October 6th, 2024: Reflections on Pentecost 20: Mark 10:2-9, by Reverend ('Mo') Lyn Crow

Difficult being called to preach on this gospel.

It was a temptation to skip over the first part of the gospel and preach about children.

Oh, I could preach a wonderful sermon about children!

But I won’t.

We don’t grow spiritually by avoiding the difficult things in life.

So we’re going to meet this gospel head on – we’re going to delve right into it.

And we’re going to do it with honesty and integrity.

Set the scene:

a.   Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem and his death

b.   He already has enemies

c.   The Pharisees in particular

d.   They are constantly trying to test him – to catch him in a mistake

e.   This time they come to Jesus asking him to settle a disagreement they are having

·        Pharisees from the school of rabbi Hillel, a Jewish lawyer who founded a rabbinical school in Babylon; his school was liberal, humane, and tolerant

Vs

·        Pharisees from the school of rabbi Shammai, an aristocrat, quite elitist and very nationalistic;  his school was conservative and strict

f.     These two schools had an ongoing disagreement about divorce

g.   Not about whether divorce was allowable, because it was

h.   But on what grounds is it allowable

i.     Deuteronomy 24 said that a man could divorce his wife on the grounds of indecency (note that a woman could not divorce her husband)

j.     But how do we interpret indecency?

·        Shammai said that it meant in the case of adultery

·        Hillel said if a wife displeased her husband, spoke ill of his family, didn’t respect his authority, burnt his toast – he could divorce her

k.   So they challenge Jesus to settle it between them;  the danger was – if he agrees with one side, everyone from the other school would be angry with him

Jesus answers the way a rabbi often answered a question which was posed to him, he answered a question with a question:  What did Moses command you?  And so quoting Moses as their authority, they recite back what scripture says about the law for divorce.

But then Jesus shifts the focus of the conversation.  He makes it primarily about marriage and not divorce.  He shifts the conversation from splitting hairs about loopholes for divorce to God’s dream for humankind.

First, he acknowledges that yes, it is lawful to divorce, but that is only because humans are suffering from hardness of heart.  In Greek, the words mean:  a heart dried up or a parched heart.  According to Jesus, it is because we have parched hearts that there is a need for divorce laws.

Then he moves on to God’s ideal for us – God’s dream for humankind

a.   He begins to quote from Genesis

b.   How God made man and woman as complimentary beings

c.   And that they became one, both physically and spiritually

d.   In essence, together, they become a new being

e.   And nothing can separate them from each other

f.     That is the nature of their oneness

Jesus speaks an absolute truth in this gospel.

a.   When God created man and woman, he intended for them to have a union that was permanent

b.   And though it doesn’t say so in this gospel, we have come to understand that the intention of God is the same for same sex unions

c.   Marriage is meant to last forever

d.   All divorce is a failure to fulfill God’s dream for us

e.   In divorce, we fail one another and we fail God

But the purpose of this gospel is not to arouse guilt.  And it is not to propose a hopelessly high standard, but to give us a vision for what God’s dream of marriage is.

We might say – but I do feel guilty.  I’ve let God down.  I’ve let the community of faith down. I’ve let my partner down because of my divorce.

I wasn’t able to be what I hoped I could be.

I wasn’t able to be what God dreamed for me.

I wasn’t able to create what I promised I would create.

Here is the truth:

a.   All divorce is tragic

b.   But sometimes staying married is more tragic than divorce

c.   Some marriages should end

d.   Sometimes divorce is the lesser of two evils

e.   Is an intact and hopelessly broken marriage any less sinful than a divorce?

f.     There are times when we must acknowledge that we have made a major mistake in the journey of life

g.   We need to face it, own it, admit to our parched hearts, confess it, ask for forgiveness, and move on

h.   That is living in truth

That doesn’t mean we don’t take marriage vows seriously

a.   No, we hold fast to God’s dream for us

b.   And we are even more determined to fulfill that dream

c.   We refuse to buy into the idea of disposable relationships that are so popular in today’s culture

d.   But we also refuse to be legalistic about marriage

e.   God’s dream for us is far more than a rule about never ever getting a divorce

f.     God’s dream for us is unity and oneness and mutuality

g.   And God’s dream above all is about grace

·        A grace that will not turn away from us even if we fail

·        A grace that welcomes us with open arms as though we are powerless children, at times unable to help ourselves

·        A grace that says “Let the little children with broken and dried up hearts come to me.”  Don’t stop them – they need me and I want to bless them

·        The kingdom of heaven belongs to people like these

I have experienced this grace

a.   Marriage falling apart

b.   Tell Bishop

c.   Tell priest who was my boss

d.   You must tell the vestry

e.   Would they ask me to leave?  Decide they couldn’t have a divorced priest?

f.     Broke down

g.   Chair in middle – laid hands

h.   Washed in grace

In that moment I truly understood grace – not at the intellectual level, but at the heart level.

And I knew then that nothing could ever separate me from God’s love.

May we continue on our journeys confident in God’s love, confident in God’s forgiveness, confident in God’s amazing grace.

September 29th, 2024: Embrace the Divine Spirit within You: Reflections on Pentecost 19: Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29; Psalms 19:7-14; James 5:13-20; Mark 9: 38-50, by J.D. Neal

For about 5 years, I worked as a high school teacher in a great books style, classical education program. This sounds a little hoity-toity, but primarily it means that instead of focusing the classroom around lectures and textbooks, we focused our classes around great books and discussions. Instead of reading textbooks about American History, they would read Frederick Douglass & Abraham Lincoln; instead of reading a textbook or anthology with snippets of English Literature, they would read G.K. Chesterton & T.S. Eliot — straight to the source. Likewise, instead of coming to class to hear me lecture about one of these topics, I would give them an opening question on the book they were supposed to have read that week, and we would spend the whole class discussing the text at hand. My job was to facilitate, to act as a guide and to help the students plumb the depths of whatever book we were discussing — to help them discover that they were able to understand and grapple with the powerful, often di      cult ideas and questions o ered in these books. And the wonderful thing is that they were able; I consistently had better discussions about philosophy and theology with my 14 year old students than with my fellow seminary students in PhD seminars.

The trickiest bit about my job was to help the students themselves discover that they really were able to understand and grapple with this stu        if they did the work, trusted one another, and didn’t give up. And this makes sense, right? I’m sure you can tell that many of the books we would read together are the kind of thing that most of us write o as being out of reach or irrelevant for the average person — stu for ‘those smart people.’ Most of my students didn’t think of themselves as being capable of understanding this stu   when they started our classes. We would get into our rst discussions and they would freeze up after I asked a question, not because they couldn’t do it, but because they had been trained to believe that the teacher was ‘the smart one’ who had all the answers, that their job was just to follow along and receive the special knowledge that I possessed. Especially with rst year students, it would take almost the whole year for the group to really break out of this; as the tutor, I would have to try all sorts of strategies to try to get them to realize that they were capable of doing this work together. One of my favorite strategies was to just go silent and dramatically turn my chair around and put myself in the corner for part of a discussion. The goal here is simple: if the students are unhelpfully relying upon you, looking to the teacher to answer the question instead of using the text, their own minds, and one another, then you remove yourself. You refuse to cooperate, and you stay out until they eventually give up waiting for you to answer the question for them and start to answer it themselves (because it’s either that or they sit in awkward silence for an hour and half) — and (if it works) something magical happens.

They try it. They start to say ‘yes’ to my invitation and begin to do the work together. They vulnerably throw out an idea, they try to puzzle through a confusing passage together, they stumble upon a key idea and start to make sense of it, and they realize that they can do this work, that their minds are made of the same stu   as mine, and that they are just as capable and worthy as I am to discover the goodness, truth, and beauty hidden in those weird old books we would read together.

Now, why did I spend so long talking about this? I’m tempted to just go sit in the corner and make you guys preach the rest of the sermon for me, but that’s not why I bring it up. In the Old Testament reading, we nd Moses feeling overwhelmed and angry, feeling as though God has saddled him alone with the impossible responsibility of taking care of the whole people of Israel. He complains to God about this, and God says, ‘Sure, no problem’ — and ordains 70 ‘elders’ to help Moses lead the people. Two of those ‘elders’ don’t come to the meeting when they are supposed to, and so the spirit of God comes upon wherever they happen to be. Suddenly they are overcome and God’s spirit begins to speak through them out in the middle of the Israelite camp. When Moses’s right-hand man, Joshua, hears about this, he is ‘jealous’ for Moses, he wants to protect Moses’s reputation as ‘The One’ who holds God’s authority, and tells Moses to shut them up. But Moses doesn’t want to, because he is overcome with relief and gratitude because he has remembered that God is the one who leads and provides for his people, and God has given him a whole lot of help when he nally asked for it. Joshua misses the point — Moses doesn’t care about protecting his status and authority, he cares about the presence and power of God being present among his people, and he even looks forward to a day when God would ‘put his spirit on all of God’s people.’

Similarly, when we get to the Gospel, we see the disciples up in arms about the fact that some rogue exorcist is out doing miracles in the name of Jesus, when this person doesn’t follow them. The disciples, like Joshua, are missing the point: they are more concerned with controlling who counts as a ‘legitimate’ disciple of Jesus, with protecting their status and worthiness, than with the fact that the healing work of God is being carried out through this stranger. Remember how Jesus caught them ghting over which one of them was ‘the greatest’ in last week’s gospel? So Jesus reminds them of what he said in last week’s gospel, that the way they are treating this stranger or that little child is the way that they are treating Jesus.

There is a ip side to our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus rebukes the disciples harshly, telling them that it would be better to be drowned or to cut o a limb than to let their pride and desire for status and ‘greatness’ cause them to mistreat or ‘become a stumbling block’ to another person in whom Christ is present, because to do so is to reject Christ himself — because in some mysterious way, Christ is present in each of them.

In other words, the hope of Moses has come true in Christ. God has put his Spirit upon all of his people. And so when we get to our reading from the epistle of James, we are given a picture of a spirit- lled community. A place where all members participate in the life of Christ. Notice that there is no Moses- gure, no special teacher or priest in James’s passage. James assumes that the Spirit lives in every member of the Church community, so he exhorts all of them to praise and pray with one another, to confess to each other, to receive healing through one another’s prayers. He believes that any one of the people he writes to could pray with as much power as Elijah, whose prayers stopped the rains in Israel for 3.5 years! He believes this, because he knows that God has placed his Spirit within each of us and so the whole life of Christ himself is on o er to us — if we can receive it.

The gospel this morning is not just a word to the disciples, it is a word to the ‘little ones’ — to all of us. It reminds us that the life of faith, prayerful connection with God, and the joy and fullness of Christ’s own life are not just for the special, ‘holy people’ over there — for the Moses, the ‘disciples,’ the priests up at the altar, the special saints who are ‘quali ed’ to experience God. We each have di erent gifts and di erent roles to play, sure, but we all are one of those little ones whom Christ stands with. We are all capable of extending Christ’s love and power and healing to each other — just like in the reading from James. And this is good news, especially for St. Matthias, because we don’t have a Moses right now, we don’t have a priest. All we have is one another and the Spirit of God here with us — and that is a gift, because it gives us an opportunity to discover that this is enough. St. Matthias can’t wait around for Church to happen until we nd a priest. We don’t know how long this search process will take, and we don’t need to wait. God has placed his Spirit within you. You are invited to step further into the life and love of Christ here and now, and invited into sharing that life with one another — whether or not there is a priest up there to help you do it. This is what we mean by the ‘priesthood of all believers.’

Each day, Christ holds out his hand to each and every one of us in ways great and small and invites us deeper into his abundant life. But each day, there are things that stand between us and accepting that invitation. Our fears, our shame and feelings of unworthiness, complacency and comfort, the wealth of distractions we are ooded with, even just the layout of our liturgy can mislead us into thinking that the real ‘Christian stu ’ happens up there, with the special ‘holy people’ in special robes rather than down here in each of us. In the somewhat grisly language of today’s gospel, there are parts of our story or our life that might need to be ‘cut o ’ or ‘plucked out’ to allow us to see and grasp the love of God. Just like my old students, we sometimes have a hard time believing that God wants to bring us into the story, that we are capable or worthy of being an instrument of God’s love or a bearer of his peace — and just like my old students, I believe that we have been made capable and worthy and there is much to discover together if we show up and trust. I believe that if we trust James and Jesus today, if we trust that Christ has put his Spirit in us and we do the faithful work of asking for God’s help and listening for his answers, of learning from one another and the Scriptures, of loving those around us and trying to say yes to all the little invitations God sends our way — if we say ‘yes’ then we will discover that we are capable of receiving joy and life that we could not have imagined.

May St. Matthias become a place where we begin to discover this together. Amen.

September 22nd, 2024: Servant Leadership and Working Lovingly Together to Solve the World's Puzzles: Reflections on Pentecost 18: Mark 9: 30-37, by The Reverend Valerie Hart

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight oh God our strength and our redeemer.

Jesus and his disciples had just gotten back to their home base in Capernaum. While they were walking, Jesus had been teaching them. He was trying to get them to understand that he was going be betrayed and die. And then after dying he would rise again, but the disciples were pretty of dense and didn't seem to quite get what was going on. Maybe they just weren't listening because they didn't want to hear.

When they got to the house where they were going to, Jesus looked at them and asked, "What were you arguing about?" They didn't like that Jesus had noticed and brought that up because they had been arguing about which one of them was the greatest. It seems a bit like the patriarch of a family bringing together everyone for Thanksgiving. All his sons and  daughters to come together. Then the father says "I have you here today because I met with my doctor last week and I'm going to be going on hospice care tomorrow." Then  the kids start arguing about  which one is the best. Which one does the father like the most. They were worried  about which one did the father think was the best even when the father was dying. Even though the father loved them all, more than they could possibly imagine

Jesus is frustrated by their lack of understanding and that they are still worried about who is the greatest, so he says to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant to all." The ones to want to be on top are going to need to be ready to be on the bottom.

Then Jesus looks around sees a child and brings this random little child into the center of the disciples. And he says, "See this child, whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."

This insignificant child, we don't even know its name, we don't know whether they are male or female, but if you are kind to this child you are being kind to Jesus - and to the father in heaven. That means that within this child, this insignificant child, Jesus is present. How can you wonder about who is the greatest.

This gospel reading has gotten me thinking about why are we so concerned with being the best, with being the greatest, with winning? There is something in our culture that is obsessed with who is the best, who is the greatest. Think of the popular shows on TV like America's Got Talent, The Voice, or Dancing with the stars where people compete to learn who is the "Best." We like to watch those to try and figure out who will win. And we imagine ourselves there  - being chosen as the best. We just had the Emmy awards that tell us who are the 'best' actors and actresses. And of course we spent a lot of time this summer, at least I did, watching the Olympics. Caring about who was found to  be the best at some sport I did not even know existed before I turned on the TV. People spend their whole lives preparing for this moment to prove that they are the best in the world.

Why do we always have to feel like we need to be winning? Why do we want to be the best?

This summer I was with my grandchildren who range in age  from nine to eleven. I was supposed to entertain them while their parents were busy, and their mother suggested we play board games. The had all the usual games that I had when I was a kid. Candyland, Monopoly, Uno, you know. the basic games. As we started to play I noticed that when one of my grandchildren was winning he started feeling overly  good about himself, saying he knew this game and he had it. Then his luck changed on him and suddenly he was losing. And he didn't like it. He didn't like losing. He wanted to change it . He wanted to cheat. You could see him slowly getting more and more upset until he finally had a meltdown because he was not the best.

The next day when I went to spend some time with them, I did not want to go through that meltdown again. We started to play another game, but he soon started to get upset so I said, "I don't want to do this. Let's do that wonderful 500-piece puzzle you got for your birthday." We found the puzzle and spread out the pieces. We all sat around the table, each trying to fit the pieces together. When someone on one side would say 'look, I got these two together'  everyone would cheer. And then someone else would "say I've got this edge here. Does anyone have red edge piece that might fit." And the others would look to see if they might have that piece. Together, bit by bit, over a couple of days because it was 500 pieces, by bringing the pieces together that chaos began to turn into a beautiful picture. When each one shared their unique pieces, their perspective, and their sense of how to solve the puzzle we where we able to complete it. We worked together to solve the problem. It was fun. And nobody was the greatest, and nobody had a meltdown.

Our society is so focused on up and down, better and less, who's the brightest, who is the fastest, that we are constantly in conflict. We are not able to just enjoy being together. We have a political system now that is all about winning and losing and not about putting the pieces together, bringing all the different perspectives together to find healthy solutions.

Jesus says that the greatest must be the least and be the servants of all.

As long as we are trying to be the best there is a lack of real satisfaction. You may become the best in your class, but then you want to be best in your school. Or you've made it to the top of your group a work, and you got a raise, but you still want to move up. We're always evaluating ourselves, judging ourselves. Are we good enough? Am I the best?

Why do we do that? I'm not sure but I think it has to do with trying to prove that we are worthy. Trying to prove to ourselves, to our parents, to our friends, to our coworkers that we are worthy, that we are of value, by being the best. Or we're afraid. Afraid that if we are not the best, we won't have anything. That there is a pecking order, and we have to be on the top of it or we lose. But Jesus teaches another way. He teaches a way of love. He teaches us that we already are more than enough.

We already are loved. Like that child in the center of the room, we are valued by God. We are so close to God and God's love for us that what someone does for us they do for Christ. That we are that worthy and that much one with Christ that it doesn't matter if we are only a little child. It doesn't matter if we are at the bottom of the pecking order. It doesn't matter if we are rich or we are poor. God loves us. Christ loves of more than we can imagine. We have nothing to prove. Nothing to be afraid of.

Christ says that if you want to be the best, be servant of all. That's what really feels good and gives true satisfaction. This afternoon I'll be going over to my home church, St. Paul's in Tustin. We have something called Sunday Supper where anyone who wants to can come and be given supper. They sit down, we take the food to them, we get drinks for them, we clean up after them. We treat them with love and respect.

There is nothing that is more satisfying than to feed someone who is hungry, to care for someone who is sick, to help someone in need. To welcome the stranger.

And I imagine that's how the people at St Mattias feel when they are doing the Loving Thing. When they are giving food to the hungry. When they are welcoming them and caring for them and smiling at them.

Jesus tells us to stop arguing. Stop competing with each other. Stop trying to be the best, and instead be the least and love and serve. For that is where we will find peace and joy and we will know Christ's presence as we serve him.

September 15th, 2024: Who is He? Reflections on Pentecost 17: Mark 8: 27-38, by The Reverend Valerie Hart

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight oh Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen

The questions that Jesus asks in this Gospel reading are the most important questions any person wrestles with. The first question is, “Who do people say that I am?”

Any thoughts? Who do people say that Jesus is?

“The savior.” “The son of God.”

“A really good man.” “Our Lord.” “A perfect example.” “The good shepherd.” “The messiah.” “A healer.” “A great teacher.” “Son of man.”

We’ve got lots of words for him. Later in the service we will be saying the Nicene Creed which is the ancient statement of faith that says such things about Jesus as “God from God.” "Light from Light"

Some of those words we’re pretty familiar with. You can probably tell me what a teacher is, because we know teachers. Or a good man, we know about good men.

But what about Messiah? Now that’s the “correct” answer that Peter gave. But the Messiah? What does the word messiah mean? The word we translate as Messiah in Greek is Christos, the anointed one. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ time the Christos, the Messiah was going to be a warrior king like David. He was going to come and lead the Jewish people to once again have control of their land. That would fight Rome so that they would be a free and  great nation. That’s not what Jesus turned out to be. He was a very different kind of messiah. A different kind of savior.

When we listen to all the ways Jesus has been described, we find that most of the time it is kind of complex. It is not easy language. During our lives we’ve heard a lot about who Jesus is. If you went to Sunday School as a child, you heard one thing. In the secular world you might hear something else. Here in church we hear other things. So we have lots and lots of answers to, “Who do people say that I am?”

All of those comments, all the theology, all the books written about who Jesus is, all the creeds can be helpful, but it is the second question that really matters. That’s when Jesus looks at his disciples and says, “Who do you say that I am?”

How do you know who Jesus is? What do you say? Not quoting someone else, not based on what someone else says that Jesus is, but who is Jesus to you? Right now, today, this morning.

I find that when we are on a spiritual journey our understanding of who Jesus is changes over time. Sometimes from day to day. It changes as we study scripture. It changes as we are in discussions with others. It changes as we read meaningful books. But most of all it changes as we have life experiences. As we go through difficult times. As we wrestle with the meaning of life. When we deeply love or deeply hurt. As we discover that through it all, Jesus is somehow there, walking with us.

The most important question of your life is “Who do you say that Jesus is?” Your answer makes all the difference in the world. And only you can answer that question. Some might start with the answer that to you Jesus is a great teacher. That is accepted pretty much around the world. There is almost no one who doesn’t say that he had some wonderful teachings and that he showed a great deal of wisdom. That is one way to approach Jesus, but is not quite consistent with what he said. C. S. Lewis wrote that if you say that Jesus was just a great teacher then you have to assume that he was either a liar or insane because he said that he was much more than that. It is hard to take the wisdom and teachings that we find in the Gospels and separate it from what he said about himself. But often the first way we get to know Jesus is as a great teacher. And that is important.

What about when we say that Jesus is my savior. What does savior mean? How has he saved you? Think about your own personal life. What have you been saved from? What have you been saved for?

How have you experienced, personally experienced Christ's presence in your life?

I've often wrestled with how to describe my relationship with Jesus, and this is what I've come up with. It is personal; it is where I am today. Where I am this morning. It may change, but it is what’s true for me right now.

I would say that who Jesus is to me is that he is my friend. He is my friend who loves me no matter what. He is my friend who values me and holds me precious because he helped to create me. I am of incredible worth to this friend; and he accepts me for who I am. Loves me for who I am. And loves me enough to not let me stay who I am, but encourages me to become more than I think I can be. He is my friend who is always there, whenever I need him. He always cares.

And he is my friend that gave his life for me. And no love is as great as offering your life for another. We don’t have a lot of experiences of what it means for someone to give their life for us. People who have been soldiers, police and the firefighters, like the brave men and women who today are fighting the fires around us, know what it is like to have companions that go into dangerous and difficult situations together. And they know that these companions will offer their lives to protect each other. It is said that when soldiers go into battle once the battle gets intense, they are not concerned with their country, they are not concerned with any grand statements of principle, they fight because of their comrades, the ones they are fighting with. And they want to protect them, and they will risk their lives in order to protect their friends, and they would be willing to die for one another.

Christ died for us. He is my friend that was willing to die for me, and in this passage, he asks for me to be willing to do the same. To pick up my cross and follow him. To be his friend the way he is a friend to me. That might mean giving my life, although being in the United States it is unlikely. But it does mean transforming my life. It challenges me to give up my self-centeredness. It asks me to let go of my sense of ego control. It means changing my priorities, and it affects every decision that I make every day of my life.

And so I'll ask you again,

Who do you say that Jesus is?

September 1st, 2024: Reflections on Pentecost 15: Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23, by The Reverend (‘Mo’) Lyn Crow

Always helpful to look at the big picture when we are reading a gospel story and ask ourselves – what is this really about?

So what is today’s gospel really about?  It’s about legalism VS grace.

Trying to earn God’s approval by performing the requirements of laws VS approval or kindness given to us by God whether or not we deserve it.

So let me ask you this:  Which do you prefer?

-      A neighbor with good habits or a good heart?

-      A friend with good habits or a good heart?

-      A spouse with good habits or a good heart? - A child with good habits or a good heart?

It’s wonderful to have a neighbor who cares for his property, keeps the noise down, brings his trash cans in.

It’s wonderful to have a friend who is considerate, keeps appointments, always sends birthday cards on time.

It’s wonderful to have a spouse who is courteous, gives gracious comments, gets chores done, puts the toilet seat down.

It’s wonderful to have a child who uses good manners, does her homework, keeps his room tidy.

But nothing compares to a neighbor, a friend, a spouse, or a child, with a good heart.

When we are looking only for a person with good behavior, we are really looking at a person’s self-control;  a serial killer can in some settings have amazing self-control.

When we are looking for a person with a good heart – now we are looking at the true quality of a person.

Jesus was always looking beyond a person’s habits to see what was in the heart of a person.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, were concerned with legalism, what was on the outside, what looked proper.  At one point Jesus called them whitewashed tombs.

And here they were attacking the disciples because they weren’t following the correct rituals

-      And by the way this handwashing thing wasn’t about germs

-      The germ theory hadn’t even been thought of

Here’s what it was about:  Exodus 30 and 40.  There you find a law that priests must do a ritual cleansing of their hands before they came to the altar.  Gradually, the Pharisees expanded what the scripture said.  Now everyone was to ritually wash their hands before eating as a way of showing devotion to God.  And it also became a way of distinguishing a devout Jew from his pagan neighbors.  Soon it had very little to do with devotion to God and a whole lot to do with who is in and who is out, who is one of us, and who isn’t.

Humans have a tendency to do that and people in some churches are still doing it:  Baptism in some places isn’t so much about commitment and love of God as it is about who is saved and who isn’t, who is in and who is out.

We in the church have a tendency to be blind to the fact that we often focus on good behavior and all the while exclude, humiliate, and harm others.

Albert Schweitzer said this:

“For centuries Christianity treasured the great commandment of love and mercy as traditional truth without recognizing it as a reason for opposing slavery, witch burning, torture, and all other ancient and medieval forms of inhumanity.”

Even when slavery was finally ended, the church made it very clear who was in and who was out:        

-      All Saints Pasadena

-      St. Barnabas Pasadena for their black servants

Jesus quoted Isaiah and said “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

As God’s people we need to be alert – and to catch ourselves when we begin to fall into legalism and use our faith to judge who is in and who is out.

Otherwise, as Frederick Beuchner said:

“We become like a child learning to play the piano.  She holds her hands just as she has been told and memorized the piece perfectly.  She hits all the proper notes, but her heart is not in it, just her fingers are.”

The church and its members need to constantly be asking, “Are our hearts in it?”

-      We need to keep from being whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside, dead on the inside.

-      To learn that compassion is far more important than getting things right.

I want to tell you a story about a church that I know and love and how they chose compassion and grace over legalism and doing things right.

Tina’s Story

-      When they arrived, she was lying on the patio in front of the church door – dirty, confused, homeless

-      Didn’t try to get her to leave.  Didn’t call police.

-      Greeted her – invited her in

-      She crawled into the sanctuary and laid on the floor

-      No one tried to get her to move

-      Everyone who walked by her greeted her

-      At the peace – people bent down to greet her

-      They discovered her name – for weeks afterward it was almost the same scenario

-      I don’t know how many weeks before she walked in and sat in a pew

-      With the help of some parishioners, she got mental health care, medical care, and an apartment of her own

-      By the end of the year, she was shopping for clothes at Good Will. 

She chose professional looking suits and spike heels.

-      She was definitely one of the best dressed women in the sanctuary

-      And she had become a beloved member of the community

Why do we carve out this time every week to be here?

-      To learn that compassion is far more important than getting things right

-      To learn that being close to the heart of God is infinitely more important than any tradition we may want to cling to

-      To learn to show the world that being a Christian isn’t about getting it right

It’s about the heart – loving our God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and loving our neighbor – yes, every neighbor – as ourselves.

If we do that, then the church can revolutionize the world!  Because that is what the world is dying to know.  There are far too many Christians out there convincing the world that it’s all about getting it right.

We need to get out there and tell the world something radical – it’s about love, that God is not a tyrant but a lover.

So when we leave here today, let’s live like Augustine of Hippo recommended – “Love God and do what you please!”

Because if we love God, truly are nuts about God, what we choose to do will please God.

August 25th, 2024: Reflections on Pentecost 14: To Whom Shall We Go: John 6:56-69, by The Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

Reading scripture is like going on an archeological dig.  As Christian disciples – students of the Christ – we seek that deepest level, to know the real Jesus, to know what he actually said, and did, and what it meant to those who walked the dusty roads with him.  It is the deepest yearning of our hearts;  this search for the historical Jesus.  And that search must go deeper than the black leatherette King James Bible I grew up with, with Jesus’ words printed in Red.

         The second level, closer to the surface, is that of discerning how the gospel writers shaped stories about Jesus for their times and places.  It is helpful to think of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John not as writers – though obviously they were – but more like editors, who took both written and oral fragments about Jesus and shaped them into narratives.  But they were not reporters.  These are not true biographies or history remembered but rather they are propaganda; proclamation of news that is good.  The word is this:  gospel.  They were writing for particular audiences and those audiences shaped how the stories were written.  Mark’s gospel was written to the Christian community in Rome sometime in the 70’s.  Like St. Paul earlier – the letters preceded the gospels – Mark was writing to Hellenistic Jews.  These were Jews who spoke and read Greek, not Hebrew, and who were open to a new sect of Judaism which was a cultural alternative to Palestinian Orthodoxy.

         Matthew wrote around the year 80 to Jews in Damascus and is the most Jewish of the four gospels.  Luke wrote around the year 90 to Gentile converts in Antioch.

         These three gospels are called “synoptic” gospels. “Syn” think of the word “synonym” meaning same.  And “optic” – to see, vision.  Although there are differences between the three – for example, the birth stories in Luke and Matthew are quite different, though we harmonize them well to pull off children’s Christmas pageants – they are of a different order than John.

         Writing around the year 100 or so, to the cosmopolitan trading center of Ephesus, John was writing to a church that had experienced a break with Judaism.  It is a church which is experiencing a competition with the cult to John the Baptist, with the religious philosophy of Gnosticism and with various “mystery religions.”  In this cultural context, John is writing to theologians and philosophers, arguing, for example, that the beginning of the Jesus story is not in an animals’ feeding trough in a stable/cave near backwater Bethlehem, but was, in fact, before space and time.  Jesus was “logos” – the plan, the agenda – of God, through whom all things came to be.

         Could writing for – at least in part – a gnostic audience, explain why there is no talk of bread/flesh and wine/blood at the Last Supper in John’s gospel but rather we find the humility of foot washing?  In part, the justification for the persecution of Gentile Christians was the suspicion that they sacrificed infants and practiced cannibalism in their hidden rites, as Jesus directed them to do in saying “eat my body” and “drink my blood.”  Could awareness of this audience explain displacing the bread and wine / body and blood talk from the Last Supper and placing it much earlier, at a synagogue in Galilee?  And this teaching is so controversial that it signals an ending of the Galilean ministry and the loss of most of his disciples.

         Today’s gospel reading:  It is the season of Passover.  The reading would have been the Exodus story and about desert manna – the bread-like substance which fell daily from the heavens and sustained the fleeing Hebrew slaves.  Jesus’ sermon – a midrash or an imaginative interpretation of scripture – claimed that he is like bread from heaven – but unlike manna of old, those who partake of him will live.

         What’s going on here?  In Jewish folk tradition, it was believed that when the Messiah came, manna would come again – for the Messiah is a second Moses.  A liberator who would deliver God’s people from their oppression under the Romans.  How powerful was this hope for a people living lives of desperation and chronic hunger.  Droughts and famine, plague and disease would be no more.  Implements of war would be refashioned into tools for an eternal harvest.

         Was Jesus really claiming that he is the fulfillment of these hopes?

         Many of the disciples left Jesus now.  This was not the idle and curious crowd from the feeding of the multitude earlier in chapter six.  These are disciples – men and women who had left hearth and home, farms and fisheries, to learn Jesus’ teaching – but this was all too much.  They left because this talk was just too bizarre.  Torah clearly forbade the consumption of blood.  Genesis 9:4 “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”  Had Jesus finally lost his damn mind?

         As many of his Galilean disciples melt away, Jesus turns to the 12 and asks, “Are you going to leave me too?”  I imagine these words asked in a whisper, as if Jesus is afraid of the answer he will receive.  All that Jesus had struggled to build threatens to come crashing down around his shoulders as he awaits their response.  A vulnerable moment that could leave him broken and alone.  (pause)

         Would the 12 break his heart?   (pause)

         Peter – impetuous, passionate and bold – speaks for the 12:  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  When John quotes Jesus’ talk of eternal life, he is not talking about life after death but about new life before death.

         The Greek is literally translated:  “the life of the Age to come.”

         John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”  Present tense – has, not will have.

         John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  Present tense – this is, not will be.

         It is in dying to our old life that we live.  As Jesus told Nicodemus way back in chapter 3, you must be born from above.

         The invitation is to a life transformed.  As Irenaeus (130-202 CE) said:  “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”   (pause)

         As manna sustained the Hebrew tribes in their journey from slavery to freedom, so Jesus, really present, in the bread and wine of Eucharist, sustains us in our journey from exile and captivity to freedom and new life.  Mary Oliver captures this in her poem, “The Eucharist.”  I’ll conclude with her poem this morning.

“The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church:  The Eucharist”

“Something has happened

to the bread

and the wine. 

They have been blessed. 

What now? 

The body leans forward

to receive the gift

from the priest’s hand,

then the chalice. 

They are something else now

from what they were

before this began. 

I want

to see Jesus,

maybe in the clouds

or on the shore,

just walking,

beautiful man

and clearly

someone else

besides. 

On the hard days

I ask myself

if I ever will.

Also there are times

my body whispers to me

that I have.”                                            

-  Mary Oliver        

August 18th, 2024: Reflections on Pentecost 13: Wisdom and Trust: John 6:51-58, by The Reverend Judith F. Lyons

Good Morning! 

Last Sunday, my dear friend and mentor, Rev. Hartshorn Murphy,

led us through his reflection on our salvation history,

from the Exodus Story of manna in the wilderness,

to the Passover sacrifice,

to Jesus and what is sometimes called the Lord’s Supper,

or the Mass, or Communion, or the Eucharist.  

He explained how differently the Sacrament of bread and wine

is understood and worshipped. 

For our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers,

there is the certainty of transubstantiation;

it is a Sacrament where the bread and the wine are not only made sacred

but become the living body and blood of Jesus. 

For many of our more conservative Protestant sisters and brothers,

the bread and the wine are  onlysymbols of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. 

For us, as Episcopalians, we hold open a big tent, offering a third way, a middle way.

We believe that during the sacramental prayers over the bread and wine,

something happens, something sacred happens,

where God sanctifies the bread and the wine to be the “holy presence” of Jesus,

given to us as the body and blood of Christ.

God is present in the Mystery of that Sacrament.

I remember my confirmation class at age 11, so very long ago,

learning about the Mystery of God in the Sacraments.

We memorized that it was an outward and visible sign

of an inward and invisible grace.

We struggled to understand this “presence” of Jesus that enters the bread and wine,

and we tried to imagine how it is that we abide in him and he in us.

We asked the same questions the disciples asked:

how can this be and what does it mean?  

And as we took communion for the first time,

some were sure they felt the “presence”

and some weren’t sure they felt anything.

But because it meant something to those we admired and loved,

and because we so wanted it to mean something to us, we kept at it. 

We were practicing our faith before we understood that we were.

What is this “presence” and how does this happen? 

The honest answer is:  we don’t know. 

It is the Mystery of God beyond our knowing, that is forever,

for all time, for everyone, all, ‘believers’ or not.

Glimmers of this ‘presence,’ however, is not beyond our experiencing.

Sometimes when we enter into the mystery of the bread and wine,

it overtakes us; we feel it deeply.

Hartshorn shared with us who he brings to the table with him,

that he thinks about his parents, his loved ones,

and his favorite saints on the other side, with Jesus,

and he shares with them the bread and wine.

Who and What will you bring to the table?

What is in your heart today that needs to be fed by the presence of Jesus?

How might this mystery strengthen you as you continue

The good work of ‘Doing the Loving Thing.?”

Two themes emerge in our readings this morning that make vivid our

encounter with the Mystery of Faith:

The Generous offerings of Wisdom and the Surrendering to Trust.

In Proverbs 9:1-6 we meet Lady Wisdom

who invites us with enthusiasm and joy to her banquet.

She has built her house, set her table, prepared her food

and sends out her servants to invite everyone to

“come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”

God awaits you. God awaits everyone…. God’s gift is abundance! 

And how does Lady Wisdom summon us? 

“You that are simple, turn in here!

                  “To those without sense, come eat of my bread and wine”

                  “lay aside immaturity and live and walk in the way of insight.”

There are no requirements, no IQ tests, there are no exceptions; all are invited.

How often does God offer us a banquet? 

Even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…..

God preparest a table before us…..

In contemporary language, Wisdom might say,

 Those of you who are skeptical, cynical or judgmental or fearful,

come and see. 

Come to the party. 

Those of you who have been hurt or are ashamed or need to be sure,

come and see.

Come to the party.  All are welcome.

I have been one of those too skeptical, too reluctant, too much in my head

and too afraid of my heart to come to the party.

I have hidden behind sophistication, education, and peer pressure.

I was a cradle Episcopalian.  I went to college in 1964,

in the midst of all that was the sixties,

and I hid my belief in God from my colleagues and friends

who were out to change the world through activism and hard-hitting art. 

I didn’t have the courage or the wisdom to speak up. 

I was a closet believer.

Years later, as I tiptoed back to church, I bought myself, at a street fair,

the smallest gold cross there was, and I wore it around my neck.

It was so tiny you probably had to squint to see it,

but that was my first step out and back.

So I understand the skeptical and the reluctant,

and I understand a world where caution is not always a bad thing,

but it can become a habit, a wall of resistance,

or you become a dabbler, showing up every once in a while for a few minutes,

missing the best parts of the party—

the food, the laughter, the stories, the truth, the pain, and the love.

I think Jesus is trying to say, again and again, I am the party,

I am the food, the laughter, the stories, the truth, the pain, and the love. 

I don’t want you to miss it. I want you to live in abundance,

sharing in the love and joy of now.

Today in Ephesians we hear,
Be careful then how you live …..

making the most of the time ……

Make the most of the time, to come to the table,

To eat your fill. Receive nourishment and strength

Well, how are we to do that?

When the world is full of so much pain and despair?

How are we to surrender ourselves to the Mystery of Faith,

Trusting in the power of God

to transform ourselves and the world?

Trust is the key.  Trust bridges the gap over what we do not know.

Henri Nouwen, prolific and powerful writer

of our relationship to Christ,

Our struggle and suffering with Christ,

And our longing for unity in Christ

Wrote often of two very powerful images of God that sustained him all his life:

The first was the image of the gentle, loving father

in Rembrandt’s painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son,

so unlike his own father.

The second came from his  fascination with the Trapeze artists

he witnessed again and again at a circus in Germany: 

The Flying Rodleighs.

He was transfixed by the free flying and the catching—the sheer beauty of it and the connection between them.   

In conversation with them, the flyer said,

“it may seem to the public that I am the star of the trapeze,

but the real star is Joe, my catcher.

The secret is that the flyer does nothing, and the catcher does everything.

When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands

and wait for him to catch me. 

The worst thing a flyer can do is try to catch the catcher;

it could break both our wrists. 

The flyer must trust with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.

Nouwen was profoundly moved by that image, of God as the catcher,

always in place, always ready, as we fly into the unknown. 

I like that image too, of God as the catcher,

but then I wonder about the times I wasn’t caught or didn’t think I was. 

Times of trauma, crisis, terrible grief and loss. 

Those times when I felt more of God’s absence than God’s presence,

or to complete the image, when God’s hands must have slipped because I fell hard;

I wasn’t caught.  I struggled and I suffered. 

Only later, as is so true for so many of us,

could I see and understand that there was always a net,

that indeed I was caught and held and strengthened and led slowly to new life. 

I experienced again and again the vastness of God, the utter mystery of God’s love.

And so I have returned to the image of God the catcher, whose net holds us all.

We come to the table today with our memories,

our broken lives, our joyous celebrations,

and we humbly offer them to God as God feeds us with God’s presence

to give us strength and courage for the days ahead

to live our lives to the fullest, in abundance. 

We revel in this Mystery of faith in a God bigger than religion. 

We share in the bread and wine grateful for the life blood it gives us. 

And we step out in little leaps of faith all the time,

trusting that God the catcher will catch us,

in whatever way God knows we most need.

Let us accept Wisdom’s invitation to the party. 

Let us trust that God’s net is firmly in place!

AMEN

August 11th, 2024: Reflections on Pentecost 12: Holy Communion: John 6:35, 41-51, by The Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

Today I’d like to offer a reflection on what is known by various names:  the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Mass, or the Greek word used by the Early Church:  Eucharistia, meaning “thanksgiving.”

          We begin with the foundational story of the Hebrew people:  the Exodus.  Moses, the Liberator is raised up by God to deliver his people out of slavery in Egypt to a land promised;  a land metaphorically envisioned to be flowing with milk and honey.

          But the journey is arduous and long, lasting more than a generation, allowing those with indentured mind sets to die along the way.  But the people grumbled in their hunger, so God sent manna from heaven – a dew like substance which could be made into bread, but sufficient only for a day.  The petition in the Lord’s Prayer is an echo:  “Give us each day our daily bread.”  Manna was strength for the journey through an alien and hostile land.  So that’s the first image:  God providing sustenance to people on the road to freedom.

          Second is sacrifice.  The Latin word is sacrificum, which means:  “to make something holy by offering it to God.”  In ancient Jewish ritual, two goats were offered.  One was the scapegoat (that’s our expression, not theirs).  This goat was laden with the sins of the community and driven into the wilderness to carry away their transgressions.  The second was the blood sacrifice in which the goat was offered as a gift to God, roasted in a holocaust (the word 'holocaust' comes from ancient Greek and means 'burnt offering');  a portion was given back to the worshipper to be consumed.  In this way, the goat came back to you as a meal with God.

          The annual Passover Supper celebrated the Exodus event by the consumption of symbolic foods.  Unleavened bread – Matzo – recalls how the people left hurriedly, with no time for the bread to rise.  Four cups of wine were consumed to commemorate God’s four acts of liberation in Exodus 6:  I will take you out, I will rescue you, I will redeem you, and I will bring you to a new land.

          At the Passover Supper with his disciples on the night before he died, Jesus did something unexpected.  In passing the bread to his friends, he added to the ancient words, “This is my body.”  And then similarly, he took the 3rd cup of wine – the cup which symbolized God’s act of redemption – and said “This is my blood.  Whenever you share it, do it for the ‘anamnesis’ of me.”  Anamnesis is the opposite of amnesia.  In amnesia, you forget who you are, who your people are, and how you understand the world.  Anamnesis means to recall, to reclaim – to come to one’s self again.  It means to find your way back again to wholeness.  To be, in short, set free.

          We today use the word “remember.”  Do this to remember me.  For some of our Protestant brothers and sisters, the Lord’s Supper is but a memorial.  It is to literally remember ceremonially the Last Supper.  But I would urge us to hyphenate.  Re-member.  To be made a member again.

          A gruesome image this:  If you were in a terrible accident and your arm were to be severed from your body and through the miracle of modern medicine, they were able to reattach it;  you could say that your arm was re-membered – made a member of your body again.  In communion, we are re-membered to the body of Christ.

          The stress and strain of daily life with all its microaggressions, distracts us and cumulatively acts to sever our connection to our own selves and to others and the holy communion reconnects us, for which we offer Eucharistia:  Thanksgiving.  In this sense, communion – the same root word as community, right? – is not a noun but a verb.  That community is a mystical one in which you today share this meal, through space and time, with those who have gone before, who have partaken of this sacred meal in their generations:  your mother and father, your grandparents, Francis and Clare, Patrick and Bridget, Mary of Magdala and Mary of Nazareth, saints all, and with Jesus the Christ.  Sit with that for a moment…

          And so all these metaphors obtain.  Communion is strength for this journey through a barren and desert land.  We are but resident aliens in a world not our own.  Pilgrims and strangers do we wander;  fed by the bread of heaven we are sacrificed, that is, made sacred.

          The bread and wine brought to the altar represents our lives and labors for the Kingdom in this broken world.  Each week we build our offering – our occasional fidelity and our pervasive faithlessness – it is blessed and returned to us made whole, renewing us to go forth again into this broken world, and as Samuel Beckett said, to be “ever tried, ever failed.  No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better!”

          Now all this is a mystery, but as is our human nature, the church has tried to nail down the ineffable.  The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation – that the bread and wine become in physical reality the flesh and blood of Jesus.  Or, as mentioned earlier, the extreme Protestant doctrine of memorial, that the Lord’s Supper is only a symbolic re-creation of Jesus’ last dinner.

          And the third option, what we reformed Catholics proclaim, the belief in a “real presence.”  That Christ is present in these substances – not as metaphor or symbol – but in a true and substantial way.  How?  Let mystery suffice.

          Matter matters.  We humans need things we can see and touch and taste and smell to mediate those things which are invisible.  The bread and wine are earthen vessels by which the holy is present to us.

          I’ve said a lot but there’s just a bit more.  At the breaking of the bread, our prayer book has me say “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.”  That phrase lifts up one aspect of the Exodus event.  Exhausted with Pharoah’s reluctance to free the people after repeated warnings in the form of plagues, God dispatches the destroying angel to strike dead all the first born, both human and animal, of the Egyptians, all the households not marked with the blood of a Lamb.  These houses were “passed over.”

          The doctrine of sacrificial atonement – that Christ died for our sins to appease a vengeful God who required a blood sacrifice – is thus connected up with the Eucharist.  But scholarship suggests that for the first thousand years of Christian history, holy communion was not understood primarily as a sin forgiveness thing.  That doctrine did not emerge as the sole understanding of Jesus until the time of St. Anselm (1033-1109) and the development of the Just War theory for the Crusades.

          No.  For the first thousand years, as reflected in the frescoes in ancient churches, the holy communion was all about practicing the vision of the Kingdom of God on earth.  A radical vision of social transformation based on love and justice.  A reflection of the primitive church’s baptismal vow to live in Christ  - in which there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female – and today we would add:  no gay or straight, no liberal or conservative, no immigrant or native born – all are one in Christ Jesus, no exceptions.  It is an acting out and a living into God’s dream for human, animal and plant kind;  of Eden’s return at last.  In other words, it’s not just about you;  it’s about us – all of us.

          To symbolize this today, in addition to saying or singing “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” I will add “Though we are many, we are one body” and I invite you to respond: “Because we all share in the one bread.”  [Let’s try it;  (repeat)]

          “Though we are many, we are one body”

          “Because we all share in the one bread”

          Let’s close with John’s vision on the Isle of Patmos.  The Book of Revelation is not about an afterlife or about heaven – or God help us, any Rapture.  It’s a vision in veiled and symbolic and often bizarre images about coming through the persecutions of that time, into the glorious new world struggling to be born, awaiting Christ’s return.  From Revelation 7:

 “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language – standing before the throne and before the Lamb…  and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.  Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.  The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat… and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

          So let it be!  Amen!

August 4th, 2024: Crowds and the Bread of Life: Exodus 16:2-4,9-15; Psalm 78: 23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35, by The Reverend Judith ("Jude") Lyons

How do you feel about crowds?  

Social scientists say that our relationship to crowds is cultural, determined in large part by the “personal space” in which we grew up.   The technical term for this study is Proxemics.   It examines how population density aPects  behavior, communication and social interaction.  

 When I was growing up in a sleepy West Los Angeles neighborhood – when the population of Los Angeles was less than half of what it is now, there were these kids from New York – back East we called it then – that would come right up to your face to talk, and I was always stepping back.   Later I learned that they meant no harm, it was simply that their personal space was developed from constant crowds  and big families in cramped spaces.

Crowds have been a big part of our cultural life lately.  Political rallies of one sort or another fill stadiums and our screens.  

Crowds stuck at airports when huge storms and a global outage hit at the same time.  

I was in one of those crowds.

And then of course there are sports crowds – most especially The Olympics, where the whole world seems to be gathered together in the pouring rain or the sweltering heat or vicariously from the non-crowd comfort of our living rooms.  

There are the day-to-day crowds of freeways and parking lots and checkout lines and service desks – and then there are the crowds where we went to escape crowds, like the beach, national parks, scenic trails, and on and on.  

 What is your experience with crowds?    

How do you feel in the midst of them?  What crowds from history  do you wish you had been in?

Any crowd where Jesus preached, I would have liked to have been there!

 Crowds can be thrilling in the energy they produce when everyone has their phone light on in raised hands swaying together, singing at a Billy Joel or a Taylor Swift concert. The surge of positive energy can be remembered for a lifetime.  

 Crowds can also be frightening, unstable, unpredictable, filled somehow with a dangerous clashing energy that feels as if life itself is at risk.

 Somewhere in between, crowds can be impersonal and lonely, as you walk among hundreds of individuals and small groups that all have separate lives, all know where they are going, and you are alone surrounded by lots of energies you are not part of.

Today, John’s Gospel is the second of 5  in a series called The Bread of Life Discourse. Last week was the feeding of the 5000, 

a crowd of people, some solo, many in family groups or neighborhood groups, all seeking Jesus because word of his healings had spread.  

 So, why did they come?  

Some desperate for help, healing, change.  

Some to see what’s the big deal about this guy?   

 They were fed.   Free food.   But …How?  

In this crowd, some could see better than others.  Were there arguments about what just happened?

The disciples witnessed it all; 

For all their ‘help’ in trying to manage this crowd, 

they were stopped in their tracks and rendered speechless as the power of God took over, a power beyond their imagining, 

beyond any reason or understanding.

 What the crowd didn’t see was the second part of the Gospel, 

where the disciples head out in the boat without Jesus, get caught in rough waters, and Jesus joins them by walking on the water, and then somehow whisks the boat to Capernaum.  

 If the disciples were speechless before;  they must be dumbstruck now.  

 Our Gospel today again features the Crowd.   John writes ‘the crowd’ as a kind of lump sum and gives it lines to say, as if it were one unified thing.

But of course, they weren’t. 

 This ‘crowd’ tried hard to find Jesus. They saw that the disciples had gone, decided to get “into the boats" and go all the way to Capernaum to find him.  

That’s a lot of boats!  

My guess is that the women, children and elders went home, and groups of men set out to find Jesus.  And it was not a short ride.  

 This crowd is persistent, energetic, driven.  

But when they get there, the question that gets blurted out is beside the point, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”   

‘When’ is not a meaningful question.  

It reflects, instead, the awkward, clumsy, thing we say when we are out of breath or don’t know what to say.  

 Jesus doesn’t answer their question, but answers instead the questions they are afraid to ask:   

Who are you? and how did you feed all those people? 

 Jesus answers that question by saying, in essence, do not pretend that you have come for high purposes.  Yes, you have worked hard to get here, but you’ve come because of all that free food!   

 And, I imagine Jesus smiles, kindly, as he says: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  

For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 

 Without skipping a beat, another blurt: 

What must we do to perform the works of God?  

Again, a poor question-- 

--asked before really listening or hearing.  

It’s not about performing a task or doing a thing.   It is about slowing down, observing, receiving something deeper; it is about seeing and understanding that Jesus was sent by God, that Jesus is the Son of God, that God’s food through Jesus brings eternal life.

 I have some sympathy with the crowd, even though their spokesperson asks stupid questions, 

and most seem to misunderstand again and again who Jesus is and what he is saying.  

 The scene feels to me a little like the press surrounding Jesus and shouting questions at him, looking for quick answers that he refuses to give.  They have forgotten yesterday’s miracles, 

feeding 5000 --old news,  and now they are hungry for a new angle to the story.

 But I also understand that a crowd, even this one, is made up of people, individual people, with real questions, real concerns, real doubts, real longing, with different needs, different styles, and different abilities to perceive and understand what they see and hear. 

Just like you and me. 

 And so Jesus ends this particular segment with something the press can quote, something that seems like an answer:  

“I am the bread of life.  

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,  whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,”  The press is satisfied for a moment.  

They have the video and they have the quote.

 It seems like an answer, 

but you and I know it is not that simple. 

It asks rather than answers

It asks: what is the bread you most need? 

What will satisfy your hunger and thirst?

 “Give us today our daily bread” we pray.

What is that bread for you today?

Jesus often speaks to and teaches to crowds, but he enters one heart at a time. 

Yours and mine. 

He heals one soul at a time. 

Yours and mine. 

You and I know that we will reflect on this bread  and pray about it for most of our lives. 

If I am honest, I know that 

I will struggle with what feels like a demand: believe or else, 

even when I know that “demand”  is not how Jesus does it.   We will sing and feel the beauty  of “I am the bread of life”; 

we will cling to that image and the feeding stories,  and we will feel fed, even when we don’t completely understand how that could be.

 These five Sundays of The Bread of Life discourse are opportunities to reenter the Gospel we have heard time and time again, and to look around with new eyes, hear with new ears, and to step away from the crowd, to slow our crowded lives, 

to allow into our hearts the Bread of Life we need, the very life and breath of God.

 AMEN

July 28th, 2024: Reflections on The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, 2 Kings 4:42-44, Ps 145: 10-19, Ephesians 3:14-21, John 6:1-21 by J. D. Neal

Our readings this morning open with an old story, about a young man named Elisha, living almost 1000 years before the time of Jesus. Elisha was a prophet, a person whose job is to listen and to speak the words of God to the people of God, a job which often entailed miraculous signs that would help reveal something of God to the ones God wanted to speak to. From what I can tell, some prophets, like Elisha, did not work a trade, nor did they accept payment in exchange for miraculous signs or for delivering the words of God to their hearers. Instead, they relied on the generosity of God and God’s people to provide their daily bread, and so our first lesson opens with a man providing Elisha with 20 barley loaves and a sack of grain out of the first-fruits of his harvest. This is a generous gift, enough to feed Elisha for some time, but instead, Elisha commands his servant to share the gift with the hundred-some people gathered around him. You heard the reading, so you know how this goes, the bread (which could never be enough to fill the bellies of over a hundred people) is somehow multiplied — all the people gathered are fed and there is even extra left over. There is something beautiful in this story, and it is certainly a display of God’s power, but what exactly is the point? What are we supposed to glean from this story and from the very similar (but even bigger) story we hear about Jesus feeding thousands in our gospel reading today? Well, if we look around 2 Kings a little bit, we’ll notice a few things. For one, we’ll see that this story about the barley loaves is just one of a series of signs that Elisha performs. In one story, God raises a young boy from the dead through Elisha’s intervention. In another, Elisha saves a widow from destitution by causing her small jar of oil to miraculously multiply into enough oil that she can sell it to pay off her debts and provide for her family. In the passage after our reading, a mighty foreign general named Naaman is healed of leprosy through Elisha’s intervention, learning that God is the true source of power in this world, not the armies or wealth that this general commanded. All these stories display God’s power to heal, to provide, to defy expectations and make a way where there seemed to be no way. This is a theme in the prophets, one that stretches all the way back to the stories of Mosess and the Exodus, where God parts the sea to deliver his people and rains miraculous bread upon them to sustain them in the wilderness. God, the prophets tell us, is the one who provides. Another thing we notice when we look around the context of Elisha’s story, is that he, and many of the Hebrew prophets, lived in a time when the kingdom of Israel was ruled by a series of corrupt kings. According to 2 Kings, Elisha prophesied under the reign of King Jehoram. In this time, the kings of Israel had taken religion into their own hands, building ‘holy places’ all over the kingdom to worship a variety of gods, installing priests who reported to the King and most likely paid tribute to the king from the peoples’ offerings. These kings conquered and enslaved neighboring nations, forcing them to pay tribute and sometimes conscripting them into forced labor, accumulating resources and amassing armies to further their political and military conquests. These kings had long since shed any real reliance upon the God of Israel, trusting instead in gold and ‘chariots’, wealth and power to provide for them — only consulting with prophets of God like Elijah when things went sideways and desperation forced them to remember the God who had delivered them from Egypt long ago, the God who they were always meant to serve and rely upon. And as the kings forgot God and instead turned to greed and violence to provide for their kingdom, so too did they lead the people of God, whom they were meant to shepherd, down this path. With this context in mind, these stories like the one with the barley loaves start to make more sense. Signs like these would show the people of God where the true source of power and provision was — would remind them of what their kings had helped them forget: that they were meant to live differently, to discover and to show the world what it would look like to rely upon God, to trust in his abundance rather than in the strength of men. And so, we start to see, I think, what Jesus has for us in the gospel reading this morning. Jesus spends much of his time in the gospel of John confronting the leaders of Israel, trying to show them that they have been putting their trust in human systems of power and security and have forgotten the love of God. Jesus, like Elisha, does many signs displaying the abundant power of God to heal, to provide, to love without boundary or measure. Jesus too wants to help his followers remember and rely upon God instead of any other source of power or security, and so he miraculously feeds them, demonstrating God’s abundant provision to thousands. But, in today’s gospel, when the people try to take Jesus’ miracle and make him king, he resists, he disappears up the mountain where they cannot find him, refusing their attempt to turn this sign of God’s provision into just another idol. Because here’s the thing, I’ve been speaking a lot about how God is in the business of providing for his people, and that’s all true; God does provide for our needs, often in very concrete and material ways, but God is not a vending machine. And it’s all too easy to turn the gospel of Jesus Christ into some kind of ‘prosperity gospel’, to read stories like this in the Scriptures and then start to believe that as long as you do the right things, or think the right things, or just believe hard enough, everything will go well for you and you will have all of the comfort and security you could want. But that’s not the promise of God’s Kingdom. That’s just treating God the same way the kings of Israel in Elisha’s time treated their gold and idols and armies — as a means to an end, to protecting ourselves and our security. But we follow the risen and crucified Lord, and like I mentioned a couple months ago when I preached on the Good Shepherd passage, God does not promise that we will always have a life free of pain and uncertainty, but that, if we turn towards him, he will always be with us, that we will have what we need, even if it’s not always what we expected or what we would have chosen for ourselves. He invites us into a different kind of kingdom, which offers a different kind of security. Instead of wealth or social standing or any of the other things we seek to secure ourselves in the world, he offers “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” — he offers the security that comes with knowing that at the center of all things, we are fully known and utterly loved by God, and the promise that, if we begin to let go of all of those other things we cling to to protect and provide for ourselves and entrust ourselves and cling to Christ instead, that we will have joy and peace, and that Christ’s love will overflow out of us to bring healing to the world around us. He promises that, somehow, our simple acts of Christ-like love — generosity, patience, kindness to those in need, however we are called to follow — will really have an effect, will really be taken up into his own work of bringing new and abundant life to our world, in ways that we could not ask or imagine. Barley was the poor man’s flour in Israel, it was cheaper to produce and of rougher texture and taste than the finer wheat, often costing half the price. That boy in today’s gospel was likely poor, and giving up his bread and fish to help Jesus feed the crowd was a precious thing, it was an act of real generosity and kindness. In using the humble gift of this boy’s barley loaves and fish to feed these thousands of people, Jesus shows us that not only is God in the business of providing for his people, but that he takes even the smallest, humblest offerings we make and transforms them into instruments of his abundant love and provision. But tomorrow is Monday, and for most of us, as soon as we walk out of these doors, we are plunged back into a world — a kingdom — where we are inundated with a whole bunch of other narratives about how we can find security and comfort and fulfillment, where it is all too easy to forget, to become deaf to the promises of Christ’s kingdom, to trust a job or a 401k or our reputation in our community or a million other things to provide for us. All too easy to become numb to those little holy nudges to love those around us. This is why Paul has to pray for the Ephesians as he does in the epistle reading today: it requires the power of Holy Spirit to make us able to comprehend and remember “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ for us, to keep us rooted and grounded in God’s love when there are so many alternatives offered to us. This is why we gather for worship and do this whole liturgy, why we gather, why we read the Scriptures or meet with faithful friends or listen to beautiful music, or read stories or poems that wake us up to the realities of God’s kingdom — why we pray: to remind ourselves that we live in another kingdom, that we are followers of another way, that God is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine”, if we only put our trust in him. So, in the words of Paul: this week, may we remember the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen

July 21st, 2024: "The Dividing Wall of Hostility", Reflections on The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Jeremiah 23:1-6, Ephesians 2:11-22, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, by J. D. Neal

On the bookshelf just to the left of my writing desk, there is a small icon — a tiny reproduction of what’s called the San Damiano cross. The San Damiano cross is a crucifix painting. It has a cool place in the story of St. Francis of Assisi and I’d encourage you to go down that rabbit hole on wikipedia later, but that’s not what I want to highlight about it today. In the painting, Christ is depicted with his arms stretched out on the cross, but he is not alone. About his arms and above his head a company of angels is gathered, while beneath his arms and by his legs are a bunch of people: saints and centurions, Jews and Romans, those who followed Jesus and those who put him to death — all of them there at the cross, looking to me like Jesus has just stretched out his arms to gather them all together under his loving embrace.

Our epistle reading today reminds me of this little cross on my bookshelf. In it, Paul describes how the ‘dividing wall of hostility’ between Jews & Gentiles is ‘broken down’ in Christ’s body on the cross — how Christ’s self-giving love on the cross not only removes this wall but gets rid of the significance of ‘Jew’ & ‘Gentile’ distinctions before God all together. Jesus, Paul says, makes them into a ‘new humanity’, joining them all together as one in his Body, his Church. This is a radical thing for Paul to say. At the time of Jesus & the apostles, religious Jews would not even enter a Gentile’s house or share food with them, because they believed it made them ritually unclean. Many of them seem to have believed that Gentiles had no share in God’s promises, and that the only hope for a Gentile was to become Jewish — to undergo circumcision, abandon all Gentile ties, take on Jewish law, and formally become a member of the people of Israel. In their eyes, Gentiles were idolaters, worshippers of false gods, and — perhaps most importantly, as Israel had been under the dominion of Gentile rulers and empires for centuries — Gentiles were ‘the enemy’. The idea that Gentiles could have the same access to God as Jews, let alone the idea of becoming reconciled and united as ‘one Body’ with them, would have seemed insane; impossible; blasphemy. But this reconciliation, this love that breaks down divisions and turns enemies into neighbors is exactly what God in Christ came to give us.

In the gospel reading today, when Jesus gets off the boat and sees the crowd gathered, Mark tells us that ‘he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.’ These people were, in other words, lost without a trustworthy voice to guide them. They felt so in need of the compassion and authority they found in Christ that they rushed all the way around the sea of Galilee on foot, just to beat him to the shore. Thousands flocked from across the whole region just to hear a word of his teaching or to graze the fringe of his garment and be healed. These people, in the words of Jeremiah, had been ‘scattered’ between bad shepherds for a long while. At this time, the people of Israel were divided by religious and political leaders who strove with eachother for influence and power. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the Zealots and Essenes, the Herodians and the Roman occupiers — all of these leaders competed for influence over God’s people, all seeking, in one way or another, to wield the name of God to amass power for their own ideals and ends. All the while, very few of these ‘shepherds’ cared for the well being of their sheep.

Does this feel familiar? We live in a world right now that, to me at least, feels more viscerally ‘scattered’ and divided than it ever has in my lifetime. Genocide and wars rage across the world, inflation and economic changes threaten our sense of security, the ideological gaps between groups and generations seem to be widening. And all the while businesses, political leaders, and even many pastors play on our fears and uncertainties, exploiting all this instability to get us to buy, vote, follow, give ourselves to their cause. I know it is taboo in some spaces to talk even generally about politics at church, but the church is not immune to any of this. All too often do our nation’s leaders wield the name of God in an attempt to get us to believe it is our ‘Christian duty’ to give our money and support to their cause, portraying their political or ideological opponents as enemies of God and God’s people. All too often do political leaders and pastors collapse their faith with their political platform and wield their pulpits to convert their congregations to their political party rather than to Jesus. Our people, our churches are torn apart and scattered between these false ‘shepherds,’ and we are taught, subtly or explicitly, to think of those who disagree with us as our enemies.

We are often exhausted and desperate in the midst of all this turmoil, and just like in the gospel, Jesus comes and looks on us with compassion, offering a different way, the way Paul speaks of in today’s epistle: the way of reconciliation and humble love. Make no mistake, it is the duty of all Christians to do justice and love mercy, to oppose injustice and oppression wherever we encounter it — at work, in our families, on social media, and in the voting booth. But our ideologies and our politics must be ruled by our commitment to the way of Christ — not the other way around. There is only one true shepherd, and if we are to be his sheep, we must be willing to oppose injustice and violence when it affects our enemies as well — to offer compassion even to those whom we cannot stand. Being a part of Christ’s body means being joined to everyone in Christ’s body, even and especially those who we disagree with and think of as our enemies. Jew and Gentile, remember? We all are like sheep without a shepherd, and our wounds and fears and desperation drive us all to seek security somewhere or another. Those who we consider our enemies are just as desperately in need of Christ’s compassion and healing as we are. If we are to be Christians, then we must learn to love as Christ loves. After all, Christ gave himself over to death to draw all people to God, even those who persecuted him and killed him.

In times like these, the Church must not give itself to a false shepherd by pledging its allegiance to a leader or political platform, nor can it remain silent, afraid to engage with the divisive and painful challenges of our times. The way of Christ requires that we seek to honestly address the evils and wounds we inflict on one another, that we call one another to repentance and the renewing of our minds. And it also requires that we follow our one, true shepherd in the way of love, hearing and extending compassion to those with whom we disagree, extending that humility and healing love that Christ gives us — that love which has always been the only thing that can tear down these dividing walls between us. Among all the other figures, that little cross on my bookshelf shows the centurions who cruelly gave Jesus vinegar to drink and stabbed him in the side right there alongside Mary and some of the apostles and saints — all of them, together under the arms of Christ.

May we be the sheep of this good shepherd and cling to his voice in these tumultuous times. May we remember that, in God’s Kingdom, division and despair do not have the last word. And may the Holy Spirit shape each of us into instruments of Christ’s peace, that we might give this world the gift of love that it so desperately needs. Amen.

July 7th, 2024: Reflections on The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 6:1-13, by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth, where he most likely assisted his father Joseph in his work as an artisan.  The word “tekton” means one who works with their hands – in wood or stone or light metals or even as a potter.  Thi9s was not considered to be highly skilled work and was often the work performed by peasants who had lost their land.  Sepphoris was the largest city in the Galilee.  The Romans had laid waste to it and were now employing a large work force to completely rebuild it.  A short journey from Nazareth, we ca easily visualize Joseph and his apprentice son waling the road and talking about the people’s hope for deliverance from the Roman occupation.

          Perhaps it was after Joseph had died, leaving Jesus bereft of a strong male figure to protect him from the gossip surrounding his birth, that Jesus went south and became a disciple of John the Immerser.  In Luke’s gospel, we see Jesus at age 12 talking with the elders in the Temple but none of the gospels reveal where he was during what’s been called “The Missing Years” – and no, it’s fantasy to speculate that Jesus went East and studied with the Buddha.  At least some of that time was spent learning John’s Mishnah.

          Following John’s martyrdom, Jesus along with a couple of John’s other disciples, go north to the relative safety of the Galilee.  Jesus picks up the mantle of John’s mission – proclaiming the nearness of the Kingdom of God and calling people to repent – to change their hearts and minds and wills – and live into this good news.  Jesus gathers about himself disciples and centered in the seaside town of Capernaum, most likely at Simon Peter’s home, Jesus travels widely;  preaching and healing and exorcizing.  Although, to be honest, the distinction between curing illness and exorcising unclean spirits – in Greek, “demons” – is fuzzy at best.

          Finally, Jesus decides to go home.  It’s clear that this is not a family visit because he takes his disciples with him.  This is an evangelism mission.

          Yeshua, a fairly common Jewish name, had gathered some fame as one of John’s disciples and for the mighty works he was said to have performed, and thus was a welcome guest preacher.

          The initial response was quite positive.  The people marveled at his wisdom.  Until someone in the back of the congregation recognized him.  “Hey, wait a minute.  Isn’t that Mary’s boy?  He and his dad repaired our shed years ago.  Y’all know his brothers and sisters…”

          Son of Mary.  Jewish boys are sons of their fathers – Simon bar Jonah, James & John the sons of Zebedee.  In effect “This is Mary’s boy, who knows for sure who his daddy is.”  All the old ugliness came back.  Mark sums it up simply:  “They took offense at him.”

          This is the story of familiarity breeding contempt.  The villagers were thinking “We’re as good as he is but we can’t teach like he does, so his teaching is not wise and he didn’t do those things they say he did.”  Jesus is amazed at their closed minds and closed hearts.  Jesus observes that other messengers of God – the Prophets – had similar experiences.

          Now Luke takes this story from Mark and embellishes it.  In Luke, the people don’t just “take offense at him,” but seek to kill him.  Jesus barely gets away with his life.  Mark is not quite so dramatic, but this story signals the ending of the Galilean ministry.  Jesus begins to set his face toward Jerusalem.

          The second story is of Jesus sending the 12 out on a missionary journey.  Their time of preparation is ending.  They are sent – the word “apostle” means “sent” – sent to proclaim the Kingdom and while doing so, to heal the sick and free the demon plagued.  They are to carry no provisions but to depend on the hospitality Jewish custom requires of fellow Jews.  If someone refuses to receive them, they are to shake the dust from their sandals as a witness against those homes.  What did that mean?

          Pious Jews, when returning to the Holy Land of Palestine from Gentile territory, would shake the dust from their shoes at the border so as not to contaminate the Holy Land and God’s holy people with the soil of profane places.  Such a public witness by the disciples would serve to publicly proclaim that those who were inhospitable were heathens and worthy of God’s judgment when the Kingdom comes.  Heavy stuff.  Perhaps it caused some folks to rethink their reluctance to welcome Jesus’ friends – or maybe it just made the disciples feel better.

          Some years ago, I had a conversation with a Mormon elder about their 2 x 2 missionary work, about how successful or unsuccessful the work was.  He confided in me that the point was not to make converts.  That is indeed very rare.  But the rejection, house by house, has the effect of strengthening a Mormon boy’s faith.

          The message of Mormon missionaries is, in a sense, a scolding for not believing what they believe and an invitation to change our minds  before it is too late.

          Was that the message of the 12?  In going out 2 x 2 and healing the sick, exorcizing unclean spirits and bringing a greater spiritual wholeness, the 12 proclaimed hope to the poor showing compassion and love.  Blessed are you poor.  Blessed are you mourning the loss of loved ones to Roman violence.  Blessed are you who are hungry or when you are excluded or reviled by the powerful;  for God loves you and his reign is near.  Live the good news.

          Do y’all remember the TV show “Blackish”?  It ran for some 8 years.  In an episode called “Charity,” Dre, the husband and father, feels uncomfortable about getting directly involved with those in need.  His wife, Bow – short for Rainbow – is a physician who travels the world to treat those in desperate need.  Shamed by her into cleaning out his clothes closet, Dre is driving to a goodwill drop site with his Armani and Calvin Klein collection and resenting it.  He sees a sleeping homeless man on a bus bench who is about his size.  He quietly puts the bag of designer clothes on the bench and congratulates himself on his generosity – and on saving gasoline.  Soon rumors circulate around town that Dre is a drunken bum because people have seen the well dressed sleeping homeless guy and assume it’s Dre because they do in fact resemble each other from a distance.  Dre decides to buy the guy some nice new sweat clothes and get his designer stuff back.  But as Dre is reaching for the bundle he’d left, the guy wakes up and cries out “I’m moving, I’m moving.”  Dre says, “Hey man, let me buy you a cup of coffee.”  And the homeless guy responds, “You’re not gonna talk to me about God are you?”

          Now, sit with that for a bit.

          They go into a coffee shop and talk and Dre discovers that they have a lot in common.  Later, Dre confesses to his wife how tenuous his own growing up was, and how with one or two catastrophes, it could have been him on that bench.  Scene –

          Now sitcoms are by nature simplistic and sentimental, but where today’s gospel reading and this TV show touch each other is in the vulnerability of the character Dre and the vulnerability of the disciples on their mission and even the vulnerability of Jesus going home for the first and last time.  These folks all went forth with open hands and open hearts seeking to bring a little hope to the broken, despised and dejected.

          When love puts on her big girl pants and walks around outside, she becomes charity.  Seeing others not as clients or problems to be solved but as brothers and sisters, all of us made in the image and likeness of God;  equally loved by God.  The task of seeking and serving Christ who comes to us incognito in the face of strangers in need – it is to them our reverence is due.

          Two quotes to sum up our reflection today.  The first is by Diana Butler Bass, who wrote:

“While contemporary Christians tend to equate morality with sexual ethics, our ancestors defined morality as welcoming the stranger.  Unlike almost every other contested idea in Early Christianity, including the nature of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, the unanimous witness of the ancient fathers and mothers was that hospitality was the primary Christian virtue.”

And finally, from Verna Dozier:

“Where Jesus came, life was different.  He proclaimed the gospel by being the gospel… (so) don’t tell me what you believe, tell me what difference it makes that you believe.”

June 30th, 2024: Reflections on The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 5:21-43, by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

Jesus has crossed to the other side of Lake Galilee.  Clearly, his fame as a healer has preceded him, as a large crowd has gathered, some simply curious, but many seeking relief from suffering.  As he’s making his way, the leader of the synagogue approaches him.

          Synagogue leaders were not clergy.  They were simply well-respected elders, empowered to facilitate the business of the town or village.  We erroneously may think that all those in authority – the scribes, the doctors of the Law, the Pharisees – opposed Jesus but that was not true. 

          Some, like Jairus, recognized Jesus as someone with spiritual power.  It’s not remarkable that Jairus comes, in his extreme distress, and kneels at Jesus’ feet.  “My daughter is dying.  Please come, and lay your hands on her and make her well.”  Jairus knows that his little girl is beyond the help of earthly powers.  Only supernatural power from God can help.  Jairus is right to be terrified.  His situation was all too commonplace.   Sixty percent of all live births in the Province of Palestine died by their mid-teens.Touched by Jairus’ very public display of trust, Jesus agrees to go. 

          While making their way, followed and surrounded by the townspeople, a woman screws up her courage.  She has suffered with what we’d diagnose today as irregular menstruation.  This condition made her ritually unclean because in order to take the ritual bath, the mikveh, her flow of blood had to be ended for 8 days.  For 12 years, prohibited from entering the Temple, she has sought the help of physicians.  She obviously was a woman of means because physicians were expensive, such that she is now destitute.  She thinks, “If only I could touch but the hem of his garment, he could make me whole.”

          It’s a bold move.  This woman is unclean, and impurity was contagious.  She dared not approach the prophet directly, but surreptitiously.  She, in her desperation, stretches out her hand and touches the hem of his garment.  Mark tells us that Jesus felt power drained out of him and asks, “Who touched me?”  The disciples laughed.  “Man, look at all these folks crowding us.  It’s more like who didn’t touch you dude.”  But Jesus persists.

          This is a tense moment.  The woman, who could have melted away in the crowd, came forward.  She fell before the prophet in great fear.  Would he condemn her in front of the whole village, who already shun her for her affliction?  Would the cure she has sensed in her body, be reversed?  Made worse?

          Jesus, with tenderness, tells her that “her faith” – that is to say, your conviction that I could make you well and restore you to this community – “your faith has made you whole.”

          While this happened, Jairus’ friends come and tell him that his daughter has died.  “Why bother the rabbi anymore.”  Jesus overhears all this and he tells Jairus to not be afraid.  Fear – not doubt – is the opposite of faith.  Dismissing the crowd, only Jesus and his top lieutenants, Peter, James and John, accompany Jairus to his house.

          The professional women mourners were keening but Jesus stops them, proclaiming “The child is but sleeping.”  They laugh as him.  Jesus takes Jairus and his wife and the 3 chosen disciples into the house, dismissing all the others.  Jesus takes the little girl by the hand and tells her to get up.  Mark, perhaps sensing that there’s some power in the Aramaic, retains the command.  The little girl is raised – in Greek, it’s the same word used for the resurrection – and Jesus says “give her some food.”  In the family meal, the little girl is restored to community, not unlike the woman with the flow of blood, now whole, is restored to family and clan.

          The Lazarus story only appears in John’s gospel.  This is Mark’s Lazarus tale – complete with the interval, the delay, that keeps Jesus from getting there before the girl has died.  It’s a mystery why Jesus said, “She is only sleeping.”  Did he somehow know that she was in a coma?  The Jews believed that the soul lingered above the body for 3 days, hoping to be reunited with the body.  It’s interesting that the word “cemetery” in the original Greek meant “sleeping place” as our ancestors in the faith believed that the dead sleep until the last day, when they will be raised up.

          The point of these two stories – held together by the number 12 – is about overcoming impurity.  Being touched by a bleeding woman made Jesus unclean.  Touching a corpse as well, made one unclean.  Jesus restores people to health;  beings touched by and touching the unclean, notwithstanding the scandal to the pious and the resentment of those in authority.

          The ministry of making well continued after Jesus’ death, in the work of the Apostles.  It is and must be a part of the work of ministry – but too often the spectacle of it all has been used to manipulate and deceive.

          As a child, I was utterly captivated by the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman, who hosted a show called “I believe in miracles” in the 1960’s and 70’s.  Such a magnetic presence, I believed that she, like Miss Nancy on Romper Room, was talking directly to me.  All I had to do to heal my angst – and my teenaged acne – was to reach out and touch the 16” screen on our black & white TV.

          Many decades later, I have come to a deeper insight.  “Curing” is aimed at disease and cures are elusive and rare when dealing with life threatening illness. 

          Healing, on the other hand, is aimed at restoring wholeness and meaning and connection.  We pray for a cure but must remain vigilant to not use the language Jesus used, “Your faith has made you – or failed to make you – well.”  Those who are quite ill are not helped by suggestion, wittingly or unwittingly, that their lack of good health is a result of scant faith.  But through faith, healing – in the sense of finding shalom – always comes to those seeking it, always.

          I will close today with a letter collected by David Kessler for this 1997 book:  The Rights of the Dying:  a companion for life’s final moments.

Dear friends,

Six or seven months ago I lay in a hospital bed convinced that I was going to die.  AIDS, cancer and pneumonia all seemed to be fighting to claim my life.  At that time, I felt very terrified that I might die and go to hell, or just not go on at all.  But my time had not come.  The time since then has been a precious gift, in which great healing had occurred.  After months of medical treatment, followed by months of holistic treatment and months of spiritual work on myself, I am free.

My partner’s remarkable support, a spiritual guide, a meditation partner, several meditation retreats, support from wonderful friends, and a lot of work within my own heart has left me in peace.

For many months, my idea of healing was that of curing my body.  I gave it my best try and I am proud of that fact.  I was even given several months of relative health and energy.  At that time, I often expressed my certainly that I could heal my body with my own healing powers.  I still believe these healing powers exist, but as my physical health reached a point where optimism about my health would have had to become self-denial, I realized the need to accept my own impending death and physical mortality.  I also realized that self-compassion meant feeling in my heart that even death was not a sign of weakness or failure.  This seems to be the ultimate act of self-acceptance.  I thank God for it.

All this did not come easily.  I have wept many times;  I have gotten angry and confused.  But I have learned that the only way out of the pain is through the pain.  A hard lesson to learn…

In the past six months, I have started my own production company, which produced a calendar of my own photography.  I have grown closer than ever to my family, my partner and my friends.  I am very proud and thankful for these things.  Most important, I have come to accept myself exactly as I am.  This is the greatest gift of all.

And so, my healing has occurred.  Soon my body will be dropping away from me, like a cocoon, and my spirit will fly like a butterfly – beautiful and perfect.  I don’t claim to know where exactly it is that I am going, but my heart tells me it is filled with light and love.

An open heart is an infinitely greater blessing than death is a tragedy.  Let us all take comfort in this knowledge.

Love, Bill

                           

Fr:  The Rights of the Dying:  a companion for life’s final moments, by David Kessler, 1997

June 23rd, 2024: Reflections on The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 4:35-41, by Reverend ('Mo') Lyn Crow

Maybe you are like me.  One of the things that most attracts me to the Episcopal Church is the symbolism.

 And one of the symbols we use a lot is the symbol of the boat.  Not only does the boat represent the physical thing that carries us across the water, it also is a symbol for the church.

 I’ll never forget the Sunday, early in my ministry, when I just finished leading the Sunday liturgy.

 As we sang the final strains of the last hymn, it hit me.  I had just taken the boat that is the church out for a sail and had just brought it safely in to shore!

 So cool!

 Another meaning of the boat symbol is that it represents the earthen vessel – the individual.

 We have on board, of this earthen vessel, the One who created the universe, formed the seas, and as today’s gospel reminds us, has power over the waves.

 Through the gift of the Holy Spirit that powerful One is present in us.

 Doesn’t that just blow you away?

 Maybe not.  We often take it so matter of factly.  Ho Hum, yes, the Holy Spirit dwells in me.

 We forget or fail to draw the obvious conclusion.

 If the powerful One dwells in me then . . .

 But we forget that, and along come the storms in our lives or in the lives of those we love, and we feel powerless over them.

 Stormy relationships, illness, emotional problems, trouble at work, addictions.

 We sometimes become overwhelmed by the events in our lives.

 Along comes a storm and we forget to wake up the power that is in us.  We are too focused on the storm.

 Or worse yet, we say wonderful things to ourselves, like:

-         This will never get any better.

-         This is just the way my life is.  I might as well get used to it.

-         I deserve this in my life because of all the mistakes I have made.

-         God brought this into my life to teach me a lesson.

-         I’m supposed to learn to endure suffering, so I’ll be a better Christian

 I defy you to show me anywhere in the gospels where someone comes to Jesus for healing or to be rid of the demons that haunt them and Jesus says

-         No, I’m sorry I won’t heal you.  You’re getting what you deserve.

-         No, I’m not going to get rid of your demons today.  I think that if you live with them a little longer there’ll be a valuable lesson in it for you.

 Jesus does not want us to suffer one moment longer with the chaos in our lives.

 He and all the power of the Universe, the powerful energy of the One who holds all of Creation in his hand is available to us – available to do miraculous things in our lives.  Things that will make our jaws drop.

 Our inheritance as followers of Jesus the Christ is power.  That’s the gift we celebrated on Pentecost and that he promises each and every one of us.  Power to do miraculous things.

 Think of some of the things Jesus said to his disciples and says to us.

 Matthew 17:20    If you had faith no bigger than a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, “Move from here to there” and it would move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.

 John 14:12    Whoever has faith in me will do what I am doing, indeed he will do greater things.

 Acts 1:8    You will receive power when the Holy Spirit falls upon you.

 Jesus was in the business of empowering people – He expected them to be powerful people doing powerful and miraculous things.

 Jesus has given us all we need to be powerful people.  People who can channel the spiritual energy of the Creator of the Universe to do incredible things:

-         to bring peace in chaos

-         to rid us of the demons and addictions that haunt us

-         to bring health in illness

 We are called to be powerful people, to wake the sleeping giant in each and every one of these earthen vessels.

 How do we do it?

-         First – choose to look away from the storm and remember the power of the Universe is in us and available to us.

-         Wake the sleeping giant within through prayer. 

Prayers like:        Let me experience the power of Your Presence

                              Let me be a channel of your healing

-         Be immersed in that energy and power that is in you.

-         Focus on what you would like to see happen – the healing, the peace in a relationship, the calming of an inner turmoil, the perfect job.

-         Allow awareness of the energy and power within you to fuel your prayers for the situation and to give you a vision, a picture in your mind of the prayer being answered and just sit with it.

-         Thank God for the healing that has already begun even before you see the effects of it.

-         Repeat as needed.

 There is a learning curve to this.  It takes some practice.  It needs to be a part of your life.

 The story is told of a Kansas farmer who found a baby eagle in one of his fields.  The poor young eagle was not in good condition and the farmer took it back to his home to nurse it back to health.  Over the next few weeks, the eagle did well, and the farmer put it in with the young chicks in his chicken pen.

 Although the eagle did well during the first weeks, it began to grow listless and seemed to be losing its strength.  The farmer feared the young eagle was going to die after all, until – one day the farmer had an inspiration.  He packed the eagle in his pickup truck and headed west for the Colorado mountains.  When he arrived at the eastern edge of the Rockies, the farmer took the young bird deep into the foothills.  Finally, he held the eagle in his arms and pointed its head to the mountain tops where the wind was blowing, and an occasional eagle cried out as it traced the currents of the mountain winds.

 A strong shudder coursed through the eagle’s body, and it spread its wings as a new strength seemed to surge through the bird.  It stood and leaped into the air, caught a strong breeze and soared into the sky.

 The farmer watched the eagle with a tear in his eye as the bird cried out what seemed to be a farewell.  A verse from the Bible came to the lonely figure of a Kansas farmer as he watched the eagle soar:

             “… those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. 

                                    They will soar on wings like eagles …”

 We are like that baby eagle.  We have spent too much time in the chicken coop and have forgotten the power within us.  It is time for us to wake up the sleeping giant in us and soar on wings like eagles.

June 16th 2024: Reflections on The Fourth Sunday of Pentecost, Proper 6, Year B, by Reverend Jeannie Martz

Back in 1977, 47 years ago, some of us here, and many others since, sat in darkened movie theaters, mesmerized as the words “Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away” scrolled into the far distance; and we might even have caught our breaths – I know I did – as the huge, pale underside of an Imperial destroyer suddenly passed silently “over us” across the screen; at the time, a wonder of animation against the black background of space.  The Star Wars world has continued to grow in the years since then, spawning multiple storylines and characters, both future and past in relation to the original; but this morning I want us to remember the first time a young actor named Mark Hamill entered our lives as Luke Skywalker – back before R2-D2, C3PO, and light sabers all became part of our culture.  I want us to remember the first time we watched Obi Wan Kenobi encourage Luke to close his eyes, and to feel and to trust the Force, that mysterious life energy in opposition to the Dark Side; the first time Obi Wan encouraged Luke to let go, and to let himself be guided by a power greater than himself.

            Back here in our own galaxy, some of us in the corporate world may at one time or another have taken part in a team building exercise called a “trust walk,” where one person is blindfolded and led by someone else through a building or along a trail, with the blindfolded person being completely dependent upon the person leading them for safe passage through whatever obstacles may be in the way.

            More energetic than the trust walk but also popular in both team building and general recreation are ropes courses, various arrangements of rigging and climbing and whatnot that present challenges for both individuals and groups, encouraging participants to trust each other and to work towards a common goal.

            If we toss these three situations into the pot:  Luke Skywalker trusting the Force, one blindfolded person trusting another person, and members of a group learning to trust each other; if we toss these three situations of trust into the pot and stir them around, we start to get an idea of what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians when he refers to “walk[ing] by faith, not by sight.”

            Remembering that Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” to “walk by faith, not by sight” is to walk every day, no matter what’s happening with the world and in the world, to walk every day trusting in Jesus’ assurance that God’s promises will come to pass and that God’s kingdom will come in its fullness.  To walk by faith rather than by sight is to trust Jesus’ words through the visions of Julian of Norwich that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well;” and trusting that in this world of ours, contrary to things seen, sooner or later, in the fullness of God’s time, God’s Ultimate Will, will be done.

            For us as disciples of Jesus, walking by faith is important; and this importance, along with the trust that makes such walking possible, this importance and trust are both affirmed by the parables of the kingdom that we hear Jesus tell this morning in Mark’s Gospel.  Both the parable of the seed that grows secretly, and the parable of the mustard seed, these both involve growth that is steady and sure, but in each case the growth begins underground and cannot initially be seen.  The sower sows the seeds, and then trusts that in God’s time and by God’s grace, they will germinate and begin to grow.

            But there’s a question mark here when we look more closely at these parables and we try to relate them to Christian life on a daily basis:  as important as walking by faith is, as important as trusting in the growth that God brings is, if we look at these parables to guide us in our everyday lives, it’s a little hard to see exactly what kind of guidance they’re giving us because there aren’t any people at all in one of them – and there’s only the “someone” I’ve already mentioned who scatters the seed in the other.

            The parable of the seed tells us that the sower sleeps and rises, night and day, but has no control over the sprouting of the seed, much less any knowledge of the “how” of its growth.  The earth produces “of itself” without the sower’s help, and the seeds’ growth is progressive and orderly:  “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”  Only when the grain is fully mature does the sower get involved again, and then the task is simply to harvest that which has come to fruition all by itself.

            So where is the guidance here for us as disciples? 

Just before today’s 2 Corinthians passage, Paul says, “…we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal…,” but I’m afraid this isn’t much help – because if this visible world and its visible troubles are actually temporary and passing away, and if, as it seems in the parables, God’s kingdom is going to steadily erupt from the soil on its own, does what we do in our own lives even make a difference anymore?

            A few verses later, though, as we just heard, Paul also says that “…whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please [the Lord].  For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.”  (2 Cor. 5:10)

            So even though this world of the body is temporary, says Paul, our actions in this world are still important; keeping our eyes on Jesus and choosing actions consistent with what we believe Jesus would do, and would have us do, in a given situation or relationship, these actions do still make a difference.

            So now the question is, what in fact should we do?  Which actions will please Jesus as we wait and walk in the confident expectation of his return, and the inbreaking of God’s kingdom?  Should we perhaps try to be helpful to hurry things along?  Should we be proactive, put the seed in a hothouse under some lights, and give God a hand by speeding up the kingdom’s growth?

            We may remember that Sarah tried that back in Genesis when she despaired of ever conceiving the child God had promised, and she took matters into her own hands.  She sent her maid Hagar to lie with Abraham, with the result that Ishmael was conceived; and the tragic and the horrific continue to this day as the descendants of Ishmael, the first born, and the descendants of Isaac, the child of God’s promise, do battle even as I preach, over who gets the land, and to whom the land really belongs.

            Speaking of the Land, the Holy Land, the Promised Land, as Jewish author Chaim Potok incorporates into his classic novel The Chosen, it’s both poignant and telling in light of our Gospel reading that back in 1948, strict Orthodox Jews opposed the formation of the State of Israel because they said that this new Jewish homeland would be an act of blasphemy; that its formation was an attempt to force God’s hand and God’s timing, because it would give the land back to the Jews before God was ready for that to happen; before God had sent them God’s messiah.

            Even today – and there was a lot of buzz around this back at Y2K, buzz that still continues – even today, various fringe groups of both Evangelical Christians and Jews, sometimes working together and sometimes working separately, these groups look at the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem and they dream about building the Third Temple in our day by force, and, depending on one’s religious perspective, thereby triggering either the Messiah’s first coming (for Jews) or second coming (for Christians).  However, given that the Muslim Dome of the Rock currently occupies, and has occupied, the Temple Mount for over 1,300 years (1,333 to be exact), such a move does not appear at the moment to be a constructive step towards world peace.

            So:  if on the one hand, doing nothing while we wait upon God and the kingdom; and on the other, doing too much instead of waiting upon God; if neither of these is what Jesus would have us do, perhaps we should take a page or two from Luke Skywalker and from the realities of gardening.  Perhaps we should work together in concert with the kingdom’s growth, through our actions as identified by today’s collect – through proclaiming God’s truth with boldness and ministering God’s justice with compassion, providing through our lives as favorable an environment for God’s will being done on earth as we can.  As we pray so often in the Prayers of the People, “Give us grace to do your will in all that we undertake, that our works may find favor in your sight.”

            In 2 Corinthians in the verses that come right after the end of today’s reading, Paul says, “All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us….”  (2 Cor. 5:18, 19a, 20a)

            We are ambassadors for Christ, and ambassadors speak in the name of the one who has sent them.  We are representatives of Christ and as we walk by faith, this is how we are to work in concert with God:  we are to be reconcilers in this broken world.  We are to continue Jesus’ healing work of bringing people back into relationship with each other, back into relationship with creation, and back into relationship with God – because that’s what reconciliation is.  Reconciliation is restoring, being in, and staying in, relationships that are marked with truth, with justice, and with compassion.

            The Rt. Rev. Stephen Charleston, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a former Bishop of Alaska, says this about Jesus and relationships:  “Jesus invites us into a living relationship with God.  That relationship is love, but the love is sustained through forgiveness.  Forgiveness is what keeps us from being lost to God.  It is what keeps us from being lost to one another.  Forgiveness is our life line in the storm.  It is our path to peace.  In the gospel, Jesus makes this connection by drawing a spiritual circle of forgiveness around us.  He tells us that we cannot stop forgiving because if we do we will stop being in relationship.  For his healing to work in our lives, for peace to be possible, we must keep the living link that only compassion can offer.  It is the deep acknowledgement that none of us stand outside the Jesus circle in our need for forgiveness.  None of us has a corner on the market of forgiving others because they have sinned greater than ourselves.  ‘Who will cast the first stone?’ he asked those who wanted to judge another’s sin.  Within the love of Jesus, there are no corners in which to hide, only the circle of forgiveness that is his healing compassion.”  (Good News: A Scriptural Path to Reconciliation, p. 21)

            Bp. Charleston goes on to say that “It is difficult to not retreat from one another because [staying] will challenge us to live into an obedience to God that is not based on law, but love.  As much as we would like to resolve our conflicts with hard and fast rules about how to judge one another’s behavior, we will have to accept the fact that we will rarely agree on what is ‘right.’  Instead, like the living branches of a vine, we will have to grow together.  We will have to be guided by love, by the example of Jesus as he taught us to be open, merciful, forgiving, and faithful.  Consequently, we will have to be open to change, to compromise, to humility.  Our faithfulness will not be measured by how ‘right’ we are, but by how loving we are.”  (Ibid., p. 27)

            Bp. Charleston finishes by saying, “Compassion is the power of God to bring forgiveness into even the most violent conflict.  Forgiveness is the mercy of God to bring people back into community even after the most hurtful separation.  Community is the grace of God to bring peace into human lives even in a world of fear.”  (Ibid., p. 22)

            We are ambassadors of Christ in community, called to be reconcilers; called to be a new creation in this world of fear by walking together in faith, in compassion, in forgiveness, in love – and in trust, trusting that “God walks beside us through all the peaks and valleys of our lives,” “as near to us as our very breath.”  (F, 2 Cor, H, 139)

            As God’s new creation, it’s time for each of us to let go of our own fear and allow ourselves to be guided, sustained, and empowered by a Spirit and a Force far, far greater than ourselves – for the sake of the world, and the reconciliation of all humankind.  Amen.  

June 9th 2024: Reflections on The Third Sunday of Pentecost, Family Conflict and Baal-Zebul, Mark 3:20-35, by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

Last Sunday’s gospel story was about a conflict between Jesus and some Pharisees over observing the Sabbath. In today’s story, the conflict has escalated and is between Jesus and his family and Jesus and the Doctors of the Law from Jerusalem. The context is Jesus’ almost frantic healings and exorcisms in the towns and villages in the Galilee. As Jesus returns to the house which is his headquarters in Capernaum, the sick and broken continue to crowd the courtyard of the house; so much so that Jesus and his disciples can hardly eat dinner. Jesus’ family is in that crowd, and they push through and seek to “restrain him.” The image here in the Greek is most dramatic – they try to bind him with rope. They think that he’s insane. Why? It’s helpful to remember that Jesus has been away for some time. We can’t say with any certainty for how long – but Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and typically, a discipleship lasted for years as the student would seek to learn his master’s Mishnah – his “repetition” – by rote memory and practice in 1st Century illiterate Palestine. Leaving home a youth and returning as a man, Jesus had preached his first sermon in Nazareth, which went well at first, until he claimed that the power of God’s deliverance is “fulfilled in me.” What was it that someone shouted from the back of the synagogue? “Hey, wait a minute, I know that dude!” (I paraphrase.) “Isn’t that Mary’s son?” A Jewish man is called by his father’s name: Simon bar Jonah, James and John the sons of Zebedee. To call him “Mary’s son” was to remind people of the rumors surrounding Jesus’ birth. Jesus shouts “A prophet is without honor in his hometown!” – and it went downhill fast. Jesus barely escaped with his life. In Capernaum, Jesus’ fame spread as an itinerant preacher, healer, and exorcist. And for his family, this had gone far enough. Jesus has gone beyond himself. In a culture in which one’s place in life is pre-determined by clan and tribe, by village and family, Jesus has shamed his people by presuming to be more than he is. It’s just all too much. It’s gotta stop. Hence, the rope… Or maybe that’s not what’s going on at all. Maybe his family is trying to protect him. If Jesus is perceived to be crazy, then he doesn’t deserve death. Aware of the growing opposition of the rich and powerful, Mary may be seeking to save her son, and while doing so, to protect her family’s honor. For the Jerusalem authorities, the issue is the same. What’s gotten into this Nazarene peasant? If he’s exorcising demons, he must be in collusion with the chief demon. Baal-Zebul was a Canaanite deity – a pagan god – which survived in Jewish folklore as the top demon. His name is literally translated as “Lord of the Mansion.” If the dark realm is like a household, the chief demon could evict a less powerful demon, but sooner or later, Jesus the enabler would have to pay the price – thus unleash an even greater evil into the world. Jesus says, “Don’t be absurd!” A house divided cannot long stand. To free the captives of Satan means that Satan has been bound; like a strong man whose house is being robbed. Only the power of God, working in me, can accomplish that. Jesus then says that these scholars are guilty of the “unforgiveable sin.” Now, those of you who have hung around churches for a generation or more, are aware that there’s been much speculation and not a little fear around the “unforgiveable sin.” So, let’s be clear. Jesus is accusing his critics of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. So, what’s blasphemy? The Greek word means “to slander” or “to show irreverence.” To slander God. If you can’t see God’s Spirit in Jesus’ work, and instead see it and name it as evil, would be to say, with Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost: “Evil be thou my good!” It is to see ugliness as beauty, to proclaim lies to be truth. You cannot enter into God’s dream for the world – The Kingdom of God – because you are incapable of the repentance both John and Jesus called for – to change. In this great cosmic struggle between good and evil, the failure to respond to this good work can only be due to a conscious and deliberate choice to oppose God. That’s the very definition of being hopelessly lost. It is to see young men, carrying Nazi flags and marching and chanting: “Jews will not replace us!” And calling them: “Very good people.” And believe it. I commend for your summer reading, a book C.S. Lewis published in 1945, titled, The Great Divorce. The storyteller lives in “grey town,” where it is dreary and dark, and where it’s always raining, both outdoors and in. He waits to board a bus for a day trip. As he waits, several people walk away in disgust. Those who board, find themselves carried to the outskirts of heaven, the shining country. Spirits of the passengers’ loved ones encourage them to repent and enter in. Surprisingly, most of the passengers choose to return to grey town. Each has compelling excuses. My favorite is an Anglican Bishop whose theological formulations are so intellectual and abstract, that he’s not sure if God exists apart from a cerebral construct. A sherpa, the great Celtic theologian George MacDonald, explains that those who choose to stay will find even their most painful griefs transformed into joyful memories. Indeed, any citizen of hell can choose to enter into heaven if they will let go their sly deceptions and illusions and be changed. Heaven and hell are a choice – in this life and in the next. Well, Jesus’ critics withdraw – no doubt stunned and angry – but surely not converted. Jesus goes back in the house and is surrounded by his disciples and a few villagers; when someone comes in to say “Your family is still outside.” Jesus replies most harshly “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Clearly, if they were trying to save him, Jesus did not see it that way. If they were trying to confine him by the bounds of family, clan, and custom, he is unwilling. Jesus redefines family as those who seek God’s will. The Jesus movement – this rag tag band of men and women who have responded to Jesus’ call to “follow me!” – they are his family now.

To Jesus, the reign of God was not some abstract theological ideal, but was a fellowship of men and women seeking to live lives of sanctity, compassion, and justice. In St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, Paul writes: “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy” – the word means sacred, set apart for God’s use, being whole – “those who are made holy, are the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them” – indeed to call us – “brothers and sisters.”

Amen

June 2nd 2024: Reflections on The Second Sunday of Pentecost, Proper 4 2024 Year B by Reverend Jeannie Martz

The Rev. Jeannie Martz In North Palm Beach, Florida, on a beautiful piece of property that runs from US Highway 1, which is always busy, down to the shore of the Intra-Coastal Waterway, there is a retreat center owned by the Passionist Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church. The dormitory wings of the center form a squared off “W,” with each arm of the W extending towards the Intra-Coastal and the rooms angled, so that every room has a balcony with a private, and serenely beautiful, view of the water. Years ago, when I served in the Diocese of Southeast Florida, I was fortunate enough to spend some time at the Passionist Fathers on a silent retreat for diocesan clergy – and trust me, trying to keep Episcopal priests silent for a full two days is like the proverbial herding of cats! Those clergy who were normally fused to their cell phones were in agony, and so the Bishop made some slight provision for taking “really (really) important calls.” Now, I’m enough of an introvert to relish enforced non-conversation, but even I was surprised during this retreat to discover silence as more than just the absence of noise. I discovered silence as a physical place; silence as a state of being. On the retreat’s free afternoon, I chose to take a walk off the grounds. I walked along US 1, and then along the road that leads to Jupiter Island, and back again. I was gone for about two hours in those days before the ever presence of ear buds, surrounded by the noise of traffic and the sounds of everyday life. When I got back to the driveway of the retreat center and stepped onto the property, stepped off the sidewalk of US 1, the contrast was physical and instantaneous. I felt as if I had opened a door and stepped through, back into my own center; back into a realm of peace. I had re-entered Silence. The Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, the day and the reality that figure in two of our readings this morning, is a similar sensory and spiritual state of being – and yet, Shabbat is so much more as well. Lasting 25 hours, from sundown Friday until 3 stars are visible in the sky on Saturday night – or more prosaically, lasting until an hour after sundown on Saturday – Shabbat is the theological and spiritual highlight of the Jewish week and the unity that binds together all the branches of Judaism. Described as “a weekly holiday;” “…more than just a day off from labor;…[Shabbat] is a day of physical and spiritual delights.” Shabbat is “a reminder of the purposefulness of the world and the role of human beings in it;” and “a day of joy, a sanctuary from travails, and even a foretaste of the perfected world that will someday be attained.” (Shabbat 101, online) Another source says that Shabbat stands alone, “separate from the rest of the week;” Shabbat is “the centerpiece of Jewish life,” “a time that is set aside to take notice of the wonders around us.” (ReformJudaism.org, Chabad.org) Most importantly, Shabbat is seen to be a personification of God’s Law and of Israel’s relationship to the Law. Once invited into the family through the opening prayers and candles lit as darkness falls on Friday evenings, “…[T]he Shabbat is a ‘queen,’ writes one rabbi, “whose regal presence graces every Jewish home for the duration of the Shabbat day.” (Chabad.org) The standard greeting for the day, “Shabbat Shalom,” is an additional invitation and welcome not only into the state of being that is the peace of Shalom, but also an invitation into the home where Queen Shabbat is present. Christian interest in the spiritual implications of the Sabbath, both devotional and personal, has grown over the past 40 years or so, with great attention now being paid to what each of us designates as our own “Sabbath time” – a time ideally free from, or at least insulated from, our own “travails,” as the rabbis phrased it; and “a time to take notice of the wonders around us.” As Christians, we also honor Genesis and God’s resting on the seventh day of Creation, seeing Sabbath time as a time of our own re-creation, of personal refreshment, and a time for reevaluating our relationships with God and with the others around us. As probably all of us know from personal experience along the way, however, relationships are tricky business. As the late Jimmy Buffet, one of my personal favorites, once said in one of his songs, “Relationships! We’ve all got ‘em. We all want ‘em. What do we do with them?” Relationships, bless their hearts, have lives of their own, with growth and developmental patterns all their own; and it doesn’t matter whether a relationship is one on one, one on group, or group on group. In each case, the interpersonal dynamics are the same. A relationship experiences tension when the needs or the expectations of one or both parties in the relationship aren’t being met. Depending on how seriously this tension is being felt, the relationship can either go into a pinch, or into a crunch. In order for the relationship to survive – and not just endure, but survive – both parties must recognize the tension, hopefully of a pinch, renegotiate their expectations, and start again from this new point. In our reading from Mark this morning, however, we’re well beyond pinch. The relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, the experts on the Law of Moses, this relationship is definitely in a crunch mode, and will need major renegotiation to survive. In Jesus, the Pharisees’ expectations of God and of the promises about the Messiah, as well as their traditions about the Law of Moses, are not being met in the person and in the actions and teachings of Jesus. They have zero interest in renegotiating these expectations with him, and so Mark concludes this section of his Gospel with the observation that “The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.” The livedout reality of Jesus and the Pharisees’ traditional expectations of the Messiah didn’t match – and therefore, something had to give. What are our own expectations concerning our relationship with God? What are our own expectations of, and understandings of, discipleship? What do we think being a disciple of Jesus Christ looks like, and means in the world today? If being a disciple means being a student, at what point do we graduate? When do we move beyond simply sitting at the Teacher’s feet? Studies in education have shown that one of the best models for learning is “action/reflection.” That is, although it may sound counterintuitive and actually descriptive of most teenagers, studies say that we all really do learn better when we act first, and then think second. According to this model, we understand better when we engage in an activity, and then reflect on our actual experience of the activity rather than reflecting only on the theory of the activity. In theory, the stove is hot, but that’s just what people say. In practice, yep, the stove is hot – and my reflection upon this action of touching the stove is, what do I personally need to do to avoid being burned again? What, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, do I personally need to do to show forth this discipleship in my life? This is the question, this is the learning model, of this season we’re now in, the long, green Season after Pentecost – and I’m delighted it’s green, because this is the first chance I’ve had to wear this green stole from Jerusalem that a friend brought back from the same pilgrimage I was on and, total surprise, gave it to me for Christmas. Today is its maiden voyage! Back to the calendar -- this season between Pentecost Sunday two weeks ago and next November’s First Sunday in Advent is known in some Christian traditions as Ordinary Time, which sounds kind of sad and ho-hum; but actually just means that we keep track of the Sundays with ordinal numbers: the Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Third Sunday after Pentecost, the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, and so on. But going back to action/reflection, Ordinary Time is this space when we reflect on, and learn from, all the activity that has come before in our liturgical year: the anticipation, nativity, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon God’s people -- in other words, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Here in Ordinary Time, we have the spiritual space to look back and say, “Holy Guacamole! Now what do I do??” – and we have the time to reflect on the teachings of the Christian year. What happened, we ask? What does all this mean? And what difference does “all this” mean in our life together as a faith community? What does it mean in each of our lives individually? How is God calling me as a person of faith to respond to Jesus on a daily basis? In addition to being questions of the Spirit, these are all questions that have to do with relationships. What do we do with them? In these coming weeks and months, through our readings, the Church gives us space to examine the assumptions and expectations that we have about life, about God, and about being a Christian and a follower of Jesus. It gives us space to examine these expectations and to compare them, both to the lived-out reality of Scripture, and to the lived-out reality of our own lives. Today’s readings show the early Church beginning this process, a process that in turn can help to guide us as we reflect. Even so, as we determine our words, our actions, and our expectations of ourselves and those around us, Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians remain a healthy touchstone: “We do not proclaim ourselves,” he writes. “[W]e proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. “But,” Paul reminds us, “we have this treasure in clay jars” – or in “earthen vessels,” as traditionally phrased; the “clay jars” of our own mortality, fallibility, and finitude. “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear,” Paul writes, “that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” This extraordinary power – power to examine our relationship with God, to examine our own expectations of this relationship, to be a participant with God in the ongoing Creation and re-creation of the cosmos, to invite God’s Sabbath into our lives with the Peace of Sabbath, the state of being that is Shabbat Shalom; all this is a gift that lies at our fingertips, waiting to be invited in. And so, I have an additional invitation for all of us. I invite all of us to approach this Ordinary Time, this long Season after Pentecost, as a season of Sabbath: a season we dedicate as a time and a space to be with God – a time of refreshment, renewal, and re-creation, welcoming God into our homes and into our lives. Most of us don’t light candles just before sundown on Fridays to welcome in the Sabbath – but I invite each of us to reflect on the Sabbath places in our lives. Where are the places that enhance, make us aware of, our relationship with God? Where are the places that feed us spiritually, that are to us, as those rabbis said, “a reminder of the purposefulness of the world and the role of human beings in it,” “a time that is set aside to take notice of the wonders around us.” (Shabbat 101 (online), Reform Judaism.org) Early June to late November is a long time, which means we can savor, rather than rush, our reflections. We can step back from the world’s busyness, find a place of quiet, and think about what the presence of Jesus in our lives means – and as we do, may the peace of this Sabbath time be with us all.

Amen.

May 26th 2024: Reflections on John 3:1-17 by Reverend Lyn Crow

Murphy’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Sailors have their own version of Murphy’s Law – in fact, there are two laws: they are called Deal’s Laws of Sailing:

 -         Deal’s first law of sailing is this: “The amount of wind will vary inversely with the number and experience of the people you have on board the sailboat.” In other words – the more people on the boat the less wind there will be.

-         Deal’s second law of sailing says, “No maSer how strong the wind is when you leave the dock, once you have reached the farthest point from the port from which you started, the wind will die.”

 Anyone who is a sailor can attest to the validity of these laws. And I think all sailors will agree that once the wind stops blowing, there is nothing you can do to get it going again.

When you are sailing, you are completely at the mercy of the wind. The wind can disappear suddenly, leaving you stranded at sea if you have no motor.

Sailing makes you aware of your dependency.

It is very much like receiving God’s grace – you by your own efforts cannot cause God’s grace to come upon you any more than you can cause the wind to blow.

That is Jesus’ message to Nicodemus in today’s gospel. You can’t cause God’s grace to come upon you.

God’s Spirit moves where it wills and the receiving of the Spirit is God’s work in us – not something we do for ourselves. As Thomas Manson, an American religious leader, once said, “We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”

And that, I think, is what Jesus is trying to teach Nicodemus in today’s gospel.

And to understand why, we have to understand Nicodemus. He was:

-         a Pharisee – the strictest sect of the Jews regarding the law

-         a ruler of Jews

-         probably a member of the Sanhedrin, a group of 71 men who made up the equivalent of the Supreme Court and the legisla]ve body in Judea.

-         very religious

-         knew the Torah (what we call the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures) by heart

-         drawn to Jesus – probably heard about water to wine at Cana and healings

-         careful, sneaking out at night to meet with Jesus

He wants to know the secret of Jesus’ spiritual power. He says, “No one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.” How has Jesus harnessed God’s power? Jesus knows what Nicodemus wants to know and so he begins to tell him the secret. You might say that what he does is to try to teach Nicodemus how to sail. (Jesus was, after all, a sailor.)

What Jesus realizes is that right now Nicodemus has a rowboat spiritually. That’s what author David Takle calls it. In rowboat spirituality we:

-         persist even when it’s hard

-         go to conferences

-         we study

-         we memorize scripture

-         we do all the right things

-         we try to help as many people as we can

-         we row harder

-         we do more

-         we beat ourselves up because we are not dedicated enough

-         we try to be perfect

-         we use willpower

We are trying to please God by trying!

But Jesus is invi]ng Nicodemus to switch it up; to embrace sailboat spirituality instead.

In sailboat spirituality:

-         the wind does most of the work

-         our only work is to align the sail with the wind

-         we allow the wind to take us where it will – maybe where we’d never go on our own

-         instead of trying to do what we think is the right thing to do, we allow God to work on our hearts to change us

-         instead of trying to use willpower to overcome contrary feelings and inclina]ons, we allow God to transform us from the inside out

In sailboat spirituality, if the wind dies down as Deal’s Law says it will, we rest and wait un]l the Spirit makes her next move.

I learned the joy of this with my friend Dennis on his Hobie Cat; sure enough, just like Deal’s Law promised we were stranded; and I discovered there was nothing more wonderful than the peace of bobbing about on the waves, soaking up the sun, while we waited for the wind to gust again. Rest is good – even in the spiritual life.

The wind blows where it chooses, Jesus tells Nicodemus, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

The spiritual life is best lived not rowing but sailing. Not with hard work and willpower, but with learning the skill of sefng our sail to catch the wind. That’s what the spiritual disciplines are for:

-         centering prayer

-         the labyrinth

-         the rosary

-         fasting

-         prayer

-         reading spiritual books

-         studying scripture

-         coming to Eucharist

-         Chris]an Education

-         small groups

These are all the ways we learn to set our sails so that we can catch the movement of the Spirit in them.

And that is Jesus’ invitation to Nicodemus and to us today: Give up your oars – put up your sail and let the wind of the Spirit do the work.

In the words of Christopher Cross’ song, “Sailing”:

“Well, it’s not far down to paradise At least it’s not for me
And if the wind is right
You can sail away and find tranquility
Oh, the canvas can do miracles
Just you wait and see
Believe me”
“Sailing – takes me away to where I’m going…”

May 19th 2024: Reflections on The Day of Pentecost by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

There were 3 great festivals in the Jewish year in which all Jewish males

were, ideally, required to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These agricultural feasts required an offering of first fruits of the harvest as a thank offering and celebrated aspects of the foundational story of Jewish identity: the Exodus.

The first and most important was Passover. Held in the spring, it commemorated the fact that the angel of death “passed over” Hebrew homes and slayed the firstborn – human and animal – of the Egyptians, thus persuading Pharoah to let the Hebrew slaves go. The Passover festival saw an ingathering of the barley harvest.

The third festival, in the fall, was the Feast of Tabernacles – or Booths, which commemorated God’s providential care of the Hebrew tribes in the desert for 40 years, living in make-shift dwellings or booths. This festival saw an ingathering of the first fruits of the grape and olive harvest.

The second feast was the Festival of Weeks which celebrated the giving of the Torah, the law, on Mount Sinai and was the ingathering of the wheat harvest. The Festival of Weeks was to be held 7 weeks after Passover. Seven weeks equals 50 days. The Greek word for 50 is “Pentecost.”

The story of Pentecost, read this morning, comes following the events Luke describes in Acts chapter one. In the first chapter, Luke tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his followers over a period of 40 days, at the end of which he instructed them to remain in Jerusalem and await the gift promised by John the Baptizer: a baptism by fire. For what purpose? So that “you shall be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”

The followers numbered about 120. That included the eleven remaining apostles following the suicide of Judas: the brothers of Jesus, Mary, Jesus’ mother, and “the women” – which suggests that a high percentage of the followers were, from the beginning, women. The apostles draw lots to determine

who should replace Judas. One who had been present from the beginning. And the lot falls on … Matthias, who is then enrolled as one of the twelve.

So when the Pentecost story unfolds in Acts 2, the “they” likely refers to the 120 followers. On them, the Spirit of God descends, described here as fire and wind.

Fire and wind are Biblical metaphors for God’s presence. God spoke to Moses out of a burning bush – fire. The escaping Jewish slaves were led through the desert at night by a pillar of fire. The Hebrew and the Greek word for “wind” can also be rendered as “breath” or “spirit.” At the beginning of creation, God’s breath hovered over the primordial waters, bringing order out of chaos. In John’s gospel, on Easter night, Jesus breathes on his disciples and says “receive the Holy Spirit.”

And so on Pentecost, these followers – the sum total of the Jesus movement – receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, experienced as a new power. They begin to proclaim Jesus in languages not their own – to be precise, in the languages of the Jewish Diaspora, the 15 nations of pilgrims in Jerusalem for the

Feast of Weeks. Symbolically then, the whole world. Now to be clear: this is not glossolalia or speaking in tongues. Glossolalia is defined as “an outpouring of inarticulate sounds as the result of overpowering religious emotion.” It was a common experience in the primitive Church and early on, it was eagerly sought as a sure sign that one was possessed by the divine.

St. Paul discouraged it because it did not edify non-believers, created disorder in worship, and could be easily counterfeited. On his list of spiritual gifts, Paul ranks it as 8 of 9. He wrote “anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves but one who prophesies” – recall, prophesy is not telling the future but rather speaking the mind of God to the present – the one who prophesies “edifies the church. Since you are eager for the gifts of the Spirit, try to excel in those that build up the Church.” (1 Corinthians 14)

Fascinatingly, 1873 years later, there was another visitation of the Spirit – in downtown Los Angeles. Called “The Azuza Street Miracle,” an itinerant black

preacher named William Seymour, on April 9, 1906, held a revival in the warehouse district in downtown LA, in which people began speaking in tongues.

But here’s the thing. Their interpretation of that event was that they were, like those first century followers, speaking foreign languages. The Azuza Street Miracle lasted until about 1915 and over that time, evangelists embarked from LA throughout the world, assuming that when they arrived, they would be enabled to do what those early followers did – to be witnesses for Jesus.

This was the birth of the Pentecostal movement. Naivety and zeal would produce an amazing harvest. Predictably, what destroyed the Azuza Street Mission was the resentment of white Christians who distrusted any spirit which saw black, white, Asian and Latinos worshipping together, women in leadership with authority over men, and an African American as the chief pastor.

A century later, in 2014, white Pentecostals formally apologized to black Pentecostals for the racism in the Assemblies of God: the unwillingness to welcome blacks among themselves.

But wind and fire had been unleashed in LA in 1906 as on that first Pentecost – but what does it mean?

In the 11th chapter of Genesis, after Noah’s flood but before the call of Abraham, there is the unsettling story of the Tower of Babel. The people all spoke the same language, living together in a great city. They conspired to build a great tower, presumably to reach heaven and to conquer it. God destroys the tower, scatters the people over the face of the earth, and confounds their language so that they cannot come together and conspire to build another tower.

The Pentecost story in Acts is the reversal of the Babel story. Where in Genesis, the scattering led to conflict and rivalry, the Pentecost story is the beginning of a reunification of humankind. Just as the Festival of Weeks celebrated the giving of the Torah which created a new community of one identity out of the disparate desert tribes, so the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost created the possibility of a new sort of human community, the Church. The Church, where as Paul writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave

or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are One in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

When a cynic in the crowd accuses the followers of Jesus of being drunk, Peter explains that it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning (although what that has to do with it, I’m not sure). Peter explains all of this by quoting the Book of Joel.

All flesh – not just a few especially chosen individuals – but the old and the young, male and female, slave and free, shall be empowered by the Spirit to prophesy; it reveals God’s dream for humankind – of reconciliation, sufficiency for all, of justice flowing like a river and of a beloved community of peace.

All prophets – from Jeremiah to Jesus, John the Baptist to Martin King, Miriam to Dorothy Day – hold out blessing and curse. A blessing if we seek and do justice, calamity and woe if we do not. But speaking up for God is hard; it’s far easier to remain silent.

Just a quick story: back when I was a newly minted priest serving in Milwaukee, on behalf of the social action committee, I submitted a resolution at convention in support of the United Farm Workers. The radical action proposed to educate our parishioners about the struggle for higher pay and better working conditions. Someone immediately stood to object, saying: God had made Mexicans short so that they wouldn’t have to stoop so low to pick our produce. The resolution was swiftly tabled.

I was stunned silent; shocked to hear such naked bigotry in a house of prayer. In saying nothing, I shamed myself by choosing prudence over prophesy.

The British theologian N.T. Wright wrote this in The Challenge of Easter:

“Our task is to announce in deed and in word that the exile is over… doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human… The Christian vocation is to be in prayer, in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, and as we embrace that vocation, we discover it to be the way of following Christ… with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the pain of the world and to the love of God.” Amen.

May 12th 2024: Reflections on John 17: 6-19 by Reverend Lyn Crow

They say you can never really know a person’s character un0l you’ve seen how he or she responds under pressure.

 Show us a person in a stressful situation –

-         like the loss of a job

-         the loss of money

-         the loss of friends

-         when things don’t go as planned

-         when his/her health or life is threatened

-         when he/she loses a loved one

Then the real character of a person is revealed, they say. Watch a person under pressure –

-         is it all about them?

-         or do they continue to think of others?

-         do they take their anxiety out on others?

-         is blame the name of their game?

-         how do they treat others who can do nothing for them?

These are some of the things that reveal a person’s true character – what they are really made of.

 In our gospel readings beginning way back on Maundy Thursday and continuing through today, we see Jesus under very stressful circumstances –

-         The pressure of the religious authori0es is building – they are out to kill him.

-         He is aware that one of his friends will betray him to death.

-         His followers are wishy-washy in their allegiance to him.

Worst of all – they s0ll don’t seem to understand what he has spent the last three years teaching them.

 Many people would fold under that kind of pressure. But what does Jesus do?

He shows his true character –

-         his absolute commitment to, and love for, God

-         and his faithful love and commitment to God’s people

The writer of John’s gospel has wriWen down all the evidence of his character.

In John’s 13th chapter, we are told that during the evening he was under the most pressure, the night of the Last Supper, he takes on the role of a servant.

He waits on his friends as a servant, washes their feet, and then tells them to do the same for others. Then he gives them a new commandment – a new rule of life – love one another. He then tells them he is going to prepare a place for them so that eventually they can all be together again.

He warns them about the corrupting influences out in the world. Then he promises them the gift of an Advocate after he is gone – the gift of the Holy Spirit. He warns them of coming persecu0ons.

And then in today’s gospel he begins to pray for them – out loud – so everyone can hear him. On this Mother’s Day I am reminded of a mother’s love.

Jesus’ prayer is an extraordinary prayer –

-         It is a prayer filled with glory.

-         It’s the prayer of a man who has given everything he could to serve the God he loves and to serve God’s people.

-         It’s the prayer of a man who wants to be sure that his followers will be protected after he is gone.

And the most amazing part of his prayer comes at the beginning of today’s gospel.

Jesus says to God – speaking about his disciples – “They were yours and you have given them to me. They have kept your word.”

Jesus is saying that the disciples were God’s gift to him and that they had been faithful to God. Now that’s amazing!

Think for a moment of whom he speaks. Think of the motley crew he is talking about.

Take James and John for instance: the Sons of Thunder –

-         who wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans

-         and who wanted the seats of honor in heaven

 You would think Jesus would pray that God would grant them compassionate hearts and a bit of humility.

Instead he prays, “James and John were yours and you have given them to me. They have kept your word.” Later he says of James and John – I am glorified in them.

Amazing!

And what about Peter –

-         who tried to walk on water and nearly drowned

-         who whacked off the ear of a soldier with his sword

-         and would deny he knew Jesus three times

 You would think Jesus would ask God to give Peter more faith, to calm him down, to give him the courage of his convictions.

But no – he prays, Peter was yours and you have given him to me. He has kept your word. He says of Peter – I am glorified in him.

 Amazing!

And then there’s Thomas – doubting Thomas who won’t believe in Jesus’ resurrec0on un0l Jesus lets him touch his wounds.

 Surely Jesus would pray to God for courage and faith for Thomas.

Instead he prays – Thomas was yours and you have given him to me. He has kept your word. And he says of Thomas – I am glorified in him.

 Amazing!

These are just a few of the ones Jesus prayed for. There were more. And none of them were spiritual superstars.

For all of them Jesus prayed – they were yours and you have given them to me. They have kept your word. He says – I am glorified in them!

Amazing!

Now here’s the interesting thing to remember.

After Jesus’s resurrection and after the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples do catch on fire for Jesus –

-         they preach even when it is dangerous to do so

-         when they are arrested, they sing hymns in their jail cells

-         nailed to crosses or thrown to the lions, they keep the faith

 What Jesus saw in them when he prayed for them comes true – becomes a reality. It was never the quality of these men that was important.

It was what they became when the Holy Spirit was moving in them.

It was their being open to moving with the Spirit that made them great. And what does that say about us in our day?

Well, as Paul put it in Romans 3, “We all fall short of the glory of God.”

And opera0ng under our own steam we don’t do much beWer than James or John or Peter or Thomas. But empowered by the Holy Spirit, who knows what we might accomplish for God?

One thing I know for sure – Jesus was not only speaking and praying for the disciples in today’s gospel.

 He was speaking and praying for all of us when he said, “They were yours and you gave them to me. They have kept your word.”

Fill in your name:                     was yours and you gave her to me. She has kept your word.

 Jesus says – I am glorified in                     (fill in your name).

                    was yours and you gave him to me. He has kept your word.

Put your name in Jesus’ prayer because he is talking about you. He is telling you your life counts. He is saying that filled with the Spirit, you can do amazing things.

That is Jesus’ prayer for you and me and for all of us. Amazing! Alleluia!