Monday Funnies

Well, it has been awhile since Pat Hill, in the Fiat Lux jokester department, checked in with some new material. Seems he is on a mission trip to Uganda, so I can't accuse him of loafing like I usually do. But he is a little busy, and so he sent recycled material the other day. Here are some Oldies-but-Goodies. Enjoy your week...

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A preacher delivered a sermon in ten minutes one Sunday morning, which was less than 1/3 the usual length of his sermons.

He explained, “I regret to inform you that my dog, who is very fond of eating paper, ate that portion of my sermon which I was unable to deliver this morning.”

After the service, a visitor from another church shook hands with the preacher and said, “Pastor, if that dog of yours has any pups, I want to get one to give to my minister.”

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A preacher was on the program at a district convention to preach for twenty minutes. The other preachers from the district were sitting behind him in the choir section, giving him moral support and throwing in an occasional “Amen” to help the preacher along.

The preacher preached his twenty minutes and continued on despite the allotted time.

He preached for 30 minutes, then forty minutes and then for an hour. He even continued, for a whole hour and ten minutes.

Finally, a brother sitting in the front row took a songbook and threw it at the preacher, who was still going strong with his message.

The preacher saw the songbook as it was hurled his way and he ducked. The songbook hit one of the preachers sitting in the choir section.

As the man in the choir section was going down, you could hear him say, “Hit me again, I can still hear him preaching!”

The simple truth is rarely simple

Dear friends,

We were knocked out by the snowstorm last Wednesday, and our power (and internet) was not restored until Friday evening. We had a number of trees down, and the cleanup will take a few days with the chainsaw. I will post photos when I get a chance. Thanks for coming back to this space in my absence.

My friend Steven Charleston, the retired bishop of Alaska, posted this on his Facebook this morning, and it speaks to me on many levels. I am not preaching today, so I leave you with this. . .

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The simple truth is rarely simple. I cannot explain the many twists and turns of my life, the reasons why, the fine shading of my choices, the hidden currents of the soul that carried me to the deep waters I tried to navigate. Like you, I often ponder the meaning of it all and share my quiet regrets, my endless thanks, my longing to understand more on the wings of prayers cast out into the patient sky. We each search for truth while we live truth and trust in a wiser mind above that understands why, a kinder heart that knows the truth and forgives just the same.

You can't take it with you -- or can you?

From our wonderful friend Steven Charleston comes this today...

I have been thinking of the old saying, you can't take it with you. It made me wonder. If you can't take your possessions with you, is there anything that you can you take? 

I began a suitcase list: a few of the things you can take with you. You can take the lasting respect of all those you blessed. You can take their enduring love. You can take the memory of every moment that made you glad to be alive. You can have the satisfaction of knowing you did your best. You can carry the hopes of a hundred hearts to heaven. You can take joy. In the end, who you are is what you take.

The Monday Funnies: Last Papal Breakfast

Thanks to Grace Cangialosi for passing this along.

Fig trees in the vineyards?

"Coastal Vineyard," by Gregory Kondos

Today's sermon is based primarily on Luke 13:1-9.

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This morning we are treated to a host of grim biblical passages about serpents, clouds, burning bushes, falling towers, blood mingled with meat, threats to a fig tree in the vineyards, and a pile of manure.

So I want to talk about something else – at least for a few minutes. You may not know this about me, but I have spent a lot of time in vineyards, and not just on the way from the car to the wine tasting room.

I have spent days and days in Napa Valley, and I’ve learned at the feet of the great vineyard masters like George Hendry, Davis Bynum, Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, and Mark West.

I’ve toured many of the vineyards in our Central Virginia region, and I have the greatest respect for the growers here who produce fine grapes in a wet climate.

I know that the Norton grape grows well here while the Pinot Noir grape does not.

When we lived in California, I even experimented with growing my own Chardonnay grapes, and Lori can tell you that the birds got more of my grapes than ended up as juice in the refrigerator.

I can show you how to graft a vine onto a disease-resistant root stock.

I’m familiar with how grape growers plant roses around the perimeter of their vineyards because rose bushes are susceptible to the same blights and diseases as grapes, and so rose bushes serve as an early-warning system in the vineyards.

I’m also familiar with how grape growers plant mustard between the rows in their vineyards in the winter to add nitrogen back into the soil.

I mention all of these elaborate details this morning so that you will trust me when I bring one simple fact to your attention:

No one – but no one – plants a fig tree in their vineyard.

A fig tree would consume too much ground water, the canopy would produce too much shade, and the fig tree would attract birds that would eat the grapes.

So when you hear this story about a fig tree in a vineyard, you should be alert to the possibility that this story might have to do with something other than figs and grapes.

Indeed, this entire passage from the Gospel of Luke is a cascade of figurative and metaphorical language designed to pull us out of our comfortable sense of reality.

The Luke passage begins with two historical inaccuracies: There is no record of Pontius Pilate massacring Galileans and mingling their blood with Roman sacrificial meat. He was a butcher, but he probably did not do that.

Nor is there any record, other than here, of a tower of Siloam falling on 18 people. And then we have this parable of man cursing a fig tree because it bears no fruit, and the gardener saying, give it another year.

So what is going on here? Does God hate figs?

In the time of Jesus, the fig tree was a symbol of religious teachers and their institutions. Rabbis taught while sitting under fig trees, and so fig trees were symbolic of the institutional religion of Jesus’ day.

In the Luke passage, Jesus seems to be saying that religious leaders have one more chance to get things right.

I find that a personally sobering message.

Yet there is also grace entwined in the figs and vines – even grace for religious leaders. And the grace that Jesus talks of come when we least expect it, in places we least expect, and from people we least expect.

If you keep reading this section of Luke beyond what is presented today, you will hear Jesus telling stories about how God’s grace springs forth from mustard seeds and yeast – or at unexpected times like a visitor in the night, or in unexpected places, like this fig tree growing where it does not belong, in a vineyard.

Give grace a chance, Jesus says. Let it grow. You never know where you will find it.

Yet these stories also come with admonitions that are hard to hear about sin and repentance. Not a popular topic then, not a popular topic now.

So let’s step back a few paces and look at the dreaded subject of sin. You might be surprised that the word “sin” does not quite mean what the popular culture thinks it means.

The basic meaning of sin is to be disconnected from God. To be born human, born mortal, means we are born disconnected from our creator. We are born into the noise of the world and into the deafening silence of our separation from God.

That is not a moralistic statement about good and bad, but a statement of reality. By being human, we cannot see God. In all of the Biblical stories, only one person has ever seen God – Moses. For the rest of humanity, we have times when might feel utterly disconnected from our creator.

To live in sin means to live in silence from God. It is unavoidable and real.

The sin Jesus talks of over and over is how we inherit this fractured broken world that seems perpetually disconnected from God – that is the meaning of “original sin.”

To be born requires learning how to live in this fractured broken world. We must learn many things to survive, including how to live amidst good and evil.

The allegorical story of the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve, is about this disconnection from God we all experience by virtue of leaving our mother’s womb – the Garden of Eden – and how we must learn to live.

Let me say as an aside, those who read the Adam and Eve story as a science text for “creationism” are sadly missing the point.

It is our disconnection from God that leads us to the arrogance of believing we need to rely on only ourselves – that we are more powerful than God.

And it is from that that self-centered focus that abusive “sinful” behavior comes.

To repent means to turn around – to turn back to God, to end our silence with our creator, to be humble enough to see that it is NOT all about us.

I hope you heard the words in one of the first prayers today, known as the “Collect of the Day”:

“Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves…”

It is from that starting point of humility that our repentance begins. That does not mean there are no morals or ethics, quite the contrary.

Our morals and ethics spring from our compassion and connection to God, and each other. We live morally and ethically because it is right so to do, not because of an expectation of reward and punishment.

If you read closely the stories of Jesus healing people, you will notice that Jesus connects forgiveness of sin with healing, and therein is a major clue to what Jesus ultimately means by sin and forgiveness – and this is the unexpected fig tree growing in the vineyard.

The forgiveness Jesus pronounces is about reconciliation with God and not about moralistic dogmas. In the healing stories of Jesus, people come who are sick, and they’ve done nothing wrong. It has taken me years to figure out why Jesus says they are “forgiven, sin no more” when they’ve done nothing wrong. He is saying you are reconnected with God – it is not a moralistic statement. Forgiveness gives us the power to turn back to God.

To be healed and forgiven – to live in the reality of salvation – is to end our silence with God despite the brokenness of the world where we dwell.

Our sin – our silence with God – is healed, and this healing brings us back into relationship with God so that we can help heal this fractured out-of-kilter world we inherit by our birth.

The lesson Jesus gives over and over is that grace, healing, forgiveness, reconciliation comes where and when no one thinks it will. It comes like a fig tree growing in vineyard.

We do need to give this fig tree a chance to grow. We do need to be open to the forgiveness and healing that comes our way when we least expect it.

We do need to plant a few fig trees in our vineyards. We might even surprise ourselves when we see it grow. AMEN.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Angels in the Alley: An invitation to a very special Lenten Saturday

Join us on Saturday, March 2, from 9 a.m. until noon, for a day of grace and reflection. We will look for experiences of grace in unexpected corners, in out-of-the-way places, and in the alleyways of life that we sometimes experience as dark. Hilary will present a series of reflections, and leave time and space for quiet reflection. Hilary came through our University ministry program, was baptized here, and sponsored by St. Paul's for ordination. She was a final candidate for Bishop Suffragan in our diocese.

About Hilary... 

The Rev. Dr. Hilary B. Smith: Hilary has been a parish priest in the Diocese of Virginia since June 2000. She recently left her position as rector of St. Paul’s on-the-Hill, Winchester, after serving there for over nine years, in order to have space and time to discern God’s call to her at this point in her life and ministry. She values silence, prayer, community, service, and the radical welcome of all. In addition to parish ministry, Hilary enjoys offering spiritual direction and leading retreats. Hilary received training to be a spiritual director at Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center in Richmond VA. Since 2004, she has served as a spiritual director for lay and ordained persons and for seminarians at the Virginia Theological Seminary.

In addition to parish retreats, Hilary has led retreats for college students, those about to be ordained, seminarians, and the Virginia Seminary faculty. Her spirituality has been influenced significantly by her association with the Jesuit Center in Wernersville PA, where she has made an annual seven-day, silent, directed retreat since 2003. In the summer of 2011, while on a sabbatical funded by the Lilly Endowment, Hilary was able to do the 30-Day Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at the Jesuit Center. During the sabbatical, she also did the 10-day Intensive Centering Prayer Retreat at Snowmass CO. Hilary loves to help people deepen their relationship with God, knowing that God is already at work in everyone's life. Her new blog," Angels in the Alley," focuses on experiences of grace in places or circumstances that are unexpected, out-of-the-way, or often experienced as dark.

Grace at dusk inside our walls

Yesterday was intense and busy. Our staff underwent a training exercise on how to interact with mentally ill people, and it was exhausting. In the afternoon I had an assortment of meetings, and I began wrestling with the upcoming Sunday sermon. The readings are not so easy and I got quickly lost. By 6pm I felt quite weary, and the evening schedule held the promise of a Vestry meeting.

Around dusk, I went upstairs into the nave of the church. It was dark, but not so dark that I couldn't see.

I stood at the Altar and looked out at the empty pews. I imagined the people who fill those pews week after week and gave thanks for them and the life they bring into these walls.

Then I sat in one of the pews  where one of our families, who are away on a year-long sabbatical, usually sit. I gave thanks for them and sent them a little prayer. And I enjoyed the cool calm for a good long while.

After I time I got up and read the plaques that are in the north facing windows. I'd never really read them. One plaque is dedicated to Col. James Skinner of the Confederate Army. He left his fortune to the University of Virginia to underwrite scholarships for Episcopal students. Our students at St. Paul's still benefit from his bequest. Another plaque was to a Mr. Bryan who had been president of Mary Washington University, and was on the Board of Visitors of UVA in the 1940s.

Many people have graced these walls, saints and sinners alike. They are truly the people of God. And for a time I get to be among them, and I give thanks.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

The road leads us home

Roman road north of Jerusalem
near ruins of "Emmaus"
Photo by James Richardson 2011

From Bishop Steven Charleston this morning . . .

I walk on, no matter how easy or difficult the path before me. I walk on in good weather and bad, under a beautiful sky, beneath a dark moon, I walk on when the road seems to pull me forward to discover what is around the next corner, or even when I need to stop for rest before I can take another step. I walk on without knowing when my journey will end, embracing the journey itself as gift, it is my life and calling. I walk on in peace, in wonder, in endless thanks that you walk with me, and that together we walk in faith, the road that leads us home.

Making sense of the atonement: Getting out of the hole

Today's sermon is based on the lectionary readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Psalm 2, Philippians 3:17-4:1 and Luke 13:31-35 . Here is the sermon:

Benvento di Giovanni, 1491, depicting
Jesus opening the gates of Hell
and crusing the devil under foot
National Gallery of Art

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I want to tell you a story, a parable, really.*

I like to tell this story now and then, and so some of you may have heard it. Please bear with me as I tell it again:

Once there was a man, and he was walking down a street. He fell into a hole, and he could not get out. It was deep and dark in the hole, and he waited and waited for help.

Eventually, he looked up and he saw a cop. “Officer, officer, help me get out the hole!”

The cop said, sorry, I am on my way to an emergency,” and he wrote something on a piece of paper and threw it in the hole

“Call 911, they’ll get you out of the hole.

But the guy in the hole had no phone.

A few minutes later, he looked up and saw a priest: “Pastor, pastor, please, help me get out of the hole!”

But the priest said, “Sorry, I have a pastoral emergency at the hospital.”

So the priest wrote something on a piece of paper and threw it in the hole.

“Here’s a prayer; you can pray to get out of the hole.”

But the man couldn’t read what was on the paper, and he was now really down.

Then he looked up and saw someone else standing at the top. The man was a friend he’d known for a long time.

“Hey, friend, help me get out the hole.”

The friend looked down, and thought for a moment. And then the friend jumped into the hole.

The first man was stunned. “Great, now we’re both stuck in the hole.”

“Yes,” the friend replied, “but I’ve been in the hole before and I know the way out.”

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In the gospel lesson today, Jesus begins his final journey to Jerusalem, the city where the only rule is the rule of violence and power, the city that kills the prophets, that kills dreams of mercy and justice. Jesus knows full well that he will be killed.

Why did Jesus go?

Today we approach a difficult, unpopular topic: the concept of the “atonement” – the idea that somehow Jesus dying on the Cross saves us from our sin.

Candidly, most explanations of atonement I’ve ever heard get lost in a deep hole. What is supposed to be a theology of hope gets smothered in the morbid concept of Jesus dying to pay ransom to a bloodthirsty God.

This idea of sacrificial atonement by Jesus comes primarily from one letter in the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews, whose author is unknown (and most certainly is not the apostle Paul).

The letter writer makes the argument that Jesus is the final substitute for all the animals that are sacrificed in the Jerusalem Temple. You get a hint of this today in Genesis with the description of cutting animals in two as a way to thank God in worship.

The argument goes that the animal sacrifices can now stop because Jesus has done the job of appeasing God. That may have made sense to people accustomed to killing animals as part of their worship, but I don’t think it makes much sense to us.

So is there another way of looking at this, another way of making sense of why Jesus goes to go to Jerusalem and the Cross?

The Apostle Paul comes to an answer that might surprise you if you cut away all of the religiosity and institutional varnish of the centuries.

For Paul, the Cross is about Jesus being divine enough to suffer the pain and humiliation of being human. It is about Jesus jumping in the hole and showing us the way out.

Jesus goes to the Cross to show the rule of power and violence won’t ultimately win. He goes to the very depths of Hell to free people from death, and show the way out to healing and new life – to Easter.

No one is beyond hope, no night is too dark, no hole too deep, for the light of Christ.

Heaven intends to include everyone.

But there is a challenge in this for each of us. We proclaim that we are the body of Christ, and that the Risen Christ dwells in us.

That ultimately means we, too, are called to go into the forgotten holes of this earth, and be as Christ to each other.

We, too, are the face of Christ to people who are poor, wounded and feeling abandoned.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

I’ve seen this happen only a few feet away from this pulpit, and not so very long ago.

A couple of years ago, we were hosting PACEM, an organization whereby churches take turns giving shelter to homeless people during the winter months.

That particular year, our church hosted a group of homeless women for two weeks, beginning on Christmas night. I volunteered to be the overnight host on Christmas night.

One of the jobs of being the overnight host, besides sleeping on an air mattress, is to get up early to make coffee.

I’m an early riser, so being up at 5:30 am was no big deal, but I must admit feeling a little sorry for myself that I hadn’t been home in my own bed on Christmas.

Just then one of our guests came in. I gave her a cup of coffee, and she wanted to talk.

She told me she had been paroled from prison only a few days earlier, and she hadn’t seen her grown son in many years. He was in the military, and he had called her on Christmas night.

She said the call from her son was the greatest Christmas present she had ever received, and she had hardly slept all night she was so thrilled.

Then she told me how she had fallen into a deep dark hole in her life.

She told me how perfect strangers, including some people right here in this church, had become the face of Christ to her in a few short hours.

And then I knew something else: She had become the face of Christ to me by sharing her story. We both got a glimpse of heaven that Christmas night, and how God intends Heaven begin here on earth with each of us.

Jesus does not promise us a comfortable bed or an easy way of life. We do not belong to a sanctified social club. The church cannot be just for insiders.

There are times when we are called to jump in the hole and be as Christ to one another, and times when someone will jump in the hole and be as Christ to us.

Jesus challenges us to take up our Cross daily, and take the hard path in our homes and in our classrooms, in our work and in the world. That is what it means to be his follower.

But know this too:

Jesus points us toward the dawn. He opens the gates of hell, and frees all who are in it. The grave is empty when Jesus leaves. And we are with him when he goes. AMEN

* I first heard the parable of the man falling in a hole on an episode of The West Wing, “Noel.” December 20, 2000.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Water and life, looking upstream

Ancient depiction of the Samaritan
woman at the well with Jesus

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4:13-17

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The dawn breaks cold and overcast this morning in Central Virginia. The weather report has icy rain on the way later today. Yet my morning reflection takes me far away, to the life-giving waters of Jacob’s well in the Judean desert that is depicted in John 4:1-26 in today’s Morning Prayer reading.

In the story, Jesus is on his way home to Galilee, having heard an argument has broken out among the Pharisees about the topic of baptism. Jesus cuts through Samaria, a land full of untouchables, and he pauses at the well. He encounters a Samaritan woman, and rich conversation ensues. Gender and religious stereotypes are cast to the dust, and it is one of those stories that preachers can mine from many directions. Indeed, I have commented on it four times before on this page.  We could go many more places; the passage might well have been written as an instruction manual for baptism.

This morning, though, I am struck by the simplicity of the water in the well. Life comes from water. Dirt is washed away by water. The old is washed away, and the new comes from it.

Sometimes in my prayers, I imagine myself sitting beside a cool mountain stream in a grassy meadow. Often I am looking downstream as the water flows past, remembering moments of my life that are gone. But today, I am looking upstream at the water yet to come, and giving thanks for what it will bring.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Grace in the pebbles

“You have shaken the earth and split it open; repair the cracks in it, for it totters…”Psalm 60:2 

“After this, Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized…” John 3:22

Photo by Lori Korleski Richardson

During Lent, I have taken to reading the psalms in the evening. Psalm 60 came as the lectionary assignment for last night, full of earthquakes, armies, enemies and God’s wrath. Not exactly comforting bedtime reading.

This morning’s reading from John 3:22-36 brings calm. Jesus is in the countryside, teaching his disciples and baptizing. A side discussion ensues about baptism and how it is a gift of the spirit. It is the only suggestion in any of the gospels that Jesus himself might have been baptizing people, though a few lines later the gospel writer says it is the disciples – not Jesus – who are performing the baptisms.

A couple of years ago, Lori and I traveled to the Judean countryside for a few days. In the morning I sat beside the Sea of Galilee and watched the sun rise. The beach was thick with stones and pebbles, the rubble from the earth split open from centuries of earthquakes and floods. I could easily imagine Jesus sitting on this shoreline, praying as the sun came up.

Nearby were olive groves, and it was easy for me to imagine Jesus and his disciples finding shade there at the noonday. No words were necessary for my imaginings.

I brought back a few olive leaves from the groves, and pressed them in my prayer book. I also brought back a pocketful of pebbles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I keep them in an olive wood bowl near my favorite chair at home.

Lately I hold one of the pebbles during my morning prayers. A few days ago, as I held the smallest of pebbles, I heard a small still voice telling me to look for the small pebbles of grace in my day.

I leave you with this today: Hold a pebble in your hand. Find the grace that comes your way. It might be very small, and unexpected. It might be a smooth or rough. But that pebble is a blessing that is yours to keep forever.

Also from today's readings. . .

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship.

Deuteronomy 10:12-20

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

I am still learning to grow in your love

For me, Lent is a time for getting back to basics, for brushing up and brushing off my prayer life. I feel blessed to enjoy a regular prayer practice every morning, but I've let a key part of my practice lapse in recent months --the "examen" at the end of the day.

The idea is to take the time to reflect on the moments of God's grace in the day that is closing, and where I might have fallen short in responding. It is a practice from Ignatian spirituality, the underlying foundation of the Jesuits (all of my spiritual directors have been Jesuits, so it rather fits with how I pray).

I have a card that helps me make this self-examination at the close of day. The card is tattered and in need of tape, but I still carry it in my prayer book, a gift from a member of one of our Education for Ministry groups. Here are the questions.

Light a candle, and try it out yourself tonight:

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Praying the Jesuit Examination of Conscience

1. Thanksgiving: Lord, I realize that all, even myself, is a gift from you.

Today, for what things am I most grateful?

2. Intention: Lord, open my eyes and ears to be more honest with myself.

Today, what do I really want for myself?

3. Examination: Lord, show me what has been happening to me and in me this day.

Today, in what ways have I experienced your love?

4. Contrition: Lord, I am still learning to grow in your love.

Today, what choices have been inadequate responses to your love?

5. Hope: Lord, let me look with longing toward the future.

Today, how will I let you lead me to a brighter tomorrow?

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

I am from the common earth

Sequoia National Park
Photo courtesy of the National Parks

From my friend Bishop Stephen Charleston...

I am from the common earth made, shaped by calloused hands, fashioned by a working God, whose design was to create a useful art, a mechanism mysterious but functional, a creation that could do something worthwhile, that could serve a good cause, and return value for what it cost, by making life for others just that much better. We are all from the common earth made, sisters of the soil, brothers of the ground on which we stand, varied but same shaped, built for the same goal, organic machines of love, durable in every season, set to a task shared in every part.

Monday Funnies

It's been too long since we've had the Monday Funnies. When better to start up again that in the dreariness of February? Here's a cartoon and a joke from Pat Hill at the expense of people in my profession.  Enjoy your week...

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A visiting minister was very long-winded. Worse, every time he would make a good point during his sermon and a member of the congregation responded with “Amen” or “That's right, preacher” he would get wound up even more and launch into another lengthy discourse.

Finally, the host pastor started responding to every few sentences with, “Amen, Pharaoh!”

The guest minister wasn't sure what that meant, but after several more, “Amen, Pharaohs” he finally concluded his very lengthy sermon.

After the service concluded and the congregation had left, the visiting minister turned to his host and asked, “What exactly did you mean when you said, ‘Amen, Pharaoh?’ ”

His host replied, “I was telling you to let my people go!”

Join us for Joyful Noise!

Last September we started a new worship service for kids and kids-at-heart -- called "Joyful Noise." We hold it in the Lounge at 10 am for songs, prayers and a story. Then everyone in Joyful Noise joins the bigger worship service for Holy Communion at about 10:40 am. Above is a wonderful photo taken today of Pastor Heather Warren leading Joyful Noise this morning. The turnout was smaller than usual, but no less joyful.

What if you know you are the beloved?

Judean desert, photo by Alexey Sergeev

Today's sermon is based on today's gospel lesson for the First Sunday in Lent: Luke 4:1-13

Here is the sermon:

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Have a seat.

It’s time we had a little serious talk about Lent.

Last week we were up in the thin air on the mountain at the Transfiguration with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Everything was shimmering and dazzling.

But today is Lent, the most serious season of the church year.

Here is what I want you to do about Lent this year: I want you to relax a little, ease up on the guilt, ease up on your worries, and take things a little slower and a little more simply.

All of which is to say: I want you to take Lent seriously like you never have before.

I want you to start every single day of Lent with a prayer – I learned this prayer from New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson. Here goes – repeat after me:

“I am the beloved of God.”

I want you to repeat that to yourself every single morning in Lent. Let’s do it again:

“I am the beloved of God.”

And I want you to start every single day for the rest of your life with that prayer.

“I am the beloved of God.”

I want you to say that enough times that you really believe it.

And then I want you to ask yourself a question every single day for the rest of your life: How does this make me feel to really know I am the beloved of God?

If you really know this – really believe this about yourself – that you truly are the beloved of God – where is that leading you in your walk with God?

And then ask, what is blocking you from walking on your path with God?

That is the reason for serious self-examination in the time of Lent.

What needs to change for you to live fully into being the beloved of God?

Where have you turned away from the path God would have you take? What is in your way?

Lent is a season of penitence. This is not about fake, sappy piety, but about having an honest conversation, at your deepest core, with God about where you are called to go and how to get onto that path.

That makes Lent a season of change, sometimes radical change.

If you want to give up something for Lent, give up whatever stops you from taking the next step on your path with God.

Is it an unhealthy habit? Or a distraction?

Give up being too busy to smile. Give up being too busy to pray and to listen. Or how about giving up being afraid to hear the small still voice telling you that you really are the beloved of God?

Find a way to simplify, slow down, lighten up, and discover again what really matters in life. Be generous like you never have before.

Do not simply withdraw into your own personal Lent, but look for the beloved of God in everyone you meet.

And that makes Lent something more than about us as individuals. Lent is really about all of us walking this path together.

If we can embrace a Holy Lent that is both inside us and beyond ourselves, maybe we might see that the hunger and pain of the world is ours, too.

That is why we open our doors to ministries like PACEM when we host women who are down on their luck, and have no other place to sleep to get out of the winter cold.

It is why we are involved in IMPACT, a coalition of 26 congregations in Charlottesville that is tackling the knotty systemic issues of homelessness and unemployment.

We do these things not just because they are good to do, but because we are connected to each other in this world as the beloved people of God.

The fact that Lent comes in the middle of winter is no accident. Maybe we need the chill of the air to remind us to be a little closer to each other.

Lent is the long season into the valley of Good Friday. Easter is coming, but not yet.

Nor is it an accident we get this strange story today from the Gospel of Luke. Like much else in Lent, the story is designed to shake us from our comfort zones.

Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, is led away from the refreshing waters of the River Jordan and into the desolation of the desert where he has a frightening vision of the Devil.

He is tested by the greatest temptation of all: Power.

He is offered the power to turn stone into bread; the power to rule every kingdom; the power to stay unharmed if he falls from the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Each of these tests has Jesus hovering above the world like the Greek God Zeus.

He can fix everything if he will stay above it all – and above us.

The ends will justify the means, or so the devil argues.

But Jesus rejects all of it.

Instead, he chooses to be down here, with us, in the griminess of the world. He chooses to be with us especially in those moments especially when we feel the most powerless.

He defines both his humanity and his divinity by being with us in the Valley of Lent – not hovering above us.

And then Jesus does one more thing: He invites us to walk out of that valley, as hard as that walk might be.

He invites us to know – to really know – that each of us is truly the beloved of God – always and forever – every single day of our life. AMEN.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

The next Pope? How about a nun?

I have several friends who are Catholic nuns. While the speculation is running rampant about where the next Pope will be from (Europe? Asia? Africa? The Americas?), the nuns I know are a little more jaded on this topic.

The male hierarchy have been bested by the sisters in recent years on issues like health care and advocacy for the poor. The men have been pushing back on the nuns of late. But the sisters are a resilient bunch. One them put this cartoon on her Facebook this morning.

Ashes to ashes

Our Ash Wednesday services were fuller than last year. I am not sure why, or what that means. I saw a lot of University of Virginia students throughout the day, many I have never seen before.

For me, Ash Wednesday is a powerful experience on many levels. It is a little like going to your own funeral. It takes a certain amount of courage for those who come to hear words of certain mortality and have ashes smeared on foreheads.

It also takes a certain amount of honesty to kneel and admit where we've lost our way in our walk with God and each other. There is a lot going on with Ash Wednesday.

For me, it was an exceedingly long day that began when I arrived at the church at 6:30 am and ended when I got home a little after 9 pm. I brought a pinch of ashes home for Lori who was feeling a little under the weather and missed the services. Somehow having ashes on her forehead and hearing that "to dust you shall return" perked her up. Ash Wednesday is definitely an experience like no other.

Here is the sermon I preached this Ash Wednesday.

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Whether you’ve experienced this a dozen times or this is your first Ash Wednesday, let’s hit the pause button to be candid about something:

Ash Wednesday is as strange as it gets.

Tonight we use words not heard in ordinary conversation, like “wretchedness” and “lamenting our sins” to describe our human condition.

In a few moments, we will have grimy ashes smeared on our forehead. We will hear “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

And after that, we will admit our sins, that as individuals, and as the human race, we’ve made a mess of this world, and we will pledge to do better – though we know we might not – and seek forgiveness, though we might not believe that we really are.

On the face of it, the words we use on Ash Wednesday are definitely not the most comforting, joyful words in the English language, or in the Christian religion, or for that matter, in any religion. This is not a warm and fuzzy feast day we are celebrating, not a day designed to attract new members. Ash Wednesday is probably one of those occasions that church growth experts would like us to forget.

The biblical lessons for Ash Wednesday are the same year after year, and they are reminders of how tough life can be, and how very thin we find the line between life and death.

In all candor, “To dust I shall return” is not something I particularly like to think about as I go through the daily drumbeat of my life.

There are no Christmas trees or Easter lilies today.

Just ashes.

Today we are asked to consider that we are mortal finite beings, that we will one day die, and that our bodies will disappear into the ashes and we will leave this world.

We are asked today to be a little brave and do something. We are asked to stand at the gate of our own death, and embrace the fact that we cannot reach new life without first passing through that gate.

Here on Ash Wednesday, we are doing something startling that goes totally against everything our culture teaches us:

Tonight, with ashes on our forehead, we proclaim that there is more to life than death, more to life than what we see now.

We declare there is more to the story than death – that death does not, and never will, get the last word.

With ashes on our forehead, we proclaim our defiance of death, and we embrace the promise of forgiveness and salvation that begins in this life and in this world.

The word salvation means healing. The root word of salvation is “salve,” which is healing ointment.

There can be no healing – no salvation – without the death of all that harms and hurts us, the death of all that enslaves us and holds is, the death of all that blocks us from the fullness and grace of life. That is the treasure Jesus speaks of, and that is where our heart should be. That is the gift of the ashes on our forehead.

If we can look through the ashes of our disappointments, the ashes of our wounds, the ashes the injustices in the world, we might just catch a glimpse of the healing that is the promise of new life today for us – now.

As Paul reminds us, “see, now is the day of salvation!”

That is why Ash Wednesday begins this season of Lent.

That is the true purpose of Lent – this season for simplifying, for the “giving up” of those things that get in our way of experiencing the fullness of God’s amazing grace.

Begin Lent with honest self-examination about your life, about your whole being. Self-examination can be hard, and takes courage, but it is a gift for your whole self.

Ask yourself this: What is it that gets in your way of experiencing the fullness of God’s love in your life? What do you need to give up that is a barrier for you?

Let me suggest we can start here today by giving up this: The fatalism that pervades our collective life and culture that says grab for all you can get because that is all there is.

Let’s give up the idea that death is all that there is.

Yes, we will die, but we will be made new again beyond the limits of what we see now, in ways we cannot yet experience.

And then maybe we might go one more step beyond the ashes to find another gift.

If we can embrace the gift of God’s love given to us, maybe we can see that the gift of God’s love is given to all people everywhere, of every tribe, every nation, every religion. Ours is not a small God.

Maybe when we see that, we might grasp, at the depth of our soul, that every pain, every wound – every injustice on this planet, is shared by us, too.

Maybe in these ashes, we can see ourselves as truly the brothers and sisters God intends us to be, and then do what we have been given to do to bring God’s Kingdom alive on earth as it is in heaven. If we can do that, it would be truly the gift of these ashes.

Amen.

James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Uh oh, it's Lent. Now what do I do?

Lent is upon once again, the season of fasting, penitence, and "giving up" things.

Maybe this year I should try to take something on -- like writing on this page again. I admit I've felt too pressed for time, found my life filled with too many meetings and too many mini-dramas in the church world to take the time to reflect in this space. But I've missed it.

So, dear readers (those of you who still come here), it's time for me to get back to pen and paper (or fingers and keyboard) and start writing again.

As Lent unfolds this year, I will likely have a few things to say about issues in our world, like guns, poverty and homelessness. I also will reflect once again on prayers, church politics (maybe), and post a few jokes for good measure. And cartoons by Dave Walker, like the one on this page.

Let me also mention that members of our wonderful Charlottesville congregation wrote reflections for Lent, one for each day. You can read them on a special blog we've set up HERE.

If you lose the link, it all you need do is click the purple cross on the upper left and that will get you there, or go to the homepage for St. Paul's to find the link.

May you have a blessed Lent. Ashes to ashes.

Jim+

Statement by Presiding Bishop Katharine about gun violence

The United States has witnessed far too many public shootings in recent months and years. Far too many lives have been cut short or maimed by both random and targeted acts of gun violence. The school shooting in Newtown was horrific, yet since that day several times as many young people have died by gunshot.

It is abundantly clear that Americans are ready to grapple with the complexities of gun violence. The Spirit is moving across this land to mobilize people of faith to act. I urge the United States members of this Church to call your federal legislators on Monday 4 February to express your concern and your expectation that gun violence be addressed. The outlines of the necessary policy decisions are clear and widely supported: limits on sales of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, effective background checks for all gun purchases, better access to mental health services, and attention to gun trafficking.

We believe all God's people should be able to live in peace, as Zechariah dreams, "old men and women shall again sit in the streets...And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing." The prophet reminds his hearers that even if this seems impossible, with God it is not. [Zech 8:4-6] I urge you to add your voice to those clamoring for peace. Call your legislators and sue for peace.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

Down by the Riverside: Our Baptismal Covenant and guns, mental health care and the culture of violence

Jordan River

Today's sermon is based on Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22.

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The people were filled with expectations and they were blessed and they were the beloved. May you be filled with expectations, blessings and know you are the beloved. Amen.


Listen again to the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”

What must these people have seen and heard, standing in line at the river?

They had come from seemingly everywhere, traveling a long perilous journey across desert and mountains, to the lowest place on earth – the Jordan River Valley.

Now they stood in line, waiting to be washed in the river by a strange holy man, to be baptized into a new way of living.

Standing next to them in line was a young man from the north, from the region known as the Galilee.

Did they even notice him in line?

Or were they so consumed by their own worries, their own struggles, their own expectations, that they didn’t notice who stood with them.

He waited his turn. If he said anything to anyone, no one seems to have noticed enough to remember it or what he looked like.

Yet one man did notice. John, he was known, the one who they would call “the Baptist.”

John was an austere man of the desert, living off the land, and he attracted followers, lots of them. We can guess some of them were starving. Maybe all he could give them was insects and a little honey. It was all he ate, and it was enough.

Then there were these lines of people from all over the Judean countryside, waiting to see him.

Maybe some were fleeing from something, but I will bet most were not unlike us – searching for some sense that God is with them, that God has not deserted them in their troubles.

And there was this other man standing in line, this man from the north, and he came alone.

John, the one they called the Baptist, he noticed him. He knew exactly who he was, and he knew in an instant that the world would never – could never – be the same.

He washed this lone man in the river, baptized him like so many others. But this time it was different. This time it was the Baptist who felt like he had been washed, made new, made holy.

And he heard the voice, maybe only a whisper, saying that this man in the river is “my beloved. Listen to him.”

For countless centuries many have pondered this scene, debated its significance, wondered why on earth Jesus, the Son of God, would chose to stand in line with all these troubled people and chose to baptized.

To find the answer, maybe we need look no further than ourselves. By standing in line to be baptized, Jesus chose to be one of us, to share in the same troubles, to experience life as we experience it, and ultimately to bring the Godness within him to dwell with us, too.

He yearned to show us that we, too, are the beloved of God, that our very existence is God’s dream.

Today we are passing along this gift of God’s dream through baptism to three children: Charlotte, James, and Alice.

We will stand with them at the font in the center of our church, where so many have been baptized for decades and decades.

We will signify with the outward symbols of water and words, music and prayers, that these three beautiful children are the beloved of God.

And we will do more: We will promise to stand with them in whatever life brings them. We will declare that nothing – nothing – will separate them from the love of God. Down through the centuries, many have declared this reality in countless places, and in countless ways.

Indeed, today, by what we do, we are reaching back thousands of years to the ancient Hebrew prophets.

Listen again to the prophet Isaiah, who in a few short words proclaims the very essence of what we do today:

“You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

No one can be a bystander today. Baptism brings with it challenges for each one of us.

In a few moments, we will join together in renewing our baptismal covenant. We will make promises for how we will live our life in faith – promises not just for ourselves but for these three children and for every child in the entire world.

We will pledge to pray together and share in the breaking of the bread – regularly.

We will promise to love our neighbors as ourselves – regularly – and promise that when we fall into sin – as we will do regularly – that will return to the Lord, again and again.

And here is the hardest one. We will promise to respect the dignity of every human being.

By doing this, we are holding these promises in trust for these three children until they are old enough to hold these promises for themselves.

If we take seriously the promises of our baptism, that will have consequences and will change the world.

Our baptism commissions us to be servants for each other, servants of our community and servants of every nation. The only privilege of our baptism – the only privilege – is the privilege to be servants.

We can start by proclaiming in word and example that we stand for an end to the way of violence, warfare, poverty, and ignorance – and an end to the idol of guns.

I want you to know that, with 27 others from our diocese, I have co-sponsored a resolution at our upcoming Diocesan Council to join with other religious communities in calling for laws restricting the sale high-powered military weapons; strengthening our mental health system; and calling on all of us to take a critical look at our culture that glorifies violence.

My baptismal promises compel me to do no less.

People of faith can differ on the details, yet we must not shrink from doing what we can to make our world safer.

Yet know this too: Wherever we go in life, whatever good we do, or the mistakes we make, Christ Jesus stands in this line with us – joins us in the water of baptism – telling us over and over that each one of us is the beloved, each of us is God’s dream.

“Do not fear,” Isaiah proclaims, “for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”

These are the promises that never, never, never end. AMEN

James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Snowing in Jerusalem

A rare day: Snowing in Jerusalem today. Notice the kids making snow angels near the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. Pray for that peace in the Holy Land will come and not on a rare day.

A new year reflection from Sister Simone Campbell

Dear friends,

May your new year be filled with many blessings, and I promise to get back into the swing here on Fiat Lux. Last fall we were treated to my friend Sister Simone Campbell preaching and teaching at St. Paul's. She is the leader of the "Nuns on the bus," a group of women religious who have been drawing attention to how our politics is hurting poor people.

This morning Sister Simone shared with Odyssey Networks a short (two minutes) reflection on what she hopes for the new year. I share it with you:

The Greatest Christmas Story Ever Told: "Get the kid his peaches"

Here again, my friends, is the greatest Christmas story ever told by a great story teller, Al Martinez, formerly of the Oakland Tribune and Los Angeles Times. 

I run this story every year in Fiat Lux, and it brings a tear to my eye every time. Seems like maybe this year we could use this story a few days early. So here it is:

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A Christmas Story

By Al Martinez

IT happened one Christmas Eve a long time ago in a place called Oakland on a newspaper called the Tribune with a city editor named Alfred P. Reck.

I was working swing shift on general assignment, writing the story of a boy who was dying of leukemia and whose greatest wish was for fresh peaches.

It was a story which, in the tradition of 1950s journalism, would be milked for every sob we could squeeze from it, because everyone loved a good cry on Christmas.

We knew how to play a tear-jerker in those days, and I was full of the kinds of passions that could make a sailor weep.

I remember it was about 11 o'clock at night and pouring rain outside when I began putting the piece together for the next day's editions.

Deadline was an hour away, but an hour is a lifetime when you're young and fast and never get tired.

Then the telephone rang.

It was Al Reck calling, as he always did at night, and he'd had a few under his belt.

Reck was a drinking man. With diabetes and epilepsy, hard liquor was about the last thing he ought to be messing with, but you didn't tell Al what he ought to or ought not to do.

He was essentially a gentle man who rarely raised his voice, but you knew he was the city editor, and in those days the city editor was the law and the word in the newsroom.

But there was more than fear and tradition at work for Al.

We respected him immensely, not only for his abilities as a newsman, but for his humanity. Al was sensitive both to our needs and the needs of those whose names and faces appeared in the pages of the Oakland Tribune.

"What's up?" he asked me that Christmas Eve in a voice as soft and slurred as a summer breeze.

He already knew what was up because, during 25 years on the city desk, Reck somehow always knew what was up, but he wanted to hear it from the man handling the story.

I told him about the kid dying of leukemia and about the peaches and about how there simply were no fresh peaches, but it still made a good piece. We had art and a hole waiting on page one.

Al listened for a moment and then said, "How long's he got?"

"Not long," I said. "His doctor says maybe a day or two."

There was a long silence and then Al said, "Get the kid his peaches."

"I've called all over," I said. "None of the produce places in the Bay Area have fresh peaches. They're just plain out of season. It's winter."

"Not everywhere. Call Australia."

"Al," I began to argue, "it's after 11 and I have no idea . . .”

"Call Australia," he said, and then hung up.

If Al said call Australia, I would call Australia.

I don't quite remember whom I telephoned, newspapers maybe and agricultural associations, but I ended up finding fresh peaches and an airline that would fly them to the Bay Area before the end of Christmas Day.

There was only one problem. Customs wouldn't clear them. They were an agricultural product and would be hung up at San Francisco International at least for a day, and possibly forever.

Reck called again. He listened to the problem and told me to telephone the secretary of agriculture and have him clear the peaches when they arrived.

"It's close to midnight," I argued. "His office is closed."

"Take this number down," Reck said. "It's his home. Tell him I told you to call."

It was axiomatic among the admirers of Al Reck that he knew everyone and everyone knew him, from cops on the street to government leaders in their Georgetown estates. No one knew how Al knew them or why, but he did.

I made the call. The secretary said he'd have the peaches cleared when they arrived and give Al Reck his best.

"All right," Reck said on his third and final call to me, "now arrange for one of our photographers to meet the plane and take the peaches over to the boy's house."

He had been drinking steadily throughout the evening and the slurring had become almost impossible to understand.

By then it was a few minutes past midnight, and just a heartbeat and a half to the final deadline.

"Al," I said, "if I don't start writing this now I'll never get the story in the paper."

I won't forget this moment.

"I didn't say get the story," Reck replied gently. "I said get the kid his peaches."

If there is a flash point in our lives to which we can refer later, moments that shape our attitudes and affect our futures, that was mine.

Alfred Pierce Reck had defined for me the importance of what we do, lifting it beyond newsprint and deadline to a level of humanity that transcends job. He understood not only what we did but what we were supposed to do.

I didn't say get the story. I said get the kid his peaches.

The boy got his peaches and the story made the home edition, and I received a lesson in journalism more important than any I've learned since.

I wanted you to know that this Christmas season.

Al Martinez is a former reporter and columnist for The Oakland Tribune, from 1955 to 1971, The Richmond (Calif.) Independent and Los Angeles Times to now. Born in Oakland, he also has written several novels, for television and the movies. This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 25, 1986.

Saturday Prayer vigil for shooting victims

Dear friends,

All of us are shocked and filled with sorrow at the shooting deaths at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. I know that everyone in the St. Paul’s community is holding in our prayers all of those who have died, their families, and those who are caring for the injured and bereaved.

Our church is a place of prayer and refuge. We will have our doors open all day on Saturday for those who would like to come for prayer and reflection. We will hold a special evening prayer service on Saturday evening at 5:30 pm in the Chapel. If you can come, please join us.

 Rector Jim Richardson

  “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3