A Feline Farewell

Reunited after three years of seminary
 

Valkyrie “Kyrie” Gage aka Rivkah bat Chava v’ Shoshanah

July 1, 2002-September 23, 2021

I am heartbroken to post that our beloved sweet and very loving cat, Kyrie, has crossed over the rainbow bridge to be reunited with her dog pal, Sammie, her true love, Boris, and to find her Nana Gage, who she adored and liked boys as much as she did. She probably does not want to see her brother Ziggy, so we won’t go there and the sister she never met, Pepita, wouldn’t want to meet her.

We “poached” Kyrie at Railroad Square one night during a run of the fall Faust cabaret. Her G-dmother, Dr. Sherri Kasper, was in the cast and helped to capture this tiny gray kitten that chased a bug into our dressing room. Her Aunt Beatrice and Uncle “Mr. Boy” Matt took her to our house after we were introduced to this little creature, pounding her paw through the dilapidated beer box that was serving as her makeshift cage. Her feisty nature was the signal that we had found a new cat.

Kyrie started out quite feral. She did not want us to talk to her or touch her and if we picked her up, she would try to swat us in the lips. Gradually, once she was over the insult of having been removed from Railroad Square and provided an 1100-square foot house with beds and chairs and other luxuries, she allowed the “tall one” (who would later become “Christian mommy” or “Shabbos Goy”) to interact with her. I would sit outside to do crosswords, and she would wander around the yard and then eventually sit with me and let me touch her.

It was only after we made the fatal mistake of adopting Ziggy, a lanky orange boy cat who was the perfect annoying little brother, that she learned to be truly affectionate. She saw how Ziggy would get things because he loved to sit in our laps and ride on my shoulders. Shortly before his sudden death, Kyrie came to me one night, let out a mournful meow (she normally just trilled) and jumped in my lap, allowing me to pet her for an hour. She wanted me to know that she knew how to be a lap cat, too, and that I was forgiven for bringing Ziggy into the fold. Following his death, she became very affectionate toward both of us, and enjoyed when I would carry her around the house in my arms or on my shoulder and let her look at the world from a higher angle.

When she was young, Kyrie liked to have me roll rocks down the driveway so she could chase them. She was very good at batting them down and loved to hop like a rabbit when she got particularly excited. She was an excellent huntress, and once treed a raccoon. For a time, she would play with a miniature dachshund named Patty. Patty’s owner would bring her over to the house and the two of them would do sideway ninja runs across the back of the furniture in the living room and wrestle and tumble around on the floor.

When Isabelle converted to Judaism, I made a promise that we would raise Kyrie to be Jewish. This was in response to the question that had been posed to Isabelle about how she planned to “keep a Jewish household living with a non-Jew (aka me).” Kyrie enjoyed sitting with her “Jewish mommy” when she would listen to practice recordings of the Temple Israel cantor as Isabelle was learning her Torah portion. Kyrie never quite understood rules of kashrut, believing that the rules did not apply to “mountain lions” (she was small, but believed herself to be bigger). For years, Isabelle made Kyrie’s cat food to counter all of her peculiar ailments that we suspected might have a connection to her diet. This might account for her longevity.  

She always seemed to enjoy listening to the sounds of Hebrew…and would often walk out on me during Christian services the minute we started to recite the Apostles or Nicene Creed or the Lord’s Prayer. She never understood, nor did she appreciate, my absence to attend seminary. She finally made her displeasure known when she peed all over my first-year notebooks (thankfully, she waited until AFTER I took the General Ordination Exams!)

Her decline started about two weeks after her 19^th birthday. We had lots of suggestions of what might be happening, but in the end, it is unknown exactly what made her go downhill so quickly. And this last week has been very difficult to watch her lose all interest or ability to eat. As hard as it was to make the decision to have her put down, it is the best decision.

We are going to miss her very expressive little thumb tail, her trilling which in these last few years developed into full-throated meows, and how she was always wanting to greet us and anyone who visited. If they happened to be men, well, that was all the better in her world. Isabelle and I are grateful to Sherri and The Animal Hospital at Southwood.

Zichronah livracha. May her memory be for a blessing.

 

 

The Need for Prayer: A Sermon for Pentecost 21B at St. Barnabas

 

This was a terrible week in my life. A post to follow this one will explain it a little more, but I had to finally say "good bye" to my beloved cat, Valkyrie "Kyrie" Gage, who was one of the most loving animals I have had in my life. It broke my heart to leave her to go seminary. And I was just happy that she hung on long enough to have a couple months together once I got home. That said, I simply could not wrap my mind around the Gospel for this week, and I had to prepare to lead a vestry retreat the Saturday before at St. Barnabas, so this sermon had to be written in a day and be what it was going to be. Certainly, I needed a lot of prayer; I imagine others did, too. And as I joked, "If you want to talk to me about cutting off your hands or gouging out your eyes, we can do that at another time." 

+++

One of my friends and mentors once told me years ago that one should always preach on the Gospel. That’s the only text preachers should focus on for their sermons. Fortunately, I went to seminary and my Homiletics professor…Homiletics is the preaching course…told us we do NOT have to preach on the Gospel every Sunday. In fact, she encouraged us to break away from that mode of thinking that the Gospel is the only text we need to hear about. Thanks be to God for that! Much as I love all four of Gospels for different reasons, and much as I can get into Mark and would love to one day stage a dramatic reading of Mark’s Gospel because it so action-packed and dramatic, I found myself this week reflecting on and being deeply drawn to our reading from the Letter of James.

As just a little bit of context about this reading: for some reason, the committee that assembled our lectionary readings decided to hit the fast-forward button…and skipped us past the first half of James Chapter Five that set the stage for why James has chosen to end this wisdom letter with a statement about prayer. Briefly, what we have not heard this morning is that in the preceding 12 verses of Chapter Five, James calls out the rich and those who exploit laborers and then turns his attention to the ones being oppressed reminding them not to lose hope in their place of suffering.

And so we start with today’s reading:

 “Are any among you the suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” (James 5:13-14).

Prayer is our avenue for being in dialogue with God…both with and without words. We tend to pray at times of suffering or illness, and James is reminding us here that at times of joy and celebration, we should also pray with music and songs. Lift up our voices in Hallelujahs for the birth of a child…a new life-giving work opportunity…recognition of accomplishments. Those are the times to sing to the Lord a new song…rejoice in God and call upon God’s name!  In fact there’s the old adage that those who sing songs of praise are praying twice.

Music can be a helpful way to enter prayer because it speaks to the right side of the brain, that center of our creative activity, and doesn’t require words. It can be a potent and powerful way to pray with those who have suffered a stroke or are living with Alzheimer’s slowly stealing their memories. More than once when I was doing my chaplaincy at Hebrew Home in Rockville, Maryland, I found the best way to communicate with residents was to sing with them. There was one African-American woman who had had a stroke. She didn’t talk much at all, but would nod her head yes or no, or she might tell me “my back” and then make a face to indicate that her back was hurting. I decided to try music with her. And I figured a woman of her age, she was in her 80s, I couldn’t go wrong with suggesting I play some Mahalia Jackson singing “Precious Lord.” On this particular visit, I pulled up the YouTube video on my phone, and we started listening to Ms. Jackson’s soulful rendition. I looked at this resident and sang along with the recording. And this lady, who had not said much at all on my other visits, joined with me in singing along with the video. We became our own duo in her room, praying for God to take our hand and help us stand.

 I have been talking about songs of praise and thanksgiving, and music can sometimes be the simplest way for some to express themselves when they are feeling too broken inside for words. It can also aid us when we feel our prayer life is dry.  

I’m talking about those times when we pray and we just aren’t sure that God is listening. The 16^th-century Carmelite mystic John of the Cross termed this the “Dark Night of the Soul.” We’re in the Dark Night of the Soul times when we pray but feel nothing in return. Our prayers may feel like “Blah,” just rote and mechanical.

Or maybe we are in anguish, and we pray but we still are left feeling restless and hopeless and we wonder if we’ve been abandoned. The psalms are full of such prayers, including the one Jesus quoted from the cross, Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

For John of the Cross, this is not a time to believe that prayer is worthless. Rather this is the time when our faith is actually experiencing a growth spurt because it is being put to the test. When we are in the Dark Night, the demand of us is the ability to develop patience, which requires sometimes slowing down, relaxing our minds, and breathing through the time of trial we are in. It is a time of letting go of the attachment that we will get an answer to our prayers. We tend to want to fashion God not only in our own image, but to meet our own ends and our own desires and to do it right now. John of the Cross, and his fellow Spaniard Teresa of Avila encourage us instead to not be attached to a particular outcome of our prayers. The attachment becomes a distractor and even blocks us from having a real dialogue with God. Developing an openness gives us the chance to move through the darkest parts of the Dark Night to discover the awe and wonder of God’s constant presence around us.

Now in letting go of a fixed outcome…we are not going to satisfy that 21^st century need to have God immediately text back a thumbs up or smiley emoji.

But God may show up to us in the face of a friend or even a stranger treating us with love, kindness and dignity when we’re under stress. Or simply in being able to get a good night’s sleep and wake up with a clearer mind to put toward whatever had been weighing us down the many nights before. That may be the beginning of a prayer being answered.

If individual prayer is good, then bringing our individual selves together in community to pray corporately for the needs of our world and others is especially important. Giving voice and acknowledgement to what is happening around us and placing that before God serves as the reminder that there is a Source of strength, courage, compassion and mercy that is greater than ourselves.

Our corporate prayers don’t make things happen. By lifting up our hearts and minds to God in prayer, putting our intentions out there in a Godward direction, we are trusting God to hear us and meet us. And in making this a communal activity, it draws us closer to one another, and creates bonds that are deeper than the superficial and quirky things that make us different. And in our world today, where there just seems to be so much anger and strife, putting aside our differences to pray may be a way for us bring the temperature down and start to see each other again as children of God.

One thing in the James letter that I think needs to be addressed is the talk of “sin” in connection with being “sick.” In this case, we’re seeing that James was a man of his First Century time when disciples believed that people became physically blind or disabled because they “sinned.” I think we now know that disability is not a sin and I also trust we know that microbes that cause viruses infect people…no matter who the people are or how often they pray. But if we look at this in another way… when people are sick or ill…it does result in a separation from their church community, and that can feel like a separation from God. And the most common short-hand definition of “sin” is “separation from God.” This is one of the reasons it is so important for us to remain informed about who in our membership is not here because of an illness. 

Physical and social isolation has been such a constant since March 2020 that we might have become numb to the pain it causes. And this separation brings shame on the person who is sick as if they have control over a virus or any ailment that has got them down. This is why James says it is so important for the elders of the church to go out and meet the person at their sick bed. Elders can mean clergy, but it can also mean longtime members or others who have a leadership role in the congregation. This past week, I have seen evidence that this is happening at some level in our own community with texts and emails alerting me to a problem with one of our members. And it seems there is an interest in making this even more a part of what we do here.

Finally… bringing people back who have gone away. James maintains helping the person who has wandered off from the community not only helps the wanderer; it will “cover a multitude of sins.” This odd ending to the letter leaves room for some reflection for us. Lots of people have wandered off because COVID hit and caused a lot of fear and caution and maybe even confusion about being open. We are open. But how will people know that? And how will they know how they will be received when they come back? The only way for them to know that we’re thinking of them is to invite them back to be part of our community.

A community that worships and prays together is one that grows stronger, healthier and more vibrant. And praying helps to shape what we believe and demonstrate in our interactions with others out in the world. May the love of God…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, grow in you through regular dialogue with God in prayer.  

 

 

 

Keeping Anxiety at Bay: A sermon for 20B at Christ the King, Valdosta

Last Thursday, Christ the King closed on their new building at 110 McKey Street in Valdosta. The location is only a few blocks from where they used to be on E. Central Avenue. It is a big deal for this congregation. Their founder and only rector, Stan White, passed away at the end of December last year during COVID (although he did not die of COVID). It has been a process of grieving, which involved letting go of their old building, and worshipping in a borrowed space from Christ Episcopal Church across from the Valdosta State campus. They also discovered that they have a lot of work to do to tighten up the accounting practices of the parish, much of which has already been started under their interim. So, this unusual parish, known for their mass reception into the Episcopal Church (the whole congregation had been under the Assembly of God Church when the Rev. White took them en masse into the Episcopal Church in the late 1980s) has been through a lot. And they're about to embark on some more steps in their journey. 

+++

Before I get into the Scripture we just heard, I want us to take some time with the words from our Collect of the Day…that prayer which basically summarizes all our intentions for this Sunday…

“Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now while we are placed among things passing away to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God, for ever and ever, Amen.”

These days…I think it’s pretty tough to keep our minds on the heavenly…and not be anxious about the things that are earthly.

We are still living with the pandemic and COVID variants and that has made people more anxious and irritable.

Racism still persists.

Classism and social inequity continue.

And there are lots and lots of other earthly concerns that pull our minds away from things “heavenly.” Jobs, mortgages, football…(I know that’s another religion, but still…)

I have friends who are sensitive to the seasons and with the Fall Equinox coming…they know that summer is over…we’re heading toward the months when it gets darker earlier in the day…and that affects their mood.

The church has its own earthly anxieties as vestries grapple with what to do about budgets and property. Fortunately, for us, we now have a new building and we are taking the steps toward calling a new rector. That’s an exciting prospect filled with opportunities…that may also cause some anxiety. The way “things always have been” may need to change. The new means sometimes having to let go of some of the old. And so it is a good reminder that we have here in the collect that even as things happening around us may cause us to feel anxious and as though the earth beneath our feet is rolling and rocking like we’re in an earthquake, that’s the time to double-down on our need to look to God…fix our hearts and minds and souls on the Source of Life and Love to keep us from falling apart.

          As l look at our readings for today, I can definitely see anxiety written all over the disciples’ reactions in our Gospel.

It’s not surprising, really, that they might be feeling anxious. They are now on their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus has told them, yet again, that there is going to be a clash between him and the ruling authorities…he is going to be killed…and he is going to rise again. They don’t get it. Or maybe they don’t want to believe it. And they have already seen how Jesus dressed down Peter for protesting this prediction about Jesus’ fate and none of them want to be called out in the same way.

Still, the thought of this leader, this Messiah, not understanding that he’s their knight in shiny armor who’s going to burn it all down and save Israel from the iron fist of the Roman Empire is causing them to be anxious.

I mean, if Jesus dies, what happens next? What are they going to do? Who is going to be in charge and take his place? And they start murmuring with each other. Comparing notes on who has the greater status.

Is it Peter, the extrovert who called it correctly that Jesus is the Messiah?

“No way!” say James son of Zebedee and his brother John: he called us the Sons of Thunder, that makes us the greatest.

“Oh, doubtful!” scoffs Thomas, “I’m analytical and loyal. I’m the greatest!”

“You’re all wrong!” chimes in Andrew. “Fisher of people. I’m bringing ‘em in! That makes me the greatest!”

 The jockeying for position…the desire to be the most important…the first…that’s all such a product of the human ego. Our fragile egos crave the attention…and that’s what the world has taught us to seek. We all want that blue ribbon, the first place award and all the accolades and recognition and power and prestige.

And if someone else gets rewarded? If someone else is the winner? That’s when our ego starts to become anxious…and quiver and shake and worry: what becomes of me if this other person gets the recognition?

You may have heard the acronym FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. Missing out on the next best thing or being the first to get the latest gadget that is supposed to make us happier. The FOMO phenomenon contributes to our dis-ease and keeps us from living into the present moment.

That is so much of what is going on with disciples as they bicker over this idea of “Who is the greatest.”

Jesus is aware that something is going on with the disciples…kind of in the same way that mom’s have eyes in the back of their head, y’know. And that’s when he, just like a mom, wants to know “What all were you arguing about?” He doesn’t really have to ask because he already knew what was going on.

They still have not understood that he is not a Messiah of Might and Fight but a Prince of Peace and Unconditional Love.

And he knew that, once again, he was going to have to use an illustration to make his point. And so he takes up a child in his arms.

“You see how I am holding this child? How I am welcoming this child? This child who depends upon the kindness of strangers? To align yourselves with the vulnerable and not worry about being the most popular or powerful…that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about greatness.”

This is an important contrast as Jesus and the disciples head on their way to Jerusalem for a confrontation with an anxiety-producing Empire, a system which props up fearful men such as Pontius Pilate to govern using every means necessary to thwart anyone who dares to challenge the status quo.

For Jesus, true power comes in throwing their lot in with the children, widows, those on the margins…the least and the lowest. Welcoming them and serving them and lifting them up is the sign of real greatness.

What a wonderful image and message for us to embrace here at Christ the King!

As we move back into the downtown area into our new place that stands along buildings with ballrooms and the Chamber of Commerce and the Court House…our presence will serve as a reminder that amidst all these earthly powers sits at the heart of the city a sanctuary of compassion and mercy. A house of worship for all comers.

A place where greatness is derived from our service to the people who are looking for kindness and seeking to find some peace.

Our place can serve as an oasis where—as one of our former presiding bishops once said—those seeking Christ can “fast on fear…and feast on faith” (++A. Lichtenberger), a faith which encourages thoughtfulness and stewardship of the gifts we’ve been given.

I hope we’re all excited about where we’re going…even if we may have some lingering fears about the changes it will bring. Because God is still working God’s purpose out as we move into this next phase.

May we have the courage to lay down our own anxieties as we trust in the Spirit’s guidance and welcome this next step in the journey. And let the church say….Amen.

 

"Who Do You Say That I Am?" A Sermon for St. Barnabas Proper 19B

 

 

 

I don't really think this one needs much of an introduction. This was the day after the world marked the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and the failed attempt to hit the U.S. Capitol. I made no mention of it in the sermon. We did remember the event in our Prayers of the People.

+++

Prayer: Almighty God, give us wisdom to perceive you, intellect to understand you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, vision to uphold you, a heart to meditate on you, and life to proclaim you. Amen.-St. Benedict

         “Who do you say that I am?”

Before we get going too deep into what I am going to offer this morning, let’s just take a moment to pause and reflect on that question.

“Who do we say Jesus is?”

If we think about Jesus…what are the words we use to describe him?

What is the mental image we have of him?

How do we relate to him?

I think the way we answer that question will speak to the how we see ourselves as we live and move and interact with others out there in the world.

I had this question posed to me once. It was asked rather pointedly, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

The person who asked it was a bishop from a state south of here…and it was asked, as I said, in a very pointed way.

My honest answer and the one that I stand by to this day was, “Jesus Christ is the greatest liberator from oppression ever.”

My vision of Jesus is the one who breaks down closed doors, flings open our minds, enters into the dark corners of our hearts and brings us light and walks with us during our times of trouble to remind us not to let our fears overshadow our joys.

Such a Jesus helps me to feel connected to all that is around me and know that even what I see is only a fraction of the greater picture.  Whether it’s other people or the natural world there is always so much more…more than fine gold and sweeter than honey in the comb.

“Who do you say that I am?”

We hear Peter’s answer to that question.

Peter, the extrovert, the one who can hardly contain himself when the light bulb goes off in his head, we can imagine him grinning with almost a raptured look of awe and wonder when he announces, “You are the Messiah!”

Messiah, for Peter and the rest of disciples, is the one who is going to restore Israel’s glory and set them free from being under the thumb of the Roman Empire.

It’s an interesting side note that this whole scene takes place in Caesarea Philippi, which was one of the centers of power of the occupying Romans in Galilee. In the looming shadow of Roman Empire…here’s Jesus asking his followers…the powerless outsiders…who do you say that I am?  

Peter gets it half-right that Jesus is the Messiah, but he gets it all wrong about the type of Messiah Jesus has been called to be. None of the disciples…despite having traveled all throughout the countryside with him... have picked up on the simple stuff.

Jesus has not used force in any of his interactions, not even when he was exorcising demons and certainly not when he was healing a hemorrhaging woman or the deaf or the blind. Their expectation was that a Jewish Messiah was going to lead an uprising, taking names and kicking some proverbial Roman butt.

But that’s not the way of “The Way” of Jesus.

Jesus is about a different revolution…about speaking words of love and wisdom, challenging the authority to get back to the basics of caring for the poor, liberating people from those habits and patterns that keep them captive, giving them eyes to see the people around them and freeing them from oppression.  I can almost hear the Beatles tune…”You say you want a revolution…well, you know, we all want to change the world…but when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…”

Because of that…because he was using a non-violent way of living and being and speaking…Jesus knew he was going to face opposition. Authority doesn’t like being questioned…ever. And tyrants don’t want troublemakers, especially if they are making what the late John Lewis called “good trouble.”

He probably didn’t know that his first opponent would be the eager beaver Peter! Peter gets angry and scolds Jesus for not being down with the revolution plan. And Jesus throws it back in Peter’s face: get behind me Satan! We aren’t going to change the world with more violence! The divine struggle is in the heart, in the soul. Will you love and see each other as beloved children of God?  And if we’re going to believe that Love really wins, Peter, will you do as I do? Go into those places where people are hurting and feel forgotten to remind them that they are never alone, and that no outside force has the power to define who they are in the eyes of God?

After putting Peter straight, Jesus turns to the crowd and offers the greatest challenge: if you want to be one of my followers, you need to take up your cross and follow where I’m going.  Into a confrontation in Jerusalem which pits the power of Love against the purveyors of Fear. This is the call of discipleship.  “Who do you say that I am?” leads to “Will you follow me?” This invitation to follow as Jesus’ disciple has echoed over time and space to reach us today, two thousand years later.

We are commanded to follow him into places that will confront our comfort zones.

Challenge systems that oppress and demean people of color,

people who are low-income,

people who are disabled.

Ask the questions of why some places are labeled “good neighborhoods.”

Look around and say, “How can I make this a better, more beloved community?”

Right now, our Jewish relatives are in the midst of what are called the Days of Awe, the period between Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. These are days in which Jews throughout the world are called on to do some self-examination and to consider the path they are on and what things they may have done or left undone that they need to account for to have their names written in the Book of Life.

I think a question such as “who do you say that I am” requires us to do our own examination and consideration of what it really means to choose life. As we ponder the question it should lead us to yet-another: who am I as a Christian, a self-proclaimed follower of Christ?

How do I live into the path of discipleship?

Have I misunderstood the expectations of what it is to be a follower?

Do I think Jesus is a nice guy, quiet and docile?

Or is Jesus a radical seeker of justice and a social reformer or something else altogether?

Does he only come out to play with me for an hour on Sunday morning and the rest of the week I just stick him back on the shelf?

However each of us answers this question of “Who do you say that I am” we are probably like Peter only getting the half of it.

The discovery of knowing who Jesus is comes as God keeps working out God’s purpose in us with new people, new encounters, new experiences, new life turns…and not being afraid to grow and change.

Perfect love casts out fear.  Stay strong. Keep the faith. And continue to explore and dialogue with Jesus:

“Who do you say that I am?”