February 7, 2021

The Fifth Sunday After Epiphany

1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Let me start this morning with saying that it is my honor and blessing to be standing here in front of you this morning on this, the second to the last Sunday of Epiphany, this Sunday that some would call Protodeacon Sunday.

As many of you know, an Epiphany is a sudden understanding of something.  Every Sunday in Epiphany we hear an epiphany story, a story of a sudden bright understanding of God or of Jesus the Gospel writer wants his readers to have. 

I see epiphanies happening in my first-grade class a lot.  My favorite first-grade epiphany is a reading epiphany.  It’s when a child suddenly and completely understands that letters make sounds, sounds make words and words have meaning.  The meaning of the word hits the child like a bolt of lightning.  The child knows he or she can read!

Over the years I have found that my favorite first-grade epiphany reading moment happens during the restroom break.  Invariably a child, usually a boy, runs out of the restroom and yells at the top of his lungs, exclaiming, “Mr. Bohanski, someone wrote sh… !”   I usually jump in before the child has a chance to finish the sentence and say, “Congratulations, you are reading!  But remember, just because you can read that word doesn’t mean you can say that word.” 

Today’s epiphany story happens in the first chapter of Mark.  That in itself is important because the author is laying the foundation for the message the author wants to give his readers.  Mark tells these healing stories in chapter one because he wants his readers to know now, in the beginning of the Gospel who Jesus is and what it means to be his followers.

Now let me recap the story.  The story takes place in Capernaum on the same sabbath day where Jesus had just healed a man with an unclean spirit.  He had given orders to an unclean spirit to come out and be silent.  After the healing Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue and go straight to Simon and Andrew’s house where Jesus is informed that Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  Jesus goes to her, takes her hand and lifts her up.  The fever leaves her and she begins to serve them.  Later that evening more sick people in need of healing and people with demons in need of exercising were brought to Jesus.  The next morning Jesus was nowhere to be seen.  Finally he was found praying in a deserted place.  Many people are surprised at Jesus’ response.  He says, “Let’s go.  Let’s go do this somewhere else.” 

I believe, the author of Mark is first telling his readers that Jesus is God’s son, the one who demonstrates he has power over the physical world when he heals the sick, the one who demonstrates he has power over the spiritual world when he gives orders to demons and they obey him.  Mark wants his readers to know that it is this powerful Jesus who wants to come into their worlds, into their current state of life to lift them up like he did with Simon’s mother-in-law in her house and transform them.  No questions asked.  Jesus wants to encounter them.  Jesus wants to encounter us.

The second question is, what is a faithful Christian supposed to do?  This week I learned that when the author of Mark wrote the sentence, “She began to serve them.”, he used a word we translate as deacon.  So Mark is saying the faithful response to an encounter Jesus is to deacon, is to serve as Simon’s mother-in-law served.  As faithful Christians we are all called to serve one another, to deacon one another.  Be like Simon’s mother-in-law the first deacon, the protodeacon, the one who faithfully demonstrates she follows Jesus by serving others.

So this week, as I pondered Simon’s mother-in-law and how she served in her faithful response to her encounter with Jesus, I could imagine the rest of the people in the town of Capernaum who Jesus healed and exercised doing the same as Simon’s mother-in-law had done.  They were “deaconing”.  They were serving.  As the week went on, I began to see with my minds eye a town filled with joy, a town where no one bashed each other on Facebook but instead posted positive memes.  I could see with my mind’s eye a town where people were caring for one another despite their race, creed, sexual orientation, their gender identity or struggle with their gender identity.  I could see a town where no church would exclude a minister for being in a same sex relationship.  I could see a town where people lovingly listened to one another.  I could see a town where someone could express their grief and another would listen and be with that person in their grief.  As I envisioned this new Capernaum I thought, perhaps that is why at the end of this story Jesus says, let’s go.  These people of new Capernaum have got the message, others need to hear it. 

So this week, I invite us all to open ourselves to this powerful healing and exercising Jesus, who like with Simon’s mother-in-law, wants to come to us, take our hands and lift us up be in relationship with him, just as we are.  I invite all to, with God’s help, to serve, to deacon one another whether we are at home or at work.  Whether we are with people whom we agree with or with people we don’t agree with or we are with people who look like us or people that don’t.

Finally, I invite us all, me included, to love God and respond faithfully to God’s love by serving one another like Simon’s mother-in-law, the protodeacon did.

January 31, 2021

The Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8: 1-13; Mark 1: 21-28

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit.  What a strange story, one that in 2021 seems…dated, old-fashioned, am I right?  On December 26, 1973, a movie called The Exorcist opened in movie theaters across the country and as one critic wrote “all hell broke loose.”  The film’s story of young girl possessed by a demonic presence generated such interest amongst the American public that people stood in line outside movie theaters to watch it – even while braving 6 degree temperatures, rain, and sleet.  I didn’t see The Exorcist until twenty years after its release, in the 90s.  Years later when attending seminary in Alexandria, VA, I was walking through nearby Georgetown, where that movie was filmed, and I found myself carefully walking down those famous steps from the film’s ending.    

            The church in recent times has struggled with the concept of evil, in dealing with stories like that from the Gospel of Mark today.  Often the very concept of exorcism seems more an anachronistic embarrassment than valid ministry.  The Episcopal Church itself does not have a liturgy for exorcism. The closest the church gets are a few words on exorcism in The Book Of Occasional Services which basically amounts to “if you have questions, call the Bishop,” which I interpret as “no one really takes this seriously.”  

            Whenever afforded the opportunity to preach on the story about the possessed man in the synagogue whom Jesus encounters, I have opted out.  My decision to be silent on these and other Gospel stories dealing with possession was two-fold.  On one hand, I didn’t understand them.  Second, I wasn’t sure what to say about evil personified in spiritual terms as demonic or unclean.   I found it safer to domesticate these stories in some way – to strip them of their spiritual nature and seek medical explanations for the behavior people purportedly possessed with unclean spiritus exhibited.

            Rather than saying the man in the synagogue was possessed by the devil, I found myself more comfortable saying  “the man in the synagogue was mentally ill, perhaps schizophrenic, or bipolar, and Jesus healed him.”   That is a miracle to be sure – but it downplays any kind of outside spiritual forces.  I don’t believe that way anymore, and I want to be careful how I say this – but I do believe in possession. 

            Now, before you write me off as a lunatic – allow me to explain.  The power of possession is that it is subtle, and it is most powerful when we are not even aware of it.   Consider someone who is a narcissist.  A narcissist holds themselves in such high esteem that they literally believe they can do no wrong.  They are possessed with an untrue image of themselves – an inflated image which convinces them that they are better than everyone else.  This image isolates them, and the demon of their narcissism creates nothing but loneliness, pain, and sadness.  Because it is subtle, the demon of narcissism closes your eyes to that, while others see it clearly.   

            If that example of possession is not persuasive consider this one: an alcoholic, by definition, is possessed with a lie, one which states that they can control their consumption of alcohol.  Medical, psychological, and behavior evidence points to the contrary, and the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that left untreated, there are three outcomes for the untreated alcoholic: jails, institutions, or death.  Still not convinced possession is real?  

            I offer one final example.  In the twentieth century, a first-world country that identified as Christian (one half Lutheran and one-half Catholic) orchestrated the systemic murder of over six million people – including the developmentally disabled, lesbian and gay, along with countless members of the Jewish faith.  What force could possess Christians to commit such horror?

            Holocaust Remembrance Day was last week, and it brings its solemn message to us yet again: Lest We Forget.  Lest We Forget that we are not immune to outside forces which have the power to possess us.  All of us are possessed in some way.  The political divisiveness in our country boils down to an unavoidable truth which is that many of us are possessed with the idea that our political party is right and good, and the other is sinister.  How does this possession serve us?  How does it make us better people?

I conclude with an answer to the problem of possession and evil, and it comes straight out of the Bible.  It is not enough for us to merely stand against it.  We don’t just get to separate ourselves from it.  Instead, we look to Jesus on the cross, crucified.  Like Jesus we do not capitulate to the evil around us, but rather we absorb it.  We become it so that we can transform it.  That probably makes very little sense to you.  I don’t say that to be condescending.  Absorbing evil so that we can transform it doesn’t make sense to me either, but it is what Jesus did, and it is what I am trying to allow Jesus to continue to do through me. 

I hope you take an honest look at what might be possessing you – your cell phone, your social media, your job, even your religious beliefs.  Invite Jesus in and let Jesus draw what is unclean out of you.  Invite him to exorcise your heart.  A warning: it is never comfortable when we invite Jesus in and ask him to transform our heart.  But it is the only to live a life worth living, one that is free of possessions.  AMEN.

January 24, 2021

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Mark 1: 14-20

The Rev. Canon Joann Saylors

I am one of those people who tends not to notice visual details in the landscape around me.  When I’ve been out riding around with my husband in areas we go all the time, I can't tell you how many times I've said, "Huh.  When did that building go up?" or "Huh.  Where did that building go?", only to have him say, "They've been building that (or tearing that down) for eight months." 

 It will be happening right beside me, on the side of a familiar, well-traveled road, and I manage to drive by without even noticing.  I guess I'm so focused on what's coming up, whether it’s on the road or in my life, that I stop seeing what's around me.  Even the big things.

 I wonder how long Jesus stood there before he spoke to Peter and Andrew.  I imagine them hard at work, casting their nets, over and over.  Commercial fishing is back-breaking work, and dangerous enough to require all of your attention.  It's not like that image of a guy sitting on the end of the dock with a line in the water, eating a sandwich.  It's hard, physical labor, and if you don't catch, there goes your income.  So Peter and Andrew would have been completely absorbed in their task, and Jesus could have been there a long time, standing quietly, waiting for them to notice him.

 Same thing with James and John.  They were doing a different kind of work that day, mending their fishing nets.  It would have taken all their attention in a different way, looking down, tying knots, focused on details very close to them.  So Jesus could have stood there for a while, too, patiently, silently, waiting for them to look up and see him.

 And when James and John did look up, whenever Peter and Andrew noticed him, Jesus simply said, "Follow me."  That completely shook them out of their routine, brought them right into the moment and to what - well, who - was before them.  It had to. Because they left everything, nets, boat, father to follow Jesus. And both pairs, Mark says, did it immediately.  No taking time to think about it, no excuses for why they couldn't go, no calculating what going with Jesus would do to their income, or their dating lives, or whatever.  None of that. Immediately they left and followed him. I hope James and John at least said goodbye to their father.  Otherwise there he'd be, standing there, mouth open, staring after them and wondering what had just happened.

 Or maybe Zebedee had a sense of it.  Maybe he looked up and saw what his sons saw, heard what his sons heard, and gently pushed them toward Jesus.  Not counting the cost, not wondering who would help him fish, but encouraging his sons to be disciples, to follow their call.

 Once they looked up and paid attention, Peter, Andrew, James and John recognized that they had a new vocation and they embraced it.  Immediately.  That's not really like my conversion experience.  I didn't have a dream, or a vision, where I saw Jesus in front of me, inviting me to follow.  There was no "immediately" at the beginning of my journey.  I'd like to say there was no taking time to think about it, no excuses for why I couldn't go, no calculating what going with Jesus would do to my life choices. But that's not the way it happened.

 I mean, Jesus was right there before me; God was in my life in all sorts of ways. I just didn't notice until much later, in hindsight.  There were opportunities. My best friend in elementary school was Southern Baptist, and every time we went to her church, I was invited to come forward for a conversion moment. I went two different times, which you aren’t supposed to do, but there were no bright lights or scales falling from my eyes. Just pressure to fit in. Later, I was confirmed as a young teen, and, as an adult, I wandered in and out of lots of churches. But I was mostly focused on my life, my security, and my future.  It took me a long time to look up.

 I haven't seen any studies on this, but I think there may be more of us who come to follow Jesus like that.  I don't doubt the reality and power of the conversion moment, because I've talked with people who had them, but my experience has been that they are more the exception than the rule.  I think more of us take a while to get there, and move in a series of steps.  That kind of conversion is real and powerful too.

 Which is why I am grateful that the passage from Mark is grouped with the story of Jonah in our lectionary, because Jonah’s conversion is more of a process. Although, weirdly, the part we mostly remember from Bible stories isn’t in our lectionary at all. The book of Jonah begins with a section called “Jonah Tries to Run Away from God.” That’s where God tries to send Jonah to Nineveh, so Jonah jumps on a ship going the opposite direction. Which leads to God’s trying to get Jonah’s attention with a storm. His shipmates figure that out and, at Jonah’s instruction, toss him overboard. Interestingly, that is their conversion moment. Jonah’s comes after he is swallowed by a big fish, while he is praying inside its belly. Ultimately the fish spits him out, and we pick up the story today with God speaking to Jonah a second time, now that he is paying attention.

That long and epic voyage feels a lot more like my story was than any sort of “Come and see.” “OK,” “Immediately!” “OK.” But really, I’m not sure it matters. Because, perhaps disappointingly, we don’t get Brownie points for being the first ones to raise our hands with the right answer. Following Jesus isn't really about that moment of decision, after all. 

I’m not saying it isn’t important.  Making a commitment is essential, but it's just the beginning.  Following Jesus is a lifelong vocation.  The vocation that comes before all the others, and the vocation that shapes all the others.  It's the vocation that calls us out of our routines to see Jesus, over and over.  It's not one moment of yes, it's a whole series of yeses.  Yeses that wear away the bits of our lives that obscure the image of God in us.  All kinds of yeses, different for each of us.  Yes to speaking words of healing and prayer instead of hurt.  Yes to going far out of our way to deliver groceries to someone shut in.  Yes to carving out time from other possibilities for prayer and Bible study, or writing a note to a family who has lost a loved one.  Yes to working for justice or peace. Yes to whatever way God is calling us to serve.

 You've all said yes at least once.  You're listening this morning, after all.  I don't know if that was an easy yes or a hard one.  Yeses come in both flavors. And the way to get to where you can say yes to the difficult parts of following Jesus is to say yes first to the easy parts.  That creates a pattern or a habit.  First you see Jesus and hear the call, whatever it is, you discern that it is in fact God calling, and then you say yes.  You say yes again, and again.  Sometimes there are no’s sprinkled in there.  But you keep saying yes.

And God keeps offering more chances to say yes.  Every day I get more chances.  Some choices are easy – get up to pray or roll over and go back to sleep?  Some are more difficult. Like invitations to reach out to people who really frustrate me. Or examining myself instead of judging others, tempting as that is. But when I say yes. What seems hard becomes do-able and what seems insurmountable becomes surprisingly possible.

I’ve found that the wonderful thing about saying yes is that it makes Jesus easier to spot.  If anything takes me out of the distractions of worry, and fear, and self-sufficiency and makes God manifest in the world around me, it’s saying yes.  Over and over.  And it makes me much more attuned to what God is doing in the world, how Jesus shows up in the lives of people around me.  Not to mention my own life.  Often that happens when I’m looking where a friend or some other wise spiritual guide is pointing.  “Don’t you see?  That’s God working.”  The Holy Spirit is moving - in that funny coincidence you can’t quite dismiss.  God is there - answering your prayers, just in ways you didn’t expect.  Jesus is there - in that story all over Facebook that restored your faith in humanity after a really bad day.  Every single one of us has these moments.  We just need to look up and see Jesus.

As Church, we need each other to be able to do that.  No scientist makes a discovery without depending on the work of the other scientists who have gone before, and none of us becomes a better follower of Christ without depending on His work, and the model of the saints who surround us, in this realm and the heavenly one.  They are the ones who have gone before and will go along to help you see, and the ones to whom you will return the favor.  It’s what we promise at baptisms: to do all in our power to support one another in our lives in Christ.  Epiphany is a season celebrating God’s being made known, and together we can enjoy a life where we come to expect epiphanies all around us.

 It’s funny.  “Follow me” has come to be language we use for Twitter or Facebook when we want to know everything someone says, hear everything they want to share about their lives.  We get to choose who we follow, people who amuse or inspire us or people who reinforce our worst instincts.  Jesus doesn’t have a Facebook account, at least outside of memes, but he is asking us to follow him.  When the world feels so heavy, what with pandemics and politics and too much family time and anxiety about the future, don’t let cynicism or fear blind you. Don’t get so distracted that you miss seeing Jesus.  Because “come and see” happens all the time. Notice him there in front of you and say yes.  Then say yes again, over and over. 

Follow Jesus, and bring a friend along, because I promise, it’s the journey of a lifetime and a journey you won’t regret.  AMEN.

January 17, 2021

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

1 Samuel 3:1-20 | John 1: 43-51

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Holy God, your Word is life. Grant us to hear your word, that we may live. In your name we pray, Amen.

Samuel, a teenager at the most by this time in the story, is told by God what God plans to do to Eli and his sons because of their sin, blasphemy, and wickedness. God will bring an end to Eli and to his sons. They will no longer provide spiritual leadership in Israel. Samuel lays in the temple until morning, unable to sleep after hearing the shocking, sad news that the man who has for all intents and purposes raised him, who has taught him to minister to the Lord, who has enabled him to understand that the Lord was speaking to him will die. The burden of this truth weighs on him. Yet when Eli demands a report, Samuel doesn’t sugar coat things, he doesn’t hedge what God said, he doesn’t nuance it. “Samuel told him everything, and hid nothing from him.” Samuel shares God’s plan to bring the House of Eli to an end. Eli, to his credit, doesn’t hem and haw. He doesn’t fight, he doesn’t argue. He accepts that the Lord is sovereign, that the Lord is good. And the actions of the Lord, even when difficult, even when they reveal our failures and shortcomings, are nonetheless, good.

Samuel and Eli do not run away from the truth of God. Samuel speaks it and Eli hears it. There’s no hint of moral superiority or self-righteousness on the part of Samuel, nor is there any sense that Eli wishes to argue with God’s judgement. There is a radical, shocking willingness by both men to stand before the truth and with the truth in naked vulnerability.

The story of Samuel and Eli is one we would all do well to sit with for the next few days. It is a story of truth telling and a story of what is required to tell and to hear the truth. God comes to Samuel, but it is only with the help of Eli that he can answer God. God speaks judgement against Eli, yet this is only known through the voice of Samuel. The truth of God which both men encounter is only encountered amid their relationship with each other. Samuel needs Eli to hear the truth and Eli needs Samuel to hear the truth. Neither will know the word of God, neither will hear God speak, without the other.

The people of God have traditionally been in the business of the truth. “The truth will set you free,” after all. But in the last several years it has seemed to me that the relationship necessary for truth hearing and truth telling have frayed. Unlike Samuel and Eli, it seems that we live in a culture where we are more and more unwilling to hear uncomfortable truths and speak uncomfortable truths. One would hope that the church would be an exception to this, but I’m not sure that’s the case.

See, if we can take our story today as a guide, hearing God’s truth doesn’t come from an unbiased, unmediated third party. Unfortunately, God isn’t simply gonna relay a private message to you and I. God, rather annoyingly, is going to use other people. People like Samuel. Samuel was young, he didn’t know what the voice of God might sound like, he’s not the kind of person you would expect God to appear to. Yet…that’s exactly what happens. God by passes the elderly priest, and goes to the young man who can’t tell the difference between the voice of God and a call from down the hall. Sometimes we will be like Samuel. Called by God to speak a hard word to someone. And sometimes we will be like Eli, called to hear a hard truth from someone.

It seems that in the last little bit we have all become increasingly unwilling to hear hard truths and speak hard truths. We are so blinded by the rightness of our ‘side’, that the other can have absolutely nothing to say to us. We hear something that’s hard and our immediate response is to either dismiss it, nuance it, argue against it, or simply say we’re the exception. Instead of speaking the truth to those we know and exist in relationship with, we cut people out, or post snide memes and comments on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, assuming that that is sufficient to tell the truth.

But Samuel and Eli show us another way. Samuel and Eli speak and hear the truth in the context of relationships of care and accountability. They know each other. They care for one-another. Though it may be difficult, nevertheless, Samuel speaks the truth to Eli, and though he may want with everything in him to escape the judgement of God, Eli doesn’t hide from the truth.

Christians have been bound by our baptism to Jesus Christ, who is the truth. We have committed ourselves to living in the light of truth, and we can only do that if we live lives of humility, lives which are open to hearing and speaking the truth. The last few months have revealed a lot of truths, in my opinion. Truths about America’s racism, truths about the way in which our legal and justice systems continued to oppress black and brown folks, truths about the economic inequality that make much of our lives possible, truths about how deeply divided we are, perhaps to our very core, as a nation. We could all squirm from these truths, keep them to ourselves, or ignore them all together, but what Christ has called us to, what we see in the story of Eli and Samuel, is that we are to accept the truths we hear, as uncomfortable as they are. We are to share those truths. We are live in the confidence that God speaks in and through the most surprising voices, and we are to trust that God who speaks through these voices is Good. Change in Israel only comes when someone is able to speak a hard truth and when someone is able to hear it. May it be so for us. Amen.

January 10, 2021

1 Epiphany

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1: 4-11

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

            Probably like many of you, I spent Epiphany (which was last Wednesday) closely watching the news.  With you, I watched as protestors pushed beyond barricades at the Capital.  Together we saw America’s constitutional process interrupted, the seat of our democracy desecrated, and the power of that democracy tarnished.  Capital police officers were clubbed, and one officer, Brian D. Sicknick (who supported President Trump) is dead.  The assault on our nation’s Capital and the disrespect shown inside its chambers was, to quote former President George W. Bush, “sickening and heartbreaking.”  Prior to January 6, I believe the last time there was an assault on our nation’s capital was during the war of 1812, over two hundred years ago.

            In the days since, I have wondered how this assault might have been handled differently, if the assailants were not largely Caucasian.  What would the response had been if the mob were undocumented Latinos, or a mob of African Americans?  Jimmie Briggs, a black author wrote of the assault in Vanity Fair, saying that “despite the mobsters extraordinary disregard for the rule of law, for agents of law enforcement, and for social norms regarding government, government property, and government processes, a near mythical graciousness was shown to the insurrectionists.” 

            Occasionally when I preach or write about political matters, I will receive an email or a call or a letter, asking that I limit my preaching to the realm of the religious or spiritual, and leave politics out of it.  With a moment like last Wednesday, my response can only be that either our faith has something to say to our world, or it does not.  Either as Christians we are called to make the world a better place or we are not.   Which is it? 

            What happened in the Capital was not a reasonable response to the concerns about a presidential election.  It was madness.  But it was also deeply revealing of how broken we are as a country, and how desperate our need is for God’s grace and wisdom.  The number of protesters taking selfie pictures of themselves in our nation’s capital is revelatory of the selfishness we as a nation are contending with. 

            As your priest, it has been challenging leading this congregation through a season of divisive politics the likes of which I have never seen before.  If we are to learn anything from the events of last Wednesday, I believe it is a lesson that we are all familiar and which we all neglect.  

            It is humility, and it is sorely needed on both sides of the political aisle.  And it is needed here – right now – with us.  A helpful litmus test for all of us to consider if we should be more humble is this – take your pulse.  If your heart is still beating, you could benefit from being more humble.  The left and the right sides of our political aisles simply cannot be reconciled to one another until both sides humble themselves to the point where they are willing to listen, to take the cotton out of their ears and put it in their mouths.    

Our printed national currency bears the motto “E Pluribus Unum” which translates to “out of many, one.”  That phrase is attributed to Roman lawyer Cicero who said that a Republic is made up of many diverse individuals who make up one unit.  Echoing this sentiment centuries later, on June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln, famously stated upon his acceptance speech as senator from the state of Illinois: “a house divided against itself, cannot stand.”  Spoken just three years before the Civil War, Lincoln’s words were as true then as they are now.

            Our democracy is fragile, and our arrogance is threatening its very livelihood.  As a nation, we must learn humility.  How do we learn humility?  Lots of ways – life experience, our children, conversations with those who hold different views than ourselves.  We also learn humility through prayer.  There is of course very little that any of us can offer that will change the outcome of events nearly 1,400 miles away in our nation’s capital.  But we can pray and we can vote.  We can use this moment in our history to return to God, to begin praying again.  Like some Episcopalians, you might find yourself saying “but I don’t know how to pray.”  That is fine.  That is why we have a prayer book.  You may have one if you do not own one.  Throughout its pages are prayers written for every circumstance in your life. 

            Prayer and humility over time, will open yourself to receiving God’s providence – the appearance of God’s care and direction.  Friends, we are in Epiphany, the season in which we proclaim the appearance of Jesus to all people.  The appearance of God’s care and direction, of Christ, is what all of us need.  Humble yourself.  Pray.  Use this time to reflect how Jesus is apparent in your life.  In a moment of a national crisis, where is the Son of God to be found?  AMEN.

December 24, 2020

Christmas Eve

Hebrews 11:1-2; Psalm 98; John 1:1-14

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

            While the Gospel of John is not my favorite Gospel (it is Mark, by the way), John’s Gospel has the best beginning of any Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  The only way to improve on that opening is if the Gospel writer would have instead written “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

            That first sentence (from John’s Gospel, not Star Wars) begins with the phrase “In the beginning.”   We hear that same beginning in another book in the Bible – the first book – Genesis, which begins like this: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 

            So, we have two beginnings – one in Genesis, one in John.  In beginning the Gospel this way, the Gospel author is making a subtle, yet important point, and it is this – Jesus has existed since the beginning.  That means that Jesus existed as part of God before his birth to Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem.  In the same way that Jesus continued to live after his death, he was alive before his birth. 

            That is why this Gospel begins with the phrase “In the beginning.”  The author is saying that Jesus has always existed with God.  That is why John’s Gospel refers to Jesus as “the Word (with a capital w).”  The word “word” translates into Greek as logos.  That word sounds strange to us today. 

            But when the Gospel was written, the word logos was more familiar.  Logos meant more than “word.”  Logos meant something that was perfect, constant, eternal.  So, when John writes “In the beginning was the logos,” the author is saying that Jesus is this eternal word, who existed before his birth, and exists after his death. 

            John’s cosmic description of Christ was a bit controversial for the day, so much that the Gospel of John almost did not make it into the Bible.  There is no familiar Christmas story in John’s Gospel.  We do not hear about a manger, angels, shepherds, or wise men.  Instead, we get this grandiose description of Christ as God’s eternal word. 

            Tonight, we celebrate Christmas Eve and honor the mystery of Christ’s birth.  While Christmas celebrations seem normal to us today (even during a pandemic) Christmas has not always been celebrated. 

            It was not until December 25, 336, (about three centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus) that we have an actual record of a Christmas service.  I do not believe this to be accidental.  Christmas became important around 336 because that was the time in which people were finally able, after much argument, to agree on exactly who Jesus was.  And who was Jesus, did they decide?  They decided that Jesus was fully human, born of a mother, and that Jesus was simultaneously fully divine. 

            To help solidify this agreement of the church, liturgies and services were formed to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  They called them a “Christ Mass,” from which we get Christmas.  One of the church leaders that attended these early church council meetings was a bishop named Nicholas of Myra.  Nicholas was known not only for his work in the church, but also for his habit of secret gift giving.   Bishop Nicholas of Myra’s reputation as a gift-giver earned him enough of a reputation that Nicholas (or Saint Nick as we might call him) became the prototype for that jolly man in a red suit and white beard who will slipping down your chimney tonight. 

            Today we celebrate Christ Mass. We hear that “In the beginning was the Word.”  God’s word is often called the Bible, but if we are to understand the Gospel of John correctly, the word of God is not a book – it is a person, it is Jesus the Messiah. 

            The gift of Christmas is Jesus himself.  It is a free gift, given not only on Christmas, but every day, because God’s word never ends.   AMEN.

January 3, 2021

The Second Sunday after Christmas

Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a | Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Our Gospel lesson today skips over 3 verses that, to really get the fullest picture possible of the lesson, I think we need. Verse 16 begins: when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time he had learned from the wise men…This scene is what has traditionally been called the murder of the Holy Innocents. We skip over this scene because the Feast of the Holy Innocents, who might be considered the first martyrs, falls just a few days after Christmas and this portion of Scripture is read there.

The death of the Holy Innocents, of all the children under two years in Bethlehem, is the driving force for the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Herod’s bloodlust is fueled by the threat which this “new born King” poses to his own reign and to the rule of Rome in Israel. Herod has a cushy job and he wants to keep it, so he’ll do whatever he must to secure his position.

Over the course of Advent some parishioners and I spent time reflecting on the Four Last Things, and one of the four last things is judgement, my favorite one. We often think of judgement in punitive terms. We judge someone and make an evaluation of them, we judge someone and pass a sentence on them. Those are certainly real parts of judgement, and they’re found in Scripture, but judgement, particularly the judgement of God, has some different nuances. In Scripture judgement is about bringing the truth to light. Judgement, God’s judgement, reveals reality. Think of a courtroom, in a good, functioning, just justice system the purpose of a judgement is to declare what the truth is. That’s why you are judged then sentenced. A court passes judgement as to what the reality of a particular case might be. This is how judgement is often used of God in Scripture. And this is the judgement which Christ, by his birth, has come to bring down on us. Christ has come to judge the world, because Christ has come to show us the truth of our world.

The flight into Egypt is a moment of judgement. As the Holy Family flees to safety, as the innocents of Bethlehem are slaughtered, the judgement of God is revealed against Herod because we see the truth of Herod’s rule, of Rome’s rule. The flight into the Egypt shows the very nature of Herod’s cushy job, the cost the good order of kingdom requires.

What the judgement reveals, however, is complex. We look at Herod and see in him one of the bad guys of the Gospels. But if we step back and think for a moment, we see that he was a man who had a job to do, he was a ruler, the king, his job was to protect Israel, his people, the Romans who he served, from threats to their interest. He had laws to uphold. Kings cannot, as a matter of course, simply allow would-be usurpers to just…wander about. Herod was made aware of a threat and took care of it. Sure, the threat was a newborn, but he was a threat nonetheless. The judgement of God reveals not simply that great evil exists, but that so often, great evil exists and is perpetrated under the guise of “doing one’s job” of “doing one’s duty.”  The judgement of God reveals how evil is often not something we add on top of our lives and work, but is something imbedded within it.

This story not only judges Herod, but every government, every. There has been no nation on earth, no power, no empire that has not, in some way secured itself by the blood of innocents.  How many enslaved Africans had to die for us to build America? How many Native Americans had to die to make room for our manifest destiny? How many women, men, and children were sacrificed in the engine of progress as the lives of the comfortable were made even cushier?

As Christians, we are called to be a people who open our eyes to the violence of the world, who do not shrink back when the innocents are killed. And there are too many instances of innocent slaughter to name everyone. But there are two that hit close to home for me, and that I think a fitting to mention on this day in which we remember the Holy Family’s flight. First, is the Syrian refugee crisis, entering its 11th year, in which millions have been displaced around the world.  Second, is immigration at the southern border, where many fleeing violence and instability in central America – including many children – have sought some form of sanctuary in the US. These people fleeing violence are no different than the Holy Family. They bear witness to the judgement of God, to the truth which God in Christ continues to reveal. When we see these people as “problems,” as “blights” as “threats” we close our eyes to the truth. But in his coming among us, Christ has invited us to open our eyes to the light, to see the truth, and boldly face it, knowing that it is only in finding the truth, and living into the truth that we will be free.

Christ came into the world at Christmas as king, savior. This has dramatic, far-reaching implications for us. If we are to be Christians, to be citizens of heaven, subjects of Christ, then all other allegiances must be relativized. Christ has come into the world and shown us the nature of our governments, he has revealed to us the way in which human systems depend on violence to secure themselves. We live in that violent world. We live as beneficiaries of the violence that has made our country and our world what it is, we live as beneficiaries of the violence that even now happens to make our lives possible. Christ has called us to see that violence. To stand against it. To speak out for the innocents. Christ has given us a new way, a different way, to be in the world. To be citizens of a kingdom not maintained by the violent securing of power but maintained by the self-giving love of God for all God’s creatures.

 Amen.

December 25, 2020

Christmas Day

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Poor, ordinary shepherds are accosted by the glory of heaven, as an angel announces to them good news of great joy: the messiah, the savior, the hope of Israel and the world has been born.  They are given a sign: a manger, bands of cloths. The terror of the moment is ratcheted up now as the barrier between heaven and earth blurs, and the shepherds are greeted with the entire host, the entire army of angelic beings praising God and singing. In a moment it is gone. They are returned to the ordinary. To the dark field. To their sheep.

The shepherds set out to confirm what was spoken to them and, sure enough, they find the sign promised to them: a baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger. All who hear this word are amazed, and for good reason. The messiah? In a feeding trough? The savior, surrounded by donkeys and goats? Certainly not. It's amazing, not in its wonder, but in its ridiculousness. The hope of the world amid livestock.

Surely the shepherds knew how shocking, how surprising this scene was. Could they have believed it without the backing of heaven's army? Nothing about the scene at Bethlehem speaks of a miraculous savior appearing. Jesus doesn't shimmer with a heavenly light. Mary doesn't recline in beatific serenity. Joseph's halo is nowhere to be found. All that's found is a newborn: perhaps asleep, perhaps fussing. A new mother, exhausted from the pain of labor. A new father, terrified of this new little person who is his to protect. Not the kind of scene often found on our Christmas cards. Yet here, so the angels say, so the shepherds believe, is the hope of humanity. Here is the savior of the world. Here is God in human flesh.

Yet the shepherds believe the word of the angels, they trust that this ordinary place is the site of the extraordinary. Here in a manger lies the savior of the world. Here in a manger lies God himself. As they approach this exceedingly ordinary baby, they approach the Holy One of Israel. In Bethlehem they find what the angel reported and that is enough for them. As the great theologian Hans Von Balthasar has said about this episode: "the sign fits!" They rejoice, they praise God, they celebrate this great miracle - the birth of Jesus Christ. Emmanuel. God with us! Not because of some miraculous proof that confirms that Jesus is actually the messiah. But simply because what the angel said was true.

Jesus outgrew the manger, but Jesus has not outgrown his penchant for showing up amid the ordinary. Jesus continues to be found in the most ordinary, shocking, surprising places. Jesus is found in his body, the church. In the women and men who make up our parishes and congregation. Jesus is found in the sip of wine and taste of what is "technically" bread. Jesus is found in the stories and laws and letters of a book so profoundly ordinary at times that Christians have shuddered to think God could be found there. These may not be an animal's feeding trough, but they are as ordinary a place as that first Christmas. They are as surprising a place to find our salvation and hope as any. Like the shepherds we approach them and we don't find anything shining or miraculous. We find things shockingly ordinary.

Christmas calls us to put aside our penchant for imagining how God should be encountered. At Christmas, we are reminded that God shows up in his own way. Sometimes with great fanfare, sometimes without. We cannot know in advance. All we can know is that Jesus has promised to be present in these things. That we would find him there.

December 20, 2020

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16; Canticle 15; Romans 16: 25-27; Luke 1:26-38

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            “Oh, the places you will go!”  “What great things are in store for you.”   “I want you to be a Bishop one day.”  These are all things which have been communicated to me over the years since I was a child.  They are the normal platitudes of high school, college, or seminary commencement addresses: a bright future lies ahead for you, you will have great success, etc.  Many of you might have been fed the same diet of platitudes, and some of you might feel the burden such platitudes can carry.  You might be wondering – “is this all there is?  I expected and wanted so much more.” 

If there is any subtle message to adults and youth in our country today, it might be the quiet specter of upward mobility.  We all hear it don’t we?  The television advertisements this time of year which feature happy family gatherings with lots of presents under the tree, tables full of food.  Those images may or may not match with your reality.  The world, and sadly, the church at times reinforces the idea that we should be seeking promotions in our work, and increases in our salaries. We should be seeking out larger homes to live in.  This is not the Gospel, nor do I believe it is God’s plan for us.

            There is that phrase – “God’s plan.”  Often those words – “God’s plan” are used to describe marvelous and wonderful things God has planned for us.  I rarely hear someone tell a patient dying of cancer “what a wonderful plan God had for you.” I want to be clear – I personally believe God has a plan for all of us, and it has nothing to do with upward mobility.  God’s plan for all of us is personal growth.  This is not easy, it is often painful, and in the growing up process we learn things about ourselves we do not like.   That is okay.  Remember that the path which seems to offer the greatest challenge is the one most likely to lead you in the right direction. 

            God had a plan for Mary.  When the angel Gabriel appeared to her to inform her of the perplexing news that she was to give birth to God’s son, she uttered some of the most profound words in all the Bible.  She said, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Notice what Mary does not say.  She does not say, “let it be done to me according to your word, but don’t let it cost me my health.”  She does not say “let it be done to me according to your word, but don’t make it too hard, or make it cost too much money.”  She does not say “let it be done according to your will, but can I get something out of it too?” 

            Mary simply accepts the angel’s words, accepting what God gave her to do.  She does not ask for more or less, she just receives what God gives.  She does not ask God to make things other than the way they are.  How many of us do the same in our lives?

            When you are faced with a serious financial predicament, or if the results of the biopsy are unfavorable, what do you say to God?   Do you say, “get me out this problem” or do you say, “let it be done according to your word?” 

            I have heard it said before that religion is something for people who are scared of hell, and that spirituality is for people who have already been there.  If you have experienced a living hell, then you are well acquainted with those hard emotions of uncertainty, pain, and torment.  I have.  For a long time, I looked back on my hell experience as wasted time.  Now, with some perspective, I see that my own personal hell was a blessing.  It was a blessing because it led me to understand the grace of Mary’s words: “let it be done according to your word.” 

The spiritual life is not a life of upward mobility, it is the opposite.  It is the life of downward mobility, of emptying yourself, losing your ego, of walking through your own hell and living to tell about it - whatever you want to call it.  Mary was chosen as God’s mother because she understood this.   She let go.  She was willing.  “Let it be done with me according your word.”  Let it be done.  Let it be.  AMEN. 

December 13, 2020

The Third Sunday of Advent: Year B

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 |Psalm 126| John 1:6-8, 19-28

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Priests and Levites leave Jerusalem and come to the wilderness by the Jordan to see John and investigate what he’s up to. They wonder who he is and why he’s doing what he’s doing. Could he be the messiah? Maybe Elijah? Maybe the prophet? In other words, could John be the hope of Israel? John, however, is not the hope of Israel. John is simply a witness, testifying to the light which was breaking over the whole world. John is simply the voice calling out in the wilderness: make straight the way of the Lord!

To better appreciate what John is doing I think we have to pay attention to what comes just a few verses after our lesson, starting at verse 29. John sees Jesus, he looks and he says “behold here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, ‘after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason - that he might be revealed to Israel.’” John did not know Jesus was the light he was bearing witness to. John knew that someone was coming, that a Messiah was on his way but John didn't know the who, the what, or the when and still John was in the wilderness baptizing and preaching calling the people of Israel to lives of repentance, calling the people of Israel to turn back to God, to make a space for God's salvation to arrive in the person of the Messiah.

John was in the wilderness, in this place where God had acted again and again in Israel’s history. John was there preparing for God to act once more, but John himself didn't know the details.  John was called to be the forerunner, to remind the people of the promises of God, promises to never forsake them, promises to be with them, promises to liberate them. So, John is out here preaching and baptizing and the pharisees send Levites and priests to go out and see John. They ask, “who are you? Are you the one we're waiting on? are you the one who we’re waiting on?” And all John can do is point away from himself and say “no, I am not the one, but one is coming after me.” And I imagine the priests and the Levites saying, “Well, who?” and John saying, “I don't know.” And then they say, “Well, when?” and john saying, “I don't know.” And then they say, “Well, where?”  and John saying, “I don't know.”

John doesn't know the details John simply knows that God will act. John was undoubtedly raised in the synagogue and in the temple where he heard the stories that the Jewish people told again and again, stories of heroes, stories of salvation, stories of deliverances large and small. John grew up knowing that the God he worshiped was a God who promised to save and who made good on those promises. So, John could look forward and know how God would save again.

John the Baptist figures prominently in the advent season. He gets two out of the four weeks of advent devoted to him. We kind of think of advent as this season of preparation for Christmas but we spend a lot more time on John the Baptist than we do on any kind of christmassy theme. We spend so much time because John reminds us of where we are in our history. Advent is a season in which we remember that God came once, and that God will come again. It’s a season in which we remember how God has delivered his people once before and will deliver them again. In advent we look to John the Baptist because he is the embodiment of what it means to live as an advent person, and whether we are in the season of advent or not, we are called to live as advent people.

John shows us that we are to be a people who proclaim the coming of God, who proclaim the mighty acts of God for our salvation and our restoration and our fullness. We, like John, are called to be a people preparing the way of the Lord, preparing for the coming again of Christ in glory to judge the world and to set all things right. That's why week after week, year after year, in pandemic and out of pandemic the church worships. We worship in order to remind ourselves of the God who has acted and the God who will act.  Week after week we come and we hear the story of Scripture so that we will remember what God has done, so we can claim the promise and the hope that what God has done for others God will do for us and for those who come after us.

  John was nurtured by the faith of Israel and it was that faith that allowed him to proclaim even when he didn't know the fullness of the story that God was going to act. We too must ground ourselves in our own story, the story of scripture and the story of the Saints. Our job as Christians is to live lives that proclaim what God is going to do. We are to proclaim justice, to practice forgiveness, to dispense grace.  We are to look boldly to the coming again of Jesus Christ, to await with hope the day when God will act to bring to fullness every work of justice, every cause of joy, every gesture of mercy, the day when God’s salvation will flow over our world like a rushing river, when God will be all in all, and when death and suffering and sin will be more. That is the hope of advent. That is the hope of Jesus. That is the hope of our faith. Amen

December 6, 2020

The Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3: 8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

Audio Block

Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

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

            During college, which seems like forever ago, I worked several different jobs.  The job I enjoyed the most was working as an on-air personality for a music radio station in Austin.  I used to work the graveyard, or overnight shift, and at the top of every hour we had to do the station identification, which was something radio stations back then (and now) were legally required to do. 

            The station I worked for had an array of various station identifications you choose from, most of which were pretty funny.  My favorite was one that began with these words: “Jesus is coming.  Look busy!”  And then it would roll into the station identification: “107.7 KNNC-FM Austin, TX.” 

            Whenever we are in the Advent season, I think of that Station identification, primarily because Advent is all about that expectant waiting for Christmas – the big day.  The season we are in -Advent -  is about waiting for the birth of the Christ child, but it is also about waiting expectantly for his return.  I used to not like Advent much at all, which was because I was not very good at waiting.  Life has taught me the importance and value of waiting, and now Advent is one of my favorite seasons. 

            Our reading from 2 Peter today addresses this problem of waiting.  It was written sometime around 80 – 90 CE.  That date is important, seeing that it was written some 50-60 after the date of Christ’s death and resurrection.  At that time, Christians believed Christ’s return was imminent.  Some of them had been waiting 50-60 years for it.  Have you ever waited that long for something?

            The scholarly term for this long period of waiting  is “delayed Parousia.”  That is a fancy way of saying “someone who is running extremely late to the party.”  It appears that Christians living during the first few decades after Jesus died expected that they would see him return during their lifetime.  This, as we know, did not happen.  They spend many years “looking busy” waiting for Christ to return. 

            Perhaps people were beginning to lose faith, since his return seemed nowhere on the horizon.  These circumstances might help to explain why the author of this letter quoted Psalm 90, verse 4, which says “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past or like a watch in the night.” 

            In other words, 2 Peter does not answer the question of “how long do we need to look busy until Jesus returns?”  It does remind us, more importantly, that to God a thousand years are like a day.  God’s time is not like ours. 

            The purpose of Advent, and of God’s timing, is not for us to try and force our own solutions.  They never work, anyway.  Instead, the purpose of Advent, and God’s timing, is to lay our entire lives at God’s feet, and to remember that we are not in control of our time, we don’t get to call the shots, we don’t get to tell God when to show up.  Instead, Advent teaches us humility.  We learn to wait.  We learn to trust.  God will show up.  God will appear when God is ready to do so.  AMEN.  

November 29, 2020

First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; Mark 13: 24-37

The Rev. Jeffrey Bohanski

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Let me be the first person to welcome you to the new year of 2021! Happy New Year!

Nope, I have not had too much communion wine!  Today marks the first day of the new church year.  The new liturgical year always begins with Advent.  I read somewhere that the first Sunday of Advent is always the Sunday before our parish feast day, Saint Andrew’s Day.

I think Advent is the season of the church year that goes most counter to what the culture is doing at the time.  Everywhere one goes one sees Christmas decorations being put up.  People are buying gifts.  I heard online shopping has dramatically gone up this year due to Covid-19.  Now, I must admit I’ve already done most of my Christmas shopping online already.  The cooking shows, always popular in my house, are now all about making the perfect Christmas foods.   

While the world wants to start celebrating Christmas like a Hallmark TV Movie where all the hope is placed in the perfect new love, the perfect Christmas gift and the perfect Christmas party, today in church we talk about death and the end times.

In today’s Gospel we heard the author of Mark give an account of a conversation Jesus had with his disciples as they were leaving the temple concerning the end times.  In the story Jesus uses words from Daniel and Isaiah to talk about the forth coming disaster that will befall Jerusalem.  These words would have been well known to Mark’s community, a community expecting Jesus’ return to be eminent. One may wonder, where is the hope in that?

This week as I read and reread this Gospel, the statement Jesus uses, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not.” have stuck with me.  “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not.” Everything will pass away; the decorations, the gifts, the foods, the parties, and yes even our loves will pass away.  Jesus’ words will not.  Now this I find hopeful.

Yesterday someone posted on Facebook an old ‘70’s picture of the marquee for “Robby’s Restaurant,” a local fast-food establishment in my home town of Stevens Point, WI.  I sent a screenshot of the picture to my brother and sisters on our family text thread.  For a good part of yesterday morning we posted memories we all had of our grandparents taking each of us to “Robby’s” for lunch.  We shared the memories of the fun we had with my grandparents eating our burgers, dipping our fries in our vanilla shakes like my grandmother enjoyed doing, laughing, carrying on, enjoying life and how they made us each feel special.  Memories of eating “Robby’s” burgers and fries for lunch with my grandparents are some of my favorite childhood memories. 

Today, “Robby’s Restaurant” is no longer there.  It went out of business long ago when major fast-food chains came to town.  Come to think about it, the restaurant that replaced “Robby’s” is also long gone.

My grandparents are no longer with us, they both passed away over forty years ago.  My grandmother died first when I was in middle school.  A few years later when I was in high school my grandfather died.  I remember being with my whole family at my grandfather’s bedside when he died.  I remember sometime during that day my father told us that death is part of life.  Dad told us that he remembered when his grandfather died and then he added, today is the day his father died and one day he will die.  As a high school kid I didn’t quite get that that statement implied that one day I will die.  I know that now.  In fact, Victor and I already have our niche in the Palmer Columbarium ready, one day, to receive our ashes. 

Robby’s, my grandparents and great-grandparents have passed away, the house has been sold and changed dramatically.  This building we are in or are streaming into will one day pass away.  Palmer’s Columbarium will even one day pass away.  All these things will pass away but the words of Jesus will not.  Words like, I love you, I forgive you, be healed, love one another as I have loved you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, forgive seventy times seven, feed my sheep,  do not let your hearts be troubled, I am the way the truth and the life.

In a few minutes we will all recite the Nicene Creed.  We will say together:  “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. . .”  I wonder how I would be judged for living according to these words of Jesus.  I know I am very grateful to be able to ask for and receive forgiveness for the times when I have not loved my enemies, prayed for those who have persecuted me, allowed my heart to be troubled,  when I did not trust in God’s complete and abiding love and when I did not feed his sheep.  These words of forgiveness I find most hopeful.

Let me again wish you a happy new year.  Let me invite us all this Advent to embrace more fully the fact that heaven and earth will pass away but the hopeful words of Jesus will not.  Words like I love you, I forgive you, I heal you, love one another as I have loved you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, do not let your hearts be troubled, I am the way the truth and the life.  And when we fail to embrace Jesus’ words let us all repent and return to God, with God’s help.  Amen

November 25, 2020

Thanksgiving Eve 

Deuteronomy 8: 7-18; Psalm 65; 2 Corinthians 9: 6-15; Luke 17: 11-19

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            I am going to go ahead and state what is completely obvious to all of us, which is that this will be a Thanksgiving unlike any of us have experienced before.  Usually each year for Thanksgiving, our house is full of people – friends and family, young and old, behaved and misbehaved.  It is always a joyful day. This year it will be much quieter as it will just be our family. 

            What is true in our home will certainly be true across countless other homes across our country.  And to be fair, while I am saddened by that, I also am reminded of something very important in the reading we hear from 2 Corinthians.  The apostle Paul writes these words: “the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

            Paul is taking an image that was widely familiar to people at the time – sowing seed – and applying it to life.  I personally have never sown seeds before.  I’ve planted them, but never sown them, so the image is not a familiar one to me.  Perhaps it is a familiar image for you.

            The point Paul seems to make here is one we already know – we get what we put into life.  And that is certainly true in all things – especially so in rendering our thanks.  If we do not take time to say that we are thankful – even in a as strange a moment of time in history as this moment certainly is – we are not going to feel thankful. 

            When we give thanks and when we really mean it – not just pay lip service to it – our personalities will change.  That is something COVID-19 does not have the power to take away from Thanksgiving.  Sure COVID can make gathering difficult.  But COVID does not have the strength to rob us of our gratitude.  It is not that powerful. 

            So this Thanksgiving, I am going to try to do what the apostle Paul asks of us  - to be reckless in bountifully sowing gratitude and thanksgiving for the miracle that is the simple fact that we are alive and able to offer thanks.

            Earlier today in our Memorial Garden, I baptized a baby.  What an astounding thing.  To impart a blessing upon such a new life.  I was reminded of how freely God gives to us.  There is no limit to God’s giving, there is no limit to God’s blessing.  Like the sower scattering seed across the land, so to does God scatter blessings all around us.  We have so much to be thankful for. 

In closing, I will in a few moments walk down the aisle carrying holy water, and will sprinkle it upon your hands, if you desire.  Like the water I poured upon the forehead of an infant, the water sprinkled upon your hands reminds you they are holy, and that you are holy.  Sow bountifully, reap bountifully, live bountifully.  AMEN.

November 22, 2020

Christ the King

Ezekiel 34: 11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95: 1-7a; Ephesians 1: 15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

            What is the difference between a fat sheep and a lean sheep? It is not the obvious – their size.  It is something else, and it is this – the difference between the two types of sheep is that that one is obedient to God, while the other was not.  That is one of the ideas I take away from the reading of Ezekiel today.  In the reading, Ezekiel compares two kinds of sheep: ones that are overfeed, boisterous, and who push the smaller sheep around.  Then there are the lean sheep – the ones who get pushed around by the larger ones.  Of the two, lately I have resembled more the fatter sheep, not because of my behavior, but because of my diet.  Last night I ate two ice cream sandwiches called, appropriately “fat boys.”  I also have discovered a fondness for double stuffed Oreo cookies, which my wife reminds me are not the epitome of health.    

            There is a lesson here for all of us.  The size of the sheep – big or small – does not matter.  Their strength – or lack of it – does not matter.  What separates the sheep in God’s eyes is one very simple question: which sheep are obedient?  Which sheep humble themselves before their shepherd? 

            When I was younger, I thought obedience was such – such a drag.  It was boring.  It was not fulfilling.  There was not much fun to it.  People obedient to God struck me as not living life to the fullest. 

            Perhaps embarrassing to admit, but true.  There was a time in my life where being the fat sheep was what I thought was expected of me.  “Take what you can.”  “Look out for yourself – no one else will.”  “Work hard.  Earn money, and money will buy you happiness.”  Push others around, take advantage of them, manipulate them.  Those characteristics define much of American masculinity.  I tried them – and it made me miserable.  You can easily see why. 

            At a certain point in my life I began to appreciate… obedience.  And, over time, I learned that the bravado of the fat sheep was a charade.  At the same time, the small obedient sheep began to allure me.  I found their humility attractive, because their humility was grounded in a deep and abiding faith in God – a faith that, although baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal church, I did not yet know how to have.  

            Over time I have been privileged to discover that obedience before God is one of the most gratifying things I have ever encountered.   I believe this may be Ezekiel’s point.  God favors the obedient outcast, not because they have had such a hard go of it – but because obedience is the love language of God.  If you have not tried right sizing your ego, I suggest you give it a try.  See what it feels like.  Find out for yourself if God really favors the humble. AMEN.  

November 15, 2020

Proper 28

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90; 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11; Matthew 25: 14-30

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

The other day a friend shared a story with me about her child’s first communion.  At the time of the story, my friend was a member of the Catholic church, where services of first communion are more common for young children than in the Episcopal church.  In any case, she said that as she watched her child receive communion for the very first time, she began to cry, and the tears she shed were not tears of joy.  They were tears of sadness.

 Why the tears of sorrow?  Shouldn’t a child’s first communion be a happy occasion?  An occasion of celebration?  Why the sadness?  My friend explained to me the purpose of her tears – she was afraid that her son would grow up with the same idea of God as she was taught by the church.  What kind of God was this?  It was an angry God.  A God that demanded obedience.  A God that was quick to extend the hand of punishment, rather than mercy.  That is the kind of God my friend grew up knowing.  And that was the image of God she thought her son would receive.  Which is why she cried at her son’s first communion.

 It is true that this image of God is contained within the verses of our psalm for today – psalm 90.  Verse 7: “we are afraid because of your wrathful indignation.”  Verse 9: “when you are angry, all our days are gone.”  Verse 11: “who regards the power of your wrath?  Who rightly fears your indignation?”  Those verses identify God as vengeful, angry, and full of wrath.  Not exactly popular images of God in 2020.

 While that concept of God is not particularly helpful, neither is its opposite: the image of God as the cosmic all-allowing ultra-tolerant best friend.  This “God as my best friend” portrayal of God seems more popular today, instead of its angry counterpart.  Why? 

 I think it might have to do with human pride.  Our modern society, in my opinion, has such an over-inflated sense of itself, that the fear of God has lost its relevance.  Our technology, our government, our knowledge, our economy has permitted us to ascend to a point where an angry God who humbles us has lost its value. We would much prefer God to be like - like a docile lap cat, that will sit and purr quietly and ignore us, while we go along with our important business.

I am not making light of harmful God concepts.  I lived for a long time in fear of an angry God.  And it is indisputable that God’s wrath and anger has been used to justify persecution and harm to those whom Christians deemed as outsiders.   All I am saying, is that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Maybe we need both: the disciplinarian God and the friendly God – two sides of one coin.  There is purpose in the difficult language of the psalm – at the very least it humbles us, it reminds us we are not God.  Psalm 90 starkly confronts us with our mortality and that at the end of the day, all of us are accountable to God.  Those are reasons to shed tears – not tears of sadness, but tears of joy.  AMEN.  

November 8, 2020

Proper 27

Amos 5:18-24 | Wisdom 6:17-20 | Matthew 25:1-13

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Dr. Susan Hylen, from Emory University, makes the point that the in the parable of the ten bridesmaids all ten start out in expectation and all ten remain expectant through the night. The problem in our parable arises because some do not plan for the possible delay of the groom. Their waiting is in vain because they don’t consider that they really don’t know when the groom will come. The message of the parable, then, is about preparing our selves for a long wait. It’s about bringing enough oil that whenever the groom finally appears we can meet him with lamps burning bright. Be prepared might be a good summary of the parable.

Yet, Dr. Hylen makes the point, a point I want to follow, that for many of us modern Christians we’re not the wise bridesmaids, nor are we even the foolish bridesmaids. We aren’t even in the bridal party. See, somewhere along the way modern Christians gave up living lives in which the expectation of Jesus’ return was central to our faith. Yet it is precisely this promise that has sustained Christians for centuries. Indeed, it is this promise that is the very reason for the existence of the church in the first place! We are not an organization of spiritual seekers, a club to debate grand questions, or a collection of do-gooders. We are, before all else, people who wait and watch in expectation.

As a nation, we have spent quite a few days waiting the results of the most recent election, and we will continue to wait as recounts take place. But friends, we who follow Christ must remember that before we are Americans, we are Christians, and our waiting does not end with certified votes or an inauguration. Our waiting only ends when Christ the bridegroom comes in glory to judge the nations, to put death to death, to free us from the sin which mars our goodness.

Ten bridesmaids, so excited for the coming of the bridegroom that they run out to wait for his arrival. Ten bridesmaids, so excited that some forget to bring extra oil! We are invited to share this excitement, to cultivate in ourselves a joyful expectation of Jesus. As I said, expectation is the very reason we exist as a church. We gather week after week, in pandemics and persecutions and triumphs and tragedies to hope together in the promise that Jesus Christ – who came and died and rose again – will come again. We gather together to remind each other and remind the world through our worship that Jesus, even now, is on his way, to cast the forces of darkness that persist in our world into the pit once and for all, transforming us and our world into the very dwelling place of God.

This future hope calls us to lives of anticipation and preparation, lives that are pregnant with the expectation that God’s kingdom is pressing closer and closer into the world.  Friends, we are invited to go out and await the coming of Jesus, to take our lamps and our oil, and prepare to meet the groom who is coming for a party! Our first lesson shows us that the day of the Lord, the coming of Jesus will not be a happy day for those caught off guard. When we are unprepared the surprise of the groom is like the surprise of finding a snake in your home. Shocking, disconcerting, panic inducing. But for those who are expecting Jesus, his coming is the beginning of a party that will not end. A party filled with abundance, with food and drinks, singing and dancing, with the joy of good friends and much laughter. Friends, our faith is not backwards looking. It looks confidently, hopefully, excitedly towards the future. I want to end with a verse from hymn 68, which John pointed me to, and which is inspired, in part, by our Gospel today. Verse 2 says:

See that your lamps are burning, replenish them with oil
          look now for your salvation, the end of sin and toil.
          The marriage feast is waiting, the gates wide open stand;
          rise up, ye heirs of glory, the Bridegroom is at hand.

Amen.

November 1, 2020

All Saint’s Day

Revelation 7:9-19; Psalm 34: 1-10, 22; 1 John 3: 1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12

The Rev. JAMES M.L. Grace

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

   Blessed are those who have died in the Lord, whose names may one day be lost on earth, but known forever in heaven.   Blessed are those who have died during 2020, whether because of a virus, a hurricane, or because of social unrest in our cities.  Blessed are those who have died this year protecting us: nurses, doctors, and researchers who have courageously cared for those infected with COVID-19, women and men in our police and fire departments who have confronted unimaginable situations and horrors, giving their lives to an ultimate good of protecting our society.

            The deceased police officer, nurse, and family whose livelihoods were prematurely lost will never be forgotten.  They will never be forgotten because they are now Saints.  They are now in God’s presence in a way that none of us on this side of eternity can fully understand.  But that does not matter.  Our job, as the living, is not to understand.  Our job is simply to trust that the God who created us out of nothing, will claim us as a beloved saint the moment our heart has its last beat.  That is what Christians courageously proclaim on All Saint’s Day. 

            “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” the apostle John writes to us today.  He continues: “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

            What I believe the apostle is saying to us is simple – none of us knows what the future holds.  We do not know when a vaccine for a virus will be available.  We do not know who our next president will be.  We do not how many days remain for each of us to live.  These are matters that only God knows.  However, the apostle John reminds us this morning something upon which all of us easily, and frequently, overlook, and it is this: we are all God’s children now. 

            At this moment – we are all God’s child.  That means that God has already claimed us as God’s own.  We belong to God, and we already belonged before we were born, and we will continue to belong even after we die.  This is why we baptize on All Saints day, and we are doing two today. 

            Along the exterior fence of this church is an art installation entitled “Faces of the Other” by photographer Joe Aker.  One of the photos is of a priest named Martha Frances.  I have known Rev. Frances for fifteen years.  She died last year, however her photo’s placement upon Yale Street is a tangible reminder for to me that, even in death, there will always be a place for her.  She belongs among Saints – just like all of us.  We all belong.  We are all saints.  AMEN.

October 25, 2020

Proper 25

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 | Psalm 1 | 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 | Matthew 22:34-46

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

---

---

To understand God’s command to the people of Israel to be holy requires we first understand what God’s holiness means. Now, generally, I think, we tend to assume that being ‘holy’ means being morally good. So, we imagine that God’s holiness means that God is morally good, morally the best. And that’s part of it, certainly. But God’s holiness in Scripture has a more encompassing meaning. God’s holiness lies in the fact that God is all-good, all-powerful, and utterly, completely, different from creation. Holiness, in Scripture, means to be set apart, and it derives from the set-apart-ness of God. God is set apart from God’s creation because God is divine, and creation is not.

So, God is Holy because God is different, God is other, and God calls Israel to be holy as he is holy. God calls Israel to be set apart for a few reasons. First, Israel is to be set apart in order to bear witness to the surrounding, gentile nations which worship other gods. Israel is called to be holy, to be different, in order to call attention to the God who rescued Israel from Egypt. Its unique way of life tells of the uniqueness of God: a God above gods who rescued his people from bondage.

Second, Israel is set apart in order that God might dwell with Israel. God’s holiness can’t simply co-exist with unholiness. God’s holiness calls forth holiness, so if God is to dwell among Israel, to literally live with the people, in the land, in the temple, then the Israelites must live holy lives. Israel – its people and places – are to be made fit for the presence and power of God to dwell among them.

Third, Israel is set apart to be holy so that God, through Israel, might bless the world. The story of Scripture is a story of rescue. We were created for relationship with God, yet humanity sinned and pulled creation from God into death and decay. So, God initiates a rescue operation to bring us back to life. From God’s chosen people, the blessings of God flow out, like a life-giving river.

So, holiness isn’t about just following the rules, though to be holy there are some rules to follow, rather it’s about living life in such a way that God is reflected in our actions as individuals and as a community. Holiness is about creating space in which God can dwell with us, in order to bless others through us. Our reading today shows us how important our relationship with others is in making us a holy people. Holiness isn’t just about offering your sacrifices or going to temple, it’s about being just in your judgements. It’s about speaking truthfully of others. It’s about living peaceably among your neighbors. The holiness of God to be reflected in Israel’s life is a holiness that is social.

Though Christians are not bound to Leviticus’ laws and rules in the way ancient Israelites were and many contemporary Jewish folks are, we are still called to be a holy people, a people set apart. This set-apart-ness requires we conform our lives to the model of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation – God becoming human in Jesus – means that when we look at Christ, we see what it means to live a human life that is totally and completely holy. Jesus Christ shows us what it means to be a holy person, and if we are follow Jesus, we must learn from him what it means to be holy, we must learn to be different just as Jesus is different.

Y’all have heard of WWJD? There’s a lot of wisdom in that little question. Holiness is about reflecting God, reflecting Jesus in every moment and every aspect of our life. So it’s a good start to ask What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do…in line at the grocery store, in traffic, in a fight with kids or a spouse? Beyond that though, we might simply ask Jesus directly what he would do. Jesus is our companion, always with us. Through the Holy Spirit given to us in our baptism, Jesus is always beside us, closer to us that we are to our own breath. Throughout our days we can call on Jesus and ask for his guidance in learning to live as a holy people. Now, this learning is not a becoming, this learning is about living into reality. I don’t learn what it means to be holy in order to become holy. I’ve become holy by virtue of being made a part of the body of Christ, I’ve become holy by being given the Holy Spirit. What I’m learning, what we have to learn, is how to do I live a life that reflects the reality that I am holy. It’s like marriage. A newlywed couple has to learn what it means to be married, but not in order to become married. They are learning how to live into a new reality.

Holiness is one of those things that the church in the west doesn’t talk a whole lot about, at least the Episcopal Church. But holiness is key if we want to understand love and justice – the other two great characteristics of God – rightly. Holiness is where we have to start. God is different. And God’s ways are different. And if we want to love with a Christian love, and pursue justice that is God’s justice, we first have to be a people who are holy just as God is holy. We have to be different in the way that God is different, and we have to have the courage to love differently and to seek justice differently, to live different lives than many of those around us. Sometimes, the differences might be slight, sometimes the differences will be great. We can’t know in advance how different the holiness of God will call us to be. But we cannot stop asking ourselves, how can I reflect the holiness of God in this word, in this action, in this relationship? How can I reflect the difference God makes in my life? The difference God makes in the life of the world? Holiness isn’t about being better than someone else, it’s about being more like God, like the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. Holiness is about pointing to the God who creates and sustains our world, and who made us to be holy, just as he is holy. Amen.

October 11, 2020

Proper 23

Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

---

---

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is different than his other letters because he’s not really addressing a problem or conflict among the Philippians. The general tone of his letter is one of encouragement, support, and joy. This is remarkable considering that Paul penned this letter while he himself was locked away in a dark, damp Roman prison. Hardly the kind of place that produces joy. And yet the entire letter is teeming with a wonderful joyfulness on Paul’s part. A joy not derived from any earthly source, but from Jesus Christ.

Though chains can keep Paul from loved ones, from freedom, from good food and fresh air, chains cannot keep him from Jesus Christ.  Now, by this I – and Paul – don’t mean Jesus as some solution to a religious problem, but Jesus as a living and active agent in the world. Paul, even in prison, knows Jesus Christ personally, intimately. Paul, we might well say, is friends with the Lord. And this friendship, like all good friendships, produces joy.  As we come to the close of this letter, Paul encourages his friends in Philippi to claim this joy for themselves: rejoice in the Lord always; - he writes - again I will say, Rejoice. To rejoice in the Lord is to find our joy in the person of Jesus, not as a model of the religious life or a good example to follow, but as a friend. To rejoice in the Lord is to receive the joy that comes from knowing Jesus.

Of course, as Paul’s life attests, to know the joy of Christ is not to escape the sufferings of this life. It is not an easy pass out of hardship and disappointment. But the joy of Christ, the invitation to rejoice always in the risen Lord, is a joy that can ground us, moor us, and uphold us even when the disappointments of this life threaten to wash us away. The great theologian Karl Barth has said that the joy of the Christian is a “defiant ‘nevertheless’” in the face of bitterness. The joy that comes from knowing Christ allows us to face prison and peril knowing that “nevertheless,” Christ has conquered.

All of us are working to discover joy in our life. You can boil down a lot of what we do as humans to a quest for joy: we work, we marry, we sacrifice, we have kids, we make friends, we move, we study, we stretch ourselves in the hope that these things – directly or indirectly – will help us experience joy in some way. We imagine that more money, or more sex, or more recognition, more something will bring us deeper joy. And these things do often bring us joy – but after a while the sources of our rejoicing disappoint or turn sour or simply don’t work – so the search for joy continues.

The audacious claim Paul makes – in his letter and his life –is that Jesus Christ in the ultimate source of joy. That in Jesus Christ our striving after joy can come to an end. We are invited to “rejoice in the Lord always” because the joy that comes from knowing Jesus Christ never runs out. Now, it’s not that other joys go away when we meet Jesus, it is simply that they are relativized, they are put in their proper place. See, Jesus is the ultimate source of joy, Jesus is the one who fulfils our deepest desire for joy in a way that cannot be exhausted. This frees everything else in our world – relationships, food, work, beauty – to be a source of joy, but not the source of joy. The pressure is off your spouse or your kids or the bottle to provide you with boundless joy, because that has been found in Jesus.

So, rejoice in the Lord always! But how? How do we rejoice in the Lord? We can only rejoice in the Lord by coming to know him personally. And we come to know Jesus by speaking to him in prayer, hearing from him in Scripture, and encountering him in the Eucharist. The knowledge we seek isn’t like the knowledge we find in a textbook, it’s the knowledge we discover as friendships deepen and relationships mature. It’s the intimate, personal knowledge that only comes through time spent with a person. The joy of knowing Christ is ours to claim and ours to share. So many of the joys which our world promises do not fulfill. But the joy of Jesus Christ is sure and trustworthy.

Friends, I think Christianity has little to offer other than Jesus Christ. As Christians, we don’t have much to share other than Jesus Christ, and the joy which comes from knowing him. Sadly, I think we have often gotten so lost in our rites and rituals, in the business and work of being a church, that we have forgotten that all of this exists in order to help us come to know Jesus more deeply, so that we might come to know his joy more fully.  

So, friends – let’s us rejoice in the lord. As we begin gathering back together in person, as we continue navigating a pandemic, as we live with the stress of an upcoming election, as we wonder when life will return to normal again, let us rejoice in the Lord. Amen.

October 4, 2020

Proper 22

Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80: 7-14; Philippians 3: 4b-14; Matthew 21: 33 - 46

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

---

---

Let nothing disturb you

Let nothing upset you

Everything changes

God alone is unchanging

With patience all things are possible

Whoever has God lacks nothing

God alone is enough.  

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

               Over a decade ago, I attended a week-long vocational retreat called CREDO with about thirty other Episcopal clergy form around the country.  We were tasked with creating a plan in which we anticipated our future careers in the church.  It took some time to do this, and once completed, we shared them with each other.  I still have that plan from years ago, and the reason I still hold onto it has nothing to do with its quality. 

          I hold onto my CREDO plan from all those years ago because of how laughable and ridiculous what I wrote down is.  My plan charted an ambitious ascent to bigger and bigger churches, culminating in a future election at which point I would become a bishop.  So yes – ridiculous, embarrassing, and cringe-worthy, are all appropriate adjectives to describe that plan.  I view that plan now not as something to aspire to, but something to avoid. 

       I avoid that plan because it is all about chasing and romanticizing external things.  That plan I wrote out was all about climbing not a corporate ladder, but an ecclesial one – to try and grab the golden crown at the top.  I keep the plan today for two reasons: (1) it always generates a good laugh, and (2) as an important reminder about the things that are not important.

        The apostle Paul, writing in the letter to the Philippians, arrives at the same point when he lists in today’s reading all that he has accomplished in his life, his pedigree.  He was born into the best tribe, baptized on the right day, blameless before the law.  If Paul went to that same retreat, that might be what his plan would look like.  Upward mobility, accomplishment, power.

But Paul has wisdom and courage to say, “I regard all of it as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  In other words, Paul says of all his accomplishments, all the power, the respect he has received – he calls it “loss” or more accurately translated – he calls it garbage, trash.  Meaning – none of it matters. 

          What wisdom there is here for all of us.  The humility Paul demonstrates in labeling as garbage the things he once held so dear is so freeing for all of us.  That CREDO plan I wrote out?  It would go great as birdcage liner.  What that plan represented to me was once very dear and important to me.  It no longer is, because – because of God.  I thought I needed that plan, I thought I needed accomplishment to earn God’s love.  Turns out – we do not.  God loves each of us no matter what is written on our plan.

          Thank God for open eyes.  Thank God for eyes to see how much of what we hold so dear is really garbage, because those things hinder our relationship with God.  Take out the garbage.  Get rid of what you hold so dear – make room instead for God.  AMEN.