The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B

Epiphany 4B_2021 January 31, 2020 Our reading from First Corinthians for today plops us down right in the middle of a conflict that is happening in the church in Corinth. First Corinthians is chock full of ways that Paul is writing to try to quell conflict among this particular group of followers of Jesus. We’ve seen factions at work in this letter—Paul writes that he has gotten reports from “Chloe’s people” of some serious conflicts in Corinthian community. In our passage for today, which seems to be, at first glance, about food, Paul is writing to the Corinthians about what it means to be a community of the followers of Christ. He is writing about how often we are called to make sacrifices on behalf of other members of the community, sacrifices of our own preferences in order to shore up our fellow believers in the church. A couple of weeks ago, one of my seminary classmates shared a reflection with us about what it means to be community. It was an interesting take for me, and I’ll share it with you and invite you to ponder it in light of our church and our society right now. This is an excerpt from the essay “Lost” in the book Perseverance by Margaret Wheatley “When we are overwhelmed and confused, our brains barely function. We reach for the old maps, the routine responses, what worked in the past. If we keep grasping for things to look familiar, if we frantically try and fit new problems and situations into old ways of thinking, we will continue to wander lost and eventually collapse from our confusion. There is no way to get out of this wilderness except to acknowledge that we’re lost. As we relax enough to tune in, we’ll be able to notice the information and signals that are everywhere around us. There’s sufficient information right here to help us find our way out. But we have to be willing to stop, to listen, to admit we don’t know. To navigate life today, we definitely need new maps. Our old ones confuse us unendingly. These new maps are waiting for us. They’ll appear as soon as we quiet down and, with other lost companions, relax into the unfamiliarity of this new place, senses open, curious rather than afraid. The maps we need are in us, but not only one of us. If we read the currents and signs together, we’ll find our way through.” One of my colleagues reflected on this that in a difficult time in her life, another colleague told her that she had learned that sometimes when she was in a rut or feeling especially lost, that she recognized that as a call from God to “stop and make camp.” After I reflected on this passage, I was reminded of the story of the Children of Israel in the wilderness and how they knew when it was time to stop and make camp and stay still for a while and how they knew when it was time to move on. (This is from Numbers 9:15-23.) The Lord would signal to the Israelites by using a pillar of cloud. Whenever the pillar of cloud would rest over the tabernacle-the tent of the covenant, then the Israelites would know that it was time to make camp and stay there. And they would stay there as long as it took until the pillar of cloud and fire would move from the tent of the covenant. Sometimes the pillar of cloud would rest for just a night and sometimes it would rest for several days. And the Israelites knew that they, too, should rest in camp as long as the pillar of cloud was stationary. I find myself longing these days for such surety and such clear cut signs as Paul’s certainty on what is right for the community in Corinth and for a pillar of cloud to light our way during this difficult season, telling us when to gather together and when not to, when to make camp and stay still and when to move boldly forward. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” He urges them to consider all members of the community and to give special consideration to the weakest ones, that they may have the full support of the community of faith to nurture them in their faith. My prayers and my wrestlings lately have been how to care for the weakest members of our community; how to know when we are being called to sacrifice the devices and desires of our own hearts on behalf of others in the community; and it has been how to discern God’s call to us in this lost season. I don’t have any answers for any of this at this point, but I invite you to join me in the ponderings, in considering when we are being called by God to sacrifice and what might be gained in our community through a season of stillness and rest and discernment and how to do that work together? “To navigate life today, we definitely need new maps. Our old ones confuse us unendingly. These new maps are waiting for us. They’ll appear as soon as we quiet down and, with other lost companions, relax into the unfamiliarity of this new place, senses open, curious rather than afraid. The maps we need are in us, but not only one of us. If we read the currents and signs together, we’ll find our way through.”

The Third Sunday after Epiphany Year B

Epiphany 3B_2021 January 24, 2021 “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” These words were spoken by William Temple who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the early 1940’s. Temple was the son of two British aristocrats and his childhood was spent living in episcopal palaces in England. (His father was also Archbishop of Canterbury, and the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury is known as Lambeth Palace.) But Temple is known for his constant concern for those in need or under persecution, and for his willingness to stand up on their behalf to governments at home and abroad. I first heard this quote shared by the bishop who ordained me, and I will confess that I have revisited it off and on throughout my ministry. In fact, it has, in some ways, haunted me, and I think it should haunt all of us, who work for the institutional church, who spend so much of our life and our love and our labor on behalf of God, trying to assist in the building up of God’s kingdom through the work of building up God’s church. Think about it for a second. What would that even look like to have a church that really only exists for the benefit of those who are not its members? On our absolute very best days, I think we here at St. Thomas come close to this, but if I am honest, I recognize that on most days, we do not. And I know I am as much to blame for that as anyone. Our gospel reading for today gives us Mark’s version of when Jesus first calls his disciples. Immediately before our reading for today picks up, Jesus has been driven out into the wilderness for 40 days where he is tempted by Satan, hangs out with the wild beasts, and is waited upon by angels. Then our reading for today picks up: “After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” Mark goes on, in his customarily sparse style, to tell us how Jesus walks along the Sea of Galilee and calls each of his disciples who, “immediately” (which is also one of Mark’s expressions that he uses over and over throughout the gospel), leave their fishing nets and their father behind to follow Jesus. In reading the gospel of Mark continuously over the course of 50 days with the Good Book Club, it is especially striking to me in this season that this is only the beginning of the pattern of call of Jesus and the disciples. Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus calls the disciples and then he sends them out to do good work. He gathers them together again for teaching and then he sends them out again with a task—go spread the good news; go on across to the other side of the lake without me; feed these 5,000 who have followed us here to this secluded place. The call of discipleship is a call that is always changing, always adjusting to the needs of the world. The call of discipleship, the call of the church is never static and unchanging. The only things that are static and unchanging in this life are things that are dead. As another writer writes about this passage: “Jesus will form [the disciples] into a community shaped through time by a pattern of being called and sent. This is the community we know as the Church, whose work it is to share good news, make disciples, help those in need, build a just world, and care for the earth.”i The Greek word that we translate as church is ekklesia. And it means those who are called out. Let that sink in for a moment. The original meaning of the word church is “those who are called out.” “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” I know you are tired of not being able to gather, in this space, all together in the ways in which we have become accustomed. I think it is safe to say that no one is more tired of this season than your two clergy. But the good news that has been forcibly reinforced for us this year is that the Church isn’t just a building. It is those of us who have been called out by Jesus to do his work in a needy world: to feed the hungry; to offer good news to those who sorely need it; to be agents of healing and reconciliation in the midst of conflict and division, and to be united in Christ through our service to others, even at times putting their needs above our own. Y’all know I’ve been reading Christian Wiman’s book My Bright Abyss devotionally these past few weeks. He reminds us that God is always present, always calling us. “Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. [If that doesn’t sum up the last 11 months!] Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience. [Or we generate our own intense experience by focusing on the negative or the dramatic or even stirring it up in our lives, our world, our church.]…God is not absent. He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love. To feel him-to find him-does not usually require that we renounce all worldly possessions and enter a monastery, or give our lives over to some cause of social justice, or create some sort of sacred art, or begin spontaneously speaking in tongues. All too often the task to which we are called is simply to show a kindness to the irritating person in the cubicle next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.”ii Your invitation this week is to “let grace wake love from your intense, self-enclosed sleep,” to look for ways to love the world: be kind to someone who irritates your or with whom you disagree; notice and acknowledge someone who would normally be beneath your notice; be intentional in the love you give to the people who are closest to you. Look for ways to be the Church in the world that this world so desperately needs right now: “share good news, make disciples, help those in need, build a just world, and care for the earth.” i. A Journey with Mark: The 50 Day Bible Challenge. Ed Marek P. Zabriskie. Day 2 Meditation by The Rt. Rev. Fred Hiltz Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. Forward Movement: 2015, pp15-16 ii. Wiman, Christian. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. New York: 2013, pp 108-109.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany January 17, 2021 I’ve been captivated by our Old Testament reading today in which we see the call of Samuel and the judgement of Yahweh against the prophet Eli and his sons. Eli has a history with Samuel’s family. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, has been unable to bear a child and is in such distress that she comes to the temple and pleads to God to give her a child. She is weeping and distraught and praying soundlessly but with her lips moving, pleading with God to give her a child. When the priest Eli sees her, he thinks that she is drunk, chides her, and starts to send her away. But Hannah tells him that she is not drunk but is praying earnestly for God to give her a child, and a somewhat chastened Eli then blesses her by saying, “May God give you what you have asked for.” God hears Hannah’s prayer and grants her a child; she dedicates him to the service of the Lord and names him Samuel, which means “God has heard.” So, at this point in our story, Samuel is still young, and we learn that the word of the Lord is precious in those days and visions from God are exceedingly rare. The young Samuel makes his bed in the holiest of holy places in the temple, and the one who is named “God has heard” is called by God three different times without knowing what is going on. Finally, Eli gets an inkling as to what might be happening after being awakened several times by the young, earnest Samuel, and he tells him next time to stay where he is and to respond to the Lord, “speak Lord, for your servant listens.” God calls Samuel for a fourth time, Samuel responds, “speak Lord, for your servant listens,” and God says, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” God proceeds to tell Samuel of God’s judgement against Eli and his house, which Eli receives the next day with equanimity. After first reading this lesson, I was struck by so many dichotomies in this reading: being asleep vs. being awake; listening vs hearing; the disappointment of Eli vs. the promise of Samuel; the wisdom and experience of Eli vs. the hopeful, fresh perspective of Samuel; the old order of the judges and the role of priests in that society, which Eli has presided over in its decay vs. the new order of the king who will be anointed by Samuel. Silence in which to listen vs. action. Longing for God vs. the fulfillment of God’s promise. The security of what is known and familiar vs. the excitement of God’s promise of doing something new. This week, I read a passage from the book My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman that I’ve shared with you here before. In this passage Wiman is writing about silence and action: “Silence is the language of faith. Action-be it church or charity, politics or poetry-is the translation. As with any translation, action is a mere echo of its original, inevitably faded and distorted, especially as it moves farther from its source. There the comparison ends, though, for while it is true that action degrades that original silence, and your moments of meditative communion with God can seem a world away from the chaotic human encounters to which those moments compel you, it is also true that without these constant translations into action, that original sustaining silence begins to be less powerful, and then less accessible, and then finally impossible.”i Silence and action, which at first glance, seem to be polarized opposites are actually both necessary for each other to thrive, and for us to thrive. The world in which we live makes it tempting to us to see polarizations and to choose one alternative over the other. It’s tempting to see Eli as bad and Samuel as good as God passes judgement on Eli and his wayward sons and promises to do something new that will, ostensibly, start with Samuel. But you know what happens? Samuel’s sons actually turn out just as bad as Eli’s in the end. Which, for me, helps me recognize that all parts are necessary for God’s word to be spoken in this story. God uses both the untested, fresh Samuel and the older, more experienced Eli, who has clearly made mistakes. God works in the silence and in the action. God uses the waking and the sleeping. God is with Israel in the period of the judges and in the period of the kings, and only in God, not in either of those sets of rulers, does Israel find her salvation. This story reminds me that our God in Christ holds all things together. Where the world encourages us to be at odds, to choose sides or positions or preferences, Christ holds it all together, and in that God continues to do new things that will make our ears tingle if we but have ears to hear. And in this week, where we have been pulled in different direction by the media and our two political parties, it is a refreshing reminder that we need all parts, even those that seem to be at odds with one another, and that Christ holds all of that together, even when we are tempted to choose one over the other. It is hopeful for me to hear that God will do something new that will make the ears of those willing to listen tingle, but it’s probably not going to look like anything we can expect or imagine. Our hope is not in elected leaders, not in political parties and their machinations. Our hope is in God, who will always be faithful and who will always hold the best interests of all together. This week, I invite you to join me in trying to lay down your dichotomies. Whatever parts of yourself, your family, your society, your church, your world feel fractured and fragmented, whenever you find yourself tempted to judge between what seem to be two extremes. I invite you to offer both to God, who holds all things together, and invite God to help you to look through God’s loving eyes and to hear the new thing that God is doing that will make your ears tingle. i. Wiman. Christian. My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux: New York, 2013, p 107.

The First Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B

First Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B January 10, 2021 When I worked at Stewpot, the inner-city non-profit that was a feeding ministry and so much more, I got to know a man named Clyde Jones. Clyde was a community member who lived in one of the neighborhood’s personal care homes, and I learned from our conversations, that Clyde was always thoughtful and had a deep faith and interesting ideas about life and the world. On special occasions, our Executive Director would invite Clyde to share one of his hidden talents at our daily chapel service. Clyde could recite the entirety of James Weldon Johnson’s poem The Creation, accompanied by appropriate movements. Every time I watched and listened to Clyde do this, I was moved by the incarnate nature of our God. The poem begins “And God stepped out on space, And he looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world. And far as the eye of God could see Darkness covered everything, Blacker than a hundred midnights Down in a cypress swamp. Then God smiled, And the light broke, And the darkness rolled up on one side, And the light stood shining on the other, And God said: That's good!”i There is a deep connection with the God of Johnson’s poem, who begins to create all that is by saying, “I’m lonely; I’ll make me a world.” And then, over and over again, proclaiming, “That’s good!” and the God of Mark’s gospel, who when Jesus steps out in baptism proclaims once again, “That’s good!” In both instances, we see God stepping out creatively, reminding us all of God’s favor, and beginning something new in this world that is based on God’s desire for relationship. I’ve been reading the gospel of Mark as a part of the Good Book Club—the scripture reading initiative that we shared with y’all in the announcements this week. There’s also a companion devotion book that goes along with the readings and has daily devotions written by clergy, scholars, and bishops from around the Episcopal Church. I was struck by a portion of the reflection for this portion of Mark’s gospel about Jesus’s baptism: …“ ‘Baptism is primarily an event, as it was with the baptism of Christ, ‘a solitary plunge’ in the waters of Jordan that flow through our neighborhoods today; that is, a commitment to walk in solidarity and compassion with others, sharing their hopes, tears, joys, and pain. As such, baptism is fundamentally a missional act, an act of stepping out with Christ for a life for others.’” The writer continues, “Our baptism immerses us in the affairs of our neighborhood, our nation, and the world. It marks us for ministry in the name of Christ’s love, with justice and peace for all.”ii It has been a difficult week. The images from our nation’s capitol that have continued to play on our news-feeds since Wednesday have me deeply unsettled. We seem more divided than ever. What good news do these pictures of God and this understanding of baptism, along with our renewal of our baptismal vows today have to offer are grieving and troubled hearts? In my continuing education class on family system theory that I’m taking this year, our instructor told us that the counter-intuitive way that you break the cycle of anxiety in a family, a church, or even a society is through creativity. It’s counter-intuitive because when we are anxious and trapped in conflict, our brains go into survival mode and refuse to think creatively, clinging to old practices and old patterns. Today, I am struck by the creative act of God and the creative act of Jesus when he steps out into the water to baptized, and I am grateful for the reminder that in and through our baptism, we are invited to participate in the act of creation with God and Christ. When we renew our baptismal vows, we are reminded that what we say and what we do matters tremendously. We remember that our faith is not a static, unchanging thing but an aspect of our relationship with God who is alwasy creative and creating. The renewal of our baptism vows invites us to join God in God’s creative work, and it reminds us that in every moment of our lives, in everything we say or do, we are either moving closer to God and each other or moving farther away from God and each other. Our baptismal vows remind us that we cannot move closer to God if we are moving farther away from our neighbor. So, in the midst of this difficult week, I invite you to spend some time with the baptismal covenant. Look for ways that your might respond creatively to the world around you, by living more deeply into the promises you have renewed this day. In this season of light that is the season after the Epiphany, may you look for ways to shine the light into this world, look for ways to reach out in kindness to stranger and to friend. And may you know that when we do this, God will continue to bless us and say, “That’s good!” i. Johnson, James Weldon. God’s Trombones. The Creation. 1927. https://www.poetry.com/poem/20733/the-creation ii. The Journey with Mark: The 50 Day Bible Challenge. Ed. Marek P. Zabriskie. Day 1 Reflection by The Rt. Rev Fred Hiltz quoting missiologist Christopher Duraisingh. Forward Movement: 2015, pp 14-15.

The Second Sunday of Christmas 2021

The Second Sunday of Christmas (Year B) January 3, 2021 I didn’t get to go home for Christmas this year. Even though I am a woman grown with a home and family of my own. Even though my parents no longer live in a place where I also have lived with them. There’s something about being together in one place with my family of origin that will always be a going home. And I didn’t get to do that this year. Sure, it was the choice that I made, and I believe it was the right choice. But I didn’t get to go home for Christmas this year. So it’s bittersweet for me that the readings for this Second Sunday of Christmas are about home. Joseph flees to Egypt upon the warnings of the angel in a dream and creates a home for his fledgling family in a foreign land. And then he returns to his homeland to make home in a new community of Nazareth based on the word from another dream. Scripture doesn’t tell us how long the holy family was exiled in Egypt, nor does it tell us what it was like for them to return home after being away. But our Jeremiah reading is all about what it means to be in exile, what it means to be scattered, and the promise of God that God will bring all of God’s people home. “He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.” All throughout scripture we see these themes of exile and homecoming being experienced, promised, and fulfilled. The promise of homecoming by God is a promise of the reversal of both physical and spiritual exile; it is the gathering up of the scattered with the promise that their life shall be like a watered garden. When I was talking about all this with some of my colleagues, one of them told me that former Presiding Bishop Katherine Jeffers-Shiori preached her first sermon at the National Cathedral as Presiding Bishop, and she asked the gathered congregation, who had come from all over the world to be there, “where is home for you?” Where is home for you? My friend said that Bishop Katherine emphasized to her listeners that for us Christians, people of both exile and homecoming, for us, as followers of the “way of Christ” our home is always on the road. Which serves as a reminder that home is possibly not as static or as unchanging as we might think it to be. All this reminded me of a podcast that David and I listened to years ago—an interview between Krista Tippett and the Irish priest and theologian John O’Donohue. In this interview, O’Donohue is talking about identity and he references reading the Medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart who said, “‘There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor no created thing can touch.’ And [O’Donohue goes on to say] I really thought that was amazing. And if you cash it out, what it means is that your identity is not equivalent to your biography and that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.”i And in his book Anam Cara (which means Soul Friend), O’Donohue writes, “In everyone’s inner solitude, there is that bright and warm hearth.” In both of these different ways, O’Donohue is saying that there is a place deep within each of us that has never been exiled. There is a place deep within each of us that is the home wherein God dwells, where we can always find our home. In 2020, I spent more time at home than any other season in my adult life. And at the end of the year, I still managed to come out of it all feeling as if I were in exile. So, this week, I am thinking about the home that is God that can be found in my inner solitude, that bright and warm hearth. I’m trying to dip into the deeper waters of that solitude to discover the place where all that is scattered within me is brought home and reunited. I’m pondering what 2020 has taught me about exile and home, what gifts it has shared with me in the midst of its unexpected trauma. This week, I invite you to join me in pondering those things, or you may choose to reflect on this blessing by John O’Donohue: At the End of the Year The particular mind of the ocean Filling the coastline’s longing With such brief harvest Of elegant, vanishing waves Is like the mind of time Opening us shapes of days. As this year draws to its end, We give thanks for the gifts it brought And how they became inlaid within Where neither time nor tide can touch them. The days when the veil lifted And the soul could see delight; When a quiver caressed the heart In the sheer exuberance of being here. Surprises that came awake In forgotten corners of old fields Where expectation seemed to have quenched. The slow, brooding times When all was awkward And the wave in the mind Pierced every sore with salt. The darkened days that stopped The confidence of the dawn. Days when beloved faces shone brighter With light from beyond themselves; And from the granite of some secret sorrow A stream of buried tears loosened. We bless this year for all we learned, For all we loved and lost And for the quiet way it brought us Nearer to our invisible destination.ii i. https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/ ii. https://www.facebook.com/JohnODonohue.AnamCara/posts/at-the-end-of-the-yearthe-particular-mind-of-the-oceanfilling-the-coastlines-lon/695390210494492/