23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 26B

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 26B October 31, 2021 Our readings for this Sunday for both Old Testament and the gospel are quite familiar. Both readings articulate and encapsulate what are the key teachings of both Judaism and Christianity: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” Most of us have probably been able to recite these since our childhood Sunday school days. And yet, a colleague helped me see these old commandments with fresh eyes this week. She shared a reflection from Steve Garnaas-Holmes from his blog Unfolding Light. It is titled: “First Commandment.” God, you know how I put other things first: to be right, to be safe, to belong. I confess. I repent. I already belong to you, eternally, absolutely. I am safe in you. I need not earn your love, or prove my worthiness, or have others approve. I only need to let the love you give me become all of me: to love you with all of myself, every little thing I do an act of love, and to pass that love to others, always and no matter what, to never compromise my love with anything else. Oh, stand for justice, speak the truth, say the hard things, prohibit abuse, but only with love, not anything else, anything else.i This colleague then asked us to reflect upon the question: What are the commandments that we really live our life according to—like being right, being safe, belonging? How do those commandments that we really live our lives according to compare or contrast to the commandments to love God and love our neighbors? What are the ways that we try to earn God’s love rather than living into the love God already has for each one of us? I invite you to think about a specific time in your life this week when things just felt wrong or out of sorts. Reflect on what commandment you were following at that time. Was it a commandment to appear perfect? Was it a commandment to give up so much of yourself in service to others so that there was nothing left of you? Was it a commandment to look or be successful? Was it a commandment to be understood in a world that doesn’t understand you? Was it a commandment to try to have all the answers? Was it a commandment to be safe in an unsafe world? Was it a commandment to try to find your own fulfillment in new experiences or entertainment? Was it a commandment that you had to be “top dog”? Was it a commandment that above every thing else, peace must be kept? What was the commandment that you were following in that time when things were wrong this week, and where did that commandment come from? How did you go astray from loving God and loving your neighbor in that moment? What might you have done differently? What might that moment have looked like if you had been more attentive to the commandment to love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself? What might it have looked like if you had been able to let God’s love speak through you in that moment—either to yourself or to someone else? Today, as you hold out your hands to received communion, know that you are receiving the love of God, offered to you over and over and over again. Take that love into your body, heart, soul, mind, and strength, and let it empower you to share that love with all you encounter this week. i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2021/10/27/first-commandment/

22nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B

22nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B October 24, 2021 Years ago, when I was working at Stewpot, the inner city soup kitchen in Jackson, Mississippi, I almost, inadvertently started a riot. I had been talking to one of the community members who was homeless, and he revealed to me that as the temperatures were beginning to drop, he was concerned because he did not have a blanket. I was delighted that I could help him; we had recently received a donation of about 20 brand new blankets, still in their packaging. So, I went to where they were stored, and I brought one out and gave it to him. I’m not sure how word got out, maybe other community members saw his new blanket, and they started mobbing the office where the blankets were kept. It eventually took the intervention of our security officer to quell the crowd. I had never seen anything like it, and I learned to be much more discreet when handing out new blankets in the future. Years later, I was serving as a priest in a downtown church. We had another man who was homeless stop by the church on a specific mission. As the deacon was talking with him the man said, “I have these two blankets here. Would you please keep them and give them to someone else who may need them more than me?” Blankets are a hot commodity among those who are homeless and impoverished. They can mean the difference between survival and not. Now, I don’t know how many blankets this man had, but it is striking to me that he must have felt that he had an abundance of blankets, and so he chose to give away two to try to help someone else in need. In our gospel reading for today, we see a blind beggar named Bartimaeus who is at work with his cloak or blanket in Jericho. When Jesus and his followers come by, Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” First, this is unusual, because this is the first time the writer of Mark introduces Jesus’s connection with David into this gospel, although if we continue on with the story, we will see it again shortly in Jesus’s triumphant entry in Jerusalem. Second, it is important to note that translators tell us that there is no good translation for the Greek words into English for what is translated as “have mercy on me.” It is a much more active demand in the Greek, and would be more like us saying, “Do something!” or even “Mercify me!” Bartimaeus encounters resistance from the crowd, but he just calls out louder. And then Jesus tells the crowd to tell Bartimaeus to come here, which they do. “Take heart,” they say. “Courage!” “Get up, he is calling you.” And this is the part that really strikes me in this story. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, and he jumps up, and he goes to Jesus. Think about that for a minute. The man is a beggar. His cloak is most likely his most valuable possession (much like my homeless visitor’s blankets). Bartimaeus would have used his cloak as a shelter from the elements; he would have laid it on the ground as a place to gather and collect any alms he received as people passed by. And when Bartimaeus throws off his cloak and leaves it behind, he knows that he most likely will not be able to find it after his encounter with Jesus unless he has assistance. What tremendous faith and courage to cast off the one most valuable thing that helped him eke out an existence as a beggar to go to Jesus and seek out a whole new and better life, a new way of being and a new way of seeing! Bartimaeus is unique in all of Mark’s healing stories (of which this is the last) because Jesus tells him to go, his faith (courage, chutzpah) has made him well, but Bartimaeus doesn’t go. He follows Jesus on the way, which means that Bartimaeus follows Jesus into Jerusalem, where he will witness others throwing their cloaks down and proclaiming Jesus to be the “Son of David”. In the daily meditation “Brother, give us a word” from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, one brother writes this about the word “Savior”: “I would be willing to bet that nearly everyone here this morning has some inconvenient truth in his or her life that may well seem beyond the pale of redemption—a failed relationship, a debilitating illness, a financial or professional setback, some loathsome habit or compulsion or addition. Take heart. You are not alone. King Jesus saves us and is with us and is for us, always, no matter what. That’s the good news—and the truth.” i Each of us has an inconvenient truth--something for which we cry out to Jesus, “Have mercy! Do something!” And Jesus offers us an invitation asking “What do you want me to do for you?” And I’d be willing to bet that each of us also has some sort of cloak or blanket, a way of coping, a way of getting by that seems essential to life as we know it, but may be encumbering our progress in following Jesus. What is your inconvenient truth? What is your cloak? Do you have the faith, the courage, the chutzpah, to throw it off, to leave it behind so that you may be given the gift of new ways of living, new ways of seeing, new ways of being? What are the gifts that God have given you—the gifts of God for the people of God? What is God’s hope for their use? What extra blanket are you being called to share? What old cloak are you being called to leave behind to receive the new, abundant life that Jesus is offering you? i. From “Brother, Give Us A Word” on 10/24/12 by Br. Kevin Hackett www.ssje.org.

21st Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24B October 17, 2021 This past week, I listened to Brene’ Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us—a recent episode where she interviews Esther Perel, who is a Belgian born psychologist who specializes in relationships and who is the child of Holocaust survivors. The two women chat about uncertainty, about life in the pandemic, about story-telling, and about how we reframe roles in our significant relationships. Esther Perel asks Brene about her experience in the pandemic saying, “Has it changed over time? Is your answer evolving, or do you feel like you felt similarly a year ago, or do you think in the beginning, and then there was that phase… I have phases at this point.” Brene replies, “Yes, I think I went to war with uncertainty. It, of course, won.…Yeah, I thought I could beat it down. And I’ve learned to move with it, but almost kind of like riding a wave, sometimes I’m right on top of it, and we’re riding together and there’s me and uncertainty, are moving together in this kind of rhythmic way, and sometimes it crashes over me and takes me down. So, I’m on that ride.” Perel responds wisely, “You have this definition somewhere of vulnerability as comprising, emotional exposure, risk and uncertainty, and I thought, this is actually not just the definition of vulnerability inside of us, this is actually a definition of the world we live in. It’s no longer just an individual experience, it is really a collective experience. We are in a phase of prolonged uncertainty, with no end in sight whatsoever, we are dealing with risk and trust, and risk and safety, and we’re struggling that whole thing, and then we are trying to remain connected in the midst of all of that. And what is the emotional exposure that that connection invites us to do? And I just thought your triad here is just a perfect description of the world at large, and not just of the individual psychology.” The two then go on to chat about how some people go through their lives with the belief, the sense that they are in complete control of their destiny and others go through life with the sense that the whole world could come crashing down on them at any moment. It was interesting and helpful for me to listen to these two wise women talk casually about how different people deal with uncertainty and how that affects our relationships. We see this at work in our gospel reading (and possibly in the Job reading as well) this week, but it is not apparent at first glance. Our lectionary has left out two really important verses that come right before our reading for today. They are absolutely critical in setting the scene; here is what they say: “They (Jesus and the disciples) were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” Then it picks up with today’s reading, where James and John approach Jesus with their request. This setting is critical for a couple of reasons. First, it’s important to recognize that this whole exchange happens on this prolonged journey on the road to Jerusalem. Second, it’s important to note that this is the third time in Mark’s gospel that Jesus has predicted his death and the disciples have misunderstood. And finally, it’s important to recognize how confused and afraid Jesus’s followers and especially his closest disciples are at this point. All of this takes a story where it is super easy for us to judge James and John for their arrogance, and it helps us to see that they are really no different than us. They are trying to wage a war against uncertainty in the only way they know how. If Jesus is going to die as he tells them, then at least they can ask for the security, the assurance of knowing where they will be—on his right hand an on his left. Externally, they appear to be arrogant and anger the other disciples, but in reality, internally, they are deeply afraid and uncertain about what the future holds for all of them. If we are being faithful, then perhaps we can relate to James and John and reflect on the ways that we have tried to wage war against uncertainty in the past and reflect on how our externals may have reflected something completely different from what was going on in our hearts. In the passage from the Old Testament, Job has suffered nonsensical, catastrophic loss (his wife, his children, his animals, his servants….). He enters a debate with his friends about Job’s plight, and Job demands a response from God saying, “O that I had one to hear me!/ (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!)” Job takes the war against uncertainty straight to God, and our reading for today gives us God’s response. God is telling Job that Job doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, which, rather than instilling certainty, actually ups the ante on uncertainty. So where is the good news in all of this? Singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer has written a poem about the process of sitting with uncertainty and how to practice kindness to ones self and to others as a part of this process. (To read the poem, see the image attached to this blog post.)

Newcomer shared an invitation with this poem that I invite you to join me in practicing this week. When you feel the first flutter of uncertainty in your heart, instead of waging war against it, lay your hand gently on your heart, and say, with the tenderness and kindness you would offer a good friend, breath and say “Oh, honey” and pay attention to how that shifts the frame.

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23B

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23B October 10, 2021 Today’s homily will be in the form of a meditation on the gospel reading. I invite you to close your eyes and use this time to prayerfully reflect. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Do you long for the answer to certain questions that only Jesus can answer? Take a moment and name them now before him. What feelings do the words “eternal life” evoke for you? Jesus invites the man to consider the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’ Notice that Jesus lists the commandments that have to do with our relationships with others when pointing to ‘eternal life’. In what ways might Jesus be inviting you to move deeper into eternal life by examining your relationships with other people? Think about a specific relationship that needs examining. Hold it in your heart alongside Jesus. Not content with this response, the young man answers Jesus impatiently that he has kept these commandments since his youth. Jesus looks at him and loves him. Jesus tells him that he lacks one thing. And he tells the man to go, sell what he owns, give the money to the poor, and then come follow Jesus. The young man is shocked and goes away grieving. After Jesus lovingly sees the young man, he tells the young man that to inherit eternal life, he must give up that which is an impediment in his relationship with God and others. Imagine that Jesus looks at you, loves you, and seeing the deepest, darkest and brightest corners of your heart, he names that which is your greatest impediment in your relationship with God and other people. Jesus calls you by name. Tells you that you lack one thing. What does he tell you to give up or to take on? What is your greatest impediment in following Jesus? How is Jesus inviting you to be changed? “What is the thing you lack?/ What do you need to let go of?/What do you rely on for happiness,/security, worthiness?” i Stay with Jesus in your discomfort at what he invites you to. Look him in the eyes and see love not judgement; see kindness and hope not condemnation. Trust his belief in you that you can live more deeply into eternal life, here and now. Remember that “Faith is the blessed leap/ from what we leave to what we receive."ii Take a deep breath, now, and leap. i. “Eye of the Needle” by Steve Garnass-Holmes; Oct 4; on unfoldinglight.net https://www.unfoldinglight.net/reflections/f7j9p3t9mjjb8ycte6kfyczxye7hws ii “What we Receive” by Steve Garnaas-Holmes; Oct 7; on unfoldinglight.net https://www.unfoldinglight.net/reflections/aewr5t3d6y8cwwnywt4r42ngftz52m