Look for the Helpers: A Sermon for All Trauma

I don't feel the need to do a lot of explaining here. Needless to say Ascension Day came and went...and where I lived was greeted the next day with two...possibly three...EF2 tornadoes and 100-mile per hour straightline winds. It was a harrowing experience. And it greatly changed the trajectory of my sermon.

The Collect for the Seventh Sunday of Easter:

O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son
Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven:
Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to
strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior
Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

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Sometimes…unexpected things happen.

I had had many thoughts on our readings at the beginning of the week.

But my life…and the lives of countless others in Tallahassee… took a strange turn in the pre-dawn hours Friday morning.

It’s the same…or at least very familiar…experience many of us have been having these past several months...where wind and rain have done more harm than good to us…and those people and possessions we hold dear.

The National Weather Service has confirmed what many of us already knew: we in Tallahassee had lived through a tornado….and it’s associated straight-line winds of 100 miles per hour.

Those of us who paid attention to the weather the night before knew that we were in for some rocky thunderstorms and strong winds.

But somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45 in the morning…the alarms on our phones…and even off in the distance…signaled for us to seek shelter immediately in an interior room.

And so we did.

A roaring sound of wind.

The exhaust fan overhead began rattling.

 Rain pelted against the house.

When it all had finally stopped…our phones starting vibrating with texts.

“We have trees down, no power. We need to recharge batteries for an oxygen machine. Who has power?”

“Huge tree branch cracked through our ceiling.”

“Our house was hit by the tornado. Our back porch is smashed to pieces.”

“I smell gas in the neighborhood.”

“OMG. We’re calling the city.”

Gradually…all of us began emerging from our homes.

We met in the street…the rain still falling…but much more gently…as we stepped carefully over downed wires and branches from trees…some of them from trees we didn’t recognize.

A plastic drink cup here…a roof tile there.

A screen door bent open at this house.

And indeed…our neighbors’ washer and dryer on their elevated back porch now looked like a Salvador Dali design…metal warped and tilted and smushed together.

One neighbor couldn’t join us in the street.

A pile of busted trees limbs and large sections of a live oak had practically barricaded her front door and the lock for the gate to their backyard was on the outside.

Because they’re in the restaurant business…her husband had gone to work hours earlier.

Some of their friends arrived.

I told them she was trapped inside.

One of them climbed over broken limbs and steady himself until he reached the front door.

She was able to slip her hand out to give him the keys to back gate.

Carefully…he retraced his steps over slippery branches and was able to get around to unlock the gate and get her out of her house. 

Smiles…and celebrations lasted for a few minutes.

Then it was back to the reality of this huge and daunting task.

When can we get someone here to get rid of these trees blocking the street?

How can we cut up and lift these heavy limbs?

How can the city get our power back on with all this mess?

Only a half-mile away…the scene was even more bleak.

The growing and eclectic Arts District in a small former industrial park called Railroad Square…had suffered huge losses.

This included the roof of the theater company that has been part of my life since the early 1990s.

My friends….the neighbors whose back porch was mangled….now stood inside this theater that they’d built and developed…creating a creative community of writers and performers.

Now we stood with them…looking up through the trusses where the roof once had been.

The blue theater seats soaked and sprinkled with pink insultation.

It was a lot to take in.

These are moments that any of us can relate to.

The underlying emotion is grief.

Grieving a profound and sudden loss.

It leaves one feeling numb…unmoored from everything else…and plunged into a liminal space of neither here nor there.

It isn’t very often that you’ll hear me…or likely anyone…preach a sermon on the words of the Collect for the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

But the phrase “do not leave us comfortless” has been playing on repeat in my brain since about seven o’clock Friday morning.

In its context…the phrase is a prayer recognizing that last Thursday…the church marked the fortieth day of the Easter season….the day on which we say that Jesus finally ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

We pray for the arrival of the Holy Spirit…which we will celebrate on Pentecost next Sunday.

So where we are in our church story is also a liminal space.

Jesus’ earthly ministry is over…but we have not yet…in theory…received the Holy Spirit.

At least that’s the story.

But in reality…that spirit is already with us….in us…and moving in and out…and up and down in our lives.

We know that’s true when something like a natural disaster…or any other major disruption happens to us.

When we’re plunged into a liminal space.

Because the spirit of God…is a spirit that doesn’t sit still.

The Holy Spirit of God is a motivator.

It pushes us to move outside of our selves…and rise up.

As the great theologian…and Presbyterian minister…Mr. Fred Rogers told those who hung out in his PBS Neighborhood… these are times to look for the helpers.

Because the spirit moves people to help…to support…to carry us when we feel the weight of sadness and despair pressing us down.

That spirit is present in a guy who climbs through a wet messy pile of moss-covered tree limbs to free a woman trapped in her home.

It’s those helpers…opening a home that is running on a generator to give respite from the heat…a cold cup of water…and a place to plug in battery packs…cell phone chargers…even running an extension cord to a neighbor so they can have a fan blowing in their home.

It’s the loaning of cars to those who’ve lost their transportation…the giving of clean clothes to those who can’t access their closets.

The offers to help clean up debris…run to get water and ice…or simply sit and hold the hand of someone who just needs to cry…and process the grief.

In those times when we want to scream…”How long O Lord, how long?”

Look for the helpers.

Be ready to receive them.

For they are the ones whom God’s spirit has called upon to show up…in answer to our prayers.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Honoring All of God's Creation: A Sermon for 6B Easter (Rogation Sunday)

 

This was a first for St. Barnabas: a celebration of the Rogation Days, a practice from the 5th Century England where the priests and church would bless the land in hopes of a fruitful harvest. These days are celebrated right before the Ascension Day, whcn Jesus is finally lifted into heaven. And while this was primarily started as a time to ask a rogatio or blessing from God on the land, the Episcopal Church has expanded it to also include commerce and industry. This way urban and rural can meet each other in a time of seeking God's mercy and grace upon all that we do here on the planet. 

As I said, St. Barnabas had never done a Rogation Day celebration before. But we have a group focused on Creation Care and linking faith to action in taking care of things around us. I felt that we could take some of that a little further...and came up with a sermon that looked at all of creation. See what you think.

Texts: Acts 10:44-48, Ps. 98, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

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Welcome to Rogation Sunday!

Rogation…that fancy schmancy word for “asking” or “petitioning” God for a blessing.

We began our worship this morning outside at our gardens. We prayed for the goodness of the soil and those who tend it.

We blessed the fish in our koi pond and sought God’s help to remember our part in caring for the fish and all animals.

We gave thanks for the Bishop’s Garden and asked for a blessing upon this space where we’ve gathered for prayer and worship.

We lift all these prayers on this Sunday.

If we really wanted to get into the spirit of Rogation Days…we’d take this next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as times to seek divine providence to bless all industry and commerce in our area.

We’d be at the entrance to Moody Air Force Base…and downtown at the seat of local government…at the offices of the Valdosta Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce…at V-S-U and South Georgia Medical…blessing the industries of our local area.

Maybe next year.

We blessed each of these areas with the waters of baptism. 

The same waters that connected us to Jesus and the whole history of God’s people.

We heard it in our first reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles.

Just like last week’s reading with the Ethiopian eunuch…Peter and the other Jewish followers are witnesses to the truth that God’s grace, love, and mercy are meant for everyone…without any kind of proof of proper pedigree or pre-requisites.

The spontaneous response to this witness was to baptize these Gentiles…bring them into the growing community of believers.

They use water to signify that those who were “them” are now one of “us.”

Water as that symbol…that outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace.

And if you think about it…that’s what we’ve done today.

With our blessing of flowers…plants…and fish.

What we’ve said is that these wonders of creation are also one of us.

It’s something that I don’t think we’re always aware of in our day-to-day living.

That phrase about stopping to smell the roses…is more than just a reminder to slow down. But to really understand that we have a connection to those roses.

I think one of our greatest sins of our day is to separate ourselves from all the rest of creation.

As wonderful and amazing as the Industrial Revolution was in opening our minds to engineering better and more efficient ways to produce food and make our lives more comfortable…I think it also disrupted our relationship to the land and the sea and all that moves within it.

In those moments when we are reminded of our role as stewards of creation…we can fall into thinking that stewardship means a paternalistic role…as if we are the better and smarter part of creation that needs to tend to these lesser things.

I remember some years ago attending a lecture by the Old Testament scholar Dr. Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School.

She was doing a teaching on the Book of Leviticus…which she says is the greenest book of the Bible.

Dr. Davis talked about how in Leviticus the various codes of proper living involved a trinitarian like relationship: God is in relationship with humanity and with the land. She drew a triangle with God as the apex and humanity at one corner and the land at the other with the lines connecting all three together.

Davis said that God holds an equal relationship to humanity and the land and that we…as the human part of creation…are to have an equal level partnership with the land…not a domineering subduing type of relationship.

She noted that the Holiness Codes in Leviticus use the body as a guidepost for how one is to treat and be in relationship with the land.

For instance…verses that talk about men not trimming the edges of their beards were a bodily physical reminder to not trim the fruit from the hedges…so that foreigners would have something they could pick and eat.

But Davis also drew our attention to the verses at the end of chapter 18 in Leviticus…ones where God gives warning to humanity…to us…about what can happen if we don’t treat the land with respect.

Right there in the text…the Hebrew is translated to say that the land can “vomit us up” if we defile the land.

So our scriptures do give us guidance for how we are to treat the land…the sea…and all that is in it. To see them as having equality to us in the eyes of our creator God.

And while we work to improve how we treat those parts of creation…our Gospel reminds us that we have another responsibility.

We must love one another as Christ loved us.

We must look to the ways in which Jesus stepped outside of himself…went beyond just his own kind…to meet people in their lives…sat with them at the water well and engaged with them. Took a stand for those whom the rest of society were ready to stone to death. Most importantly…sat at the table with the ones considered the disinherited rabble.

Not only did he “lay down himself for his friends” in the truest sense by going to the cross; he laid down himself over and over again to heal and treat people with the respect and the dignity and love for the other person.

Because this is the love that God has for all of us. And Jesus wanted the whole world to know it.

That message is just as true now as it was some two thousand years ago.

Caring for creation means caring for all of creation…plants, flowers, animals, fish, and human beings.

As we have blessed all those things that remind us of life…may we remember that we have the responsibility to be a blessing to all others.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.