Mountains and Messages: A Sermon for the Last Sunday After the Epiphany

It isn't easy to talk about the transfiguring power of Love when the world is embroiled in war with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And we are reminded of the messed-up situations of extrajudicial police killings, and then state governors and legislatures add more toxicity to the public sphere with anti-queer rhetoric. Jesus keeps telling us to "love." The world keeps rebelling against that message. And I find that I need to keep going back to the well of prayer to prevent from falling into a funk. Love will win, Love will win, Love will win....

+++

We’ve been on quite a journey. For these past almost two months, we’ve been catching these snippets of stories, snapshots of Jesus as he instructs on loving each other…even when we may not really like each other…a particularly difficult lesson for the times in which we’re living. It’s hard to feel love as we witness war. And yet, that is the thing we are commanded to do.

Throughout this season, Jesus has been expanding the circle of whom we are to love. He tells the Jews that the Gentiles did a better job of upholding the basic tenets of bringing good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed. That message didn’t go over well with his kinfolk…and he moved on from his hometown.

He makes Peter go fishing again after the poor guy had been out in his boat all night without having caught anything…and Peter suddenly hauls in more fish than he can safely bring aboard. Jesus assures him that this is just the beginning of a new venture, and that Peter will be “fishing for people” in the future. More people; different people; not the same people he’s been around his whole life. The circle needs to get wider, more diverse. That’s what Love does; it brings people in and doesn’t leave people out…including the person we call “enemy.” And as I said last week…that last bit about loving the one who we view as a threat to us is the most difficult part of living into our calling as followers of Jesus.

And speaking of following Jesus…we have Peter, John and James again…our fishing buddies…this time up on a mountain with Jesus. Mountain tops…as we see in the Exodus reading…are these thin places where a person comes in contact with God. For Moses…this encounter with God…where he received the ten commandments to give to the Israelites…causes his skin to glow so brightly that he must put on a veil.

In the case of Jesus…however…there’s more going on than his face glowing…or his clothes dazzling white. We hear that Moses and Elijah…the representations of the Law and the Prophets…flank Jesus and are talking to him. And then we’re told that they were “speaking of his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31).

I hadn’t really paid much attention to this verse before, but this is the start of the inevitable trek that Jesus will now undertake. Here we have Moses…the one who brought the written Torah to the Jews and Elijah…the prophet who represents the Torah in action. We don’t know what these two were saying to Jesus, but we can imagine what might have been going on as these three became glowing in ways that only seem to happen when it’s a Godly encounter.

Perhaps this appearance was the answer to Jesus’ prayer up there on the mountain. Maybe Jesus was seeking the strength to carry on in the mission that had been laid upon him when he came out of Jordan at his baptism or when he read from Isaiah in the temple. Moses would know and understand the struggle to lead people and guide them to stick close to God when there were so many temptations not to do so. And I can believe Elijah was there to give him the reassurance that he must make the trip to Jerusalem…even though it is not going to go well. Elijah knew what it meant to be rejected! I think we spend a lot of time in Christianity emphasizing Jesus’ personhood as God that we forget that the church also asserts that he was not just play acting at being human; he was human. And his humanness shows up at different times in the biblical stories. I think this is one of those times where the human Jesus…after so much teaching and healing…needed a little help from his friends.

And in the course of praying to God the Father…God the Son is answered with illumination…insight…and the blessed assurance that he is doing exactly as he was sent to do. Important as Jesus prepares for his departure.

The Greek word Luke uses is actually “exodus” as in the same “exodus” that took the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness. Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem. This may feel a bit like wandering out into the wilderness for him. And his exodus will be his death, resurrection, and ascension.

I’m also curious about how much of this is really a change in Jesus…or is it more of a further revelation to Peter, John, and James? We read that they’ve been weighed down with sleep…I guess praying wore them out. But they see the glory that is before them…these three glowing figures. And Peter…being that beloved extrovert…whatever is inside his head comes out of his mouth…immediately thinks “let’s build booths.” He’s thinking of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, a time where Jews build booths to commemorate those many days of being in the wilderness. He wants to hang out with Moses and Elijah and Jesus. And wouldn’t that be a great place to hang? And then the cloud descends and envelopes all of them. And just as we heard a voice at Jesus’ baptism…the voice calls out:

“This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!”

There is quiet. Perhaps at most there is the wind swirling around on the mountain top. And to the astonishment of Peter and the others…the only one before them…the chosen one…is Jesus.

They’ve now witnessed something breathtaking. The scales have fallen from their eyes and they’ve seen that this teacher who they have chosen to follow is embodying something more than just rabbinic wisdom. And something in them…having seen this…has changed. It’s so big that they not only don’t tell anyone…they probably can’t tell anyone because it is just so much to process.

As I said…mountain tops are thin places where we meet God in glorious and unexpected ways. They are literal experiences on mountains… and they are figurative happenings in our everyday lives. You don’t have to climb Mount Everest to have a mountain moment with God.

These blessed encounters give us hope, resolve, and the fortitude to follow Jesus. And like Peter, James and John, much as we might want to build a booth and just hang out with the Holy One up there on the mountain…we aren’t allowed to do that. We inevitably must come back down into the valley…because that is where God needs us to be to do the work of sharing our hope, our resolve with others. There are still so many valleys…some of which just seem to be sinking lower…as we might have felt in this past week. Through bringing our experience of meeting Jesus on the mountain we can shine for others still seeking to find meaning in everyday living.

My hope is that this season of Epiphany has revealed enough of Jesus…and his counter-cultural ways of Love…that we are inspired to be that love and light to all around us.  The world needs that from us now more than ever.

 

Love Your Enemies...Really. A Sermon for the 7th Sunday After Epiphany Year C

 

One of the many signs like this that dotted the landscape of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, DC, 2019. 

The Epiphany season's Gospel lessons are a bit like an onion: each week, we peel back another layer to get a glimpse into who is this Jesus and what makes him tick. Next week, it will be the great reveal. But first, we are challenged to face one of the most difficult commandments of the followers of Christ: love your enemies. 

+++

(Text: Luke 6:27-36)

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27)

Perhaps you’re like me, and you want to look at this sentence over and over. Maybe turn the paper sideways, upside down…

In case we hadn’t picked up on this already: Jesus is countercultural. I mean, really counter to the culture…definitely counter to OUR culture. This is more than love beads and flower power. This instruction goes against everything logical.

It goes against how we are conditioned to respond.

And honestly, for anyone who has ever been abused…by an intimate partner or family member…or even a supervisor…this is more than foolish. This potentially deadly advice.

I want to scream at Jesus, “How dare you?! How am I supposed to preach about this?”

Truthfully, the ones I am most upset with are the folks who devised the lectionary readings. It’s not that we need to avoid this message of “Love your enemies.” But…and this tends to be one of the biggest issues with getting only small snippets of Scripture each week…in order to wrap our minds around what Jesus is saying…we need to remember what he said in last week’s Gospel…that list of who are the blessed and who are the woeful…and how do we learn to live with one another and move closer to each other instead of moving further apart.

So…let’s go back and revisit Luke’s beatitudes.

The ones blessed are the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the hated and excluded. Jesus tells them that all these things, these states of mind, body and spirit…the stuff that conventional wisdom of society says makes them a “less than”: God blesses these characteristics…and Jesus gives a future tense promise that “Yeah, you are in this place of hurting…and you WILL move through your trials and be in a better place.”

Then he turns to the woeful. Who are they? They are the rich, the ones with full bellies, the laughing, and those who sit in places of power. Jesus warns them, “Yeah, you’re feeling all cocky and confident now, but you’re trusting in the “things” and not the One God…and that’s gonna bite you if you’re not careful.” One group gets comfort; the other caution to not get too comfortable.

And now we are at today’s Gospel…which starts with Jesus saying, “But I say to you that listen.”

To. You. That. Listen.

My father used to always say right before he was about to lay down some hard truth or fact of life, “Listen and you might learn something.”

What are we listening for in this? I think it’s a couple of things.

One is that each one of us is going to find our selves in one of these camps…blessed or woeful…at one time or another.

For example, each one of us is going to find ourselves in mourning…whether it is due to a death of a human or pet or a dream that goes unfulfilled. Life is not without pain and suffering. And when that comes, some of the best medicine is that person who doesn’t pat us on the head or attempt to take away the hurt through some diversion. It’s that person who knows how to show compassion…which means “to suffer with.” Jesus’ whole life is one that was lived out of compassion…God with us. This is the person who sits with us, weeps with us, can relate to us in our pain.

At the same time…we will all experience moments of joy and laughter. It’s not that it’s bad to be happy; it isn’t and God desires for us to have joy. But if all we did is bounce through life without ever knowing sorrow or hurt, we’d really be of little help to that person who is suffering a loss.

In my experience, there’s nothing worse than being in place of deep sadness and having someone insist that I must be perky or “get over it” because they simply can’t relate to what I’m going through.

Understanding this….and having gotten their attention with that “listen and you might learn something” language…we get to the next part of Jesus’ very difficult teaching: “love your enemies…do good by them.” The wisdom of the rabbis…and remember Jesus is Jewish…was to teach that by aiding or helping an enemy that was a way to “subdue the evil inclination in the human heart” (b.B. Metz 32b). It’s that idea that the enemy won’t bite the hand that feeds them.

In a perfect world, that’s exactly how things might work. Our enemies would experience our generosity, our helpfulness and respond by no longer hating us. We’d clasp hands and sing Kumbaya and all would be right in the world.

But Jesus knew that the world he was living in was less than perfect, and so he goes on to explain himself:

“If you love those who love you what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32)

Let’s put this in our own times. We’re living in a moment in our culture where there’s just so much polarization and anger. We have become so divided that we now have whole television networks devoted to keeping us separated and angry at each other while reinforcing our own prejudices. We’re being enticed and encouraged to tune each other out, become more tribal, only care for our own kind and let those who aren’t on “our side” just die.

I was reading a blog which talked about an episode of the TV show The Jeffersons in which George Jefferson saves the life of a KKK member. When the Klansman learns that a black man saved his life, he tells his son, “You should have let me die.”

And maybe we agree. Why should anyone save the life of a person dedicated to hatred and bigotry. Why not leave that one bleeding and dying in the ditch? Afterall, they won’t be grateful, right?

The Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was known for his advocacy against the Nazis, noted that the instruction to “love our enemies” gets perverted when we think that “love” means something like being in love with the enemy. That’s not at all what Jesus or Paul or any of the New Testament writers are talking about. Niebuhr says:

“We aren’t told to love our enemies because they will love us in return.” We love them for the transcendent nature of love. This is agape love. A love that wants what’s good for our enemy because the good of our enemies will always be bound to that transcendent ideal…the sense that we are all connected as beloved children of God.

In the case of the Jeffersons episode, the hatred might have remained with the Klansman, but in that same episode, the Klansman’s son thanks Jefferson for saving his dad, rips up the Klan fliers, and walks out of the room. George’s ability to see the humanity beneath the hatred helped to turn the next generation of that family toward the light of Love instead of continuing on that dark path of self-centeredness and fear.

In the time of Jesus, he was giving this “love your enemy” instruction to a people living under an oppressive Roman Empire.

In our time, we are being challenged to see the humanity in that person in our lives…family members, neighbors or colleagues…with whom we just don’t see eye-to-eye.

If you’re struggling with this, you’re not alone. And I wish I could sugar-coat this teaching, but I can’t because this is some of the toughest work we’re called upon to do as followers of Jesus.

I will suggest that if you need a prayer to help with a particular person or situation, I’d recommend one that is in our Book of Common Prayer. It’s on page 816, and appropriately, it’s a prayer “For Our Enemies.”  I’ve used this prayer countless times in my advocacy work. It has helped me remember that ultimately, I can’t change the other person, but I can change how I respond to them, and recognize that we are interconnected even if we are at odds:

Let us pray:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from cruelty, hatred, and revenge. And in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

 

Absalom Jones and the Beatitudes: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday After the Epiphany

 

When I first looked at the Gospel lesson for this week, I was drawn to the part where it says how Jesus and his disciples came down (from the mountain) to "the level place." I had all kinds of thoughts on that idea. And then, as I was walking with my spouse to her job, I remembered that February 13th is Absalom Jones Day in the Episcopal Calendar. His story had captured my imagination from the first time I heard it when Fr. Lee Graham preached about him at 12:10 service at St. John's. I thought about his bold move to walk out of St. George's when he was being told, for no reason besides racial prejudice, that he needed to sit in the balcony. Everything clicked in my head...and this is the sermon that came out through my fingers.

 +++

Prayer: O God of love and liberty, may what I say today reflect your will…may our ears be open to your Word and may our hearts be on fire for love of you. Amen.

 

Believe it or not, today is a saint day in our Episcopal calendar.

Not one of the major feasts, and not one we recognize to be celebrated on a Sunday…which is why we are sticking with the usual lectionary readings.

But as I was reading through our Gospel lesson of Luke’s beatitudes…and looking at this day of February 13^th…it seemed only fitting to share the story of our “saint of the day” in our calendar…a priest by the name of Absalom Jones.

Who is Absalom Jones?

He was an African-American…born into slavery in Delaware in 1746. He was owned by an Anglican planter named Abraham Wynkoop.

Wynkoop recognized that the young Absalom was an intelligent child and so he moved him from working in the field to being a house slave.

When the elder Wynkoop died, Absalom became the property of a son. That son moved Jones and his mother and siblings to Philadelphia. That’s where he granted Absalom Jones the right to attend night school with the Quakers and kept him working in a store during the day.

As a young adult, Jones met and married another slave, Mary Thomas. He used the money he’d been saving to buy her freedom, and would eventually he would buy his own.

Absalom and Mary started attending St. George’s Methodist Church where another free African-American, Richard Allen, was a lay preacher. Jones and Allen became good friends. They started the Free African Society, which provided aid to people in need and would hold additional religious services during the week.

Jones and Allen became great evangelists for St. George’s, helping to attract more black members to join the congregation.

But then… in a surprise move…the white vestry of St. George’s decided that the black parishioners should be moved to the balcony.

There came a Sunday…during the middle of the prayers…that the ushers tried to forcibly move Absalom Jones from his seat and ordered him to go to the balcony.

Instead…Jones led a walk out with Richard Allen and all the other African-Americans. They marched out of the church never to come back again.

The Free African Society went on conducting services on their own with the help of a priest from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Eventually, the group decided it wanted to affiliate with the Episcopal Church on three conditions:

1. They would be recognized as an organized body;

2. They would have control over their local affairs and

3. That Absalom Jones would be recognized as their lay leader and, if he qualified, would be ordained a priest.

Bishop William White of Pennsylvania received this new church…called the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas…and Jones became the first African-American Episcopal priest in 1802. That church…by the way… is still active and meeting to this day.

Meanwhile…Absalom’s friend…Richard Allen…didn’t want to be an Episcopalian and instead he began the African Methodist Episcopal or AME Church.

Blessed are those who are ordered upstairs. Woe to those who let their prejudices rule their hearts.

Jones and Allen knew that their rightful place at St. George’s was not up in some balcony separated from the rest of the congregation. And Luke’s version of the beatitudes envisions Jesus also at the ground level.

Unlike Matthew’s version, where Jesus is preaching his Sermon on the Mount, here Jesus has been up on the mountain and now is coming down to “a level place.”

This is the vision of God meeting with us on equal ground. No person…not even Jesus…is elevated over another. And all these people…with their hurts…their doubts…their desires…they’re reaching out to touch Jesus.

Instead of running away from them…he has come to them. And more than that…he’s blessing them.

You who are poor.

You who are hungry.

You who weep.

You who are being excluded and hated.

Blessed are you! You are exactly the ones for whom the psalmist says will “bear fruit in due season.” All those qualities that the world will count as weakness and will use as a reason to discount you…God rejoices and lifts up as fulfilling the promise that nobody is seen as a less-than.

Think about what happened to Absalom Jones. A man who started out his life being told by an unjust system that he was only three-fifths of a person.  As a fully whole person… he showed how much he could contribute to the life of his church. And then the church told him to get upstairs to the nosebleed section…tried to reduce his worth. But he stood up…moved on…and achieved a place of honor in the history of the Episcopal Church.

What others had intended for evil…God made sure something good happened instead.

God’s abundant love and deep desire to meet us in that level place should be an inspiration for all of us.

I imagine any one of us at some point in time has experienced what it means to be poor…or in mourning over a loss. Maybe we’ve even known the pain of being hated or rejected…told to get out or go up to some balcony where we can be ignored.

I know the Georgia Assembly is in session as is the Florida legislature. One of my friends in Florida recently posted on Facebook how tough it is for her to go before the elected leaders only to have them ignore or even ridicule her advocacy on behalf of marginalized groups. She attempts to put a human face on whatever lawmakers are debating as an “issue.”

Too often…she leaves having seen those human faces reduced to specimens in a petri dish…problems that need to be solved.

I know public school teachers who have felt similarly frustrated as politicians who have no connection to the classroom make laws that add more burdens to their workload…while administrators do nothing to support them in their efforts to teach.

The Gospel addresses those concerns: “Woe to those who speak well of you for that is what they did to their false prophets!”

Jesus is harkening back to the days of the prophet Jeremiah who was ignored and even beaten for his efforts to warn about the coming destruction of Jerusalem. The powerful didn’t want to hear it…and neither did the general public for that matter. The leaders…the false prophets and priests…drowned out Jeremiah’s voice and repeated platitudes that made the people happy and kept them blissfully unaware of the trouble that was brewing on their doorstep.

Jerusalem learned the hard and very traumatic way what happens when you ignore the prophets.

Woe to them and blessed are those who tell the hard truths, those who advocate for the underdogs, and dare to stand up to the powerful when justice demands it.

Those are the people who are walking in the way of an Absalom Jones…which is nothing less than walking in the way of Jesus. May God grant us all that strength and courage to follow in those footsteps leading to the cross.

 

The Call

 

God is calling. What are we going to do?

I remember one Sunday when I was an acolyte at my Episcopal church in New Hampshire, I was probably about sixteen years old. Our curate, Roger Senechal, was standing with me outside of the vesting room with still probably about 15 minutes before the service. He was a youngish man…I imagine he was probably in his early 30s, a nice guy who was starting off life in ordained ministry in our parish. And I was…well…I was a teenager. And as a teenager in the church, I loved to play a game I called, “Stump the Priest!” And Roger, being the newest priest on the premises, was a perfect victim. So I said to him,

“Father Senechal, how do you know you’re supposed to be a priest?”

I was being playful. And at the same time, I really did want to know what would motivate somebody to want to be a priest. The question was both a riddle and a real inquiry.

I think he was a little surprised by the question because it seemed to catch him off guard.

“Well”…he said…”you’re called by God.”

I smiled. “Oh, Is it a collect call?”

By this time, Roger…realizing he’d just walked into that one, laughed. “Yeah, it kinda is! You have to decide if you’re going to accept the charges.”

And I’ll just say: standing on this side of ordination, yeah, I learned the hard way.  

When God calls…we can either answer or not. And in our readings this morning, we see how God initiates the call with Isaiah.

The Reverend Billy Alford who was the preacher at my ordination service noted how the image of God before Isaiah was so huge, so grand, so incredible that there’s no way a person witnessing this scene could look away or ignore it. The Lord is on his throne…the hem of his robe…just the hem of the robe…fills the entire space. There is smoke billowing up and the heavenly chorus sings loud and proud:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts

If we imagine this…the loudness and the awesomeness of God in the Temple…it must have been just overwhelming. And just like last week’s prophet…Jeremiah…who was hesitating about his call because “Ah, Lord God I am just a boy…”, here we have Isaiah basically saying, “Oh, my Lord God…I’m stunned…this is incredible…and who am I to be here? Me, this one with unclean lips…coming from a people of unclean lips.”

It's interesting how we can put up such resistance to God when God comes calling. We can stammer like Jeremiah and say that we’re not ready to take a leap of faith, to take an action. Or we might be like Isaiah, quick to see our faults, our failings, our weaknesses. God can’t possibly be looking for us. We’re too awkward, we’re too short, too tall, too imperfect in our own imagination.

But it’s not like God is ignorant to all those things!

In fact, it seems to me that it’s when we acknowledge our shortcomings and our vulnerability that Jesus has a way of showing up.

That’s what happened to Simon Peter and the other disciples who had failed to catch any fish. Notice how Jesus starts by asking Simon Peter to take him out into the water so he could do his teaching to the crowd that was gathering. The fisherman obliges…and Jesus does his teaching and then asks Peter to lower his net into the sea…just as he had likely done hundreds of times before. Now, Peter has been at this all night before with no luck, and he’s dog tired and he knows there’s no fish to be caught. Still, almost as if to humor Jesus, he goes ahead and puts the net down in the water. And then there are so many fish that it practically capsizes the boat with weight of all that catch!

You would think Simon Peter would be ecstatic at this happy haul. But just like Isaiah, Peter’s first reaction is…”Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy.”  He’s like Isaiah: this is too much!

But Jesus, sensing Peter’s self-doubt and worry, says to him that oft-repeated phrase in the Bible, “Do not be afraid, from now on you’re going to be catching people…not fish.”

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a curious thing that “fear” is the response to something God does that is truly remarkable and amazing. A prayer gets answered…an opportunity comes along in our lives to maybe do something different in our careers or pursue some interest at school…and suddenly we become like cats at an open door: do we go out and explore the back yard…chasing squirrels and butterflies, experiencing new things? Or do we retreat inside and hide under the bed afraid of those new adventures and wait until the next time the door gets opened when we think we’re more ready?

Having faith means taking risks and, in our case as Christians, trusting that Jesus is going to be there when we trip and fall. And it is a “when” and not an “if.” Human nature being what it is, we’re gonna make some mistakes as we venture out.

God seeks us out in our perfect imperfection, in those places where we don’t feel adequate to a task. And God calls us to meet others in their vulnerability and fears to be that Jesus-like figure who says, “Don’t be afraid. It’s OK. I’m here with you. Let’s walk together.”

Our faith calls us to take chances and risk to do things like help the kid who is struggling in school because of problems at home or the grandparent who can’t drive anymore. Or walking into that public meeting to speak truth to power when things are not right in the community and injustice persists.

God is calling us to respond with a “Here I am. Send me.” And Jesus is promising us “Do not be afraid. By helping others, standing for others…we are fishing for people.”

 

Bonus Post: Remarks to the Annual Meeting of the Misfits

 

Among the firsts coming fast and furious for me, the Annual Meeting. Ours is scheduled for the last Sunday in January, so I had all of eight days as a priest to get ready to lead this thing. These meetings, in my experience, are usually marked by general congeniality but with some pockets of "concern" about what's happening with the budget. And we elect members to the vestry (for those who don't know, that's the lay governing board of an Episcopal Church). In addition to those two important tasks, we adopted bylaws (finally!) for the parish of St. Barnabas (it had been a mission for its first forty years). 

And there is always an expectation of "remarks" from the rector or priest-in-charge. Here's what I had to say...

When Bishop Logue was here this fall for the celebration of 150 years of Episcopalians in Valdosta, he shared a story about each of the three Episcopal Churches. When he talked about us, he recalled a conversation he had with the late Janet Robinson, who said of St. Barnabas:

“We’re the Island of Misfit Toys.”

Now, if you remember your Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you might remember that all the toys on the island were a little quirky:

A Cowboy who rides an ostrich.

A bird that doesn’t fly but swims.

An elephant with pink polka dots.

These toys are all quite loveable if someone would just love them.

Those of you who were at my ordination last weekend might remember that the cake was decorated with a gray and black cat in a clerical collar. The message was simply “Welcome Home.” The legend behind the cake is that, again, Bishop Logue had shared a story he got from my mentor and good friend, the Rev. Dr. Lee Shafer, about my re-entry into the Episcopal Church. After staying away from the church, God called me back in. And she described me as “that feral cat that wandered into the church.” Mama Lee fed me, got me involved in lay ministries of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, and tamed me with one book after another to show me that not everyone in the Episcopal Church was as stiff-necked and cruel as I had come to believe them to be.

Feral cats are just another type of misfit toy. And just like misfit toys searching for that child who will love them, they just want someone to love and care for them.

As COVID hit, this congregation found itself without clergy leadership. Your Senior Warden, struggling with her own health issues, had to find her way through the maze of what is to be leading a parish. She and the treasurer had to cobble together a parochial report for the first time. With no priest, and no idea how to gather, if to gather, members of the congregation suddenly found themselves needing to figure out a way to worship. Eucharist wasn’t a possibility, at least not every week. So the next best option—Morning Prayer—became the weekly staple. Kathy Hodges, serving as a volunteer in the front office, made schedules of prayer leadership. Mother Tar Drazdowski came in once a month to provide Eucharist. And St. Barnabas persevered.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, I was perfecting my skills at hybrid learning, attending classes sometimes on Zoom, sometimes in person, sometimes half the class in person and the other half on Zoom. I was completing Clinical Pastoral Education and taking (and passing!) General Ordination Exams and waiting and wondering when the diocese was going to be in touch with placement possibilities. I celebrated each classmate who landed a call somewhere, attended many a virtual diaconal ordination. But no one was calling me. In fact, it wasn’t until almost the week before my graduation that I received an urgent message from Canon Loren Lasch to please send along my profile from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Transitional Ministry. There was a plan afoot. A church in Valdosta. And then it became two churches in Valdosta. One was Christ the King, in crisis because of the death of their rector. The other was St. Barnabas, in crisis for lack of a rector. Christ the King had an interim, my former spiritual director, Mtr. Galen Mirate. She could be my supervising priest as I ventured into life as a transitional deacon. So, the feral cat essentially had two foster homes, working to see which one, if either of them, would be a good fit. And it didn’t take long for me to get the sense of where I wanted to be. Listening to your stories, both the good things and the bad stuff of your lives, I knew this was the better place for me to be. At first, the bishop was surprised. And then he saw me and our delegation at the diocesan convention and our interactions with each other and the rest of the delegates. I believe that’s when Bishop Logue knew that we were a good match.

In essence, to stick with the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer theme, we were like Rudolph and Hermie, the Elf who wants to be a dentist. We were independent…and now we’re going to be independent together! Thanks be to God!

Independent together is, of course, an irony. Once we are put together, we become interdependent, dependent on each other. Thankfully, we are not alone in this venture.

The bedrock of this relationship begins with God. I make it a practice every day to take time…even if it is only the 20 minutes of doing the Morning daily office…to touch base with the Holy One…and give thanks for opportunities and learn from my missteps. I encourage you to do the same. Take a small segment of your day or night to give thanks and seek God’s love and mercy.

The diocesan staff are willing, able, and want to help make this partnership succeed.  They will answer questions as they come up. Fellow clergy have also been very helpful to me, and have been there to remind me, constantly, that it is not my job to do all the roles in the church and to make room for others in the congregation to exercise their gifts. I look forward to ideas and dreams that you have, and ways you think we can accomplish goals for serving our wider community. Maybe it’s doing more with our gardens. Maybe it’s looking into safe ways to utilize our campus, both the grounds outside and the inside, to host groups. Perhaps it’s setting up strategic planning for the future of St. Barnabas or creating special events that we can host to introduce ourselves to a community that doesn’t know us yet.

I know I want us to former stronger ties with our two sister Episcopal churches as well as some other congregations and faith-based groups in Valdosta and engage in the ancient practice of the church to be a prophetic witness to the larger community. I feel strongly that we are at a juncture in our history of this country that demands the best efforts of those of us who claim the mantle of Christ to work toward a society where no person is an outcast, and those on the margins are brought into the center and treated with equity and fairness. For me, this means rejecting racism and other forms of the sin of exclusion, be it marginalizing the disabled, or the LGBT+ community or anti-Semitism. We serve and worship a God who is Love. And that Love demands us to act with compassion. Matthew 25:35-40 makes it plain that love means extending ourselves and stepping up to help the person who is in trouble. Reminding our community leaders of their responsibility to be servants of all and not some of the people is the type of witness that is a politics not of left or right; it is the politics of love.    

I realize this is a lot. As a wise person recently pointed out to me, neither Rome nor London was built in a day. My hope is that we ponder these ideas, allow ourselves to take this next year for the Holy Spirit to stir up the power within each of us, and give hope, love, encouragement, and above all, value each other as we venture forward, grounded in love of God and each other.

The spirit of the Lord is upon us!