Tuesday in Holy Week: Healing

The theme for today is healing. At our 12:15 pm Holy Eucharist, Pastor Heather Warren preached a wonderful homily about how God turns our expectations upside down so that we might experience the indwelling of God. We had prayers for healing, and I could use some of that now. I've been fighting off a throat infection since Saturday that is stealing my voice.

I went to the doc this afternoon; he said the bug is floating around Charlottesville and he's had it too. So he fixed me up with a few drugs and sent me home for rest, plenty of water and all that.

So dear readers, I am resting up. Please have a very blessed Holy Week!

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Prayer for the sick

O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and grant to your servants (NAMES) the help of your power, that their sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Expect healing and the far reaches of hope

Bishop Steven Charleston consistently amazes me with his prayerful wisdom and the holiness of his words. He is formerly the bishop Alaska and former dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.

He put this on his Facebook Monday and I pass it along to you:

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If I were bold enough to proclaim a healing, would you be bold enough to believe me? I work no miracle more than you. I have no special power to offer. But I do know that when we bring our love to bear, when we seek mercy, when we summon comfort from the far reaches of hope, something happens. Take my prayer as your own. Feel our words as one. Let this healing be our soul shared certainty, our fixed point of faith. Be bold not because you expect magic, but because like me you have been witness to a wholeness that no broken body can deny.

Have you ever been surprised by compassion?

I am back in the pulpit today at Charlottesville, and it is good to be back. Today's readings are 2 Kings 5:1-14 , 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Psalm 30 and Mark 1:40-45.

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Have you ever been surprised by compassion?

Have you ever been surprised by a kind word from someone at the very moment you needed it the most? Maybe from someone whom you least expected it?

Or, have you been surprised by someone who opened a door, or a friend who squeezed your hand in the moment you needed it most?

Have you ever been surprised by your own compassion maybe with someone you have a very hard time with?

Sometimes compassion is simple, and the simplicity surprises us.

Take, for example, Naaman, who we meet in the Old Testament lesson today. Naaman is a soldier who is very sick and in need of compassion. The prophet Elisha tells him to go wash in the Jordan seven times.

But Naaman goes away angry, thinking Elisha is mocking him. Surely it must be more complicated than this.

Prophets are supposed waive their hands and do prophet-y things. The simple moment of compassion is not as he expects.

Thanks to a lowly servant, Naaman finally catches on. He washes and is healed. And he is very surprised, and humbled.

It was as simple – and as surprising – as Elisha said, but Naaman almost misses it by being too caught up the complexities.

Or take the nameless leper who is healed by Jesus. Things are not as he expects. Jesus heals the leper and tells him to go to the Temple to be washed, and not talk about what he has seen.

Of course, the healed man goes out and blabs to everyone, and soon large crowds descend upon Jesus.

These biblical stories, and others like it, are meant to push us off kilter so we can see God’s compassion that is so close to us we might otherwise miss it.
These stories are meant to surprise us.

Sometimes it takes a surprise so that we can see God more clearly and love more dearly.
The apostle Paul is driving at the same point in his letter today, but coming at it from a different angle. This idea of running the race is not about being the fastest or the first past the finish line.

Rather, Paul is talking about how we can run the race of life by being open to the holy, and being open all of the time to the compassion that surrounds us.

He implores us to practice looking for compassionate surprises. And keep practicing, practicing, practicing.

We live in a world undergoing tremendous change and complexity, and it can feel overwhelming. Compassion is not always easy to see in the noise and cruelty of the world.

This week in our community, we have the trial opened for George Huguely, accused of killing his girlfriend, Yeardley Love, when both were students at the University of Virginia. For many, the trial reopens wounds that have not healed. The killing shook the tight University community to the core.

Yet I am also mindful of how this terrible incident sparked many acts of compassion, and still does. Cruelty does not get the last word.

A few months after the brutal killing, Teresa Sullivan gave her first public speech in this pulpit as president of the University of Virginia.

She called upon all of us to build a more compassionate community because we are all connected.

We here have taken up that challenge in big ways and small. That is our mission and has always been our mission. Building a compassionate world is really what it means to build the Kingdom of God on earth.

This church is a refuge for those who are hurting and needing solace, and may that always be so.

But the Church is not a refuge from surprises or change. Indeed, the Church is often characterized as the “rock,” but it is not an inert lump of stone. The church is alive, it is an organism, and it is changing because we are changing.

I believe there is a holy spark of compassion here at St. Paul’s that is truly extraordinary. That spark will change us into the compassionate people we were created to be, and we in turn will change the world around us.

By practicing compassion we are running together the race that Paul encourages us to run. 

The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu 

To practice compassion requires not worrying when something doesn’t work exactly right, trusting that Holy spark will carry us through.

And here’s the good news: We don’t have run this race of compassion alone. We can find strength together, as a community of faith. When we do, we will find that new growth and healing will come to us, day by day.

When we run this race of compassion together, we will spread healing and hope into the world beyond, and we have no greater mission in this life than that.

But we need to be ready for the unexpected. We need to listen for the holy from unexpected corners, from unexpected voices, in moments when we least expect it.

God’s Kingdom really can be that simple – and surprising.

Poems for healing at the hospital

The other day I went to the University of Virginia Medical Center to visit a parishioner. When I checked in at the visitor center, I found a wicker basket sitting on the counter. In the basket were little paper rolls with ribbons around each.

Each roll contained a poem, courtesy of the Jefferson-Madison branch of the public library (which incidentally is just around the corner from St. Paul's). I was told it was "Poetry Day" at the Med Center, and I was invited to take a few rolls to patients. So I did.

What a bright, wonderful gift for people in need of seeing something other than beds, monitors and monotonous television sets.

Poems and healing. I like that.

Here's one of the poems I brought to a patient -- it came with a green ribbon around it, a perfect color for the poem inside. The poem is about baseball and dreams of being fast. Here's the poem:

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The Testing-Tree
By Stanley Kunick


On my way home from school

up tribal Providence Hill

past the Academy ballpark

where I could never hope to play

I scuffed in the drainage ditch

among the sodden seethe of leaves

hunting for perfect stones

rolled out of glacial time

into my pitcher's hand;

then sprinted lickety-

split on my magic Keds

from a crouching start,

scarcely touching the ground

with my flying skin as I poured it on

for the prize of the mastery

over that stretch of road,

with no one no where to deny

when I flung myself down

that on the given course

I was the world's fastest human.

What would healing look like for you?

My prayer meandered for awhile this Saturday morning. It took awhile to catch.

Candidly the Daily Office readings were pretty blah. The prophet Isaiah 10:20-27 talked of the Lord "wielding a whip," and then the obscure Letter of Jude 17-25 implored we should save people from unholiness while "hating even the tunic" of those who won't go along with the program. And then we meet up with John the Baptist in Luke 3:1-9 one more time calling us a "brood of vipers."

I get what all this is about, but I've had enough of John the Baptist this season. We've had him every which way, and it feels time to move on from the river and the locusts-and-honey. But I thought, let's dwell with this a little longer, see where we go. My prayer became about ridding myself of my flaws. Isn't that the point of all these lessons today?

Then the Voice said, "Go a little deeper with this. It's not about self-help and self-improvement. It's not about anything you can do for yourself. It's about grace and the power of love."

So I tried to go a little deeper. In my prayer I realized the point is about healing of all that hurts me, all that has wounded me throughout my life, and lifting from my back all of the baggage that I have carried around. I began to picture what healing at its deepest would like like for me, and what it would mean to leave those heavy bags beside the road, and walk on without them. This became very personal and felt very freeing.

What would healing look like for you? What bags do you need to leave beside the road so you can walk on?

And then I heard the Voice say "It is Saturday. It is Sabbath. I made the Sabbath for you today. Be at peace, be at rest this day."

Amen.

Pastoral Care Sunday: Please join us for an extraordinary day

This Sunday we are celebrating our pastoral care ministries. The Rev. Dr. Ann Willms, our associate rector for pastoral care, will be preaching. We are also hosting a very special ministry fare highlighting our pastoral care ministries and the many resources in our community for the health of body, mind and soul. Do please come.

During the 10 am service, we will also be blessing the prayer shawls created by members of our congregation. The shawls are given to people who are ill or in need in some way.

We will also be offering prayers for healing in the chapel during Communion at the 10 am service. After the service, we have a guest speaker, Suzanne Smith, the chaplain at Martha Jefferson Hospital.

Earlier at 9 am (between our two morning services) I will be hosting a rector's forum. I will be happy to take any questions about anything including our recent staff changes, our finances, or just how Lori and I are doing two years into this adventure in Charlottesville. Please come.

In recent days I have been particularly struck by how God provides so abundantly for this parish by continually sending us gifted people and all of the resources we need to do so much to bring healing, reconciliation and wholeness to the people who walk in our doors and beyond our walls. Please come celebrate Sunday!

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.