"How is it they live for eons in such harmony?" (but we don't)

I am not preaching today -- but if you are in the area, please come hear Pastor Nik in the pulpit. Today is sometimes known as "Mary Sunday," as the lessons will make clear: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Canticle 15, Romans 16: 25-27 and Luke 1: 26-38.

Our friend Karen in Tennessee sent this other day. Enjoy your Sunday . . .

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“We are fields before each other.”

~ St. Thomas Aquinas ~

How is it they live for eons in such harmony -

the billions of stars -

when most men can barely go a minute

without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,

though that does not keep casualties

from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth.

We are fields before

each other.

How can we live in harmony?

First we need to

know

we are all madly in love

with the same

God.

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And one more item today: Steven Charleston, the retired Bishop of Alaska, and who I admire greatly (and who I would love to have come preach at St. Paul's), wrote this on his Facebook this morning, and I pass it along to you:

"The incarnate story begins in humility. That is the first step in our own spiritual narrative. But how to take it? Not once, but over and over, as our life shifts through age and place. It is not feigned innocence or submission. It is what my ancestors believed was the gyroscope of the holy, the sense of inner balance that held a tension between pride and resignation, between limitation and possibility. What gave life to the sacred was a vulnerable power. That same divine energy resides incarnate in each of us, a hope that knows it can change the world, if only it is willing to seek shelter in the poorest home it finds."

Art by Flor Larios

Being like the little children

This came across my email the other day from Barbara Crafton in her Almost Daily eMo from GeraniumFarm.org.

While I am somewhat unable to relate to her wardrobe difficulty, I was really taken aback (in a good way) by her comment on Jesus' telling us to become like little children.

Barbara hears a different twist than the usual. Have a read...

FRUSTRATION AND DESIRE

By the Rev. Barbara Crafton

The wrap dress: soft and comfortable but chic and understated. Guaranteed to look fabulous on any woman who wears it, regardless of her shape. Guaranteed by whom, I wondered. But I bought the dress.

I've worn it a few times, but this morning I found myself inexplicably confounded by its rather complex topology. You definitely need to get both waist ties to meet from opposite directions and join in the middle, but somehow they both kept ending up on the same side. There was a belt loop-- for sure, one of them is supposed to go through it. But then its direction is wrong. Why can I not do this today, when I've done it before?

I never did get it right. Feeling like a kindergartener who can't yet tie her shoes and ends up with an ugly knot instead, I found a way to tie it so that at least the dress won't fall off during the day. One hopes. Oy.

The frustration of being unable to master a task is bitter. It takes a brave person to persevere in the face of it. Toddlers are that brave -- they climb steps as high as their hips, struggle mightily to push a chair across the floor that weighs as much as they do. Their drive to learn is greater than their frustration, and it carries them.

I think about Jesus and the little children. Let them come, he said, don't shoo them away. You must become like them, in fact, to enter the household of God. We usually think of their innocence when we hear the story of this exchange, or their vulnerability. But those two are not the only facts of childhood: to those we must add children's endless curiosity, their boundless drive to know things they do not yet know, to try and try to do things they cannot yet do. They are ready to be empowered.

And empowerment never ends. We don't stop learning just because we grow up, unless we confuse God's radical acceptance of us just as we are with our own indolent desire not to grow and change. Just as I am, Christ welcomes me. And fires me, with every weakness I bring, with desire to become what I will be.

Art by Flor Larios

A day of emotions, a theme of healing

The day was full of textures, colors, and many emotions. The theme of healing emerged throughout the day in prayers and images. For me, Wednesday of Holy Week began before dawn with Morning Prayer and the blunt Collect of the Day that speaks of graphically of betrayal and how Jesus gave his body "to be whipped and his face to be spit upon."

Startling words indeed to begin the day.

I worked on various projects until noon when I paused to preside at a healing Eucharist. A handful of people came; we recited the "Litany for Healing" that is in our supplemental prayer book Lesser Feasts and Fasts: "God the Holy Spirit, you make our bodies the temple of your presence."

The collect in the early morning, in a peculiar way, was connected to healing because it speaks of betrayal. Sometimes it is our bodies that betray us, and we become sick. At the healing service, I anointed people with holy oil, blessed by our bishop a year ago in Holy Week. We then stood around the altar and celebrated the Eucharist. One young woman who came was using a cane, and so she sat.

In the late afternoon, we held our regular Wednesday Evening Prayer in the chapel, and it was especially focused on children. The Rev. Janet Legro, our associate rector for youth, read a children's story about how Jesus was anointed with oil by Mary. Janet brought a little bottle of aromatic oil, and she put a dab on each child when they put their arm out.

After dinner, two of our young adult leaders led a "Stations of the Cross" mediation in the nave; there were 17 people who came. I had not attended a Stations of the Cross observance in some time. I found it moving and challenging. It ends with these words we imagine Jesus might have said:

I told you at the start my life was not complete until I crowned it by my death and resurrection.

Your way is not complete unless you crown it by your life.

Accept each moment as it comes to you, with faith and trust. All that happens has my mark upon it, that somewhere out of the darkness will come light.

We ended the evening with an instructed Eucharist in the chapel, led by The Rev. Henry Minich, a retired priest who helped draft our current prayer book in 1976. He was a font of knowledge and wisdom.

Today, Maundy Thursday, we enter the Great Three Days: The Easter Triduum. For me, Maundy Thursday will begin again before dawn in my private Morning Prayer, and then I plan to go to Culpeper for a gathering of the Diocese of Virginia clergy with our bishop, Shannon Johnston. He will recommit himself to his ordination vows, and then he will ask us to stand and renew our own ordination vows. I always find the renewal of vows not only powerful, but revealing of the path of my own calling. Bishop Shannon will then bless the holy oils for us to bring back to our parishes for anointing the sick and blessing the newly baptized.

The Stations of the Cross will be observed again this evening at 6:30 pm in the nave.

At 7:30 pm today we will gather at St. Paul's for our last Eucharist before Easter, and the traditional washing of feet by the clergy of our people. I hope you can join us.

Collect for Maundy Thursday

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he
suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood:
Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in
remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy
mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

Liturgical notes: The word maundy comes from the middle English maunde, which means "commandment" or "mandate." The day commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus when he commands his followers to remember him in the breaking of bread and sharing in the cup of wine, and to be servants to each other and the world.

The washing of feet on Maundy Thursday is one of the most ancient and universal rites in the Christian Church. It is a reminder to us all of the humility necessary to us as ministers to each other. The ceremony has its origin in the Gospel according to John. Unique among the Gospels, John has no account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, including instead the account of the washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus with the admonition, “do this for one another.”

Jesus was pointing to this act as a sign of our servant ministry to one another and the world. Tonight, we remind ourselves of that vocation through the washing of feet. The clergy wash the feet of those in the congregation who come forward. This shows the church’s regard for the spiritual gifts of all its members.

The service concludes with the stripping of the altar and a procession by the deacon to the altar in the chapel, where the reserved sacrament (a container of consecrated wafers), the outward and visible sign of the presence of Christ, will be placed. This altar is designated as the “Altar of Repose” and it is here that the sacrament will lie in state until it is distributed on Good Friday at the 5 pm service. You are invited to sit in silent prayer in the chapel until 11 pm this evening.

Art by Flor Larios.

A baby came, and we were gob-smacked

This came from Barbara Crafton and I really love it:

A CHRISTMAS POEM BY THOM SHUMAN

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:6-7

you could have
come
as warrior, ready
to take us on
one at a time
or en masse . . .

you could have
come
a whirlwind
swirling, twirling,
twisting around us,
flinging us up into
the air . . .

you could have
come
with a bag of
chocolates
in one hand
and
a time-out chair
in the other;

you came
a tiny
vulnerable
baby
lungs screaming for
life,
fingers grasping for
something to hold onto,
your whole being
completely depending on
us (!) to
feed you
change you
clothe you
protect you
love you

and we were
gob-smacked.

Maria y Jesus, art by Flor Larios

Christmas Blessings to you and yours!

May you have a joyful Christmas and may many blessings light your path in the New Year!

-- Lori and Jim

Seeing the face of God

With the snow keeping us homebound, I thought it time to go back to one of those Big-Hard-Questions that I promised I would tackle in Advent. The season is nearly done, and I haven’t tackled many of them. But we will continue this discussion, and our walk through the labyrinth, through other seasons.

My friend Ilana DeBare, who is preparing for her Bat Mitzvah as a middle-aged adult, posted something on her blog Tuesday that got me thinking again on the Big-Hard-Questions.

She reports on a book about the variety of perspectives rabbis view God (Finding God: Selected Responses, by Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme). Ilana noted that the authors did not spend much time on the “classic” view of God as a Zeus-like wrathful deity up in the clouds. They went more interesting places.

Ilana mentioned some other views, including that of Mordecai Kaplan, who had this to say about popular concepts of God:

“To most people God is not really God but a magnified demon. That is why they cannot disassociate religion from supernaturalism.”

That really grabbed me. I believe that is absolutely true for many people, and is why the idea of being in a religion or having a religious experience is repelling to many people. And I can’t say I blame people for that feeling, given the religious landscape across our globe.

Let’s acknowledge that the Abrahamic tradition, of which we are a part, comes with an imagery of a bloodthirsty God. The Bible is filled with it: Pharaoh and his army are swallowed up in the Red Sea because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, the rebels of Korah swallowed by the earth, the Revelation of John’s apocalyptic vision of the “End Time” when the elect will achieve rapture and the rest of us left in perpetual agony.

The religions that have flowed from the Abraham tradition – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have histories filled with purges, pogroms, crusades and jihads. Is it any wonder that to many non-religious, God seems like a demon? Or that many westerners are attracted to the peaceful meditation practices of Buddhism?It should also be no wonder that authors like Christopher Hitchens can sell a lot of books by arguing that there is no God, and that concepts of God are fundamentally dangerous. Indeed, he is right to this extent: Many concepts of God are dangerous, and if God is who the hateful mouthpieces of wrathful religion say it is, then I want no part of that religion or that God, either.

Is there another way of seeing this? Is there another way of entering into an experience of the Holy that is authentic and real? Many have tried expressing alterntives. In the last 30 years or so, many Christians made Jesus into an easy-going, free-loving hippie. The image is certainly more inviting than a demon. But that, too, has left some feeling that is more spin than real.

A number of modern religious thinkers and mystics talk of God being a “numinous thread” binding the universe together in a single living cord, and I believe that is close to my own belief. It has a universal appeal, transcends dogma and elite elections of the chosen few. Yet it is not very personal; it is really a passive image of God that seems more like electricity buzzing through a long extension cord than a God who I can talk with.

So it is that this time of year, Advent, the time before the dawn of Christmas, I am particularly drawn to another idea of God: the One who comes to us as a helpless baby, born to an unwed very young mother: Miriam – we would call her “Mary.”

She named her son Joshua – and we would later call him “Jesus.” He was born in scandal, and lived much of his life violating religious rules; he was arrested and executed scandalously as a common criminal on a Roman cross (1 Corinthians 1: 18-24).

That people would see in this child the divine is nothing short of a miracle, for they were certainly experiencing an idea of God that was as far from a demon, or a Zeus, or their own expectations of a messiah as could be imagined.

No gloss or theologizing can cover up how radical a concept of the divine this is, then or now.

This is of course a Christian way of looking at things, and I am, after all, a Christian pastor so that should not be too surprising. But this way of seeing Christ is not shared by everyone who carries the label Christian, for it brings into question many of our own cultural norms and the re-packaging of Jesus by 2,000 years of Christianity.

I am much taken in recent years by the writing of James Alison, a former Dominican who teaches and writes from South America. He was left the Dominicans after it came to light that his partner died of HIV/AIDS.

In one of his books, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, Alison writes of how that experience led him to a new understanding of a God who has no outcasts, who needs no revenge, who lives inside and outside of time, and pushes us to upend our conventional culture-bound images of God and ourselves.

I’ve used one of Alison’s analogies in several sermons: he compares the Bible to a Lego set; you can put the pieces together to create a demon-god, or you can put the pieces together to see a creator who not only loves us, but who even likes us for who we are and who we are becoming; and challenges us to take that reality and see life without fear or the need for the rule of vengeance and death. Alison writes (p. 139):

“The coming of the Son into the world has as its end to create a belief in the absolute aliveness of God and the empower us in this way to act as if death were not, thus being set free from our compulsion to act out in a way governed by the kingdom of death.”

The implications of that idea are vast, for it suggests a different way to live. Religion, to me, is ultimately not a set of beliefs or dogmas – a contest of mine are better than yours – but a way of discovering how to live without fear in the presence of the Holy. Alison writes of this (p. 139):

“People like this do not fear the exposing of their previous participation in the system or mechanism of the dominion of death, because that is being left behind as they begin to allow themselves to be transformed into a mansion of life without end in the midst of the world.”

There is a great deal more to say, and it leads us onto the difficult ground of atonement theology, so it seems a good place to stop today. May you have many blessings this Christmas and in the year to come.

Nativity painting by Flor Larios.