The Right Rev. Rayford High, Sunday August 25, 2024
The Right Reverend Rayford High, Sunday August 25, 2024
“I AM the bread of life”
Then he said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them”.
Many of Jesus’ followers heard this and said, “This is a hard teaching. In fact, it is tough to swallow”.
Difficult to understand? Actually, it could not have been too awkward for them to comprehend, because they knew what he told them repeatedly.
William Barclay says in his commentary on the Gospel of John, “Time and again it is not the intellectual difficulty of accepting Christ which keeps us from becoming Christians, it is the Moral Demand.
For the past four Sundays and again today, all of the Gospel readings have centered on only one chapter in the Gospel of John: the Sixth Chapter. It is here that the institution of the Eucharist is presented. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where the institution is an event, it is John who explains what the Eucharist does for Christians. John clearly establishes all of Jesus’ life as the Eucharist. This truth is captured in Jesus professing the fact: I “AM” the Bread of Life, the food that gives life, on earth as in heaven, Eternal Life. When Jesus says “I AM” the bread of life, He is saying emphatically I AM everything Christians need, now and forever.
Where we choose to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood, as we do when we take part in the Eucharistic meal, we abide in Christ and He abides in us.
Abide: what does it mean? If we abide in Christ and He abides in us? The Greek word actually means “to make your self at home in relationship” Christ makes Himself at home within us. How does this happen? When we participate in the Eucharist we are drawn into relationship with Jesus.
So the word abide “expresses the interrelationship of Jesus and the one who believes in Jesus. That is the source of every believer’s life. But it is more, much more than that. Hear what I say: the interrelationships of Jesus and each one of us who believes is actually an extension of the interrelationship of God and Jesus!
When we as Christians participate in the Eucharist, we partake of Christ’s Body and Blood. We are empowered, both as individuals and as faith communities to follow in Jesus’ footsteps of ministry: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with our God” (Michah 6:8). We are empowered to continue in Jesus’s work of healing, forgiveness, acceptance of all God’s Children, of showing God’s unconditional love with those we encounter.
A rector of a large parish greeted people as they left the church service one Sunday. He exchanged the usual pleasantries like, “it was such a nice sermon…your words were so comforting…” However, the rector spoke to one of the worshippers as she was leaving, saying “I don’t know if we have met, are you visiting today?”
The lady answered “I’ve been coming here for 20 years! You all have fed me every Saturday at the Saturday Sidewalk Breakfast for those in need of food. I have received meals from this church all of these years. Today, this Sunday, I decided to go inside to worship and see if you are real. I decided to find out if you really meant what you say, that God loves each and every one of us. I discovered that it is true. I recognized God’s love through your love. It is the same love I have experienced for 20 years at the Saturday Sidewalk Service. I experienced this love in the Eucharist this morning.” This parish abides in Christ and in doing so, the people they serve find relationships with God in Christ. The love of God gets passed on and others find life! She responded by saying “this is the first time I have been been treated like a human being. For years, I have been treated like a dog. These tears that you see are tears of joy, because you all treat me like a human. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Conclusion:
The table is set with the gift of God for the people of God, the life giving gifts of bread and wine, “of the flesh and blood of Christ”, as Jesus Himself says “whoever eats of me will abide in Christ and Christ will abide in us”.
At the end of communion, we here today at St. George’s will “take these gifts in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with Thanksgiving”. We are sent, we will then do the work God has given us to do to love and serve as faithful witnesses of our Lord.
We go with the life of Christ, with the host in our souls.
Let us go as a host, offered with Christ and for the love of Him to all those with whom we shall meet.
The Blessing of God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with you and remain with you always. Amen.
Reverend Betsy Scott, Sunday August 4, 2024
August 4, 2024
John 6:24-35
Today’s Gospel reading in John 6: 24 to 35 is monumental. Jesus tells us in these verses Who He is: “ The Son of Man, On Him God the Father has set his seal”. What He can do for us: the Son of Man will give to you food that endures for eternal life and what we need to do: “This is the work of God that you believe in Him who God has sent”.
Through the millenniums, so much of the emphasis of the Church has been on eternal life but today, many theologians are in addition emphasizing life in the here and now such as the recently deceased Jurgen Moltmann who is widely known for his theology of Hope, Hope for an abundant life here on earth.
It is the quality of the life here and now that these verses most forcefully speak to me and perhaps to you as well.
In these verses, the people ask Christ what they must do: Christ answers: “This is the work of God. You must believe in Him whom He has sent”.
When I heard these verses as a child or young person, I thought it meant to just say I Believe in Him, but it always confused me and didn’t make sense. How can saying I believe be all there is to it?
Since then, I have learned that Belief in Him is a powerful statement meaning believe there is love in this world and we are meant to seek it. It is a call to action: to seek, to spend time, to take very seriously, to have faith, to not give up hope to listen. It is a call to keep going under difficult circumstances believing there are still many blessings in store for you.
In the spiritual world, there is a huge contrast about belief compared to the secular world and this is one of the major points I want to leave with you. In the secular world, one first sees and experiences and then believes but in the spiritual world, one is called to first believe, seek and then one will experience. You must believe in Him first. This is absolutely major. I had someone arguing with me recently who said he was a scientist and he only believed in evidence and argued against a belief in God for there was no scientific evidence. This person’s mind was made-up and nothing I said budged his thinking at all. He had missed the whole point that one must first believe, seek, knock and then one will experience the love of God, the kind of love where you will no longer hunger and thirst—where you will no longer be lost, anxious, unable to concentrate. You will be able to fulfill all you are created to be on this earth. This is Christ’s promise in John 6.
It is very interesting, however, despite what I just said above, that what Jesus has been telling us for millenniums, now science is pointing in the same direction. Scientific experiments are now demonstrating the tremendous power of belief.
One such book of science is the Biology of Belief which talks about the mind body connection and the power of our own thoughts on our health—not just our DNA as previously thought. So Christ exhorting us to believe is telling us to meditate on his words, on love which fills our minds which in turn are tremendously powerful—in fact life giving. All the cells of your body are affected by your thoughts. Robert H. Lipton PHD. a renowned cell biologist, describes the precise molecular pathways through which this occurs. He goes on to say that thought develops the grey matter in our brains. By our believing in Him, we are affecting our own growth. He further says that those people whose thought are filled with fear instead of love, are prone to disease of all kinds and their brains do not develop in a healthy fashion.e
Quoting from the Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton: “We can choose what to believe. You can filter your life with rose colored beliefs that will help your body grow or you can use a dark filter that turns everything black and makes your body/ mind more susceptible to disease. You can have a life of fear or a life of love. You have the choice, but I can tell you if you choose to see a world full of love, your body will respond by growing in health”.
There are studies going on in colleges showing that those students who have a spiritual component in their lives have much better coping skills than those who do not. Doctor Luisa Miller has written a book entitled The Spiritual Child where she explains the power of the spiritual life in growing the brain. As a psychologist she has taken many brain scans and has proved her theory that the college students that have a spiritual component to their lives have a part of their brain more developed and much better to cope with the stresses of college.
“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent”. The promise is that he who seeks finds, he who knocks the door will be opened unto him. 2000 years ago, Christ knew the power of belief in Him. He told us --You will find the Bread of Life where you hunger and thirst no more.
What is the Bread of Life? The Scriptures tell us that God is love so the Bread of Life is love.
“He who dwells in love, dwelleth in God and God in Him.” John 4:16
The person who lacks the Bread of Love, has spiritual hunger and thirst which is manifest as restlessness, nervousness, irritability, behavioral difficulty, impulsivity, anger, aggression, lacking purpose.
We are being given here the fundamental truths of human existence: without love, we humans cannot grow and with love we will blossom. We love because He first loved us.
We love because we fist were loved.
Where is this Christ that we are exhorted to believe, to seek. I have come to believe that it is within each one of us.
I have to relate to you a story from my own life of experiencing the kind of spiritual love where I hungered and thirsted no more. I had a spontaneous spiritual happening that is not scientifically explainable and yet changed my life. I talked with two ministers about this and they both told me it was important and right that I share my stories.
When I was forty-three years old with two young children, eleven and fourteen, having just moved to a new community, my husband died an instant death in a car accident, totally out of the blue. No warning. We were all in the midst of daily life. Then he was gone forever.
I had no idea how to proceed. Everything I had believed no longer applied. I went seeking. I decided to enroll in Union Theological Seminary in New York City in their three year MDIV program hoping I would find a new path for my life. I was in a dark night of the soul period of my life but still believed that there was something left for me even though I had no idea what it was or even how to proceed. I felt very alone as my mother had died a decade before and we had recently moved to a new community. I entered Seminary and spent my time studying the scriptures, going to worship services, studying psychology and religion, going to a therapist and mourning, talking and praying with this seminary community. In my second year, after listening one noon to a Good Friday sermon about Christ feeling abandoned on the Cross, “My God, My God, Why have you abandoned me” I had an incredible experience.
As I stood outside the chapel talking with fellow seminarians, the great pastor and preacher whose course I had been taking, James Forbes, tapped me on the shoulder from the back and said to me: “You know what they are talking about in there but can no credit for it for it has been too hard on you, but you know what others would like to know”.
I was stunned, speechless, almost frozen for he had named the unnamable. He had articulated how I truly felt but had never dared acknowledge. Abandoned. Yes, I truly felt abandoned. I ran through the refectory unable to speak to anyone who asked me what was happening and down the stairs to a small chapel in the basement, closed the doors and lay on the floor and stayed there alone in the dark just trying to deal with this information. All of a sudden, I became aware I was not alone in that chapel for there was a presence there, a spiritual presence with me. I knew there was Christ with me. I sensed His presence totally knew me, accepted me, and I knew and accepted Him. I knew for a certainty that I was not alone in this universe. I was not abandoned. The Holy Spirit knew me and loved me. I experienced unconditional love, the kind of love where one hungers and thirsts no more. The Holy Spirit met me where I had the need. My heart had been torn asunder and the Holy Spirit healed my heart. My belief had been replaced by knowledge by the Bread of Life. I was free. I was filled with smiles and new life so that friends would stop me and ask why I was so radiant? My whole life changed after that for people seemed drawn to me rather than running away and I entered a new path in my life which included becoming a therapist, an ordained minister, and a wonderful new marriage that was a blessing to my children as well as myself. I did not have to believe because I knew there was a God who was with me and loved me.
I spent considerable time at Seminary after that trying to understand what had happened to me. It is called grace and/or mystical experience which has been reported down through the ages. I also heard of other examples. I talked with some nuns who worked on the Aids floor of New York hospitals and they told me those wards were filled with joy.
These passages in John 6 came true in my life, and they will come true in all of our lives, that is the promise. Believe in Him so that you may know the Bread of life where you will no longer hunger and thirst.
Of course there are many different ways that believers have sought this Bread of Life, this Holy Spirit. Traditionally people have experienced the Holy in nature, in the Scriptures, in meditation, on pilgrimages, in art and music, in prayer, in worship services. Believe, seek and you will find. This is the great promise that has been witnessed over and over in the lives of the seekers.
To summarize today’s great Scripture reading, Jesus is putting out a call to all of us to believe in Him, to believe Love is available to you, waiting for you, longing for you, that there is saving love in this world and we are to seek it by believing that it exists and entering the spiritual path. He promises us that this bread he offers will satisfy forever our spiritual hunger and thirst.
Oh Heavenly Father, we thank you for the innumerable blessings you bestow upon us.
Amen
Reverend Richard Greenleaf, Sunday July 28, 2024
A Sermon
The Reverend Richard E. Greenleaf
St. George’s Chapel
Long Cove Rd.
Tenant's Harbor, ME 04860
28 July 2024
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
HE II
Isaiah 53:1-3, 12
Psalm 37:1-12
Philippians 2:1-13
Collect of the Day
Heavenly Father, whose blessed Son came not to be served but to serve: Bless all who, following in his steps, give themselves to the service of others; that with wisdom, patience, and courage, they may minister in his Name to the suffering, the friendless, and the needy; for the love of him who laid down his life for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
In the year 1886,
the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
published a work entitled Beyond Good and Evil,
in which he wrote the following:
"I regard Christianity as the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed--
as the greatest and most impious lie . . . I urge people to declare open war with it."
Nietzsche went on to write that he believed this
because he considered Christianity
"the morality of paltry people,"
the morality of "slaves" who,
only because of their own powerlessness,
promoted an ethic of love and compassion,
an ethic of "turning the other cheek."
Against this so-called "slave morality,”
Nietzsche argued for a "morality of the ruling class,”
a "master morality" based on what he called the "Will to Power,"
a morality that honors pride, vanity, power, and "dreadfulness."
Of this Nietzsche wrote,
"The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite
of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he despises them . . . The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values . . . .”
Against critics, who argued that he was calling for a new barbarism,
Nietzsche wrote,
"'Exploitation' does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society;
it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a
consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.--
Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of
all history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!"
I know, I know,
the Nietzsche is
a bit extreme,
but as he said,
“Let us be so far honest towards OURselves . . . .”
And, you have to admit,
this is
a good exhortation
at any time.
But I think it is an especially good exhortation
for this time,
the middle of a summer
--and what a summer it’s been--
that has seen the world marked
by political convulsions;
by violence, war, and unthinkable acts of terror.
And here in the United States
by conflict and division;
by the shaking of our political institutions, attempted assassination,
and the continued coarsening of our civic discourse.
It is also the run up to a fall season
that threatens to bring even more of all this,
culminating in the national election
in just 101 days
on November 5th,
followed by the transition in administrations
and the seating of a new Congress.
We are also entering a time I have come to think of
as the beginning of the real new year
in our country:
the beginning of the school year.
And as someone who
for 31 years
served as a teacher and chaplain
at St. Paul’s School down in Concord, NH,
and, though now retired,
I have been thinking long and hard
about just what it is
that we are
and that we do
in both church and school
that could possibly make a difference
in such a challenging time.
And what I could possibly say
to the students at my old school
who will arrive
in just a few short weeks.
Again, in the words of Nietzsche,
“Let us be so far honest towards ourselves!”
Flashback—
For a number of years,
I taught a course on the history of ethics
in which I put this exhortation
--and the challenge of Nietzsche's words--
to my students
in the following
essay assignment:
St. Paul's School enjoys the reputation of being an elite boarding school that
prepares exceptional young people for positions of power and leadership in society.
It also claims to be a "church school" within the Christian tradition.
Questions:
To what extent can it be seen to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the love ethic
of Christianity?
To what extent can St. Paul's School be seen to actually teach "master morality"
and Nietzsche's view of nobility in general?
Are these compatible?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
These essays
were usually
"interesting,"
to say the least.
Because the question they had to take on
is the question I believe to be at the heart
of today's reading from the gospel of Mark:
Namely,
is it possible to be ambitious, excellent, or successful
and be morally good?
This is a question
St. Paul's School
and many places like it
struggle with
all the time.
And that very real concern about it
is reflected in the School’s hard work
in the areas of its fully residential life,
in team building, leadership training,
and community service,
to say nothing of its chapel program.
Indeed, the School’s whole program
can be seen as an attempt to respond well
to Jesus’ warning that to whom much is given
much is expected,
and not just in terms of productivity.
Still, the question remains,
and it is a perennial question
for people of high achievement.
For Nietzsche,
it is a question that is easily discharged.
He simply does away with the traditional understanding of good and evil,
and calls power and conquest good,
opening the door to the full flowering of the will.
If Nietzsche were to interpret Mark’s story of James and John’s request of Jesus,
it would be James and John and “the way of the Gentiles” that was commended
and the ten disciples upbraided for not showing more spunk.
It is not too hard to hear Nietzsche saying,
"All who exalt themselves will be exalted,
and all who humble themselves will be humbled!"
"Let us be so far honest towards ourselves!"
And to be honest,
Nietzsche was right,
insofar that the way of the world
for countless millennia
was the way of the struggle for survival,
the way of power and conquest.
And success in this
counted for happiness.
But there has always been a counter-narrative,
and with the coming of Jesus
the old power narrative was most fully tipped on its head.
Notice that in today's gospel,
Jesus tells his disciples,
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
And the reason why
is that Jesus is here
reaffirming the dignity and inherent divinity
of each and every human person
--all persons—
that God bestowed on them
--on US!—
at creation.
As it is written in Genesis 1:27,
“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them;”
And when asked what is the greatest commandment,
“Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)
But even more, Jesus told his disciples,
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15: 12-15)
And in his first letter,
the apostle John adds,
“Those who say ‘I love God’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (John 4:20)
I was trying to think of a way
to help us see this,
a living example,
when I came across an article
about Maria Skobtsova,
a saint of the Orthodox Church
whom the Episcopal Church
also remembers in its liturgical calendar.
Maria was born into the Russian aristocracy in 1891
but became a radical intellectual and poet.
She married, became a mother,
and involved herself in the Russian Revolution.
Slowly, she became disillusioned with the revolution
found her way back to the church,
and finally fled to Paris.
In the church’s write-up,
it is written that
“She became a nun,
but only on condition that she could live in the world
and directly serve the poor.
As a twice-married former revolutionary and poet-theologian,
she was a unique fixture,
to say the least.
When she was not giving of herself to those in need,
she could be seen smoking cigarettes
and debating theology or philosophy with her friends.
When the Nazis took Paris,
she did all she could to provide shelter and escape
for the Jews in the city.
And then,
Maria was arrested
and sent to a concentration camp.
Of her life of service,
Maria wrote,
"If someone turns with his spiritual world toward the spiritual world of another person, he encounters an awesome and inspiring mystery …. He comes into contact with the true image of God in man, with the very icon of God incarnate in the world... And he needs to accept this awesome revelation of God unconditionally, to venerate the image of God in his brother."
Maria continues,
"The way to God lies through love of people. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked. About every poor, hungry and imprisoned person the Savior says ‘I': ‘I was hungry and thirsty, I was sick and in prison.’ To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone in need. . . . I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe."
And on Holy Saturday 1945,
Maria was martyred in a gas chamber in Ravensbrück, Germany,
taking the spot of another woman.
Once again, Maria:
“To think that he, the Saviour, puts an equal sign between himself and anyone in need. . . . I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe."
To be sure,
other religious and philosophical thinkers before Jesus
made the connection
between love and virtue,
between service and success,
between humility and greatness.
But in Jesus
this connection was realized
with a fullness that
turned the world on its head
and gave birth to the Christian faith.
And because it was made real in Jesus
it became a living possibility,
for each generation that followed,
a living possibility
for us today.
My friends, we are the inheritors of a culture,
--a civilization--
that was spawned
from this core truth,
this form of greatness, this kind of love.
It was such a radically different truth,
historically speaking,
that we came to date our time
from its origin
in the life of Jesus Christ.
In recent years that civilization itself
has once again come under threat,
and we
--and our very way of life--
with it.
The "open war" on the Christian ethic
that Nietzsche called for
has been joined.
But in this war,
Christians
and all those who follow this way of love
are called not
to "triumphal domination or success,"
for that would be to give in
to the very values
that threaten to undo us.
Rather, we are called to that love,
that sacrificial goodness
upon which true success
--and true happiness--
indeed, civilization,
and life itself as we know and love it,
depends.
Although we stand at this critical point in time,
there is really nothing new in this message,
for it is the very thing that this place,
St. George’s Chapel, has been about for 123 years,
and St. Paul’s School has been about for 168 years
--when they remember what and "whose" they really are --
what they are about!
In the end,
when it comes to true greatness
there are really only two choices,
the way of Nietzsche
or the way of Jesus.
But the choice . . .
the choice
is ours!
Let us pray:
God our Father, you see your children growing up in anunsteady and confusing world: Show them that your waysgive more life than the ways of the world, and that followingyou is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them totake failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chancefor a new start. Give them strength to hold their faith in you,and to keep alive their joy in your creation; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen
Reverend Marsha Hoecker Sunday July 21st, 2024
Sermon - July 21, 2024 St. George Chapel
I was encouraged to stay away from politics in today’s comments, and please trust me, I am not intending to refer to any candidates, parties or races, but boy, with an opening like,
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord,” one could be sorely tempted.
I am going to talk about something that has been in the news lately though: the need to maintain our basic unity even with our differences. Our lesson today from Jeremiah is about the scattering of a people and the promise of reunification through righteous leadership and shepherding.
The lesson from Ephesians reminds us of the early disagreement in the church about circumcision. Non-Jews were not as a rule circumcised, but for Jewish men circumcision was a mark of their religious faith. With the appearance of Jesus, a prophet out of the Jewish tradition, it was initially Jews who were drawn to follow him.
As the faith moved beyond Israel, especially through the missionary work of St. Paul, many Gentiles became part of this new community called Christians. Paul himself had been a devout Jew who had seen the Jesus movement as a threat.
Until he was blinded by the light and knocked off his horse, he was intent on stopping this renegade sect. There is no question that he was circumcised.
Paul, who was an apostle to the Gentiles, rather than the Jews, clearly saw the demand for circumcision as an impediment to his mission. He went to the Christian council in Jerusalem to argue for his work among Gentiles, and to convince them that in Christ such divisions as Jew - Gentile, Circumcised - Uncircumcised, had been erased. One’s spiritual transformation in Christ required no outward and visible physical change.
Paul was about breaking down the divisions, not setting up new ones. He said “[Christ]... is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us.”
Yet even among Christians today, we see those dividing walls being built. In an election year like this one, in spite of all the talk about unity it is our differences that get the focus. And, of course that is, after all, what it is all about. We want to highlight the differences between party platforms and candidates because we are being asked to make a choice.
But highlighting differences is one thing, name calling and demonizing is something else entirely. We are all the children of one God, and each has the potential to do good as well as evil. It is our job as citizens of a democracy to evaluate our candidates based on factual and reasonable data and to make an informed choice.
We will not all come to the same conclusion. We have different scoring cards, different needs, and different beliefs about what is best for our country. I hope though, that one basic belief we can all share is that we are all children of a loving God; the same loving God. And in the eyes of that God we are all worthy of love.
And I hope we can all agree that our right to choose our leader through a democratic process is a cherished right, and because we will not ever all agree 100%, it is a right we need to protect.
Our God is a God of reconciliation and of love. We are different in so many ways, but love and reconciliation should always be our goal. Our unity as a nation and as a diverse people must be precious to us even as we disagree about the particulars. When all the voting is done let us pray that we will still be one nation under God, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.
Conversation questions;
How do we love one another in the midst of contentious discourse?
How do we respect each other’s dignity when we vehemently disagree?
Reverend Bill Blaine-Wallace, Sunday July 14th, 2024
The Rev. Bill Blaine-Wallace
St. George’s Chapel
Tenants Harbor, Maine
Proper 10
July 14, 2024
It was like the prophets in the Bible. They didn’t have any special powers of seeing the future. They saw where the present was at, was all.
from This Other Eden, by Paul Harding
Malaga Island, Maine, about 60 miles south, is an icon through which I prayed this sermon to life.
The martyrdom of John the Baptist mirrors the fate of 52 people on a 42-acre coastal island at the beginning of the 20th century. Malaga Island not as brutal. No heads on a platter. Yet as absolute.
John’s execution and the erasure of Malaga Islanders foretell America’s latest struggle to renew, and possibly save, our fragile democracy.
Malaga Island was last occupied by a mixed-race fishing community established in the 1790’s by Benjamin Darling, a once enslaved Black man, and his white wife, a local resident, Sarah Proverbs. They had 9 children. Others found their way to the island—Irish, Scots, Portuguese. The community became a safer haven for the down and out and ostracized.
The community was mostly left to itself until the first decade of the 20th century. Four factors brought greater attention to the island community. These same factors presently shorten America’s reach for a more perfect union.
First: Reconstruction. The post-Civil War, decades-long blatant and stealth resistance to incorporate freed slaves into American society, and the influx of Roman Catholic French Canadians into Maine, outed previously more latent racial, religious, and immigrant discrimination. In the early years of the 20th century, Maine had the highest per capita Ku Klux Klan membership in the United States.
Studies show that about one third of Americans currently resist uplift for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. A smaller and noisy percentage disavow non-Judeo-Christian religions and traditions, and stand against those outside the circle of heteronormality.
Second: Nativism. During the early 1900s, a growing number of Americans sought to protect the interests of native-born people. Nativists coalesced around the fear that immigrants threatened both the American way of life and jobs of American workers. The infamous literacy test of the Civil Rights Movement originated in the nativism movement.
Nativism is at the heart of white America’s current quest for greater ascendency and insularity. Note the present crusade to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at public universities.
Third: The Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century. Eugenics prospered the idea that one’s “blood” mattered. Purer the better. Segregation, involuntary sterilization, and other exclusionary measures were touted and applied in the arenas of medicine, education, and government.
“Purer” blood still matters. Extremists are becoming less subtle and quiet about the matter.
Fourth: tourism. At the beginning of the 20th century, tourism became and remains a major financial focus of Maine. The Malaga community did not help local property values. An eyesore.
As the chasm between rich and poor grows and the middle class shrinks, America’s current, accelerated greed-creep infiltrates and pushes aside communities that stand in the way. More and more cities turn their backs to and try to hide the unhoused. The Supreme Court recently upheld laws that criminalize sleeping in public.
The 4-fold assault against difference sealed the fate of the Malaga community.
In 1912, 47 residents of Malaga Island were evicted from their homes by the State of Maine. The remains of their dead were exhumed. 17 bodies were put into 5 caskets and relocated to lessen the incentive of the islanders to return. 8 residents were taken to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded. Some were sterilized. The other inhabitants of the island were scattered about.
The dynamics that erased the Malaga community threaten our nation in ways and at a pace that, nine years ago, we could have hardly imagined.
In 2015/2016, seemingly out of nowhere, came a dangerous and determined agenda to steady the aging gait of whiteness. Principles and commitments of about half of the 61% of white Americans seek to divide and conquer the remaining 39% of us. The latest and clearest iteration of this agenda is the Heritage Foundation’s project 2025.
Seemingly out of nowhere. Emphasis on seemingly. Malaga is another reminder that the 2015/2016 outpouring of hate is the latest uprising of a brokenness that has been with us since the beginning of America’s experiment with democracy.
Now is not the time for despair. It is time to breath deep, hunker down, examine, and adjust our lives towards a specific love. For those of the progressive Christian tradition, the shape of love is the Jesus Movement.
Is the Jesus Movement, practically speaking, worthy of our trust and hope as hell abounds all around?
The question is what kind of hope. The goal of hope, in terms of the Jesus Movement, is not the victory of democracy over autocracy. Why not? Isn’t that what we are struggling for. Not exactly.
Last week, I talked with Paul, my long-time friend and co-commiserater. We deconstructed the June 27th debate, its aftermath, and consequences.
Paul asked if I had read David Brooke’s interview with Steve Bannon in the NYT. I said that I had not. I said that I started it. Too much. Couldn’t bare it.
Paul said that I should finish it; said Bannon had a point.
Coming from Paul, that was a lot. Paul grew up in NYC. He attended The Little Red School House. He is an economics correspondent for the PBS News Hour. You’d think as an economics reporter, he’d have moved back from the left edge of progressive politics, closer to the middle. Not so.
Paul believes betting odds are more accurate than polls. His father, Joseph Solman, funded his early years as an artist as a teller at Belmont Park. Paul knows betting.
Paul believes Bannon is right on at least one account. Fascism is a solid bet, a runaway winner. History records far more Victor Orban’s than Joe Biden’s.
Paul’s point. Don’t be surprised that hell abounds all around.
American democracy, history’s longest surviving democracy, is messy, hard fought, and breakable. Shock saps will and purpose.
In other words, stay composed, poised, and aware amid the fray.
Hope for democracy, as an expectation we sweat blood to reach, is not enough. Expectation gets about 3 miles to the gallon. Big time burnout.
Hope, in terms of the Jesus Movement, is a way of life. Regardless of the outcome.
Hope is the stewardship of decency, integrity, respect, attention, curiosity, and vulnerability between self and others. All others. “You mean even…” Don’t go there. Hope is the commitment to be less a self-in-the-making and more a self in relation, a self in and for community.
Jesus’ foundational aim was not to get Rome’s foot off Galilee’s neck or to undo Herod’s alignment with empire.
Jesus is grounded more in the particular moment, less in universal possibility. Jesus attends to what’s near and now. Less concerned about what might be.
Jesus, like the one who baptized him, stands with those presently displaced and erased by the public square and the temple.
Jesus’ strategy is different than John’s. The baptizer focused on repentance, which tends to separate, the sheep and goat thing.
Jesus focuses on a love that unites, a love that finds solidarity with the disinherited, a love that incites solidarity among the disinherited. And who isn’t disinherited in one form or another? Jesus’ reach is long and unqualified.
Solidarity is highly contagious.
Solidarity infects the ballot box. Like the last couple of weeks. Iran, the United Kingdom. France.
And maybe America. We’ll see.
In the meantime, words of Maine native E. B. White, cited last night by Heather Cox Richardson, are worth holding onto: “Hang onto your hat. Hang onto your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
Amen.
Reverend Ralph Moore, Sunday July 7th, 2024
Baptism – July 7, 2024
2 Corinthians 5:17-20, Psalm 23, Mark 10:13-16
O God, you prepared your disciples for the coming of the Spirit through the life and teaching of our savior Christ. Make our hearts and minds always ready to receive the blessing of the Spirit, that we may be filled with strength and compassion as loving servants of your grace. Amen
A few months ago one of our area's writers shared a very intimate experience in his life. (David Grima, the Rockland Courier-Gazette) In church one Sunday as he was taking communion the choir was singing and he was suddenly smitten. “I know that tune! I haven't heard that since I was a boy!” “Just as I am without one plea….O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” Transported back over 50 years ago, an unmeasurable moment, transcendent, his spirit fully accepting in the here and now “the gift of grace.” He goes on to reflect on how our given human spirit continually has the capacity “to sense the more and greater; the me, the us, the all.” To be full of the totally beautiful compassionate Spirit! Joy!
Jesus describes this when he invites the children--”to such as these the realm of God belongs….if you aren't open to this like a little child you'll never enter God's realm.” What are we doing this morning, if not seeking this overwhelming transcendent moment? And what a blessing that we've been invited to lift up and celebrate the wondrous life of Marian Grace Ott. Whenever we celebrate this sacrament it's as though Jesus himself set this up. (“sacrament”-- in the here and now touched by the sacred)
Our writer ponders how among us human beings: “what is it that goes so wrong with this [part of our human condition] that, having once tasted the transcendent, so many people have fallen back so very far as to confuse their religion with hatred, cruelty and violence.” This echoes Paul's simple reminder about us as we seek spiritual maturity. We're in the world and, --but, when we become part of the “beloved community” formed in the name of Jesus, “there is a new creation, everything old has passed away...new things have come into being!” David concludes with his hope that in the harsh, angry world about us more of us “might still hear that 'still, small voice' offering grace.”
This is an invitation to open ourselves to renewal, be as little children. Stop all thoughts! Now feelings, special high moment in our lives. “Breath on me, Breathe of God.” As little children, we “re-member.” “Remember” by Joy Harjo. Ursula LeGuin: “I stand out on the deck of my house, looking at the sky full of God's children and I know that I am one of them.” Psalm 23: “I lie down in green pastures..beside still waters..my soul revives..my head is anointed with oil..goodness and mercy follow me all my days..I shall fear no evil….” Of such is the kingdom of heaven….the realm of the Spirit.
Remember - Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
“Remember.” Copyright ©1983 by Joy Harjo
August 13, 2023 Rev. Susan Flanders
Walking on Water - Sermon for Aug. 13, St.George’s, ME
Walking on water! How often we hear that phase! It can signal admiration - she walks on water for me - because she’s so good at what she does, or so inspiring. He walks on water - goes above and beyond our normal expectations, does what no-one else can do.
The phrase can also signal scorn. If we say someone thinks she walks on water, that’s bad! We’re then saying the person is arrogant, thinks he or she is better than the rest of us. We need only a bit of the daily news chatter to hear about such people. Walking on water has become a way of expressing how extraordinary a person is, or thinks he is, and certainly today’s gospel story - the original walking-on-water text - is one of many expressing how extraordinary Jesus was. The story of Jesus walking on water is one of those stories about impossible things, seeming miracles. We can’t really believe these stories, but they work on us all the same. They appeal to our imaginations and deepest longings; they are metaphors for actual lived experiences.
And in today’s version from Matthew’s gospel, we have what is to me the more interesting part of the story, Peter’s attempt to walk on water - his amazing, courageous striding out onto the waves to meet Jesus, only to flounder and be caught by Jesus’ saving hand. Our human instinct to go for it, dare it, risk it all, but then our fear, our loss of confidence, our realization that we need help. It’s all there in this tiny vignette.
I want to dig further into the story with the help of a reflection and then a poem. The reflection is from Macrina Wiederkehr, a RC sister, author of Seasons of the Heart, a collection of reflections and prayers. Here is a part of the reflection:
Come, walk on the water with me!
I’m in the mood for impossible things!
Take out your heart of courage,
a lamp amid your fears
and walk on the water with me.
Let’s look at everything that could be
believing it will be
if we dare
to walk on water
scared and hopeful.
Come, walk on the water with me!
Let’s wrap our fears in hope.
Across these waters we must go
our lamps of courage high
Scared and hopeful we will go.
Come, walk on the water with me!
Hold high your lamp of courage
Put all your doubts away
Let’s take a chance on staying up.
Come, walk on the water with me!
I’m in the mood for impossible things.
I feel scared
because it is impossible
I feel hopeful
because it is not impossible
So, scared and hopeful
we will walk.
Come!
Walk on the water with me!
When we face something tough, or perhaps seemingly impossible, it’s fear that gets in our way, right? This can be helpless fear – like that of the disciples in the storm-tossed boat, feeling there was nothing they could do. What if you, or your child, or your sister gets very sick – terminal cancer, ALS, Alzheimers – all the terrible fears, of pain, of loss of body function and dignity, loss of mind, fear of death. All these fears rise like towering waves and raging winds. Getting out of the boat and walking away isn’t an option – or is it? How can we find hope? We can’t change the situation, make the storm subside. However, we can make choices about how to live with or live through such a terrible storm. As the reflection says, we can wrap our fears in hope; we can be both scared and hopeful.
And lots of times, we are not helpless in our fears, we can do more than hope. Often the storms that beset us are about tough decisions, things that may change our comfortable or familiar lives. Here’s where courage joins hope in combating fear. Here is where Peter, seeing Jesus walking on water, and beckoned by him, starts out himself, taking a chance on staying up. As long as he focuses on Jesus’ outstretched hand, it works, but he gets distracted by the wind, lets his fear take over and begins to sink. Isn’t that the way with us, when we try to take bold steps in a new direction? It feels like stepping on a surface that won’t hold our weight. And we also worry about what others will think -“Who does she think she is? She’s trying to do the impossible.” How do we respect such voices but not necessarily heed them? How do we trust that the support we need, the metaphorical hand of Jesus, will be there for us?
I turn now to a poem by David Whyte, one of my favorites. He is a poet who actually works for corporations, bringing the life of the heart and the soul into the business world. But he also writes very personal poems like this one with its allusions to this morning’s gospel.
THE TRUELOVE
by David Whyte
There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,
and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them
and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love
so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.
The poem can be heard as a poem about love for another person, about the awakening finally to a love that is both eros and agape and that feels so meant to be that it cannot be denied. I think it bears all these meanings as it certainly did for me when it was read by my sister at Bill’s and my wedding back in 2005.
But I also think it’s a poem about God - about how we are called to love God and discover ourselves known and loved by a presence beyond ourselves, like that ghostly figure of Jesus, calling across the water. It’s a poem about giving ourselves to that presence – trusting in something that seems impossible, saying “yes” after perhaps a long time of doubt and floundering. It’s about saying “yes” to a voice calling you to your true self and to real life. It’s a poem about God’s love for us, just as the gospel story is, at its heart. If you wonder about Jesus in today’s story – think about times when life has beckoned you to do and to be more than you ever thought, and you found you actually could! Think about times when a tumult has been stilled in your life or your heart because you’ve felt the presence of God with you – like Jesus sitting in the boat with the disciples.
A personal note here: Some of you know that I am in a new and demanding role as caregiver for Bill as dementia and its diminishments shadow our life together. This walking on water story just grabs me this year in ways it never has before. And it grabs me here in Tenants Harbor where every single day I look out at the ocean, sometimes flat and calm, other times raging and rough. And I, we, Bill and I, need to stay afloat and not lose ourselves in fear and hopelessness. I need to trust that I can be and do what is needed. I’m not a brash, young Peter, thinking I can walk on water like Jesus. But I can trust in the hand, that there will be love held out for me and that I will not sink in despair. People, not always those I expect, but those I need, are there, reaching out, and life is still rich and beautiful, and we are held up.
You’ve probably experienced times like this as well, but maybe like me, you never really connected them to Jesus’ walking on water, or more specifically Peter. Today, in gospel and reflection and poetry, we are offered a vision of the saving help we all long for.
Come, walk on the water with me. Amen.
The Rev. Susan M. Flanders, August 13, 2023
August 6, 2023 Rev. Betsy Scott
Transfiguration Sunday
August 6, 2023
This is Transfiguration Sunday, it celebrates one of the most profound moments that ever took place on this earth. The scriptures record the moment of great holiness, intimacy and love between God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. The son prays to the father up on the mountain with his disciples present, Elijah and Moses appear, the prophet and the law, and the son’s face shines with light and his clothes become a brilliant white. Light has always symbolized love, goodness, wisdom, hope, grace and in this case divinity. This is a mystical event, a direct and personal experience of the divine in a temporal setting. Mystical events have been recorded and known throughout the ages but this transfiguration is the penultimate mystical event. William James in his book Varieties of Religious Experience explains mystical experience: James said mystical experiences are ineffable or inexpressible, noetic, or great wisdom, transient, not lasting and passive, it happens to you. You cannot make it happen. They are always a surprise.
The Transfiguration is also one of the five most important events in Christ’s life and many writers say the transfiguration has language that leads back to the Exodus and language that is a preview of the glorified body of Christ following His resurrection. The transfiguration took place 40 days before His passion.
For me to plumb the depths of this extraordinary text, penultimate happening, in just a few minutes is a herculean task.
I decided to explore just one aspect of this great even given to me in a couplet by a pastoral counselor:
“ Divinity was Revealed to Humanity in the Transfiguraion
and
Humanity was illuminated by Divinity in the Transfiguration.
Christ said: “ I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness.”
The Transfiguration text is certainly a declaration of the divinity of Christ and it has been interpreted thus throughout the ages but it is also interpreted as a declaration of the way we can change, the way we can draw nearer to the Knowledge and love of God and be transformed into the image of God., to be in touch with the Kingdom of God that is within us.
We have been talking about the Kingdom of God within us for a number of Sundays here at St. George’s Chapel and today we are going to be talking about the process of getting in touch with this Kingdom of God within. To repeat: Christ said in 1 John 1 that : I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light and fellowship with one another.” This is crucial, life changing! It means we are not stuck in whatever state of heart, mind and spirit that we find ourselves in but that we can change to become closer to the image of Christ, the Kingdom Within. Notice that it is Christ that changed and in turn others changed in relation to Christ. In other words, the only person we can change is ourselves but if we change, others will change in relation to us.
The transfiguration of Christ shows the process by which we can change. Obviously Christ is divinity but we can change to become closer to the image of Christ. The process described is a description of the process of love. Christ draws close to the father, they are present one to the other. The Father affirms the Son. This is my son in Whom I am Well pleased. They are united in this love. So what is love and how do we able to learn to love? Drawing from my seminary years, Love was described to me by the great Dr. Russell Davis, as a presence, an affirmation and a union. I have found this a very helpful definition of love. It is one way to describe what happened on that Mountain as Christ was present with the father in prayer, the father affirmed Christ, this is my son, listen to him, and the light was the divine light of Holy love, the union.
St. Paul expressed this thought in
2 Corinthians 3:18 where Paul wrote:
“And we all, who with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord’s Glory, are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord.”
In order to come close to the Lord , we must have an unveiled face. What does that mean? With a veil, we are hiding ourselves and we can’t see others clearly. With an unveiled face, we can see more clearly ourselves and others, we are enabled to contemplate the Glory of God. As we unveil ourselves, we become more compassionate on ourselves and on others.
To understand what the Scriptures are talking about, let’s think of figures and stories in literature where the main character has either been unveiled or refused to unveil themselves and what happens to them. The two examples that came to me are Don Juan and Prince Andre. I’m sure you can think of others.
Don Juan is the great libertine in the Mozart opera Don Giovanni who ruins the life of many women and at the end of the opera, he is asked to repent, he refuses and disappears, going to hell.
My favorite transformation in literature is in WAR And Peace when Prince Andre transforms. The story is that Prince Andre was engaged to Natasha and then went off to war. While he was gone, Natasha almost ran off with another man, as it turns out a scoundrel. Subsequently, Prince Andre is wounded in battle, perhaps his unveiling as he comes in touch with his own pain. He then sees clearly. He looks up to the heavens and realizes how small he is compared to the universe and suddenly sees Natasha as the young girl that she is and how he is the one who left her by going off to war. Tolstoy has another beautiful scene where Natasha comes to Prince Andre while he is mortally wounded and begs for forgiveness. Prince Andre answers: “ While there is nothing to forgive. I love you now more than I have ever loved you before.” I am quite sure Prince Andre’s face was radiating in love.
What happened to these figures when they transformed?
In Christian theology transformation is understood as a change of heart. One is filled with compassion and gratitude , increased awareness, greater sense of purpose and meaning, deeper connection with divine energy expanded consciousness and understanding , enhanced intuition and inner guidance positive change in life relationships and life. This is what happened to Prince Andre and the Scripture promise it will happens to you and me when we draw closer to the Lord.
Many people have written about this process of transformation, but one of my favorites is Ken Wilber who describes the unveiling very well: Clean up, grow-up, wake-up and show up.
In this process, one learns to love oneself which in turn enables one to love another.
This is the life long journey to which we all are called, the journey home to our true selves, the Kingdom of God Within. It has been written about forever. Many interpret the Odyssey as the journey home.
I thought you would be interested to know that in the field of the teaching of parenting, there is now a big movement away from behavior modification of the children and towards what is called parent centric parenting. What this means is that the parents are taught to unveil, to tune into their own emotions, the unveiling: to feel their own emotions, to understand where their own emotions have come from, to finally find their own center of peace and joy. When the parents are in their own state of peace and joy, they will have their eyes unveiled to see their own children more clearly. The parent will be enabled to listen to their children, to try to understand what is bothering their children, what are their current needs etc, You know that listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give one to another. To really listen without immediately chiming in to say who we are. In this way, the children will feel understood and loved and can truly blossom into their own God given natures. So this process of the amazing transfiguration of Christ is also the path we are called to follow to become more loving in our everyday lives.
As Irenaeus wrote in the 2nde Century: “The glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life is the vision of God.”
Christ went up on the mountain with his disciples to a place of quiet and refuge and strength and a place where he drew close to the Holy Spirit, and he prayed. Christ went to the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal. He devoted himself to drawing nearer to the Holy Spirit. It was during that praying that his face shone and his garments became dazzling white. We are all exhorted in our unveiled state to climb our own mountain, find the quiet places, draw closer and listen to our inner most selves, to meditate, to pray, to draw closer to the Holy Spirit, and in the process we ourselves become more loving and whole.
To close, I want to read to you what Thomas Keating wrote in his book Open Mind and Open Heart about what is was like to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit or in the presence of pure unconditional love.
This presence is so immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring yet so gentle; limitless yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence. It knows everything about me—all my weaknesses, brokenness, sinfulness—and still loves me infinitely. This presence is healing, strengthening. Refreshing, just by its Presence. It is non-judgmental, self-giving, seeing no reward, boundless in compassion. It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize.
This is the kind of love which we can find with the Holy Spirit and which we in turn can offer to our children, our loved ones, our friends, all the people. The Transfiguration of Christ shows us the way the Holy Spirit interacts with us here on earth. May we all follow this light and become a light.
Amen
This is a very big and important topic so I am happy we will now have a time for the audience’s reflection, questions and discussion.
July 16, 2023 - The Rev. Bill Blaine-Wallace
Tenants Harbor, Maine | Proper 9A
Gospel wisdom from Sandra Pankhurst: “When at first you don’t succeed, redefine the meaning of success.”
Sandra Pankhurst was founder and director of Strategic Trauma Cleaning Services in Frankston, Australia. The company cleans up crime scenes and suicide sites. They assist the mentally and physically disabled with home maintenance. They clear out hoarder homes and the likes. Ms. Pankhurst, who died in 2021, described her business as cleaning up messes no one else wants do deal with.
Ms. Pankhurst was not your typical successful business owner. The Guardian newspaper described her as “a person who has led many lives within a life: adopted as a child, then severely abused by her adoptive parents; emerging from a failed marriage and coming out as a transgender woman in the 1980s; working as a drag queen and sex worker; and eventually starting her own cleaning business in the 1990s.”
Last week, Victoria and I watched the 2022 documentary about Ms. Pankhurst and her cleaning service. The title of the documentary is Clean.
The rotten tomato score shows a wide discrepancy. The tomatometer score, based on critical reviews, gave it 100%. The audience score: 36%.
The discrepancy makes sense. I have seen PG-13 depictions of violent murder scenes, stains of decomposed bodies, homes of hoarders and general squalor. All of which are revealed in R-rated reality in the documentary. Hard to watch. And for Victoria and me, well worth it.
Ms. Pankhurst died of severe COPD, after decades of struggling to breathe. She was a smoker. And her disease was due in part from exposure to extremely harsh cleaning agents during the first years of work, when she did not wear a mask.
Ms. Pankhurst lived a Christ-like life. Radical compassion and care for the untouchables, the disenfranchised, the inconsolable, the so-called criminal element, the erased, and ridiculed.
Moreover, she recruited colleagues whose own lives parallel those they serve. Folks who are struggling to get their lives back together.
The Specialized Trauma Cleaning Services mirrors what one of my heroes, Will Campbell, understood the church to be: “One cat in a ditch and one no count son-of-a-gun trying to pull her out.”
Church, at its best, celebrates what I call the sacrament of shared sorrow and suffering. From such a sacrament emerges a solidarity that incites a relational joy. Sizzling joy inspires fiery passion for justice.
The Specialized Trauma Cleaning Services zealously embraces grunt work. Another way of saying it: STCS, as their logo reads, re-defines the definition of success.
The Parable of the Sower, at first glance, is a morality play. The story stirs in us a desire to scratch our heads. What kind of soil am I? What does good soil look and act like. How can I enrich my soil?
The more I wrestle with these questions, the further down I go into the be-and-do-better rabbit hole.
I often follow paths that lead nowhere. I make commitments that are uprooted. I am distracted by thin cares and appealing possibilities for more and better.
And I keep striving to plant my life in good soil.
What, exactly, is good soil?
The Parable of the Sower also is found in the gospels of Mark and Luke, each with its particular nuance. Matthew says good soil understands. Mark says good soil accepts. Luke says those who have good and noble hearts. I guess that’s the go to 10-10-10 fertilizer. Still, weeds grow, plants wilt, dry out and drown, and sometimes fail. Like our lives.
And that leads me back to the parable’s title: The Parable of the Sower. The parable is less about the quality of our faith and actions and more about God’s fiercely devoted heart.
When it comes to seeding love, God is generous, if not reckless, indiscriminate, if not wasteful, determined, as in possessed. God, in this parable, does not get the less is more thing. The heart of God is profligate.
Good for God. Great for us. We all need love over-seeded in our lives now and again. And at times we really, really need love over-seeded again and again. And for that, thank you Strategic Trauma Cleaning Services. Thank any and all who show up when we are knee deep in you know what.
Here’s what I imagine Ms. Pankhurst saying to me when I am obsessing about the quality of my dirt: “Get over yourself! It’s not all about you! Get with your neighbor. Pick up a mop, and don’t forget to put on your mask.”
We belong to the post-resurrection Church. Jesus, for us, is less a person and more a way of life. Jesus was back then. Christ is right now. Christ as presence. Christ as action. Christ in and as us.
Christ as us. Those who have finer polish and more means than the majority of the world. Our social location calls for a Christ-like caution.
In the Specialized Trauma Cleaning Service, the distinction between server and served is transfigured into us, just us. Little noblesse oblige in the body of Christ.
Generosity of the more privileged toward the less privileged has little to do with the Jesus Movement. Just us, all of us, making our way together through life-the-way-it-really-is. Down and out. Up and out. And those in between.
A few days ago, at breakfast, while reflecting on having watched Clean the night before, Victoria said, “The fundamental questions are, for all of us, it seems: “Am I enough? Do I have enough?”
When we ask these questions in a materially saturated culture, the answer is usually no, whether we are on a fixed income or have a big bank account spilling over into investments.
Always scratching in the dirt to be more and have more. A less anxious me. The latest driver to correct my slice. Or, more concisely and succinctly put, words of Damon, protagonist in Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel: Demon Copperhead: “The landfill is where I figured out one of my main philosophies, that everybody alive is basically in the process of trading out their old stuff for different stuff, day in and day out.”
When we ask Victoria’s questions about enough, from the standpoint of a less domesticated Jesus Movement, the answers are more nuanced.
From such a social location, our faith might whisper: “Maybe I am enough. Possibly we are enough.”
Gospel identity is simple: We relate, therefore I am.
Amen.
July 24, 2022 - Rev. Ralph Moore
Rev. Ralph Moore
Hosea lives in Samaria in the northern kingdom after it has split off from the southern kingdom centered in Jerusalem—about mid-8th-century BCE—and in the poetry of his thirty or so years we feel the pain of a personal faith stretched to the limit. The kingdom is shattering by assassinations of kings and other royalty, corruption among the wealthy, and the disappearance of any loyalty to the ancient covenant between the people and God. Hosea's spiritual strength is such that he can interpret the infidelity of his wife as a metaphor for the disintegration of his society--national infidelity. But he doesn't give up; even in the end of today's reading he writes predicts that some day the people can again be called “Children of the living God.” His fears come true: shortly after his death the kingdom is devoured by the forces of Assyria.
Jump ahead 700 years to Jesus and his people. The tyrants and rulers are different, but the living conditions are the same. Picture the circle around Jesus: male, female, young, old, mostly poor, mostly Jews, immigrants, slaves. What attracts them to Jesus? Their life situations are best described as desperate. They are trying to survive in a society ruled by a puppet king and his religious cronies whose power and authority depend on a vicious Roman occupation force. Daily arrests, disappearances, forced labor, prison, executions, poverty and illness. They've given up on religion.
Jesus is a new experience of hope for them. “The law and the prophets,” he has said: “they still offer us hope.” The Torah, the teachings the covenant between God and the people, and the prophets who speak truth to the power-mongers that defame the Torah. In these is our capacity for not just survival but for new strength and growth toward justice. Well how should we pray, then? Jesus repeats age-old daily prayer phrases.. “Awe and praise to you, Eternal. Our hearts are humbled. We yearn for your presence among us as we struggle for the essentials of life. We seek release from our wrong doing as we release all who have wronged us. May we not be tested beyond our endurance.” He stops talking. Silence. They stare at him. “That's it, that's all!”
I recall a televised interview that Bill Moyers has in 1991 with the Dalai Lama, who states his view on the essential path to world peace. “The essence of any good religion,” says the Dalai Lama, “is the good heart….There are many philosophies and systems of thought but they mostly can be obstacles for good heart.” He stops talking. Silence. Bill Moyers then says, “Is that all?” The Dalai Lama answers, “Well, what's wrong with that?” “Nothing,” says Bill Moyers, “but when I look around the world…..”
Just before he dies, Jesus sums it all up for those closest to him, as they share the last supper. “Love one another. Exactly as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” The power that frees us to forgive and to be forgiven...the courage to breathe deeply in quietness and humility and kindness...the joy and awe over the goodness and beauty of the gift of life given to us...And: “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.” A theologian from South Africa once made a statement in a sermon that stays with me constantly. She said, “Jesus' resurrection began well before his death.” This path we are on, before our deaths, is potentially a opening of the risen life in us. There's an outside world of conflict, strife, oppression. The people rise above and beyond that, transformed into what Martin Luther King calls “the beloved community,” or, in Jesus' words, “the kingdom of God has come near.” Luke himself, in the Book of Acts uses the primary word to describe how the disciples live during the years after the crucifixion of Jesus--”koinonia,” the commons, sharing all with each other and caring for others in need.” “Church.” And then change in the world emerges as a result.
But of course this doesn't happen without effort, without persistence. “If you, who are imperfect, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Holy Spirit be given to those who are open to receive it!” Do you believe that? Do you trust that that is true, that it can happen to you? It means paying attention, spending time, making an effort, going deeply into yourself. It means trusting that there can be new hope, “hope with teeth.” (D Lama: sleep in a room with a mosquito.) The Lord's Prayer: “Eternal, reveal yourself, please. Set the world aright. Keep us alive with the essentials. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe enduring what we face.” Spirit, dwell in me. (Spirit means breath—the name of God.) Jesuit philosopher Teilhard De Chardin:“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." Jesus is not shouting when he says: “Keep knocking on the door until it opens, and it will.”
That's where all this is going for us as we agonize over this world we live in. persistent care within each of us as relationship in community. In our nation right now is a distortion a distortion of Christianity itself has become politicized. I've come across the work of a man named David Skeel, a professor of law in the University of Pennsylvania and an active member of a Presbyterian congregation in Philadelphia. He appears in the Wall Street Journal. “When Christians seek to usher in the kingdom of God through law,” he writes, “they are denying Christianity's teachings, not promoting them.” And: “Complexity is not an embarrassment for Christianity; it is Christianity's natural element.” The laws that are the most successful are those “that actually help to create relationships in our communities.” Christians seek “the flourishing” of others.
We are being reminded about the daily need to live into the possibility that the Spirit can come into every human heart (the “good heart”) We do not choose the alternatives to win in politics by any means necessary as promoted by “religious nationalism.” In the nourishing to relationships. In the cost and joy of discipleship. And let's stress that gift of joy. Keep knocking—Rumi says, “sooner or later you become the door itself.”
I give the last word to poet Mary Oliver
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate.
Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way fo fighting back,
that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.
Anyway, that's often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
July 11, 2021 - Rev. Ralph Moore
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (year B proper 10)
Sam 6.1-5,12b-19; Ps 24; Eph 1.1-14; Mk 6.14-29
When we read certain parts of the Bible we can get agitated. The discord and conflict in the situations described, the agony in human lives, the intensity of the historical period. This morning. David acclaimed king by all the tribes, the result of a lot of violent conflict. Now they are making their way to the holy hill that is known as Jerusalem. The Ark of God, that ancient container of the tablets of the law made by Moses that represents the presence of God is being moved to a new location to a tent that David sets up. Upon its arrival a great ritual celebration erupts, complete with sacrifices and wild noisy music and dancing, led by an exuberant David. Michal, daughter of former king Saul, is displeased by David’s exuberance. That’s the reading. But...
This lesson by itself is sanitized. The hill city is ruled by Jebusites, a Cannanite tribe that refuses to allow David and his people to settle there. Rather than fight, David establishes a new location in what is called the City of David; (to this day it is being fully examined by archeologists). Over time the Jews finally inhabit Jerusalem through negotiation and inter-marriage. Omitted from our lesson is that strange incident while the Ark is being carried. As it’s about to tilt one of the leaders touches it and is struck dead. (By God?) And, Michal, identified here only as Saul’s daughter, is David’s wife. Her disgust over David’s wild dancing reveals a family feud. When David gets home she yells. What a glorious day for the king, when he exposed his person in the sight of his servants’ slave-girls like an empty headed fool! To which David replies, this was done in God’s presence…he choose me instead of your father and family and I will dance forever for the Lord and cause you and whoever else more disgust!Then, Michal, Saul’s daughter, had no child to her dying day. The back story is that David earlier longed for Michal and Saul demanded a high cost for her down 100 Philistine foreskins; David brought him 200. As Saul began to lose his mind, he tried to have David killed, and he took Michal back and gave her to another man, and David then got her back. The environments of these narratives are conflict, violence, and death.
Mark’s gospel doesn’t let up. We don’t have to go into all the details of violence in the Roman occupation of Jesus’ day. Here we have a local puppet ruler called œKing Herod. He’s not a king at all but the son of the late Herod who was king when Jesus was born. He is overseer of the northern region of Galilee. Though he has tolerated the teachings of John the baptizer, he finally can’t stand the prophet’s criticism of his having divorced his first wife and then married Herodias, wife of his late brother. She hates John. So, at Herod’s birthday feast Herodias’ daughter (Salome) dances and he asks what reward she wishes, and goaded by her mother she asks for John’s head. Disciples take John’s body. The location of that and his head are still unknown. Richard Strauss’ opera œSalome presents the gory tale quite adequately. More conflict, violence, and death.
Well, aren’t we glad that we live in a world where those kinds of things don’t happen anymore? And, of course, we really do. Not exactly the same, but maybe much worse. The genius of the biblical stories ”for Jews, Christians, and Muslims ”is that they are preserved not as idealized portraits of saints, but as reports of real people whose decisions and actions result in suffering and defeat and sometimes blessing. There is some insight, perhaps some humility. Perhaps, some trace of the Creator. Through all of these centuries of narratives and poems is a thread, a reality, of human heart, as our ancestors discover their destructiveness, and their humility, and truth, identified as grace. Somewhere in all of these stories are prophets. Samuel himself is one ”early on he tried to talk the people out of having a king. Watch out for Nathan, who announces the decisive judgment of David himself. The Ephesians lesson ends in a phrase that translates: œthere is a pledge in our inheritance as people of God that we will be rescued. Jesus upholds the centrality not of the canonical histories as though they are pure, but of the law and the prophets (including the poetry of the Psalms): Micah’s seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly; today’s Psalm: œWho can ascend the hill of the Lord and who can stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, nor sworn by what is a fraud.
The pandemic and unique crises of hostility and disunity that we’re living right now lands us in the same uncomfortable place as these stories. If we’re smart, we will discern and learn from the new revelations of who we have become and are yet to become, as a country and as neighbors of human beings in the total world. High levels of poverty, homelessness, displaced people, refugees, hate crimes ”what is the normal being mentioned as desirable to recover? Individually, each of us knows unfinished business of our lives. As people of the Beloved Community formed by Jesus, maybe we can commit ourselves to new normals–new support for adequate public health systems; a new sense of our place among sisters and brothers of every other nation; new behaviors in relation to our neighbors of other races and classes. And, most of all, new acceptance of the gift of hope, freedom from despair, faith in the goodness of soul that’s in us.
Last week frequent references were made to the speech Frederick Douglas delivered to the Republican Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester on July 5, 1852, entitled What to the slave is the 4th of July? He makes all of the truthful points with unerring accuracy, and then, after such a rehearsal of unvarnished reality, he closes with words of hope and optimism and recites a poem by William Lloyd Garrison:
œGod speed the day when human blood shall cease to flow/In every clime be understood
The claims of human brotherhood,/And each return for evil, good,/Not blow for blow;That day will come all feuds to end,/And change into a faithful friend/Each foe.
The members of an investment firm recently completed a self-study and came up with a list of values and qualities that they’d like to apply to their work: œAgility, Consistency, Collaboration, Compassion, Justice, and Compassion. That’s impressive ¦..
Maya Angelou says, œWhen we look to the past we do so with forgiveness, when look to the future we do so with deep prayer, we look into the present we do so with deep gratitude ”the beautiful actions follow ¦..
So may it be with us.
Sunday, July 18, 2021
A Sermon
The Reverend Richard E. Greenleaf St. Georges Chapel
18 July 2021
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 11B
Morning Prayer II
2 Samuel 7:1-14a Psalm 89:20-37 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
God, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may thy word, but accomplish that for which it is given. O Lord, hear, O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Sons sake, in whose sweet name we pray. Amen.
George Herbert, 1593-1633
I once was acquainted with a man, an accomplished man, a learned man,
a clergy-man who was elected bishop of a diocese
that included a number of Indian reservations, and the Episcopal Churches therein, which were many.
Once installed, the new bishop set off on a tour of all the churches in his new diocese, churches great, but mostly small, and prepared a paper to deliver on the phenomenology of pastoral care in such places, a subject on which he had done doctoral work and wanted to use as his personal mission statement for his work among reservation parishes. At one of these small parishes, the bishop entered, vested in cope and mitre, carrying his Episcopal crosier, and began the service in the usual way.
When it came to the time for the homily, the bishop introduced his subject on the phenomenology of pastoral care and his intentions for how it applied to reservation parishes in his diocese.
But as he launched into his sermon,
a man in one of the front rows slowly stood up, a man who was an elder in the community, an elder in years,
but more importantly
an elder in church and tribal standing.
The elder stood and slowly but deliberately began to make his way forward
while the new bishop –pretending not to notice–
continued with his learned sermon.
To the bishops surprise,
the elder mounted the few small steps to the pulpit,
circled the bishop, reached over,
lifted the script
of the bishops carefully crafted sermon,
and just as slowly walked down the steps on the other side of the pulpit.
When the elder got back to the floor,
he turned back to the astonished preacher
and simply said, Speak to us, Bishop. And then he took his seat.
Speak to us.
I have taken the liberty of telling you this story because the bishop in question told it to me, and he told this story in public not a few times.
I also tell you this story because it is a good admonition for every preacher, especially so-called learned preachers of which I, by training and vocation, supposedly am one.
But more importantly, I tell you this story because
I believe it touches something at the heart of todays Gospel,
2
and that is the ravenous hunger of people
–of all of us for a word.
A ravenous hunger to be truly,
authentically , and personally
spoken to.
And Scripture tells us that wherever Jesus went that is exactly what he did.
Earlier, in the Gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, and They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (Mark 1:21-22)
A little later, after Jesus had delivered a man supposedly possessed,
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.(Mark 1: 27)
After Jesus stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, his disciples, were filled with great awe and said to one another, Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mark 4:41)
And then, in the Gospel of John, the Samaritan woman meets Jesus at the well and after that left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! (John 4: 28-29)
Or in the words of another translation,
Come and see a man who told me everything that I am!
And the woman concludes
with the wide-eyed question,
He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
Speak to us!
Speak to us as one with real authority.
Speak to us with words that even the sea and winds obey. Speak to us with words that tell us all that we are.
This past week,
I was hungry for such a word.
Last Saturday, I attended a party for an old friend and colleague that was a combination birthday, house-warming, and retirement party. Family, friends, and colleagues came from near and far to celebrate my friend,
and the toasts and testimonials were many.
What was left mostly unsaid, though, was that my friend had retired early because he had developed not one but two neuro-muscular conditions that left him unable to continue working.
The following day, last Sunday, my wife Jenny and I traveled to Yarmouth, Maine to attend the celebration of the life of my late cousin, Kathy Greenleaf. Four years ago, following the death of her husband, my late cousin Peter Greenleaf, Kathy had been diagnosed with a virulent cancer
for which she was, fortunately, treated in a drug trial that worked quite well for her, at least for a while.
But last fall the cancer returned, and it was angry, and just before Christmas it took Kathy.
And then this past Monday, Jenny and I moved her 90 year old father
from a family members home in Massachusetts to a memory care unit near us in southern Maine, all because of the effects of a stroke he had suffered some eight years ago that left him blind and with mild dementia.
In each of these moments I had a moment
where I thought, What do you say?
What can you possibly say
that would make a bit of difference?
4
In todays gospel,
there are a number of such moments.
And what does Jesus do?
He first and foremost speaks to the people and situations as he found them.
He gives them a word.
And only after that does he . . .
feed them,
heal them,
and give them rest.
And because Jesus speaks to them in his Jesus way, everything is changed, transformed, redeemed.
And he is still speaking in this way today .
At last Saturdays party just when the tributes were about to get maudlin, and I was beginning to wonder What should I say? my not-obviously-religious friend quite unexpectedly introduced his new good friend the very young local rector, who proceeded to hug my friend and then, with pine bough and holy water, to bless the new house and all who lived in or visited it with the healing, life, and rest that Jesus came to bring.
And in this, Jesus spoke.
At last Sundays supposedly non-religious gathering to honor my cousin Kathy, her older brother, a veteran of the foreign service and a cranky Yankee if ever there was one, began his remarks by saying we weren’t there to get all religious or mystic and I started to wonder What should I say?
5
But then he went on to remember Kathy in terms that were profoundly religious, if not mystical, and deeply expressive of a Christian love and hope that, I dare say, seemed to be shared by all in attendance.
And in this, Jesus spoke.
And on Monday, when we were settling my father-in-law, Bob, into his new room in the memory unit, there were moments quite good and more than a few when we found ourselves wondering if this was going to work. One of those questionable moments came when the nurse was asking Bob, in front of a team of caregivers, how he wanted to handle going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I again found myself wondering, What should I say? But at the nurses question, Bob suddenly brightened, screwed up his lips, and let go a piercing whistle. And then sat there beaming, proud as a peacock, at which the assembled caregivers laughed and applauded. And in this, Jesus spoke.
The Christian writer Anne Lamott says that there are really only 3 types of prayer: Help! Thanks! Wow! But to this I would add a fourth type of prayer: Speak to us. Give us a word.
6
In answer to which God speaks his word Jesus. And if we would see who God is we need only see who Jesus was and what he did, and what he is and does even now.
Jesus is Gods word to us.
The Word God spoke long ago and continues to speak to us today in our every situation.
And so let us conclude the way we began with the prayerful words of George Herbert.
O God, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may thy word, but accomplish that for which it is given. O Lord, hear, O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Sons sake, in whose sweet name we pray. Amen.
George Herbert, 1593-1633
Sunday, July 11, 2021
It all begins with an idea.
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (year B proper 10)
Sam 6.1-5,12b-19; Ps 24; Eph 1.1-14; Mk 6.14-29
July 11, 2021
Rev. Ralph Moore
When we read certain parts of the Bible we can get agitated. The discord and conflict in the situations described, the agony in human lives, the intensity of the historical period. This morning. David acclaimed king by all the tribes, the result of a lot of violent conflict. Now they are making their way to the holy hill that is known as Jerusalem. The Ark of God, that ancient container of the tablets of the law made by Moses that represents the presence of God is being moved to a new location to a tent that David sets up. Upon its arrival a great ritual celebration erupts, complete with sacrifices and wild noisy music and dancing, led by an exuberant David. Michal, daughter of former king Saul, is displeased by David’s exuberance. That’s the reading. But...
This lesson by itself is sanitized. The hill city is ruled by Jebusites, a Cannanite tribe that refuses to allow David and his people to settle there. Rather than fight, David establishes a new location in what is called the City of David; (to this day it is being fully examined by archeologists). Over time the Jews finally inhabit Jerusalem through negotiation and inter-marriage. Omitted from our lesson is that strange incident while the Ark is being carried. As it’s about to tilt one of the leaders touches it and is struck dead. (By God?) And, Michal, identified here only as Saul’s daughter, is David’s wife. Her disgust over David’s wild dancing reveals a family feud. When David gets home she yells. What a glorious day for the king, when he exposed his person in the sight of his servants’ slave-girls like an empty headed fool! To which David replies, this was done in God’s presence…he choose me instead of your father and family and I will dance forever for the Lord and cause you and whoever else more disgust!Then, Michal, Saul’s daughter, had no child to her dying day. The back story is that David earlier longed for Michal and Saul demanded a high cost for her down 100 Philistine foreskins; David brought him 200. As Saul began to lose his mind, he tried to have David killed, and he took Michal back and gave her to another man, and David then got her back. The environments of these narratives are conflict, violence, and death.
Mark’s gospel doesn’t let up. We don’t have to go into all the details of violence in the Roman occupation of Jesus’ day. Here we have a local puppet ruler called œKing Herod. He’s not a king at all but the son of the late Herod who was king when Jesus was born. He is overseer of the northern region of Galilee. Though he has tolerated the teachings of John the baptizer, he finally can’t stand the prophet’s criticism of his having divorced his first wife and then married Herodias, wife of his late brother. She hates John. So, at Herod’s birthday feast Herodias’ daughter (Salome) dances and he asks what reward she wishes, and goaded by her mother she asks for John’s head. Disciples take John’s body. The location of that and his head are still unknown. Richard Strauss’ opera œSalome presents the gory tale quite adequately. More conflict, violence, and death.
Well, aren’t we glad that we live in a world where those kinds of things don’t happen anymore? And, of course, we really do. Not exactly the same, but maybe much worse. The genius of the biblical stories ”for Jews, Christians, and Muslims ”is that they are preserved not as idealized portraits of saints, but as reports of real people whose decisions and actions result in suffering and defeat and sometimes blessing. There is some insight, perhaps some humility. Perhaps, some trace of the Creator. Through all of these centuries of narratives and poems is a thread, a reality, of human heart, as our ancestors discover their destructiveness, and their humility, and truth, identified as grace. Somewhere in all of these stories are prophets. Samuel himself is one ”early on he tried to talk the people out of having a king. Watch out for Nathan, who announces the decisive judgment of David himself. The Ephesians lesson ends in a phrase that translates: œthere is a pledge in our inheritance as people of God that we will be rescued. Jesus upholds the centrality not of the canonical histories as though they are pure, but of the law and the prophets (including the poetry of the Psalms): Micah’s seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly; today’s Psalm: œWho can ascend the hill of the Lord and who can stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, nor sworn by what is a fraud.
The pandemic and unique crises of hostility and disunity that we’re living right now lands us in the same uncomfortable place as these stories. If we’re smart, we will discern and learn from the new revelations of who we have become and are yet to become, as a country and as neighbors of human beings in the total world. High levels of poverty, homelessness, displaced people, refugees, hate crimes ”what is the normal being mentioned as desirable to recover? Individually, each of us knows unfinished business of our lives. As people of the Beloved Community formed by Jesus, maybe we can commit ourselves to new normals–new support for adequate public health systems; a new sense of our place among sisters and brothers of every other nation; new behaviors in relation to our neighbors of other races and classes. And, most of all, new acceptance of the gift of hope, freedom from despair, faith in the goodness of soul that’s in us.
Last week frequent references were made to the speech Frederick Douglas delivered to the Republican Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester on July 5, 1852, entitled What to the slave is the 4th of July? He makes all of the truthful points with unerring accuracy, and then, after such a rehearsal of unvarnished reality, he closes with words of hope and optimism and recites a poem by William Lloyd Garrison:
œGod speed the day when human blood shall cease to flow/In every clime be understood
The claims of human brotherhood,/And each return for evil, good,/Not blow for blow;That day will come all feuds to end,/And change into a faithful friend/Each foe.
The members of an investment firm recently completed a self-study and came up with a list of values and qualities that they’d like to apply to their work: œAgility, Consistency, Collaboration, Compassion, Justice, and Compassion. That’s impressive ¦..
Maya Angelou says, œWhen we look to the past we do so with forgiveness, when look to the future we do so with deep prayer, we look into the present we do so with deep gratitude ”the beautiful actions follow ¦..
So may it be with us ¦.
August 25, 2019 – The Archdeacon Mimsy Jones
It all begins with an idea.
It 's wonderful to be back in this pulpit, although I 've also loved being in the pews with you most of the summer. I’ve said this before and I 'm sure I will say it again, but there is no church, or chapel, or place of worship I know of to equal this one! There is a mixture here of intelligence and compassion, tradition and edginess, devotion and deep, resounding humor.
This time last week, most of us sitting in the pews had doubled over with laughter more than once. The Rev. Tom Pike, the beloved priest who was familiar to many of us led the service of Morning Prayer, while Renny Stockpole 's inimitable group provided the music, starting with a rendition of Satin Doll ' that had us humming and tapping our feet as the tall, elegant figure of Tom Pike appeared from a side door to begin the worship.
Our programs indicated that we were to begin by singing a hymn so we were a bit startled to hear Tom say: Let us say together the Confession on page 79, and knowing many of you as well as I do, I 'm sure we need to say it ¦Most merciful God, we confess ¦.
THE HYMN! The HYMN! someone shouted from the back row; YES! echoed another voice. We are supposed to sing the hymn first!
Unfazed, and with great dignity, Father Pike bowed to the musicians: Gentlemen, I apologize. Of course, we are to sing a hymn ¦
So we sang the hymn, and THEN said the Confession, and by this time my visitor, a semi-retired priest from Memphis and New York named Buddy Stallings, turned to me and said, This is my kind of church! I love it. '
According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, the fastest growing religious group in the United States is the Nones, ' – the people who mark None ' on the survey that asks for religious affiliation. In 2014, there were almost 56 million of them, roughly 23% of the adult population, and, Lord knows, that number has done nothing but increase. Lately, another category has been added by those who study statistics on religion: the Dones, ' those who have been there, done that.
The Nones and the Dones have made a decidedly negative impact on traditional church attendance, for sure. But after experiencing that worship service last week – participating in the warmth and deep laughter, listening to a preacher who spoke with emotion about God 's unfailing love for us and the value of being together in prayer and worship, I 've decided that this institution I 've served for decades is well worth preserving, albeit with some much needed transformation.
Which brings me to today 's gospel reading, the story of a healing but also of a synagogue leader in great need of lightening up! Talk about a vivid contrast to St. George chapel last Sunday – here it is, in the gospel according to Luke.
While Jesus is teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath, he notices a woman on the edge of the crowd. Luke describes her as a woman with a spirit that has crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight. '
In case some of you are wondering what the significance of the number eighteen is, the answer is that nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that in the 1st century, the life span, particularly of women, was considerably less than today 's, so eighteen years could be half of her life. A long, long time, in other words.
The woman is used to being ignored; she does not ask for healing; she does not recite a creed or profess her faith in Jesus. She just stands, bent over, at the edge of the crowd.
But Jesus sees her, calls her over and says, Woman you are set free from your ailment. ' Then, Luke tells us, Jesus lays his hands on her and immediately she stands up straight and begins praising God.
You 'd think that would be the end of a lovely story of healing and restoration, but NO! The synagogue leader, a consummate bureaucrat, proceeds to have what my grandmother would have called a conniption fit, ' raising his voice (and maybe his fist) and shouting, There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.
He is not shouting at Jesus; he 's shouting at the woman! Bully that he is, he doesn 't have the courage to rage at the rabbi who has attracted quite a following in towns and villages healing people and preaching about the coming Kingdom of God where the last will be first and those who appear to be first, like this synagogue leader, will be at the end of the line.
Jesus must have had a mild version of a conniption fit himself, firing back, You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?
My friend Buddy Stallings who was here last Sunday is a marvelous preacher; in fact, he 's preaching at the Episcopal church on Fishers Island for the next four weeks.
Here is a portion of Buddy 's sermon for today, about Jesus ' confrontation with the synagogue leader 's strict adherence to the Law: the primacy of law, though often depicted by us as singularly rigid and unforgiving, in fact brought order and goodness into what otherwise would have been chaotic.
We cavalierly suggest that Jesus, in a rush of free love, turned a righteous nose to the law. Not only is that not true but also it misses the finer point of how Jesus understood sacred scripture. He loved and knew the Law – on this very day teaching in a synagogue built in devotion to the Law. But Jesus understood it as a guide to truth, not the ultimate container; as a roadmap for life but one that was spacious and humane ¦
Though he had encountered it before, Jesus, it seems, was utterly dismayed by the position taken by the leader of the synagogue and angry enough to resort to calling him out. You hypocrites! How dare you stand in the way of healing for this suffering soul?
I can almost hear Jesus say, Do you really believe that the God whom we are taught to love with our heart, soul, and mind would quibble over what day one of his beloved children is returned to health and fullness of life?
And on this day, Buddy concludes, Jesus ' reaction carries the day: When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. '
As we know all too well, that is a day that has to be won again and again, throughout our lives. The synagogue leader attempted to preserve his power and control by using his title as synagogue leader to discredit and weaken Jesus, and to shame the woman.
In vivid contrast, Jesus employed the greatest power in the universe, the power of love, to heal the woman, to release her from whatever had worn her down. He used that power of love over and over again, to bring healing, to release people from bondage, to offer God 's mercy and justice to the least and lost ¦that is why he, and only he, is called The Chosen One. '
As her encounter with Jesus enabled the woman to stand up straight, so our encounters with the Holy can equip us to stand up straighter and with more conviction, when justice, mercy, and love are called for. If standing up for those things causes a crisis, as it did in the synagogue long ago, so be it. As followers of Jesus we can do nothing less.
One of you recently shared a portion of your spiritual journey with me which goes like this: The mystery of Jesus as Lord, Son of God, is to me as powerful and incomprehensible as my own existence, the directives of my conscience, and the yearnings of my soul for God. The existence of Jesus as man is not a mystery but a master plan, a map, for me to emulate. Like all master plans and conscious efforts to improve our lot, Christ is often forgotten, and our vision of Him in our neighbor's face is often blurred by our selfish needs.
The existence of Jesus as a man is a master plan, a map, for us to emulate. I like that. Some days, we (or at least I do) identify with the stooped over woman, weighed down by the weight of our world; other days, we try to emulate Jesus as best we can: by standing up, speaking up, for what we believe is right, paying attention to those on the margins, to heal at every opportunity.
Remember that in doing those things we are never alone: God told the young Jeremiah: Do not be afraid for I am with you to deliver you. Jesus told his disciples the same thing as they gathered around a table in Jerusalem on the night before he died: Do not be afraid; love one another as I have loved you.
They shared a loaf of bread and a cup of wine that night, and Jesus sent them out to do the work he had given them to do, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. May we leave here today, empowered to do the same, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
AMEN.
August 4, 2019 – Reverend Susan Flanders
It all begins with an idea.
Sermon For St. George's
Aug. 4, 2019
Susan Flanders
Today's readings pose a challenge – all of them together offer a clear message, both of condemnation and of hope, but the message is not easy – especially for you and for me, affluent and comfortable here on our coastal peninsula, ensconced in our summer homes, far from the poverty and w s of so much of the world.
Hosea depicts a God who mourns the infidelity of Israel, its chasing of other gods – a message of condemnation met with mercy. So d s the psalmist;God's mercy endures despite people's wanderings. In Colossians we have a list of sins – all manner of evil behavior – some of which may apply to us. And finally Jesus' parable about the rich man and his dependence on his treasures – the material wealth he has stored up for himself – basically a teaching about greed.
I'll start with the easy response to this challenge. We can look at all the sins cataloged in the Colossians passage and point the finger of blame away from ourselves and straight at an obvious target. Listen again and notice who might come to mind: whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)¦all such things – anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another. Well, one target of blame emerges instantly.We can rest that case and deplore that person – and easily forget to even wonder, however reluctantly, whether God's mercy extends to him as well.
But what about us?What is on our conscience?What in us is idolatrous or greedy or mean-spirited?
I recently finished reading the columnist David Brooks' latest book,The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. If you read Brooks' column or watch him on the PBS Newshour, you may have noticed that he has moved into a less political, more sociological or even spiritual kind of commentary. Well this book is a kind of memoir explaining this change. Brooks has gone through a conversion process – not from the Jewish background of his upbringing to a born-again Christian faith, but a far more nuanced process of exploring both traditions and very gradually moving from a stance of unbelief or atheism to one of belief. And that has brought David Brooks to a passionate embrace of commitment to moral values, not just intellectually but in practice. He sees our moral failings as in part carelessness about our desires, and he uses a brilliant quote from the author David Foster Wallace to illustrate the importance of our wants.Brooks quotes from a commencement address given by Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005, saying this:
in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship“be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles“is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough¦Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you¦ Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
I quote Foster at such length, because what he has to say gets at the crux of whatever culpability we bear for our own moral short-comings. They are so often unconscious – our default settings, unexamined and unrecognized. And whether or not we are religious, even if we call ourselves atheists – we do worship; we do turn to one thing or another, one person or another to make our lives work out, to make us feel secure, and surely money is one of those things. The things we turn to are saviors for us, even if we don't call them that.
I remember way back, when I was just starting seminary, an encounter with George at some fancy party. George was a rich, successful businessman, handsome and confident, with a wife and two daughters who were just like him. When he learned that I was headed for the ministry, he told me that although he attended church,he really didn't feel he had need of saving or forgiveness – that his life was really going well and he had nothing to regret, no need for confession. He'd made it on his own. And it threw me because I think there are lots of Georges, but back then,I didn't know what to say.
If I met George today, now that I'm forty years older and after a divorce and a late miscarriage and money and career crises and an early stage cancer, I would know what to say. George, we can't do it on our own. We can never make all good choices; we can never be sure that if we get things right, everything will be fine. We depend on our relationships, our vocations, our savings, our fitness practices, our real estate, a drink at the end of the day, all of our beloved familiar rituals – and that is fine, and normal, and good. But we can't worship them – we can't rely ultimately on any or all of these things and expect that by doing so, we'll ensure a happy life and a peaceful death.
Well, so – we need help, and what the Bible passages tell us is that we need God, we need Jesus. But what does that mean?How do we even think about that in terms of our own experience rather than as some supernatural savior who stands ready to save us? Maybe at first read the scriptures seem to say this, but I believe there's a deeper message buried within them. These ancient writings about God's mercy and love, God's care for God's people are not just false promises. To me they suggest something at work in the world that is worth desiring and striving for – something that gives meaning when all our little saviors fail us.
When I suggest that love is that thing, that savior, that source of meaning and purpose we yearn for, that sounds too easy, too pat – oh yeah, that whole God is Love thing, but hear me out.If there is an actual power and presence underlying all of creation and expressing itself in all forms of love, then we can be part of that expression – each one of us can be a bearer of love, to one another, to our communities, our country, our whole aching planet. And we can call that presence God, as I do, or just stick with Love. Perhaps this is our purpose – to be part of the force that is love in this world, to commit surely to love – and to bet our lives on it – perhaps in so doing, we find, or make meaning. And maybe that's another way of saying have faith in God.
But I hasten to add – having faith includes action. Love is a verb, not a noun,as one of my favorite song writers, sitting right over here, wrote in a song years ago. And just this past week, Deanna Hollas, the new Presbyterian minister especially ordained to work against gun violence said this, While all that we do as Christians should be rooted in worship and prayer, it should not stay there.It is like breathing – worship and prayer is the in-breath, and action is the out breath.Love must express itself in action; it is more than a feeling.
What David Brooks discovers after his own life falls apart is his need for actual practical commitments to something beyond himself, and most of his book is about that. He writes at length about the importance of relationships and community, and of course these are the incarnations, the embodiments of love – the appropriate objects of our commitments.
But somewhere in all of his advocacy for our committing ourselves to something bigger and beyond, Brooks really got my attention with this: Consider the possibility that we are the ones committed to, the objects of an infinite commitment, and that the commitment is to redeem us and bring us home. What if:
Which brings me back to the ancient writings from Hosea and the Psalm about a God we really might worship:
This God says to the prophet:
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
And the Psalmist says of this God:
He put their feet on a straight path *
to go to a city where they might dwell.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his mercy *
and the wonders he does for his children.
For he satisfies the thirsty *
and fills the hungry with good things.
Whoever is wise will ponder these things, *
and consider well the mercies of the Lord.
Consider indeed:What if God's love comes first – love poured out that we might learn to love?
Can we commit to love, to the love that commits to us?Mercies indeed – what will be our response? Amen.
July 28, 2019 – Reverend C. Waite Maclin
It all begins with an idea.
St. George Chapel
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
July 28, 2019
There once was a funeral for a man named John. The preacher asked for someone in the congregation to speak kind words of the deceased. No one spoke. After several pleadings from the preacher for a comment about John, someone in the back of the church shouted: Well, John was not as big a loser as his brother, Bill!
As we are not here on All Saints Day, November First “ when we remember all who have gone before us in the Spirit of God's Grace “ It seemed to me that it would be a good thing to take a moment to call forth the love, the companionship,the creativity, the brilliance and the energy of all those who have been a part of this wonderful and blessed chapel.
In a moment I will read the memorials to members of the congregation on the plaques around the walls. Following that I will ask you to share the names of those you love who have died and you would want us to remember.
As the artist, Steve Lindsay reminded us last week when we dedicated this beautiful granite cross : St. George's Chapel was begun to answer the religious needs of the residents of Long Cove, most of whom were of English or Scots background and were of the Anglican faith. Almost all of the men worked in the large granite quarry that occupied much of the Long Cove land,
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For the First Lesson Lucy Banks read a portion from the Apocrapha.The14 books of the Apocrapha, were written in Greek in the time period between the Old and New Testaments. There was great controversy over whether to include them in the canonical scriptures. The word Apocrapha means hidden wisdom. It is still read for its insight and wisdom. We might say that it is not unlike the redacted portions of the Mueller report.
Ben Sara, who translated the original Hebrew, called the Wisdom of Sirach, asks people to remember both those who are famous and known throughout the community, but also just as important the countless numbers who
have no memorial but are just as much at the center of what and who the community is about.
Ben Sara speaks of those who are celebrated:
Let us now praise famous persons and our ancestors in their generations. The Lord apportioned to them great glory, his majesty from the beginning.
There were those who ruled in their kingdoms, and were people renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and proclaiming prophecies;leaders of the people in their deliberations and in understanding of learning for the people, wise in their words of instruction;
those who composed musical tunes, and set forth verses in writing;(Our dear friend, Margaret Neeson)
He speaks of those who have faded into history:
And there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived; they have become as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them. But these were persons of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their prosperity will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance to their children’s children.
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And finally, Ben Sara says of those both known and unknown:
Their bodies were buried in peace, and their name lives to all generations.Peoples will declare their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise
I find these words so stirring and comforting as I reflect on those we love who are no longer with us.
Jesus Christ called the Church into being. Now it is our task, through His grace to do this worship and mighty work.
Here is something to ponder:
Do we create this community or in fact, ds the community create us. Are we here because this chapel has called us, or is this place here because we have agreed that it is a good thing to worship together. It is not unlike the question Michael Pollan asks about nature: Do bees pollinate the flowers on their own or do the flowers call the bees to themselves in order to live?
Therefore this day, we remember with the utmost gratitude many known and unknown. You can rightly say that we are sending them a love letter of our joy and immeasurable thankfulness that they have been in OUR lives as well as in this place. Around the chapel walls are plaques with the names of many who have been memorialized by those who have loved them. In addition some sent me additional names. After I have shared these names I invite all of us here to call out the names of loved ones you wish remembered as well.
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These memorials on the walls of the chapel are given by those of us who wish not only to remember someone dear and close, but to keep us all in remembrance that we are in this holy place because of those who have gone before.
– The windows in this chapel, were given to the Glory of God and in loving memory of Anne Howell Monahan, Mary Helen Monahan, Viola James Wathen. In their light we shall see light
– Always remembering The Rev, Edward Felix and Olivia Kloman, Olivia Cis Kloman Chappell.And He Walks with me.
– In loving memory of Jack McHenry Neeson (1918-2001) and Margaret Graham Neeson (1918-2010
– in loving memory of Charlotte Baker (1924-2012)
– In loving memory of Churchill Gibson Carey ((1912-1981) and Juliet McAdams Carey (1918-2008)
– Forester Clark Smith (1931-2007) God is Love
– In Loving memory of Kathleen and Charles Bingham and Aubrey Gorman. Let There Be light.
Alice wrote me the following: It was given by Heidi Bingham Stott, my former sister-in-law, and me, for her parents and for my husband Aubrey Gorman.
In Loving memory of Christine Anderson Maclin (1941-2016) Thanks Be to God.Christine, The love of my life.
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Also, Betsy Scott wrote the following;
I have given a pledge towards the purchase of the cross in memory of my parents who loved the chapel, Bob and Betty Hunter. My mother was born in far away India, the daughter of missionaries, but her mother was from Tenants Harbor. Tenants Harbor was my mother's true emotional home and this chapel in particular was very special to her.
John Snow wrote the following:
In a shameless plug, I might suggest you mention my grandfather Harold Dunne and his son Richard Dunne, both were Episcopal priests who served at the Chapel.My understanding is that grandfather (with his kids helping) re-opened the Chapel after World War II.It's a special memory to me, even though he died before I was born.My Uncle Dick was my godfather and a bit of a hero to me as well.
And now I invite you to mention anyone you wish for us to remember this important Day.
Prayer:
Almighty God, with whom still live the spirits of those who die in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful are in joy and felicity: We give you heartfelt thanks for the good examples of all your servants, who, having finished their course in faith, now find rest and refreshment. May we, with all of have died in the true faith of your holy Name, have perfect fulfillment and bliss in your eternal and everlasting glory, through Jesus Christ our lord. Amen.
We have one last task.
Since none of us can be at our own funeral or memorial service and hope nice things will be said of us, (not like poor John in the opening story), take a moment for your own personal inventory. Contemplate what you wish to be said of you, by your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, by those who wait on you, and the whole community where you live.
Amen
July 14, 2019 – Reverend Anne Cox
It all begins with an idea.
What must I do to have life?
A Sermon preached at the St. George Chapel
July 14, 2019
I have always liked walking along with the prophet Amos, with his plumb line and his calls for justice and righteousness to flow like an ever flowing stream. As much as the message, I think I like his imagery. So when I saw that Amos was one of the readings for today, I'd thought we would be strolling through Judah with Amos. But no, it was that well-known, potentially overly familiar story of the Good Samaritan in Luke's gospel that kept grabbing me to meander instead from Jericho to Jerusalem. Oh well. So let's take a stroll.
This is probably one of the most guilt-producing passages of scripture out there. How many of us have not passed on the other side of the street to avoid a panhandler asking for money for food, or turned a blind eye to a neighbor in need. I know: there are often all sorts of good reasons for turning away, ignoring, not engaging ” I know, I am an introvert; I don't really want to engage much of the time. But I also know, as one formed in the Christian tradition, whose sister is the director of the Samaritan Relief Center in her town, I know that I have all sorts of little niggling guilty thoughts about how I really ought to act, on account of this story. Before I go on my justified way.
So let's look at it, shall we.
A lawyer stood up, to test Jesus: œTeacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? It's the same thing that in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the rich young man asks Jesus: œWhat do I have to do to align myself with God, with life?
Jesus says to the lawyer, œWell, what's written in the law; what do you read? What's in the law of Israel? Do you think he was just irritated with this question? œYou are a lawyer; you are educated; you know the answer. Are you asking me just to show off? Or to trip me up?
The lawyer answered: œYou shall love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; and your neighbor as yourself. He recited the catechism.
œOK, you are educated; you do know the tradition. Do it and you will live.
The laws, the traditions of Israel were very clear. The lawyer knew them. And even the elaborations on the laws, as only a lawyer would.
In Deuteronomy: the Shema: œHear. O Israel: The LORD our God is one God; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
In Leviticus: œYou shall love your neighbor as yourself¦. and then later on, œ When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do that person wrong¦.and you shall love that person as yourself.
Pretty clear. That's in the Torah, something the lawyer knew.
But no, he had to push a little more: œAnd, just who is my neighbor.
So we get the story of the Good Samaritan.
œWhich of the three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man?
œThe one who showed mercy.
“Well, then, go and do likewise. Clear. Not difficult.
I think it is somewhat easy to get a handle on what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves, this cross-cultural golden rule. We may not do it (and that's another whole question about why we don't do it), but there are clear injunctions in our scriptural traditions, ethical traditions, and in our legal systems. Feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, educating children, cleaning up the environment, doing what is just, speaking truth. It doesn't always happen. Clearly. But we can figure out what loving our neighbor means, even when things are fuzzy. And they are often fuzzy: for instance, how do we decide about floating wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine, with the competing claims of our different neighbors? What is the right decision regarding inland salmon farming? What about that power line from Quebec to Massachusetts? It's complicated, without answers as easy as just who showed mercy to the man lying by the side of the road, but I think we can slog through figuring these things out. Not all of our neighbors may be happy, but collectively, we can slog through figuring out answers. And maybe we can slog through best when we couple this love of neighbor, and who our neighbor is, with love of God.
So what about loving God? That one is not as obvious. Or maybe it is.
Loving God is where religion I think gets tripped up, even though at least nominally, it's supposed to be all about loving God. But God, God is out there, a construct, open to all sorts of interpretation. I can see my neighbor; can I see God? Can you see God? What do you know about God? God the Father. Really? Literally? I don't think so. Metaphorically, maybe. Omniscient, omnipotent, morally-perfect? Not really. Is it just a warm fuzzy feeling? What is this God we bandy about and appeal to? And how do you know if I love God. I say I love God. You can't touch that. Because it's my own personal thing, right? Who, what, where is this God in whom we live and move and have our being? Oh there are times and times of theology, gallons of ink, gigabytes out there about God. And we're not going to solve it all on this summer morning.
But here is just a little piece I glean today, from our story. A little piece that might help as we think about what it means to have life. Because that is the question: œWhat do I have to do to have life.
First, the lawyer's answer: œYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; AND your neighbor as yourself. œDo this, Jesus says, œand you will live.
Both. Love God AND love your neighbor. Not love God OR love your neighbor. AND. Somehow that's important. They are parallel. You can't love God and not your neighbor, or your neighbor and not God. They are linked. For life.
So how do you love God? Here's the one clue I see in today's story that might help tease at least a little thread out. Our story is about loving the neighbor, answering the œand who is my neighbor's question, but there is also something about loving God. In the story we have the man who was going from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among robbers who left him half dead. Then we have a priest, a religious leader, going down the same road, and when he glimpsed the half dead man, he passed by on the other side; likewise, a Levite, also a religious leader, passed by on the other side. The Samaritan, a foreigner, and a non-religious person to boot, came along the same road to where the man was, and when he saw him, he had compassion and tended to his wounds.
Both of those who passed by on the other side were part of a system, the religious system of the time. I can imagine them thinking that their task, whatever was taking them into Jerusalem, was far more important, holy, justified, than taking the time to examine the man who had been beaten, to stop and pay attention to what was in their path. It was the one with nothing to do with the purity of religion who stopped. Jesus probably chose a Samaritan for his story because the inhabitants of Samaria were known to be ne'er do-wells, impure, beyond the pale; Samaria was where many crooks and thieves were sent, out of Israel. No one ever expected any good to come out of Samaria.
Well, I am wondering if loving God is not all about paying attention, observing, attending to what is put before us. It's about getting outside of the social constructs that might tell us that our systems are more important than paying attention to what is in our path. Instead, it is about shedding these identities so we can actually see what is in front of us, shedding our religious, national, economic, social, political identities and allegiances, putting them aside.
Taken this way then, maybe loving God is about close observation, attentiveness: Paying attention to life in all its incredible richness, the beauty of this land, the miracle of life and growth, the ecology of life and death. Maybe our scientific impulses, with close observation of smallest atoms, largest galaxies, patterns and laws of nature, maybe these impulses are mostly about loving God. Likewise, our artistic impulses, to understand the life we see and reflect it back, describing and interpreting the world: these are about loving God.
To love God is to look closely, to engage with this fragile earth, our island home.
Today we have an entire world that has fallen among thieves who have extracted resources, human and natural, in the pursuit of progress and growth; we have a world that has been beaten up and left by the metaphorical road. Politicians glimpse this situation and hurry back to attend to political expediency; business people glimpse this situation and turn back toward bolstering the GDP and satisfying their stockholders. Maybe it is only a child, not yet fully inculcated in the systems that consume us and keep us from seeing what is in front of our noses, maybe it is only a child who can look at rising temperatures and sea levels, who can see the plastics clogging our oceans, maybe it is only a child who can truly observe what has happened, and have mercy. Or at least, perhaps it is those able to break out of the systems that bind them to actually see and examine this beaten up world and have compassion, tending to the wounds.
Today, the writer of the gospel of Luke tells us that showing mercy, behaving as the Samaritan, is how we are to have life. The writers of Mark and Matthew are more stringent when they have Jesus respond to the young man who asks what he should do to have life. In their telling of this encounter, Jesus tells him to go and sell all that he has, and come, follow him. And the young man went away very sad, for he had many riches
So for what it's worth, that is what I have been thinking about. Life, a full life, is about observing the world we encounter, outside of our conventions, AND responding with compassion and mercy to what we encounter. It may mean selling all that we have. I have a suspicion that it is less about becoming impoverished and more about putting aside the blind adherence to our different social constructs, and paying attention and responding to the realities in our paths. We do this, and we will live.
And I dare say, that should we not put away our conventions, those things that keep us from seeing the state of this planet, this world with receding glaciers, violent storms, disappearing bees, dying coral reefs, acidifying oceans, mountains of non-degradable plastic trash, I dare say that if we do not stare at this reality and tend to these wounds, none of us will have any life at all.
May we all love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. Our lives depend on it.