July 18, 2021

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

THE REV. CANON JOANN SAYLORS

Reading today’s Gospel lesson – really, reading all of Mark’s Gospel - makes me think, “You know, Jesus is kind of a workaholic.”

Up to this point he’s been preaching, teaching, healing, driving out demons, sending out the disciples - doing everything at high speed, because everything he does he does “immediately.”   By this point in his ministry, he’s got to be tired.  And ditto for the disciples.  They’ve been on crazy out of town trips, staying with people they barely know – that’s always exhausting – and teaching, healing, and casting out demons themselves. 

Which is what makes one verse in our text so stand out for me: "And he said to them, 'Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.'" Rest. A break from all the bustle and activity. Rest. A chance to renew, to stop, to slow. Rest. An end of work, if only for a little while. Rest. An opportunity to stop doing that you may simply be. Rest. What a beautiful word!

So much is packed into Jesus' simple invitation and I have been a little surprised at my own very strong reaction to it. Maybe it’s because I’m about to start several weeks of time off. Maybe it’s that I have filled my life – for years, I suspect, but especially lately –  with so much activity, so much work, so many obligations that the very idea of rest is enough to grab and take hold. Don't get me wrong: this isn't a complaint. I love my life and would rather be busy than not. Anyone who knows me much at all would back me up on that.  But upon reflection – in the time stuck in traffic on 610 – it struck me. Somewhere in all the moving and learning and doing and traveling and visiting and all the other things that make up my blessedly hectic life, I may have forgotten how to rest. And I suspect that I'm not alone.  Maybe you know someone like that too.  Maybe you are someone like that. And I don’t even have children with schedules to manage. But I’ve seen my sister’s life. She’s a busy physician, and she juggles a lot of hours of work with all the support for activities that ambitious high school and now new college students have to juggle. The family goes from super early to crazy late. Trying to find one week to travel together in the summer is an ordeal in itself. So much for that family to do! And all families. They don’t have the time, in other words, to rest.

We're all familiar with commandment #4: keep the Sabbath holy. But lots of us interpret that as one in a list of nagging “do not’s” or with the assumption that keeping Sabbath just means coming to church. Professor Rolf Jacobson points out that this commandment would have been unbelievably good news when it was given.  Think how a teaching like that would have sounded to people who were recently slaves, whose time was never their own, and who never, ever had a guaranteed period of rest. "Wait a minute," Jacobson imagines them saying, upon hearing the 10 Commandments read, "You mean we get to rest? We even have to rest?! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

I wonder why we don’t think of it that way. After all, more and more of us find ourselves trapped in a place a little bit like where the ancient Hebrews toiled. But there’s one important difference. Our bondage is self-constructed and self-imposed, which makes it a lot harder to notice, much less change. We are bound to ideas about success, which means we don’t put limits on our work. We are bound to ideas about our children having every opportunity possible, and so we schedule them into frantic lives and wonder why they have a hard time focusing. We are bound to the belief that what will help our churches grow is more ministry, more programs, more work.

But “he said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.’”

This is not just an invitation to take an afternoon off or go on vacation -- though those may be important elements -- this is an invitation to loosen our shackles and climb out of the cages we've constructed from a culturally-fed belief that more is the ticket to success of whatever kind and that work is the ticket to more.  This is an invitation to rest - in God.

The lectionary puts together two pieces of Mark’s Gospel but takes out what is in between them:  the feeding of the 5,000.  We’ll pick it up next week from John’s Gospel instead.  And what is the feeding of the 5,000 about but God’s abundance?  About God taking the little bits each of us brings and to create great things?  In God the not-enough becomes the more-than-enough.  We have all we need and then some.  And that's the key thing about Sabbath rest, I think --it invites a chance to step back and stand apart from all the things that usually drive and consume us that we might see this abundance.  We have space and time to detect God's presence and providence and blessing, to experience a sense of contentment, and to give thanks.

But stepping back like that is hard to do. No wonder the Psalmist says quite honestly in Psalm 23 that the Lord didn't simply invite rest but rather confesses that the Lord "makes me lie down in green pastures." We are a people that desperately need rest yet resist it. And so the Lord has to command it.

“He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.’”

Ok, God says so. Rest. But then, if you’re like me, you hear that command, you agree with it in theory, but you have a hard time actually following it.  So I look for loopholes.  I say things like, ok, that’s all good, but that’s not what Jesus is modeling in our passage today.  The disciples get back and they don’t even have a minute to eat, because of the crowds coming to see Jesus. Sure, Jesus invites the disciples to rest, and they retreat into the wilderness, but the crowd gets wind of it and actually beats them there.  So Jesus skips the rest period and starts teaching.  And the missing part of the text, as I said, is Jesus feeding 5,000 people.  That may well be all about God’s abundance, but where’s the rest in it? 

Is God sending a mixed message?  Does Jesus really get to say one thing and do another? Good questions, if I do say so myself. And here’s how I think Mark’s Gospel answers them.  Jesus does believe in rest and in Sabbath.  Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and he’s not interested in abolishing it.  We have stories of Jesus being in the synagogue on the Sabbath. We also have stories of Jesus' struggles with religious leaders over how the Sabbath is to be observed. He seems to focus more on faithful behavior than on the exactly the right way to do Sabbath. Earlier in Mark's Gospel, Jesus teaches that Sabbath is a gift.  It is a day to be freed from our labors to enjoy the creation and the Creator. He says, "The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath."  The invitation of Jesus to his disciples to retire to a place where they can rest, take a deep breath, bond with one another and share in telling their stories is important for their well-being.

Jesus cares about rest. But even more than that, Jesus believes in caring for others.  He is, after all, the shepherd to the flock, including the lost sheep.  The commandments are a way God relates to us and cares for us, not an end in themselves.

So Jesus does take time to rest and to pray, he just doesn't do it when others are hungry or in need of healing. 

After the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him while he goes up on the mountain alone to pray.  And this is a rhythm we see throughout his ministry, back and forth between serving and Sabbath.  Time to care for others is followed by time to rest and hear God.  That rhythm gets interrupted and those things get mixed together when the sheep most need their shepherd, but it’s still the underlying pattern of Jesus’ life, as it is meant to be the pattern for ours.

We don’t choose between work and rest, we balance them.  Each is important in its appointed time.  Being intentional about rest is being intentional about ministry. Ministry is just…work, when it hasn't been informed by the community's taking time to be still and know God. How can we have the strength do those many frankly challenging things God calls us to do and how can we discern how to do them faithfully if we don't pause to rest in God?

We should and will go forth from here to serve.

Let's just make sure that we heed Jesus' invitation from time to time too. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.”  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  AMEN.

July 11, 2021

The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

Ephesian 1:3-14 | Ps 24 | Mark 6:14-29

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

We love choices in America. We like choosing our favorite bands, our favorite toothpastes, we like choosing from an array of options on a menu, or whether to watch a new movie or binge an old show from the comfort of our living rooms. In many ways American identity, and the American understanding of freedom is bound up with the idea of choice. To be free is, ultimately, to be free to choose. We are a people who love duty, as long as we choose duty. Choice reigns supreme – especially in our religious lives. Gone are the days where virtually everyone who was born into a particular tradition – Jewish, Catholic, Baptist, what have you – died in that same tradition. The Pew Research Center has documented increased shifting among religious adherents. About 40% of people who belong to a particular denomination or church tradition didn’t grow up in that tradition. Many of you are part of that 40%, as am I. We choose to leave one faith behind for another, or perhaps for no faith at all. The key is we choose. We choose our churches and traditions, just like we choose any number of things in our lives.

I think this ability to choose, to follow your beliefs as they evolve is a gift in many ways, but it also can lead to a danger. We’re often brought up and taught the goodness of choices, and it can lead – and in America I think it has dangerously led – to a place where the chooser is the be-all, end-all. The stuff of life – from cereal brands to Sunday morning – become subject to my choice and will, my choice and will become what matters. They are the ultimate goods. Everything else becomes subject to my choice. Even God. God becomes one thing among many which we can choose or not choose. God is meaningful if I choose God. And God is not meaningful if I don’t choose God. I’ve seen this creep into some forms of religious life, especially among clergy, a kind of what’s good for you is good for you mentality. Our churches, traditions, and worship are great for people who choose it, but if people don’t choose it that’s certainly fine for them. They aren’t missing out on anything or losing anything. They just made a different choice.

In this scheme God doesn’t stand apart from us as the giver of all meaning, God becomes one choice among many, who has meaning only because we have chosen to give God meaning. I think this is wrong, and sinful. And I think our first lesson today helpfully reminds us of the proper role of choice and choosing in our relationship with God.

Throughout our lesson from Ephesians the author is at pains to emphasize that it is GOD who makes the important choice in the God-human dynamic. The author says that before the foundations of the world we were chosen by God, destined for adoption. It is not we who choose God (or don’t choose God). It is God who has chosen us. God has chosen us to live and love. To know him and worship him. God has made the choice to make us his children, heirs with Christ, inheritors of the divine life. We may act as though we can choose or not choose God. Worship him or set him aside, but that is just an illusion. God doesn’t begin working on you and me when we choose him. Whether we choose or not, God is at work in our lives. Holding us together, keeping our universe going, speaking life into every atom of our being. God has chosen us, before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless to live for the praise of his glory. We don’t get to pick God. But we can choose how will we respond to God. Will we choose to acknowledge God’s choice, God’s work, God’s destiny or will we choose to ignore it, to live our lives resisting God’s decisions to call us into adopted childhood?

This choice isn’t just for a few folks – the choice which God has made is a choice for all people. Every one of us, every person who has lived, is living and will live on this planet was chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before God. To resist this choice, to work against it, to ignore it, is to live against the grain of the universe. Before the world was, God chose us. To resist that choice is to resist a decision older than creation, older than the universe itself. It is resist God’s decision to know us, to love us, to be with us and for us. It is to resist God’s decision to love us with everything God has.

The knowledge that God has destined us for himself is, I think, good news. The fact that it is God’s choice, not ours, that determines our relationship with God means that no doubt, no fear, no wandering around can separate us from God. God has made the choice to be with us, to be for us, to be our God. And you and I cannot change that – your lack of faith, your abundance of faith, doesn’t make God choose you more or less. Before the foundation of the world you were chosen. And God has waited centuries and millennia to know you, to love you, to show you what it means that you were chosen by him. Rest in that choice. Rest in that security. God has chosen to know you. To be your God. So let him. Amen.

July 4, 2021

Proper Nine

Deuteronomy 10: 17-21; Psalm 145; Hebrews 11: 8-16; Matthew 5:43-48

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

Two hundred and forty-five years ago today, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Second Continental Congress delegates from thirteen states signed the Declaration of Independence, a document which at the time expressed the ideals upon which this country was founded and the reason for its separation from England.

Can you imagine being the King or Queen of England 245 years ago?  Your sorting through all your letters and come across an envelope from America and you say what’s this?  And your advisor looks at it and says, “oh that’s nothing, that’s junk mail from America, throw it into recycling!”  But you don’t and you open it and read the Declaration of Independence!  That would be an interesting day at work if you were the king or queen of England, wouldn’t it?

In all seriousness, the Declaration of Independence is a masterfully worded document that expresses ideals that America has yet to reach: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  That’s a powerful vision, isn’t it?  In the two hundred forty-five years since, America has pushed toward this ideal, sometimes struggling, sometimes succeeding – abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage.  Our nations success in the past gives me hope that we do have the strength as a nation to live into the vision written onto paper all those years ago. 

I believe that sometime in our future, the dream of life and liberty and happiness put down on that paper will become real.  That’s my hope for my country.  Maybe we will see it happen in our lifetime – who knows?

There’s a great book in the Bible called Hebrews.  We heard a little of it today, from the 11th chapter – the famous chapter on faith.  In this chapter are some of the most eloquent verses to be found in the entire Bible.  They talk about Abraham and Sarah, and their son Isaac.  They are some of the most eloquent verses to be found in the entire Bible. 

The faith they demonstrated was not dependent on a favorable outcome for them.  Abraham and Sarah are considered heroes of the faith not because they had a super-human amount of faith that would be impossible for any of us to have.  They are heroes of the faith because they believed, just like you or me, in God’s guarantee of the future, even if they wouldn’t live to see it happen.  As Hebrews says, they saw the promises, but only from a distance. 

That’s like those people in Philadelphia two hundred forty-five years ago.  They had an idea, they had hope in a future that they believed God was a part of, a future they could see only from a distance.   That’s like us today, who look around and see the world as it is and not as it should be, and our faith compels us to get to work building the world God wants.

I saw a cartoon the other day and it was a person talking to God and the person said, “God I just don’t understand why you allow all the crime, all the hate, all the homelessness, all the child abuse, all the drug addiction in your world.”  And God’s response?  God simply says, “Funny…I was going to ask you the same question.”

We are here in this country today because of the vision people hundreds of years before us had.  Were they perfect?  No.  Is our nation perfect?  Of course not.  But it is our job as citizens to strive to form a more perfect union.  

The fact that we are in this church today, is due to the vision and sacrifice of people long before all of us.  People sacrificed and saved and gave money to build this church.  In the decades since, people have sacrificed and saved and gave money to maintain these buildings, and to maintain the church’s debt-free status.  In the last seven years since I have been here, you all have stepped up in big ways to support financially our growing ministry together. 

And we’re going to continue being faithful to God’s call to serve.  Like Abraham and Sarah, like the authors of the Declaration of Independence, we here now are called into action.

What will this church do today or this year to affect the lives of people who will come here fifty or a hundred years from now?  Several months ago a parishioner approached me and asked, “what is the long term plan for the care and maintenance of our church?”  That is a question this person probably wished they didn’t ask me, because my answer was putting that person on a long-term planning committee whose job it is to find the answer to that question.

Today we celebrate not just our nation’s independence, but we celebrate a vision – a vision of what this nation can be, what this church can be, and who God is calling each of us to be.  AMEN. 

June 27, 2021

The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Psalm 130; Mark 5:21-43

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

Lord, open my mouth and my lips shall proclaim your praise.  Amen

 In the Gospel we heard this morning we heard what some scripture scholars call a Markan sandwich, a story within a story.  Today’s passage takes place almost directly after the story we heard last week; the story of Jesus asleep in the boat, when he was woken-up and he calmed the storm.  Our Lectionary, this morning, skipped over what Jesus had done next, healing the demoniac in the country of the Gerasenes. 

This story takes place upon Jesus’ return from the other side of the sea.   Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue busted through the crowd begging him to come to his house and lay hands on his very sick little girl, so that she may be made well.  Of course, Jesus agreed to come.  On the way to Jairus’ house a woman reached through the crowd, touched Jesus and she was healed by merely touching his garment.  On meeting the woman, Jesus lovingly said to her “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.” As this was happening, people from Jairus’ house broke-up this moment to report the death of the little girl.  Jesus, seeing the look on the grief-stricken father’s face tells him to have no fear but believe.  Jesus immediately continued his journey to Jairus’ house.  When they arrive, he entered the house with Jairus, the little girl’s mother, Peter, James, and John.  Jesus took the little girl’s hand and told the little girl in Aramaic, “Talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up!”

In my preparation for this sermon, I read a commentary by N.T. Wright who is a leading biblical scholar in England.  In his commentary, Wright brings up an intriguing question.  He asks, why would Mark, who is writing his gospel in Greek addressing a Greek speaking audience keep these Aramaic words of Jesus? –  words that required translating.  In other words, why not skip the Aramaic altogether.

N.T. Wright provides an answer to his question.  He says, we will never know for sure, but perhaps these ordinary spoken words made such a deep impression on Peter and the rest of the apostles that when even they retold the story afterwards, they used these crucial words in Aramaic (words of the ordinary people).  Wright suggests that by using these Aramaic words, Mark is demonstrating that the life-giving power of God is breaking into the world and working through the ordinary experiences of humanity.

It makes me wonder that perhaps these ordinary Aramaic words were left in by Mark because he wanted to show us, his readers, how God loves us.  Mark wants to show that God has come into the world to love us on our ordinary human level. 

Perhaps Mark is demonstrating that God’s love for us is like the love of an ordinary doting father for his little girl, who is the joy of his life, his little princess.  Perhaps Mark has left in the ordinary Aramaic to demonstrate we are God’s little princesses, his joy, his special little child, the Apple of his eye.  Perhaps Mark is telling his readers that God wants to have a loving, life-giving relationship with each of us like a doting father would have for his little girl.  Like Jairus’ little girl who Jesus woke-up with all tenderness.  “Little girl, get up!”  A love with no questions asked.  No questions about one’s ethnicity (we are one race – the human race), one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation nor one’s gender identity. Just the love of a Daddy.

Today, Across the Diocese of Texas we are celebrating the feast of Pauli Murry, the first African American woman ordained to priesthood in The Episcopal Church.  According to a biography provided by the diocese:

•    Anna Pauline Murray was baptized in 1911, a seventh-generation Episcopalian.  She was orphaned at an early age when her father was beaten to death by a white man following the prior loss of her mother. 

•    Murray’s career was imbued with Christian principles, particularly a thirst for social justice. But it wasn’t an easy road. Prejudice dogged her for most her life. The University of North Carolina rejected her because of race. After graduating from Howard University, Harvard Law rejected her because of gender.

•    This experience led her to recognize the connections between racism and sexism before many others did, a condition she called “Jane Crow.”  She later became the first African American to earn a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School.  As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights.

•    Thurgood Marshall called her 1950 book, States' Laws on Race and Color, the "bible" of the civil rights movement. It was the foundation of his arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional. 

•    In 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsburg named Murray as a coauthor of a brief in Reed v. Reed, a groundbreaking case on gender discrimination.

•    As an activist Pauli Murray attempted to desegregate buses and helped organize sit-ins a decade before the civil rights movement. She later served on President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women. She co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966.

•    Even as she advocated for women, Murray struggled to understand her own sexual and gender identity, sometimes describing herself as having an "inverted sex instinct." She was briefly married to a man and had several deep relationships with women. In the 1950’s, she met Renee Barlow, who became her long-term partner. Although Murray publicly identified as female, she sometimes considered herself a male.

•    Renee Barlow died in 1973, with Murray at her bedside, reading the 23rd Psalm. Murray planned the memorial service. The priest praised its beauty and asked her if she had ever thought about being ordained.

•    Murray soon left academia and entered General Theological Seminary and earned a Master of Divinity. Again, it was not an easy path. The Episcopal Church did not yet ordain women; and she was not well received by many seminarians. Nevertheless, she persisted. On January 8, 1977, at age 65, Murray was ordained at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

•    Cancer cut short her ministry of healing, and Pauli Murray died at home on July 1, 1985. The General Convention added her to the church’s calendar in 2012.

I believe a person like Pauli Murray could only draw her strength, her tenacity, her endurance, her courage, and her ministry of healing from her faith and her loving, life-giving relationship with God.  I believe Pauli Murray is a great example of someone who like Jairus’s little girl, was at some point in her young life woken up by Jesus’ loving embrace and continued to draw on that special Daddy’s love her whole life.  A love with no questions asked.  No questions about one’s ethnicity one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation nor one’s gender identity. Just the love of a Daddy.

My prayer for us all this morning is that we all, (online and here in this church) like Jairus’ little girl, and like Pauli Murray take Jesus’ offer to wake-up in God’s daddy’s kind of complete and abiding love that God has for us all.  Amen.

June 13, 2021

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

1 Samuel 15: 34-16:13; Psalm 20; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4: 26-34

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

I would like to ask you a series of questions that you do not have to answer verbally, but I want you to answer them mentally, in your mind.  And they are all questions about desire.  When you were nine years old, what was your heart’s desire?  What mattered most to your nine-year-old self?

What about when you turned twenty-one?  Was your heart’s desire the same at twenty-one as when you were nine?   One final question – what is your heart’s desire now?  What do you want most at whatever age you are?  Is your heart’s desire the same now as it was when you were twenty-one?

For most people, our desires change over time.  They do not remain constant as we age from nine to twenty-one to whatever age we are now.  In the psalm we read today, psalm 20, we encounter a verse which reads “May the Lord grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans.”  

The psalm is considered a “royal psalm” meaning that it was written to ask for God’s help for Israel’s ruler.  All the language in the psalm is geared toward asking God to bless and prosper the king and the land.  It was a prayer to prosper the king – if the king is happy, everyone is happy – maybe.  It is like some of the prayers we offer in church when we pray for our elected officials and for our government. 

When the author of the psalm writes “may the Lord grant you your heart’s desire and prosper all your plans,” the author is asking God to bless the king.  So, if this psalm is political, which it is, what purpose does it have for us?  Would God consider granting your heart’s desire, even though you are not a king or ruler? 

For many people today, God has been replaced as the provider of one’s heart’s desire by something more tangible: Amazon.com.  Jeff Bezos, the founder, has made billions of dollars by delivering what people think are their heart’s desires to their front doors. 

What do you desire?  I have a friend. And he told me once that when he was 18 years old, he asked God to grant him his heart’s desire.  At the very mature age of 18, my friend’s heart’s desire was to be surrounded by beautiful women.  There were some additional nuances to that desire that I will leave unsaid since we are in church, but you get the idea.    But here’s miracle – God answered his prayer. 

God did not answer it the way my friend wanted God to answer it, nor did God answer it in a timely manner, but some thirty years later, my friend found himself surrounded by people – just not women, in fact they were all men.  Men wearing Harris County Correctional Unit uniforms.  Seems a far cry from an answered prayer, doesn’t it?  It was not.

See by the time my friend found himself in jail, he had a debilitating crack cocaine addiction, and doing time saved his life, and now he is sober, happily married, and retired.  He is helping other people, and that is his true heart’s desire.  He just did not know it when he was eighteen, but God did.  God helped him to find his true heart’s desire. 

At the end of the day, I believe that our true heart’s desire is the same for all of us: our deepest desire, our deepest longing is to be in friendship with God and help others.  Our deepest desire - once we grow out of our selfish needs for acquiring more stuff and wanting more praise and recognition – our honest deep desire is to live usefully and to humbly follow our God.  Period.  End of story.  That is what truly matters, above anything.

There is very little in life I have certainty about – but I am certain about this.  The verse in that psalm is true.    God will grant you your heart’s desire, and God will fulfill your plans.  I have seen God do it in my life.  I have seen God do it in some of your lives. 

But there is a secret to this that most people do not know.   If you really want God to prosper your plans and fulfill your heart’s desire, you must do one thing.  One thing.  And here is the secret: you have to get out of God’s way.  You have to get out of yourself.  You have to sacrifice your ego.  And if you can do those things, God has a lot of use for you, and God will fulfill the deepest of your heart’s desires.  AMEN.

May 30, 2021

Trinity Sunday

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

Isaiah 6: 1-8; Psalm 29, Romans 8: 12-17; John 3:1-17

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

It is hard for me to imagine even saying this, but today – May 30, I am now the father of a sixteen-year-old son.  Sixteen years ago today, our son James was born in Alexandria, Virginia, a few days after my graduation from seminary, and a few days before my ordination here in Texas. 

I am thinking of birth today for two reasons – (1) it is my son’s birthday, and (2) birth is an obvious theme in today’s Gospel reading for us.

The story is a familiar one to us, that of Nicodemus, who seeks Jesus out to have a conversation with him.  There are several things that are important to note about Nicodemus seeking Jesus: (1) John tells us that Nicodemus went to meet Jesus “at night” which suggests that Nicodemus wished not to be seen speaking with Jesus, and (2) Nicodemus was a pharisee which literally means “separated one.” 

In the Gospels, the pharisees are often presented as some of Jesus’ main opponents, so the point is – it was unusual for Nicodemus to seek Jesus out.  They occupied very different positions in society at that time, and it seems that Nicodemus wanted to seek out Jesus very privately to potentially avoid shame or embarrassment.  Think about someone in your life whom you know, but you do not want other people to know you know, and that might be kind of like what is going on between Nicodemus and Jesus. 

And Jesus says to Nicodemus, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Nicodemus does not fully understand what Jesus is saying, and he responds, “how can anyone be born again after growing old?”  This is not Jesus’ point, of course.  He is not talking about physical rebirth, but wants Nicodemus to go deeper. 

Jesus says that to be people of God, we need to be born of the Spirit, to be born from above.  What does that even mean?  Jesus tried to explain it to Nicodemus, but Nicodemus could not understand it.  And neither do I, fully.

Although I do not understand what exactly “being born from above” means, I know what it feels like.  It feels like true freedom.  I am drawn to what I recently read in James Hollis’ book Living an Examined Life, in which he wrote that “the first half of life, for most of us is a giant, unavoidable, mistake.”  Think about that! 

For me, being born from above means stepping into a second half of life that has nothing to do with age, but rather has to do with awareness and becoming truly free.  As St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, when we become adults, it is time to put away childish things.  This comes close to what I believe Jesus is saying to Nicodemus that we must be born from above. 

Elsewhere in the same book James Hollis says this: “the two greatest threats to ourselves are inside of us and they are (1) fear and (2) lethargy.  Hollis writes: “every morning we rise to find two gremlins at the foot of the bed.  The one named fear says, “The world is too big for you, too much.  You are not up to it.  Find a way to procrastinate again today.”   And the other gremlin, the named Lethargy says “Hey, chill out, you’ve had a hard day, watch TV, zone out, numb yourself..  Tomorrow’s another day.”

If you are born of the earth, then Fear and Lethargy are ultimately your masters, and you are the slave.  Many people live this way.  To be born from above, means to chose love instead of fear, it means to choose action instead of lethargy. 

There is a lot of action going on at this church over the next month and a half.  We are renovating parts of our shared space because they need our attention, and action is necessary.  This will be, I hope, the beginning of a new face of St. Andrew’s that it will share with the community.  There will be people who oppose this – who speak in the guise of fear, who say “we don’t have enough money to do this, we don’t deserve to do this.”  And I am sure I will hear lethargy speak up: “why are we doing this now?  Let’s not move into action, let’s appoint a committee to talk about doing something next year.” 

Once you are born, there is no going back to being physically born again.  The same is true with being born from above – once you move into the second half of life, the life of the spirit, the life where you leave fear and lethargy behind, there is no going back.  Once you have experienced freedom, why would you want to return to your prison cell?  AMEN. 

May 23, 2021

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

The Rev. Canon Joann Saylors

Good morning. It’s great to be back with you, and great to be here for the birthday of the Church. Maybe. I said that about the Ascension, too. Also, arguably, the calling of the disciples. Or the Last Supper. The Church has a lot of birthdays for scholars to debate. I’ll come back to that.

Certainly today is a feast day, and joy abounds. Pentecost, from the Greek word for fifty. A major feast of the Church. But aside from special church practices – red t-shirts, balloons, doves, reading the Gospel in multiple languages – why does it matter? What takes us beyond just the day itself in our faith journeys?

On the day of Pentecost, when the fifty days of Easter had come to an end, Christ's Passover was fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, manifested, given and communicated as a divine person. The Advocate promised by Christ entered the believing community to guide and protect us until the Jesus returns.

Let me say here that Pentecost is not the birthday of the Holy Spirit. The scholars do agree on that one. As the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is co-eternal with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit was there for Creation: remember that the Spirit, God’s breath, moved over the waters. And we hear about works of the Spirit throughout the Hebrew scriptures. We say it every week in the Nicene Creed: the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, has spoken through the prophets.

Pentecost is a feast we share with our Jewish sisters and brothers, at least in part. I was in seminary before I realized that there was more to the day than what we heard in the Book of Acts. It had never occurred to me to ask WHY people were gathered on that particular occasion. The disciples, sure, they gathered in rooms all the time, but why had the crowds gathered? They were actually there for the Jewish feast of Shavuot, which is …wait for it… 50 days after the harvest offering at Passover.

We didn’t come up with the name “Pentecost.” By Jesus’ time, it had also come to commemorate God giving the Law, the Torah, to Moses at Mount Sinai. Pentecost, then, in the broadest sense, is a celebration both of God giving the Word and of God giving the Spirit. The Ten Commandments is a Pentecost movie!

We talk a lot about gifts coming from God. On Shavuot, Jews mark not just the giving of the Torah by God, but their acceptance of the Torah. Some Jewish writers have compared the exchange to a marriage or other sacred covenant. One way the holiday is observed is through the reading of the Book of Ruth, the story of a woman who converts to Judaism and accepts the Torah. And the Christian Pentecost celebrates not just God sending the Holy Spirit to the gathered community, but also their accepting the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The gifts accepted at the first Christian Pentecost have different meanings to different Christians. Some interpret what was received as the spiritual benefits of accepting Jesus that bring a more meaningful earthly life. Others — especially those Christians known as Pentecostals — believe the first Pentecost offers all followers of Jesus “the gifts of the spirit” — speaking in and interpreting tongues, the ability to prophesy, the power to heal by touch, the ability to discern spirits. Pentecostals believe those things are available to all Christians, starting with the first ones, but only those who accept them are able to fulfill the work and destiny that God has laid out for them.

We believe that it is the gift of the Spirit to each one of us that helps us confess Jesus as Lord, serve God, pray, and live like Jesus. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, names the fruits of the Spirit that make us more like Jesus: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Gifts that keep on giving.

But Pentecost has always been about more than gifts to us as individuals. From that first Pentecost until now, it has always been the belief of the Church that the Holy Spirit directs and guides us both collectively and individually. When we call Pentecost the birthday of the Church, it’s because the gift of the Spirit made to the believing community equipped and empowered the apostles to go out among the people and begin to spread Jesus’ message.

The day of Pentecost is a celebration of God's hand guiding the Christian community through the trials and decisions that had been and will be presented to it. In the Book of Acts we see this new Church struggling to come up with answers to the existential problems it faced: Who should be admitted to the believing community? Is it necessary to obey the purity and food laws of the Torah? What roles, rights and duties should Church officials exercise? These were problems that vexed the early community, and the descendants of those problems still vex us today.

The stories throughout Acts testify to a community struggling to organize itself in the best possible and most inclusive way. The most faithful way. It was only with the belief that its members were acting with some guidance and grace from God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, that the early Church had the confidence to make the necessary decisions about who and how to be, then live into them.

Throughout Paul’s letters, we hear of faith communities struggling to understand the doctrine and practices of following Jesus. We hear Paul preach against conflict, selfishness, factionalism, pride, and immoral behaviors. Paul’s letters, inspired by the Holy Spirit, held up a model of faithful behavior for the churches to whom they were written, the churches that they were sent on to, and the very diverse mix of churches who have studied them ever since.

The problems experienced by the early communities are as real today as they were to the apostles and disciples who knew Christ. There was bitter division in the early Church about who should be allowed to join the community. Some proposed much more inclusion; others more restriction. This is not so different from the conversations around immigration or homelessness or race in the U.S. and around the world.

Like those who objected to the admission of the Gentiles, we have our negative terms for those we wish to exclude. Think about “undocumented person” versus “illegal alien.” Or “unhoused” versus “homeless.” We all know there is power in language we use around race. “Those people.” Too often that means “those other people not like us and not as valuable as people like us.”

That sort of us vs. them mentality doesn’t stay outside the doors of the church. We see congregations who say they want more young families, but don’t really want children in worship. Or say they want to be hospitable to the community, but only if the community will pay for extra cleaning services after their meetings. Or schedule vestry meetings at a time when no parent of younger children could possibly commit, despite a plea for new leaders. We use exclusive terms like “genuflect” and “rector” and “vestment” that can inhibit people from participating in our community, because it’s so hard to keep asking what things mean.

When we start to see a need to open our arms and take down our walls, that is the prompting of the Spirit. When we find ways to let go of our precious judgment so we truly see other people as beloved children of God, that’s the Spirit. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we treat those we put into the category of “other” as our sisters and brothers in Christ.

The early Church also faced questions of ethics. How can Christians live into the image of God? In the wake of Church scandals and the appalling words and actions of many who profess themselves followers of Jesus, the unchurched and de-churched have come to see greed, selfishness, and tribalism as normal Christian behavior. As we watch the politicization of caring for the vulnerable, the rise in social apathy, and elevation of rights without corresponding responsibilities, we should ask ourselves: what sort of life do we lead when we let the Holy Spirit guide us? How could we as the Spirit-led Body of Christ point back to an understanding of the common good? Can we model Jesus’ “love thy neighbor” command as a way of life attractive to those who are weary of selfishness and exploitation?

Led by the Spirit, the Church after Pentecost tried to structure itself as a caring and just community. If we are being led to do the same, we are doing a good job of hiding it. A recent Barna study revealed that 62% of lapsed Christians said the #1 quality they look for in a person with whom to discuss faith is ‘non-judgment.’ But only 34% said they know any Christians who possess this quality. It’s a gift of the Holy Spirit that allows us to listen, to see our own brokenness before that of others, and to love instead of judging.

Fortified and encouraged by the belief that the Spirit of God guides us, the Church from its very beginnings has continued to evaluate its attitudes and teachings in the light of new contexts and cultures. We will continue to ask new questions, find new answers, and the Spirit will guide us to adapt in faithful ways that honor the past. Pentecost may be a feast with its roots in the past, but the power it gives to change the Church and to change the world is perennial.

It’s no accident that just after we profess our beliefs in and about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed, our next statement is, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Because the birthday of the Church is a work of the Spirit, a gift for the apostles of the past, present, and future.

When we are made new Christians by water and the Holy Spirit, a cross is marked on our forehead with the words “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever.” It’s a little Pentecost moment every time, as the Church is reborn whenever the Body of Christ adds a new member. We may not hear a violent wind or see tongues of fire, as they did at the first Pentecost. But we can trust that God will send the Holy Spirit to guide and protect us. It’s up to us to accept the gift, and then go where she leads us.

AMEN.

May 16, 2021

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

1 John 5:9-13 | Ps 1 | John 17:6-19

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

I’m guessing y’all have seen the Marvel movies, right? Spider-man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, all that. They’re quite good. They’re so good, in fact, because of how well they create the cinematic world where the stories take place. All these little bits and pieces work together to form this coherent whole. The writers and directors have gone to great lengths establishing a universe where superheroes are just a part of life. 

I thought about the Marvel movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe reading this passage from the Gospel for today. Jesus, praying to God, repeats twice that his disciples, just like him, do not belong to the world. Sometimes we use “world” as interchangeable with “earth.” That’s led to some bad readings of the Bible, readings that make it seem like Christians are somehow better than or above the planet. That’s not right at all – we are deeply, deeply bound up with our planet. So what if “world,” like Jesus uses the word, means something more like “world” when we talk about the Marvel movies. Worlds are something we create, we fashion them. They have histories and characters, rules that govern them. What makes the Marvel movies or the Lord of the Rings books or whatever sci-fi or fantasy thing we’re enjoying so great are the worlds they create.

I think, in some ways, like authors and directors, we humans create our own worlds. The earth is a given, but the world or worlds we create on this earth are determined, in large part, by us. We create the worlds we live in.  Worlds are what happen when humans encounter nature and each other. We take the raw materials around us – human and otherwise – and form them into something meaningful. Ways of living together, eating, the hows and whys of worship and government, the traditions that mark time and transition, all of these and more go into creating our worlds.

The worlds we create, much like the worlds of our books and movies, are worlds filled with hurt and harm. Humanity can produce incredible good, amazing beauty, right alongside unspeakable, almost unfathomable evil. That’s why Christians talk about a fallen, sinful world: no matter the worlds we dream up, we can’t seem to escape creating worlds touched by evil, by death, by destruction.

So, Jesus has entered into the worlds we have created, to save us from our worlds, by inviting us into a world created by God. This world, which the Gospels call the Kingdom of God, breaks into ours. Jesus is the crack, the break. Through Jesus healing, mercy, forgiveness, - eternal life enter our world! God’s world presses on us. The resurrected Jesus is our escape, not from the earth, not from our bodies, but from ways of living that are marked by sin and death. Jesus invites us out of the worlds we have created into his new world, from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of God.

Jesus does not belong to the world, because Jesus does not belong to sin or to death. His life, as Easter reminds us, cannot be stopped by death. Jesus does not belong to our world, and by grace, neither do we. In our baptisms, we change our address! We no longer live in the worlds which humanity has made, but in the world which God has made. This is the true world, the world we were made for. This world is one of peace, mercy, forgiveness. It is a world in which God is worshipped and our neighbors loved. This is a world that is overflowing with life, with justice, with abundance! This is the world – this is the kingdom – which God is bringing to bear on the old worlds of sin and death. And you and I are called to be a part of that.

Belonging to this world, preaching this world, will often put a target on our backs. God’s world simply produces enemies, folks who are more invested in the world as we have made it than the world as God intends it. The fight against slavery and for civil rights is a case study in this, but it’s something we all have to be aware of. Each of us, in some way, is invested in the world as it is, we have to ask Jesus for the grace to die daily to the temptations of this world, and the strength to turn our hearts to the world which he has brought.

The church must also wrestle with this. Plenty of good Christians, plenty of good Episcopalians stood by while abolitionists and protesters fought for the end of slavery and the granting of equal rights in the US. The church in America has spent much of its life seeking to be acceptable to the world it finds itself in, and it has led us to a point of massive decline, decline that will probably be accelerated by the pandemic. If want to continue as a church, if we want to have a church to give to our kids, godkids, and grandkids, we need to start preaching and proclaiming the world that Jesus Christ has brought, bearing witness in our lives to that world. Jesus said we do not belong to the world of sin and death. We belong to another world, and we have to act like it. As we come back together there will be a strong temptation to “go back” to normal. But what if that’s not what we’re called to, though? What if God is calling us to imagine what we can be? What if God is calling us to imagine new kind of parish life, a parish life where the world of God, a world of mercy, grace, and love is boldly, unapologetically, proclaimed? We may be hated, we may even be crucified, but that can only be a prelude to resurrection. Amen.

May 9, 2021

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5: 1-6; John 15: 9-17

The Rev. James M.L Grace

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

Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, happy Mother’s Day out there to every person who has been born.  If you were a baby once, you get to celebrate Mother’s Day!

I would like to spend a few minutes this morning talking about our reading from 1 John today and would like to do so through a story.  This is a story about something I experienced roughly two weeks ago. 

A friend of mine reached out to me two weeks ago and asked if I would go over to her house and say a prayer with her.  She is about my age, is a mother of several children and was getting ready to have major surgery.  She was going to have a hysterectomy.  As I walked into her home, I became aware of the irony of it being so close to Mother’s Day, and her having the apparatus of her motherhood removed from her body.  

Her family members and I gathered around her, placing our hands on her shoulders, and prayed.  The next day she had the surgery, she came through fine, and is healing now.  We talked last week, and I wished her a happy Mother’s Day. 

She expressed gratitude for the doctors, optimism, and hope, and I left the conversation with this feeling that despite what my friend had just gone through surgically, that she seemed stronger after the surgery than before.  This sounds ridiculous – but she continues to give birth even after this surgery – creating hope and joy.

Birth against all odds is the story of scripture, filled as it is with stories of women barren since birth, who by a miracle discover life growing within them – an act of God. 

There is a mysterious line in our scripture reading from 1 John today in which the author writes these words: “whatever is born of God conquers the world.”   What does that mean?  For me it means, what a person wiser than I once told me, which is that inside the will of God, there is no failure.  Outside the will of God, there is no success.”   Or to put it another way, God did not bring you this far to bring you this far. 

There is still new life ahead.  It does not matter if our bodies are biologically not up to giving birth anymore, all of us, no matter our age or ability have new life, new insights, new wisdom to share with the world.  

When the author of 1 John writes those words “what is born of God conquers the world,” I do not believe that we are to assume that means we should forge our own paths and use God as a sledgehammer to knock down others and further our own agendas.  What I believe the author means, is that it does not matter if you are a woman who has had a hysterectomy – it does not matter if you are man, it does not matter what your gender identification is – because we all have the same job – to join with God and get to work getting born. 

If we trust God, what you and I create will have God’s blessing on it.  If what you or I create is contrary to God, you better believe God will thwart our efforts, as God did with the builders of the Tower of Babel. 

Whatever God brings into the world, will triumph against all odds.  That is our job by the way – to be co-creators with God.  To build something.  And there is risk to that – there is risk of failure of course.  At this church I have heard people share with me their fears of failure, which I completely identify with.  We are all afraid of failing. 

And while that fear of failure runs deep for many of us, I submit a fear greater than that is our fear of success.  What if we really accomplish something?  What then? 

One final word on this verse.  Anything that is born, even born of God, must one day be weaned.  Whatever is born must become self-supporting.  This weaning process is difficult for us, and many of us refuse it.  No one likes to be weaned.   But we cannot mature – we cannot grow – until we are weaned, until we are deprived of comfort and certainty.  Once we are on our own, once we face our fears with courage, trusting God to go before us and clear our path, then we will conquer any adversity that comes before us.

Bob Dylan once said, “He who isn’t busy getting born is busy dyin.’”   God is into living, not dying.  God is birthing within you right now at this moment – something wonderful to give to the world.  All you must do is figure out what it is, allow God to deliver it, and watch the world change.  Happy Mother’s Day.   AMEN.

May 2, 2021

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

1 John 4:7-21 | Ps. 22:24-30 | John 15:1-8

The heart of our passage today is the ultimate necessity of Jesus Christ for us.  “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” Strong words from the Lord today. And hard words, in many ways. For us to live, for us to bear the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of resurrection, requires we receive our life from Jesus. He lays it out for us: if we don’t have him, we have nothing. We’re just dried branches for the kindling.

To abide in Jesus is just to act towards the Lord as he acts towards us. Jesus abides in us and we are to abide in him in the same way! Jesus, resurrected and ascended, is present to each and every one of us. Not in a general way, but in a specific, personal way. Jesus Christ is present to us right now. He is in the midst of us, closer to us that we are to our own breath. There is never a time, never a moment when we who have been baptized into the body of Christ are apart from Jesus. He’s there in our good moments and our bad moments. He’s there when we’re at church and he’s there when we’re at home. He’s with us in our moments of sorrow and with us in our moments of joy. That’s Jesus abiding in us. He abides in us by being with us. By sharing his life with us in every moment.  So, for us to abide in him, we return the favor. Just as Jesus is present to us, we must be present to him. In our moments of sorrow and joy, in church and at home, at our best and at our worst we must turn our attention to Jesus just as he always has his attention turned to us, we must share our life with him.

Think of it like a turning to look at a friend. You can do a lot with a friend side-by-side, with them in the same room as you. But looking at each other squarely in the face, turning your body and your eyes and your focus to each other changes things. There’s a level of attention and intention that arises when we look at each other in the face. It’s a posture of sharing. That’s what it means for Jesus to abide in us and we in him: we turn spiritually to face Jesus as he is turned to face us. We turn to each other to share our lives with one another.

This is what the Christian life is all about. Everything we do – prayer, Scripture, sacraments, fellowship, worship – all of it is about correcting our spiritual posture, turning from all the other things we pay attention to, all the other things we abide in, towards Jesus. Because without turning to Jesus we simply will not live. We shrivel up and die, like branches pruned from the vine.

Jesus calls us to abide in him because in him is life. Not just eternal life, life in heaven, but life that be lived right now, today! Life that is possible only when we know the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, the incredible, overwhelming, world-creating love of God. That is the life which Jesus the vine offers to us, to the branches. We don’t receive this by thinking about Jesus or talking about Jesus, but only by abiding in him, by sharing with him, by knowing him personally as he knows each of us personally. The branch doesn’t think about the vine, or talk about the vine, the branch simply receives what the vine has to offer. So too with us: it’s not that thinking and talking about Jesus are unimportant! They’ve very important. But they’re only important insofar as they help us know Jesus more personally, to receive from him all that he has to offer.

Our faith isn’t about our buildings, our music, our liturgies. It’s not even about the good works we do, or the theologies we write. Our faith, at its core, is about the truth that Jesus Christ has come to give us life. He abides in us and invites us to abide in him so that we might live. If you have not turned to Jesus, if you have thought about him, spoken about him, but not abided with him and in him, start today. As we receive communion Jesus gives himself to us physically in the bread and wine of Eucharist to abide in us. As we receive him, let us turn our hearts to him, and as we go out into this next week and the weeks ahead, let’s keep our hearts turned to him. Share your life with him in prayer, let him share his life with you in Scripture. Receive from the heavenly vine all that he has to give us – you won’t regret it. Amen.  

April 25, 2021

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

Acts 4: 5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 10:11-18; John 10: 11-18

Good morning St. Andrew’s.  As the photo on the front of your service bulletin indicates, today is Good Shepherd Sunday.  We hear readings today, such as the 23rd psalm and the Gospel which speak of the Lord as our shepherd. 

In the Gospel Jesus clearly explains the difference between a hired hand and a good shepherd.  A hired hand is someone who shows up to do a job, but they are there primarily to get a paycheck.  The hired hand doesn’t really have much passion, or interest in the work they are doing. There’s not much in the way of long-term involvement.  When things get tough, the hired hand usually runs away. 

That’s different from a good shepherd, who shows up with compassion, who is passionate about the work they are doing.  The good shepherd doesn’t leave when things get tough – but stays present, takes care of the sheep. 

The story of the Bible is pretty simple – it is the story of God showing up in our lives as a good shepherd.  A God who is faithful, compassionate, and with us every step of our journey.   

While God always shows up as the good shepherd in our lives, how do we show up?  Are we good shepherds to others, or do we show up as the hired hand, just wanting to know what’s in it for me? 

I will tell you that every morning I wake up, the voice of the hired hand starts getting real loud in my head.  And what I hear, again and again, is “you aren’t good enough.”  “You must produce something.  You must do something to earn your affirmation and your value.”  That’s what my hired hand says.  I know what he looks like (and it is a he) – he’s short and likes to yell a lot and his bark is much bigger than his bite. 

What does the hired hand in your head say to you?  I get into trouble when I start believing what the hired hand who lives in my head says to me.  I let the hired hand’s voice drown out the voice of the Good shepherd who says “you are enough.  You are loved fully by God.”  That’s what my good shepherd says.  “You are loved, you are enough.”

The world is much more interested in hired hands by the way.  Hired hands tend to be the movers and shakers in the world.  They get big deals done, they make money, they have all the outward trappings of success.  We are taught from childhood that the path to material success lies in being a hired hand, rather than in being a good shepherd.

Good shepherds, on the other hand, usually don’t have an easy life.  Recall the first characteristic of a good shepherd in which Jesus says “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”  Our culture applauds hired hands while it crucifies good shepherds.  If you need a reminder of that, look no further than behind me – Jesus, crucified on a cross.  That cross, ironically, was a gift to St. Andrew’s from Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. 

The voice of the good shepherd is hard to hear, but it will speak to us if we allow it.  I will share one story of what I believe to have been an occasion of the shepherd speaking.  I am leading a book club on a book entitled Caste which argues that there is a hidden hierarchy of social and racial ranking in America.  

One of the parishioners in the class (I call us the “Casteaways”) said that when she sat down to read the assigned chapters for last Sunday on race relations, she sat down on her couch convinced she was not a racist.   After reading the chapters, she said she got up from the couch and owned the hard truth that she was after all, racist.  She described it as a moment “of scales falling from her eyes” like Paul after he was blinded. She spoke a truth many of us are afraid of doing – acknowledging the deeply embedded layers of “hired hand” thinking that all of us have to some degree. 

That’s the shepherd’s voice – asking us to go deep and look at ourselves and examine our faults with courage so that we can become better people.  The hired hand won’t stick around for that kind of inward soul work. 

I will close today with an illustration of a Good Shepherd I have been unable to remove from my mind this week – George Floyd was a Good Shepherd to me. 

You may be thinking to yourself that Floyd had a criminal background – he had chemicals in his body, was using counterfeit money, and you’re right.  But that doesn’t matter to me.  Because this week I keep thinking about that other Good Shepherd, the one brought before the crowds and Pontius Pilate.  Remember what they said about him?  He was a criminal, a threat, an abomination.  He should be crucified.  And he was.  It wasn’t until that Good Shepherd died that the eyes of the Roman soldier standing at the cross were opened, and he said “truly this was God’s son.”

I am embarrassed to say that it wasn’t until Floyd’s death until my eyes were finally opened to the problem of race in our country.  My eyes could have opened so much sooner. And I believe they would have, if I wasn’t spending so much time with hired hands.  I will be walking with the good shepherd, from now on.  I understand the price, and to me, there is nothing more valuable.  AMEN.

April 18, 2021

The Third Sunday of Easter

1 John 3:1-7 | Psalm 4 | Luke 24:36b-48

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus spends a good amount of time showing his disciples that he’s not a ghost but is actually a real person -  in the flesh! Important to this Jesus offers his hands and his feet to his disciples; he shows them the wounds of the cross which remain after his resurrection. It is those wounds which prove that he really is alive. Christian art since the very beginning has followed the witness of Scripture and almost always portrays the risen Jesus with the marks of his crucifixion. The calling card of the Risen Lord, we can say, is the marks of his death.

The fact that the Risen Lord keeps the wound in his side and the nail marks in his hands and feet tells us a lot about what resurrection isn’t and what it is. Resurrection isn’t erasure. The Risen Jesus isn’t washed of the marks of his crucifixion; he bears them in his resurrected body and will bear them for all time. The resurrection doesn’t undo the past, it transforms it – hallowing it, sanctifying it, redeeming it. The wounds of death are now signs of life, evidence not of death’s power to end, but of the depths to which God’s love will go for us.

1 John tells us that we have become children of God, adopted by him. We have been joined not into our own relationship with God, but Jesus’. We stand where Jesus stands, sharing his relationship with the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because we have been adopted by God, made a part of Jesus, so the author of 1 John says, at our resurrection we will be like Jesus. God has adopted us, and God will give to us the same resurrection which he has given our Lord. So too, our wounds, our scars will not be erased, but they will be transformed. We will not bear them as signs of sin’s power or death’s touch, but as tokens of God’s incredible power to turn all things to good. 

This isn’t the same thing as saying, “everything happens for a reason,” or “God’s got a plan.”  In a world of sin and evil not everything happens for a reason – sometimes evil and sin just happen. Horrors are committed, hurts inflicted. God does have a plan, but that plan doesn’t mean that everything that happens to us or our world is God’s will. To know God’s will, we must look at Scripture – and from beginning to end God’s will is for life! For our flourishing and our joy! God’s plan in the face of a world of sin and evil is resurrection – God will, in some way, take everything that has happened to us, take all our scars and marks, and knit them into new life.

I don’t quite know how that will work. There are some things in our individual pasts and in our collective, communal pasts that are just evil, that are reprehensible, where no good can be found. Luckily none of us have to know exactly what our future will look like, we are simply called to trust that we will be like Jesus, with even our past resurrected! The good news of the resurrection, in part at least, is the good news that nothing is lost to God. Nothing is left out of the realm of God’s redeeming, resurrecting power.

The other bit of good news of the resurrection is that we don’t have to wait until our deaths to begin living in its power. Jesus appears among his disciples and shares his life with them, he offers them his peace, and he continues to share his life and peace with us today. In our baptism we are baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the Eucharist we are fed the very life of Jesus, equipped by God’s grace to live the resurrected life now! We are invited today and every day to wade deeper into the life which God has given us through his Son. That’s why we gather for worship – to become a people who live not as people bound for death, but as people who have been given new life! Slowly but surely even now, on this side of death, we can begin to see the way in which God’s Spirit touches our pain, our wounds, our sin. Slowly but surely, we can begin to see little moments when resurrection bubbles up in our life, transforming our shames, our hurt into tokens of God’s redeeming power.

As we share in communion in the next few minutes, may we all receive it not just as a religious rite, but as gift of God’s transforming power. May we share in the body of Christ and be empowered to be just a little more like him. May we accept the presence of the wounded and resurrected Jesus in the Eucharist, and in turn offer him our own wounds to be touched, healed, and filled with his resurrected life. Amen.  

April 3, 2021

Easter Vigil

The Rev. Canon Joann Saylors

Mark 16:1-8

“Alarmed.”[i] “Frightened.”[ii] “Taken aback, astonished.”[iii] “Startled.”[iv]

That’s how various translations describe the women’s reaction to the young man they found waiting for them inside Jesus’ tomb.

It had been a task that was ordinary, domestic. I imagine the women as they awoke that third day before sunrise. Maybe they awoke without immediately remembering what was ahead of them. It’s possible that their first waking seconds were full of blissful ignorance, only to be followed by the heart-rending realization of what had happened and what they had to do. They gathered up their bundles, carefully prepared with the spices they had purchased, and set off together for the tomb. We don’t know how far they had to walk, or what they were thinking as they made their way, but surely they approached the tomb with growing dread and sorrow. They knew they would see the lifeless body of their beloved teacher, and they knew how painful it would be to touch his cold flesh, dress his wounds, and make him ready for proper burial. They’d done it for others in the past.

The women were ready for their heartbreaking and ordinary act of love, at least as ready as one can be. They were looking into the face of death, expecting it, preparing for it, ritually acknowledging it.  If anyone still couldn’t quite believe Jesus was gone, this painful but familiar act, customarily performed by members of the family, would settle it. Physical contact makes the reality of death inescapable. Their task was difficult, but it was, at its heart, ordinary. People die all the time, and we are constantly confronted with it. Death itself is not unbelievable, even when we are surprised by its timing. Death is all too real and all too present in our lives and the lives of our communities. We have come to know this, in the past year more than ever.

But the first sign that a new reality had subverted the women’s ordinary expectations came when they found that the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb had been rolled away. That was the moment when grief merged with fear, as it implied that the tomb had been targeted by grave robbers, or vandals, who might still be inside. As in so many places now and then, a small group of women out alone would worry about their safety.  We can only imagine what thoughts raced through their minds at the unexpected jolt of finding the tomb open. Then, fearfully and hesitantly entering it, the added shocks of encountering a young man in a white robe sitting there and finding Jesus’ body gone. Astonished, indeed.

The young man tried to reassure them. “Don’t be alarmed. Jesus isn’t here. He has risen! If you convince the disciples and Peter to go to Galilee, you will see him there. Just like he told you.”

That was clearly not as reassuring as the young man had hoped, because their emotions were amped up even further. The translations say it in different ways: they were seized by “terror and amazement.”[v] “Trembling and bewildered.”[vi] “Stunned.”[vii] “Overcome with terror and dread.”[viii]

That, my sisters and brothers, is absolutely the right response. Jesus had told them. As one New Testament scholar notes, “The resurrection was everything these women had ever hoped it would be, everything Jesus had said it would be.” But, he adds, “Sometimes the scariest thing in the world is to believe that your deepest, most secret hopes might actually be possible.”[ix]

Sometimes hope opens a door that you thought was long since closed. You’ve been disappointed or heartbroken; we all have. And maybe you worked through it, came to terms with it, forgave or let go, and put it behind you. There’s relief, even peace, in that. It’s a gift not to have to think about it anymore. So after someone or something breaks your heart, the possibility of opening yourself up to it happening again is scary. Vulnerability can be terrifying. Maybe Shakespeare was wrong – better not to love than to love and lose again.

When the one they all thought was the Messiah was tortured, crucified, and killed, the dream died, too. Perhaps that added to the familiarity of the task the women had come to do. For a people who had become used to being defeated and ruled by others, maybe disappointment itself had started to feel ordinary, something manageable. They had taken a chance. They had let themselves believe that the coming of their messiah was different, only to have their dreams dashed. Could it really be safe to hope again? Or was the possibility that Jesus was right, that everything had changed too bewildering and terrifying even to face, much less talk about?

They fled. And said nothing to anyone. Here ends the reading. And almost certainly Mark’s Gospel. We are left to consider their fear and vulnerability – and our own.

Like the women we live with the question of what comes next. Do we truly understand that Jesus’ resurrection was life-changing? World-changing? What do we do with that? Are we appropriately stunned by the depth of God’s love for us and for creation? Are we prepared to live with the fear of being vulnerable, naked before God, so that God can transform us? Will we recognize that our own grasping at the safety of hopes we can control blinds us to the chaotic and beautiful power of this mystery?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the term “cheap grace” to define the grace we bestow upon ourselves, a way of taming the danger of what God offers us and what God asks of us. God’s grace is not cheap and it is not easily absorbed. We should be astonished and taken aback. Because it is when we believe that our deepest and secret hopes are truly made possible, when we are most bewildered, that we are most like those first followers of Jesus. It is when we are ready to become more like Jesus. And it is when we are equipped to see and be the light of Christ in a world that so often seems unremittingly dark.

It is fitting that our Easter Vigil liturgy began in darkness. When we come to Easter services on Sunday morning, the world is already light again. We can see spring all around us. We know the story ends joyfully. But we started here tonight, before all of that, in darkness drawn closer to the women in their terror and bewilderment at this holy Paschal mystery. But like the women, we didn’t stay there. We have also drawn closer to their courageous hope.

While Mark’s Gospel says that the women told no one, we know they did – or how else would we know the story? That update was included by the subsequent Gospel writers and even added to Mark’s later. The women overcame their fear. Just as the Pascal candle begins to light the path through the darkness, just as the sunrise begins to chase away the night, hope began to dawn upon the women. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[x] As their incredible story was told and retold, eventually the light of Christ shone brightly enough to let people believe it could drive away darkness and even death. On this night we hear anew the same story of God’s saving love, and light and alleluias burst forth to shine upon us – and the whole world. All of creation sings along.

Fear of the Lord may be the beginning of wisdom[xi], but perfect love casts out fear.[xii] And we have experienced perfect love in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. So now our choice is what we do with this Good News. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. How, then, shall we live?

May we be blessed by God interrupting our ordinary and difficult tasks to shatter our expectations. May we keep meeting Jesus in Galilee. And may we share our incredible story with the world. Happy Easter. Alleluia and amen.

[i] NRSV, NIV.

[ii] 21st Century KJV.

[iii] The Message.

[iv] CEB.

[v] NRSV.

[vi] NIV.

[vii] The Message.

[viii] CEB.

[ix] Paul Wheatley, “Fear at the Resurrection,” https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2018/04/03/fear-at-the-resurrection/ (accessed March 31, 2021).

[x] John 1:5 (NRSV).

[xi] Proverbs 9:10 (NRSV).

[xii] 1 John 4:18 (NRSV).

April 2, 2021

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Ps 22 ; John 18:1-19:42

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

“For this I was born, and for this I have come into the word: to bear witness to the truth.”

The passion of Jesus is nothing if it not a great, cosmic moment of truth telling. Earlier on in John, in chapter 12, Jesus speaks of his passion, his hour, and says “now is the judgement of the world…” In his crucifixion Jesus judges the world. Now, of course, as our story goes those who put Jesus on the cross, Pilate, the Romans, the Judean authorities, are the ones who seem to judge Jesus. They find him to be a political threat, a potential disturber of the peace. Passover is soon to occur, Jerusalem has swelled in size with pilgrims from all over the known world, and the folks in charge cannot have some would-be Messiah stoking flames of insurrection. Better for one man to perish than the entire nation.

So Jesus is crucified. Raised up with bandits and revolutionaries to die the kind of death so horrible that it wasn’t spoken of my polite, well-to-do Romans. Crucifixion was a way to make an example of someone. To show others what happened when you dared to make waves again Rome’s power. Crucifixion showed the judgement of Rome. Keep in mind that judgement is, primarily, about truth telling. A judgement is a determination. When we judge we say “this is how things are.” Rome, in crucifying Jesus, says “this is how things are: we are in charge. We are in power.” The religious authorities, in offering Jesus to the Romans say “this is how things are: this man is no all-powerful messiah.” They judge Jesus.

But here, on the cross, Jesus also judges. Here, on the cross, Jesus passes judgement on the entire world. Here, on the cross, Jesus Christ – the Word of God made flesh, God in human form – reveals the way things are: humanity is so enmeshed in sin and evil, so caught up with the forces of death, that God himself is killed. Remember all the way back in John chapter 1 John speaks about Jesus’ coming into the world. John writes “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Jesus is the light of the World who shows us just how dark our world is – especially on the cross. On this cross we see how dark things really are. We see how far humanity will go to keep power, order, “peace” in place. We see how the innocent must die for the Kings of the World to stay firmly placed on their thrones. But the cross reveals more: not only is Jesus condemned by an unjust government, he is betrayed by his fellow countrymen, abandoned by his friends, denied by Peter, abused by the guards. At every moment in the story of Jesus’ passion we see how fickle human hearts can be! We see how the incredible diversity of ways we can fail to love.

The passion, in short, lays bare before us the reality of sin: ways of life, habits, attitudes, systems that all work together to create death – relational death, biological death, and even spiritual death. Jesus – the Word made flesh – is life itself. The word is the source of life, and to turn from the Word as humans did as soon as we could speak, is to unleash sin into the world. It is to turn to ways of existence that can only lead to death. Sin isn’t about breaking rules, sin is about living in such a way that only death can come about. The long story of Scripture is the story of sin’s infection of our world, of the way in which death has become so imbedded in God’s good creation that it is impossible to imagine existence without it. It is a testament to how deep the infection goes that we cannot think life without also thinking death. Creation was brought into being to enjoy relationship with God and to know God is to know life itself. This is the power of sin at work in us – that we die.

Jesus judges us on the cross. Jesus reveals the nature of our world. But it matters that it is Jesus that does it. If anyone else were to have died in this way they may well have exposed our sin, but they could do nothing to help us. That it is Jesus, however, means that our judge is also our physician. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” From his birth in human history, Jesus Christ – God made man – took all that is ours and made it his own. Jesus united in himself God and humanity, Jesus brought us closer to God than we could ever imagine. The power and love and light of God pulsated through Jesus’ body and into our own. The Word stooped down to humanity, so that he might raise us up to God! What matters is that on the cross our judge is Jesus, the Word, God. God encounters death on the cross – relational death, biological death, and even spiritual death – and death could not contain him. The life of God bursts through to the other side of death. On Easter, Jesus Christ moves beyond death, beyond life afflicted with death into the life which God created all humanity for: the fullness of life with God, life that simply cannot be stopped by death.

The cross is our salvation because the cross has put death to death. The cross has opened for us a path from this life – with its sin and suffering – to life with God, to the promise of new life, recreated life. Because of Jesus, nothing is ever lost to death. Because of Jesus, everything that is, everything that God has created has a future.

Just today I was reading something which a professor of mine from seminary, Dr. Kavin Rowe, wrote that just gob smacked me. He writes, “there is no place in human existence where crucifixion does not apply and no place where resurrection is not possible.”  The death which Jesus meets on the cross is all around us in some way, maybe hidden, maybe not. The death of relationship, of our bodies, of our spirits. But because of Jesus, no death we meet, no death we encounter, no death which will ever touch us is the end. As sure as death surrounds us, so does resurrection. Amen.  

April 4, 2021

Easter Day

Acts 10: 34-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24; John 20: 1 - 18

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

In John’s Gospel we all return to Jesus’ tomb early on Easter morning.  We are there, in the dark, with Mary Magdalene visiting Christ’s tomb.  When she arrives, she discovers, much to her surprise that the stone had been removed from the tomb’s opening.  Upon seeing this, she leaves the tomb out of fear, and runs to Peter to tell him what she saw.

Then Peter runs to the tomb with another disciple, but John tells us Peter was kind of slow, and another disciple beat him to the tomb.  They confirm Mary’s description of the empty tomb, they see the linen which once wrapped the body of Jesus on the ground, and probably go into panic mode – thinking that the  tomb had been robbed, or worse, desecrated.  The disciples go home. 

But Mary stays by herself in the tomb, she turns around, and sees Jesus.  She doesn’t recognize him, mistaking him to be a gardener, but once Jesus says her name, she responds, rabbouni, - rabbi – teacher.  And she rushes to Jesus, and holds onto him, out of love, out of want.  Jesus offers this response to her: “Mary, do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended.”   In other words, Jesus says “you can’t hold onto me, Mary.”  What a hard thing to hear, and what an appropriate thing for Jesus to say. 

Do not hold onto me.  If I were in her shoes, I would want to hold onto Jesus and never let go. I would never want him to leave.  I so identify with Mary here, because there are things I hold onto tightly; desperately not wanting to let go of. 

One of those things I have held tightly to was my mother, who died in 2007.  A night or two before her death, I spent an evening sitting beside her bed.  My sister was there as well.  I don’t remember what we were talking about but I remember feeling so sad.  I knew what the outcome of this was.  I was crying, I was sad because I didn’t want her to leave me. 

My sister was getting ready to go home, and as she made her way to the door, I told mom, “mom I’m going to stay here with you.”  And my mother replied, “no – go…go with your sister.”  Those were hard words for me to hear.  I didn’t want to leave with my sister – I wanted to stay with my mother.  But that is not what my mom wanted.  She had work to do – to ready herself for the new life she was going to be stepping into in a matter of days, and my clinging to her was not helpful. 

As a young boy I remember losing my mother in a grocery store, and crying feeling like I lost her forever, when in reality she was just one aisle over looking for bread.  Leaving her that night felt like that.  I didn’t want to let go of her.  But letting go is exactly what Easter is about.  Easter is about letting go of our loved ones, because we trust them to God’s care, as Mary did so beautifully on that first Easter morning. 

There is a phrase we use in the church to describe this idea of letting go.  The church calls this kind of letting go a “paschal mystery.”  A paschal mystery is the process of letting go of what we love dearly for the sake of being born anew.  It is about trusting God that even when we let go, God will be there to uphold us so that we emerge even more alive than before. 

In a few days I will preside at my older brother Randall’s funeral in a nearby cemetery.  This is another paschal mystery, another painful letting go.  It is not accidental that the burial liturgy in the Episcopal Church is an Easter liturgy, a service that proclaims and affirms our Easter hope.  And my Easter hope is simple - we will be okay, even when like Mary, we must let go of what we love, because we let go in faith.  We let go in trust because we know God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 

When we let go, we become less burdened and less burdensome.  We become light.  Angels fly, because they take themselves lightly.   Be light to yourself and to others this Easter.  Let go.  Let God.  AMEN.

April 1, 2021

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The Rev. Jeffery Bohanski

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

Good evening.  Welcome to Maundy Thursday, the first night of the Triduum, or the three days leading into Easter.  This evening I find myself compelled to tell you that my husband and I love Maundy Thursday.  Maundy Thursday is the highlight of our entire church year! And for me to be standing here talking to you as a priest who was ordained just a month and a half ago makes this night even more special to us.

Victor and I love the pageantry of this evening!  There is the foot washing, the Liturgy of the Table, the stripping of the Altar and finally the preparation of the Altar of Repose.  Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions we will not be washing feet nor will we have an altar of Repose this year.  But for us, that’s okay.  Because their return next year will make next year’s Maundy Thursday even more special.  Or perhaps, this year we can wash feet and have our Altar of Repose in a different way this year.

Victor and I also love the name we give this service.  Maundy Thursday.  You see, we grew up Roman Catholic.  Our families are accustomed to calling this evening’s celebration, Holy Thursday.  We often find ourselves explaining why we Episcopalians call this evening Maundy Thursday.  We tell people:

Maundy Thursday.  The word Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum which is translated as command or perhaps mandate.  So I guess one could call this evening Mandate Thursday.

In this evening’s reading we hear God, Paul and Jesus giving mandates.

First, in Exodus we heard God commanding Moses and Aaron how and when Passover is to be celebrated.  For Passover is the night when God passed over the Israelites as God struck the land of Egypt with a plague. A plague which struck down every firstborn, human and animal, in the land of Egypt. That night, God saved Israel.

In the Epistle this evening, we heard Paul remind the Corinthians how, on the night before Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.” Paul goes on to say that after taking the bread, Jesus took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, do this, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  Paul is commanding the Corinthians to celebrate Eucharist.

In John’s account of the Last Supper, we heard how Jesus showed his disciples how to be servant leaders.  Jesus poured water into a basin and washed the disciples’ feet.  When he was complete, Jesus told them he had done this as an example of how they will need to do the same.  Jesus added that if they were to lead as he led, they must serve. For it is in serving as Jesus had served that night that people would know that they were his disciples because people would see they love one another. 

Victor and I love the pageantry, the meaning of the word Maundy and the readings of the night.  But what makes Maundy Thursday the highlight of the church calendar for us is the vigil.  It’s the quiet waiting and the praying together that makes Maundy Thursday special for us. 

You see, it was on Maundy Thursday, twenty-six years ago, that Victor and I were healed.  Yep, we were healed.  We believe we experienced a bonified healing miracle.  We even have a couple’s counselor confirm that.

That year Victor and I found ourselves at the end of what we call our year from hell.  It was during the previous year that Victor’s father and best friend both died within two weeks of each other. Victor’s father died from an unexpected heart attack and his friend died from complications of AIDS.  In addition, that year, we knew of 22 other people dying. My Aunt Grace was included in that number. 

As one might expect, we found ourselves fighting a lot that year.  We disagreed on everything.  It got to the point where we were asking ourselves if it would be better off if we separated and went our own ways.  Thankfully, Victor had found a relationship counselor for us and I reluctantly agreed to attend the counseling sessions. 

Our faith has always been very important to each of us.  At the time, Victor and I belonged to Dignity Houston.  Dignity is the Roman Catholic counterpart to Integrity.  That year I found myself in charge of decorating the community worship space.  The space was actually a few rooms in a part of a strip mall on Yale Street.  I asked Victor for his help and he agreed.  We both decided to set our grievances aside during the Triduum in order to complete our decorating tasks.

After the Maundy Thursday Service, no one in our community felt comfortable leaving the Eucharist in our strip mall chapel.  So, Victor and I volunteered to bring the Sacrament into our home and return it for the Good Friday Services the next day.  

We set the Sacrament on our fireplace mantel, lit a candle to keep watch and we went to bed.  At about 3:00 a.m. we both woke up feeling drawn to the living room.  Together we sat in silence for a time.  Eventually we began to speak and to listen to each other.  As we spoke, we found all the bitterness, all the anger and frustration melt away.  We instinctively began using the tools of good communication skills we learned in our counseling sessions.  We found a renewed sense of love and peace settle in our home.  As time passed, we learned that not all our problems had been erased but we discovered we each had a new strength and peace that made our problems easier to deal with. 

A few months later our counselor told us that she felt we no longer needed her services.  She told us that when she first met us, she thought we would not make it. She wondered now what had changed.  We told her we had brought Jesus back into our home.  That was what had changed.

Victor and I often reflect back on those days and we are thankful.  Not a Maundy Thursday goes by where we don’t spend some time together in prayer.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this year we are not going to be washing feet.  Perhaps we could demonstrate Jesus’ mandate for serving one another by simply wearing our masks in public.  I believe when we wear our masks, we show those around us we care and are concerned for their health.  We show we are trying to keep our siblings of God healthy.  Thankfully, I’m fully vaccinated but I know I can still carry the COVID-19 virus.  I wear my mask in public to keep others safe just in case I am infected and I’m unaware of it.

This evening, I invite you to find a place to have a quiet vigil of your own.  I invite you to sit quietly and ask Jesus to come and reside in your heart and home.   I invite you to reread these scriptures we heard this evening.  I invite us all to ponder the image of Jesus washing his disciples feet.  Notice that Judas was still one of the disciples during the foot washing.  That evening Jesus demonstrated love and a desire to cleanse everyone, even his betrayer.  I invite us this night to ponder who Jesus calls us to love and serve like Jesus served.  Served even Judas.

March 29, 2021

Tenebrae: Nocturn One

Lamentations 1: 1-14

The Rev. Jeffrey Bohanski

When I was a freshman in college, in what now seems a century ago, I attended a Wednesday night Bible study.  The program was led by the much-loved campus minister, Father Larry Burger.  Our group was made up of students from the university and a few Roman Catholic nuns from a nearby convent.  One particular Bible study in Lent stands out vividly in my memory.

That memorable evening we were having a discussion about a particular psalm.  The psalm number I don’t remember, but I remember telling the group that I didn’t like that particular psalm because I did not find it particularly uplifting.  I told the group I liked the parts of the Bible that made me feel good, made me feel happy.  It was at that point where Sister Ancelle, a nun who was well past retirement age and who was known to be kind, gentle and meek blurted out  in a not quite so kind, gentle and meek way, “That’s spoken like a young person who has not yet experienced life.”  Everyone turned their opened mouth heads to look at the kind Sister Ancelle.  With a deep breath she continued in her more usual kind tone.  She told us that in her life she had, at one time or another, felt all the words in the Psalms and in Lamentations.  She said she felt them when she entered the order, she felt them when her parents died, she felt them when she had to, under the vow of obedience, to leave one community which she loved and go to another community that needed her specific gifts of ministry.  She told us she felt these words at many other points in her life.

She went on to say that as she lived her life with these words, she became grateful to them because she noticed they gave words to her feelings.  She said she became grateful to them when she learned that Jesus used these same psalms and lamentations when he prayed while he was here on earth.  She told us that image of Jesus using these same words in his prayers that she used in her prayers brought her a closer connection to Jesus and closer to the Father.  She said she knew Jesus was with her and would always be.

As I have grown older and as I am nearing retirement, I’ve learned that Sister Ancelle was right.  These words have given words to my feelings.  I have felt not quite so alone when I’ve prayed the ancient words in Psalm 69:  “Save me, O God, for the waters have risen up to my neck.” Because I know I’m not the only one who has felt this way or will feel this way.   I have felt more comfortable with my anguish when I’ve prayed the words in Psalm 70, “You are my helper and my deliverer; O LORD, do not tarry.” because I know someone centuries ago once felt this way, wrote them down and we still use them today. 

Like Sister Ancelle, I know Jesus prayed these words.  A Christian cannot help but to read Jesus into many of the Psalms.  I know he felt every word in Lamentations on his Maundy Thursday. 

As it says in the introduction to this service on page two,  In the Service of Tenebrae, we are given an opportunity to meditate on the truth that Jesus truly was Emanuel, “God with us,” and that like us, Jesus faced the same emotional challenges that can bring us down.  Knowing Jesus used these words give me hope to make it through the times when I am down.  They give me the strength to make it to the resurrection. 

This week I invite you to join us to pray, to read and to feel these words of Scripture that Sister Ancelle and Jesus once prayed and felt.  I invite you to feel the pain of Holy Week.  I guarantee it will make Easter Day feel much more meaningful and glorious! 

March 28, 2021

Palm Sunday 

Isaiah 50: 1-4; Psalm 31: 9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 11: 1-11

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

 Love them or hate them, cars are part of living in Houston.  It seems that most of Houston is built around the whole idea of cars with our massive freeways which always seem to be under construction.  Hard to imagine living in a city this big without owning a car.   I am a proud owner of a fully depreciated 2012 Toyota FJ Cruiser that is dented and scratched with thousands of miles on my odometer.  I love my car. 

While cars were not around during the time of Jesus, transportation was arguably just as important as it is today.  In place of a car, horses or other animals were used for transportation.  In Jesus’ case, however, he did not ride a horse, but rather a donkey.  That might sound a little odd to you.  Why a donkey?  Donkeys are smaller animals; they do not have the strength of a horse.  Why ride a donkey if you could just as easily ride a horse?

It is like if someone offered you at no cost either a 2021 Cadillac Escalade or a 1971 Pontiac, you would probably go with the Escalade, right? 

As you might expect, there is a reason why Jesus’ mode of transportation into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a donkey.  And this is the reason: a donkey was a lowly animal of peace.  Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey was a sign of humility.  It also recalls a verse from the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament, Zechariah 9:9: which reads, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!  Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” 

The donkey was the preferred vehicle for the true king.  So, Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem upon a donkey was a bold political statement – everyone knew that him riding a donkey was no accident.  It was his claim as a servant king – riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to celebrate Passover.  He rode into Jerusalem from the East side, from the Mount of Olives.

 Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was not the only one that day.  There was another.  This was a much grander entry of the Pontius Pilate, the appointed Roman governor of Jerusalem.  Pilate’s vehicle of choice was not the humble donkey, but a horse, and he rode into Jerusalem accompanied by his Roman army.  Pilate’s procession into Jerusalem was anything but humble.  Pilate likely had little interest in observing Passover. 

Rather, Pilate entered Jerusalem during Passover to instill a healthy dose of fear and intimidation to Jewish citizenry.  Pilate did not want an enthusiastic Passover celebration to stir possible insurrection against the Roman Empire, which was likely, given that Passover observed God’s deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery. 

Pilate’s procession had all the glitz and pageantry befitting a Roman official.  His procession was the Escalade, Jesus rode in on that ’71 Pontiac.  

I love the honesty of Jesus.  As a spiritual master, Jesus understood that there was no need for external, empty symbols of power.  He did not need a horse; he did not need an army.  He did not need any of the empty symbols of power and intimidation used by the Roman Empire.  He just needed a donkey.  And the donkey, the preferred form of transportation for a king in the line of David, was plenty.

The lesson here is obvious:  the power of God’s spirit is the greatest power in the universe.  Our conquest of each other, the conquest for wealth, all amount to very little in the end.  Although he was powerful, few remember Pilate.  For years, my father drove a 1983 Buick.  He literally had several hundred thousand miles on this car.  At some point the car became so old that the struts which supported the trunk of the car when you opened it wore out.  That was not a problem for my dad – he found a 2x4 which he could prop under the trunk to keep it open when necessary. 

Over time, the car really began to show its age.  This would later become problematic for my father when he would drive his car to work.  My father is a heart surgeon.  One day after finishing a round of surgery, he walked out of the hospital to his car which was parked in the “Physician Parking Only” section.  A tow truck was towing his car out of the parking lot when my father ran to the tow truck, trying to stop them from towing his car away. 

The tow truck driver explained to my father that only physicians could park where his car was.  My father explained that despite his car’s appearance, he was a physician, albeit one attached to a dilapidated, yet humble, vehicle.  The tow truck driver released the car and apologized for the misunderstanding.

Why drive a beat-up old Buick if you could afford something newer?  Why ride a donkey if a horse exudes more power gets you there faster?  I think the answer is humility. I think the answer is about not needing external validation.  Humility, friends, is the answer to most, if not all, our problems.  Ride on, ride on, ride on in majesty.  AMEN.

March 25, 2021

The Feast of the Annunciation

Isaiah 7:10-14; Luke 1:26-38

The Rev. Jeffrey Bohanski

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.  Good lord, help us to remember you are with each of us.  Help us to say yes to your will.  Amen

In our homiletics classes at Iona we were taught to think about the subject we are going to preach on and ask ourselves what comes to mind about that subject.  For instance, when I think about The Feast of the Annunciation, it is easy for me to think of a Botticelli painting I once saw.  In the painting, Mary and Gabriel are alone in a small room.  Mary is on one side of the room and Gabriel is on the other.  Mary is portrayed as a white thin red headed woman.  She is wearing a red dress with a blue coat and there is a delicate gold halo around her head.   

Gabriel, on the other hand is portrayed as a scoundrel looking character crouching in the opposite corner of the room looking to me like he is ready to pounce.  Like Mary, Gabriel is white complexioned with red hair.  He is wearing a full flowing red garment that seems to be belted at his waste.   There are strong eagle like wings sprouting from his upper back.  If it was not for the thin gold halo above his head, I would not think he was an angel.  Mary has her hand up as if to stop Gabriel from speaking any further. 

Although this is a beautiful painting packed full of meaning, I don’t think it is what draws us to worship this evening on this the Feast of the Annunciation. 

I think today’s celebration is about Mary, a down to earth young, innocent girl who has the courage to trust Gabriel when he tells her “The Lord is with you.”  It’s a celebration of this same trusting young girl who said yes, to God’s plan.  You see, God’s plan was this:  God so loved his creation that God wanted to send God’s Son, God’s Word, into the world to love it and redeem it.  God wanted to show God’s creation how to love each other, how to serve each other and how to love God in the process.  All God needed for God’s plan to come about was for someone to say “yes.” Today we celebrate Mary trusting that God was with her and Mary saying yes to God’s plan. 

The Good News today is that this very important “yes” God needed was uttered by a young innocent trusting girl from a small simple town.  A town where someone would eventually ask, “Can anything good come from there?”

I believe that if God would come to a trusting young girl from a small simple town to make God’s plan come to fruition, there is hope for this simple Prius driving, gay bivocational priest like me.  I believe there is hope for us all.  You see, I believe it doesn’t matter to God which side of the border one comes from, what the color one’s skin is, one’s age or one’s weight.  It doesn’t matter to God what one’s sexual orientation is, what one’s gender is or what gender one knows one needs to transform into is.  It doesn’t matter to God which political party one belongs to or what one’s marital status is.  I believe God invites us all, like Mary, to trust that our loving God is with all God’s creation.  I believe this loving God invites us all to say “yes” to his plan to bring God’s Son, God’s love to where ever we find ourselves each day.

Like many of us, I find myself driving the streets of Houston in my daily life.  I often wonder how I can say “yes” to God’s plan when I am in traffic.  Perhaps it is by letting that driver next to me merge into my lane in front of me.  Perhaps it is simply by not blocking an intersection when I find myself stopped in heavy traffic so others can get through to cross the street.  Perhaps it’s about acknowledging the driver next to me is a child of God who is also trying to live out God’s call for him or for her.

Perhaps I can say “yes” to God’s plan of bringing God’s son into the world when I am walking down the street and I don’t cross the street when I see someone coming toward me who doesn’t look like me.  Perhaps I could say “yes” to God’s loving plan by simply saying hello to that person.  I believe by saying hello to someone I am recognizing God’s presence in that person and that God loves that person as much as God loves me.

Perhaps I can say “yes” to God’s plan to bring God’s Word, God’s love into the world when I encounter someone from the other side of the political aisle who says something I don’t agree with and give a kind response.  Perhaps I could explain my position and attempt to engage a respectful discussion.  Perhaps if I would find it impossible to have a respectful conversation, I could end it kindly, walk away and leave that person in God’s loving hands without going to social media to vent my feelings.

Today’s celebration is about what can happen when we, like Mary,  trust that God is with us and with others.  Today’s celebration is about, like with Mary, our saying yes to God’s invitation each of us has to bring God’s son, God’s Word, God’s love into the world.  This evening I ask us all to ponder what the world would look like if we all viewed ourselves and each other through the lens of God’s loving plans for God’s world that Mary saw on this day, this Annunciation Day.  Amen

March 21, 2021

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

The Rev. Jeffrey Bohanski

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

Jesus said:  “My soul is troubled.”

These words give me hope.  These words give me peace.  These words give me comfort. 

These words of Jesus, “My soul is troubled.” gives me hope, peace and comfort because these words are words of a human Jesus.  I think it important to remember, Jesus was not only divine, but he was also human.  Recall, how a few months ago at Christmas we celebrated the Word becoming flesh, messy flesh like you and me.  Remember how we say:  “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.”  In a few days we’ll even celebrate the moment when Mary was asked to become the mother of the incarnate Word, Jesus, God made man, human.  These words, “My soul is troubled.” are the words of a human Jesus, a human like you and me.   

This past week I’ve been on Spring Break.  I’ve enjoyed the rest and solitude I was craving before the break.  The week before Spring Break when after I had completed  lesson plans, I envisioned myself floating off into a blissful break like a fully loaded cruise ship heading out to sea.

Unfortunately, that was not the way it happened.  You see, the Thursday before the break my coworkers and I found ourselves calling the parents of our face-to-face students directing them to come and pick-up their children because the school was closing the grade-level due to a possible exposure to a presumed case of COVID-19. We informed our parents that our afternoon classes and the classes of the next day, the final day before break, were going to be held 100% online and teachers were going to teach from home again.  We informed the parents in-person learning would resume the Monday after Spring Break.

One parent asked me in an email how long this year’s Spring Break would last.  It surprised me how quickly that email brought back the fears and trepidation I experienced last Spring Break when all of Houston was closed due to COVID-19.  I quickly responded to the email with my rational mind saying that the school was following district protocols that are aligned with the CDC to keep all children safe and I looked forward to seeing her child back in school the Monday after Spring Break.  That was my rational mind.

My soul was in a different place.  I found myself trapped in last year’s fears and worries.  I knew Victor and I were fully vaccinated so we would be fine.  I found myself wondering what if this was the start of something new?  What if…. What if…. What if….

That evening I read this Gospel we just heard.  I also read a commentary on it by N.T. Wright.  Wright said, and I’m paraphrasing, that when Jesus heard, some Greeks were wanting to see him, he recognized it as a sign that his hour had indeed finally come.  Human Jesus responded with a knee jerk reaction.  He responded with the words of a fleshy human like us:  “My soul is troubled.” I wonder if Jesus’ words were something more like, “Oh, good Lord, here we go!”  Unlike me who can get stuck in fear, Jesus got over his knee jerk human response quickly and remained firm with his Father, with his mission and with his conviction that God was with him and God would be with him through to the resurrection. 

So these words of Jesus, “My soul is troubled.” give me comfort.  They give me comfort because these words of Jesus show me Jesus understands my irrational fear that I experienced last week. He knows only too well what it means to be human.  They show me he is willing to walk with me as I work through my fear because his Father did the same with him.  These words give me hope and peace because as Jesus was able to be his human self with the Father, as adopted children of God through Jesus, I know we are able to do the same.  God, the Father will remain with us in all our humanity as he remained with Jesus that day. 

Life is hard.  This week I invite you to ask yourself what is making your life hard at this moment in time.  Perhaps, you are like me who struggle with fear.  Perhaps you struggle with addiction, illness, or loneliness.  Perhaps you are mourning the loss of a loved one, a loss of a dream, or a loss of a job. 

As I‘ve said earlier, a few months ago at Christmas we celebrated the Word becoming flesh, fleshy flesh, the first part of the Paschal Mystery.  Next Sunday we begin Holy Week with Palm Sunday.  It won’t be like it was before the COVID quarantine.  But together, we will walk with Jesus on the road to the cross, the second part of the Paschal Mystery.  I invite us all to bring that which makes life hard into Holy Week.  As we do, I ask each of us to remember that Jesus was fully human as well as being fully divine when he walked his path of Holy Week. 

I invite us all to remember how Jesus, being fully human and fully divine entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, how human and divine Jesus showed us how to be servant leaders and to share all one’s issues with the Father as Jesus did on Maundy Thursday.  I invite us all to remember how human and divine Jesus showed us all how to love, how to stand up to earthly power and how to fully give oneself in love on Good Friday.  I invite us all to remember how the human and divine Jesus died and was buried.  I invite us all to then celebrate how the new human and divine Jesus rose again on the third day.  I invite us all to trust that our hardships will one day be transformed with and through the resurrection of Jesus.

I wish everyone a blessed Holy Week.  Amen