The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost: Remember Before

Lessons: Psalm 118; 1 Samuel 10:1-16; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 21:23-32

As a child I loved to hear my grandparents talk of what they could remember from "before."  They could remember from before cars which meant they remembered when trains and horses were the rule and the blacksmith was essential.  That was the most impressive to me.  They remembered before the Great Depression even though all their lives were impacted by that Depression.  They could remember before TV when everyone who could gathered about the radio for story times.  All but one remembered before they moved to professional lives and their lives on large family farms.  They spoke of working together, simplicity but always plenty to eat.  Two of them were not fit for the farm. One because of polio, the other because of heat exhaustion. They could remember when indoor plumbing was just kitchen water.  Outhouses were the rule.

I used to wonder what I would one day remember "from before."  I know now.  I remember before TV was in every home and bedroom.  When there was only one station per city and all was black and white and gray. I remember before self correction typewriters.  I remember before desegregation and before women were common as doctors and lawyers and clergy.  I remember before you could talk or think about human sexuality.  I remember before you could suffer through a divorce and hope to remarry and be in anyway acceptable in society.  I remember before when children born in retardation (differently abled we say now) were almost always housed in institutions where we seldom would see them. I remember when one bath per house was normal, multiple baths an extravagance.

Today's lessons all have tinges of remembering from "before."  Saul is just on the cusp of change.  He can still remember when his prime responsibility was his father's needs and herds. He is growing in  a new vocation as Israel's first King and not yet alert to the effect of power placed in his life.  Except of course the power of being loved at home and entrusted with a herd to recover.  Just anointed in a rather secret ceremony as King, he learns what it is to join in prophecy and look into the future.  In the complex hours ahead will he remember the simple acceptance of God's love and call?

In Roman's we are asked to remember what we know of Abraham, what it was like to have faith in the One True God who would send one out to a foreign land with the promise of that land and children and a great nation to come. What was it like to order your life by God's will known in the law yet to be codified in things like the Ten Commandments? What was it like to trust God before we encountered God in Jesus' being and teaching? Can we imagine that depth of faith and use it to encourage our own.  That is what St. Paul sets before the early Church in Rome...and you and me. We are to remember before...

And Jesus who we learn elsewhere in Philippians came form God and did not grasp at equality with God but at humility as in today's Gospel questioned. 

"By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Matthew 21:24

How much did he remember from "before?"  Is he remembering more deeply as he goes?  His only answer is to ask the religious leader to wonder about the authority of John the Baptist.  Where did this authority to call people to change back to God's people come from...earth or heaven? Slyly they will not answer. But we can guess, they remember.

OK then, think more deeply.  If there are two sons asked to do their father's will and one says "No," yet does it.  The other says, "Yes," but does not. Who is the better son?  Well dah, the one who does it.  So it is with those who catch a vision of God and follow even after they have said "No." Those you consider so desperately unclean, so tainted by the law broken, who have been brought now by John (and implied here by Jesus) to see again what once they knew (or did not), have reevaluated and returned to hope in God.  They are headed into God's reign in front of those who can only see themselves as better than, as righteous.

Why?  Because the returning folk remember what it was like before.  They remember by an encounter with God's love and grace in John and Jesus what it was to live in this love, order, acceptance.  They remember the freshness of repenting, turning to hope as they once did before the world's pressure to make an adult living settled in on them.  As they encounter the small gift of the mustard seed of faith, the lost sheep found, the precious pearl sought, they remember before.  And in remembering they find an energy of hopeful wonder, faith.

Perhaps this kind reign is in fact in me, in my heart, my memory, my self concept. They choose to follow it. What about me today?

Maybe all Jesus is asking is for us daily to remember before when our faith was more simple, hopeful, childlike and return to follow. 

The Fifth Saturday After Pentecost: Peter and Paul, Apostles and Martyrs

Lessons: Psalm 66, 97; Ezekiel 2:1-7; Acts 11:1-18.

Faith is not just an easy nod to God.  It does not simply verify our life as it is and let us move on.  Its intent is to change us in ways we may not expect until the change is well underway. 

While "conversion" may come in a sudden insight or may be a slow progression over years, conversion is not the exception but the rule of faith.  We may be kind people.  We may see ourselves as good people.  We may have bought into moral principles early and sought to live by honesty and integrity but that is not enough in the Christian walk. Why is that?

Simply put, because we have the capacity for enlargement, conversion.  Simply put, we are designed to reflect the core of God to each other and back to God and that core is compassion. 

If or when or as we yield to God's compassion we will be changed and it will cost us our very selves.  The self we loose is what some call the false self, the polite or defensive shell we build to protect our true and deeply alive self.  

While this image, this dichotomy of true and false self, was born in the field of psychology in the work of  D. W. Winnicott, it is useful here.  As we trust God not only to have created us once but to continue to enlighten and enlarge us, we let go this false shell.  We allow compassion to fill us and remove our defensiveness.  We hear one another, we hear Christ, we hear self, all in conversation and we change.  We are progressively converted. Little pieces of us are born again and again and again, to reapply and open up fundamentalist language.

Today we celebrate the life, witness and martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, not because they were martyred together.  They were not.  But because they exemplify this progressive conversion, set it and its cost as a central image of the Christian walk.  They will die for its primacy in Christian formation and being.  They were errant men who allowed themselves to grow and become after the example of Christ that they might know their true selves.  They worked to the same end from a distance.

We witnessed this in part in today's reading from Acts.  A great controversy was afoot between Jewish and Gentile believers. Simply put, it had to do with what God required to join the Church, to be a follower of Jesus, Messiah.  Was one required to journey as a Jew, simultaneously with following Christ Jesus?  The parts of Jewish custom both foreign and repugnant to Gentiles, was it required that these be assumed and practiced to receive the salvation and care and forgiveness and new life available in Jesus?  Paul came to understand "No" as he witnessed the growth of faith in new converts form outside Judaism. 

Peter on the other hand struggled.  He, like Paul, had received the revelation of God working through and in Jesus from within Judaism.  The two faith walks were connected for him, but there remained the question, was this to be true for all.  He had a natural predilection for his own experience from within Judaism.

As he struggles he has a dream and in the dream all the forbidden foods of Judaism are placed before him to consume and he is ordered by the voice of God to do so. Three times he says "No" and three times he is ordered. 

"What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

Then he is called to  go and witness the conversions among the Gentiles.  He sees the same fruit of faithful lives growing in community and charity, compassion before him.

He reports back to the Jerusalem Church:

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God? When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life. (Acts 11:17-18)

One must wonder what conversations we are missing as they settled into this new understanding.  Compassion and understanding do most often win in us when we talk though our defenses so we can yield to God. Thus our true selves are progressively born by progressive conversion.

This compassion, this ever opening desire to truly understand what God is doing in another life that we may not easily see is key to our own continual conversion.  When we find ourselves standing in judgment, over against another life as to whether that life is lived in God's fullness, we do best to test our compassion, our desire to understand.  Are there defenses I need to lower?  Have I made unclean what to God may not be?  Has my faith tradition? How does compassion move me deeper here?

Saint Augustine writes (Sermon 295):

Both apostles share the same feast day, for these two were one; and even though they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, and Paul followed. And so we celebrate this day made holy for us by the apostles' blood. Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith.

The Fifth Friday After Pentecost: Listen, Learn, Be Useful

The Fifth Friday After Pentecost

Lessons: Psalm 102; 1 Samuel 8:1-14; Acts 7:17-29; Luke 22:31-38

In the past I have been asked to be pastorally present to a person in a church trial.  It is not easy work.  One must work through the doubt inside one's self.  It is not easy to see the damage done to someone further down the authority line by another in a superior position.  It is not easy to see someone who may have given years to developing gifts and skills make a stupid decision and thus potentially cast away their life's work.  Depending on where one more naturally falls in bias, you will favor one possible interpretation of the "facts" over another.  Perhaps this is because we often underestimate the power dynamic. One may first look at all involved as adults who should know better.  Certainly I have. 

Just behind this rather superior take on the situation lies memory.  There are, at least  for me, the memories of where I have managed professional boundaries well.  There are times where I have felt them threatened, where I know only by prayer and grace I have been able to maintain integrity, not yield to some wrong decision of care. There are also moments I could feel the draw to what was not health and whole.

This dynamic is at the heart of today's gospel.  Jesus sees what Peter does not.  Jesus, sensing things are drawing to a close on his ministry and life, warns Simon Peter he too will be threatened, not by death but by betrayal.  He will not stand easily strong in the trial to come.

"Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."  Luke 22: 31-32

It is interesting that Jesus calls him Simon.  This was his called name before Jesus saw in him the faith to follow Jesus as Messiah. You might say this was his name before his vocation to lead, to be a rock of faith.  Does Jesus see this faith will waiver? Does he understand that when the pressures grow great, one goes back to safety or instinctual, as in this case, denial of association?

Is the warning articulated for Simon part of the prayer? "I have prayed" becomes I am praying even now as I speak, letting you know the prayer is part of the flow of communication from me to the Father and back again.  I think so. 

The prayer might become Simon's prayer now, and then later when the self preservation hours have passed and the healing after betrayal is needed.  Peter will stand in stark need of prayer soon.  For now he is very confident.

"Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Luke 22:33

This will fade away.

Jesus warns him and all they will soon need all their resources.  Before in their training they were sent out on a healing and preaching mission with minimal comforts.  They were sent out to be dependent on God and on the human generosity which comes when people glimpse the goodness of God in hope and wholeness;  when it sets in and we share gratefully with others.  That worked to keep the disciples in deep relationship not just to God but to those who were to receive God's word, healing and blessing.

Now is different.  Darkness of the human heart will assault this mission.  The safety of hope will vanish soon even while a deeper drama is playing out.  Jesus instructs them.

 "But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, 'And he was counted among the lawless'; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled." They said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." He replied, "It is enough." Luke 22:36-38

They are to protect themselves now, provide for themselves.  A tougher time is ahead.  Did he actually mean for them to buy swords or is this another case of overstating that Jesus found so useful to his message?  Once they note there are two swords already present, it is enough.  Is this more like, "Be on your guard." 

They will not fully be so.  Things will soon falter.  Does it help to look back and remember that you were warned these things were coming?

It does later seem to help Peter. With the cock's crow we are told Peter noted it and his accomplished denial.  How long did it take him to remember ,"...when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." He does you know in fits and starts. "Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep." John 21:15-17.  He will do so solidly in Acts.

Perhaps here is the depth of this story.  We will all in someway fail to love Jesus fully and to love the Word of God and its wisdom.  We will all break a loyalty or vow spoken in utter hope. Will we then grow spiritually or emotionally or morally or mentally sleepy in the garden that is our life? We can stay sleepy.  We can defend our position with Peter's, "I will not...I am ready to go anywhere you say..."  We can mask our behaviors even from ourselves.  Many do. We can also awaken.

What is useful to Jesus, to God, is when we take time to note our weak moments or failed moments and turn to use them for others' well being.  That is the foundation of all 12-step work.  That is what makes a confessor wise or a therapist alert or spiritual director useful.  Most medical trials are based on this principle. Good parents employ this for children.  Deep friendships know this route to share costly lessons.

I suppose that was the value I offered the church trial process.  I know my weaknesses and failures. I can work through my bias. I know how to pray and seek aid to stay awake.  When I fail, I am willing to begin again.  The insights can be useful to others as they are employed in care.

This is all that Jesus asked of Simon Peter.

The Fifth Thursday After Pentecost: Two Reigns

Lessons: Psalm 105:1-22; 1 Samuel 8:1-22; Acts 6:15-7:16; Luke 22:24-30

Those of us who have faith in God will find that we always live at two planes. We live on an earthy plane with earthly citizenship and we live on an eternal plane with a Godly or Heavenly citizenship.  St Augustine wrote of this after the Vandals sacked Rome in The City of God. 

We live within a society or culture which aligns itself by somewhat agreed upon principles or even warring principles.  For instance Americans live in a democratic culture with the ideal of "One man, one vote."  Yet we war over who is included in that "one man." Once it was only white men.  Once only males. Always there is an age qualifier. Citizenship is a qualifier and the degree to which you can prove it another.

Other cultures align citizenship by other qualifiers.

I once had a parishioner who could not prove his birth. Long story short he was born either in the South or most likely in Jamaica of an American mother and a Jamaican father. He was brought in infancy to the States, the South, and then migrated to New Jersey where he could get a job on a farm and later a factory to support his widowed mother and younger siblings.  He lied about his age to be permitted to work and get a SS number and card. He lost it and years later got a new card with his real age. When in his late sixties he applied for Social security the two conflicting birth dates on SS cards caused him to have to prove his birth. After years he can find no birth certificate for himself or his mother since rural Black births often went unrecorded in the South. The effect of 9/11 is that he cannot receive SS benefits, drive a car or vote any longer.  How strange earthly citizenship can become.

The Judeo/Christian faith holds to an additional and primary citizenship.  We belong to the Reign of God or as we used to say, the Kingdom of God.  It is not the same as the earthly reign and we see that reflected in today's scriptures. 

In First Samuel 8 we learn of an early Biblical reflection on this divide. The people have come to Samuel:

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." Samuel prayed to the LORD, and the LORD said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. First Samuel 8:4-7

The rejection is not perceived as a rejection of Samuel's corrupt sons but in faith that even in this God can lead them.  An earthly king is a corruption of the "King of Heaven", God.  Loyalty will henceforth be divided.  Kings will oppress, tax, demand loyalty that will enslave some. Freedom under God will shift by these loyalties required for earthly citizenship. We will lose our way to God's ideals and voice of governance.  Sociologically it must have seemed essential to organize the people of Israel into a kingdom, an earthly nation to protect earthly place and power.  The trade off will be mixed loyalty, though in truth it already existed.

Fast forward to Jesus in Luke's Gospel.  The disciples are doing the earthly kingdom thing..."which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest." (Luke 22:24)

Jesus responds, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves." Luke 22:25-27 

There is articulated here the bare boundaries of this other citizenship.  It is to be based on one who serves and serves God. Other defining principles are in Jesus' broader teachings.  They are essentially living a morality of care which reaches over divides, calling us to a forgiving compassion displayed in service one to the other. Those included will be many that are looked down on in the earthly plane.  What would Jesus do is a modern take on this.

Jesus goes on.

"You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Luke 22:28-30

The portrait is a mirror image of Earthly power corrected in the Heavenly Kingdom. As we act now so will we later find we are in God's reign.

The brilliance of Augustine's work was his ability to see how the two kingdoms are distinct by defining loyalty, love of earth or love of God.  Yet he also holds that one can live, rather make pilgrimage in this world guided by Christ's principles and largely be uncorrupted.  The art is to seek what God loves in all places, to know this will not be the same as earthbound loves necessarily.  You may use earthly resources and power to aid God's reign.  One needs to remain clear there will be dividing points measured by one key image: Does this promote God's reign, God's care? Is any given action or feeling acted upon reflective of God's purpose or compassion or forgiveness?

He also allows that earthly comforts are neutrals as long as they aid the advancement of this reign in our lives and that of others. 

Thus the challenge daily remains.  Earthly life is a gift.  Even authority, power, is a gift. How will we use it to reflect God and compassion and care?  Will we see where we do not? Will we change as we do?  Is the world more holy for our life in it?  Are we?

The Fifth Wednesday After Pentecost: Cake, Communion?

The Fifth Wednesday After Pentecost

Lessons: Psalm 101, 109; 1 Samuel 7:2-17; Acts 6:1-15; Luke 22:14-23

We cannot debate the import of eating or being fed.  Food, its preparation, presentation and sharing forms the base of so much of our lives.  We are, I suppose, always hunters and gatherers and at our best sharers of food.

I had a puzzling encounter as a young priest.  Long story, short, a young boy came to me at a coffee hour and said, "I want a piece of cake to take home to my Mom."

Looking over and seeing the large sheet cake was being served by an elderly spinster of the parish I responded, "Ask Miss Anderson for a piece."

"She won't give me any." "

Then you must not have asked politely.  Go and ask her again with a polite 'please."' 

I watched as he went back.  No cake and he was crest fallen. 

I intervened, "Bea, this young man would like a piece of cake to take home to his Mom."

"He will just eat it on the way home and his mother will never see it!" was the reply.

"Then may I have a piece of cake?"

Down went the knife and off she walked.

It was a stupid encounter really.  I could have been more subtle, gotten the cake later.  She could have been more gracious and allowed the boy to deal with the ramifications of whether the cake got home or not. Later that day I watched as the remaining sheet cake went home divided by a group of older white ladies.  The Black choir boy had the small piece I had cut for him.  I could not help but wonder was this a Depression survival group, a White power group or just one old spinster with the power to judge? Was it just one more example of discomfort with the changing demographic of the parish?

These issues around food are not odd and they are not new.

"Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food." Acts 6:1

Food can be power.  We know it if we pay attention to global economies and politics.  We Americans have food in abundance.  So much so that we can worry whether it is organic or not.  We stand side by side in the grocery store, some of us buying the best cuts of meat while others are looking for the mark downs.  Some fill their carts with prepared foods while others dream how they will create a meal from raw ingredients.

In the urban center I once lived, I would see a bus load of seniors arrive and watch as they picked through the carts of bruised produce or expiring packaged goods looking for ways to make their pensions last. This gave me pause to be grateful for my own choices.

Then of course there is the global dynamic of who will eat what.  In times of famine will the food get to the needed destination point and how many will be aided?  How many will starve or suffer malnutrition?

It is thus not surprising that the Bible has rules on food.  Yes there are forbidden foods like pork and shrimp and oysters and there are permitted foods like lamb and vegetables and grains. There are also rules on what the planter, landowner may harvest.  There is a rule to protect the poor, the landless, the widow and orphan. A tenth of the field, the edges are to be left for them.  What ever is dropped by the harvesters is to remain on the land for the poor to glean.  Yes they will work for it as they are able.  They must pick it up, harvest it, winnow it, grind it. Yet it is there for them...if the land owner follows the rule and the harvesters are instructed to leave the gleanings.

So I am not surprised that there was concern for the widows in the early Church. What is interesting here is who is being overlooked.  Two groups made up the Jewish Jerusalem Church.  There are those who always lived in Israel and those whose families had once lived scattered in the Empire now returned.  

As a North Carolinian who lived in New Jersey for 34 years and then returned, there is a dynamic of credibility. Your accent is noted.  Your origins questioned and an insider/outsider status is assigned.  You "understand" life here or not, lies beneath this status. You will be included differently, to varying degrees.

Every locale does this it seems, in one way or another.

What is important in Acts is that the solution is not whether all widows will be fairly handled but how they came to handle the normal status struggle of inside and outside. The order of Deacons is founded.  They are to care on behalf of the Church for those in need.  And here the named ones all have Hellenistic names.  They reversed the power structure freely asking those who felt overlooked to now administer care for all.  It is as if they saw one way to even out the inside/outside dynamic was to redefine who was which.  They trusted the "outsiders" returned home would care equally without regard to accent. We hear no more of this issue in Jerusalem so one supposes this worked.  Perhaps it worked because all were "outside" the norm of Jewish life by the very fact they held Jesus to be Messiah, believed in resurrection, hoped in the second coming.  Perhaps it worked because those with the power to exclude recognized their tendency and saw this as a way to heal it. 

They are also united in the redefinition of Passover as we read in Luke.  The bread and wine of Jesus' last Passover is now a weekly event.  What once had been an annual reminder of God's saving help and providence in the past is redefined. Now it is a sign of Messiah having come, having left us as his Body present.  Like the mother pelican seeing her young in crisis, he feeds us on his life blood so we do not spiritually starve in the world.  His spirit of generosity and compassion is to course through our veins, our heart to pump it into every bit of our being.  Like the Torah before, this shared meal is to instruct our outlook and actions.

We are to fed each other compassionately.

I wonder what would have happened if we assigned a choir boy to cut the cake.  What behavior would he assume, Bea's or the image of communion where all share equally? 

The Fifth Tuesday After Pentecost: The Gift of Change, Becoming

Lessons: Psalm 97, 99; 1 Samuel 6:1-16; Acts 5:27-42; Luke 21:37-22:13.

It was the summer of 1977 I was ordained a deacon on my way to priesthood a year later. I had been assigned to a good parish for the year that I might be well mentored. I felt so abundantly blessed.

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church was to meet that September and among many things, vote on the ordination of women which three years before was disapproved.  That vote kept the male only tradition of ordination in place. 

While in Seminary I had come to question this tradition mostly by observation. I was quite traditional in my outlook except as I listened, the same questions, hopes, stirrings, fears I had experienced in discerning my own call were being spoken of by my few female classmates. I had come across information which showed hidden places in our tradition of women being somewhat ordained, clearly leaders. And of course we were in a cultural shift of women assuming increasingly recognized authority in all fields.  This information churned in my heart/mind and I felt God was at work in some new way...at least new to me.

Only a month ordained I was left in charge of the congregation while the Rector, Bill, went to the convention.  There was no small tension in the congregation as the possibility of a sea change in the ordination tradition loomed. I was left to preach in the midst of this, knowing Bill would most likely vote for women's ordination and knowing some might leave the church if it passed.

Somehow by God's grace or by the Church's plan the reading from Acts 5 came to mind.  Here was a pivotal moment in the Christian becoming. Just after Jesus' resurrection and after Pentecost a new preaching began right in the midst of the traditional gathering place of Jews.  The very idea of this mingled message of death, resurrection, Messiah (leader and Savior) being preached was a sea change?  Was it true?  That was the issue before the religious establishment.  Had they brought about a thwarting of God's will?  That was not possible to them. The one way to end this message was to put an end to these followers of Jesus. 

But a Pharisee in the council named Gama'liel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside for a short time. Then he said to them, 'Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men...because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them-in that case you may even be found fighting against God!' They were convinced by him. Acts 5:34-35, 38-39

He illustrates his point with failed attempts in the past of mere men with a following who have attempted to lead the people away from tradition and failed.

What he does here is make space for God's operation among them.  His understanding is that God will ultimately prevail no matter our protestations. What is of God rights things in the long run.  What is not of God falls away. We live in the space of that righting and that falling away.  In our daily choices we will at best choose what seems right in our lives.  This is important moral making and at times it is important yielding to a will that is beyond us, that is of God.  There is a push and a pull.  How does one honor fully the faith making tradition while leaving room for the ongoing work of God?  The idea of Messiah was not outside God's word or will.  The how of it was to date a mystery.

At the heart of the Christian faith is this notion of God's ongoing self revelation. God is constantly righting our thoughts and thus our teachings, practices, understandings. 

Like the blind men who each grasp only a part of the elephant (trunk, tail, leg, belly...) and think they comprehend its all, so are we with God.  Hold too tightly to our piece of the revelation and we may loose the essence of God. Hold it as a piece, perhaps a vital piece of truth, and we may together be drawn into the essence more deeply. 

What binds us is the core belief that Jesus invites us to touch aspects of God we may otherwise miss and thus miss our true lives. Rigor is trumped by forgiving grace.  Self preservation is trumped by life-giving service and yielding to a will larger than our own.  Purpose is defined between God, neighbor and self in conversation.

As to women's ordination, 26 years on they have served as well and as poorly as men.  The fruit seems largely worthy so far.  The insights into God brought by women in deep spiritual work has found a deeper voice I believe.  I at least see more of God then I did before.

I hear a voice within that says, "Thank you Gamaliel...and Martha, Page, Sandy, Cooper, Marge...."  God in Christ is larger than I knew.

Where next will we be pressed into deeper insight?

The Fifth Monday After Pentecost: Birth of St. John the Baptist

Lessons: Psalm 82, 98; Malachi 3:1-5; John 3:22-30

Today is the Feast of St. John Baptist and I am an associate of that Order. That association arose from my many years of first retreating to Convent of St. John Baptist in Mendham, NJ annually as a young priest and then later being the Rector in Mendham and saying mass for the Sisters.  They remain in my prayer and I in theirs after so long a time. So today I honor them in my heart not because of any particular Sister but rather because they are a destination, a place of making. 

Not all of us are called to the life of a religious community where people pledge themselves to a life of prayer and action 24/7. Not all who enter this life will sustain it, but may be called to it for a season and a time. There is always a sadness when one samples this way of life and it does not fit and one must leave.  The Sound of Music romanticized that, yet it is true.

In a world where not all will marry or find intimacy in a one on one way there is this model of vocation open. It is a model of intimacy found in prayer and work. It is a model of family and work much of the world does not grasp. The Religious Life, as it is often called, is a particular way to come to know God deeply and with purpose, what we call vocation. While at its heart there is a rhythm of prayer, there is also study and work.  Some Orders run schools, some social service institutions, some nurse, some run places of retreat, some mix it up and some are insulated places of prayer.  As one Sister once said to me, "When the rest of the world is forgetting to pray, we are here praying in their place and for them."

Too often we only see this life through the worst Roman Catholic school boy's tale of a Sister and her ruler over the knuckles.  Certainly she has or did exist, but she is a distortion just like I am a distortion on a bad day.  We all are a distortion of our created selves on a bad day.  But I digress a bit here.

The lessons for this day are insightful.  From Malachi we read:

"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom you delight in: behold, he shall come, says the Lord of hosts.  But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire, and like fullers soap..." Malachi 3:1-2

Always in scripture we find some vision of God as One who means to purify or clarify our lives and our life's purpose.  In the prophetic vision often there is a sense where the purity of God's purpose cuts to our core, burns away what is amiss. At its heart is not dislike of the human creature but sheer love, the core of divinity.  This love desire that we become as we were created in the heart of God to be, an entrance of Divine love, full acceptance of what is best into the world again.  Malachi goes on to say,  

"Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.  Malachi 3:5

The truth of Divine Love, original love, is that it judges by its very nature.  Its judgment is not punitive in intent nor is it destructive.  Its very purity simply stands in contrast to self preservation or preoccupation.  It understands that its well does not empty, is eternal.  There is always more to tap into.  It does not distort by false sources or actions (sorcerers, adulteries, lies).  It does not misuse others (hired workers) but serves need (widows, orphaned, those with no place of security).  This is its purifying power, it spends itself only to grow more profound.

On the Feast of John the Baptist we celebrate the divine intention for this Love to come among us in Jesus.  The strength of this coming is so gently captured in the Gospel today.  We are well into John's message of repentance, returning full attention to God's hope for us by turning and seeing God more clearly and desiring to be changed into God's reflection.  What else is John's baptism?  John's disciples are puzzled that Jesus is gathering greater following than John. 

"Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him." John 3:26

John defers to Jesus in the most clear and pure way.

"No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. ... I have been sent ahead of (the Messiah)... For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease." John 3:27-30

John's willingness to decrease is proportionate to Love's increase.  What seems like jealousy in John's disciples melts in John's ego.  The greater Love must occupy increasing space.

After turning to God, we are only briefly judged by the presence of love.  Then we melt, not like butter, not like the cinders after coal is burned.  Rather we become like something more precious than we knew we housed.  We become God's gold, God's silver.  Something deep within purifies.  It is merely our core of love, not ours but God's designed into us.  Our false protective self is to decrease, our generous core is to increase.  We do not disappear, we simply grow more real.  That is what John was trying to tell his followers.

When I first began to go the Convent of St. John Baptist for quiet, retreat, reflection, becoming, the convent was guided by Mother Margaret Helena.  She was not perfect but for me she was wise.  I shared with her as much as I dared.  As I look back I suspect she knew much that I held back as myself. But what I remember was her patient insight.  I always felt loved but with a gentle distance as if it was not her love but God's. 

I think she knew from within that in time I too would learn the art of decreasing only to increase in something more core, Jesus.  Who knows this for you?

The Fourth Saturday After Pentecost: Ebenezer?

Lessons: Psalm 87, 90; 1 Samuel 4:1b-11; Acts 4:32-5:11; Luke 21:20-28

In the reading from First Samuel we hear of a battle that did not go so well for the people of Israel.  Over against the Philistine army with their iron weapons of war, Israel in desperation goes to Shiloh and brings the Ark of the Covenant into their midst as a protector and encourager.  The shouts of joy put forth worry the Philistines for a bit, but not enough.  Israel desperately loses the battle and the Ark.  In time owning the Ark will not prove wise for the Philistines and they will desperately want to return this powerful symbol of God's presence.  It becomes a curse to the wrong people. 

All this happens in a place called Ebenezer.  The place was not actually named Ebenezer at the time.  Later when the Philistines return the Ark and lose the war to the not now anointed David leading Israel, the place is so named.

"Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, 'till now the LORD has helped us.'" Samuel 7:12.     

The stone is a memorial, a reminder of God's help, and means "stone of help." It speaks to the solidness of God with God's people, God's "rock-ness."  Ironically this is the name of the place where the Ark is lost, only later to be returned. By God's strength they will finally win over the Philistines.  It should not escape our notice that this occurs after the mere shepherd boy, David, is raised up by faith to lead Israel's army.

One might think of the hymn "Rock of Ages" but another comes to mind, one I love and find touches someplace deep. "Come thou Font of Every Blessing" has the line, "Here I raise my Ebenezer."  Here it is. 

Come, thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
here by thy great help I've come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnQrBUGIhGg

This hymn, now edited, was written in 1758 by a young man who led a street gang until he was converted by the great preacher, George Whitfield.  He composed this hymn at age 23 after he himself became a pastor, though like the hymn he would wander off this path. 

Much later, "He was...traveling on a stagecoach when a lady sitting next to him was reading a hymn book and read out this hymn and said how wonderful it was. He replied "Madam, I'm the poor man who wrote that hymn many years ago. I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then." It was indeed true- he even says in the next verse "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it...." 

Source: The Complete Book of Hymns- Inspiring stories by William J. Peterson and Ardythe Peterson 

We all need an Ebenezer, a touch stone in our pilgrimage, to know and be known by God. When first I sang this hymn in Seminary the line that captured me was: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. 

Is this not the universal struggle, having been loved by God we will journey off.  We will betray some core value etched by God on our heart  Yet by some divine grace, some inner call, we will return to those core parts of our self and journey, hopefully home.

Our Ebenezer may well be a battle of faith lost where another has helped us reclaim it.  It may be some early place where we have tripped on God's care and grown and years later come back it.  Perhaps we cannot re-engender the freshness of early wonder, innocent faith.  But we can for a moment touch it as a gift now remembered.  In the touching we know God and are known.

My Ebenezers are many: a grandfather, the first time I took communion, an elderly woman on a path who called me to sit with her, a gentle coach who forgave my fear of balls and aided me in swimming well...  So many places where something of God's love reached out and I took hold, not forever but for long enough.

Take some time today.  Touch your Ebenezer.

The Fourth Friday After Pentecost: Thin Places

Lessons: Psalm 88; 1 Samuel 3;1-21; Acts 2:37-47; Luke 21:5-19

As a preteen a wonderful opportunity opened before me.  It was created by a heart attack.  My paternal grandfather needed to alter his life both in diet and by walking three miles every morning.  I do not remember how it began but I realized quickly that if I was willing to rise by 5:30, I could walk with him. He would wake me and off we would go. 

This was as sacred a time as I had ever known.  This gentle, strong, so easy to love man would be mine for an hour and I would be his.  We spoke off everything and nothing.  The world's beauty opened before me as he helped me notice it.  God came up in simple earth revealing ways.  I could open my questions, wonderments, hurts, hope.  I do not remember him as profound.  I remember him as listening and wise.  I remember the world as loving and grounded and for an hour, ours.  I felt so enveloped by goodness, hope, what we call love and by an honest faith.

My friend and colleague Everett Thomas speaks of thin places from the Celtic tradition.  These are places where the two worlds mingle, where the distance between the worlds gives way to communication, this mingling.  People harken to them seeking the connection. The connection is deeper than we often find in life.  That is another way to see my time with Granddad as we walked Lake Boon Trail. Most often we think of thin places as geographic, particular.  I would later find those to be the Chapel of Holy Trinity Church, Greensboro, NC particularly as the sun set in Lent or in the dark of night after time with friends. There was the rock jetty in Oriental far from others' easy reach that was a place of God's passing. There is always the sea.

In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi in his Message to the World said, "There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything.  I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen power that makes itself felt though and yet defies all proof because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses.  It transcends the senses." 

Truth  abides in thin places, naked raw hard to face truth, yet the comfort, safety and strength to face that truth also abide there.  There is something healing in this truth found. Thin places find us often, though we can deliberately seek them and we know them and find ourselves known.

That is how I understand the dynamic in First Samuel today.  The boy Samuel and Eli sleep near each other, Eli in his chamber and Samuel in the Temple near the holy Ark of God.  It was a time when the crossover between the worlds was not revealed often in visions or God's voice heard.  Yet on this night God is heard thrice, "Samuel, Samuel."  The boy can make no sense of it without Eli.

 "Eli said to Samuel, 'Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'"  Samuel 3:8-9

Yet the voice is for the boy to hear, not the old man.  In the voice is the hard truth that Eli's time of service and that of his linage will soon be expiated from this holy place, this thin place, this Temple. Reluctantly, desiring not to hurt Eli, the boy Samuel will share the vision at Eli's insistence.  

Then wonder of wonders, Eli says to Samuel, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him." I Samuel 3:18.

In this thin place is not only the truth heard, but the strength to accept it, to grow in its light is found.  Thus Samuel grows into the prophet of Israel and God's word is better heard and comprehended.  The thin place is the Temple but also the relationship with Eli who has lost the vision but held the hope that once again God will speak into the heart of life with truth heard, accepted, built upon.

Thin places can be intentionally created upon a worthy foundation.  That is one way to understand the reading from Acts.

They (this early baptized community in Jerusalem) devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47.

Here was an intentional thin place where all fed on God's Word in teaching and Eucharist, prayer and fellowship.  So thin was it that they held all in common and aided any among them in need. The truth of being the beloved of God shaped them deeply.

In the Gospel, Jesus notes that the Temple, holy and thin as it may be, will fall. The hearing of God may fail there.  The world will go into its next chaotic convulsion about man's power, war. Persecutions will happen.  This will be the arena where your faith will find articulation.  No need to prepare, rather be a thin place, endure in the surety of God's care, this thin place of heart/mind. Here you will connect the worlds and gain your very soul.

So what would they do?  Run to and fro? No, we hear of them in Acts:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common...

Thin places are a given.  Sometimes they are geographic.  Sometimes they are the places we create as we yield to an openness to God, as we break the bread and say the prayers and hope to hear and share our lives either on Lake Boon Trail or in some church or youth retreat or jail. Anywhere where we yield to the "indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything." 

Thank you Granddad.

The Fourth Thursday After Pentecost: Sailing and judgment.

Lessons: Psalm 34; 1 Samuel 2:27-36; Acts 2:22-36; Luke 20:41-21:4

I do not much like the bits of scripture with judgment in them. Yet I need them.  They remind me that even when life feels on course, it is wise to check my course.

I grew up sailing more by family hobby than preference.  I did not enjoy the tension sometimes on the boat.  Part of the tension was generated as the lapping of the water and the cool of the breeze draws one away for one's task as a crew.  A sail will luff when you are on a steady course because you neglect to trim it in. Or the helmsman calls, "Going about" and you have wandered too far in your imagination to react quickly enough.

When I could go out alone I found a certain joy.  There was no judgment from my father or brother.  I could trim the sail as I liked, neglect choosing a course for awhile, sing out loud with no protest.  I could even turn the boat over well into the river and practice righting it again.  Yet when it was time to head home, I needed to use my skill.  One had to note the wind well, judge which tack to make and when. It was important to note the amount of wind so you could estimate your timing and not be out beyond sunset.  I actually was pretty good about the homeward journey.  The boundaries of time were an aid to me.

Two images of scripture today are both helpful and troubling to me. The first is the judgment on the house of Eli. The priesthood is about to be removed from him and his sons.  The sons have broken faith, proved greedy with what was not theirs but gifts to God by God's people.  This priesthood was to be a linage, to go on for ever.  However it was by the third generation taken as a right not a privilege and thus there was no watchfulness about its gifts and its boundaries. 

As a priest myself I know this tension.  One wants to pray well and often so as to be grounded.  Other tasks and duties impinge or prayer grows dull.  You drift a bit.  People's problems come to you and some seem worthy and others less so.  Yet you are called to be faithful to both.  You find joy at the altar aiding God's word to be lively and the sacraments to have meaning.  Someone gets obsessed by a detail missed or a sermon they dislike and you feel your efforts are lost.  It can be hard to remember it is your role that is being criticized and not your person.  You drift a little from people and God sometimes.

Then you come upon Samuel and Eli and in the judgment you realize there are core expectations.  Live as truly as you can to God's word as you understand it.  Take less for granted as yours by some right.  Handle holy things and holy people with the care you hope for in God.  Sometimes that is judgment.  Often it is receiving the gifts of one another's lives so you can journey well as a "crew", a people. 

This journey is as true for those not ordained yet baptized into Christ's life.  Prayer, faithfulness, the Word entered and lived, the sacraments taken for troubling and healing are for us all.  The distractions of other responsibilities are not distractions but are arenas of devotion and service.  That can be challenging to remember.

Secondly we have the Gospel with Jesus doing theology on the Messiah.  His point is the overarching authority of the Messiah.  The Messiah may be of the lineage of David but he is far superior, worthy of full worship. Do not confuse those in sacred roles with the One they represent.  All can lose their way, devour the wrong things, hold the wrong practice. Ouch I think.

Then he holds up the poor widow whose whole focus on the moment he observes her is on God.  She gives a tiny gift of profound import for it is all she has for now.  Others tithe perhaps from their abundance. Abundance gets noticed usually. 

It is humbling to notice that we can be righted by small observations of great worth. They are always there.  A child gives you a hug and an awful day is back on course for now.  A generous smile comes from the unexpected, a door held open, a polite "sir" or "ma'am"  and you are brought back to your center of worth. Or someone tells a truth you need, forgives an error or a luff in the sail, gently shows you how to handle the tiller, be it on a boat or the tiller of some moral value applied, and you see your worth and possibility as one who bares God's image.   

In a world so puffed up with self import and building grand lives, it helps to be righted by some observed goodness and grace.  We all need times of such judgment be it small and momentarily a corrective or be it large and core to our identities as creatures made to give God our glory which is but God's glory reflected back.

The Fourth Wednesday After Pentecost: Icons of hope

Lessons: Psalm 119:97-120, 1 Samuel 2:12-26; Acts 2:1-21; Luke 20:27-40

On Sunday when we are at Greenacre we go to two small Churches in order to have racial diversity. Such is life in rural NC.  This past Sunday at one of the churches there was a new altar server.  He was focused and encouraged by everyone it seemed.  When the altar candles were unlit, I noticed it just before the procession and gently went to the back to remind him.  It was in hand. No one could find the matches.  Once found, all went perfectly with a nod here and there to help him. I was encouraged by his presence, traveled back to remember when I was so young and focused on the altar.  At the peace he spoke with utter Southern politeness. I traveled back again. 

It turns out this was his first time serving at the altar.  He was small for fourteen, so seemed younger except for his manners and a confidence in his bearing.  When the two senior girls graduated high school, his grandmother, who is a core member, asked him to come, learn the role and help out.  That explained in part the tremendous care he was given and returned at the altar.  I hope we will all sustain him well and he continues to find this gift of self a place of import and encouragement.  He is an icon for me of the freshness of seeking God and being found in proximity to the altar.  I hope I may be an icon for him as one long in this search and service, but it is most likely his grandmother, who embodies this so well, will be this for him or is this for him.

The boy Samuel in the first reading today was such a youthful icon for Eli. By extension, he is that for us also. We read of Eli's sons today who have taken the holy place for granted and turned it from holiness and wonder to gain, casual misuse. It is as if they no longer see that people who come to Shiloh, come to touch the holy with their own offerings, which are by extension their very selves.  One might say Eli's sons are in some way jaded by too close a proximity or by inheritance of a position before God.  They have lost a fresh hope of expectation that here one grows into the eternal by daily steps, by faithfulness in ordinary things, like assisting peoples' hope and offerings to God by their own mere but reverent presence.

Perhaps they do not see their father as an icon of one long on this search and service. We do not know why.  It is suggested that they have been indulged by a father, perhaps by limited expectation.  We are told this displeases God. By contrast, "the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the LORD and with the people." 1 Samuel 2:26

We each have the potential to be icons for one another.  An icon is an image we peer through to see the Holy Other or to encounter the search of one who seeks God. This encounter is based on the energy of faith.  

We read in Hebrews 11:1-, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.  By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible."

Eli and Samuel are in some sense icons for each other.  Samuel looks to Eli to show him how to live faithfully in a responsible relationship to God.  His mother's annual visits of care are also an icon not fully valued here. She is now spoken of only glancingly.

Samuel is a place where Eli and Hannah also can see the wonder of God in fresh faith and practice.  Perhaps it causes them to remember when their faith was born, their wonder was new, their hope fresh and lively. 

Surely this is true for Hannah who was so long barren and now so fruitful.  It was her earnest prayer for a son like Samuel met by God's "yes" that is her core story.  Each time she looks on Samuel she remembers what it is in faith to hope. 

Perhaps that is what happens for me when I look on a young earnest altar server.  I am reminded what a gift faith is, how powerful hope can be when entrusted to God.  Don't we each live with some hope that others who see us, will also encounter God in some humble but true way.

Faith feeds faith.  Where now does mine feed others', perhaps someone young enough to feed yet others'?