “A Deeply Moral Act: Voting Is a Decisive Statement of Christian Faith that I Matter, Justice Matters, and Others Matter,” Sojourners, vol. 47, no. 10 (November 2018), 19;

21st Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25A

21st Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25A October 25, 2020 When I was in my mid-twenties, working in the inner-city soup kitchen known as Stewpot, my job was to create and run a morning enrichment program for Senior Citizens and Adults with Mental Disabilities. One of my favorite days was always art therapy day, when the Occupational Therapists and their students from the local med-school would come in and offer art therapy to the participants in my program. On this particular day, the art therapists gave the assignment: if you could design a t-shirt that you could wear around all the time, what would it look like? The participants were given a piece of paper and some oil-based crayons and got to work. One participant who was a particular favorite of mine was Miss Virginia, an elderly black woman who had never had children and whose husband had died years before. She lived on a small, fixed income, and she was mischievous and child-like, fun-loving and wise. Virginia called me over to assist her, and I looked down to see that with the help of some of the students, she had written on her paper “Love Everybody.” She told me she wanted me to help her write her name on there and gave me specific details as to how she wanted it. I clarified it multiple times to make sure I understood what she was asking, and then finally wrote her name on the paper. She was immediately pleased, and I was humorously puzzled because her t-shirt design that had originally read: “Love Everybody” now said “Love Virginia Everybody.” It was a powerful learning for me in my early 20’s, that no matter how different each of us is, we all have that basic desire to be loved by everybody, and if we were all as honest as Miss Virginia, we’d wear it around on a t-shirt, too. But, now that I’m older, I’ve been pondering the other human characteristic that we all share, no matter our differences: that is what is it that flips the switch in each of us between our motto being “Love everybody” and “Love ME everybody!” Because we all know that as Christians, we are supposed to “Love everybody,” but much of the time, we act in ways that try to demand “Love ME Everybody.” Our gospel passage for today is perhaps one of the most well-known passages of scripture in the gospels. We are on week 5 of Jesus fighting with one group or another in the temple after he has ridden triumphantly into Jerusalem and driven the money-changers out of the temple. In our reading for today, a lawyer seeks to test Jesus by asking him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Now, this is not new information. Any Jews listening would have known the law. But here is what is new about this. First, Jesus changes the words that he is quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5 and instead quoting it as it is written: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might…” Jesus changes might to mind. And then Jesus takes the second part from Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” So he pairs these two commandments in a new and different way than their original contexts, and the love that Jesus is referencing here is a love that looks like listening and keeping God’s commandments for the sake of personal and communal wellbeing. And, it’s a love that looks like kindness, generosity, and respect for our neighbors — and in particular, it looks like eschewing all claims to “vengeance” and “bearing grudges.” This is all at the heart of our Christian faith and practice, and it is worth remembering in this season where it seems extra-difficult to love our neighbors. But it still doesn’t answer the question I’ve been pondering about what is it that can help us flip the switch in our hearts and minds and souls to go from “Love ME Everybody” to “Love Everybody.” This past week, I had multiple conversations with all different people about how each person is not ok right now. “I was yelling at the customer service rep so loudly my wife came running in and fussed at me that I was going to have a stroke, and then I started yelling at her.” “I just feel like all of this emotion is built up inside me, like it’s behind a giant dam, and anytime anything happens, I’m afraid it’s going to all come flooding out.” “I’m normally pretty laid back, like a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10; but these days, I’m operating on a level of about a 7 all the time, and then, when I get worked up, I am off the chart-like 11 and higher. My husband thinks I’ve lost my mind.” If you are feeling this way, too, these days, know that you are not alone. But here’s some good news. There are ways that we can flip the switch back toward a more loving way of being in this world, a more loving way toward ourselves and toward our neighbors (and our poor spouses and family and customer service reps who have to put up with our crazy). Because here’s the thing that I learned in a podcast this week, that has helped me and changed me. Most of us in this current moment are suffering from Burnout. Burnout occurs when we get trapped in a stressful emotion and thus in the stress cycle of that emotion. Our bodies are unable to let go of that emotion, and so it just continues to build up inside us until it erupts, and we find ourselves acting in ways that are not loving to whoever happens to be closest to us in the moment. But, the good news that I learned from the podcast is that there are 7 ways that we can help our bodies complete the stress cycle and in those ways we can flip the switch back to being more loving to ourselves and to all those around us. This is all from Brene Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us, and she interviews twin sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski who both have PhD level degrees in their fields and who have written a book on Burnout together. I’ll put a link to the podcast as an endnote to this sermon (and on our FB page) in case you want to go listen to the whole thing. It’s all really helpful (but there is some profanity in it, so be mindful of when and where you listen.) The sisters report that the 3 components of burnout are emotional exhaustion, decreased sense of accomplishment, and depersonalization. And here’s how they define these. Emotional exhaustion is “the fatigue that comes from caring too much for too long.” “Depersonalization [is] the depletion of empathy, caring and compassion, and…decreased sense of accomplishment [is] the unconquerable sense of futility, feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.”i. They talk about how just because a stressful situation is done or over, it does not mean that the feeling or emotion we have associated with the situation has been completed. Instead, if we aren’t able to see the emotion through to its end, then we get stuck, the emotion gets lodged in our bodies, and we suffer burnout. (There’s so much more to this, and it’s really worth your time to listen to it our read the transcript.) But they have identified 7 ways we can complete the stress response cycle and thus be more loving to ourselves and each other. The first and most efficient is physical activity. Second is breathing—taking a set amount of time to not focus on your thoughts but instead to focus on simply breathing in and out. Third is positive social interaction. Fourth is laughter. Fifth is giving and receiving a 20 second hug. Sixth is crying—not focusing on why you are crying but instead on the act of crying itself. And seventh is creating something. They say that your body will tell you, you’ll feel it in your body, when you have completed the stress cycle. And I’m going to conclude with some of their closing words from the podcast: “And thank God you know how to begin to feel better because if you can’t stay well enough to continue dealing with the stressors, you are going to burn out and stop trying to make the world a better place, and we need… Everybody… The world is in a bad enough state right now, we need everybody on board, which means we need everybody taking care of themselves. And if there’s anything we learned in the process of writing the book, it is that the cure for burnout isn’t and can’t be self-care, it has to be all of us caring for each other.” This week, your invitation is to look for ways to take care of yourself so that you can “Love Everybody.” [i] https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-emily-and-amelia-nagoski-on-burnout-and-how-to-complete-the-stress-cycle/

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24A

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24A October 18, 2020 This past week, as Fran and I sat outside in the mild temperatures giving out communion, I remarked about all the butterflies I had seen around on the church campus lately—all different colors and sizes. She said, “Did you know the yellow ones only live 24 hours?” I expressed my surprise, and she said, “Yes, just think about it. They live their whole lives in just one day: they are born they mate and have children; they fly around; they eat; and then they die. All in a single day. It’s kind of sad if you think about it.” And she was right, but I also realized that their impermanence made them that much more beautiful. As I was giving out communion this week, I asked many of you how you were doing, if you were ready to come back to church. Of course, there were as many different answers as there are different people in this church, but I was struck by a theme that I heard from some of our older members. They talked about the impermanence of the current situation, about their faith that it wouldn’t go on forever. They said they’d been so careful for so many months, and they didn’t want to do anything to compromise that carefulness at this present moment. I was also grateful to see some Facebook memories this past week. Kelly Bianco shared pictures from 4 years ago when the church fed the neighborhood after Hurricane Matthew, and I also got to see beautiful pictures capturing all the energy and fun of our fist CAST event this time last year. It was helpful for me to see those joyful memories alongside the reminders from some of our more seasoned parishioners about the impermanence of this present season coupled with those yellow butterflies who seem to be everywhere, now that I have eyes to look for them. I have been deeply grateful for those gifts in my life this week. Also, this past week, I listened to a podcast while walking. It’s called 10 Percent Happier with journalist Dan Harris. Harris, an anchor for a major network, had a panic attack while on live tv, and so he started a meditation practice and now uses the podcast platform to interview people who talk about how we can be happier. The episode I listened to is titled What’s the point of joy right now? and the guest Harris interviewed is James Baraz, who is the author of the book Awakening Joy and is a practicing Buddhist. In the podcast, Baraz spends a lot of time talking about mindfulness and how we can have “an equipment of mind to disarm all hostility.” This means paying attention to how things feel. For example, if you’re in the middle of a generous act, think to yourself, “I’m being generous now.” And it’s not to try to get attention for being generous from other people but rather it is to notice how good it feels for generosity to move through this being. Because whatever one ponders upon, that will become the frequency of the mind. Baraz quotes a friend of his who likes to say, “The brain is like Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative ones.” And then he goes on to elaborate: “It takes some training to be on the look out for the good and not only notice it but to be present for it mindfully not just as a thought ‘Oh, this is a good moment. I’m happy now.’ But actually to be mindful in your body. So instead of knowing ‘Oh, I’m feeling good right now,’ to notice ‘Oh, this is what it feels like to feel good.’ And just with a few moments of turning your attention to that, so that there is a visceral experience, is tremendously powerful. And that’s what we [need to] do over a course of time.” We have the power to cultivate an “equipment of mind” to overcome negativity and hostility by focusing on positive experiences, even cultivating them, and paying attention to how our bodies and souls feel when we have them. And the more we do it, the easier it gets. So, what does all this have to do with any of the readings today? In the letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, we see Paul using the standard opening of this time. This is the oldest of Paul’s letter’s, probably the oldest book of the New Testament. And what does it start with? What does Paul start with? “We always give thanks to God for all of you…” Paul starts with gratitude. Paul, who is away from these people he loves, is writing to them to encourage them; he has caused great suffering upon others in his life, and he will know great suffering. And yet he starts with gratitude. Today, we are kicking off the 2021 Annual Giving Campaign. It is titled Sheltering St. Thomas: Giving in Gratitude, and it is our hope that this campaign will be a love-letter to you, this church, about all the ways we are grateful for each other. We want to focus on gratitude as a spiritual practice and to invite everyone to tap into your own gratitude for the mission and ministry of St. Thomas—whether that is gratitude for the past, the present, or the good things that we know are to come in the future. Beginning today and continuing through November 22nd, you will hear reflections from different parishioners on social media and our website right after this service. (We’ll also send out the links in our weekly emails.) Today, you will hear from our Senior Warden and his wife about the gratitude for St. Thomas in this present impermanent moment and in the past. After you listen to them, I invite you to begin reflecting on your own gratitude for the mission and ministry of this church. This past week, I discovered a prayer written by Ted Loder in his book Guerrillas of Grace. I’ll read the whole prayer through and then share with you the line that especially struck me. I Need to Breathe Deeply – Oct. 14, 2020 Eternal Friend, grant me an ease to breathe deeply of this moment, this light, this miracle of now. Beneath the din and fury of great movements and harsh news and urgent crises, make me attentive still to good news, to small occasions, and the grace of what is possible for me to be, to do, to give, to receive, that I may miss neither my neighbor’s gift nor my enemy’s need. Precious Lord, grant me a sense of humor that adds perspective to compassion, gratitude that adds persistence to courage, quietness of spirit that adds irrepressibility to hope, openness of mind that adds surprise to joy; that with gladness of heart I may link arm and aim with the One who saw signs of your kingdom in salt and yeast, pearls and seeds, travelers and tax collectors, sowers and harlots, foreigners and fishermen, and open my eyes with these signs and my ears with the summons to follow to something more of justice and joy.i. This week, I invite you to join me in looking out for your “gratitude that adds persistence to courage” and to pay attention to the good in your life and in the world around you. i. https://inwardoutward.org/i-need-to-breathe-deeply-oct-14-2020/—Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23A

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23A October 11, 2020 Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to an audiobook that is cleverly titled: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). The book is written by two social psychologists, and it reflects on the concept of cognitive dissonance or why is it so hard for us to admit when we are wrong. As I was driving home this week listening to the book, I was struck by a section where the authors talk about the social phenomenon of “us versus them.” The authors write, “Us is the most fundamental social category in the brain’s organizing system, and the concept is hardwired.” “As soon as people have created a category called us…they invariably perceive everybody who isn’t in it as not-us. The specific content of us can change in a flash: It’s us sensible Midwesterners against you flashy coastal types; it’s us Prius owners against you gas-guzzling SUV owners; it’s us Boston Red Sox fans against you Los Angeles Angels fans (to pick a random example that happens to describe your two authors during baseball season.) ‘Us-ness’ can be manufactured in a minute in a laboratory, as [one scientist] and his colleagues demonstrated in a classic experiment with British schoolboys.” In the experiment, the scientist showed the boys slides with varying numbers of dots on them. He asked them to guess how many dots on each slide, and then he arbitrarily told the boys that some were over-estimators and others that others were under-estimators. He then sent the boys off to work on another task where they were able to give points to other boys identified as over-estimators and under-estimators. Although each boy worked alone in his cubicle, almost every single one assigned more points to the boys he thought were like him, an over-estimator or an under-estimator. As the boys emerged from their cubicles, the other kids asked ‘Which one were you?’ and they would cheer for the ones like them and boo for those who were not. The authors conclude by talking about the importance of belonging. “Without feeling attached to groups that give our lives meaning, identity, and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation that we were loose marbles rattling around in a random universe. Therefore, we will do what it takes to preserve these attachments…When things are going well, most of us feel pretty tolerant of other cultures and religions…but when we are angry, anxious or threatened, our blind spots are automatically activated. We have the human qualities of intelligence and deep emotions, but they are dumb, they are crybabies, they don’t know the meaning of love, shame, grief, or remorse.”i Our readings are rife with these “us versus them” divisions today. In the Philippians reading we see a conflict between two key women in the Christian community in Phillipi. Paul asks his loyal companion to help Euodia and Sytyche to resolve their differences, and he asks the women to move beyond us versus them to “be of the same mind in the Lord.” The gospel reading for today shows us the third parable of three in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus tells after he has ridden triumphantly into Jerusalem, driven the money changers and those who are selling animals out of the temple, and is asked by the chief priests and the elders by what authority he is doing this. Over two chapters in the Matthew’s gospel, we see the chief priests and elders digging in deeper and deeper to an us versus them mentality when it comes to the religious elite versus Jesus and his rag tag band of followers. And it is after the conclusion of today’s parable that the chief priests and elders determine that Jesus has to die. Also important is the context of the Matthean community. Matthew is writing to a primarily Jewish audience after the Romans have besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, further solidifying the us versus them of victims and their foreign oppressors. I’ve preached at least 3 other sermons on this parable and in each one, I found a different way to deal with this violent, horrible story. And I just don’t have it in me to try to make sense of it this year in the midst of all that we are living through. But here is what I do know, what is at the heart of my faith, what I understand is the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection, why people flocked to hear his message and why his rag-tag followers became the Christian church and movement that would change the world. Jesus’s life, his death, and his resurrection all show that it’s not about us versus them. Jesus’s life, his death, and his resurrection all show that there is only us. There is only us. No matter what the powers and principalities of this world may try to tempt us into believing. No matter what our own biases and blind spots encourage us to think in order to preserve our egos or our sense of belonging. No matter what. There is only us. It’s all us. Those of us who are followers and disciples of Jesus are called to deal with our own stuff so that we can live more fully into this truth. There is only us. But how do we do this, especially now? How do we live as if there is only us in a nation so deeply divided? Paul suggests that we do three things—we rejoice and give thanks for what is good, we allow our natural gentleness to shine through, and we pray. The authors of the book write about the “Shimon Peres solution” which has to do with examining two dissonant thoughts and keeping them separate rather than internalizing one over the other to further our bias. Peres, Israel’s former prime minister, was angered by his friend Ronald Reagan’s visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where members of the SS were buried. When asked how he felt about Reagan’s decision to go there, Peres could have chosen to either throw out the friendship in anger, or he could have made excuses for his friend, but he did neither. Instead he said, “When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.” “Peres’s message conveys the importance of staying with the dissonance, avoiding easy knee-jerk responses, and asking ourselves, Why am I believing this? Why am I behaving this way? Have I thought it through or am I simply taking a short cut, following the party line, or justifying the effort I put in to join the group?”ii Your invitation this week is to pay attention to when you fall into us versus them thinking—whether it is about individuals, people you know or strangers, or about whole groups. When you find yourself falling into this us versus them thinking, then I invite you to practice a prayer activity that I’ve been using during this past week. It has helped me to remember that in and through Christ, it’s all us; there is only us. My prayer has been when I’ve been angered or tempted to be alienated from a person or group, rather than allowing myself to stay with “Well, they’re just bad or stupid or wrong…” instead I pray: “Jesus died for ______; Jesus rose for ______; Jesus loves ______. There is only us.” It can work in a number of situations. Jesus died for that guy who just cut me off in traffic; Jesus rose for that guy; Jesus loves that guy. There is only us. You can use it regarding politics both individuals and entire parties: Jesus died for that presidential candidate; Jesus rose for that presidential candidate; Jesus loves that presidential candidate; there is only us. Jesus died for the Democrats; Jesus rose for the Republicans; Jesus loves the Republicans and the Democrats; there is only us. If that doesn’t work for you, there is a prayer resource available on our website (with hard copies in the chapel) that has helped me because it gives me daily guidance over what to pray for, even when I don’t want to pray for certain people or things. I’m going to close us with a prayer from that resource. Let us pray. Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. i. Tervis, Carol and Elliot Arondson. Mistakes were made (but not by me). Revised edition Pp 80-81, 82 ii. Same authors as above. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/role-cognitive-dissonance-pandemic/614074/

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A September 20, 2020 When I was a baby priest, just a few years into my ordained ministry, when I would get in a bind, I would call my mentor, the now retired Canon to the Ordinary, and ask him for advice. This man, who has known me since I was three years old, would never tell me what to do, but he would give me helpful insight or perspective into my situation that allowed me to develop more as a priest and a person and to figure out a solution to the problem myself. I remember vividly one such conversation, about conflict in my parish of the time, when my mentor told me a lesson he learned from Bowen Family Systems Theory. He talked about how a leader needs to think of the church or system like a big ball in a hotel ballroom. The leader is called to be on the dance floor dancing with all the people and also, at the same time, standing on the balcony looking down from above to see a bigger picture. Since that phone call, I’ve done a little more investigating into family systems theory (and plan to pursue it as my continuing ed for this year in a virtual format), and I’ve learned that some of the teachings that come out of this analogy also illustrate key teachings about self-differentiation. This includes the ability to observe one’s self, recognizing that the only way we can improve relationships is to begin reflecting on our own behavior and to work to change that. It means understanding that the only thing we have power to change is ourselves. And it also helps us remember, when we get caught up in the dance on the dance floor, that there is always a bigger perspective, a bigger pattern to the dance, that we may need to climb up to the balcony out of the fray to observe. Our readings for today show us ways in which participants in the story have become myopic, nearsighted, aware only of their own needs, and the readings show us how God is inviting them to join with God in seeing the bigger perspective and participating in it. The book of Jonah is one of my favorite books of the bible. If you haven’t ever sat down and read it or haven’t encountered it since you were a child in Sunday School, you should really sit down and read it. It’s really short, only 4 few chapters, and it’s really funny. The story is this. God tells Jonah he needs to go to Ninevah to tell the people there to repent. But Jonah doesn’t want to go to Ninevah, so he gets on a boat and makes a run for it in the opposite direction of Ninevah. The Lord hurls a great storm upon the sea where Jonah’s ship is, and the sailors are afraid and tell Jonah to pray to his God. The sailors cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah, so they demand to know from him why this is happening. Jonah tells the sailors that they should pick him up and throw him overboard and the storm will stop, so they do, and it does. And then God sends a giant fish to come and swallow Jonah up. Jonah prays to God for deliverance for three days and nights from the belly of the fish, and God makes the fish spit Jonah out on dry land. Then God tells Jonah again to go to Ninevah and call them to repent, and this time, Jonah does it. Jonah’s call to repentance is so effective that word gets to the king, and he decrees that all Ninevites are to put on sackcloth and ashes and to repent, and that even the animals are to wear the sackcloth to show how repentant all the Ninevites are so that God may change God’s mind and not smite them all. That’s when our reading for today picks up. Jonah has done exactly what God has told him to do, but get this. This repentance on the part of Ninevah makes Jonah really, really angry. Jonah prays to God and says, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” When God relents from smiting Ninevah because they have repented, Jonah has a temper tantrum. But God does not leave Jonah alone in his near-sightedness and anger. God invites Jonah to join God in seeing the bigger picture. God asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” and then God grows a bush to shade Jonah in his temper tantrum as he sits on a hilltop waiting and watching and hoping against hope that God is still going to smite Ninevah. And God sends a worm to eat the bush so it dies, and Jonah gets even angrier. And God asks him again, “Is it right for you to be angry?” God says, As much as you care for this one bush, can’t you understand the bigger picture-how much more I care for the whole city of Ninevah, “that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” And that’s the end of the book. We don’t know what happens to Jonah, what he chooses to do in the face of God’s invitation to join God in seeing a bigger picture, in the face of God’s invitation to examine “is it really right for you to be angry?” Our gospel reading for today also gives us a glimpse, through Jesus’s parable, into some of these questions. “Is it right for you to be angry” at how I pay other workers in my vineyard when I am paying you what we agreed upon? The workers of the vineyard are invited to join the landowner in the bigger picture of what justice, equity, generosity and economy look like in the kingdom of God, and Jesus invites us to do the same. Your invitation this week is to ponder some questions. What ways might you be called to come off the dance-floor of your life and go up to the balcony to see the bigger picture-of your life, your family, this church, your school, our country, the world? Or, if you are like me, finding yourself getting angry about all sorts of different things, perhaps we can use God’s question to Jonah—"Is it right for you to be angry?” to help us gain more self-awareness, self-control, and to participate in life on a bigger picture.

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A September 13, 2020 This week, a friend of mine asked a question. She said she had been thinking about forgiveness, especially in light of this week’s gospel reading, and she couldn’t help but wonder what to do with anger? Is it possible to forgive someone and still be angry? Or do you have to give up the one to do the other? And if we do have to give up anger to forgive, how on earth do we do that? Let’s look for a minute at the context for today’s gospel reading. Our reading for today is nestled within some other passages in Matthew that might inform how we read this difficult parable. This chapter of Matthew’s gospel starts with the disciples arguing about greatness. Jesus teaches them that greatness can be found only through humility, and then he warns them about causing “a little one” to sin. Next he tells them the parable of the shepherd who has 99 sheep and leaves them to go find the one lost sheep. Immediately following that, we have last week’s reading which is Jesus’s teaching about how to deal with conflict in the church, which is immediately followed by this week’s passage-where Peter asks Jesus how often he must forgive someone who offends him, Jesus answers with a ridiculously large number and then tells the parable for today. In this parable, a slave begs the king to forgive his very large debt, and when the king does forgive this debt, the slave leaves and goes and demands payment for a much smaller debt from a fellow slave. The debt-forgiven slave has the other slave thrown into prison, and the parable tells us that the other slaves are greatly distressed when they see this, so they go report it to the king. The king calls up the forgiven slave and says to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’” Here are my takeaways from this parable. First, we cannot maintain both anger and forgiveness. They are mutually exclusive. At first, it looked like the king had forgiven the first slave, but then at the end of the parable, we see the king’s anger, which must have been so close under the surface, as he revokes his forgiveness and hands the slave over to be tortured until he can pay his full debt that the king had just forgiven. Second, this parable holds up an unflattering mirror before us in that it shows that we are much quicker to beg forgiveness for ourselves than to offer it to our fellows. And finally, the key to forgiveness in this parable, the antidote to our anger when we have been wronged, is named in one simple, and almost archaic word: mercy. One of my colleagues told me about a previous boss she had in the church who would not let her use the word mercy as a response when she would write the Prayers of the People; he would never let her use the response, “Lord, have mercy.” When she finally asked him why, he responded, “Because people don’t understand mercy.” And in some ways, it’s true. We don’t understand mercy. And isn’t that really the point of Jesus’s whole parable today? Mercy is such a foreign concept to us, especially these days. What does it even mean to act mercifully, to ask for mercy from one another? How can we live more mercifully 6 months into a global pandemic, when we are all tired and just want things to “go back to normal”? What would it look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life? How might we even begin to go about demanding it? I think the first step in this is that we as people of faith have to recognize the mercy that has already been shown to us by God. That is the first step in discharging our own anger about perceived wrongs or injustices that have been done to us. We must confess our own faults and failings and then wholeheartedly receive the assurance of God’s pardon, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy. There is a quote from Bryan Stephenson’s book Just Mercy that we read a couple of years ago that speaks to this. Stephenson writes, “There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear.”i

Today, before we take communion, we are going to pray a litany of forgiveness, where we name our own brokenness, commending to God those ways that we have failed God and each other and also commending to God those who have hurt us. We will receive the assurance of God’s pardon, and then we will taste God’s mercy as we share communion, receiving the mercy of God that is incarnate and embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ into our very bodies, hearts, and souls. As we do this, Bernadette is going to play one of my favorite hymns “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” and I’ll invite you to reflect on the ways you have tasted God’s mercy in your own life. The words for the hymn are set to a tune that rolls like the gentle waves of the ocean, and they are “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty. There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good; there is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in his blood. There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven; there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgement given. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed; there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head. For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind. If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word; and our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.”ii This week, your invitation is to spend some time floating in the wide sea of God’s mercy for yourself and for those around you. Begin to look for ways that you might be called to act mercifully to others. Begin to think about what it would look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life, and how might we begin to go about demanding it? i. Stephenson. Bryan. Just Mercy. 2014. ii. Hymnal 1982. 469. Words: Frederick William Faber. Music: St. Helena, Calvin Hampton.

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A September 6, 2020 Last summer, you might recall that I took a one-week intensive course on conflict meditation training at the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center near Chicago. Our trainer, a man named Richard Blackburn, started the training with us by talking about conflict in the bible. If you think about it, the bible is full of diversity and conflict. And I remember Richard saying that conflict (in the bible and elsewhere) is often an opportunity to learn something new about God. Richard Blackburn also spent a fair amount of time with us on our gospel passage for today—Jesus’s own prescription for conflict mediation and resolution in the church. Richard told us that this particular passage of scripture reminds us that “1. God intends for us to live in peace…[and] Peacemaking starts with our sisters and brothers. 2. Conflict is inevitable and normal. 3. [Jesus makes it clear that] the question is not if we have conflict but how we respond to it. 4. Direct communication is better than triangling. 5. [It is important during times of conflict] to draw on the gifts of others. 6. Conflict between individuals concerns the whole church. And 7. God is present for the purpose of helping people resolve their differences.” Healing and reconciliation are gifts that come from God. i At one point in the course, Richard also recommended that every church should create a covenant based on Matthew 18:15-20 that all church members would agree to be in relationship and handle conflict in these specific ways that Jesus outlines. While all this is a very positive, life-giving way to look at conflict in community, I read a commentary this week that invites us to look at what Jesus is saying not to do in this passage in how to deal with conflict that I also found enlightening, because much of what Jesus is telling us not to do in this passage is how we normally try to handle conflict in our lives, our families, the church. This commentary writes, “As we enter the doorway of this passage, it’s helpful to bear in mind the classic, counterproductive, even death-dealing ways we’re often tempted to engage in conflict. First, we’re tempted to avoid it. Second, we’re tempted to gossip: to tell other people about the person or behavior that’s offended us, rather than to address our concerns directly to the person or people involved. Third, we’re tempted to gang up on each other, to recruit like-minded people to our side and create echo chambers of grievance. Fourth, we’re tempted to air our grievance only in such echo-chambers, or in front of overwhelmingly friendly audiences where accountability is minimal. And fifth, we’re tempted to regard our opponents as if they are unwelcome or better off elsewhere, outside our community entirely. In this week’s reading, Jesus takes on these five temptations, one at a time.”ii Let’s look at these wrong ways to deal with conflict in light of what Jesus is saying in the gospel passage. 1. “Against avoidance: Right out of the gates, Jesus is clear that in cases of significant offense, avoidance and evasion aren’t good options; go directly to source of the issue, he says, and share your concerns.” 2. “Against gossip: If you feel offended or critical, Jesus insists, begin not by telling someone else, but rather by directly communicating with the person (or people) by whom you’ve been offended - and do so, if possible, one-on-one, “when the two of you are alone” (Matthew 18:15). This respectfully allows the person to clear up any misunderstanding, or to apologize and make amends - and all the while, to save face. This approach implicitly says: I respect you enough to give you space to rectify this, without embarrassing you in front of others; and I’m humble enough to recognize that I may have misunderstood something, or may have something to learn. And it wisely avoids the ‘triangulation’ so corrosive to human communities.” 3. “Against ganging up in an echo chamber of grievance: only after this first step has proven impossible or ineffective, Jesus says, should a second step be taken - though here again, direct communication is the strategy, not echo-chamber-meetings held in secret, apart from the alleged offender. Go directly to him or her, not with a gang of five or ten, but with ‘one or two’ as witnesses (Matthew 18:16). This communicates the same respect and humility of the “one-on-one” approach, while at the same time adding the wisdom and experience one or two others might provide. In some situations, a third-party perspective can help two parties in conflict find common ground and a way forward.” 4. “Against airing grievances only with friendly audiences: If steps one and two don’t prove fruitful and the issue persists, Jesus says, step three is to share your grievance with the whole community (Matthew 18:17). Not the part of the community that will likely agree with you, or the part that will likely agree with the person who’s offended you; but the whole community (or, by the same principle, a cross-section thereof, like a church council)--including the person who’s offended you! This keeps you accountable, since with diverse listeners, you’ll be less likely to exaggerate, omit key details, or deny either how you’ve contributed to the problem or how you can help rectify it. And likewise… the alleged offender will be similarly accountable. This step…can act as a kind of “sunlight” strategy: things can fester and multiply in the dark, and in certain cases, letting sunlight in can help - and keep all of us on our best behavior.” 5) Against excommunication: Wait a minute - doesn’t Jesus actually agree with excluding an unrepentant offender from the community, saying, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17)? On the one hand, yes: unabashed offenders who insist on destructive or dysfunctional behavior should, in the end, be given a clear message: “stop this behavior, or step away from the community.” The church is a mission, after all, and the mission needs to be carried out. But on the other hand, Jesus qualifies this recommendation: by preceding and following this teaching with two parables of mercy and inclusion (the latter of which, on forgiveness, we’ll read next week); by clearly positioning exclusion as a last resort, to be taken only after three other intentional, constructive steps; and [by the way that Jesus, himself, treats Gentiles and tax collectors]. In surprising, graceful ways, these supposed outsiders are ultimately included in both Jesus’ mission and the beloved community.”iii This week, I offer us all the invitation to think about a time when you learned something new about God during conflict. Think about and look for ways you might be called to put these ideas from Matthew 18 into practice—in the life of your family, in the life of this church, or in the life of our greater society/community. i.Mediation Skills Training Institute Manual. Sponsored by Lombard Mennonite Peace Center . 2016. p A-9 Some of this was also reconstructed from personal notes that I took in the class. ii.https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/8/30/life-together-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-fourteenth-week-after-pentecost iii.Ibid.

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17A

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17A August 30, 2020 This week, our gospel reading invites us to sit for a moment with paradox. Just last week, Matthew tells us, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the district of Caesarea Phillipi, a Mecca of Roman wealth and civilization built by King Herod on the Mediterranean Sea and nestled in the heart of Israel. In this lavish, overly-Romanized area, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is and who they say he is. It is Peter, impulsive, impetuous Peter, who wears his heart on his sleeve, who gets it unexpectedly right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus commends Peter saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...” Then there is this week, which follows immediately on the heels of last week’s gospel, when Jesus offers the first prediction of his death and how it will happen in Matthew’s gospel, and Peter just cannot hear it. He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, but Jesus in turn rebukes Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In a short span of time, Peter goes from being the rock upon which Jesus will build his church to a stumbling block for Jesus. In this instance, both Peter’s strength and his weakness are coming from the same source and are on full display in this gospel pair. It is Peter’s courage, his boldness, than allows him to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and it is that same boldness which causes him to speak injudiciously and threaten to become an impediment to Jesus’s mission. And that’s a paradox—how something that is strong enough to serve as foundation can also be something that causes another to trip or stumble; that our very strengths are also, at times, the source of our greatest weaknesses. I did a little research on the word paradox. It’s from the Greek word paradoxos. “Para can mean both ‘next to’ and ‘in relation to.’” And we know doxos, right? We use the word Doxology weekly. “Doxos…literally means ‘praise’ [or glory] but also ‘awe’ or ‘celebration.’ A near-literal translation of paradoxos would be ‘things that, placed in relationship to each other, inspire awe and praise.’” i What if, instead of thinking of our strengths and weaknesses as opposites, we see them as shadows of each other, qualities that, “placed in relationship to each other inspire awe and praise”? What would that look like for ourselves and for others we come into contact with? Last week, a colleague spoke about wrestling with herself to create space in her heart for the weaknesses of others, to know them in that weakness and to love them in that as opposed to being frustrated or angry with them? What would that look like for us to do this for ourselves and for others, to recognize that strengths and weakness are from the same source and that they dwell side by side in each of us? So many folks that I talk to speak about the chaos of our lives and this current moment in time. As I contemplated that, I found this blessing in the chaos, by artist and clergyperson Jan Richardson that is its own paradox. May you find blessing in your strengths and weaknesses this week; may you find love in your heart for both the strengths and the weaknesses of others. May you find the love of God and its blessing, even in the midst of chaos. Blessing in the Chaos by Jan Richardson To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence. Let there be a calming of the clamoring, a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you, that have made their home in you, that go with you even to the holy places but will not let you rest, will not let you hear your life with wholeness or feel the grace that fashioned you. Let what distracts you cease. Let what divides you cease. Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans, and let depart all that keeps you in its cage. Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos, where you find the peace you did not think possible and see what shimmers within the storm. ii i. Howard, Ken. Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them. Paraclete Press: Brewster, MA, 2010. P 141. ii. http://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/01/24/epiphany-4-blessing-in-the-chaos/#:~:text=Thanks%20for%20noting%20that%20while%20%E2%80%9CBlessing%20in%20the,A%20Book%20of%20Blessings%20for%20Times%20of%20Grief.

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A August 23, 2020 This past week, Facebook shared one of my memories with me. It was a post that I had shared five years ago from the brothers of SSJE (the Society of St. John the Evangelist is a Episcopal community of monks in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The post read: “For what am I most thankful today? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love? Often in these moments, God was catching me: appearing in a surprising form. Stopping to reflect, I now see and say ‘thank you.’”i I shared this quote with my group of seminary friends that meets weekly on Zoom, and I was so touched by their responses. “For what am I most thankful today or this week? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love?” This has not been a season where I have been closely in touch with my gratitude, and this question from my past served as an important reminder for me of the spiritual practice, the spiritual discipline of gratitude. Also this past week, I read a reflection on our gospel reading for today by the Lutheran pastor David Lose. The gospel reading for this week is the portion of Matthew’s gospel where Peter makes his confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus recognizes Peter as the rock upon which Jesus will build his church. Neither of them has acted in an obvious way to live into either of those titles in any way that the other could have expected. Peter, in all his fumbling bravado, hasn’t acted like the stalwart rock that Jesus names him; and Jesus hasn’t acted like Peter would have expected a typical Messiah to act. In some ways, I think that they see each other bathed in the light of gratitude, of hopefulness, of possibility. And it is this light that enables them each to have a clarity of vision for each other in this particular moment. David Lose writes that we can celebrate this reading this week, even be grateful for the way that Matthew lifts up Peter’s success, his clarity of vision because we all know what’s going to happen in next week’s gospel reading. Peter is going to fail miserably, immediately after his proclamation of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus will quickly turn from proclaiming Peter as the rock upon which he will build his church to calling Peter a stumbling block between Jesus and his mission of self-giving love. Lose suggests that we should “pause to give thanks” this week; to celebrate with Peter that he gets it right.ii I would include that we also need to celebrate the way that God reveals this truth of each of these men to each other; to celebrate the way that Peter is “not conformed but… transformed to seek the will of God” (as Paul puts it in our Romans passage for today). We are invited to remember that our practice of gratitude can be a way that God reveals God’s very self to us. Through our gratitude we can sometimes see the way God is surprising us, showing up in our lives through the way we have given or received love or when we have felt most fully alive. I truly believe that gratitude is the rock upon which this church is founded. We are most fully ourselves when we express our gratitude for each other, and God continues to show up and be revealed in and through that practice, that gift, even in this season of diaspora. There was an article that was circulating among clergy circles this week about how difficult it is to be a pastor during the pandemic, and the article cited a recent Zoom call that the author was on where no less than 4 clergy out of 10 expressed that they’d had suicidal thoughts recently. These clergy talked about the burden of the complaints from their congregation, how no matter what they did, a portion of the congregation was going to be unhappy. I read that article, and while my initial feeling was the sadness that I have for my colleagues who feel this way, my most profound feeling is a one of deep gratitude, because this has not been my experience. My experience has been that even in the deep loneliness that I feel as your priest who cannot be regularly with you in person, your gratitude, that you freely give and express, continues to nurture me in its light in ways that continue to reveal God to me. Your consistent generosity of spirit for me, for us, and for the work we continue to try to do has been a profound gift. And I am so deeply grateful for you. So this week, I invite you to ponder the question that I posed to my group of seminary classmates. If you feel so inclined, you can even post your responses in the Facebook comments as the service continues to share your gratitude with others. And reflect on the questions as the week goes on. “For what am I most thankful today? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love? Often in these moments, God was catching me: appearing in a surprising form. Stopping to reflect, I now see and say ‘thank you.’” i. From SSJE’s Facebook page. Originally posted and shared by me on August 17, 2015. Ssje.org/word ii. http://www.davidlose.net/2017/08/pentecost-12-a-pausing-to-give-thanks/

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15A

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15A August 16, 2020 This past week, my friend and colleague here sent me a meme. She didn’t include any words to it-just the picture. It’s a picture of Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman on the basketball court in their Chicago Bulls uniforms. In the pic, the equanimous Jordan has gripped the back of the jersey of the notoriously hotheaded Rodman and is calmly walking him back as Rodman looks like he’s headed off to start a fight. The caption on the meme labels Jordan as “The Holy Spirit” and Rodman as “my response to people on social media.” Below the picture it reads: me: “first of all…”; Holy Spirit: “Delete it.” My friend knows me well, especially of my deep wrestling with not debating people on social media. This meme was especially true for me this week, as I walked away from a potential fight on Facebook. The younger sister of one of my high school friends posted a link to an article about the church Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Newbury, California who has refused to stop in person services indoors despite a county order mandated by the state in mid-July requiring that services be moved outdoors. She posted her own commentary about justice, about our rights as Americans and how they are being jeopardized as if we were in a Communist country, and she wrote that if her brother and sister in law, who live in California, were to attend that church they could be arrested for their faith. Well, of course, I had to read the actual article which states that the city council in this community has voted to pursue legal action against individuals or entities not complying with public health orders and that the board of supervisors of the county is asking for a temporary restraining order to stop the church’s plans to continue indoor services. A number of folks weighed in on the post, all touting freedom of religion for the individuals and sharing their fears that our liberties are being taken away under the banner of public health. “Justice! Where is the justice?” they clamored. I was already formulating my response when, like Michael Jordan for Dennis Rodman, the Holy Spirit intervened and told me to put down my iPad and walk away. But the whole thing got me to thinking. Why is it that some Christians have returned to in person worship indoors at this time and others have not? And what does our understanding of justice have to do with that decision? Our readings for today both give a nod to the theological concept of justice. In our Old Testament reading, we hear God telling the people, “Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance will be revealed…” Isaiah is talking about how God will do a new thing and that the former things are passing away. But this promise of a new thing, which will include gathering up all the people and even those who have been considered outsiders, requires a response from the people of consent and obedience. God’s expectations for their response include keeping Sabbath, refraining from evil, and holding fast to the covenant. In the gospel reading for today, Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman right after he’s been involved in a controversy with some scribes and Pharisees. The woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter, and Jesus’s response is less than complementary. But the woman is persistent, and she kneels before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” (Note that this is virtually the same thing Peter says to Jesus in last week’s gospel when he attempts to walk on water and begins floundering.) She and Jesus exchange more words, and Jesus, impressed by her faith, heals her daughter and sends her on her way. I’m struck by the fact that in this instance, when the woman says to Jesus, “have mercy,” even though our translation has mercy as a noun, in the original Greek, mercy is a verb. “Do something merciful” she is saying to Jesus. In both of these readings, people are invited to expand their understanding of justice. Now, keep in mind that the Hebrew notion of justice is very different from our current American understanding of justice. When we say justice now, I believe we think at best, of protecting individual rights, and at worst, a systematized way to enact vengeance for perceived harm or wrong-doing. The Hebrew notion of justice is to do right, to make right, to make things right for everyone. So in the Isaiah reading, God is showing God’s people that God is expanding the notion of justice, of making things right for everyone, to include not just God’s people who are a part of the covenant but to include people who have typically been considered outside God’s consideration. And in this gospel reading, Jesus is being challenged by the demand of the Canaanite woman to do something merciful on behalf of her daughter, to expand his understanding of his mission and his notion of justice. Perhaps in that moment, he realizes that his mission is no longer only about saving the lost sheep of Israel but it has now become about saving everyone, about making things right for everyone, about doing something of mercy for everyone. This week, I learned that we have lost one of our newer couples to the Catholic Church because they have resumed in person gatherings in church and the weekly distribution of the sacrament. In my sadness and my disheartened state, I had to remind myself why we are doing this. It is because your vestry and I believe that in order to do our part in making things right for everyone (in this church, in the greater community, and even beyond), the best way we can make things right is to not gather for in person worship. That for us, rather than infringing on our individual rights to worship together, rather than focusing on our individual wants and desires, we are choosing what we believe to be the path of justice and mercy that expands beyond individuals to what we hope to be the greater good. This week, your invitation is to be mindful in different situations that you encounter about how we might be called to expand our notion of justice. Look for ways to think beyond the rights that you want as an individual to how we might be invited to all together make things right for all. Look for ways in your life this week where you are called to do mercy, to think of mercy as a verb and not just a noun.

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A August 9, 2020 I have a joke for all you golfers out there. Jesus and Moses were out playing golf one day. They pull up to a hole in their cart, and they see that this hole has a water element. So Jesus pulls out his 5 iron and prepares to hit. Moses says, ‘I don’t know about that, Jesus. I think you should use your 4 iron here. Jesus replies, “No, I don’t think so, Moses. I’ve been watching a lot of Jack Nicklaus, and I think he’d use the 5 iron here.” Moses says, “Ok, Jesus, whatever you say.” So Jesus hits his ball with the 5 iron and it goes right into the water. Moses takes out his 4 iron and his ball sails over the water. So the two get into their cart and drive down to the water where Jesus is looking around for his ball. Not seeing it on the edge of the water, Jesus proceeds to walk out across the water looking for his ball. Moses sits in the cart waiting when two other golfers drive up to him, and say, “Who does that guy think he is? Jesus?” Moses replies, “No, he thinks he’s Jack Nicklaus.” This past Thursday on our church calendar, we had one of our major feasts: The Feast of the Transfiguration. I’m a part of a weekly Zoom gathering with some seminary classmates every Thursday, and our question for reflection for this week was based on the collect for the Transfiguration. The first part goes “O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty…” Our moderator for the day invited us to reflect on the question “What is the disquietude in your life right now that you need God to save you from?” (repeat) It was an interesting question to ponder, and as my friends were speaking, I realized that our disquietude is as unique as each one of us, so I jotted down all the different forms of disquietude I heard in our conversation (and then threw in a few more for good measure). The list of our disquietude included anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, alienation, fear, noise of others’ opinions, being overwhelmed, unworthiness, sadness, resentment, frustration, loss of control, caring too much about what others think. We see people wrestling with their own disquietude in our lessons for today. Elijah has just come off of an enormous victory against the priests of Baal; he has showed them up with a display of fire from heaven, and he has hunted them all down and killed them. As a result the queen is after him and he is on the run. He is weary (and perhaps, as a result, a little overly dramatic); he is alone, as all the other prophets of Yahweh have been hunted down and killed; and he is beginning to despair. So he goes away to a deserted, holy place; he calls upon God, and God shows up, not in all the noise of the elements but in silence. As an antidote to Elijah’s disquiet, God offers him quiet and the peace of God’s presence. In the gospel reading, we have just seen Jesus feed the 5,000 with a few fish and loaves of bread. He has drawn away to a deserted place, and his disciples have continued on in the boat when a storm blows up. These seasoned fishermen become terrified of the storm, and then they are even more terrified to see Jesus walking to them across the water. Jesus offers them reassurance saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And then Peter inexplicably says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus is like, “Sure. Come on.” So Peter gets out of the boat and actually starts walking to Jesus on the water, and he is rocking along, but when he notices the strong wind he becomes disquieted and afraid, and beginning to sink, he cries out to Jesus. Jesus offers his hand and says, “Faint-heart, what got into you?” And together they climb into the boat and the wind ceases. One of the reasons it was so helpful for me to talk about disquietude with some trusted friends is that by speaking it, naming it, it helped to refrain from acting out of place of disquietude. Peter steps out of the boat in a spirit of courage and faith to meet Jesus but then his disquietude gets the better of him. But even then, Jesus is there, offering him a hand and walking with him back to the boat. When we act out of our disquietude, it causes problems for us and for those around us. Our family has watched Hamilton since it came out on Disney plus in July, and I actually got to see it in the theater in Chicago this time last year. This week, I’ve been thinking about one of the turning points in the play, which is a number called “Hurricane.” Hamilton has made some bad decisions which he has kept secret, but then his political rivals learn of his indiscretions. And this song Hurricane is all about him wrestling with his own disquietude, worrying about his legacy, and trying to find a way out of the predicament that he is in. He even says that God has abandoned him, so it is up to him. And so Hamilton acts out of this place of disquietude, and it is devastating for his marriage and for his whole family, leading to even worse problems for all of them. It’s a cautionary tale for us when we are tempted to act out of our disquietude rather than seeking out God who promises to always be present with us and who offers what we need whether it is safety and quiet in the face of our enemies or whether it is an invitation to get out of our comfort zone and a helping hand when we begin to flounder. This week, I invite you to ponder the question “What is the disquietude in your life right now that you need God to save you from?” And in your prayers name that before God and ask for God’s saving grace to offer you the quiet your soul needs. In closing, I’ll share a prayer that I have seen posted several places this week that asks God to save us from the way that acting out of our disquietude hurts us and others. It’s attributed to Laura Jean Truman. God, Keep my anger from becoming meanness. Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. Keep my anger turned towards justice, not cruelty. Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. Keep me fiercely kind. Amen.