Sunday, September 4, 2022

Proper 18

Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5,12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: Learning to doubt ourselves

After more than three months of debate and compromise, the moment had finally arrived to sign the piece of parchment. After all their labors, it was the delegates’ fervent hope that they had arrived at a system that would establish a “more perfect union” than that of the Articles of Confederation. On the morning of Monday, September 17, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention, the engrossed Constitution having been read aloud one last time, Benjamin Franklin rose with a speech in his hand that he had worked on all weekend. In it he hoped to distill the work of the whole proceedings and to bring it over the finish line. Addressing first the chair and being recognized by General Washington, the President of the Convention, he handed his speech to his fellow Pennsylvanian James Wilson to read on his behalf. “Mr. President,” it begins:

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that whereever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said "I don't know how it happens, Sister, but I meet with no body but myself, that's always in the right" -- Il n'y a que moi qui a toujours raison.

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us… [and] I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good…

On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility-- and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument."[1]

As we continue to navigate a time of deep division in our nation, I find myself thinking more and more of these words of Dr. Franklin. To me they speak with a force equal to Scripture of the two essential qualities of a free people: honesty and humility. In a system such as ours, which sees value in the coming together of many passions and views, we can and must “doubt a little of [our] own infallibility” if we are to reap any of its advantages. Intractability, local interests,  mistrust – these have always been the easier options, but the promise of the moment, the promise of America, thought Franklin, was the realization of that ideal that had thus far eluded humanity and that now stood its best chance of success: that the strongest and most enduring community is the one forged more from difference than from sameness. And the ongoing reinvention necessary of such a people is well-captured in today’s image from the prophet Jeremiah. We are all like clay in God’s hands, clay which has the potential to be reworked a thousand times. Jeremiah’s mission was all towards convincing the people that whatever judgement might be hanging over them, it was not inevitable. They could reform. Crisis could be averted. Always open to us is the possibility of being remade. But if we are too sure of ourselves, if we grow too inflexible and hardened in our opinions, if we choose, instead, hearts of stone, we will be broken, shattering into a thousand pieces. Christ tells us to prefer nothing to God, to renounce whatever might take first place to God and, to my mind, that means chiefly ourselves. Our salvation consists only in throwing ourselves constantly back into the hands of the potter, allowing ourselves to be remade, forever learning to doubt ourselves.

[1] Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911), 641-43.

Sunday, August 28, 2022

Proper 17

Jeremiah 2: 4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16, Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16; Luke 14: 1, 7-14

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Years ago, a woman made an appointment with me for confession.  She and I came into church and it was here that she disclosed to me the grief that was upon their heart – a heavy burden she had carried through a marriage of many years which pertained to her infidelity, an affair (at the time of our meeting) she had yet to disclose to her husband. 

Infidelity is of course nothing new, and if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that all of us bear the same guilt in regard to our important relationship, which is our relationship with God. 

Infidelity is the theme of the reading today from the prophet Jeremiah.  In the verses which were read shortly ago from chapter 2, God addresses the infidelity of the people of Israel in verse 5, which reads: “Thus says the Lord, What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? 

It is here that we see the story of Israel from God’s perspective.  In God’s perspective, the story of Israel is not a story of successful kings and rulers, or of prosperity and growth.  That might be how Israel wants to look at themselves.  But from God’s perspective the story of Israel is a long story of Israel forsaking God’s perfect love again and again and again.  God is righteous, and Israel is accused of infidelity to the truth. 

Jeremiah says that those who go after worthless things become worthless themselves.  How many of us are drawn away from our true love by worthless things?  I have pursued worthless things before, and have felt worthless because of my pursuit.

Infidelity makes us worthless not simply because it is wrong or evil, but because infidelity is like amnesia – we forget who we are when we choose to love the wrong things, we forget that we have value and dignity because we are made in God’s image, and so we become worthless.

Israel forgot who they were and sought to become like other people living around them.  The person who confessed infidelity to me I would say forgot she was were, and was subsequently drawn to another person pursuing the mirage that such a relationship could fill human emptiness.  We forget ourselves, every day.  You are precious in God’s eyes.  We have all been unfaithful, but God does not condemn us for our infidelity. 

A consequence of our infidelity is that we hurt people we may not even know.  I had a conversation with a person just yesterday, whom I don’t know well, and she (not knowing what I do for a job) said organized religion is one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.  Now I cannot be sure, but I imagine that if this person would not feel this way if their experience of religion was of faithful, accountable, and humble people.  If her experience of religion led to an encounter with judgmental, hypocritical people who follow worthless things, then yes, I agree – the religion is a hoax. 

There are two ways to solve infidelity: First is God’s way, and the second, is God’s way.  Both ways draw us to look inward and take inventory of our heart.  It is in our heart, where God reveals to us our true and faithful purpose.    AMEN. 

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Proper 15

Isaiah 5: 1-7; Psalm 80: 1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11: 29 – 12:2; Luke 12: 49-56

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

The reading I wish to reflect on for a few moments is today’s Psalm – Psalm 80.  In the psalm the author writes about the people of Israel, and describes them, at least in verse 8 of the psalm, as a “vine” which the Lord has brought out of Egypt, and planted it in the Promised Land.  The author of the psalm says that the Lord “prepared the ground for it,” and the vine did what vines typically do – grow, and it filled the land.  This is author of the Psalm’s way of saying that the people of Israel were brought out of slavery in Egypt, by God, and led into Israel.

I would like to identify two problems with this story.  The first problem with God’s chosen people settling into Israel was that in doing so, the Hebrews murdered and displaced numerous people who were living in Israel before they arrived.  It is suggested by some that the Hebrews manner of treating the indigenous people of Canaan established a justification, and example, for how the United States government and settlers in America displaced indigenous native peoples who lived here before Europeans arrived.  A second problem with this story is God’s apparent support of this murder and displacement on behalf of Israelite settlers.  Violence always begets violence.  This is true today, and it was true during Israel’s conquest of Canaan.

Once Israel settled into Canaan, problems occurred, and many of which were Israel’s own making.  The violence they exhibited in the settling of Israel was returned upon them. The author of Psalm 80, says of the vine God has planted: “the wild boar of the forest has ravaged it, the beasts of the field have grazed upon it…they burn it with fire like rubbish.”  The murder and displacement which Israel caused to the people whom they forced out of Canaan, is now revisited upon them, and they cry out to God for an answer: “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, stir up your strength to come and help us,” the author proclaims. 

Israel finds itself amidst great calamity.  Things have fallen apart.  Cynicism and despair are rampant.  And yet – they dare.  They dare, as evidenced by this psalm, that amidst calamitous circumstances, they dare to proclaim that God is sovereign.   

The other day, I heard a woman from California share that she was in Houston because her son had – tragically – taken his own life.   As she shared this, my heart broke open for her, and I couldn’t imagine the pain she felt.  But then she did something remarkable.  She said, in so many words, that she would be okay, that she had faith that God was fully with her through this, and she expressed profound gratitude for the many people who care and love her.  Her vine – her son – was ravaged by the wild boar of the forest – taken from her too soon.  But like the author of this psalm has written in verse 17, she will never turn away from God.  Not even after this. 

Our human task is to meet calamity with serenity, and to trust God when the wild boars ravage our vines, and to say to God even when our vines are permitted to burn: “Restore us O Lord God of hosts, show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”  AMEN.

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Proper 7

Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13

The Rev. Clint Brown

Imagine that it is the year 3022, exactly one thousand years into the future, and archaeologists are excavating the site of the ancient city of Houston. In the course of their excavations, they discover the remains of a public swimming pool. Now the purpose of the large, concrete hole in the ground might not be altogether clear to them, but they would know two things about it based on the list of rules displayed on a nearby wall. It was not a place intended for running or diving. And they would learn that people both ran and dove, hence the need for rules against these actions.[1] This is how rules work. To see a list of prohibitions is to discover the kinds of problematic things that people have done. In my teaching, I have long used this illustration to introduce the purpose of the Creeds. “Creeds speak especially to those matters that were controversial at the time the Creeds were written,” the problems that needed solving, the heresies then current that had the potential to divide and wreck the Christian proclamation, and since most of the controversies were related to belief in the Holy Trinity, our Creeds are heavily Trinitarian and careful to speak with clarity and precision about this all-important, distinctly Christian doctrine.[2]

As I reflected on the Lord’s Prayer this week, I realized that this same logic might apply. In giving us a model for prayer, in telling us the things for which we should pray, the prayer is, ultimately, telling us what we lack. It seems a simple outline for how to do a task, but it is also a theological anthropology. It is an answer to the question: who are we?

We are, says the prayer, first of all, dependent: “Give us each day our daily bread” (v. 3). We have need of provision that comes from outside us and for which we are obliged to ask because it is beyond our control. The laws of nature operate, most of the time, beneath our awareness, in ways we do not fully comprehend, but reliably and to our benefit and for that we should be thankful. Somehow the plants grow due to a magical chemical and electrical phenomenon called photosynthesis providing, in their turn, fodder for animals, and then many hands – mostly invisible and unknown to us – link together to bring that food from farm and ranch to market through impressive supply chains that crisscross continents and oceans and time zones and international borders to arrive, eventually, on store shelves and in restaurant larders, and then, through either our own skill or that of others, it is cooked and prepared and dished out ready to enjoy onto our plates to fuel the incredible electro-chemical engine that is us – the human organism that Carl Sagan once observed is stardust having attained the capacity to contemplate itself. In the face of all this staggering providence, that should strike us as nothing short of miraculous, we are right to be moved to gratitude, a sense of something given. “Thank God for that,” we often say, before we realize what we’ve said, as we reach instinctively for someone to thank.[3] But occasionally what stops us short is not our gratitude but our finitude. We plunge ahead confident in our self-sufficiency and mastery until, inevitably, we are confronted with how little control we have. Perhaps it is a diagnosis, or a financial set back, or a death, or an addiction spiraling out of control – eventually something shakes us to our foundation, and we know that we can’t pull ourselves out of this one alone. “Many a bargain is struck in the recesses of the heart when things look black, only to be discarded with embarrassment when the good times return. But it may still be a reminder that none of us is self-sufficient; we all face situations when we know we could do with someone big on our side…[and] reaching out beyond ourselves is the first move of prayer.”[4] We are, first of all, dependent.

Second of all, the prayer says we are guilty: “forgive us our sins” (v.4). Not only are we in need of daily provision, we are also in need of daily forgiveness, because, as any of us can testify, in the scales of cosmic justice we are always tending toward the wrong. It is in our nature to be always choosing the worse over the better part, to be falling short, and so, each day, we are instructed to confess our failings, both in the things done and those left undone. And why this is is not just to secure an extra week of grace for ourselves so that when we rise from our knees we have a clean slate with which to make room for another week of sinning. We are to become instruments of reconciliation ourselves. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Here in slightly different wording is the crucial insight that we can’t recognize forgiveness unless we are living that way in relation to others.[5] It’s nothing new. Long ago, God commanded our ancestors, “You shall not oppress an alien since you know the alien’s soul, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).[6] Jesus made the same point when he stared at the crowd and said, “He that is without sin…let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7, KJV). We are all in this together, sinning and being sinned against. None of us is guiltless, which is why we must pray, daily, “Forgive us our sins.”

And, finally, the prayer has us calling out to God, “Lead us” and “Deliver us” (v.4b, in its traditional rendering), because we cannot make our own way in this world in any satisfactory sense without divine guidance. We are lost and vulnerable beings who, left to our own devices, will only make misery for ourselves. We cannot be our own source. We cannot be our own salvation. Our impulses lead us only as far as self-interest can take us, to a hollow existence of petty greed, power lust, violence. So into the breach comes a Savior, Christ, to show us a better way and to save us from ourselves. Ever our model, we see him in the garden, in prayer, submitting himself to the perfect will of the Father. We think that we are our highest good, but not so proclaims the Cross – only death brings life. In the great debate about whether prayer changes God or changes us, I don’t think there can be any real doubt. Prayer changes us. “God is perfect love and perfect wisdom,” wrote William Temple. “We do not pray in order to change His Will, but to bring our wills into harmony with His.”[7] “Deliver us,” we pray, from all that would try to tempt us away from the arms of perfect love.

In this brief survey of the Lord’s Prayer, we have discovered ourselves a frail creature: dependent and guilty and vulnerable. This is not the way we like to think of ourselves. We do not like to think of ourselves as either deficient or weak or out of control, and yet this is the reality of who we are. The story is told that Karl Marx’s daughter once told a friend that she hadn’t been brought up with any religion and therefore wasn’t religious. “But,” she confessed, “the other day I came across a beautiful little prayer which I very much wish could be true.” And when asked about it, she began repeating slowly, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”[8] Well, it is true. It tells us exactly who we are.

[1] Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Schobe, Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs and Practices (Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 2018), 171.

[2] Ibid., 172.

[3] John Pritchard, How to Pray: A Practical Handbook (London: SPCK, 2011), 3.

[4] Pritchard, How to Pray, 4.

[5] Ibid., 18.

[6] Richard Elliott Friedman, The Exodus (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), 201.

[7] Quoted in Bruce Barton, Dave Veerman, and Linda Taylor, Luke, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1997), 291.

[8] Quoted in Pritchard, How to Pray, 19.

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Proper 11

Amos 8:1-12; Colossians 1:25-28; Luke 38-42

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

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

Martha, Martha, Martha.  Poor worried Martha.  I feel sorry for her.  I can relate to her.  I am grateful for her.  In today’s Gospel Mary is the good one who Jesus praises.  Mary is the one who biblical scholars give credit to as the one Jesus uses to upend conventional thinking about roles of men and women in society.  Rules he wants changed in the new kingdom he is ushering in.  Good for Mary!  Amen!  

But this morning I want to ponder Martha.  A few weeks ago, we heard Jesus tell the ones he sent out to eat what was set before them when they entered a town that welcomed them.  It seems to me Martha, was doing just that. Martha was lovingly welcoming Jesus by her diligently preparing food and working hard so it would be set out beautifully.  I like to think Martha may have known some of these foods were Jesus’ favorites.  But poor worried Martha got so caught up with doing things right that she forgot why she was doing what she was doing even though Jesus was there!  I’m sure she never expected to hear Jesus say what he said when she appealed to him for help. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

In June, I was fortunate enough to travel to Alaska and spend a few days with my niece who had just finished her first year of teaching in the Anchorage School District.

During my time there we booked a helicopter excursion to the top of a glacier.  The pilot was a friend of a friend of my niece’s, so we had personal connection with him.  On our flight up to the top of glacier I asked him about what he has noticed about the people he takes on these flights.  I found his answer quite interesting.  He said he found lots of people come up here and take lots of pictures.  He went on to say that picture taking is good, for he too was an amateur photographer, but it seemed to him that people get so caught up in taking their pictures of these phenomenal views, that they forget to take the time to feel the experience of standing on a 200-foot-thick glacier in June with a cold wind blowing over the ice.  As we landed, I promised myself I would, indeed take time to feel the experience of being on this glacier in June.  I promised myself I would be fully present.  I would see and feel God in God’s creation.

After putting on gear and listening to a quick orientation about how to walk on a glacier, I began taking pictures.  I took pictures of my niece scampering on the ice, the helicopter, a gorgeous pool of crystal-clear water, the actual ice of the glacier, the mountains on both sides of the glacier, and views up and down the glacier.  I was so very happy and proud of my amazing pictures.  I remember thinking how great it was that I had this opportunity to take these pictures that I would have forever.

That’s when it occurred to me, I was doing the same thing as all the other passengers the pilot had talked about.  I wasn’t taking time to take in what was before me.  I wasn’t experiencing God’s magnificent creation.  So, I stopped taking pictures.  I put my phone in my pocket and I looked around, and I listened, I breathed in the fresh cold June air atop that glacier and experienced that environment.  It was Amazing!

As I turned to take in another view, I saw my beautiful niece crouch down and collect two bottles of glacier water from the pool of melted ice.  I noticed as she stood up, she had the most astounding joyous smile I had ever seen.  Now, I have felt joy before, but after seeing my niece in that moment, I now know what joy looks like.  I will forever be grateful for the chance I had to witness my beautiful, brilliant, and brave niece, who at one time I held as a baby, being filled with joy.  I know if I had not stopped my busy picture taking, I would have missed the joy that was right in front of me, the joy in my niece’s face.

People of Saint Andrews, I fully believe Martha was preparing food for Jesus out of love.  Unfortunately, in her need for wanting to do things right she forgot and almost missed the joy that was right before her, Jesus, Emanuel.  I’ve often wondered how Martha could have done this, but after my experience on that glacier I now understand.

In a few minutes we will recite the Nicene Creed.  We will say together the words, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” I invite you this week to learn from Martha and me. Look for God.  Look for God in all God’s creation.  I invite you to stop for a moment in the good busy things you are doing and be present to God.  Feel God’s presence in what you are doing.  Look for God in the person who is near you. Pray for that person.  Look for God in yourself, because like both Martha and Mary, Jesus wants to come and dwell with you where you are today.  Say yes to God’s love as you are in that moment.  I invite you to look at the world around you.  Ask yourself where you see God.  Give thanks for that.

Perhaps you are in a time of life where you don’t especially feel God’s love.  I ask you to trust me.  God loves you for who you are today.  Invite God into what you are feeling.

Finally, I am grateful for Martha.  I have come to believe that credit should go to Martha because Jesus uses Martha to show us how to love God.  Martha reminds us to ask the question, where is God in this moment?  Be mindful, feel God’s presence.   Amen.

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Proper 10

Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

The Rev. Clint Brown

Love – the content and the aim of the Gospel. The content because love is that which has been revealed by God’s actions in our behalf; the aim because Christ has mandated that we love one another as he has loved us (John 14:34-35). The first is supremely demonstrated by Christ’s death on the cross, and the second by one of his most famous parables, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In those early days of Christianity, when Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles were spreading out and taking the Gospel to all parts of the Roman world, there was no more defining characteristic of this upstart sect than the radical boundary crossing exemplified by the story of the Good Samaritan. Slaves, foreigners, any and all of society’s cast offs and riff raff, these were the ones that embraced the new religion and were populating the early Christian communities. It seemed that there was no societal norm this upstart religion wasn’t willing to break, no “undesirable” it was unwilling to “cross the road” for, so to speak, in the name of love. As the foundational and organizing principle of our identity – so radical, so expansive – as I say, both the content and aim of the Gospel, let us examine it.

There are, in Greek, four words for love. There is, first of all, ἔρως (erōs), the love of passion and passionate feeling, usually synonymous with physical intimacy but not necessarily to be understood as only that. Erōs is characterized by its intensity, how it abandons ordinary constraints and will not answer to reason. It is the love we mean when we say we’re “in love.” And if it sounds a little dangerous, that’s because it is! But it is important to emphasize that we cannot live as humans without such deep emotions, by being touched by things that give us intense feelings of joy and pleasure that do not answer to any reason other than that we like them.

And second, there is στοργή, storgē, the word for family love, the love that defines the relationship of parent and child. You have only to think of the first moment you held your newborn to know what this love is. The bond created by the blood relationship is powerful and written into our DNA, a sign to us of love that is of a deep and instinctual kind. We are made to be in families and to know the kind of love that families know, love that is unbreakable, unshakeable, and absolute, a “given” that we can always rely upon in a world of expediency, of fairweather friends, fragile alliances, and shifting loyalties.

The third word for love is φιλία (philia), which is the warm and affectionate love such as friends feel toward one another. Philadelphia, both a city of ancient Asia Minor and modern Pennsylvania, translates as the city of brotherly love. Philia encompasses both spiritual and physical closeness and the trust and confidence we can have in our friends can equal, and often does exceed, that which we have in our families. Many ancient writers noted the irony, as did the Apostle Paul and the early Christian communities, that we can and do often find our most permanent place of belonging, our greatest sense of home, outside our families with those of like mind who accept us by choice and not obligation.

And, finally, there is ἀγάπη (agapē), and this is Christian love. It is love that gives and does not expect a return. It is sacrificial – it will have nothing to do with conditions or transactions – and it, more than any other, is the kind of love that we learn in Scripture most characterizes God. Jesus reveals its essential flavor when says that no one has greater love than to lay down their life for their friends (John 15:13); or, in Matthew 5, when he bids Christians to love even their enemies; or, as mentioned, in the image of the Good Samaritan. Why are we to love even our enemies? Why are we to extend ourselves even for complete strangers? Because that’s what God does. God makes his sun to rise on both the evil and the good, sending rain on both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Which is to say that there is in God an “unconquerable benevolence”[1] to all God’s creatures, irrespective of their class or character. In theology this goes by the word grace.

Now to us all this makes no sense at all. Plutarch, a contemporary of the writing of the New Testament, might well be speaking for us today when he defined a real man as one who was useful to his friends and dangerous to his enemies, but observe just how far agapē love forces us beyond this – beyond our human nature, our self-interestedness, our too-small conception of love as just one more “transactional commodity.” It should come then as no surprise to learn that the word agapē is hardly a word at all in the ancient world. In its rare appearance in classical Greek it is noteworthy only for how hard it is to define.[2] It is a word out of focus because unconditional love as an idea was out of focus. Agapē only comes into its own in the Christian era. As one biblical scholar puts it, it is a word “born within the bosom of revealed religion,”[3] a word that only God could define.

Like the love of God extended toward us, agapē love demands of every Christian a universal and unconquerable benevolence to all people, no matter their attitude toward us, their treatment of us, whether they look or think like us, or whether we judge them worthy of it or deserving. We love first and ask questions later. We are leaven that, through just a small amount, can affect the whole batch; we are salt that, though tiny, can make the whole dish savory; we are light that, even though a single candle, still has the power to penetrate the darkness of an entire room. Two thousand years has not changed how surprising, how revolutionary, how world-changing this kind of love is, so let us show we are Christians by our love.

[1] William Barclay, Great Themes of the New Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 4.

[2] Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 36-37.

[3] Barclay, Great Themes, 4.

Sunday, July 3, 2022

Proper 9

2 Kings 5: 1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6: 1-16; Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

We hear today an excerpt from a letter written by the Apostle Paul to churches in Galatia.  At the time, Galatia was a region located right in the middle of the modern-day country of Turkey.  Years before Paul wrote this letter, he had travelled throughout this region of Galatia, and during his travels there, he started several churches. 

That all sounds good, but the problem with Paul starting churches was that he would leave them after some time, and he would travel somewhere else and start a church in some other city.  While Paul started a number of churches all around the Mediterranean, it is difficult to assess how healthy any of those churches really were. 

If you read his letters to these churches he established - and you can read them, they are called the Epistles, and they are found in the New Testament – you will see, to probably no one’s surprise, that there was a lot of conflict in Paul’s churches.  It might be argued that this conflict was also exacerbated in these churches due to Paul’s absence because he was traveling and starting new churches elsewhere.

Nevertheless, when you read (or hear) Galatians, as we have today, we are hearing the Apostle Paul at his angriest.  Paul is angry because people in the churches he helped establish are now rejecting what he had taught them about God and about Jesus.  In his letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul is upset because people in these churches have begun to follow other teachings, teachings which Paul considers to be false, and this is related to an important, yet difficult for us to appreciate debate at the time.

The debate centered around the relationship between people who grew up following Judaism, and who came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah – God’s anointed king.  On one side of this debate you have faithful Jews who believed Christ was the Messiah.  On the other side of the debate, you have people who believe Jesus is the Messiah, but these are people who are not Jewish, they are Gentile – non Jews – who also have come to believe that Jesus was God’s Messiah.  The question which both groups had to wrestle with, and this is the question that fuels Paul’s anger in Galatians is this:  If you are not Jewish, but you come to believe that Jesus, who was Jewish, is God’s Messiah – does that mean that you need to begin practicing Judaism and following the Torah?

It was a big question at the time, and a controversial one.  Here is what Paul (who was Jewish) thought: his answer was a resounding “no.”  If you were not Jewish and you followed Christ, you were not obligated to become Jewish yourself.  In the Galatian churches, after Paul left, people began to teach that yes, if you followed Christ, you must become Jewish, if you were not already.  This was the debate that fed the conflict in Galatia, and subsequently (and sadly) agitated the Galatian churches Paul invested so much hard work in. 

Paul lamented that this debate was infecting the Galatian congregations as he was away, and that is the reason he writes this strongly-worded letter to the Galatians.

Was Paul’s letter successful?  Did the Galatian community stray further away from Paul’s teaching, or did they embrace it more?  Unfortunately, we don’t really know.  That is one reason why the Epistles are challenging (at least for me) to preach on – we don’t often know how communities received these letters. 

Nonetheless, the letters are important, not only for historical value, but because they are the foundation Christian understanding and theology –  most of the Epistles were written years before the Gospels were written. 

Like the Apostle Paul, I am going away – for vacation, not to start another church.  I do not share Paul’s concern that problematic teaching or preaching will occur during my absence.  If anything the preaching will probably improve while I am away!  I look forward to leaving, for time away, but I also am looking forward to coming back. 

That’s one thing I’m not sure Paul did much of – returning to the churches he left. 

But I get to, and for that, I am grateful.  AMEN.

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Proper 7 – Commitment Sunday

1 Kings 19: 1-15; Psalm 42; Galatians 3: 23-29; Luke 8:26-39

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

In our Sunday morning Bible Study class, we are reading through the book of Exodus, which tells the dramatic story, of God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from their enslavement in Egypt – a powerful story of emancipation we recall this weekend as we honor Juneteenth today.  After their delivery out of Egypt, Moses and the Hebrews encamp at the base of a tall mountain, called Sinai.  It is to the top of this mountain that Moses summits, where he meets God, and receives the ten commandments.  One of the commandments God delivers to Moses is “Thou shalt not murder.”  

It is to this specific commandment Elijah – God’s chosen prophet, turned a deaf ear to.  We are told in today’s reading from 1 Kings that Elijah slaughtered the  prophets of Baal by the sword, perhaps while  thinking “yeah, God probably didn’t mean for us to take that commandment seriously.”  Why did Elijah do this?  He did so because of revenge, never a good motivation, but it was Elijah’s.  Elijah was taking revenge upon Jezebel, Queen and wife of arguably the most wicked king in Israel’s history - Ahab. 

In the chapter that precedes the one we heard today, Jezebel murders the prophets of God.  And Elijah decides “well two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’ll give it a chance anyway,” and he proceeds to murder the prophets of Baal.  Now who was Baal?  Baal was Yahweh’s competition.  While Yahweh might have lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, it was Baal who controlled the weather.  Weather back then was extremely important for people like farmers, and shepherds who depended upon seasonable weather to raise their crops and their herds.  This will be a stretch for all of us, but imagine you lived in a humid environment with a stifling heat wave and no sign of rain on the way.  I know, it’s a stretch. 

Who are you going to pray to?  The answer is easy – Baal.  And it was Baal’s prophets who served as mediators between the people and this weather god.  Elijah murders them and Jezebel’s response to Elijah’s revenge, is to issue a threat for his life.  Elijah flees, and ends up going to place familiar to him – Mt. Horeb.  Horeb was a holy mountain of God – elsewhere in the Bible it is called Sinai – the mountain where Moses went centuries before and received the ten commandments, one of which Elijah wasn’t so good at following.

Nevertheless, upon this holy mountain, Elijah waits for God.  All kinds of things happen on the mountain: wind, earthquake, fire, and Elijah does not observe God’s presence in any of that.  It is only in the silence where Elijah eventually hears God speak to him.  Although not included in today’s reading, Elijah receives direction from God to anoint new kings over Israel and a new prophet (this occurs later in chapter 19 if you wish to read the rest of the story).

It’s not until things get quiet that Elijah hears God.  Our lives are really noisy.  And in my experience, the more noise, the less I hear God’s voice.   When I stop hearing God’s voice, I lose direction, and I am lost. 

It might seem that none of this has very much to do with a parish capital campaign, which is a very noisy thing – there’s emails, signs, people talking, cards in your pews.  And yet, this is where we are – Commitment Sunday – this is the day we formally wrap up our campaign, and probably more exciting for all of you – you will stop hearing me, and others, ask you for money, for about four months until October when we do it again for our annual stewardship campaign. 

In your pews are cards that look like this – I want everyone to grab one, and fill it out right now.  Fill it out even if you have already pledged, fill it out even if you don’t intend to pledge.  All of us are doing this together – now.  We’re going to take a minute and do this.  

Now that your cards are filled out, hold onto them, and bring them with you to the altar on your way to receive communion.  You will see that there is a basket here, and all of us will place out forms into the basket just like this.  After communion, we will bring the basket to the altar, and offer it to God. 

As we close out the campaign today, we will transition into the implementation phase.  There will be much more to say about this at a later date, but for the time being, know that an implementation committee, called the Capital Project Committee, consisting of parishioners, will assemble in August to begin scheduling our upcoming capital improvement projects.  I am pleased today to share that David Rennie, a lifetime member of St. Andrew’s, will serve as chair of this committee.

I close today with a word of gratitude to St. Andrew’s staff, its clergy, the members of its Vestry, our consultants, and the members of our Campaign Executive Committee for their collective hard work on this campaign.  I believe this campaign is a historic milestone for St. Andrew’s.  I also believe that what we are committing to today will impact our community and neighbors for the good for generations to come. 

I believe we are following God’s command to live.  To honor life, to create new possibilites, to step out in faith – all of that we are doing in this Holy space, where God speaks to us.  We are making our promise – upon this card, and giving it to God.  We are following God, not the other gods of the world today -modern day equivalents to Baal from centuries ago.  We are not following false Gods of selfishness, arrogance, or certainty – we are following the true God who calls us toward love and generosity.  We are establishing God’s legacy at St. Andrew’s for decades to come.

I can’t wait to see this next chapter at St. Andrew’s begin.  AMEN.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15; Psalm 8

The Rev. Clint Brown

The doctrine of the Trinity is like the phenomenon of Time. If I were to stop you on the street and say, “Excuse me, what time is it?” what would you do? You would probably take out your watch and say, “Well, my good man, it’s a quarter to one,” and feel confident that you had satisfactorily answered my question. But if I were to stop you and say the same words but in a different order, “Excuse me. Time, what is it?” you would probably stare back blankly for a moment and think, well gosh, I want to give you an answer, but I don’t know how. It is the same with the doctrine of the Trinity – it is in that class of ideas that are easy to name but surprisingly difficult to explain. It is for this reason that there is always some good-natured ribbing among clergy about who gets to preach on Trinity Sunday. (Yes, that’s me.) But how does one take what, in many ways, is an intellectual abstraction, and speak something helpful out of it?

One way to begin is with an observation made by the great Thomas Aquinas who pointed out that the Trinity is actually no more difficult or mysterious a concept than God. Reason has already broken down just as soon as we use the word “God.” How do we really know exactly what we’re talking about when we say the word “God.” And yet, we know that we can say some things about God and I feel confident that if I say the word “God” there will be enough correspondence between what I’m thinking and what you’re thinking to speak intelligibly. So we can proceed to talk about the Trinity if for no other reason we are all adrift alike. All we are ever doing when theologizing about the Trinity is making our best stab at it.

So then let us proceed to a working definition. The doctrine of the Trinity: it is the belief that God, though one, is also somehow three. It is an idea that did not come down to us fully formed from heaven, although it is implicit in Scripture; rather, it is something we have worked out based on our experience. And it is important to note that God did not suddenly become a Trinity just because we said so. The Trinity is simply our best attempt to describe what is and has been eternally true of God. Its seeds lay in a significant problem for the first Christians, in that how could they, as good Jews, know in their bones that Jesus was God yet remain committed to their monotheism. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, how were they to make room for the Holy Spirit, whom Christ himself suggested co-equality with when he commanded the apostles to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). While the details are utterly fascinating, this will not be a sermon about how all that got worked out, but, as promised, what I will do is suggest two ways that the doctrine of the Trinity actually matters to you.

And the first is an idea latent in a lot of thinking about the Trinity but really only brought to full form by the Lutheran Robert Jenson. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” he writes, is the name of the Christian God, what we might call the proper name of God. We may say, “Mary is coming to dinner,” and be answered with, “Who is Mary?” to which we must say something like, “Mary is the one who lives in apartment 2C, and is always so cheerful.” In general, proper names, Jenson writes, need these kinds of identifying descriptions so we can be sure we are talking about the same thing. “Yahweh,” the God of Israel, was the one who rescued Israel from Egypt, and the Christian God, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” is the God revealed through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is the Christian name for God, just as “Yahweh” is for Jews, “Allah” is for Muslims, and the “Cosmic Power” or “life force” is for the spiritual but not religious. The Trinity matters to us because, in Jenson’s words, it “summarizes faith’s apprehension of God”[1] and stands as a kind of condensed narrative of our history with God. We invoke the Trinity in our liturgy and our prayers so often because this is the name for the God “with whom we have found ourselves involved.”[2]

Secondly, the doctrine of the Trinity does something quite marvelous when it reminds us not only the God has a personal name, but also that God if personally disposed towards us. In other words, God’s very name underscores the primacy of relationship. It tells us that, remarkably, there is within the very life of God a relationship that has been carrying on like a dance from all eternity. In the beginning was the Relationship, and now that Relationship has reached out in love – for its essential nature is love – to relate to a cosmos of which you and I are a part. The Trinity is, therefore, a model for all relationships and of the importance of relationships, and especially that what happens in a relationship happens to each member of it. For the Trinity is the great bulwark that protects the doctrine of atonement, of how Christ’s death on the Cross makes possible our salvation. The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that whatever Christ has suffered has been brought into the very life of God and that Christ took with him into the experience of the Godhead the human experience of pain and death. The Trinity witnesses to the truth that God and the world are connected. God has and continues to be right down in and among us.

And so, to conclude, the doctrine of the Trinity answers both the questions “Who?” and “How?” To the question, “Who?” the Christian answers “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” And to the question “How?” the Christian answers, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” That is all we might ever be able to say, but that is enough.

[1] Robert W. Jenson, The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1982), 12-13.

[2] Jenson, Triune Identity, 13.

Sunday, June 5, 2022

The Day of Pentecost

Gen 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27); Psalm 104:25-35, 37

The Rev. Clint Brown

For a long time the prevailing wisdom had it that once we reached a certain age our brains stopped developing. What you had you had, so you had better make the most of your window of opportunity. But now we know that this is just not true. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains continue to develop throughout our lives. The word they have coined for this is “neuroplasticity.” We can with effort remap our brains. To learn a new skill we create new neural pathways; to undo bad habits we break existing connections. Why we believed the opposite for so long is actually counterintuitive. After all, the regular work of living requires us to adjust to new situations and people all the time. When we run over a pothole, we remember to avoid it the next time.  And it’s interesting what we can learn even about things or people we think we already know a lot about.

Take my friend Brenda. Cavan and I will get to visit her later this summer at her home in East Tennessee. She’ll be 82 years old this year and she shows no signs of slowing down. She lives alone. She still rides horses every chance she gets. She can proudly claim to be the most senior acolyte at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Johnson City. Oh…and did I mention that she’s a champion axe thrower? But even at that, despite all the years I’ve known her, she’s still full of surprises.

Once when we were talking late into the night, Brenda started telling me the story of her pet frog. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known anyone who had a pet frog. Well, she said, this was a rescue frog. Brenda had saved it from her dad’s minnow bucket when it was still a little polywog. It was the summer of 1960 and during this particular summer the family was vacationing in Quebec, so, of course, this was – sorry I can’t help myself – a French frog. And as a French frog he was christened with the name Monsieur Jean-Claude Pierre de Fourchette. Monsieur de Fourchette grew into a fine and friendly frog and very attached to Brenda. In fact, so attached to her that he had a very peculiar tendency. Whenever Brenda cleaned house, he was wont to ride around perched on her head! Vacuuming the rug or unloading the dryer, there he was surveying his domain from his lofty perch. One day Brenda had a visitor come to the door, her landlady no less, and, you guessed it, Brenda had forgotten that Monsieur de Fourchette was on her head. The landlady looked up and down and up and down and made a great effort at trying to ignore what was so obviously unignorable, and finally blurted out, “Do you know you have a frog on your head!?” So, yeah, pet frogs are a thing and it just goes to prove that we’re always learning new things, even about people we know very well.

And, you know, it’s the same with God? Today as we the Church stand witness to baptism, we will take the opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenant. When the Celebrant asks, “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship…?” we will answer, “I will, with God’s help,” knowing full well that the reason for this is that there is so much to learn and unlearn as we walk the path of faith. The word disciple, after all, literally means one who learns. How are we to know what we are meant to do and how to do it? How are we to know what God wants? How can we learn the way that leads to eternal life?

The Christian tradition has an answer. The Christian tradition has long answered that there are two “Words” that have come down from heaven to tell us what we need to know about God. We encounter both in today’s service, divided as it is between the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Table. The first is the Bible, a written word, and the second is the Word made flesh, Jesus. In the Bible, we recognize the record of God’s dealings with a chosen people. During the Miqra this congregation has been intentional about honoring its importance by reading it through in its entirety as a community. From it we learn that there is one God, the creator of heaven and earth, who can be known to us. The Bible, however, is an imperfect word. To put it bluntly, it’s a very confusing portrait of God. Indeed, for many people it is the reason they have rejected God altogether. What kind of answer are we to give? What we say is that it has some important things wrong. It is wrong about its attitudes towards slavery and human sexuality and the status of women, to name just a few, but that’s okay. All that indicates is that it cannot be the final word for us. It doesn’t have to be outright rejected. What we Episcopalians believe is that the revelation of God did not end with the closing of Scripture.   

And that brings us to Pentecost. We believe that, through the ongoing work of the Spirit, we have learned some things too. The Day of Pentecost is the moment when the Christian witness is born, to tell the world that what was old is being made new and the Spirit is ever at work among us renewing the earth. Pentecost testifies to the fact that we are still on a journey, still reaching out to God…and God is still reaching out to us. What is the message of Pentecost? It is that there is always something new to learn.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16: 16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17: 20-26

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            If you are paying attention today, you will have probably noticed that our reading from Revelation jumps all over the place. We hear verses12-14, then skip over verse fifteen, then we read verse 16 and 17, then skip over verses 18 and 19, and then read verses 20 and 21. Whenever we skip over verses like we do today in Revelation, I want to know why. So I opened to Revelation chapter 22, which you all can do with the Bibles in your pews if you want, and read the whole passage, including the verses omitted in today’s reading: verses 15,18, and 19. It is ironic that verses 18 and 19 serve as a warning to anyone who would attempt to edit or take away, any of the verses in revelation, a warning the editors of today’s lectionary reading ignored, and removed the passages saying “don’t remove this” from today’s reading.  Curious.

The other verse, verse 15 I will read together with verse fourteen, which begins [and you can follow along because this is printed in your bulletin]: “Blessed are those who wash their robes to that they will have right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. [the omitted verse fifteen begins here] Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” 

            If we read the verses as they are printed in your leaflet today, we have the image of heaven where resolution seems to be complete, judgment is past, there is a new heaven and a new earth, a new city of God, and all may partake of the tree of life. Beautiful, right? If we add in verse fifteen, the image changes. Even if there is no longer a boundary between God and human beings, verse 15 informs us that there are people outside the gates of the city: “dogs (a pejorative term used to designate a people as outsiders) and sorcerers, fornicators, idolators, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” 

            When I read who in the Bible is outside the gate – the idolators, the people who love falsehood – well, that includes me, and may include you. But I do not want to be outside the gate of the heavenly city – I want to be inside drinking from the water of life. How do we get into the city? We walk through the gates, because they are open to us if we want to pass through. But moving through the gate into the city to the tree of life will cost us. The price we must pay is the cost of discipline. Discipline of yourself is necessary before the power of God can be given to any of us. Before we drink from the water of life, we must first wash our robes and discipline our hearts.

Recently my email was hacked, and many of you all received an email from someone claiming to be me, asking you to give eBay gift cards for cancer patients. Throughout the pandemic, I have emailed several St. Andrew’s parishioners whom I have not seen and received no response. I have called them on the phone, no response. But when these parishioners receive a false email from me, they are one of the first to say “Hey, Jimmy, I think your email got hacked.”

And I am astounded because it took, a false email to get them to respond to me! I emailed them back “great to hear from you, can we meet for coffee and connect? I will buy.”  No response. There are many people who are not ready to walk through the gate, they want to remain outside, even though what is inside is so much better. I cannot push them through the gate. They will have to choose themselves, if they wish, that is their job.

God is the Great Allower – God welcomes us into the heavenly city if we choose, and God allows us to stay outside of it among the dogs if that is our preference. The good news is that none of us need to live outside the gates, none of us need to be outsiders, unless we choose that for ourselves. AMEN. 

Sunday, May 22, 2022

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Clint Brown

Most people are unaware that, during his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was not the well-respected composer that he is today. During his lifetime he was much better known as an organist rather than a composer. Remarkable as it seems to us, if someone in Bach’s day had struck up a conversation about him at the local Kaffeehaus in Leipzig, they would probably have ignored his compositions completely and swapped stories about his going head-to-head and besting the celebrated Buxtehude or Pachelbel, or some other preeminent organist, like a kind of eighteenth century American Idol. If you did press them about Bach’s music, they would likely have said that it was embarrassingly old-fashioned and out of touch, much like the man himself they would chuckle. But I’d wager that if we weren’t so accustomed to being told that Bach is a musical genius, we would probably pass much the same judgment. You see, most of the reasons for saying that Bach is great are difficult to explain and appreciate because they require a great deal of technical knowledge about how music works, and, for most of us, that will just always be just beyond our grasp, but it all boils down to something called polyphony.

Bach was and is the absolute master of polyphony, which, in music, is the term for putting multiple lines of music together at the same time. Perhaps you have heard of the term “fugue?” Fugue is the most highly developed and rigorous of the forms of polyphony, and I say “rigorous” because fugue is not just the holding together of musical lines, not just doing so in a pleasing and harmonious way, but doing it while following the strictest set of rules – rules which must be obeyed or else what you have can be called something but not a fugue. And this, the experts tell us, is the place where Bach’s star shines brighter than any other in the musical firmament. It is not just that he creates skillfully and tastefully, not just that he captivates us with delightful sounds, but that he does so within enormous, self-imposed constraints. Even as we feel ourselves tugged by the beauty and power of this music, Bach has submitted himself, far below our level of comprehension and even awareness, to the exacting and strict requirements of law and order. So expert is he in this disguise of his tremendous labor, that this is the reason we say he is the perfect composer. We can enjoy the art without necessarily discerning the craft.

Toward the end of his life, Bach set himself the task of composing a thorough treatment, or, as he put it, a “chapter of instruction” on fugue writing. He called it The Art of Fugue, and the challenge he set himself was to subject a single theme to every possible fugal technique imaginable. It was to be an encyclopedic composition, a compendium of all that he knew, of all that was then possible, and as such a lasting testament to his ability. Towards the end of this work, which he unfortunately left unfinished at the time of his death, there is a remarkable moment. As the third and last subject of the final fugue begins, we hear the notes of Bach’s name. In the German musical alphabet, you see, B is B-flat, and A and C are like ours, and H stands for B-natural, so in the name of Bach we have a sequence of four notes: B-flat, A, C, and B-natural. BACH. It is, in other words, a musical autograph and now, at the climactic moment of the crowning achievement of his life, Bach writes his name, as if to say, “I am here.” I am here in this moment of creation, at this the most complex and technically challenging moment. I am here. Bach is here.

“Let us make humankind in our own image” (Genesis 1:26). The book of Genesis tells us that we must create. Bach creates. Michelangelo creates. Shakespeare creates. You and I create. The capacity to create is there in our nature in much the same way that Bach put his name in the fugue. God creates and, therefore, so do we. It is God’s nature written upon us. We here at St. Andrew’s are being called at this moment to our own creative effort, a capital campaign that we are calling “Our Hope, Our Vision, Our Legacy.” It is a moment meant to stretch us, meant to challenge us, meant to humble us with the thought that this church is not for our benefit alone but for the many generations we will never meet. The poet Rilke writes:

You must give birth to your images.

They are the future waiting to be born.

Fear not the strangeness you feel.

The future must enter you long before it happens. 

In the story of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in the Heights, we have our own chapter to write, our own part to play, our own melody to spin in a much larger symphony, and in this bold work we are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. “And I will ask the Father, and he will send you another [Helper], to be with you forever” (John 14:16). Jesus reminds us today that we are not alone in this work. It is not all on us nor is it a work for which we are meant to congratulate ourselves. This is the Spirit’s work among us, and it is but a part of a much greater work that has spanned decades and will continue long after us. In this time and place, in this day and hour, our task is simply to be led forward in a new act of creation … to greater hope, greater vision, greater legacy. Amen.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148: 14-29; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”  These beautiful words come at the very end of the Bible – we heard them in the reading from Revelation earlier, from chapter 21, and if you open up a Bible to Revelation, you will see the chapter 21 is at the very end.

            The Bible ends on a high note: there is a new heaven and a new earth, and curiously, John the author, writes, the sea was no more.  Why get rid of the ocean?  What’s wrong with fish and dolphins?  In the ancient mind, the sea represented chaos and death.  In the grand ending of the Bible – the conclusion of Revelation, the sea is banished, meaning all death and chaos are permanently deleted as God’s final word affirming the goodness of God’s love.

            At its heart, Revelation is a book about hope, it is about God’s vision, and it is about God’s legacy.  These themes of hope, vision, and legacy concerned the author of Revelation thousands of years ago, and these same themes concern us at St. Andrew’s today.  Hope, vision, and legacy are the themes of our capital campaign, which goes public today. 

            While this may be news for some of you, the beginning of this campaign started over a year ago, when a member of our Vestry approached me before a Sunday service with a concern about St. Andrew’s legacy – would St. Andrew’s still be around fifty years from now to share God’s love with people we might never know ourselves?  An appropriate concern, and one that led to many subsequent meetings at the Vestry and Finance Committee levels, and a year later, we are embarking on a capital campaign rooted in prayer and in Jesus Christ to solidify St. Andrew’s legacy in the Heights. 

            In this campaign, entitled “Our Hope, Our Vision, Our Legacy” we are raising $2 million to support necessary restorations and updates to our church to ensure that St. Andrew’s remains a spiritual home for people for generations to come.  Although going public today, the campaign actually started in March, and our Campaign Executive Committee, who includes, Alli Jarrett and Dianne Yeomans as campaign co-chairs, along with members Greg Caudell, Treasurer, Doug Pecore, Sr. Warden, Mary Eyubolu, Finance Chair, Catherine Runner, Jr. Warden, Nancy Simpson, previous Head of School, and Vestry members Eric Reed and Deb Perl have been hard at work quietly shepherding this campaign along the way.  I am also pleased to say that every member of the Executive Committee has made a commitment to the Capital Campaign.  Marla and I have made our pledge.  

            A closing word on Revelation.  Verse 5 of today’s reading: “the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.  The church next door is closing and selling their property.  I do not believe that is St. Andrew’s legacy, at least right now.   I believe God is doing a new thing at St. Andrew’s, and this is our moment to participate in what God is doing.  It’s not obligatory.  And in full transparency, this capital campaign is not in place, but in addition too, our stewardship campaign, and we will again be asking you to support our growing ministries in the Fall.   We get to participate in what is doing at St. Andrew’s  What a gift.  A gift that is trustworthy and true.  AMEN. 

Sunday, May 1, 2022

The Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9: 1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-19

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

He was the finest persecutor in the land.  When it came to threats, intimidation, and putting first century Christians in harm’s way, you could do no better than Paul of Tarsus.  Paul’s reputation as an intolerant religious zealot preceded him wherever he went.   Paul was known as far away as Damascus, in Syria – a place where an early disciple of Jesus, named, Ananias lived.  Ananias was aware of Paul’s threatening and vindictive behavior toward people who believed as he did. 

And perhaps it was this knowledge of Paul which was what made it so awkward for the visit Ananias had with the risen Lord.  Jesus, risen from the dead, appears to Ananias, and says, “hey, you’ve probably heard about this person named Paul – kind of a dysfunctional personality, he suffers from an extremely inflated ego and self-grandiosity, but let’s not get into that now.  Just so you know, Ananias, I blinded Paul on the way to Damascus, and I want you to go to him and lay your hands on him so he can regain his sight.” 

Ananias replies, “Lord I love you, but you’re crazy – I know what Paul has done and he will have me killed on sight.”  And Jesus says, “I know it seems that way, but I intend to use Paul for good to spread my name amongst the Gentiles.”  Well, that’s even crazier.  Paul was Jewish, he had no interest in speaking about God to non Jews. 

Ananias relents, he meets with Paul, lays his hand upon Paul’s shoulder, and says “Jesus has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  And immediately, something like scales fell from Paul's eyes,  and he regains his sight.  Now.  Which was the greater miracle – that Paul’s sight was restored, or that Ananias trusted the Lord enough to meet with this angry, vile man, and tell him God loved him?

It is because of Ananias, that Paul’s sight was restored.  It is because of Ananias, that we have the letters in the New Testament written by Paul, which became the foundation of early Christian faith.  If there was no Ananias, there would be no Paul – I believe. 

There is more to the person of Ananias, however.  Why was he asked by the Lord to visit Paul and restore his sight?  Was it because God needed a person to do it?  Certainly not.  God did not need a person to blind Paul on his way to Damascus – it just happened.  So why the need for Ananias?  I suspect the answer is this – God did not need Ananias to help, but rather invited Ananias into this because it would help him.  God sent Ananias for Ananias’ sake, because it helped him, not because God needed a miracle maker.

We learn from Ananias that God calls us to hard tasks which demand our best efforts.  None of us, including me, enjoy this.  The author Scott Peck says that “the point of life is that it is difficult, that we struggle and that we grow.  The problem is that we struggle to accept that truth.” 

 A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a person in which I walked away a lot of anger.  Full disclosure: this is not a cryptic way of sharing about an argument I had with my wife – this was actually an argument with a parishioner.  I felt so justified in my position, and took it very personally when this person disagreed with me.  I felt like I was attacked.  Yucky feeling. 

The next day I was sharing about this argument with a friend of mine (who does not go to church here, and is not a Christian).  I was saying how I felt wronged by this person, how they attacked me, how unfair it was, and he interrupted me.  He said, “Jimmy, stop.  Calm down.  You feel this parishioner hurt you, right?” “Absolutely!” I replied.  He said “Jimmy, I haven’t figured out the God thing, and I’m not a Christian, but didn’t Jesus say in the Bible somewhere to pray for the people who hurt you?”  Marvel for a moment, just a moment, the person who isn’t even sure if God exists reminding the Episcopal priest of what Jesus says in the New Testament: pray for those who hurt you. 

Pray for those who hurt you, not because they need your prayers, not because God needs it, but because I need it.  Praying for those who hurt is perhaps the most liberating thing a human being can do.  It is what Christ did on the cross. 

So I am praying.  I am grateful to my agnostic friend, my Ananias, who reminded me of what Christians are supposed to do.  AMEN.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 5:27-32; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

Pray with me.  Risen Christ, give us the grace to believe, like Thomas you know each of us by name.  Give us the grace to be open to your love as we are today.  Give us the grace to allow you to transform us into loving, sharing disciples of you.  Amen.

I will always remember the first time I had a senior moment in public.  I was at the 7:45 morning Service at Memorial Episcopal Church reading the Prayers of the People.  At that Service we had a custom of not only praying for the bishops by name, but we also prayed for our clergy by name. This one morning I got all the bishops’ names right, but unfortunately, I got only most of the clergy’s names.  I can still remember that cold fear I felt when I drew a complete blank on our deacon’s name.  That same deacon who was standing right there next me.  After what felt like an eternity, by the grace of God, I managed to feebly refer to her as, “Our beloved deacon.” 

In the Gospel that was read a few moments ago, we heard two stories.  First, we have the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in a locked room without Thomas on the day of resurrection.  The second story happens, presumably in the same room, a week later.  This time Thomas is there. 

In the first story the doors are locked, and the disciples are in fear of the authorities.  Thomas is not there.  Three days earlier, Jesus had been crucified, he died, and he was buried.  Now, on the third day, reports have come in of women seeing and speaking with the resurrected Jesus, holes, and all.  Suddenly, that same Jesus appeared.  He is alive!  The crucified one was standing right in front of them! And what does Jesus do?  He met the disciples exactly where they were, in their fear.  He says, “Peace be with you.” With these words, the resurrected Jesus transformed the disciples, he empowered them, and he gave them a commission of ministry.  Where once there were fearful disciples, now there are peace filled, transformed, and empowered disciples.

In the second story, Thomas is there.  Jesus appears, again he extends his peace.  Then he turns and called Thomas by name.  Jesus comes to Thomas in his doubt, turns Thomas’ own words on him and invites him to put his finger in the holes in his hands and his own hand in Jesus’ side.  Like with the disciples, Jesus met Thomas exactly where he was.  In his doubt. Where once there was a doubt filled Thomas, now there is a faith filled, worshiping Thomas.

Both these stories are transformative stories.  The resurrected Jesus transformed the disciples’ fear into peace and strength.  Thomas’ doubt was transformed into faith and belief.  In both stories Jesus met the ones to be transformed where they were, not in a public worship place, not in a beautiful lily filled church, but where they were; in a room with closed doors where fear and doubt was found.  Jesus transformed their fear into peace, and their doubt into faith.  My friends, this resurrected Jesus is alive today and continues to call us by our names and invites us all to be transformed by his love. 

Lately I’ve had some conversations with people who don’t like to watch the news anymore because it makes them anxious and depressed.  I hear people tell me they find themselves binge watching something on a streaming service to escape the bad news to feel better.  I understand.  Many days I feel the same.  There is a lot of bad news out there.  There is the war in Ukraine, there is the unrest in the middle east, a news item we seem to have forgotten, inflation, the deaminizing of the other side of the political aisle, and the putting down of our gay, lesbian, and transgender siblings in our human community to name but a few issues. 

I’ve come to wonder if perhaps this is what the world wants.  I wonder if the world wants us, out of fear, to stop watching the news so we don’t know what is happening to our fellow human beings and we stop praying for them and the world.  I wonder if the world doesn’t want us to know each other’s names so fear can fester, grow, and spread so it can be used against us.

I wonder what the world would look like if we lived life like we embraced and bore witness to a resurrected Jesus who calls us each by our name and offers his transformative love. 

So, how can we bear witness to this love of the resurrected Jesus?  Perhaps, the first thing we could do is to pray.  Pray for God’s help.  Then I would invite us to pray and ponder the stories we heard in today’s Gospel.  Imagine you are in that room with the disciples and the resurrected Jesus suddenly appears to you, holes, and all. Where he meets you exactly where you are, in your doubt, fear, sadness, anger, or wherever you are and calls you by your name and says, “Peace be with you.  Believe in me.  Believe in my transforming love.”  What a sight that would be!

Then we could pray for one another and those whom we encounter in our lives.  Pray for other as they are not as we wish they were.  Pray for the grace to see the person we are having difficulty with as one who Jesus also calls by name, who Jesus also invites into a transformational loving relationship.

My prayer for each of us is as we go forth from this place today is that we remember that the risen Jesus is alive.  Like Thomas, he knows each of us by name.  The risen Jesus comes to us all where we are and invites us to be transformed by his love.  This risen Jesus then asks us to share that love with others and the world around us. Amen.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Easter Vigil

Genesis 22:1-8; Exodus 14:10—15:1; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12

The Rev. Jef Bohanski

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

My mother is a prolific knitter.  She makes afghans. She’s made a couple afghans for each of her five children and their spouses, three for each of her fourteen grandchildren – a baby size, a junior size, and an adult size.  She has also made countless afghans for friends, neighbors, and their extended families.  She tells me now she is beginning to make afghans for her great-grandchildren.  (The third one is on its way.)

Mom’s baby afghans are blue, pink, or yellow.  The color of each junior or adult size afghan is chosen by the recipient.  If the recipient is lucky, she’ll take him or her to her favorite yarn shop and have that person choose the actual yarn itself. 

Mom’s afghans are easily identified in someone’s home. She uses the same pattern for every afghan she makes.  Her pattern is the cable twirl.  There are eight twirl cables that resemble two twirled ropes running down the length of each afghan. 

As I was preparing for the sermon, it occurred to me that Ezekiel’s reading, The Valley of Dry Bones, unites Jews and Christians in much the same way as the cable twirl pattern of one of my mother’s afghans.  Ezekiel’s reading is one of the readings used on the sabbath of Passover week. We use it every year on this night, the Easter Vigil.  (Passover and Easter always happen at the same time of the year, every year.)

Them dry bones!  Them dry bones!  In this, the third of four visions, Ezekiel experiences and prophesies to Israel that God will restore His people, Israel.  God will take them from their graves of exile and return them to the land of Israel.  God will put his spirt within them and they shall live on their own soil, and they shall know that God, their God has done that.  God will restore them.  And God did.

Them dry bones!  Them dry bones!  How often have you and I felt like them dry bones that have been laying there after a long battle and that have been picked over by birds and were left there to decay where they fell?  Like when you and I are hungry and need food, like when you and I are sick and need someone to take care of us, like when you and I are tired and we need rest, or when you and I were alone or troubled and we need someone to comfort us, or when you and I have been in prison of any kind, and we’ve needed someone to visit. 

Did you notice in Luke’s Gospel we heard this evening, on Easter Vigil, the most important Service of the year; Jesus was not there at the tomb at all?  We heard about the women from Galilee and the men in dazzling clothes, but no Jesus.  Where is Jesus?  The men in dazzling clothes tell us that Jesus is not with the dead, but among the living.  What does this mean, Jesus will be found amongst the living?  Luke will go on to finish this book and use the next book, The Acts of the Apostles, to tell about how the resurrected Jesus being among the living.

At our house, Victor and I have a disagreement about Salvador Dali’s last supper picture hanging in our office.  He doesn’t like it because Jesus’ posture reminds him of the 1983 movie, Sudden Impact where Dirty Harry, played by Clint Eastwood says, “Go ahead, make my day.” I like the picture because in this picture Jesus is translucent, while the people at table are deep in prayer.  This picture reminds me that the resurrected Jesus is there, at the breaking of the bread. 

I believe that Luke’s empty tomb tells us today that whenever the hungry are fed, the resurrected Jesus is there ready to restore dry bones.  When one is sick and someone is there to take care of that person, the resurrected Jesus can be found ready to renew dry bones.  I believe when someone is alone or troubled and someone is there to comfort that person, the resurrected Jesus can be found ready to refresh dry bones.  I believe that the resurrected Jesus will be here tonight with us at the breaking of the bread. 

This morning I was fortunate enough to be somewhere where I heard about someone who did not want a funeral service.  Mind you, I never met this person, but I did know and respect someone who knew and cared for the deceased.  Knowing that someone, I felt the need to hear about this individual who did not want a funeral service.  During the service, I heard how this person fed people, welcomed people and how this person entertained people.  I learned about how this person clothed people and how her clothes can be found across the United States.  Again, I have never met this person, but from what I heard, this person helped to bring the resurrected Jesus to people so he could heal many dry bones, if this person knew it or not.

I tell my children in school to monitor the world around them.  My prayer for us all this Easter Vigil is that we will all monitor the world around us.  I pray we take a moment to see where we can help bring about the resurrected Jesus so he can tend to the dry bones of those who are hungry, sick, lonely, and troubled. For as we look and find Jesus among the living, so will our dry bones be healed.  Amen

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Holy Wednesday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 70; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

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

This evening I invite you to ponder two questions.  Question one:  What makes you able to say and own these in the words we say in the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth?”  Question two: “What makes you able to authentically say these words “…he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.”

For me, I can say and own these words, “I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth because of Donald Duck.  Yep, Donald Duck.  When I was a kid in middle school, I saw an old 1959 short movie produced by Walt Disney called Donald in Mathmagic Land.  (You can find this movie today on YouTube.)  The story is about Donald Duck who is on a hunting expedition where he finds himself in a strange land where all the trees are made up of square roots.  When he asks, “What kind of crazy place is this?” the narrator informs him that he is in a land of great adventure, he is about to take a journey into the fantastic world of mathematics.  In the movie Donald learns how math is found in music, art, architecture, nature, games, science, and the entire universe.  The movie ends with a quote from Galileo.  “Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe.”  As a middle schooler, this movie helped me to begin a lifelong journey with God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven earth because I knew then, like Donald, that if our universe is ordered by math, it must have been created by a great intelligence. 

What makes me able believe and to authentically say these words “…he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” is because of the words in the Gospel we heard a few moments ago, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.”  These words tell me that Jesus was human.  He was troubled.  That means God really became one of us. These words make this mere human feel understood by God because they show me God in Jesus knows my pain.  God gets me.  These words give me hope.

The other day my class and I were headed out for Recess.  Recess for my class comes at a time in the latter part of the afternoon when the children and I need a break from each other.  The children have been in class for hours.  I have been working with them for hours.  That day as we were heading out, we met a class was coming in.  The teacher informed us that it was raining.  My children and I together let out a collective groan.  When the children heard me groan, they looked at me with great astonishment.  I simply said, “Yep, I understand your pain.  I want to be outside too. 

These words, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.” give me hope because I know the one who was troubled in spirit will one day also say to me, “Yep, I understand your pain.”

My friends, today is Wednesday of Holy Week.  It feels as if we are at the very top of a rollercoaster looking over the precipice.  We’ve been on this ride since Christmas.  At Christmas we celebrated the birth of Jesus with poinsettias.  The red of the flowers reminded us we were at the beginning of a ride that would only lead us to Holy Week.  We passed through the season of Epiphany where we saw glimpses of Jesus’ divinity.  Then Lent began with ashes and the reminder that we are but dust and to dust we shall one day return. In Lent were invited to ask ourselves how we manage to forget that even though we are but dust, we are never be left alone.

Tomorrow starts the Tridium, the three days where we pass through the anguish of Gethsemane, the pain of good Friday, the emptiness of Holy Saturday as we journey toward the joy of Easter. I invite you to journey through these days remembering that Jesus was also human.  Though he was also fully divine, he was also fully human like you and me.  He was troubled, as you and I are.  He felt sadness, betrayal, and loneliness as you and I do. 

My prayer for all of us these three days is that we embrace this human and divine Jesus who once walked, and still walks with us the path of human life.  Life, death, and resurrection.  I pray we all hold onto the hope that one day we will be met with the words, “Yep, I feel your pain.”  Have a good three days.  Have a good Tridium.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Easter Day

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: We see what we expect to see.

 Now this morning you might think we have something very simple to do. After all, it’s Easter and we know the story and all we need to do is to say our “Alleluias” and to peek into the empty tomb to say for one more year, “Yep, still empty,” and move on. The problem is that while we can all be looking into the same tomb, are we all seeing the same thing? Because, in fact, there are at least three ways I can think of to look into the empty tomb and each of them has to do with our expectations of what we’ll find there. The truth is that you will only find what you’re looking for; you will only see what you expect to see.

One way to look into the empty tomb is to think of the Resurrection as a fabrication – a made up story – impossible to believe. I’m sorry, you say, I appreciate the fervor of faith and that this warms some people’s hearts and gives them something to believe in, but you just can’t rise from the dead. It’s an impossibility. That’s not nitpicking. That’s not being a party pooper. That’s just respecting the facts. One cannot build a life upon something which is so obviously mythological, no offence, so please don’t force me to. If Jesus lived at all and if he died by crucifixion, then death was as final for him as it is for you or me. It is much more likely that what we have here is some chicanery, if well-intentioned, on the part of his followers, who knew him to be a good and decent man and wanted others to know that, too, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that the world has been misled from the beginning.

Now this is all a valid point. If we are the victims of a massive deception, then that has implications. The religious leaders of the time certainly appreciated that if Jesus’ disciples were able to point to an empty tomb and say that he had risen, it could potentially destroy all that they were working to save. Matthew reports that they went to Pilate. “Sir, we remember what this imposter said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again’” (Matthew 27:64). And they requested that a troop of soldiers be placed at the tomb and that, in addition to the large stone rolled across its entrance, that it should be sealed (Matthew 27:62-66). If you look into the empty tomb and expect to see a hoax, perpetuated on us down through the millennia, then that is what you will see. Certainly, that has been one way to see it from the beginning.

Then again, like Peter, we may run to the tomb and breathlessly look inside and wonder just what in the world is going on? We notice the details. Despite the extra precautions, the tomb is definitely empty. The extra seals are broken. The massive stone is rolled away. The soldiers have fled. The cloth that had wrapped the head is, curiously, neatly folded up off to the side in a place by itself. None of those things can just happen by themselves. One thing Peter knows for sure is that he didn’t do it. Is this some kind of a sick joke? Who would do such a thing? Peter emerges from the tomb, looks over his shoulder, scratches his head, and shuffles back home in deep thought pondering these things. We, too, can check out the facts and yet still be puzzled by what has happened (20:6)…and the possibility begins to dawn on us that maybe, just maybe Jesus has been raised? But it could also be that this possibility is just so far outside the realm of our experience that it can’t be believed. In the empty tomb we can see a conundrum, a nut too hard to crack, so we leave it behind not quite knowing what to make of it. We can just ignore it. For a great many of us we leave the tomb scratching our heads and wondering about it, but then life goes on.

Finally, then, we can look inside the empty tomb and expect to see what the Church has proclaimed for two thousand years. Here is a validation. Jesus Christ was God Incarnate who came to dwell among us. He rose again, just as he said, and is neither a false prophet nor an imposter. Because he was resurrected, we can be sure that he was telling the truth. We can be certain now of our own resurrection. And the divine power that brought Jesus Christ back to life is now available to us to bring our spiritually dead selves back to life.[1] But only if we believe. And that’s the rub. You have to see in order to believe; you have to believe in order to see. Mary Magdalene hears a voice behind her and turns around. She expects the gardener and that is what she sees. A second time the voice speaks to her, but this time it calls her name. Then she knew. She knew the second time that turning around she would see Jesus because with Jesus she had a personal relationship. Only the second time was Mary’s turn a turn toward recognition, and that, friends, is the audacious claim of Easter. We are called to turn toward Jesus and to recognize in the empty tomb the unassailable proof that here is our Lord…our Savior…our God (John 20:28).

Today the empty tomb is set before you as a fact. We are all looking in. The question is, what do you see?... because we can all be seeing different things. You will only find what you are looking for; you will only see what you expect to see. Just maybe this Easter you have a turn you need to make, to face directly the one who is calling you by name. Perhaps as you peer into the empty tomb this year you will discover the God who is always looking for you looking back. We see what we expect to see. Amen.

[1] Bruce Barton et al., John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1993), 389.

Friday, April 15, 2022

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10: 16-25; John 18:1 – 19:42

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr says this of the crucifixion: “the cross we Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain of the world.  Jesus embraced suffering, not as a punishment, but because he wanted to understand our pain – the pain of the world.”    The cross represents Jesus’ full and complete solidarity with the brokenness of the world, the inevitability of death, and pain that you and I feel.  There is no pain Jesus has not felt, there is no sin that Christ has not forgiven, there is no death Christ has not touched. 

One year ago I presided at the graveside burial at a local cemetery for my older brother, Randall, who was four years older than me.  When I arrived at the cemetery I saw his casket, his name, the year of his birth, and the date of his death.  It has been, to date, the closest I have ever come to seeing my own death.  The reality of death was unavoidable to me.  The hole dug into the earth, the pile of dirt beside the whole, all of pointed to the inevitability of mortality.

Presiding over the burial of my older brother felt like someone took a shovel, thrust it into my chest, and started shoveling out my insides.  I hated it.  I recognized then that I was going through a necessary death myself.  A death that I wanted to avoid feeling at all costs.  

 Spiritual teachers and saints far more intelligent than I have taught us for centuries that if we really desire life, we must first die a necessary death.  It is only through these necessary deaths, that our souls grow deeper.  Saints like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila called these necessary deaths the dark nights of the soul.  They are often seasons of doubt, confusion, pain, or depression, anguish, intense feelings of vulnerability.  They are extremely uncomfortable, and they are unavoidable. 

Sadly, our society lacks even the most basic spiritual skills to deal with the kind of pain Jesus faced at the cross and the kind of necessary dying we must do ourselves.   The best mechanism our culture has to offer for spiritual pain is distraction.  It’s Tik Tok, facebook, the endless news cycle. 

Are you upset, angry, confused?  Don’t like how you are feeling?  There are pills you can take, there is an unlimited stream of alcohol you can put into your body, there are plenty of smart phone apps that will help you meet someone for a meaningless sexual trist.  You can take a trip, you can buy a car, you can get a new job, get a new spouse, have a new kid – and none of it will cure the pain which exists in every human soul. 

Jesus’ way – the one way – the way, the truth, and the life – is this: reality must be felt at all costs.  That is the reason for so many empty pews on Good Friday – reality is painful and hard.  Few of us are courageous enough to face the stark reality – Christ’s reality – which is that there are parts within each of us that should die, so that we can more fully live.  AMEN.   

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Maundy Thursday

Ex. 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: Foot washing circa 2022

Seeing God in the ordinary stuff of life. That is the classic definition of “What is a ‘sacrament?’” In the Eucharist, for example, we are presented with ordinary bread and wine, but we are made to understand that though like all other bread and wine in the world, this bread and this wine has become for us like no other bread or wine in the world. In them, beneath the form and substance of ordinary matter, we perceive Christ’s very own Presence. In St. Augustine’s memorable phrase, a sacrament such as this is what it is “because in [it] one thing is seen, while another is grasped.”[1] We are here tonight to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

We recall tonight the institution of the Eucharist or Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper. Different traditions have different names for it as well as different understandings of what it is that is happening and how, but all Christians agree that, symbolically, it represents the fact that, as Christians, we are united spiritually. That’s pretty extraordinary. Without being related by blood or class or by any other categorical measure, those who eat at this table are family. And, like family, when we get up from this table, it is expected that we should bear some resemblance to one another. It is supposed that this Sacrament will define us and reveal to us who we are and what we aspire to become. We are meant to be recognized as the people who live out what it communicates about brokenness and sacrifice. The ongoing challenge of the Eucharist, then, is to live into its meaning not just to receive it. As Paul would have it, to receive it “worthily” (1 Corinthians 11:27ff.) and as one of our prayers has it, to be delivered from the presumption of coming to it for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. In every sense, we are to metabolize this food, to ingest it, so that it actually becomes a part of who we are.

As a counterpoint to this great act of Christian devotion, tonight we will also commemorate the foot washing. C.S. Lewis writes: “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself [by which he means the Eucharist], your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, God Himself, is truly hidden.”[2] Here is the connective tissue between the Supper and the foot washing. Without our neighbor – the common connections between us – we cannot practice the sacrament of equal importance, the giving of ourselves. Here again is God to be seen in the ordinary stuff of life.

More than a few times in recent weeks I have remarked in conversation that the reason people don’t come to church is because there are Christians there. We Christians who are supposed to be known by extraordinary acts of compassion and care and self-denial, kindness, generosity, self-offering, and patience, are more often known these days for extraordinary acts of exclusion and fear of the stranger, for small-mindedness and self-preservation, and for judgment. The place that our neighbor holds in the ordering of our lives is getting smaller and smaller. The foot washing is the antidote for what ails us. Tonight we see Jesus washing the feet of his friends.

To our sensibilities is seems such an exemplary act. We can be profoundly affected by the humbling experience of washing another’s feet, getting down on our knees, lowering ourselves, experiencing its discomfort and embarrassment, but this is not actually Jesus’ lesson. It is not actually the foot washing that matters. The trick is actually to see it as something quite ordinary. In Jesus’ day, there were two very practical reasons to wash feet: firstly, to remove dirt; and, secondly, to be hospitable. Jesus’ primary lesson was to do the very common thing that was ordinarily given to do by servant as the commonplace thing to do as a Christian. It is the foot washing attitude that matters, of serving others in a commonplace stuff of life.

We can show a foot washing attitude anytime we take on a menial task or accept a lesser role. We can try not insisting so much on our “rights” or “privileges” so much, but opt, instead, to try seeing the world through the eyes of those for whom “rights” and “privileges” are just things written on paper, a far cry from how society treats them. We can stop ourselves from time to time from blowing right past others, and, instead, meet others’ needs before meeting our own. We can wash feet when we seek out a job that no one else will do and then cheerfully do it, or when we focus on the results being achieved and not on who is getting the credit. All these are ways to wash feet in the year 2022.[3]  

The Eucharist – the foot washing – two powerful and complementary images for the living of the Christian life. Perceive it, the things that are, and become it. Amen.

[1] Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 272

[2] Bruce Barton et al., John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1993), 277.

[3] Bruce Barton et al., John, 389.