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." 

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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. 

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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.

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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?”

 

 

 

 

 

Living Our Faith in Troubled Times: A Sermon at St. Barnabas, Proper 17 Year B

 

This past week has been really terrible in the world. 

The United States withdrawal from Afghanistan has been fraught with danger and bombings that killed civilians and soldiers outside the Kabal airport. The COVID Delta variant is spreading like wildfire, especially in Florida and South Georgia. Parents in Florida actually had to bring a lawsuit against the Governor because he has been threatening to withhold education funds from school districts that mandate mask wearing inside public schools. Friday, a judge in Leon County found in favor of the parents because Governor Ron DeSantis does not have the constitutional authority to override the decisions made by local school boards. And the rare, and present, danger of COVID breakthrough infections claimed the life of my friend and longtime civil rights and social justice advocate Agnes Furey. As one might imagine, the shock and pain and hurt of losing a person who lived her life as close to the Gospel as any person I have ever known devastated many in Tallahassee and only further upped the anger and resentment that is boiling over about people who are willing remaining unvaccinated against COVID.  

In a climate of anger and division the Sunday lectionary readings gave me something to think about, especially as I looked at the Letter of James laid alongside the Gospel lesson from Mark. The gorgeous love poetry of the Song of Solomon added the perfect balm for the past week. 

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Texts cited: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7:1-8;14-15; 21-23

Prayer: Blessed God who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant us so to hear them , read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen. (Collect for Proper 27 aka "The Lee Graham Collect")

There are some weeks when the Sunday lectionary readings are hard and complicated…like what we’ve been hearing from the Gospel of John all month. There are sometimes when I know I want to just pull the covers up over my head and avoid what’s in the readings. And then there are weeks like this one where things all seem to fit together well…even if the ultimate lesson is one that makes us pause to take it in and know…” Yeah, we need a refresher course in what it means to be a Christian.”

 I imagine y’all are familiar with the cartoon Hagar the Horrible, the one with the guy who’s a Viking and his wife Helga. A friend who serves on the school board in my Florida county posted a Hagar cartoon.

Hagar has come through the door.

He has arrows sticking out of his helmet and shield. His sword is bent, and his brow is sweaty and he’s announcing into the room “I’m home from battle!”

In the next frame, Helga steps out of the kitchen. Her face is bruised. Her nose is bandaged. Her dress is disheveled. There are stars floating around her head as if she’s taken a few blows to her brain.

She leans on a cane and says, “I’m home from the school board meeting!”

It’s really come to this now. We live in a world where serving on a school board…an elected office where you’re charged with making decisions to aid the learning and protect the students and employees in public schools…makes you a target for abuse. And all because of a requirement to wear a mask while in school. 

I heard on the radio about a woman who is a school board member up in a small county in southern Indiana. She now has a baseball bat by her door underneath the photos of her grandchildren because she’s been threatened by her neighbors.

And while I haven’t visited her town, I am sure there is no lack of churches…and those who consider themselves regular church attendees…happy to praise God on Sunday…while beating up a child of God serving on a school board the other six days of the week.

This is the type of hypocritical behavior that gives Christianity a bad name.

And this is what our letter from the apostle James…the just leader of the church in Jerusalem... is talking about with his mirror analogy.

He says that if we hear the right prayers without doing the right actions in our lives…that’s no better than looking at ourselves in the mirror and admiring how good our hair looks…and then walking away and forgetting about that fantastic coiffe we just saw in the mirror.

This is an important tenet in Judaism…one which has been passed along to us from our Jewish parents…that the prayers we say, the words of Scripture we hear, the hymns and songs we sing are not just to be mouthed. We are to sit with them and study them…and take them into our hearts to do the work of transformation. With that new heart…we are led back out into the world to do action of our prayers “to show forth God’s praise not only with our lips but in our lives” (BCP, 101).

This is the same idea that Jesus was driving at in this exchange with the Pharisees. This is so much more than disciples having grubby hands when they’re eating. Jesus isn’t dismissing the Pharisees for their commitment to the ritual of handwashing; he understands the significance of following the tradition of the elders. What he is saying is that if they’re washing their hands without feeding the poor, releasing the captives, and taking care of widows and children then their handwashing isn’t much more than a mechanical function. There are portions of this passage from Mark Chapter 7 which the lectionary diviners left out, probably to keep the narrative easier to follow and not complicated by details relevant to First Century Jewish worship. But the bottom line is that if the ritual act doesn’t point the person toward doing the act of caring for all of God’s creation…human, animal and mineral…then it is an empty gesture and a sign of an empty faith.

The same applies to us. If we come here week after week and say all the right prayers and do all the right gestures, but then do nothing to make life better for another person or (worse) actively engage in activities that hurt someone or something in God’s creation, then it renders our prayers and praise meaningless. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw: if going to church makes you a Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?

This is not the same idea as “I have to do good things in order to be on God’s good side.” We don’t earn frequent good person miles with God; God’s grace has already been extended to us. This isn’t about us doing anything for God’s love. This is about us doing acts of kindness because we know deep inside us that God did such acts of kindness and so much more for us already. This is about us letting these prayers and these Scriptures we say and hear shape our outlook and guide our wills.

And what a beautiful starting point for us in this inner work than our first reading today.

If we look at the reading from the poetry of the Song of Solomon, we get a glimpse in these five verses of God as the lover, calling and beckoning to us.

God whispers to us, the beloved, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.”

Such words, such loving and tender words, spoken to us now in our world swirling with anger, division, and discontent. Bullies and soul-crushing reports on the nightly news.

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away”

Come away, my beloved child: I am your God who so loves you. I am the love that will not give up on you. I am the love that will make it possible for you to love one another even in the face of rejection.

“Arise, my love, my fair one…and come away”

Now what if we have been hurt by someone? What if we have felt the sting of betrayal? What if we are carrying around the scars of our life that make it hard to love? I don’t think there’s a person in the world who hasn’t known some level of suffering. And those wounds left untended…untouched by God…can manifest in ways where we hurt others. I’m not talking just about physically abusive behavior, but even the dismissive ways we speak to one another because someone dismissed us. Or spread gossip about someone because a part of us is insecure and wants to feel a level of self-righteousness. This is all part of the human condition stuff…and is a symptom of the hardening of our hearts brought about by being in the world.

The challenge for all of us is to remember that all those hurts inflicted on our souls are not the definition of who we are. They are only part of us, not all of us. We can turn these hurts to God’s good purposes when we use them to inform how we deal with each other in that compassionate way…that way where we understand the other because we have been through the fires of Hell and back, too.

With prayer, Scripture, and music as the tools that God uses to reach us in our worship to shape us and prepare us for the week ahead, we can learn the practice of listening…being slow to anger…and be prepared to exercise the true religion of caring for those around us.

In the name of God…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   

 

The Weird Difficult Path of Eternal Life: A Sermon at Christ the King (John 6:56-69)

It's the oddity of my journey as a transitional deacon that I am serving in two parishes; hence I am preaching three weeks in a row. Last week, it was St. Barnabas. This week, it was Christ the King. 

A word about this congregation: back in the late 1980s, the Rev. Stan White took the extraordinary step to take his entire Pentecostal congregation with him into the Episcopal Church. There was a mass confirmation service, an instantly, Valdosta, Georgia, gained a whole new Episcopal Church. The music is straight up Gospel. People clap, snap, sway and pray with hands lifted to the heavens. It is a much different experience for this Episcopalian with more Anglo-Catholic leanings! 

Their interim rector, who is my supervising priest, has perfected the art of preaching without notes or a script. I am not that person...and I felt the need to apologize to the assembly that I wasn't going to engage with them in the same way. I also wanted them to know that I don't say "Amen" at the end of my sermons because that "Amen" is their confirmation that they've heard me. Good news: everyone was able to roll with my differences. Even if it may have felt a little weird....

And so speaking of weird things…John’s Gospel with bread that is flesh and blood…and now Jesus has added “Spirit” and “Life” into the mix!

I wasn’t with y’all last week, but Mother Galen has already noted that the “bread” is metaphorical. And in fact…Jesus isn’t advocating for cannibalism with eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

Rather…this is the importance of having a deep and intimate relationship with him. That puts us in a similar deep and intensely intimate relationship with God.

Our Evangelist John has a point he wants to make about Jesus: he is the Word made flesh. And by consuming…or bringing Jesus into our selves…really having faith in him…we will be transformed.

And here’s the kicker: that transformation will enliven us…and give our spirits life…so that we might do the work of Christ in the world…to bring good news to the poor…release to the captives…and freedom to the oppressed.

We might even start to sense how we are interconnected with each other and that the spiritual world is not removed the material world around us. It’s a little bit like what God tells the prophet Ezekiel when God talks about replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh.  

For our Evangelist John…there is no other way than to go all in with Jesus.

We are to…as we say over the water at a baptism…be buried with Christ and brought through death to resurrection…having been reborn by the Holy Spirit (BCP, 306). That’s what it means to be a member of the Christian faith…sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever.

And that sounds a little weird…us dying and being born all at once. One of the brothers at St. John the Evangelist up in Boston, MA,  Br. Keith Nelson, describes this as “the paradox of Christian faith…a collision of opposites.” We must die to our own self-interests in order to be made fully alive in Christ. This is how we abide in him as he abides in us.  

We see how well THAT went over with Jesus’ followers back in the First Century!

They grumble…“This is hard, man.”

“Nah, that’s OK. I think I’ll be on my way now.”

“Thanks for the fish…….and the bread.”

Jesus…laying claim to all of us…not just that part of us that shows up on Sunday for prayers and the praise is a frightening proposition.

And fear…the enemy of hope…is almost like the “go-to” emotion of our fragile egos that don’t want to give up any ground to make room for God!

To really live into this call to be a Christian means we must align ourselves to see others in the same way Christ does: as God’s equally beloved children.

Even the person who is irritating us by how long they are taking in the check-out line or doesn’t see eye to eye with us politically.

How many times do we fail to recognize that love and grace is extended to us let alone someone else?!

We have a God who loves in abundance…will even lay down his life for us…calls on us to do the same and give up our self-centered ways to look out for those who are being left behind.

This teaching was hard for the disciples of the First Century…and it is very hard for us too. Just like then…people turn away from this light and go back into their darkened corners.

It’s not that we don’t WANT to follow Jesus. But to be in relationship with Jesus? A love so high we can’t get over it or so wide we can’t get around it? And wants our whole being to be infused with that great a love? Again…our fragile egos start to quiver and shake…and wonder “What happens if I let go? Who am I if I don’t separate myself from the other?”

To live into our calling to be Christ-like…hence Christians…means we won’t be popular.

We are called on to see ourselves as deeply reflected in the eyes of the other and the world around us…and to care and not look away.

We should suffer when we see images of frightened Afghanis clinging to an American aircraft taking off from Kabul…or our own citizens beating police officers at the nation’s capitol.

We should weep at the thought of Haitians already reeling from one earthquake and the assassination of their president…suffering yet another earthquake.

We should have concern for the healthcare workers stretched thin and worn-out from saving people’s lives from COVID.

And…we should also be moved in our innermost being when we gaze upon the way a South Georgia sunset paints the sky with blues, and yellows and orange over tops of grassy fields and live oaks.

I think it’s one of the curious things that happened over time in Christianity that we came to read words about the “spirit” and the “flesh” and concluded that Jesus was against the human body. Somehow we came to read these words as “Spirit” is good. “Flesh” is baaaaad.

I think it’s part of the centuries-old struggle for people to understand Christ’s full humanity and full divinity…which led to a lot of infighting and accusations of heresy back in the Second Century.

We keep wanting to rationalize the nature of Jesus with our limited understanding of the holy in a way that makes sense to us.

One of our earliest church fathers, Irenaeus (eye-reh-NAY-us), wrangled with those insisting that Christ had to be either a full human or some ethereal spirit being but he could not be both. Irenaeus was a firm believer in Jesus being both/and…both fully human and fully divine…both the eternally begotten Son and a human baby born to Mary (it’s that collision of opposites again!) For Irenaeus …flesh and spirit were not separated in Jesus…and they aren’t separated in us.

He said, “Spirits without bodies will never be spiritual men and women. It is our entire being…that is to say…the soul and the flesh combined by receiving the Spirit of God that constitutes the spiritual man (or woman).”

God isn’t seeking for us to live apart from our bodies. My goodness: God became incarnate!

God is seeking to become one with our spirit so we can live more fully into our deep interconnection to God’s creation. If we live in this way…there is hope that we will begin seeing the world in a different, less monochrome way.

Driving between here and Tallahassee, I have been listening to the Pulitzer-prize winning fiction “The Overstory” by Richard Powers. I am not far enough into it to give much away, but it is a story involving humans and the trees.

And as the human affairs go on…the trees are having a much longer and richer life that the characters are not seeing or understanding.

Powers novel is about how we have become so separated from our natural environment that we don’t really know anything about it, how the trees are communicating with each other through their root systems. He says that is the “root problem” with us…(pun very much intended). We miss so much because we only comprehend the material things we see without understanding the spiritual that is taking place under our feet…or in the air moving through the swaying branches.

Again…I haven’t gotten beyond the opening chapter of the book, but I sense there will be an awakening in some of the characters to their connection to the trees that have marked their lives. And perhaps their outlook will shift as their spirits become awakened to their place in God’s created order.

Perhaps as we move on from this part of John’s Gospel…(yes, we’re moving on. We are going back to Mark next week!)…perhaps we’ll contemplate what it means to be so deeply infused with the Spirit of Christ that we begin to sense what it means to be transformed by Jesus. Maybe we’ll start to see ourselves as God’s hands and feet in this world as we meet our neighbors on the street or at our jobs.

Being Christian in the circumstances and climate we’re in today is not easy. But we are called to meet the demands and the injustices of the world in our flesh and blood…and we can do so with a transformed spirit that exudes peace and love.

Live into the belief that there is a “Perfect Love that casts out fear.”  

This is our hope.

This is our light.

This is our strength.

May this be so and let the church say….

Amen.