May 31, 2020

/

Pentecost  

Acts 2: 1-21; Psalm 104: 25-35,37; 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-13; John 7:37-39

The Rev. Jimmy Grace 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

               I grew up in a house that was full of love, and care, and I was provided for.  But our family was not very good about church attendance.  I think I’ve shared that with you before – which is that for the first twelve or so years of my life I could probably count one Easter and one Christmas Eve service that we attended as a family.  Likewise, you probably can guess that there was not much in the way of conversation about the Holy Spirit around our house.

            So, for most of my life the Holy Spirit has been a vague, misty, thing that I did not understand.  Even after attending church for many years later in my life, I still did not hear much about the Holy Spirit.  Whenever people would talk about the Holy Spirit, I found myself uncomfortable around them.  My discomfort was not for any good reason, it’s just that I began to associate any kind of talk about the Holy Spirit with a kind of Christianity that seemed judgmental, intolerant, racist, and bigoted.  This is an unfair assumption, I know.  It is just that the kind of people I most recall talking about the Holy Spirit often appeared that way to me.

            So, for many years I avoided the Holy Spirit, I kept it at a distance, because I didn’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t trust people who claimed to be full of it because those people often seemed to act in very condescending ways to others.  This belief entered with me into seminary, where I successfully spent three years keeping the Holy Spirit away.  Not only was I able to distance myself Holy Spirit filled peers who gladly would have told me everything I was doing wrong and how my faith was not strong enough, but I also kept the Holy Spirit away who by pouring myself into academics: theology, eschatology, ethics and on and on.  I pursued academics because I thought intellectual knowledge of God would maybe make the Holy Spirit clearer to me.  Maybe I was missing something.  As you probably would expect, book knowledge did not fill the hole inside me that I that I did not know at the time could only be filled by the Holy Spirit. 

            After a time in seminary I realized my pursuit of God through books and academics was kind of interesting, but I did not like where it took me.  It took me to a place of passive, unknowing, dull, complacent spirituality.  Eventually I got fed up with all the academics. I was tired of theory - I wanted proof.  I wanted to know that there was something good out there I could trust but no amount of reading Karl Barth, Schleiermacher, Rowan Williams, or any other big-time author could convince me. 

Since I could not find proof of God in books or classes – I began to look for proof of the Spirit elsewhere, and eventually I found it.  I found proof – not that academic proof, something better, something that made me feel better.  I found proof in a glass bottle.  100 proof, to be more specific.  I feel in love with alcohol.  What a wonderful Spirit it was!  I could touch it, I could taste it, it made life fun, and for a moment while caught up in it, I would forget the emptiness inside me.

            I pursued this Spirit with great enthusiasm for quite a while.  But then a problem began to emerge, and it was this.  This Spirit of drink I had fallen in love with was powerful, in fact more powerful than I, and inevitably I began to lose control of it.  I wanted more.  This desire for more grew steadily in me until I became entranced by this Spirit, bewildered by this Spirit, and finally the enslaved to it.  Gradually I realized like with my studies in seminary, no amount of this Spirit would fill the emptiness inside. I was seeing a therapist at the time to help me make sense of my condition.  After listening to me go on about this inability of mine to control my desire for this Spirit, she asked a rather peculiar question.  She said “Jimmy, did it ever occur to you that you might be an alcoholic?” 

            Well, I did not like hearing that question very much.  Alcoholism is a problem other people had – not me, I mean was a priest, and had a master’s degree.  She stopped me.  And asked the question again.  “Jimmy, do you think you might be an alcoholic?”  I could not answer then, but I knew inside me the answer, yes, I am.  And so, I stopped, and found a community of people like me, who share this.  They are like family to me. Here is the miracle I discovered:  our most desperate moments are necessary for authentic spiritual growth.  In this community of people in recovery from addiction I finally, finally have found the Holy Spirit.  I looked for it in a book, and it wasn’t there, so I turned to a bottle, it wasn’t their either – instead I found it in people who share their burdens with one another and who love one another. 

After a lifetime, I think I finally have learned what the Holy Spirit is, at least for me, and it is God’s ability to do for us what we are incapable of doing for ourselves.  It is one of the most powerful things I have ever experienced.  I want to briefly share a quote from author and priest Henri Nouwen who describes the Holy Spirit in this way.  He says:

The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised to his followers, is the great gift of God. Without the Spirit of Jesus we can do nothing, but in and through his Spirit we can live free, joyful, and courageous lives. . . We cannot create peace and joy, but the Spirit of Christ can fill us with a peace and joy that is not of this world.

I want to close this morning with a few words about the events which have occurred in Minneapolis, and are happening across our country and in the city of Houston.  With the death of George Floyd, we are once again confronted with another African American man being killed by law enforcement.  We are confronted again, with another life cut short, another grieving family, another grieving community, another place for all of us to lament and confess.  We are once again appalled, and we cry out, forty years after the civil rights movement in this country “How can this be?”  We grieve.  It is an act of faith to grieve.  But our grief is not enough.  Faith without works is dead.  There is action and there is more action. 

The events of this week are a stark reminder, that we cannot overcome racism on our own.  Civil Rights laws and ordinances move us in the right direction, but there are not enough.  I believe we are powerless to overcome our racism, and so we must turn it over to God.  We must allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts, to teach us a new way.  Ask yourself: when you see a person of another color, do you see them through the lens of your prejudice?  What would it look like if you saw them through God’s eyes, as God’s child? 

I have an African American friend, and in talking this week, he called me brother, and I could not be more grateful, because neither he nor I would let the actions of others affect our relationship with each other.  I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit, because I know I could not do it alone.  AMEN.

May 21, 2020

/

Ascension Day

Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

The Rev. Jimmy Grace

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN

Over twenty years ago, I visited the city of Jerusalem.  And in the part of the city called the Mount of Olives where the Garden of Gethsemane is, there is a small chapel.  It is called the chapel of the Ascension.  Like most of the city, the chapel itself is very old, it was built in the twelfth century, so it is more than 800 years old.  It was built upon the foundation of an even older church that dates from the fourth century.  The church over the centuries has served as a place of Christian worship, it has also served as a monastery, and also a mosque.

For hundreds of years this spot upon the Mt of Olives has been visited by millions of people who want to see with their own eyes the spot upon which many people believe marks the place where Jesus ascended into heaven. When I visited the chapel of the Ascension, I noticed that there was a stone slab on the floor.  Upon this slab, if you looked carefully, you might see what appears to be a footprint.  For many people, the stone literally bears the footprint of Christ, perhaps marking the very last spot Jesus placed his foot before ascending into heaven.

In our Bible studies earlier this week, we spent a lot of time talking about this reading, and people confessed their struggles with this story of Christ ascending, particularly with the admonition offered by the two angels who inform the disciples that Jesus will return one day in the same way that he has ascended.  For some in our studies, they regretted their upbringing in churches that wielded this teaching of Christ’s return with dread and foreboding. 

Having been raised in the Episcopal Church myself, I can say that I have never felt that way about this story – nor do I feel anxious about Christ’s return.   I appreciate the Ascension because it reminds me that as Jesus ascends to a higher plane so to shall we.  That is our calling – to ascend like Jesus to move to a higher place. 

At our vestry meeting this week, several of our Vestry members shared with me their impressions of last Sunday’s town hall meeting in which I described what regathering for in person worship will probably look like, and what we will need to do to get ready for it.  The most common phrase I heard to describe that town hall meeting was this: “it was depressing.”  That’s honest.  And I so appreciate the honesty.  It made me think of some words St. Augustine said many years ago – Augustine was the bishop of Hippo in northern Africa in the 4th century.  Augustine said this: “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”

We will never ascend to a higher place, we will never grow closer to God – unless we get on our knees, and lower ourselves to the ground – depress ourselves – and be humble.  That’s where ascension happens.  That’s why Jesus was so good at it and could ascend effortlessly – because he didn’t need it.  His humility made him light, so he could float.

Perhaps the stone upon which Christ last placed his foot, met the foot of God, and kissed it before it disappeared into a higher place.  The stone released the foot and bore the weight of God joyfully capturing Christ’s essence before his foot left it.  Or maybe the rock formation upon the stone is natural indentation someone long ago thought looked like a foot.  Does it matter?  

May 3, 2020

/

4 Easter

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2: 19-25; John 10: 1-10

The Rev. Jimmy Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

 

            Good morning, everyone.  It is really good to be here with you all – virtually, from a distance, I know.  But it is still good to be here with you.  I want to begin this morning to simply address a question many of you all probably have which is when are we going to resume in person worship.  I have two answers to that question – the short and the longer answer.  Short answer: I’m not sure.  Here’s the longer answer:  The Bishop and his staff are listening to medical experts and heading their advice and I have convened several members of the Vestry along with our staff here at St. Andrew’s to form a “Regathering Task Force” that will work with me to insure that when our doors do open, we are ready.  So we are working on a plan in consultation with the Diocese and other Episcopal churches. 

            I am grateful today that we can worship together through this live stream, but I am also aware that it is not the same as being together.  A priest and good friend of mine told me recently that one his parishioners told him that watching their service online was about as interesting as watching golf.  I think watching worship online is more like watching CPSAN – where you watch people sit and talk or read, or stand and talk and read.  It’s not riveting stuff (my apologies to any CSPAN fans out there).  Even if we were to dress this up – have different camera angles, fancy lighting, words on the screen, etc.  That’s all still window dressing in my opinion, and it doesn’t take away from the reality that this church on a Sunday morning only has 8 people physically in it. 

After doing services this way for the last seven weeks I can tell you that I am grieving not seeing you.  That might sound glib or cliché, but it’s the truth.  I care for you ,and so when I look out this morning and see pews where you all typically are, and see them empty, week after week, is depressing to me.  It just is.  I feel that grief.  What are you grieving now during this time?  That’s not a rhetorical question.  I actually want you to think about this strange moment all of us are in, and for many of us feel grief about a part of it.  Where are you seeing that grief right now?  Answer the question – write your answer on the live stream comments -  be as long winded or brief as you want to be, but be honest. 

            I am sure you all are grieving all kinds of things right now.  Let this be a moment to be honest about that.   

            Two weeks ago I received a phone call from a parishioner, Gary Moseley, who told me that his mother, at 96 years of age, was nearing her final moments.  I went to visit her in an assisted living home, and after filling out a questionnaire and having my temperature taken, I was permitted to visit her.  When I entered the room, I saw something beautiful.  I saw a frail elderly woman of advanced age, resting quietly and peacefully in her bed, and nestled between her head and the crook of her left arm, was a baby doll. 

            That doll, had brought her comfort during this last chapter of her life, and when I saw this 96 year-old woman holding that doll in bed, it was like watching the full circle of life – a woman so old was herself becoming a little girl again.  I knelt beside her bed, and began to recite the 23rd psalm – the psalm that was sung so beautifully by members of our choir moments ago.  I said prayers, and then anointed her with oil, and then quietly left.  Mrs. Moseley went to be with God later that evening.  As soon as we are permitted to worship in person together again, we will have a memorial service here to honor her life. 

            I have found the 23rd psalm to be one of the greatest and most powerful responses to human grief.  I have said it in multiple hospital rooms, funerals, homes, the list goes on and on.  The psalm reminds us that even though we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil.  This is a psalm that is large enough to bear our grief.   

            I heard the other day the former boxer Mike Tyson say something that struck me as profound as I think about grief this morning.  He said, “I used to think life was about getting everything, but now I realize that life is about losing everything.”  That’s really what life is – life is a process of losing things – losing friendships, losing parents, and in the end, losing our very bodies.  That’s not a very popular message – but it’s the truth.  In the stark reality of loss and grief, the 23rd psalm meets us and says – “yes, it is true, you really will lose everything, even your life but remember though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death you will fear no evil.   

            So I want to pivot away from grief now, recognizing its importance as an emotional response to the reality of loss every single one of us deals with.  Because while the 23rd psalm is powerful during times of grief, it is equally so during times of thanksgiving and joy.  As the author of the psalm writes “surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  This psalm is large enough to contain our grief as well as our joy.  So that’s where I want to go right now – I want to ask you another question, and I want you to write out your answers on the comments.  This is the question – where have you found joy in the last seven weeks?  It could be anything.  Here is my answer.  It was seeing John Ibanez last week in the men’s bible study.   Although he was in the hospital for a medical procedure, John was able to be with our group in his hospital bed on Zoom at 6 in the morning.  It was singing songs with Paul Hardwick and Ed Amash atop Harold’s restaurant last Tuesday evening. 

            I want to close with an invitation.  I want to invite you to read the 23rd psalm daily, for one week, starting today.  And I want to invite you to listen as you read it and pray it for how God speaks to you through it.  And finally, I invite you this week to look into your grief, and consider how God is present int the things you have lost or are losing just as God is also present in the things that bring you joy right now.  AMEN.

April 26, 2020

/

Easter 3 Morning Prayer

Jeff Bohanski, Priest Intern

Luke 24: 13-25

Open the eyes of our faith to you walking with us, Oh Lord.

N. T. Wright, in his commentary entitled Luke for Everyone says,“If the story of the prodigal son has a claim to be the finest story Jesus ever told, the tale of the two on the road to Emmaus must have an equal claim to be the finest scene Luke ever sketched.

The scene Luke presents us today is so easy to picture.  When the story begins we hear of two disciples were walking in fear, confusion, bewilderment and uncertainty.  Jesus came near and went with them.  But the two did not recognize him.  Perhaps because they are afraid of what happened three days ago.  Perhaps they are confused and bewildered because they had hoped Jesus would free them from Rome as he freed people from illness, demons. Now Jesus himself is dead.  Or is he?  They tell Jesus that earlier in the day they heard reports of Jesus being alive.  Alive, could it be?

I believe it is important to note in this story Jesus walked with the two on their journey as if they were the only two on the planet. The disciples’ fear and bewilderment did not keep Jesus away.  He walked with them, stayed with them, he did not abandon them to their fear.  He explained scripture to them and broke bread with them.  Jesus sought them out.

I find great courage when I read this story.  What I learn from this story is that Jesus seeks me out.  He is with me when I am afraid like he was with the two. He tells me as he told the two that he can be found in the scriptures.  He is seen when we break bread together, when we serve one another. 

What a scary time we find ourselves in.  It’s not an easy time.  An extrovert like me has a difficult time with social distancing.  Today marks the first time I have been to the church since this whole social distancing began.

The week before everything was shut down I notified Jimmy that I would not be coming to church because I had picked up a bug going around school.  I felt no one needed a person with a cold at the altar with the threat of the Corona Virus in the news.  It ended up that a few days later the Rodeo was shutdown, HISD and all the surrounding schools were closed until April.  Suddenly we are on the last Sunday of April and we are still in quarantine.  Now we know school won’t be open for the rest of the year. 

Where is Jesus in all of this?  Like with the two, he is walking with us, he is in scripture he is in the midst of our community.

This morning we are live on Facebook, yesterday my niece had a Zoom birthday party for my kindergarten nephew. I’m holding five first-grade classes daily on Microsoft Teams.  People are holding online coffee hours.

Where is Jesus in all of this?  Like with the two, he is walking with us, he is in scripture he is in the midst of our community.

Like the two on the road to Emmaus I may not always recognize him because of my fears, my confusion, my bewilderment and my uncertainty, but I guarantee you he is with me because he loves me.  I guarantee you he is with you as well because he loves you.  God has always been with us.  You can find him in the scriptures.  Even when people were at their very worst and felt most abandoned.  God was with them.  God is with us.

Last weekend was my monthly Iona School of Ministry weekend.  As the weekend started we all wondered how Jesus would be felt in our community via a Zoom.  At our Sunday Service we heard the story of how locked doors could not separate Jesus from his disciples.  As it turned out Jesus not only can’t he be stopped by locked doors, but he can’t be stopped by computer screens as well. Our whole Iona school community felt Jesus presence in our community even though we were spread throughout the Diocese of Texas and beyond.

Where is Jesus in all of this?  Like with the two, he is walking with us, he is in scripture he is in the midst of our community.

One evening early in the pandemic social distancing I made the mistake of watching the news before I went to bed.  I found myself tossing and turning and unable to go to sleep.  When I find myself in a fearful or uncertain time I pray my prayer rope.  I use two mantras.  The first is “Be still and know I am God.” The other is “In you, oh God, I put my trust.”  As I finished these prayers that night I felt as if I was falling asleep in the arms of Jesus. 

Where is Jesus in all of this?  Like the two, he was with me, he is in scripture he is in the midst of our community.

I invite you this week after you finish your prayers, after you finish reading scripture to call someone, call two people.  Call them to say hello, let them know you are calling for no other reason than to check in with them.  Listen to them.  Tell your story.  You will find where Jesus is.  Like the two, he is with you, he is in scripture and he is in the midst of our community.

Amen.

April 19, 2020

/

Easter 2

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

“But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held by its power…”

I once read somewhere that memory lasts about four generations. Meaning that a person generally remembers or knows about or has some sense of their great-great grandparents and their generation. But beyond that, there’s really no knowledge. That is, for me at least, fairly accurate. I know something of my great-great grandparents, but beyond that the slate is blank. It is a rather sobering reminder that memory is not eternal, that, eventually, you and I – short of us becoming famous or infamous – will not be remembered. Not through the fault of any one person or family member, but simply because of the nature of human memory. But the fault doesn’t really lie with our memories – the fault lies with death. Death cuts us off living relationships and so it raises the possibility that we will be forgotten, that we will simply fade away, as though we ceased to be.

Death, as the apostle Peter reminds us today, is a powerful thing. It is an indiscriminate force taking the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad. Death, in the words of Rowan Williams, “is…a drastic severing of relations.” 1 Death ends our ability to be in relationship with others or have them be in relationship with us. With our deaths our lives, but also our stories, our gifts and abilities disappear and, eventually, so does the memory of us. Perhaps most disastrously, death forecloses the possibility of healing or reconciliation. We all know stories of people who die nursing a grudge, or without ever experiencing forgiveness. Simply put, death is the end. The end of biological life, the end of relational life, and the end of spiritual life. With death, all possibilities are shut out.

Jesus faced this, Jesus endured this. Jesus died. His friends who survived him could remember him, but they couldn’t talk with him, they couldn’t interact with him. The chances to be restored, to be forgiven, to explain why they betrayed him and abandoned him were gone forever.

But God raised Jesus from the dead and in raising Jesus from the dead, the power of death to end our lives, our relationships, our futures is overcome. Because Jesus is raised, he can return to his apostles and friends, he can offer forgiveness, relationships continue. Jesus’ life and ministry are not settled, the story isn’t finished. The resurrection opens the life of Jesus onto eternity. Jesus’ life is no longer lived with death constantly on the horizon, it is no longer lived with the understanding that it will all fade away one day. There is always a future before Jesus.

In celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, we celebrate the defeat of death. “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held by its power…” Jesus could not be held by the power of death and through Jesus, you and I are freed from the power of death. We are baptized into his death and resurrection, and Paul says that having been baptized into a death like his, we will also participate in a resurrection like his. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise to you and me that death is not the “period” at the end of the sentence. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise that God will not allow us, our lives, our memories, our stories, our relationships to simply go away. The resurrection of Jesus means that for you and I, there is always an eternity to look forward to, always a future filled with possibilities. Of course, you and I will face death. Biological death, relational death, perhaps even spiritual death. The resurrection does not remove death from our stories, but it changes it. Death is not the end of life, but a feature of life. But we will exist on the other side of death. The Eastern Orthodox have a wonderful way of viewing this, they will often speak of folks “falling asleep in the Lord,” not dying. We fall asleep, but we will awaken.

Death may be natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Death ends life with each other and with God, and we weren’t made for that. We weren’t made to be forgotten after a few years. We were made to live, to live for eternity in the presence of God. Jesus in the Gospel of John says that he came that we might “have life, and have it abundantly,” (Jn 10:10). The abundant life is Jesus’ life, a life so full that death cannot contain it. Jesus shares that life with us, gifting us lives that will not be contained by the power of death. Whether we fall asleep in the Lord today, or fifty years from today our lives will not be ended. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is always a future for us to look towards. The resurrection of Jesus promises us that death will not sever our relationships, that death will not cause us to fade into memory. Death may appear powerful, it may appear final – but that’s just an illusion. What’s powerful is the love of God, and what’s final is God’s choice to raise us from death to new life. Amen.

April 12, 2020

/

Easter Day

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10

The Rev. Jimmy Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

        Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!  The Lord is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!

                It is Easter Sunday and today we celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection to eternal life.  We celebrate that because of resurrection, life now is different.  It is changed.  It is changed in this way: death is not the end, because there is no end to life – even death cannot bring our lives to their final moment.  Our lives are permanently interwoven with God – nothing separates us from God, not even death – that is the Easter proclamation.

                The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia.  Life is different.  [Pause] Is it?

                Let’s check and see.  Hmm.  Okay.  COVID-19 is still out there.  People are still getting sick.  Hospitals are still struggling to meet a growing demand.  We are still sheltering in place.  We don’t know when schools will reopen, when churches will reopen, or when the economy will reopen.  Millions of people are unemployed.  Has Easter changed anything?

                That’s a fair question, and it’s a question that might have been asked that first Easter day.  When Jesus emerged from the tomb and appeared again to the disciples, they knew their lives would never be the same.  They knew their lives would be different.

                It was the resurrection of Jesus that compelled the disciples to go out and proclaim the news that Jesus was risen from the dead around the known world at the time.  There is simply no other motivating factor (that I can think of) which would have caused them to do that. 

                Yet – while the resurrection changed the lives of the disciples, the change didn’t mean anyone’s life was going to get easier.  The resurrection was a defeat over death, but it was not an invitation to an easier life.  The resurrection of Jesus did not solve the problem of Roman occupation of Israel.  The resurrection did not prevent the later suffering of the disciples and apostles, as told in the book of Acts.  Neither did the resurrection set the church up for a life of ease for the centuries to follow.  Resurrection has failed to be an answer to global hunger, war, famine, homelessness, and novel viruses. 

                The resurrection does not solve our problem about dying and death – we still must go through it.  So, what is it?  Does anything really change as a result of it? 

                Yes.  And it is this.  In the resurrection of Jesus, God is saying to Jesus “you are my beloved son, and my love knows no boundaries.  Not even death can stop it.”  What that means is that God is saying the same thing to us: “you - me, we, all of us are God’s beloved children, and the love God has for us has no end.”  The resurrection of Jesus reveals to all of us that nothing God creates goes to waste.  What belongs to God will never be lost, not even our bodies. 

                Like the early disciples, resurrection does not entitle us to a life without adversity, pain, hardship, disease, or hunger.  We will continue to experience these.  But it does promise to us that God is with us through all of it. 

                One more thing the resurrection does not do – it does not answer qualitatively all our questions about life after death.  What will it be like?  How will I look?  Will I have my 44-year-old body or my 18-year-old body?  Do I have a choice?  All resurrection reveals to us is that God’s love is stronger than death.  After that, we must be silent and leave the how’s, where’s, whys, and when’s to God.  God knows the answers to all those questions – the answers are not for us to know right now. 

                Our Easter work is simple: to give thanks and to simply trust our God who defeated death and rose again.  Life is changed – not ended, not easier, not entitled – but changed.  For that Easter change, we give thanks to God.  AMEN.

April 9, 2020

/

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12: 1-14

Psalm 116: 1, 10-17

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13:1-17,31-35

The Rev. Jimmy Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

 

At the end of the day, when everything is taken from us, when we have nothing left to give or to offer.  We have love.

 That’s the point of Maundy Thursday, at least to me.

A question sometimes asked about today is why is it called Maundy?  The word Maundy comes from the Latin “mandautum”  which means “commandment” 

 In the reading from the Gospel today, we hear Jesus offer a new commandment to those gathered around the table with him. 

 They break bread together, they share the Eucharist, and Jesus takes a towel around his waist, and begins to wash the feet of the disciples.

 I imagine that there was a lot of anxiety in the room at that moment.  Jesus is about to be arrested, the disciples knew that their time with Jesus would be short. 

And Jesus in fact tells them “I am not going to be with you much longer.  My time with you is coming to an end.” 

 It was not what they wanted to hear.  There was nothing uplifting about it.  It was bad news, no way around it.  The sense of dread the disciples felt might have been similar to the sense of dread we feel even now, wondering what the final death toll will be from this virus.

How many will die, how much will we lose?  What else is going to be taken from us?

“A new commandment I am going to give you – that you love one another,”  Jesus says to the disciples the night before his death.

In other words, Jesus was saying, “Look, I am not going to be with you much longer.  But this is how I am going to remain with you – you will know my presence and that I am with you by the love you show one another.”

There is nothing easy about this.  If you live in a home with another person, or five other people, in my case, weeks of sheltering in place has a way of challenging Christ’s commandment to love the other person.  I drove by a person in a wheelchair on a street corner asking for money, and I did not roll my window down, I did not offer this person anything in the way of assistance or help.  I fail to love the way Jesus instructs us to love on a daily basis. 

But here’s the thing about love which we all know.  If we reach out, if we love another person, that love will always come back to us.  In our isolation right now it might seem as if the phone weighs a 1,000 pounds – it’s too heavy to pick up to call a friend or family member.  It does to me sometimes.

But that’s what tonight is all about – remembering that Christ’s love that he left his disciples with, that new commandment that he proclaimed is with us all tonight.  It is our commandment – to love in spite of all the odds.

Jesus did not say “love one another except in times of a pandemic, or love one another except when your 401k is depleted.”  The strength of Christ’s love will be truly known to us when everything around us falls and withers away.  Because in the end, that is all we will have anyway. 

In a few moments, we will remove what is left of the altar appointments – this is called the stripping of the altar.  And it is meant to represent to us the abandonment of Jesus in his final moments – he was alone – everything taken away from him except one thing.  His love.  His love will remain.  No matter how dark, how uncertain, his love will always be.  AMEN.

April 5, 2020

/

Palm Sunday  - Year A

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Crowds greet Jesus today as he enters Jerusalem. They find branches and cloaks to lay in his path, and they sing and shout and cheer, they greet him with “Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowds are ecstatic to see Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, coming into Jerusalem.

I can’t help but think of how different today, the start of Holy Week is, from the end of Holy Week. Over the course of this week, as the crowd that greeted Jesus sees what it means for Jesus to be king, as they see the risk that is involved in claiming allegiance to Jesus, as they witness firsthand what happens when the Kingdom of Jesus meets the kingdoms of Herod, Pilate, and powers in charge of this world, the crowd starts to thin out. Eventually, even Jesus’s closest friends and followers leave him until he dies all-but alone on Good Friday – with only his mother and John the Beloved Disciple keeping watch at the cross.

The crowds begin to thin as they realize that Jesus isn’t the kind of king they expected or wanted. This happens with a lot of movements: there’s an incredible amount of passion and energy at the start, at the promise, at the hope – but as reality sets in things begin to fizzle. The crowds wanted Jesus when it meant was waving branches and singing songs, but the crowd didn’t want Jesus when things got hard, when all hope seemed lost, when Jesus didn’t act like or look like a king should.

Now, it’s not that the crowds were especially wicked people – they were simply realists. They read the writing on the wall. They knew what it meant for someone to be handed over to death on a cross, it meant the entire power of the Roman Empire was going to kill them and make an example out of them. Jesus was going to be hung up as an example to anyone who would be silly enough to think they were a king. The crowds that welcomed Jesus knew that victorious kings don’t get killed. Jesus didn’t meet their expectations, so the crowds moved on.

We have the same temptation: the temptation to move on when Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations, when Jesus doesn’t act in the way we think Jesus should. We have our boxes, and when Jesus doesn’t fit in them or stay in them, we find fault with him and go on our way.

Jesus challenges us and our expectations. Will we accept Jesus on his terms, in his way, or will we try and fit Jesus into our box? The church, for 2,000 years, has done a marvelous job of putting Jesus into all sorts of boxes, of trying to stifle him, of making him into a mascot. But God can’t be trapped – and Jesus, despite our best attempts, is still alive, still at work, still willing to be our king if we’re willing to let him define the terms. The crowds abandoned Jesus as Holy Week drug on because they were limited by the box they put Jesus in.  According to their box, the dead don’t rise again, killed kings aren’t victorious, death is the end. But Jesus doesn’t fit into that box.

As we begin what is undoubtedly the most interesting Holy Week I have ever experienced, I hope we will keep our eyes open to the ways in which Jesus is breaking out of our boxes, and inviting us to know him on his own terms, not on ours. If we are going to follow Jesus, we have to give up some control, we have to let go of what how we think Jesus will act, and open ourselves up to the possibility that God is still at work, even when everything seems to the contrary. Rowan Williams puts its beautifully when he write “God is not at the end of his resources, when we are at the end of ours.”

Holy Week invites us to re-familiarize ourselves with the central events in the history of our salvation. We are invited to re-hear the story of Jesus’ victory over death and the grave, of the ways in which he has defeated sin through the power of his cross. We are invited to become reacquainted with Jesus Christ, the king who surprises us. We are invited to stick with Christ, to let get of our expectations, and wait to see what Jesus is up to. Amen.  

March 29, 2020

/

5 Lent  

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11: 1-45

The Rev. James M.L. Grace 


In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

                Good morning.  I want to begin this morning just by saying I miss you.  I miss seeing you all here in this building.  I miss our conversations at coffee hour.  I miss hearing a choir sing.  As I gaze out at row after row of empty pews, I feel a vacancy, a kind of emptiness that maybe you all feel too.  I miss you.  This has been a hard week for all of us.  We have members of our church who have lost employment, some who have lost hope, some who have lost faith. 

            To that point I want to share a story with you.  A person once asked the buddha, “if Buddhism is so simple can you explain it in one sentence?”  And the Buddha said, “I can’t, but I can explain it in three.”  And so the person said, “okay, three, go ahead give me the answer.”  And the Buddha said “1.  Everything changes.  2.  Anything can happen at anytime.  And 3 I am not exempt.”  In other words, this is all temporary, nothing is certain, we are not excused.  That’s heavy.  That’s a lot of reality.  Some of us choose not to accept that much reality, because it can be painful, so we find ways to avoid it.   A pandemic is a form of reality that evokes a spiritual response, because a pandemic forces us to live with the knowledge that we will one day die. 

            We are like Jesus, wandering through a desolate wilderness alone, facing temptation, and wondering exactly where God is in all of this.  At least that’s what people have asked me.  “Where is God now?” they ask.  I have no easy answers, no platitudes to offer, except to say that God is exactly where God needs to be: God is with us in all of this.  We are not alone.  We are not being punished. 

            But it does kind of feel that God has put the whole world in a cosmic “time out,” doesn’t it?  I do not believe that it is a coincidence that one of our readings this morning comes from the 37th chapter of Ezekiel.  I really don’t.  In the reading, we meet Ezekiel, who is placed by God in a valley of dry bones.  Actually, the reading says they are very dry, indicating that all of these bones were from bodies of soldiers who long had been dead.  Ezekiel sees nothing but death, nothing but despair, nothing but hopelessness.  And then God asks Ezekiel a very strange question, God says “Ezekiel, do you think these bones can live?”  And Ezekiel says, “God I have no idea – only you would know” (this is a very smart answer).  And their conversation goes on, and we know the rest of the story: the bones are animated, they join together, muscle and tendon and skin grow upon them and the bones become people again. 

            What does this mean?  Ezekiel was written during a tragic period of time in Israel’s history.  An invading Babylonian army had destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  The temple in Jerusalem, which was considered the hub of religious activity and piety, was razed to the ground.  The Hebrews, God’s chosen people, were forced into exile and lived far away in Babylon.  It is believed that the book of Ezekiel was written in Babylon, during this time of exile. 

            Their cities destroyed, their temple lost, the Hebrews looked around and asked the question many are asking today: “what is God doing?”  Imagine how scared they were.  In response to the anxiety of his day, Ezekiel proclaimed in a story we hear today, that God was rebuilding.  Bones long since dead were being reclaimed once again by God to rebuild new bodies and create new life.  It was Ezekiel’s message of hope, ultimately that as God rejoined these old bones, so to, would God rejoin Israel, now nearly dead, and make it live once again.  Ezekiel’s vision gave people hope.

            Many of us here today might feel that we are walking through a similar valley as Ezekiel.  You might feel just like Ezekiel – that your life has been overturned, and that like him, you’ve also been plopped into a valley of old very dry bones.  I certainly felt that way this week.  If that’s where you are, know there is nothing wrong with feeling grief, sadness, depression, or anxiety.  I felt all those feelings this week. 

            But here’s the thing, and I learned this from a person who I once confided many of my personal troubles in.  After running through a list of whatever my grievances and frustrations were at the time to this person, he only had one question for me.  He said, “Jimmy I hear you saying all that.  So where is the good?”  I didn’t like that he asked me that question, because it meant not only that I needed to see a positive, and at the time I was much more interested in just focusing on all the negative around me.  His question also meant also that I no longer could keep playing a victim (which felt so good!) once I started identifying where the good was. 

            So where is the good in all this?  Those of you with in church now, go ahead and write on this livestream where you are seeing good.  Write where you are seeing God.  Write how you are seeing God put things back together in your life as God once brought together old bones.  Because the good is that God is present, now, in all of this.  The good is that when we rebuild, perhaps we might rebuild things in a better way.  The good is that as our officials tell us to shelter in place, some of us are learning to shelter in peace.  The good is that we are pulling together.  The good is that even though we look around and see only dry bones around us now, things are growing and emerging and there is resurrection even now.  It would be easy to give up right now.  I hope to God you don’t.  I hope to God you don’t give up before the miracle happens.  Because it will.  It’s already happening now.

            Two weeks from today – we celebrate Easter.  We will join with many other people who affirm a simple belief that dry bones are not an end, but a prerequisite to something greater, something eternal, something miraculous.  Yes, it is Lent.  Yes, we are in a valley, and all I see, at least, are dry bones.  And yes, God will create something beautiful out of everyone.  AMEN.  

March 22, 2020

/

4 Lent

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41

 The Rev. James M.L. Grace


In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

 

            About three weeks ago I reported for my first volunteer shift for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  There was some conversation on our committee about a virus making headway into the United States, and someone on the committee asked if they thought it would have any impact on the Rodeo attendance.  Seven days later, the announcement came that the Rodeo was shutting down early for the first time since it started in 1931.  A month ago, I never would have predicted this – where we are now. 

            Over the past week, I have reached out and talked to many of you. I haven’t made all my phone calls yet (I’m handling A-M of the phone directory, and am currently on “F”).  It has been so wonderful to hear your voice.  To share with you in your joy, your struggle, your hope, your uncertainty, but also your humor.  You have shared painful truths, you have shared your financial anxiety with me.  I get it.  I really do.  Because I share all of that with you.  But you also are sharing your humor, and what a gift that is! One of you shared with me that your grandson, upon learning that church was closed for the foreseeable future, said to his mother “Mom!  How will we get Jesus back?” 

            Look, we have find reasons to laugh, even in uncertain times like this.  We all feel scared, we all feel lost.  I spoke with a colleague of mine, a priest in a different city this week, and he asked “should I be happy now?  I don’t even know what to feel.”  I don’t how I should feel, either. As my wife and I keep saying to each other, we are in uncharted territory.  It’s new for all of us. 

            We see empty stadiums, empty restaurants, juxtaposed with images of hospitals crammed with people in Italy and in other parts of the world.  The world seems less familiar – it seems more strange – it appears more scary, at least to me.  What do we do? 

            I believe we have an answer, and it comes to us in something called the BIBLE – which stands for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.”  I didn’t make that up.  It’s the 23rd psalm.  What a masterpiece.  What a gift to read that psalm today.  I want to read it again. 

            “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his names sake.Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.  Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.  Thou preparist a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

            With all the uncertainty and ambiguity in the world, I daily get on my knees and ask the Lord to lead me and to guide me in all that I do.  I am just a sheep who chooses to surrender my need for control,  my need to explain, my need to understand.  I am just one sheep in much larger herd, doing my best to listen to the shepherd’s voice.  Christ is my shepherd.  I surrender my life, to follow him. 

            I am choosing to accept and surrender to God’s plan.  Notice I did not say the word “understand.”  I don’t understand God’s plan, I can’t explain it.  But I trust it.  I trust God now more than ever with the chaos going around us. I am able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil because I know my shepherd is with me.  We are going to get through this.  God is with us and God will see us through it. 

            A pandemic is not the end of the world.  Suffering is not the end of the world.  Author and priest Henri Nouwen writes these words on suffering, which I share with you today because they mean something to me, and I hope they mean something to you:

“  I really want to encourage you not to despair, not to lose faith, not to let go of God in your life, but stand in your suffering as a person who believes that she is deeply loved by God. When you look inside yourself, you might sometimes be overwhelmed by all the brokenness and confusion, but when you look outside toward him who died on the cross for you, you might suddenly realize that your brokenness has been lived through for you long before you touched it yourself.

 

Suffering is a period in your life in which true faith can emerge, a naked faith, a faith that comes to life in the midst of great pain. The grain, indeed, has to die in order to bear fruit and when you dare to stand in your suffering, your life will bear fruit in ways that are far beyond your own predications or understanding. . . .”

 

Believe that good will come from this, and it will.  Centuries ago, when the Great Plague hit London, Isaac Newton, then in his 20s, practiced a form of “self quarantine” at his home.  Away from college, Newton thrived.  He later called his year away from his professors annus mirabilis the “year of wonders.”  He did a lot during his time at home from school because of the plague.  He wrote papers that would later become early calculus, and he also discovered the principle of gravity.  Look for the good and hold onto it.  The Lord is OUR shepherd, he will watch over us, in all things and through all times.  AMEN.

March 1, 2020

/

Lent 1 – Year A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Today’s lesson from Genesis is the first story we have in Scripture of shattered trust. Adam and Eve are in the garden and the serpent appears, tempting them to do the one thing God said not to do: eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. And they do it! The result is a tragic, immediate awareness of their own nakedness. They see themselves as exposed, as vulnerable, as capable of being hurt. Before there was no knowledge of this, no thought in their mind that someone or something might mislead them. They were like children, who see only good. They were like children, who knew the word of God and knew, in their bones, that whatever God said was true and good and beautiful and right. God could be trusted, the God who created them, who brought then out of the dust of the ground, willed and desired only their best!

Adam and Eve lived in a state of absolute and total trust in God. But the serpent introduces a new thought: what if...what if God can’t really be trusted? God had given to Eve and Adam everything in the garden, except for this tree. What if there was more that wasn’t being given? What if…God was keeping something from them? What if God was keeping the very ability to be like God from Adam and Eve? The Serpent planted this seed in the mind of Adam and Eve and it took root.

The fall of Adam and Eve, the fall of humanity, is often taught or talked about as though it was the result of a violation of a rule. Adam and Eve broke the rule and so God dished out the punishment for breaking that rule, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I don’t think the fall is a result of a rule-break, I think the rule-breaking is a result of the fall. The fall happens when Eve and Adam choose to trust in the Serpent and not in God. The Serpent said, in so many words, that God couldn’t really be trusted and when you entertain that idea that God is fundamentally, untrustworthy, everything else goes haywire. Why follow the rule of this possibly capricious, possibly withholding deity?

What I find especially tragic in the story of the fall, is that the temptation made to Eve by the serpent is a twisting of the truth. The Serpent says that, in eating of the tree, Eve and Adam will be like God, they trust the serpent, and in trusting the serpent they forget the word of God, they forget the truth of God. Remember back in Genesis 1, God has just created the earth and stars, the creatures of the sea and the ground and the sky, and he says “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” From the very beginning, humanity was created to be like God. God created us to be as much like God as a creature can be.

Adam and Eve forgot. Adam and Eve forgot that they were already like God, that in their very bones they were like God, because God made them, and God gave them every possible good. Adam and Eve forgot, believing instead the Serpent. Eve and Adam are tempted by something they already had. To be like God, to desire to be like God isn’t a bad thing, it’s the greatest thing we could want to be. The first sin isn’t a desire to be like God, the first sin is forgetting what God has already given us and trusting in another instead of God. In trusting the serpent over God, humanity’s relationship with God and with everything else is broken. Doubt now exists – can we really trust God? Can we trust creation? Can we trust each other? The serpent sowed a seed of doubt that still exists in us. 

It’s interesting to hear the story of Jesus’ own temptation in light of the temptation of Adam and Eve. Today Jesus finds himself away from the cities and towns of Galilee and Judaea, in the wilderness, led there by the Holy Spirit after his baptism, and here, in a setting not too different from the garden, he is tempted by Satan three times. I think it’s interesting how Satan introduces the first two temptations: “If you are the Son of God…” turn these stones to bread, throw yourself down. Christ is being tempted to prove that he is the Son of God. But he refuses.  He won’t give in to temptation. We talk about Christ’s three temptations, and yes there were three specific ways in which he was tempted, but there was only one real temptation, the same temptation that got Adam and Eve: the temptation to doubt God and trust in another.

Keep in mind, the end of chapter 3 in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus’ baptism. Do you remember what happens? Jesus goes to John, he is baptized, the skies open, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends and God speaks. Do you remember what he says? God says “This. Is. My. Son.” At his baptism, God declares to everyone that Jesus is the Son of God, and now Satan comes on the scene wanting Jesus to prove it. Satan is tempting Jesus, just like he tempted Adam and Eve, tempting Jesus to doubt God. Tempting Jesus to imagine that God cannot be trusted.

But Jesus resists. Jesus’ will not stop trusting in God and in what God has said. Every temptation is met with a renewed statement of faith in God:

One does not live by bread alone…

Do not put the Lord your God to the test…

Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him…

Jesus is tempted, but Jesus at every turn trust in God. Do you see what’s happening? Paul helps us here, in the letter to the Romans which we heard from today, Paul sets up a contrast between Adam (and I would say Eve, as well) and Jesus. Through the one came death, through the other life. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is a kind of undoing of the fall from grace into sin. Jesus trusts God, where Adam and Eve couldn’t. Jesus becomes the new Adam, the new human. Jesus trusts in God fully, totally, completely. Jesus trusts God even to the point of death, and that trust proven on Easter morning.

Adam and Eve and Jesus. All of them were tempted to doubt God, to doubt what God had said about them: Adam and Eve were tempted to doubt that they were already like God, made in God’s likeness. Jesus was tempted to doubt that he was really God’s Son. Adam and Eve gave into temptation. They doubted that God was dependable. Jesus didn’t give into temptation. Jesus trusted.

There are plenty of serpents and devils around still. We are still tempted every day by voices that that invite us to trust what they say instead of God and what God says. The voices come from our jobs, our families, our friends, our churches(!), our politics. They’re all over. They tempt us to think, to believe that God can’t be trusted, that God’s word to us and about us can’t be trusted. Lent is a time to make space, to give up on a few of those voices that tempt us to doubt. Lent isn’t about thinking how terrible you are. It’s about taking stock of all the voices in our lives, it’s about answering the question of who we will trust. Will we trust serpents and devils that say we can’t really believe God, that we can’t really depend on God to tell us the truth about ourselves? Or will we trust God? AMEN

March 8, 2020

/

2 Lent

Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

 

            Does the church look any different to you all today?  Not really, right?  The paint is still the same color, the pews are where they were last week.  Everything pretty much looks the same in here as it did last week.  But the church is different this week than it was one week ago.  And if it doesn’t look different to you than it did last week, I would suggest that we aren’t looking close enough.

            See in this church last week, we read the Bible – the whole Bible Genesis to Revelation, from start to finish.  We read it right here.  Fifty volunteers read for about 80 hours – that’s how long it took, to get us through the Bible.  And so this church looks different to me now, as a result.  This looks like a church in which the word of God was read inside it.   Just like we are changed when we read the Bible, so to, I believe, this church is different as well.  It’s a bit kinder.  It’s a bit more open to where God is calling it.  It’s people are a bit more open to the Holy Spirit.  Look close enough, and you will see, or feel, the change I am speaking of.

            If I could summarize the entire message of the Bible, to consolidate all 66 of its books into one phrase, it would be this: “be not afraid, fear not.”  That’s it.  And that is a message I need to hear, every day – sometimes every hour of every day.  I need to remember that I do not need to be afraid because God is in control.  Everyday I turn my life over to God, and entrust my loved ones, my family, my children, to God’s care.  And when I do that, I’m not in fear.  When I forget that God is in control, and become confused and think that I am in control, that’s when I slip into fear. 

I have a simple definition of fear – an acronym which spells fear out to me: Future Events Appearing Real.  If I am not intentionally in prayer, and seeking God’s will, not my own, then fear is where I end up every time. Give me two minutes and if I am not connected to God I can catastrophize about the future and cook up the worst possible outcome of a situation and I can fixate on that. 

I can build an idol out of my fear and bow down and worship before my fear god very quickly.  I’ve had lots of practice worshipping my fears.  The Bible is very clear about idol worship – and if you don’t know where God stands on this topic, let me suggest to you that God does not like it very much. 

There is plenty of fear to go around right now.  But you know what?  The sun rose this morning.  And it rose for everybody.  We’re going to be okay.

That is the message of the Bible.  In our reading from Genesis today we meet a man named Abram, who at this point of the story lived in a region called Haran, which scholars think is right on the border of modern day Turkish/Syrian border.  It is in Haran where God calls out to Abram “go from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  It’s quite an ask, don’t you think? 

Imagine you are Abram, and God comes to you and says, “listen I know that you are comfortable, and that you are settled, but this is not the place I have prepared for you to live in.  It’s time to pack up and go somewhere else – another place I will show you.”  That’s kind of scary, isn’t it?  Very few people enjoy change, more or less moving, for that matter. 

Abram could have refused God’s command.  But he did not.  He packed his things, and settled into a new land, which would become Israel.  Abram’s new life following God’s command was not easy, and he encountered much in the way of struggle.  But Abram persevered, and today, is remembered for his faith and trust in the Almighty.

See, faith is the opposite of fear.  Abram did not fear, Abram believed.  And because of his faith, God tells Abram later, “Hey Abram, how would you feel about having a new name.  How does ‘Abraham’ sound?  Do you like it?” Abraham would become the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  But none of that would have been possible for Abram had he lived in fear.

We all have a choice today – we can choose to build idols out of fear and go ahead and worship them.  We can do that, and be miserable.  Or we can choose faith, the opposite of fear, and turn our lives to God, and entrust God with every facet.  We can do that, and be happy, joyous, and free.  I’ve lived in fear long enough.  Today, I’m choosing to live in faith, remembering that God is in control.  AMEN.

February 26, 2020

/

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

 

I begin this sermon with words from Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist and author.  You might be thinking to yourself "Richard Dawkins - isn't he that atheist who wrote "The God Delusion"?  Yes, he is.  While I would part ways with Dawkins on that book, I am in alignment with much of his work, including a book he wrote in 1998 entitled "Unweaving the Rainbow" which begins with these words:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly, those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here, we privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

What a gift our lives are.  What honor there is in acknowledging that our lives are fleeting - momentary blips on a cosmic scale.  And yet - here we are today, on Ash Wednesday, pausing during our busy lives to ponder the curious fact that we are mortal.  Today is one of my favorite days of the year, which probably sounds odd, or morbid.    I love this day because of its simple acknowledgement of a truth many of us deny - which is that none of us are getting out of this alive!

 

As a follower of Christ for the last thirty years, death no longer frightens me in ways it used to.  I am at a point in my own faith journey where if tomorrow someone was able to prove unquestionably that the resurrection of Jesus never occurred - that it was, for example,  a simple legend told after Jesus' death to inspire his followers, I would probably say:  "Well, I guess that means we lose Easter, but could we still have Ash Wednesday?"  

 

Jesus embraced and honored his living, and his dying.  I cannot think of anyone other than Jesus who not only once lived a beautiful life but continues to live in a very real way.  Jesus is alive. but even so, I would not miss Easter, because we live in a culture that seeks to anesthetize itself to the natural process of dying.  As an American society, we have outsourced much of the dying process to hospitals and elderly care facilities.  We have enabled a multi-billion-dollar funeral industry to handle our dead.  All of this has produced a result where we are a death denying culture.  In our culture which denies death in so many ways, we need Ash Wednesday.  We need Good Friday, though attendance at both pales in comparison to Easter.  

 

I am guilty of this same denial of death.  To be honest with you all, I still struggle with the Latin phrase "memento mori," which means "remember you must die."  For a long time, whenever I was asked if I wanted to be an organ donor when I would renew my driver's license, I would answer "no."  Why?  The answer is simple.  I would not permit myself to think about my body on a table being opened.  Gross!  Like I would even be aware of it!  Of course, I wouldn't - I would be dead.  Perhaps I thought that if I would say no to being an organ donor in some way I could postpone death or deny its inevitability.  At some point, I don't know when, I went to the DPS to renew my driver's license.  I was asked if I would consider being an organ donor, again.  That time, I said yes.  I grew up.

 

Mortality is a part of living.  When we gather for a funeral service, we are gathering to do a couple of things.  We are giving thanks to God for the life the person lived.  We are gathering to grieve.  But more importantly at a funeral we gather to express our trust in God that death is not the end.  That God has a purpose for all of us, in our living and in our dying, and that purpose is holy.  You have a purpose, even if your life seems purpose-less.  God has a purpose for you.

 

I was reminded of God's purpose in living and in dying nineteen years ago when my brother in law died from a virulent form of leukemia.  His name was Granger.  Granger’s father is a Methodist pastor.  As the funeral plans were coming together, the family decided that they wanted to have Granger cremated.  I will never forget one day getting the call from Granger's father, asking me if I would accompany him to the crematorium to stand beside Granger's body in its final moments before entering the crematorium. 

 

I stood there beside Granger and his father in that crematorium.  His father said a few prayers.  While I don't remember the words, I remember the intent.  They were gentle prayers.  They were kind prayers.  In them were the words only a parent can say at a time such as that.  He entrusted Granger to God.  He believed that even at the moment before the body of his son was to be cremated, that Christ was present.  

 

I will never forget that day. I will never forget how even in those final moments; Granger's father saw so clearly the purpose of his son's life.  I will never forget the trust his father had that God's grace was fully present in that room, and that there would be a day when he would see his son again.  In that crematorium, beside the furnace which would soon consume his body, turning it to ash, I saw the resurrection.  At the end of life, I saw it begin again.

 

All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  AMEN.