4th Sunday after Epiphany-Year A

4th Sunday after Epiphany-Year A January 29, 2023 “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters,” Paul writes to the divided church in Corinth. And it’s not unintentional that in the first chapter of that letter, Paul talks about “call” 6 different times. For Paul, the church is those who are “called out” to represent Jesus in the world, and his letter to this young, church in Corinth shows all the ways that they are struggling together to understand what it means to be the church, the body of Christ in the world. I am thankful that we at St. Thomas do not find ourselves in a time of conflict. And yet, as followers of Jesus, we are always called to wrestle with what it means to be the church, those who are called out into the world to share the news of God’s love through the person of Jesus. Our Book of Common Prayer reminds us that the mission of the church is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” It teaches us that “the Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.” And it reminds us that “the Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.” i. Church isn’t just a place, a building, that we go to on Sunday mornings. Church is us, and we are called to ministry beyond the walls of this place in ways that are inspired by God’s Holy Spirit working in, among, and through us. This year, we are celebrating 100 years as the worshipping community of St. Thomas. We have lots of celebrations planned, and we also want to look back and remember all who have come before us and the ministry that they carried out in this place. It is also a time to ponder who we are being called to be in the next 100 years. How is God inspiring us to be a reconciling force out in the community beyond the walls of these buildings? To that end, I invite us to begin conversations today around listening for where God is calling us this year and beyond. I have three questions that I’m going to invite you to reflect upon at our Annual Parish meeting today or in an electronic format. It is my hope that these questions help us get to the heart of where God has been working in and among and through us this past year, and may give us an inkling on where/how God is calling us into the future. The questions are: 1. Where have you encountered God in life at St. Thomas in the last year (2022)? 2. When was St. Thomas at our best in representing Christ in this past year? What made that possible? 3. What aspects of our church are we being called to let go of to create space for new life and growth? I invite you to take some time pondering these, which I’ll reflect on more in the Rector’s report at the annual parish meeting, and to share your thoughts in small groups with vestry members at the meeting or via an online survey that was shared on social media today and will be in the email tomorrow. In conclusion, I’ll pray one of my favorite prayers about church and calling. It comes from the ordination of a priest and is also found in our Good Friday liturgy. Let us pray. O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were being cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. i. Book of Common Prayer 1979. P 855 (from The Catechism—under The Church)

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

3rd Sunday after Epiphany—Year A January 22, 2023 I’ve been reading a book titled The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. The author is The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, who is a canon on the staff of our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. In this book Spellers is writing about the seismic changes that are happening in the Church since 2020, and she is unpacking some of what she thinks is happening there. I’m about half-way through the book, and she is painting a bleak picture, indeed. So, I’ll confess, I looked ahead to the conclusion (mainly to decide if I could keep soldiering through this challenging read), and I was heartened by this paragraph: “No one asks to be cracked open or disrupted. No church seeks to decline in membership or stature. Most people don’t go looking for experiences that will humble them and break their hold on a treasured identity and culture. We did not choose to land here in this wilderness; we were shoved by pandemic, racial reckoning, decline and economic and social disruption. But now that we’re here, humbled and open, we have a choice and a chance.” i It’s an interesting idea to think about how a crisis can crack us open, and in and through that process give us a choice and a chance at something new. It’s true for us as a church, and it’s true for us as individuals. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is beginning his public ministry in Matthew’s gospel, and he begins it under the shadow of a crisis. His cousin, John the Baptist, has just been arrested by Herod after John has offered public criticism about Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife. In the midst of this crisis, Matthew tells us that Jesus decides to move from Nazareth to Capernaum, citing the fulfillment of scripture from the prophet Isaiah for the reason for this move: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,/ on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—/ the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,/ and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death/ light has dawned.” But what’s interesting about this is that at the time of Jesus and even at the time of Matthew’s writing, Zebulun and Napthali weren’t on any maps. They had been wiped out by foreign occupation 700 years before. So Jesus is starting his ministry under the shadow of a crisis, in a place that is marked by darkness and failure and loss, and in an area that is especially connected with the shadow of the occupation of the foreign power of Rome, under which the people of Jesus’s day lived. And what is Jesus’ message in this crisis-shadowed time and place? “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” (This is from the Common English Bible translation.) In the midst of crisis and failure, Jesus offers an invitation to change, to new life, and new hope, and new opportunity. When talking about how crisis can be a time to experience new life, our Wednesday healing service reflected on crises that they had weathered in their past—how we as a church changed and adapted to the crisis that has been the pandemic, how they recognized new life and growth in their spiritual lives after having coming through personal crises. Some of us shared how, even as we are in the midst of crises now, we look toward tried and tested sources of wisdom or learnings from how we navigated other challenging experiences to help us look for the sprigs of new life that are sprouting even now and that we hope will bear fruit on the other side of this crisis. The gift of that conversation was also a reminder that community is another gift in the midst of crisis to help weather and navigate change together. There have been no shortages of crises of late. Many here have known the death of a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend. Some have known the loss of a job or income. Many are tasting the lessening of mobility or independence. We have heard a new diagnosis. We have been held by the uncertainty of waiting for what may be to come. And that’s all in addition to the changing landscape of the world around us, the changing landscape of the post-covid church. But there is good news. Jesus who is God with Us, the very heart of Matthew’s gospel, doesn’t leave us alone in our crises. And let me be clear and say again, I do not believe that God is giving any one of us these crisis, so please, stop saying that to yourself or about yourself. (God isn’t giving you crisis to handle!) In the times when we are being cracked open by the circumstances of our lives and of our choices and other peoples’ choices, God moves there—into the moment of crisis, into the no-man’s land—to make God’s home there with us. And God calls forth new life, even in the midst of the worst experiences, even when we are not able to yet see it. And Jesus acts to spread the good news of God’s love and to heal us. The gift of community, of church, is that we can help share some of the burden with each other, and we can help each other see the sprigs of new life which God promises will come. i. Spellers, Stephanie. The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. Church Publishing, Inc: New York, 2021, p 95.

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Year A January 15, 2023 A letter to Mason Lanier Johnston upon the occasion of your baptism Dear Mason, Today is an exciting day in your young life! It is the day that you are being baptized into Christ’s body the church in this special place where your mom grew up and where your parents were married. It is the day when your parents and godparents will make promises before God and this congregation about how they will raise you and how they will teach you to live. It is the day when they will acknowledge on your behalf that God has already called you and claimed you as God’s beloved and that you will live your life accordingly. And it is the day that this congregation will promise you and your family that we will support you as you grow in your faith in Christ, no matter where you go or what you do. Because you see, sweet Mason, being baptized changes us. In and through our baptism, we become who we already are; we become more fully who God has created us to be. The baptismal covenant that your parents and godparents will say on your behalf this day, that we will all say alongside them and you, and which we will all continue to renew together again and again throughout the years means that we live life with a different sort of intentionality. And through baptism, we are bound together in community through the body of Christ, not just with all those who surround us now, but also with all those who have come before us and all those who come after us by these promises to this way of life, this commitment to following this path. In and through our baptism, we are called by God to continue to be transformed, to be open to God’s work in our lives, in the lives of those we love, and in the world around us. And we need each other to see, sometimes, how we are called; to understand things about ourselves that we cannot always see or understand. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is writing to that community there. He’s gearing up to let them have it because they have been fighting and acting up, and he’s not at all happy with what they’ve been up to since he’s been away. But first, before he does this, we have our portion for today, where he reminds them about what he loves about them. He holds up the mirror before them to show them and remind them of the best of themselves. This is one of the gifts of Christian community—that we can see and recognize and name things for each other, speaking the truth in love, that we can’t always recognize in ourselves. Paul also reminds the Corinthians that God has already given them all the spiritual gifts or the tools that they need to be in community and to share the good news of God’s love for all through Jesus. So, today, sweet Mason, we give thanks for you and your baptism. We promise that we will help you recognize things about yourself that you might only be able to find in and through Christian community. We will help you remember that you are called and claimed as God’s beloved, to live your life accordingly, and to trust that God will give you the tools that you need in order to do this. And we will support you as you grow, nurturing you in the faith and helping you to see the ways that God is at work in your life, in the lives of those you love, and in the world around you. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

Holy Name 2023

Holy Name 2023 January 1, 2023 Today is the Feast of the Holy Name, when we mark Jesus’s naming and circumcision 8 days after his birth. Our Old Testament reading gives us a glimpse of how God gives God’s name as a blessing to the people of Israel in Exodus, so I’ve been thinking about the sort of naming that we do in blessing this past week. Jesus’s own name is, of course, a blessing. In his native tongue, Jesus’s name is Joshua, which means “the Lord is salvation.” Jesus’s person and his name serve as a reminder to any and all that God cares about what happens to God’s people and that God will continue to offer salvation. In our Episcopal tradition, a priest is able to offer blessing at certain times during certain services, and a blessing is essentially the pronouncement of God’s love and favor for God’s people. And that’s important. But there are other ways to offer blessing as well. The Irish priest, poet, and mystic, John O’Donohue, has written an entire book of blessings. Its title is To Bless the Space Between Us, and in the book O’Donohue explores what the gifts of blessing are. He writes that blessing is a way of manifesting kindness, of holding a circle of light around the one being blessed. “There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things;” he writes, “it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitable reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul deems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves… The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo the presence of compassionate goodness. When someone is kind to you, you feel understood and seen. There is not judgement or harsh perception directed toward you. Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself. Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference. Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing.” i. As I was thinking about blessing this week, I was joking around with people in the office. At the end of each conversation, I offered a blessing to them of what we had talked about in our conversation or what I thought they might need. To Jane, I offered her the blessing that she could find the grocery item she needed without having to go to the Big Kroger. To Amy Jo, as I was parting, I said that I hoped that she would not need to talk to me or I to her over the long weekend (because that usually means there’s some sort of crisis). These blessings were said as jokes, but I noted how good it made my heart feel to offer these friends my hope for goodness and blessing in their lives. So this week, as we continue in this Christmas season (yep, it’s still Christmas through this Thursday), I invite you to look for ways to offer kindness to those you love and those you encounter. Look for ways to name the hopes that you have for them, to shine a sphere of light around them and be alert to the ways that God offers God’s love to you through others. In closing, I’ll offer you an excerpt of one of O’Donohue’s blessings: At The End of the Year 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... 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. O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us. Doubleday: New York, 2008, pp 185-186 ii. Ibid. pp 159-160