Sunday, April 10, 2022

Lent

Luke 23:1-49

The Rev. Cn. Joann Saylors

When my niece and nephew were little, they were like most children when it came to their birthdays. They would look forward to their birthdays for months, planning the theme, the location, the guest list. And of course, the most important thing: what presents to ask for?  They would go back and forth, influenced by their friends, their parents, commercials. Throughout the process the excitement would continue to grow. The topic of the birthday gift worked its way into the conversation about five times a week. Anticipation would build and build, reaching a nearly unbearable pitch by the time the birthday finally arrived. The opening of gifts flew by in an instant.  It was THE BEST PARTY EVER and I GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.

But then the letdown.  That present looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life.  Putting 11,000 Lego pieces together takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all.  The toy doesn’t work the way it was supposed to.  Another friend got something newer or bigger.  Whatever the reason, the gift they received didn’t match their expectations, and they’d failed to see it coming. Massive disappointment, and tossing the gift aside as the insatiable desire for the next present, the one that really will be perfect, started to grow.

How quickly they go from celebration to despair and anger.   The same jarring leap that I feel myself make every Palm Sunday.  As Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest and renowned preacher, put it, “We start out in gala mood; Palm Sunday is always a crowd-pleaser. The festivity of the triumphal procession, the stirring music, the palm branches, the repeated hosannas all suggest a general air of celebration. It comes as a shock to us, year after year, to find ourselves abruptly plunged into the solemn, overwhelmingly long dramatic reading of the Passion narrative. It’s a tough Sunday. It begins in triumph and ends in catastrophe.”[1] 

It's that movement we get from our readings, the jump from “Hosanna”s for Palm Sunday to “Crucify Him!” in the Passion narrative. 

The people of Israel had been waiting so very long for the promised Messiah.  The pilgrims coming to town with Jesus were singing the so-called Hallel psalms, the ‘let’s go up to Zion’ songs, kind of like the songs my family used to sing while we hiked — ‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go’.  The Hallel psalms are full of Hosannas which means, “God saves,” and Hallelujahs which means, “praise Yahweh.”  They are ancient praise songs, and the pilgrims would have sung them whether Jesus was coming into town with them or not.  The line ‘blessed is he who comes (to Jerusalem) in the name of the Lord’ was what the pilgrims sang about and to each other every time they went up to Zion.  

But this time the songs were especially meaningful because THIS TIME their king really had come to town.  This time the ultimate son of David really had arrived.  All the talking and planning and waiting and anticipating was done, the King of Kings was riding into Jerusalem, and things were finally going to change.

But they didn't understand that God's plan wasn't going to unfold in the way they thought it would.  I wonder how they didn't realize something was awry.  Pilate was riding into town at the same time, on a great white steed, in a glorious Imperial procession.  That was how the rulers traveled – with great pomp and circumstance.  So how could the crowds not see how far their expectations for Jesus were from reality?  How could they not notice that this messiah, this one coming in the name of the Lord, was riding on a donkey, just a colt?  It would have been – should have been – ridiculous.  But no one saw.  No one realized that the gift they thought they wanted, a savior, would turn the world upside down not by military might but by hanging on a cross, They didn't realize because they failed to see.

Those who shouted “Hosanna” should have seen, but they did not, at least not most of them.  By Friday, the image of the lowly donkey had faded, if it had ever registered at all. 

If this gift wasn’t what we thought we wanted, if Jesus wasn’t the sort of superhero leader we expected,

if we couldn’t make him work the way we wanted to, we’d simply toss him aside.  “Crucify him!”  It’s easy for us to look back at the crowd and shake our heads, but we would have done the same.  We do the same.  We shout both lines today, because we are no different from the crowds gathered in Jerusalem.  We want clear and believable demonstrations of God’s power and kingly authority.  We want God to act in ways we expect, in ways we can control.

God acts – decisively and finally – by coming into the world, but he comes as a helpless baby who grows up to be killed on a cross.  That messiah looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life.  Following him takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all.  Discipleship doesn’t work the way we thought it was supposed to.  The world promises lots of somethings that are newer and bigger.  Why should we serve this God instead?

We can stay in that place.  Disappointed, even angry that God hasn't intervened in the way we think is right.  We can turn our eyes away from the messy work that God is doing and dream instead of a God who just rushes in to fix things.  We can start looking for the next party, the next magic answer to our problems.But if we do that, we will be disappointed yet again.We can’t go from hosanna to alleluia without this terrible journey between.

Easter is our next party, a time when all possibilities are fresh again and the world is made new.  It is meet and right to be people who live in confidence that it will come again.  But we're not there yet.

We're here instead, on Palm Sunday, in the confusing space between “Hosanna” and “Crucify him!”  As we travel with Jesus through Holy Week, my prayer is for us to stay here, to see Jesus as he really is instead of limiting him to who we would have him be.  In his life and death, Jesus worked outside the margins of what was comfortable for people, calling his followers to step outside of our own comfort zones. 

And in this uncomfortable week we meet Jesus who is abandoned and betrayed. And Jesus who prays at the Mount of Olives that he might be delivered. Jesus who above all prays to obey his Father’s will. Jesus who is beaten and blindfolded, condemned and mocked. Jesus who forgives his tormentors. Jesus who forgives us for how we have wronged him.

When we know that Jesus, and commit to following him anyway, we walk with our Savior to the cross and beyond.  Which is where true joy will be found.  Because it is only when we live as Jesus lived and die to self as Jesus died, in the service of others, that our deep longing for God can be fulfilled and our disappointment in everything else put aside like so many torn scraps of wrapping paper.  

After the darkness and the pain, the light will come again. And we can enjoy the party, grateful for this gift we have been given.  

AMEN.

[1]Fleming Rutledge, “The New World Order,” in The Undoing of Death, Wm. B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2002, 11.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43: 16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Two Sundays ago, I walked outside my home early on a Sunday morning to get into my car and drive to work. On my driveway, I noticed a plastic ziplock bag.  Picking the bag up, I found several rocks and a piece of paper.  I took out the paper, unfolded it, and was shocked by what I saw – in my hands I was holding a propaganda poster for a white supremacist organization.  On the poster I read words of threat and of hate toward people of Jewish faith. 

I have three things I want to say about this incident - the first two involve my response, and the final is a word about our Good Friday service next week. 

My initial response to discovering this poster on my driveway Sunday before church was problematic – I was filled with self-righteous rage and anger.  On my way to conduct services here on Sunday morning, I said more than a few four-letter words directed to whomever littered our street with these posters.  Not the best mindset with which to enter worship.  It wasn’t pretty. 

After some time passed, I remembered that confronting hate with my own hatred would not solve anything.  At the same time, I could not find it anywhere in my heart to forgive my enemy – as Jesus instructs that we do.  I was at an impasse – I knew that I was supposed to forgive, but I could not find it anywhere in my heart.  I prayed, and I believe I received an answer.  The answer was this: to see whomever he or she was that distributed these flyers throughout our neighborhood as God might see them.  How do I do that?  The answer was this – to imagine the person distributing flyers of bile and hate throughout my neighborhood – as an infant, a baby.  A baby who had not yet learned hate, a baby of God wonderfully made who had not yet learned such flawed thinking that pollutes so much of our world today.  Thinking of the perpetrator as a baby, created in God’s image just like me, sinful like me, has opened a pathway for me to begin praying for this person or group, whomever they are.  I am reminded once more that the only way to confront hate purposefully, is through love.

My second initial response to this circumstance was also problematic.  Once I got in my car that Sunday morning, I stopped at the nearby CVS and threw the flyer in the garbage can, because that is what the flyer was to me, garbage, which belonged in a landfill.  I thought about calling the constable, but I chose not to, because I was preoccupied with Sunday morning’s work.   Such is the subtlety and banality of evil.  We let it slip in, we don’t react to it because it seems too inconvenient, we are too busy.  That was my response, initially. Until a conversation with my wife prompted me to a change my mind.  She told me I needed to call it in, that I could not be silent about this.  She was right. As she often is.  I called it in, and was told that many people had called in as well, thank God.  I have decided to use this sad moment to create some light, and have made a donation to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in St. Andrew’s name.   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his attempt to take Hitler’s life during World War II, and who was martyred days before the Third Reich fell said this: “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: . . . Not to speak is to speak.   Not to act is to act.”   

I close with a word about Good Friday.  While Good Friday, which commemorates Christ’s crucifixion, is a powerful day, it can also be a trigger point, as some use it to espouse a dangerous theology which promotes the view that Christianity is superior to Judaism.  It is not.  This idea of Christian superiority is to blame – in part – for the pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine, and the holocaust.  Jesus was not Christian.  Jesus was Jewish.  Jesus was not crucified by Jews, but by Romans.  Judaism is the very tree from which the branch of Christianity grows.  If we deny this, if we as professing Christians support positions which elevate Christianity as superior to Judaism, we are sawing off the very branch from the tree upon which we are sitting.

On Good Friday this year, St. Andrew’s will offer a new Good Friday liturgy which seeks to amend problematic language regarding Judaism and Jewish people.  This liturgy comes from the Seminary of the Southwest, and comes with Bishop Doyle’s support.   It is a beautiful service.  I cannot wait for us to participate in it together.  AMEN.

Sunday, Marrch 27, 2022

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

 Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: God is looking for you

Paul’s word for it was “reconciliation,” which means, then as now, the work of restoring the relationship between two parties who have had a falling out; but in Paul’s day it was a largely secular term. In Paul’s day, the more familiar use of the word was in the sphere of international relations. It was more akin to what we might call diplomacy or mediation. Reconciliation was quintessentially the work of an ambassador who was tasked with hammering out treaties and terms of trade between countries or people groups. With Paul the twist is that normally the responsibility for reconciliation lay with the one responsible for the breach, the rupture in the relationship, but here, in this illustration to the Corinthian church, contrary to normal expectations, Paul represents God as the reconciler. God, who is the injured party, is the one who accepts responsibility for having us back in God’s good graces, and whereas human demands for reparation are often punitive, onerous, and vindictive, God, Paul tells us, has offered all of humanity a blanket amnesty. If it were us, and the tables were turned, we would not likely pass such kindly judgment, at least not if our track record as a species has anything to teach us, and nowhere is the difference between us and God more poignantly or powerfully illustrated than in the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.

We all know the story. By verse 16, the prodigal has hit rock bottom. We know this because he finds himself in a pig sty, no less, which for a Jewish person would have been a particularly offensive place to find oneself in. And as he watches with envious eyes the pigs munching on their scraps and would even be glad to fill his own belly with what they’re eating, it is the same word[1] that Jesus has used in the Sermon on the Mount for those who are to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6); and, later, at the feeding of the five thousand, it describes the complete satisfaction of the crowds after having their fill of loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:20). All along all the prodigal has wanted is to fill his belly, and, all along, he has wanted the wrong thing. So very like us. And so, the Scripture says, he “came to himself” (v. 17). What a masterful “stroke of art to represent the beginning of repentance as the return of a sound consciousness.”[2] Swallowing his pride, he determines to return home. He knows he will not be returning as a son, however. By custom he is now dead to his family, as if buried and gone. As someone who has brought enormous shame on his household, particularly on his father, he is now to be treated as a complete stranger, not even to be acknowledged on the street. As he well knows, the best he can hope for is just what he says, to be taken on as a hired hand in his father’s house in order to at least subsist – which, to him, would be a vast improvement over the abject state he is in now. And so he returns home a far wiser individual than how he left.

And what happens? It is a complete reversal of expectation. While he is still far off, his father recognizes him and runs to him – runs to him, as if the father were the one in the wrong – and throwing his arms around his son he completely ignores all the disapproving looks of the neighbors for the smelly, dirty, unworthy louse they see crawling back with his tail between his legs. What he sees though, and what they do not, is the moral journey his son has taken, who has returned a different person. He was dead and now lives, he was lost and now is found.

Of course, the prodigal son is us, our deadness and lostness is just a matter of degree, perhaps. What are we to do with such extravagant grace? In the first place, there’s really nothing else for it but to take it seriously and accept it, and we do that by changing. Countless times when Jesus heals or in some other way restores the individuals he encounters, he says, “Go and sin no more.” It is not necessarily a free pass. It comes with strings attached. He is saying, go and make a fresh start. Don’t waste this opportunity by falling back into the same patterns and hates and sin. Go and show that you understand what I have done for you by amending your life. And, secondly, appreciating all that has been done for us, we are to become ourselves ministers of reconciliation. We are to practice the kind of forgiveness and reconciliation that has been lavished on us. Every strained relationship in your life – every wrong that you have done that needs to be righted – there is no better time than today to utter those most difficult words, “I’m sorry.” Because when the books are opened and the accounts are read, the only thing we will have been asked to be experts at is the quality of our relationships and our love.

To close, I wanted to point out that in Luke 15, in addition to the story of the prodigal, there are two other stories about something being lost: a man loses a sheep and a woman loses a coin. Jesus does not tell these stories as models of virtuous conduct. Jesus’s point is that no one in their right mind would leave ninety-nine sheep to wander around in search of one. Plain common sense dictates that you count your losses and not risk losing more. Or take the lady with the coin. While we might search for ten minutes – to get on our hands and knees and scratch around a little under the dresser or a few extra nooks and crannies – we also know we can’t waste the whole morning. What we do is recognize our loss – it stings a little – but we decide that it is not a very great loss, or at least not one from which we can’t recover. We haven’t lost something we can’t live without.

But not so with God. That is where human nature and the character of God are shown to be so radically different. Because God can’t live without us. God does go off to search for the one lost sheep, not desiring that any are left behind. God is the father, the Heavenly Father, running out to embrace you after you have “come to your senses” (Luke 15:17). In God’s mind there is no calculus to perform – no risk assessment to make – no judgment about whether you are worth the effort or not. You are. You are something God searches for constantly and intensely, and that is really good news in a world that that always seems to be in a rush to get ahead and to see after its own needs, even if it means putting you down and, all too often, leaving you behind. God is always looking for you, which means that the only way you can be lost is if you want to be. Amen.

Children’s Sermon: Practicing forgiveness and letting go of anger and resentment

[1] Gk. χορτάζω (chortazō). See Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol. 1 (McLean, VA: MacDonald, 1985), 386.

[2] ibid., 387.

Sunday, March 13, 2022

The Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

The Rev. Clint Brown

God is a meddler. The Bible is really just one long catalogue of God’s meddling, getting involved with us, inserting himself into our business. The Bible is the proof that God has never left us alone.

In the first place, God has chosen to create. Instead of nothing, there is something. It did not have to be so. God’s Nature is Perfection. God doesn’t need or require anything. God suffers no lack, God experiences no diminishment of any kind – and yet, look around. There is something, not nothing. Here we are; here is the universe with all its astoundingness and wonder. The only explanation – why we’re even here at all – is that God wished it to be so. God did the choosing in this, and God chose to create – you, and me, and everything that ever was or ever will be. And that means God is fully invested in you, in us, in the world in the same way as you are invested in your children, in your work, in anything you create. God meddles in all that’s important to God for the same reason you do – because God loves.

Which we see borne out today in a dramatic way in God’s choosing of a people. We speak of the Jewish people as the “chosen” people, and this is because God spoke to a specific person, Abraham, and told him that he and his descendants would be blessed and connected to God in a special way. It’s not that God has no use for any other people, but God chose a particular people in order to reveal Himself in a personal way – through whom He could directly relate to the world. And when this people found themselves in trouble, God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. And when this people turned apostate and rejected Him, God did not give them up, but sent prophets to turn their hearts. And when this people were taken into exile, God made a way for their return. And, in the fullness of time, from among this people there issued forth a Savior, a Son, born of a woman, born into the middle of empire, violence, and sin – born into our world. Proving, yet again, that God can’t leave us alone. And this despite how we much we would often like to be left alone, left to our own devices, left free to live as if God didn’t matter. God can’t seem to keep out of our business.

Every year as we journey from Christmas to Easter, we are reminded that the Christian God is not a hidden God. He is not a concept you need to tease out – an abstraction to cooly and dispassionately judge – but is someone staring right out at you from the place where he lay in a manger – and from a cross. The modern notion that deity is a philosophical concept to be tried on alongside others is quite alien to our tradition. Immanuel – God is with us – is what the Christian has to proclaim. God has come to live and die among us, to confront us directly with his reality, and that demands a decision.

Because God’s meddling is not something we can speak of in the past tense. You need to decide what to do with this meddling God today. No doubt you have experienced God’s meddling at some point in your life. You will have heard a voice within saying that maybe it’s all true? Maybe I should give in and let this Gospel change my life? That is God speaking to you. That is what you get when you have a meddling God who just won’t leave you alone, who won’t let you stay as you are. You can’t escape God, or God’s meddling, because God is the answer to the question. So thanks be to God – this meddling God – who has meddled his way right into history – who has demonstrated how profoundly he loves you – and who will be forever trying to meddle his way into your heart.

Sunday, March 6, 2022

The First Sunday in Lent

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16; Romans 10: 8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            I want to speak today about temptation, something Oscar Wilde famously once said was the only thing in the world he could not resist. In the Gospel reading today, Jesus confronts three specific temptations: (1) the temptation of instant gratification (“turn this stone into a loaf of bread”). (2) the temptation of worldly power (“if you then, then, will worship me, it will all be yours”) and finally (3) the temptation of authority over God (“if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here . . . for God will protect you.”) 

            Although there appear to be two characters in today’s story, I would argue there is only one.  There is Jesus, of course, who is like us in this regard – he is alone, vulnerable, hungry conditions which make temptation especially alluring.  And there is one whom I choose to call the tempter.  The tempter, I argue, is not separate from us, it is the corrosive voice all of us have inside ourselves which pushes us toward the easy answer and the quick fix.  It is a most persuasive voice. 

Temptation, though it is all around us, is powerless over us. We are the ones who permit ourselves to be tempted. There are donuts in our parish hall. They are not forcing me to eat them. They are just sitting there, in the box, all glazed and pretty. But nevertheless I hear the tempter’s voice in my head – even now – just eat one donut.  It’s so delicious.  One donut will satisfy you.  If I choose to be persuaded by the tempter’s voice – which is really my voice - I am culpable, not the donut.

            The first temptation – the temptation of instant gratification. Jesus is in the wilderness, fasting, he is hungry. He is told that he has power to transform a stone into bread to eat. If he gives into the temptation, he will eat the bread, and no longer hunger. He refuses. He chooses discomfort – hunger – over gratification.  We live in a world of instant gratification. Instant Rice. Instant Coffee. Instant Credit. I have a sign on my wall which says, “the path that offers the greatest challenge is often the one leading you in the right direction.” 

            The second temptation – the temptation of worldly power. Jesus sees all the kingdoms of the world and is told he can have it all if he only would worship…himself.  Make himself God. 

Our culture is permeated with self worship.  How many of us have created our own narcissistic and self-centered universes in which we are the center and every one else orbits around us? I have. It never works. Jesus’ rebuttal – “worship the Lord your God and serve only him” saves him - it humbles him.  When we fire ourselves as the manager of our lives, and hire God instead to manage our lives, our lives become a thousand-fold more interesting and worth living.  

            The third temptation – the temptation of authority over God. Jesus is led to the top of the temple in Jerusalem, some 180 feet from the ground. He is persuaded to jump from the temple, and even quotes the Psalm to say that God will not allow him to be injured.   His stronger self prevails, and he refuses, and in doing so teaches that none of us – even Jesus – should play God.

            I close with a story. Growing up, my mother firmly established three rules for the teenage boys living in her home: no babies, no drugs, no dogs on the couch. She later added a fourth: if you get arrested, do not call her. My older brother tested this fourth rule, and in high school was arrested. He got his one phone call and called mom. Mom answered the phone in the middle of the night, and after hearing my brother’s sob story, said to him “well, I hope you can find someone to bail you out.”  Tough love. That is what happens in the wilderness. Jesus learns God’s three rules: do not seek instant gratification, do not be misguided by worldly power, and do not try to play God. That might sound like tough love. To me it sounds like grace. AMEN.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022 - Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

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

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: The freedom of limitation

As I understand it, there are two basic tasks in Lent. The first is to simplify and reorder our priorities so that the desire for God is before any other. We often reflect this in intentional practices, in the taking on of works of charity or piety or the taking away of things like chocolate or television. The second task is to accept responsibility for our sins…for owning it. We are sinners who, the Catechism reminds us, “[seek] our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation” (BCP 848). Sin which we normally work so hard to rationalize, minimize, or deny altogether is very much on the table during the season of Lent. In Lent we are invited to face ourselves squarely and not give ourselves a pass. We are sinners and we need to repent. The Catechism goes on to ask:

Q. How does sin have power over us?

A. Sin has power over us because we lose our liberty when our relationship to God is distorted.

Very curious, that. We lose our liberty? One thinks of sin as getting to do whatever we want, a gain not a loss. How does it make sense, then, to say that it is a loss to wriggle out from under all the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots?”

Three times today Christ calls out those whom he labels “hypocrites,” a word we use to mean people who say one thing, but do another, like a person who says they never talk bad about people behind their back, and then we catch them talking about people behind their backs. Actually, it’s a word that comes from the world of the theater. It’s the Greek for “one who speaks from under a mask,” since in the ancient world, when only men were actors, it was necessary to wear masks to impersonate different roles, especially female roles.

When Christ calls out the hypocrites, this is his basic idea. They are acting – mask-wearing – pretending to be something they are not in reality. The person who gives money to the poor, but only when the cameras are around, is not doing it out of any genuine concern for the poor, but to impress. The one who prays long, fancy prayers is not usually thinking first about their piety as much as winning the admiration of those who hear them. The warning here is that when undertaking any spiritual practice, our outsides should match our insides, and when they do not, that is a problem. Outward displays that do not correspond to internal dispositions are meaningless because they are not grounded in truth. They are not just deception; worse, they are self-deception. The real “you” is the one away from the cameras and the crowds, the person only you and God know about. And that is the “you” that matters.

It is altogether accurate to say that liberty is the freedom to choose, to self-determine, but true liberty is the freedom to choose what is best for us. So as you move through Lent and tackle your own Lenten devotions, I suggest that you try rooting your piety in your freedom rather than obligation. “I am not eating chocolate this Lent” sounds a lot better than “I can’t eat chocolate this Lent.” The second sounds like an imposition and lends itself to falseness and bitterness, while the first is rooted in authenticity as an expression of identity and personal choice. “I am a person who does this” will always be much more preferable than “I have to do this.” You see, Lent only works when it becomes an opportunity for making the kind of choices that are better for us. It is a time to practice priorities, in particular that all-important recognition that God should always have the greater claim on our lives. So, yes, this Lent choose practices that encourage discomfort over comfort, inconvenience over convenience. Go in whole hog, not because you want to maximize your suffering, but because you are meant to confront the question, “Why am I doing this?” And in complete liberty you may reply, “Because I am choosing Christ.” And that demonstrates, in its ironic way, the absolute freedom of limitation.

Sunday, February 13, 2022

The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Clint Brown

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while out making a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. Throwing down his tools he rushed toward the cries. There, mired to his waist, was a struggling boy fighting for his life. After several attempts, Farmer Fleming finally managed to draw the lad out from what would have been a slow and horrible death. The next day, a fine carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s humble little cottage and a nobleman stepped out. He introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. “I want to repay you,” said the nobleman, “for you have saved my son’s life.” “No, I cannot possibly accept payment for what I did,” said the farmer, waving off the offer. “It’s what anyone would have done.” At that moment, the farmer’s own son appeared in the doorway. “Is that your son?” the nobleman asked. “Yes,” replied the farmer. “Very well, I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide your boy with the same level of education as my own son and if the lad is anything like his father, he’ll no doubt grow up to be a man we both will be proud of.” And the nobleman was true to his word. Farmer Fleming’s son attended the very best schools and, in time, graduated from medical school in London. He went on to become known throughout the world as the celebrated Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time? Penicillin. The name of the nobleman was Lord Randolph Churchill. The name of his son? Sir Winston Churchill.

Now, full disclosure, I regret to say that this story, though widely circulated, has been proven to be, almost certainly, unhistorical, but I have never been able to stop thinking about it as an example of just how closely our lives are connected. We never know how far our actions may reverberate or where the tendrils of our influence will reach. One small deed sends out into the universe ripples that can have world-changing consequences. Where would countless millions be without the life-saving boon of penicillin? Where would the course of history be without Sir Winston Churchill? It could be argued that in the late spring and early summer of 1940, when all seemed lost, Winston Churchill was about the only man in Europe equal to the moment, the only man alive who was brave enough – or some would say pig-headed enough – to have resisted the almost irresistible temptation to capitulate to the Nazis.

Whether Farmer Fleming ever performed the actions described in this wonderful story or not, the truth is that even the humblest of us are incapable of walking our life’s journey without adding our own tiny ripple to the stream of life. There is no possible way for us not to bump into one another – not to have some effect on others or leave some evidence of our existence. I think it’s fair to say that all too often we greatly underestimate our place in the great web of life. If you are alive at all you are here because of countless forgotten ancestors who did their living and dying on this planet long before you. It is upon that infinite, mostly nameless and faceless chain that your very existence is predicated. And if you are a parent yourself, you stand in the unique position of seeing your future in the eyes of your children.

When Jesus blesses the hungry, the poor, and the weepers this day and declares woes over the rich, the well-fed, and the merrymakers, he is considerably enlarging who it is we should include in our circle of concern. He is blowing off the doors of private religion and suggesting – demanding – that our faith be not a matter of personal enrichment alone, but, rather, of the kind of inner, spiritual transformation that makes us capable of the kinds of blessings he describes. Blessing in itself is not a reward; blessing is not the ability to receive, but to give. As my mother often says when I attempt to refuse a gift: “Don’t take away our blessing.” We Christians need to be the kind of people running about in the world today who are more willing to give than to receive…and the currency most in demand at the moment, dear people of God, is simple kindness, and patience, and the capacity to find a friend in the face of your neighbor rather than an enemy. So this week, I suggest that you make a special effort to enlarge your circle of concern beyond your own private borders and be a good neighbor. Find a way to inconvenience yourself and contribute something positive into the life of someone else that costs you something. Touch a life and it just may be that you will have touched your own.

Sunday, February 6, 2022

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 6: 1-13; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            This past summer I took some of my kids fishing at the Trout Haven Fishing Pond in Colorado.  The Trout Haven Fishing Pond is well stocked lake that is (no pun intended) packed to the gills with fish to catch.  You drop your line in the water and within seconds a fish is on your hook, and you real it in.  The Trout Haven Fishing Pond does not allow catch and release fishing, which means that you must pay for each fish you catch.  We were there maybe twenty minutes, and we had almost two buckets full of fish!

Any experienced fisherman or woman knows fishing an artificially stocked lake like the Trout Haven Fishing Pond is nothing like real fishing. In real fishing, you drop your line in the water and you wait.  And you wait some more.  The waiting is worth it, because nothing matches the excitement of feeling that tug on your line when you set the hook and reel in your catch. 

            Today we hear a fishing story in which Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee, sitting in a fishing boat, teaching a crowd of people who had gathered near.  After he had finished, he told Peter to take the boat out into deeper waters and to throw their nets in and see what they might find.  Simon Peter protested, saying, we were out here all night, and we didn’t catch a single fish.  Jesus said to Simon Peter, “don’t worry about what happened last night, try it again.” 

Simon Peter dropped the nets, and we know the rest of the story.  The nets caught so many fish they had to get people in other boats to come by and help them pull all the fish out.  They pulled in so many fish that the boats began to sink!  And immediately, Simon Peter grew afraid.  He felt he didn’t deserve all the good that was happening to him. 

            Jesus reassured him, saying “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”  This is more than just a really good fishing story.  This is a story about abundance, and how abundance comes from listening to God and doing what God asks you to do. 

            Elsewhere in the Bible, in a much older book called Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel writes about a vision of God’s holy temple.  In the 47th chapter, Ezekiel writes about a river which flows out of God’s temple.  In v. 9, Ezekiel says: “wherever the river goes . . . there will be very many fish.  People will stand beside the sea, it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds.”  It sounds like Ezekiel is describing the Trout Haven Fishing Pond in Estes Park, Colorado, but really the prophet is offering a beautiful description of the abundance offered to all who humbly follow God and do the hard and difficult work of listening. 

            Peter’s life after answering Jesus’ call was not easy, not did Peter always demonstrate faithfulness to God.  But neither do we.  God’s promise is not that our lives will be easy, but that they will be abundant.

            The earliest statement of belief in the church that we know of went like this: “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.  The Greek acronym of this creed “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” spells the Greek word for fish – “icthus.”  This led to the drawing of a fish as the earliest symbol Christians used as a sign of their identity, predating even the cross. 

            Even in the Winter, Trout Haven is open for ice fishing and ice skating.  It seems to never close.  There are always more fish to be caught.  AMEN.

Sunday, January 30, 2022

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

The Reverend Jeff Bohanski

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my

heart be acceptable in your sight,

O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.  Psalm 19:14 

Who are you called to be?  Who are we called to be?  Who am I called to be?  

A few minutes ago, we heard the call of Jeremiah.  The story follows the format of one being called, then the one being called gives reasons for why he/she is a poor choice to be called, but in the end, God calls the person anyway.  Finally, God sends the chosen one to do God’s work.

I believe these words we heard in Jeremiah can be said of all of us.  For God knew you and I before we were born and loved us.  I believe in Christ we all, even back then at our beginning, were appointed and called to be God’s prophets, to proclaim and show God’s love for all humanity.

Like Jeremiah we come up with excuses for why we are poor choices for this ministry.  Jeremiah said he was only a boy.  I’ve said, I have dyslexia and I’m a slow reader and a poor student, surely you do not mean me.  Some say they are the wrong ethnicity, the wrong gender, or the sexual identity or perhaps they are in wrong social class.  Unfortunately, many people say, I’m not an ordained person, I know it’s not me you want, anyway, I have a job and a family.  Surely, you don’t mean me.

My friends, I believe God replies to all of us, like he replied to Jeremiah, don’t give me these excuses, I chose you.  I shall send you and you shall speak whatever I tell you.  Do not be afraid.  Trust in me.

So next one begins to wonder about how we are to do this work of proclaiming God’s love that God calls us to do.  Surely, I’m not supposed to stand on a street corner and preach.

Saint Francis said, “Always preach the Gospel, and when necessary, use words.”  This week in men’s Bible study someone reminded us that God’s love Paul is talking about is not a noun, it’s a verb.  So, perhaps we proclaim God’s love when we, in our everyday lives, are patient, when we show kindness, when we are not rude, arrogant, nor resentful.  I believe we are proclaiming God’s love for all humanity when we let others have their way sometimes, maybe even that person who tries to cut in front of us in road construction traffic.  Or perhaps when we simply take a second in our busyness to say hello to someone, do a small quick head bow to the other to remind to ourselves that the other person is also a chosen child of God.

Again, I’ll say, I believe we are all called by God to proclaim and show God’s love for all humanity.  My hope for us all this week is that we all heed our call.  I pray each of us will proclaim God’s love by showing kindness to those we encounter in our daily lives.  I pray we simply take a second this week to greet someone with a simple hello and remind ourselves that that person we greet is also a chosen child of God.

Sunday, January 23, 2022

The Third Sunday of Epiphany

Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Two weeks ago I left church on a Sunday afternoon after services.  When I got home, I realized I was tired.  When I get tired – my brain focuses on one thing: take a nap.  Naps are desirable to me because I am an introvert – and on Sundays I play the role of the outgoing “extrovert.”  This tires me usually, but this Sunday I really felt exhausted. 

I knew in the long run the nap was not a good idea.  I knew I would be isolating myself – tuning out was at the time not the right solution.  I decided that even though the day was half-over, I could restart.  I could re-energize.  And I did. 

Instead of napping, I went in the back yard, picked up the dog poop, took my son to exchange a broken BB gun for a new one, paid bills.  Nothing about these acts qualify as heroic, but there was a war waged within me between what I really wanted to do (isolate and nap) and what I could do that would make things better (paying bills on time, new BB gun, etc.). 

The theme of this morning’s sermon is this: it is never too late to start over. 

Today we hear a reading from a book of the Bible called Nehemiah, and the story is all about starting over again.  In order to appreciate the reading, some context is necessary.  About one hundred years before the events in today’s reading from Nehemiah, Jerusalem was conquered by an invading empire we call the Babylonians. The Babylonians burned the city of Jerusalem to the ground, and emptied their sacred temple of all its appointments, perhaps including the ark of the covenant.  Citizens of Jerusalem were forced into Babylonian exile, where they lived for decades. 

Eventually, the citizens of Jerusalem were allowed to return and begin rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.  This was no small task.  The city walls had been destroyed and there was rubble and disorganization everywhere.  The book of Nehemiah tells the story of Jerusalem’s reconstruction.  Nehemiah, for whom the book is named, was the governor of Jerusalem during the people’s return and reconstruction.  The walls that lay in ruins were rebuilt in less than two months once the people had been galvanized into action by Nehemiah’s leadership. 

When the walls were completed, the people gathered around Ezra the priest, who publicly read the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).  This public reading is the first of its kind in the Bible, and the Hebrew word for it is “miqra” which is also the name of our annual read through of the Bible at St. Andrew’s.  The day Ezra read was on the first day of the seventh month, which became New Year’s Day in the Jewish calendar - Rosh Hashanah.

Even though the city was destroyed, the temple ransacked, the city walls demolished – it wasn’t too late to start over.  It wasn’t too late to rebuild and begin anew. 

I have a friend who is involved in a twelve-step recovery program called Alcoholics Anonymous.  When this person decided to start living a life without alcohol, they took what is called a “Desire Chip” which is a round metal chip that represents their desire to live alcohol-free for twenty-four hours.  This person lasted about eight hours, went out and drank.  The next day this same person went to the same Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, stood up in front of everyone, and took another desire chip, intending to live alcohol free for twenty-four hours. 

This time my friend drank after four hours.  The next, day, same meeting, another desire chip, another failure.  Again and again this process repeated itself.   This person told me they had accrued so many desire chips that they could make a belt out of them.  Today, this person has thirteen years.  We can always start again.  Nehemiah teaches us that God is a God of second chances.  It takes courage to start over, and God is always pitching a tent among those courageous enough to rebuild their lives.  AMEN. 

Sunday, January 9, 2022

The First Sunday after Epiphany

Isaiah 43: 1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8: 14 - 17, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

 Twenty-five years ago, my brother Randall and I travelled to the Middle East.  Our trip took about a month, and along the way we visited Athens, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Amman, Petra, and Jericho.  With only a few days of our trip left, we crossed the border from Israel into Egypt. 

We crossed over from Israel into Egypt and began our drive across the Sinai peninsula to Cairo.  At some point during our journey, the car broke down.  We all climbed out of it, and I scanned the desert horizon around me, and it was miles and miles of endless desert As the deep red sun began to set in the west, I knew that as long as we followed the sun west, we would eventually arrive at Cairo.  Eventually a kind person driving along the road picked us up and brought us to our destination in Cairo.  

Thousands of years before, a group of travelers also came from the east, following a star in the nighttime sky.  These travelers were presumably astrologers, people who studied the stars.  The stars have helped people travel for centuries, whether a sailor at sea, or those who travelled the Underground Railroad alongside Harriet Tubman.  Today, we don’t know what star these astrologers followed, or what it looked like.  Some think it was a comet, or maybe the joining of two planets in the sky, or even a supernova.  We don’t know.

We do know that they left their homeland because they believed that astrological phenomena, like a bright star, indicated that something important had happened on earth.  We know the star, whatever it was, led them to meet God’s child, Jesus of Nazareth. 

That story marks the beginning of the season Epiphany, which we celebrated on January 6 and Epiphany is the season we are in now.   The word “epiphany” means a “manifestation of a divine being.”   This morning we hear another story of an Epiphany - the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.  He is an infant no longer, the visiting astrologers have long since left.  Jesus is now a man, and his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist is one of the few moments in the entire Bible where all three persons of the Trinity are present: God the Son, emerging from the waters, God the Father, whose voice proclaims “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased” and God the Holy Spirit, who rests upon Christ as a dove.

Today is typically a Sunday for baptism, and we were going to have them today, but those who were to be baptized had a Covid exposure, and…you all know the rest of the story.  Such is our life today.  In place of baptism, in a short moment, we will turn to page 292 of our prayer books to renew our baptismal vows – to remind ourselves of the promises we made (or were made for us) at our baptism. 

All of us are on a journey.  Some of us are on literal journeys, going places, following stars, or jobs or what have you.  Christ also was on a journey – but a different one – a journey of inner discovery.  That is the journey we are called to. 

You might think of our renewal of baptismal vows today like a map for you.  A map helping each of us to do the next right thing.  Travel light.  Keep following your true star.  It will lead you to the greatest discovery imaginable – God, living within you.  AMEN.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: Natural theology and revelation

There comes a point in every faith journey when you suddenly realize that Jesus – the guy up in heaven, the guy you worship, the guy who came and suffered and died to complete an awesome cosmic purpose in the mind of God – well, that august figure had to have, at some point, been a boy: a boy who scraped his shins, played hide-and-seek with his friends, licked the brownie bowl when his mother wasn’t looking, and, sometimes, got a runny nose and had to stay in bed. The gospel accounts do us no favors, of course. Their job is to make Jesus the Christ. Once he’s born the next thing we get is Jesus the man, wading into the Jordan River to be baptized by John. He is already in his early thirties. Baby. Man, albeit a God-Man. That’s pretty much how we conceptualize Jesus for ourselves. Until that day when you say to yourself, “I believe in a person,” and now you emerge into that open space where theologians roam, because now you are invited to speculate about that most wondrous and fascinating question: how can Christ be both divine and human at the same time? Don’t worry. At this point we can leave things to the theologians – the how and the what – because the important thing is that we have asked the question at all, and so this little story from Luke’s Gospel of the boy Jesus becomes tantalizing as a glimpse into what the childhood of a God-Man looks like. What does it tell us?

The first thing to notice is that Jesus’s family is very pious. They are obedient to what the law requires as a matter of course and have just visited the Temple in Jerusalem to make the proper observances for the Passover. Jesus, we are told, is twelve years old. That is an important detail. According to the Mishnah, the age of twelve years old is one year before a boy becomes responsible for his own religious commitments, so all that we’re about to see is meant to be seen in that context, that Jesus is ahead of the curve: precocious and eager and intensely interested, well beyond his years, in the things of God, so much so that when the caravan departs for the return journey to Nazareth, Jesus stays behind in the temple. It is so relatable. We all know the experience of being so absorbed in an activity that we lose all track of time. But here there is something more. It is not just a few hours. It is several days. At some point, Jesus would have had to impose on somebody to give him a place to sleep and a meal, would he not? Jesus had time enough to realize that he was left behind, and yet he chooses to remain. When his anxious parents burst in, their question is why did he think that was okay? But notice Jesus’s question. Why did they not know to come to the Temple first? I must be “in the [things] of my Father” (Luke 3:49), he says, and it is crystal clear that the father referred to is not Joseph panting breathlessly next to Mary.

There are many things we can make out of this story, but what I would like to comment on briefly this morning is this image of Jesus in love with learning. “I must be about my Father’s business” is Jesus’s way of saying that the things of God are the primary and essential thing. We may have many choices about what to do with our lives, we have many ways to occupy ourselves, but God is to be our chief preoccupation, and, my friends, God is in everything. Every interaction we have with another, every time we stop to daydream about a drop of water, every insight of science and the arts, these are all the “things of God” and worthy of our attention if we will but stop to pay attention.

Now it was not too long ago that there was presumed to be an unbridgeable divide between science and religion, between reason and faith. It was even called a “conflict” because it was assumed you had to choose a side in a fight to the death. But, in fact, that is not the case. There is no conflict, because if the universe is God’s handiwork then it must bear signs of its Creator. Whatever science and reason have to teach us about the universe can only reveal the nature of God. And what has our quest for understanding revealed? It has proved that the universe is an orderly system governed by laws, laws that can be discerned and depended on. Our greatest doubts and incomprehension have only served to strengthen the case. Whenever human understanding reaches a limit and finds itself staring at a wall, whenever it seems we have no other recourse but mystery, further investigation always reveals an explanation. Countless times on the far side of a conundrum we have found ourselves landing again on something solid. It is just us who have to catch up with the way things really are. And look at what we’ve accomplished. By splicing together the laws of nature we have found ourselves capable of medical breakthroughs and moonshots, yet the principles of flight and the mechanisms of disease were just as true a thousand years ago as today, it was just the people didn’t know it. The miracles of a thousand years from now are quite possible today except that we don’t know yet how to get at them.[1] There is a lot we know, even more we don’t know, yet what we do know, what we can say, is this: there is purpose in this universe because everything in it is directed to some goal.

Thus far has science and reason gotten us, very far indeed, but, alas, it does not take us all the way. Despite our immense capacity and great successes, there are yet limits to both our science and our reason, for what is the nature of this God who has written his name in the stars? For this, God reached out a helping hand.

Man [writes Saint Thomas Aquinas] is directed to God as an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason…but the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason can investigate, it was necessary that man be taught by a divine revelation. For the truth about God, such as reason can know it, could only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors; whereas man’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends on the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they be taught divine truths by divine revelation.[2] [end quote]

So it is that God became flesh and dwelt among us. God reached out to us because it was too important to leave everything up to us. Life’s great purpose is to know God, and so God came to show us God’s very face.

[1] Frank E. Wilson, Faith and Practice, rev. ed. (New York: Morehouse, 2009), 25.

[2] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a.1.1, quoted from Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Anton Pegis (New York: Random House, Inc., 1948), 4.

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Christmas Day

Text: Luke 2:1-20

Theme: Christ’s birth is a confrontation

The Rev. Clint Brown

“Upon you…while still living among us, we already bestow divine honors…and confess that nobody like you will arise hereafter or has arisen before now.”[1] Words of exalted praise and adoration, a fitting tribute to offer to a king, and especially appropriate on this day when we celebrate the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords…except that they were not spoken about Jesus. These are the words of the poet Horace, penned to recognize not the Word made flesh, but to bestow divine honors on the Roman Emperor Augustus, during whose reign Jesus was born: Caesar Augustus who, as this quote makes clear, was already considered divine while still alive. In telling the story of the birth of Christ, it is easy to overlook the fact that before it mentions angels, or mangers, or shepherds, Luke’s account mentions Augustus and Quirinius. The context for the birth of Christ is Empire, and the Roman Empire’s omnipresence stands in the background of the entire Christmas story. The imperial machine is pulling all the levers. With its long arm it reaches into the lives of the lowliest of its subjects and decrees the movement of whole populations. The registration or census referred to is itself a mechanism for exerting domination and control. Yes, the context for the birth of Christ is Empire, and it is in the confrontation between the divine Augustus and the divine Jesus that the true message of Christmas is to be found.

To fully appreciate the events of Bethlehem, we have to rewind the clock some thirty years and travel almost a thousand miles west to the town of Actium on the western coast of Greece. Here, in the pivotal year of 31 B.C., the last great naval battle of the ancient world was fought, securing for Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, victory in the civil war that had bled the Roman Republic for twenty years. On a long September afternoon, Octavian’s galleys defeated the combined forces of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, giving the couple no other recourse but suicide. With their deaths, all claimants to the imperial throne had been dispatched. At last, there was peace. Around the entire Mediterranean, a collective sigh of relief went up. Octavian had brought order to the chaos, and, as the adopted son of the divine Caesar, he well-deserved the epithet “son of god.” Surely this one was touched by divinity, and, in no time, not just the poets but also the ordinary folk were acclaiming him “savior of the world.” By his victory, it was said, he had brought “peace on earth.” And so, Octavian took for himself a new, more appropriate name to better reflect his elevated status. He would call himself Augustus, the august one, an appellation that, in current usage, carried with it a faintly religious connotation. Augustus was a level up from humanus; literally translated, Augustus means the “One Who Is Divine.”[2] And just in case you thought that this was ancient history with very little bearing on your life now, just think that every time you date a check or fill out a school registration form in the month of August, you are still acknowledging the greatness of Augustus.

With this background firmly in place, we begin to see that there is a whole lot more going on in the Christmas story than our cute nativity scenes may suggest: Son of God. Peace on Earth. Savior of the World. Even the word “good tidings” or “glad tidings” appears, which becomes in our literature the word “gospel.” Long before these became the stock phrases of Christmas pageants and Christmas cards, they were the terms of imperial propaganda, and so Luke is being deliberately provocative in using them. He knows exactly what he is doing. The Christmas story is a scandal. It is the beginning, just the beginning, of what will remain ever after a confrontation between the kingdom of God, on the one hand – in all its apparent weakness, insignificance, vulnerability – and the kingdoms of this world on the other. “The Roman vision incarnated in the divine Augustus was peace through victory. The Christian vision incarnated in the divine Jesus was peace through justice. It is those alternatives that are at stake behind all the titles and countertitles, the claims and counterclaims.”[3]

For Christians, our difficulties with the Roman Empire have long since evaporated. There is no longer a literal empire with which we have to contend, at least for most of us anyway. In one of the supreme ironies of history, the Empire that had apparently neutralized the threat of the Jesus movement by crucifying its founder was itself converted when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the state religion less than 300 years later. But make no mistake. We do live with empire. Its spirit is alive and well in all the corrupting influences which underlie so much of how we live and how the world operates, which show up in how poorly we treat one another and how we build towering edifices not to peace and kindness and the just distribution of wealth, but to greed and pride and open rebellion to God. In that sense, empire is always with us, vying for our allegiance, wooing us with its seductive promises. Empire is the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God; the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God; the sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.[4] All that we renounce in our baptismal covenant is what the Incarnation confronts, and it demands a decision. It demands a taking of sides. Will you crown the king of empire or will you crown the King of Love?

[1] Quoted in Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 63-64.

[2] Borg and Crossan, The First Christmas, 61.

[3] Borg and Crossan, The First Christmas, 166.

[4] BCP, 302.

Friday, December 24, 2021

Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-14

The Rev. James M. L. Grace

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

I was at a loss for what to say for a Christmas Eve sermon this year. I knew that I wanted to say something about the reading we heard from Titus, but I did not know what. So, I pitched a question to the Vestry at our regular Vestry meeting earlier this week. I said to them, “let us hypothetically say that you are a priest and that you just might be preaching on Christmas Eve on this short reading from Titus. What would you say in your sermon?”

Members of the Vestry had all kinds of responses, and I will share a few of them here – with you. One Vestry member – let us just say it might have been Mary Eyuboglu – said that this reading from Titus describes the grace of salvation’s appearance. She added that Titus reminds us that Jesus’ birth offers salvation to all, and that salvation should inspire us to do the next right thing. That is a good sermon there.

Another member of our Vestry – maybe it was Spencer Vosko – said that Titus encourages us to take the gift of Christmas and to pass it on. Also good. Another member of our Vestry – John Alexander – suggested that Titus is helpful for all of us during a season in which we easily can get caught up on worldly things. John suggested that Titus reminds us of what we should be focusing on.

I was struck by the wisdom of our Vestry members, and for my sermon tonight I am just going to say “ditto” to everything they already said. It has occurred to me more than once that we might have a better sermon tonight if they were standing in this pulpit tonight rather than I. Nevertheless, in addition to what has been said about Titus, I have three truly short points, and then I will wrap up.

1.        Titus is an easily overlooked book in the New Testament. It is a short letter of only three chapters possibly written by the Apostle Paul to some new congregations on the island of Crete. Kind of random for Christmas, don’t you think? I believe the reason we read it on Christmas is because it mentions the appearance or manifestation of Christ – his birth.

2.       Which brings me to my second point – the letters, or Epistles, in the New Testament say little about the birth of Jesus. Titus is an epistle, a letter, and it is perhaps unique in this way – it mentions Christ’s birth. So, Titus is somewhat unique in this regard in its reference to the birth of Jesus.

3.       Which brings me to my last point. In the very last verse, Titus identifies the guiding principle behind Jesus’ birth – that he would redeem us and save us from ourselves. We are carrying a lot on our shoulders right now – sadness, pain, loss, hardship, financial insecurity, anxiety, pandemic fatigue, illness, addiction, etc. But we are not carrying any of it alone, because the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all of us. We are saved.

Now the wonderful thing about choosing to preach on a short passage is that it results in a short sermon, which on a late Christmas Eve, you might consider an early Christmas present. Merry Christmas, everyone. AMEN.

Sunday, December 19, 2021

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Micah 5: 2-5a; Canticle 15; Hebrews 10: 5-10; Luke 1:39-1:45

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Today we hear Mary’s song – the Magnificat – the words the Gospel tells us Mary sang, upon hearing Gabriel inform her she was to give birth to God’s son.  The word “Magnificat” is simply Latin for the first three words of her song – “My soul magnifies.”  Magnificat.  Our translation reads “my soul proclaims,” but the meaning is the same. 

The Magnificat is Mary’s joy-filled response to God’s invitation.  She is to be a mother, and to welcome her infant son, Jesus, into the world.  To do so, Mary demonstrated great faith and trust in God.  Something I often overlook when I read the Magnificat is that the young woman who joyfully sung them will also be the older woman holding her adult son’s lifeless body in her arms. 

But at this point of the story, Mary does not know what is in store for her son.  She does not know the pain he will feel, the rejection he will encounter, or the joy he will bring into the world.  As beautiful and compelling as the Magnificat is, there is something else – a moment which occurs just before her song, a moment which occurs just a few verses before, in which she speaks the some of the most profound words in all the Bible.  “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Mary surrenders to God’s will, unlike many others in the Bible who seek to get out of doing what God asks them to do.  Notice what Mary does not say.  She does not say, “let it be done to me according to your word, but don’t let it cost me my health.”  She does not say “let it be done to me according to your word, but don’t make it too hard, or make it cost too much money.”  She does not say “let it be done according to your will, but can I get something out of it too?” 

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

This has been a hard year – no question.  We have endured more than we thought we would before this year started.  At least I have.  And if I am going to be very honest with you all, when I have had to endure hard moments and pain, I have not always done so in the spirit of Mary’s words “let it be done to me according to your will.”  Sometimes, quite the opposite. 

Even so, we are called to be the light.  And there are a lot of people who need light right now.  A few days ago I made a donation to the St. Bernard Project, which is a non profit organization that rebuilds homes following a disaster.  They are on the ground responding to the devastation caused by a series of tornadoes across states in which one hundred people are feared dead.  St. Bernard Project has a four star rating on Charity Navigator, which is the highest rating they offer. 

Today we are going to take a collection for this charity, and all cash coin or designated checks put into the alms basin today will go to the St. Bernard Project.  Mary says in her song “the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”  We are the hands of the almighty.  Let us do good things.  Let us reach out.  Let us be light.  Let it be according to your word.  AMEN.

Sunday, December 12, 2021

The Third Sunday of Advent

The Rev. Clint Brown

Themes: Sing; “spilling over;” Beethoven Op. 132; God “spilling over” into our world (the Incarnation)

The prophet Zephaniah says, “Sing aloud…shout…Rejoice and exult…” (Zephaniah 3:14). And the First Song of Isaiah says, “Cry aloud…ring out your joy…Sing the praises of the Lord...” Singing, shouting, praising, rejoicing. This is the work we are given to do this day on Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, “Gaudete” being the Latin imperative meaning “Rejoice!” We are joyful because a child is soon to be born in Bethlehem who is the Savior of the world. We are joyful that all our longings will be fulfilled and that ancient wrongs will be righted and justice will reign on the earth. We are joyful that no matter our circumstances, no matter how bad things look on the outside, on the inside we are confident that our faith in Christ is neither misguided nor misplaced. So whether we feel in the mood for it on this particular day or not, there is reason to be joyful. “Rejoice!” we are told, and it is a command.

Our model for this, of course, is the Apostle Paul who, when writing to the Philippians, wrote: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). But as Jeff Bohanski reminded us last Sunday, this letter to the Philippians, so suffused with joy was not written while Paul was lazing about in comfortable retirement on a beach somewhere. Rather, Paul was under house arrest. At the time he wrote it, Paul was well aware that his life’s work, in the many churches he had founded, was being undermined and even undone by rivals, and, after twenty years of hard traveling in service to the Gospel, he was tired and weary. No one could begrudge Paul if, for just a moment, he wanted to complain a little or express some regret. But rather than complain, he tells the Philippians in his introductory remarks that life is about distinguishing the greater from the lesser (1:10), and that he counted his imprisonment as among the lesser things. Five times the word “joy” appears in the letter (1:4, 25; 2:2, 29; 4:1) and the verbs “rejoice” and “be glad” no less than eleven (once in 2:28; 3:1; 4:10; and twice in 1:18; 2:17, 18; 4:4).

What is apparent from even the most cursory reading of Philippians is something that many of us have come to realize in our best moments – something that we need others’ help reminding us when we are not at our best – that circumstances are not the thing upon which our happiness depends. Even when confronted with the worst that life can dish out, we can yet feel a confidence, a sureness, that everything is alright. Paul was fond of calling this life the life “in Christ,” in Christ being his image for suggesting submersion and suffusion with the spirit of Christ. At all points the life that’s possible through the glorified Christ penetrates you, lends it a totally different quality from one lived without him. A truly Christian life is one so full that it spills out of us into all the life around us; into the lives of the people we know; into our awareness and perception of the world itself. And that’s what we mean when we speak of joy. It is not denial. It is not putting on a happy face and pretending everything is okay. It is a life of abundance. Joy is life in excess. It is the overflow of that which cannot be contained within any single person[1] and must reach outside.

No wonder, then, that we must sing. Zephaniah, Isaiah, Paul – each of them knew that we need a more elevated language for joy, and that language is song. “Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things, and this is known in all the world.” “Music…stands quite alone,” wrote Schopenhauer. “It does not express a particular and definite joy…but joy [itself], in the abstract, in [its] essential nature…[enabling] us to grasp and share [it] fully in this quintessence.”[2]

Most people nowadays are unaware that in 1825, two years before he died, the ailing Beethoven suffered a dreadful bowel inflammation that interrupted the composition of his last five string quartets. Throughout the spring and summer, he endured the trauma of not only the condition, but also the appalling medical science of the time, such as it was, that ended up killing more people than all the Napoleonic wars put together. That recovery from the illness was not assured can be surmised by his handling of the third movement of Op. 132, which he took up when he resumed working again. At the top of the score he wrote an inscription, “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart,” “Song of Thanksgiving, in the Lydian Mode, Offered to the Deity by a Convalescent.” The impulse to sing, you see, was irrepressible.

And so it is for us. We have to sing and rejoice because we have no other option. That is what you do when your heart is so full of thanksgiving, when the news you have to share is so great. It is joy – our joy – spilling out into the world around us, to tell a grieving, hopeless, pandemic-weary world that God is coming to be with us – Immanuel. Joy is spilling over. God is spilling over into our world.

[1] Eugene H. Peterson, introduction to Philippians in The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2018).

[2] Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, 52.

Sunday, December 5, 2021

The Second Sunday of Advent

Malachi 3:1-14; Canticle 14 (Luke 1:68-79); Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3: 1-6

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

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

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.  You, my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High.  You, my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High.

In what seems like a lifetime ago, I attended college in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  I went to The University of Saint Thomas, a Roman Catholic university.  While I was there, I was part of Saint John Vianney Minor Seminary.  What’s a minor seminary, you ask?  A minor seminary is like a house of formation for men discerning the call to the priesthood.  During my time there we attended daily Mass, we were encouraged to attend Morning Prayer, we met monthly with a spiritual director.  In those years we formed a rule of life that included regular prayer and study.  Those life skills I learned back then have served me well over the years. 

One summer As part of my formation experience, I found myself serving as the Roman Catholic chaplain for a Boy Scout camp in northern Wisconsin.  This part of the state is a very thick pine forest.  The entire time I was there I would see open sky that was free of trees only once a week.  It was when I would drive the Catholic junior camp counselors into the town of Rhinelander to attend Saturday evening Mass, do laundry, and to have dinner.  It was a world almost the exact opposite of the city of Saint Paul. 

In the Roman Catholic version of Morning Prayer, one prays The Canticle of Zacharia every morning.  So, for me, this canticle is like an old friend who I’ve known and lived with for a very long time. 

Please bear with me as I pray it one more time.  As I read the canticle, I invite you to close your eyes and pay attention to what words or images strike you.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; *

he has come to his people and set them free.

He has raised up for us a mighty savior, *

born of the house of his servant David.

Through his holy prophets he promised of old,

that he would save us from our enemies, *

from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers *

and to remember his holy covenant.

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, *

to set us free from the hands of our enemies,

Free to worship him without fear, *

holy and righteous in his sight

all the days of our life.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, *

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,

To give his people knowledge of salvation *

by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God *

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the

                 shadow of death, *

and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

The sentence, You, my child shall be called the prophet of the Most High., always strikes me.  Now, tradition holds that when Zacharia was saying these words he was proudly gazing at his newly named son, John, and praising God and prophesizing with the words.   But for me, these words strike me as a commission, a call to action for me and to all those who call themselves Christian.  I believe we, all God’s children, are loved by a very proud father/mother God. I believe we are called to be God’s prophets, to bare witnesses to that love. I believe prophets bring hope to the world. 

Malachi preached to the people of Israel around the time of Ezra-Nehemiah.  As Ezra and Nehemiah were rebuilding the temple at the time of the exiles return from Babylon, Malachi prophesized to to bring about reform of the priests that would serve in this temple.  He spoke of God scrubbing away of impurities of the priesthood as a loving parent would scrub out a road rash injury their beloved child received from a fall off their bike.  A painful but necessary cleaning that brings about healthy life.  I suspect all of us here today have at one time experienced this healing power of God.  I believe we are called bear witness to this kind of restorative love.

If one looks for N.T. Wright’s commentaries on Paul’s letter to the Philippians, one finds it in the section entitled, Paul, the Prison Letters.  Scholars believe Philippians, along with Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon were most likely authentic Pauline letters because he wrote them while he was imprisoned in Rome awaiting his execution.  In these letters, Paul near the end of his life, bears witness to God’s lifegiving, forgiving love.

In the days when Paul was in prison, the government provided no food for the prisoners.  The family of the imprisoned provided food for the prisoner.  If there was no family, the prisoner starved.  Since Paul was unable to continue his tentmaking business from prison he would starve.  The Philippians had sent him money to be able to feed himself.  Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians to thank them for sending money him food money. I believe the Philippians prophesized; they bore witness to Jesus when they sent money to feed poor unemployed imprisoned Paul.  For in the kingdom of God the poor are fed and the imprisoned are visited.

I submit that Luke, the great storyteller, prophesized about the kingdom of God Jesus was about bring in.  One commentator I read this week suggested Luke listed these important names of people of the day to show that Jesus, the Messiah, was about to turn everything people expected Messiah to be on its head.  Instead of the Good News coming from the important people of the day, the message first came from someone the world would describe as a lowly unimportant person.  In this story, Luke prophesized what the Kingdom of God would look like. 

So, how do we who are living in the time of Covid, in the time of great social, political, and economic uncertainty prophesy about God’s love for the world?  We get vaccinated.  We build a garden, raise food, and donate it to a food pantry.  We donate to the MAM toy drive.    We take part in the Christmas Market.  We greet people we do not know at the grocery store; we make a point to greet a person who doesn’t look like ourselves.  In a group of people, we look for those who are alone and engage that person.

My friends, I suspect we have at one time, or another felt the mercy, the forgiveness, and the love of God in Jesus.  I invite us all to look at all others as people loved by God as he has loved us and go prophesy about it.

November 24, 2021

Thanksgiving Eve

The Rev. Clint Brown

Thanksgiving Day has its origin in the year 1621 in a harvest feast shared by the newly arrived English colonists of Plymouth and a local native tribe called the Wampanoag. It seems to have all started when a few of the Englishmen went out to do some “fowling,” that is, bird hunting, possibly for turkeys but more probably for geese and ducks, which were much easier prey. As the colonists began to roast what they had bagged, 90 or so Wampanoag emerged from the woods. I’m sure the only 50 or so colonists were not a little unnerved by this sudden appearance of so many strangers at their gate, but over the next few days the two groups socialized without incident. For their part, the Wampanoag contributed venison and fish, vegetables and beer. In between meals, it is recorded, the men competed at target practice, foot races, and drinking contests. Everyone struggled, of course, to communicate in broken English and Wampanoag, but all in all, one could say, that despite being thoroughly disorderly it was a good-natured affair, and it helped to cement friendly relations between the two groups for over fifty years. 

The New England colonists had a tradition of regularly setting aside days of prayer like this to thank God for God’s many blessings. When the Constitution was ratified, the Continental Congress proclaimed for the former colonies, now federated states, a day of thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving did not become an annual holiday with a fixed day until Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of a popular women’s magazine, campaigned for one to promote unity during the Civil War. And so, on October 3, 1863, just three months after the greatest bloodletting this continent has ever seen at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.

Over the years, as the country became more urban and families began to live farther apart, Thanksgiving became an important time for regathering. Thanksgiving Day football games became a tradition, beginning with Yale versus Princeton in 1876. Towards the end of the century, parades of costumed revelers became common, and so it was only to be expected that, in 1920, the Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia should stage a parade of about 50 people, with Santa Claus at the rear of the procession, to tap into the holiday spirit and give the happy crowd a good reason to come downtown and spend their money. In New York City, Macy’s followed suit not long after in 1924.[1] And we all know what Thanksgiving looks and feels like today. How remarkable, then, that standing behind all this is the story of some colonists and natives who overcame their suspicions to celebrate the earth’s bounty and give thanks in one another’s company.

For we Episcopalians, however, none of this should seem new to us. Over the years we have grown more and more comfortable letting strangers in at the gate and being pleasantly surprised at the result. But most importantly, gathering to give thanks is, for us, the very definition of church, because the word for thanksgiving in Greek is eucharistía. Every Eucharist at which we gather is an act of thanksgiving. When we come together to hear scripture, to pray, to praise, and then partake of holy communion, we are simply performing the needful task of remembering and then responding to all that has been done for us. Thanksgiving is the context in which Christians gather to share the Body and Blood of Christ. And so, as you leave here tonight, know that the excuse for gathering may have been because Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow, but remember that we are actually no strangers to the work of thanksgiving.

[1] The history of Thanksgiving Day summarized here is drawn from Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Thanksgiving Day,” accessed November 23, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thanksgiving-Day.

November 28, 2021

1 Advent 

Jeremiah 33: 14-16; Psalm 25: 1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21: 25-36

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

In the psalm appointed for today which is psalm 25, we hear some incredible verses, the first of which I want to read again here – you can follow along in your order of service if you would like – I am going to read the first three verses: “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.  O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.  Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.”

This is very clearly the prayer of a person in great distress, a person perhaps dealing with insurmountable fear or uncertainty, something none of us can relate to at all, right?  If only.  There is an interesting line in those verses, the line where the author of the psalm says “do not let those who wait for you be put to shame.”  That is another way of saying “God, please don’t frustrate the people who are praying to you by not answering their prayers.”  If you have ever received no answer from God to your prayers, you understand how frustrating that experience can be.

Every week I have a conversation with a person who expresses to me their frustration at their seemingly unanswered prayers.  I field questions all the time like “Why is God silent?  Why are the prayers I have offered for months seeming to fall upon deaf ears?  Does God even care?” 

Of course I don’t have adequate answers to any of those questions.  All I can offer is my own experience, bereft as it often is. 

And my experience of seemingly unanswered prayers to a non-responsive God is more robust than I would wish.  I used to get real frustrated, like the author of the psalm.  “Answer my prayer, God – do not put me to shame!”  And then, something changed inside me, and I awakened.  I had a spiritual awakening, a spiritual experience, where I started to get some clarity, and that clarity led me to see that actually God was hearing and answering my prayers, all along. 

What led me to this discovery was not God behaving any differently, but rather a change inside me that allowed me to become more aware.  I learned that unanswered prayers are impossibilities, as all prayers are answered.  It’s just that the prayers I thought were going unanswered instead just weren’t being answered the way I wished they would be. 

It is probably a sign of spiritual maturity to maintain trust in God when things don’t go your way, and when your prayers are not answered the way you would like them to be.  This experience, though often frustrating, and even humiliating, is actually good for our well-being.  Priest and author Richard Rohr writes that he expects to have one humiliation daily.  A daily humiliation doesn’t sound very fun does it?  But what wondrous things that daily dose of humility does for our relationship with God.

Over time, one of the gifts humility gives us is that it expands our consciousness, and we begin to see more and more.  Enough humility expands our vision to recognize paradox and we see things we didn’t see before, and things we have always seen begin to look different to us.   Prayers that we thought unanswered for years take on a new appearance, and beauty, with our new vision, we see those beautiful unanswered prayers as they really are: radiant, gleaming, and answered.  AMEN.

November 14, 2021 - 7:30am & 9am

Proper 28

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

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

Most Sundays after the 7:30 Service someone in the group asks me to tell them a story from my first-grade class.  This person’s spouse has lovingly dubbed this story time as “a Tale from the Crypt.”  My friends, consider this my “tale from the crypt” for this morning. 

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Halloween.  At our school we observed the day by having a “Character Day.” The children were invited to come dressed as their favorite book character.  They were also asked to bring the book their character was in.  We had lots of Spidermen and Transformers and one Hulk.  We found ourselves in the company of a few Elsa’s from Frozen, a few princesses and one very creative unicorn.

If I had thought through the idea more thoroughly, I would have come dressed as a Who and brought my copy of Dr. Seuss’ book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  If you don’t remember who a Who is, a Who lived in Who-ville, and they liked Christmas a lot.  The Grinch who lived just north of Who-ville did not.  He hated the Whos and the whole Christmas season.  He especially hated the thought of them hanging their mistletoe wreaths and their stockings.  But most of all he hated their noise, their feasting and especially their singing! It was then he hatched a fiendish plot to stop Christmas from coming. The Whos inspire me.  They inspire me because they knew who and what they were doing.  The Whos had faith that no Grinch could stop.  The Whos knew what Christmas was about. They knew they were a people who when united would bring light and love to their world.  I should’ve been a Who.

As you probably know, I love a good story of many different genres.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a great story.  So, it’s no wonder I’ve been enjoying the readings we’ve been hearing these last several weeks.  For the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing the colorful intriguing story of Ruth who at the beginning of her story had nothing.  By the end of the story, she was the great-grandmother of King David.  Ruth, who was in the midst of chaos, in the midst of turmoil believed God loved her and God was and would be with her.  Ruth was a woman of faith.

In the first reading we heard this morning; we heard the story of Hannah faithfully ask God for a son and promised to one day return him back to God in thanksgiving.  Hannah prayed so diligently for her son; her lips moved.  She was accused of being drunk.  In our response to this reading, we prayed Hannah’s powerful prayer of rejoicing for her son.  It was this prayer that many scholars believe was used to format the Magnificat sung by Mary in Luke’s Gospel.  It was this son of Hannah’s son who one day would be the one to find and anoint Ruth’s great-grandson as King of Israel from whose line Jesus, Emanuel – God is with us – would one day be born into.  Hannah, who in the midst of chaos, in the midst of turmoil believed God loved her and God was and would be with her.  Hannah was a woman of faith. 

Then we come to today’s Gospel story.  Jesus comes out of the temple and his disciples are marveling at the stones of the temple.  They don’t get it.  Now, I think it is important at this point in my message to recall, that Mark’s Gospel was probably written just before or very close to the time the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.  Mark’s community was living in the midst of turmoil and chaos.  I believe Mark has a message here for his community.  I believe his is the message of Ruth and Hannah.  Have faith.  Turmoil and chaos are coming, it may be here.  But have faith in God.  Have faith Jesus, Emanuel – God is with us.   I think the message of Mark is the same for us today.  Believe. God is with you.  God is with us. Find your strength in and God’s love for you.  Believe, have faith like Ruth and Hannah had faith.

In a few minutes Tony will speak about Stewardship.  I invite us all to listen.  Have faith of Ruth and Hannah.  I have found Saint Andrews to be a place where I find God’s love.  I have found it a place where I am free to grow into the person God created me to be.  I ask you to have faith, believe, do what you feel called by God to do.  I invite you to be a person of faith like Ruth and Hannah.

Later this morning, during the 11:15 Service people of faith will stand up in front of Bishop Fisher to profess their faith, to renew their faith.  I invite you as a member of Saint Andrew’s Community to come back at 11:15, represent this congregation to bear witness to their faith, to your faith, to our faith and to show support for these new members of God’s community.

Like Ruth and Hannah, I invite us all be people of faith in Jesus, Emanuel – God is with us.  Believe in the midst of turmoil.