Entangled Loves: Sermon for Trinity Sunday B

 

It’s a blessing that Trinity Sunday falls the day before the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. On May 31, 1921, a white mob attempted to lynch a black man accused of rape in an elevator in downtown Tulsa. Even though the police were dubious about the entire story, they arrested the young man. The Tulsa evening paper called for him to be lynched. Black veterans showed up at the jail determined to protect him, and a gunshot went off when a white man tried to seize one of their weapons. 

 

Within the next hours, forty square city blocks of one of the most prosperous black communities in the United States was reduced to rubble and ash. Twelve hundred buildings—churches, homes, businesses-- were destroyed, some by firebombs thrown from airplanes. Machine-gun fire raked streets filled with those trying to escape. Probably 300 African Americans died, bodies dumped into the Arkansas River or unceremoniously into unmarked mass graves. Although at first Tulsa’s leadership was appalled, soon, the story of that terrible time and the truth of the deadly consequences of division and hatred were buried, unmarked, as well. The estimated death toll of that day makes May 31, 1921 the day of the worst act of domestic terrorism in United States history.(1)

 

This massacre began with the great evil of division—the sin that denies our common bonds as humans, that encourages murderous jealousy and greed, that tries to divide us so that we are isolated and weak.

 

It is an unfortunate fact that we humans often find it easy to tear things down into their constituent parts. We categorize and separate. But to take a step back and see how all is connected, and to feel that as a reality, is a spiritual as well as a imaginative challenge. Yet scientists are discovering all the time how things we formerly thought were separate are actually united in community.

 

And so it is with us. We have a tendency to break ourselves off from the rest of creation as humans, and then we have the tendency to divide ourselves up further still, by race, language, gender, sexual identity. Chop, chop, chop. Some people even use the Bible to justify such division.

 

But creation tells a very different story, and science is just now beginning to catch up.

 

Physicists now talk about something called quantum entanglement. This is a phenomenon where when a group of particles come into proximity or relationship with each other, they remain influenced by each other even after being separated by distance. Though they separate, they behave as a singular whole. Ironically, many of these same physicists who are also people of faith see the similarity – including the difficulty of describing what this means—in the concept of the Trinity. 

It also reminds us of how even fleeting relationships can change us and remind us of our essential similarities. Even botanists are now seeing similar unifying principles where once only separateness was admitted.

 

In Fishlake National Forest in Utah, in the south-central part of the state, near Kanosh, just east of Interstate 15, south of Salt Lake City and Provo, there is one of the oldest and largest organisms on earth, nicknamed Pando. He covers over 106 acres, but Pando is estimated to weigh 13 million pounds, so he certainly is both more visible and largest in term of weight than any living thing found so far on Earth.  He is also 80,000 years old, born in the Pleistocene epoch, during the last Ice Age. He spent the three-fourths of his life before humans ever stepped foot on this continent approximately 15,000 years ago—indeed he has been alive for half the time that homo sapiens has roamed the planet. He survived and flourished at about the time of a massive die-off that killed three-fourths of large mammals in North America.

 

He (for he is male) is a colony of Quaking Aspen that has been named “Pando” (Lat. “I spread”) by the scientists who have studied him since his discovery in 1968. Above the surface of the ground, he appears as if he is simply 47,000 individual trees. However, under the surface of the ground, Pando is actually one genetically identical organism that spreads via vegetative reproduction, developing a complex and expansive root system that from which shoots rise to pierce the surface of the ground. 

 

Probably there were other seeds that sprouted on that same day and in the long years since. Yet Pando was born at the right time, and in the right place, and with the right characteristics for survival and endurance, as the rest of his generation have themselves subsided back before memory. As he grew, he raised his arms toward the sun, and with all the other trees of the forest, he sang songs of joy and praise before God, dancing in the breeze like David before the Ark. 

 

Pando was already old and wise by the time that stories of Moses were being passed from generation to generation at the juncture of Asia and Africa, thousands of miles away. He had barely begun living alongside humans by the time, half a world away, a wandering teacher named Y’shua began calling disciples along the banks of a small sea called Galilee. 

 

And Pando is not a solitary example. We are now finding that trees talk to each other through their root systems even across species. The beat of a butterfly’s wing on one side of the world can generate a storm on the other. All of this leads to one thing: Separation is an illusion. It also leads us to deny the nature of creation, and the nature of God. Being is relational. Our lives are entangled with others even when-- especially when-- we can't see it.

 

Trinity Sunday is our dedicated yearly reminder—hopefully we think about this more than once a year—that community lies at the very center of God’s inner reality. When the Bible insists “God is love,” it says so because at the heart of the mystery of God lies the Trinity: Holy Spirit, Son, and Father, all drawn together in mutual love that the flows outward to all creation. I deliberately wrote those in a different order than that to which most of us are accustomed, because even as some theologians affirm that each "person" of the Trinity is equal, there often seems to be a preferencing for God the Father to always come first, even though scripture itself often uses other orders. 

 

Why does this matter? Because it puts a sharp point to the lie that our lives within God are hierarchical, solitary, individual, or self-centered. God’s essence is joyful community, equality, affirmation, sharing. The relationship within the Trinity is often described as a dance, and there’s even a fancy word for that: perichoresis.  God’s very self exists in love, kinship, and community, and we are called to be children of God. Further, God draws us into the loving relationship of God through Jesus as Incarnate One in particular. 

 

There’s a story of a monk who was asked by a man if Jesus Christ was his personal savior.

 

“Nope,” the monk replied. “I like to share him.”(2)

 

Sharing is at the heart of God. It is at the heart of the life of faith. And it is at the center of the web of life and love that makes up the universe.

 

We are made in the image of God, and whatever that vague phrase might mean, it has to mean that we are called, with our free will, to choose to live a life worthy of God. To live a life in which we see the concept of the Trinity as a beautiful mystery, yes, but as a beautiful challenge to us all to let love’s call sing out in our lives. If we might truly take hold of the truth that our lives were meant, from the time of creation, to be entangled with each other in love, fellowship, and kinship, how might we be changed?

 

Through Christ, the Beloved Son, we are taken into the very heart of God. We are called to inhibit the same spaces and graces that Jesus himself inhabited as one of us. And it IS possible to love that much and that freely. It’s countercultural, but it is possible. We are called to live as Jesus lived, here on earth, yes—a life that had a beginning and an ending. 

As theologian Mary LaCugna states:

 

“Living trinitarian faith means living God’s life: living from and for God, from and for others. Living trinitarian faith means living as Jesus Christ lived, in persona Christi: preaching the gospel; relying totally on God; offering healing and reconciliation; rejecting laws, customs, conventions that place persons beneath rules; resisting temptation; praying constantly; eating with modern-day lepers and other outcasts; embracing the enemy and the sinner; dying for the sake of the gospel if it is God’s will. Living trinitarian faith means living according to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit: training the eyes of the heart on God’s face and name proclaimed before us in the economy; responding to God in faith, hope and love; eventually becoming unrestrictedly united with God. Living trinitarian faith means living together in harmony and communion with every other creature in the common household of God.”(3)

 

We are all one, held together by the love of God that is the heart of God. May we rejoice in our entangled lives, and our entangled loves. Only then will we know the peace and justice of God.

 

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17
• Psalm 29

Citations:

1) See Tim Madigan, "Remembering Tulsa: American Terror" in Smithsonian Magazine, April 2021, at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tulsa-race-massacre-century-later-180977145/

2) Related by Scott Cairns, in "The End of Suffering," in Image Journal, Issue 52, 2006, at https://imagejournal.org/article/the-end-of-suffering/  

3) Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, 400-401.

Prayer, day 2577: Inspired by the thought of William Temple

The sparrows rejoice in the dawn,
and call us from our slumbers to likewise give praise:
Loving Savior, hear our prayer.

Help us, Blessed Jesus,
to make this day one of peace and healing.
Forgive us our disregard of others' dignity, O God,
our contempt toward those we are called to love.
Forgive us for failing to see the beauty in simple things,
in the voice of a friend
and the touch of a loved one.

Open our eyes to delight as a child does
in the wonders of this Earth,
and in the faces of those we meet.
Let us rejoice in this sacramental universe
made holy by your sustaining love and grace.

Lord, strengthen us to demonstrate our faith
in a time of doubt and faithlessness.
Holy One, let us arise from our prayers before You
determined to persevere in mercy and truth.

Spirit of Compassion,
bend near to those who suffer
in body, mind or spirit.
Guide us, O Shepherd, in the paths of peace,
and rest your blessing upon those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 1740: Inspired by the Parable of the Sower

You call us to wakefulness, O God,
our Ground and Stronghold:
may we follow your ways,
rejoicing in your mercy.

May we open the eyes of our hearts
to see that we dwell in the presence of the sacred,
for the living Earth sings your praise!
Sow within our hearts, Lord Christ,
the seeds of tranquility and holy action,
grounded in justice and loving-kindness.
Turn the desert places in our hearts
to springs of clear, cool water, O Holy One,
that your mercy may flourish within us.

Let us seek understanding among us;
may our companionship be steadfast and true,
guided by God's grace and love.
Grant, O Lord, your aid to those who call upon You,
and bless those for whom we pray.

Amen.

(Photo: detail of Martin Luther from a window in the McCarthy Room at Eden Theological Seminary, Webster Groves, MO)

Prayer 1402

Reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer this semester, andgiving thanks to God for his witness.

We praise you and bless You,
Lord God of Power and Mercy,
and give You thanks for this moment of worship.
You are creating the heavens and the earth:
let the song of the earth overflow
to fill our hearts with peace. 

Open our eyes
to perceive your grace and mercy
moving within our lives,
for we know that our times are in your hand.
Animate us by your Holy Spirit
to be warriors for justice
and humble servants for the cause of real peace and compassion.

Drive far from us
our arrogance and self-service,
which lead us away from You
to worship at false altars of pride and contempt.

Let us act in justice,
and love mercy,
and walk humbly with You, O Holy One,
all the days of our lives.

Lord Jesus, we place our hearts and souls
within your healing hands:
lead us to new life in kinship
with You and each other.

Resting within your embrace, O Christ,
accept our whispered prayers and petitions
that we bear in our hearts, as we pray.

Amen.

The path to light: Speaking to the Soul, October 26, 2016

“Everything happens for a reason. God never gives you more than you can handle.” 

There it was again, yesterday and then again this morning, those trite phrases that feel like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. I’ve heard it trotted out at hospital bedsides, at funerals, by well-meaning people, who awkwardly fumble for the two-tap pat on the hand as they address a person who is suffering, and as they try to make meaning of their suffering. Even though well-meaning, does this really help us understand and come to grips with what happens to us? 

When my late mother-in-law was nearing her transition, the only thing that seemed to comfort her when they refused to increase the morphine was the “Hail, Mary.” As we waited for the ambulance to take her to the hospital, we sat with her in our laps, and kept repeating that prayer, over and over and over. When the ambulance came, I rode in the back with her and kept praying with her—and she was praying it, too-- because if we stopped, she was in agony again. Regardless of her pain, though, that lovely old prayer was steeped into her very bones, and she would turn to me and wait to see if I would start again, and then she would pray it with me: 

Hail Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. 

For hours we prayed that prayer, in the living room and in the back of the ambulance, and in the ER and in the hospital room to which she was admitted. 

As a kid, I certainly never said such a prayer in any of the Protestant churches we attended as I grew up. It was only when I took my first teaching job in a parochial school in St. Louis that I learned that prayer, as hopeful person after hopeful person at that school pressed rosaries and scapulars into my hand in the hopes of my conversion. That never happened, but I did come away from those years with a love of the rosary, and of Mary, and of the prayer reminding us of the bold, audacious young girl who said “Yes!” to the impossible.

Years later, someone told me that I had spent two often-difficult years at that school just so I could learn that prayer just for that moment. “THAT was the reason you had to be at that school,” they told me. 

I don’t know. Maybe. I know in that situation, it’s a rather innocuous comment. But it does make me wince when people suggest that God had a hand in some tragic situation for a “higher purpose.” I don’t think God arranges for people to have cancer, or experience the death of a loved one, just so they can learn something. Bad things don’t happen to us to test us. Frankly, sometimes the reason why something happens is based on human choices, which is a gift and a burden I believe that is inherent in our very natures, part of what makes us creatures in the image and likeness of God. 

I think perhaps it’s more that we are meaning-makers as people. That’s one of the things that all the stories in scripture are really about: trying to make sense of why we are here, what our purpose is, and offering hypotheses for why things happen. Our freedom to act and create can lead to wondrous things—sonnets to sonatas, novels to Nobel prizes—but it can also lead to decisions to treat others as mere objects for our convenience, to cruelty, fear-mongering, and derision. Eventually, at the right time whenever that is, we can choose the path of healing, knowing that the pain like a scar will never completely fade, but can hopefully be borne. I know that, through grace and hope, often we are healed and led to new life after trauma. But I don't think that's the reason why these things happen, because I have also seen times when trauma has never revealed “a good side,” which reminds us that we shouldn’t be so sanguine in believing that terrible human choices don’t really matter. Some traumas leave scars upon us that never fade—a friend of mine told me tonight that with these kinds of experiences, “we can either transform them or we can transmit them onto someone else.” It may be that, down the road, the new person we have become after sorrow or loss will be able to use that time of trial to make sense of some new situation. I think it's a way we heal and grow differently than we might get have, especially in compassion. But always, we carry these pains and sorrows with us, knowing the best we can do is be transformed by them. We can try to find the path toward light in the midst of darkness.

When we are honest with ourselves, we know that sometimes bad things happen, and there is no reason. We live in the midst of uncertainty at times. It can be hard. Nonetheless, we get through it knowing that we are never alone. Through the darkest valley, we hold the hand of a Savior who walks alongside me in times of joy as well as times of sorrow. A Good Shepherd who, in times of darkness, encourages us to dare to hope, and we are inspired by knowing that the Son of God, God Incarnate, Light from Light, himself has walked in our footsteps and has literally shared in all the joys and pain that comes with the beauty and the trials of being human. When bad things happen, we do have that assurance- that God is with us, even to the end of what we think we can bear and beyond. That’s the most comforting reason in the world.

The Singing of the Earth- Speaking to the Soul, October 18, 2016

A pollinator in Shepherd Farm garden at Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, MO.

Psalm 65, Book of Common Prayer

Psalm 65, translated by Ellen Davis

It’s October, so for many of us, besides being either joyfully or grudgingly immersed in the season of Pumpkin Spice Everything, it is the season of baseball playoffs. One of my favorite things during the seventh inning stretch is the renditions of “America the Beautiful” that are often sung. I have always loved the visuals brought to mind in that song as embodying the natural beauty of our country. Along with “Finlandia,” the reminders of the beauty of growing things, of the love we can have for the land, are always so vitally important, especially since it is often so easy to take this abundance for granted.

I thought again of the images in “America the Beautiful” and “Finlandia” as I read this Sunday’s psalm, Psalm 65. Many of the images of Psalm 65 seem like they might have been the inspiration for these two hymns.

The descriptions here of God’s domination of all natural forces and of creating not just order but an abundance of agricultural wealth to not just sustain the people but to demonstrate forcefully that God is not just merciful but mighty. Remember that Israel is an arid environment, and that the people are often at the mercy of extremes in climate and environment. Yet even in difficult paces, God is making the terrain bountiful and rich—notice that the verb tense is not in the past, but in the present. Examine the pregnant imagery employed here: in verse 11, furrows are “drenched” with “heavy rain;” in verses 13-14, a wilderness is instead filled with fields that can sustain and fatten a multitude of flocks. The image of valleys “cloaked with grain” is striking, and so lavish. 

But what I tend to notice is that God is here portrayed as a farmer, as one who makes the earth bring forth both beauty and plenty. Last Sunday was World Food Day, so how wonderful it is to ponder the ways that creation continually renews itself in each growing season. In verses 9 and 10, God tends to the Earth, and waters the plants that grow for food upon it, and then God prepares the grain so that it may be eaten and bless the people. God’s abundance reaches to the round corners of the Earth. Abundance becomes clear when people are fed. 

Psalm 65 also mentions our sins in verse 3—or “our crimes,” as theologian Ellen Davis translates it. It acknowledges the power that sin can have on us— they are “stronger than we are.” Yet the second half of that verse notes God’s astounding grace in forgiveness of those sins, that God will “blot them out.” Even though our misdeeds are strong, we can receive the gift of forgiveness. With that gift, we can attempt to make recompense for our sins, especially those against the Earth and those who share this small planet with us. Dr. Davis notes that God blesses the Earth with growth (verse 11), so that even the valleys join with dawn and dusk in singing out their joy. Yet it is up to us to make sure that that our practices in and on the Earth do not damage it, but tend to it and respect and support its sacred work of sustaining us as God intended. It is up to us to make sure that the abundance of the earth is used righteously, for the good of all who dwell upon it.

Every year, it is estimated that ten million children less than five years old die of hunger and malnutrition. Every year. One in seven people on the planet face daily, persistent hunger. This is why Episcopal Relief and Development seeks to provide tools, seed, and livestock for the creation of sustainable family farms throughout the world. 

Urban gardening at Holy Communion.

But there are concrete actions we can take to help do our part to make sure the bounty of the earth is used for the blessing of all the people of God, no matter their nationality or creed. This is why, this year, nearly two dozen members of the Diocese of Missouri joined dozens of others from around the area to walk in the Crop Walk on September 25 for the benefit of hunger ministries in St. Louis and around the world. This is why the parish I am privileged to serve as intern, the Church of the Good Shepherd, pours its energy into Shepherd Farm, once again giving away 2,000 pounds of food this year to the hungry. This is why my home parish, the Church of the Holy Communion, has sustained and expanded a vegetable and pollinator garden for more than seven years that has also grown thousands of pounds of produce to be given away at the food pantry operated by our sister parish of Trinity Episcopal Church in the city of St. Louis. 

Some of the Episcopal Crop Walk contingent.

And these stories are repeated hundreds of times over across the nation, as more and more religious organizations become involved in cultivating the land that they have to produce abundant harvests of food for the benefit of our brothers and sisters who are hungry. But we know, that with care, as God’s very example shows us, we can also tend to the Earth lovingly, reverently, and in so doing bring forth blessing over all the Earth, from dawn to dusk, from mountain to valley.

In her translation of Psalm 65, especially verses 9- 14, Professor Davis highlights the saturation of goodness that God continues to embed in creation:

You visit the earth and water it;

You abundantly enrich it—

God’s stream, full of water. 

You set their grain—yes, You set it just so.

Drenching its furrows, settling its hillocks,

You soften it with showers; its growth You bless.

You have crowned the year with Your goodness,

and Your wagon-tracks drip richness.

The pastures of the wilderness are dripping, 

and the hills are girdled with rejoicing.

The meadows are clothed with the flocks, 

and the valleys robed with grain.

They shout out; they even sing.

The glory of God is reflected in the song wrung from the hills and valleys, from the first shoots of growth in spring to the heavy branches sighing out their joy as they are covered with juicy, lavish fruit in autumn. Harvest time as well as spring time is the time of the Earth’s singing. It is the time of the seed falling to the receptive earth, to slumber through the winter to be reborn in the spring, reminding us of resurrection and life abundant. May our hearts be fertile soil for the word of God, that they may bring us, singing too, to a holy covenant of life with and for each other, blessed by and inspired by the abundant love of God for us in creation.

On Faith and Trust

"If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all."- Isaiah 7:9

"It is commonly agreed that this utterance of the prophet is a (the?) pivotal text upon which the meaning of faith in the work of Isaiah and, indeed, in the entire Old Testament. Faith... is not a matter of intellectual content or cognitive belief. It is rather a matter of quite practical reliance upon the assurance of God in a context of risk where one's own resources are not adequate.... 

It is most unfortunate that, in the long history of the church, "faith" has been almost everywhere transubstantiated into "belief," which transposes the concrete practicality of trust into a cognitive enterprise. How ludicrous that in the long, oppressive history of orthodoxy-- which guards cognitive formulations-- that those who enforce right belief seem most often themselves unable or unwilling to engage in deep trust."

-- Walter Brueggemann, WBC Commentary on Isaiah, 67-68.

Of C. S. Lewis, Heaven and Hell

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. ” -- C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Today is the 114th birthday of C. S. Lewis. Therefore, I have included one of my favorite theological quotes of his. It is a thought-provoking reflection on the implications of free will on salvation, and it is a quote I think of every time I hear someone talking about how Gandhi is roasting in Hell. Oh, and by the way? Stop that. Thanks!

Happy birthday, Mr. Lewis!

Complete Love Without Complete Understanding

I love the book (and the movie version) of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. The story of a family of two sons, love of nature, and our longing to understand those we love is just so beautiful and true. One of my favorite lines is this one below. In the story, a grown Norman listens with his family to one of his father's last sermons. His father says this:

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”-- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It 

So many of us have someone in our lives whom we love but cannot help. All of our natural inclinations and ethical impulses demand that we step in, but this person is as unreachable as a distant star. For a long time, I have been confronted with the misery of such a one. Madness, sadness, resentment, delusion, anger and denial create a magnetic field of misery that pervades this one's waking life, and I cannot even imagine what dreams they may have. I do know that they need love most of all, and yet they cannot accept love when offered.  When we hate ourselves, we cannot love anyone nor accept love from anyone. It is like trying to grow an orchid in the desert.

Our loved ones often cannot understand us, and we cannot understand them. When we speak of love, they think of that which they can gain and from which they can profit. They are drowning, dragged down by the sorrows of the past. They are confused between what they want, and what they need. They demand more things, when what they need is more love. They try to feed their stomach, but they need to feed their heart.

Last week we heard about the feeding of the multitude. They had gone to hear the Word of God, and then received bread to feed their bodies as well. Jesus fed them out of love for them, but the real miracle was the Word. I've always imagined that most of those who were fed by the bread were unaware of the miraculous nature of the feeding, or more would have been made of it. Many of them were unaware of the even bigger miracle of being physically in the presence of God. They walked away knowing only that their temporary appetite had been satiated.

It was the same thing with the crowd in this Sunday's gospel reading. They were busy taking about filling their stomachs, when Jesus was talking about feeding their hearts and their souls. 

John 6:24-35:

So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”

Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 

So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 

Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 

They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

The bread of life begins in love. I hope we all are willing to open ourselves to that bread, which will feed us forever. Amen.

Body, hands, feet, eyes, heart

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, 
no hands but yours, 
no feet but yours, 


Yours are the eyes through which 
is to look out Christ's compassion to the world; 
Yours are the feet with which 
he is to go about doing good; 


Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now. 
 -- St. Teresa of Avila

I rediscovered this wonderful statement a few days ago, and it has blessed me richly as I have pondered it in my heart since then. To me, this encompasses what our mission is if we wish to declare ourselves followers of Christ.

Sadly, in American pubic religion today, there is a big difference between being "Christian" and being a disciple, especially for those in leadership or positions of power. There is no religious test for public office, we claim (although I would be tempted to disagree about the reality of that statement), but I wish there was a reminder to many of us that we may be saved through grace, but we are known as Christians by our works. It is amazing the contempt with which "the least of these" are treated by so many institutions and parties, while these same groups profess allegiance to the teachings of our Savior.

I try to ask myself each day, "How have I tried to do good?" I would like to ask some of these people, who seek to profit from their declarations to be Christians, "How have you tried to do good today?"

I remember when I was in junior high. It was fashionable for kids who went to a certain church to carry their Bibles with them throughout the school day (they called them their "swords"- I kid you not). Anyone who wasn't lugging around the KJV along with their algebra books would often get cornered. "Are you saved?" they would ask. "Have you been born again?"

But what good did this all do? How did this help advance the message of Christ about what we are supposed to do as Christians? Was the point loving others, or judging others?

And, just for the record, yes--I realize that Jesus saves me over and over, every day, every hour, with every breath that I am granted. He saves me every time I fail to live up to his call to me as one of his sheep, when he forgives me and bids me to set my feet on the path once more even when it looks like a high-wire over Niagara Falls.

And that path is one of service. It is the way of love and peace. It is the way of care and concern for others-- and not just those in my family, my town, my parish, my Church, my tribe, my ethnicity, my gender, my generation, my class, my neighborhood, my sexual orientation, my state, my country. Jesus doesn't want us to crush those who are weaker or different. Jesus calls us to love others as we love ourselves-- which means to love them a LOT, in this narcissistic era.

We are really great at jealously guarding our turf, which means viewing others as threats. Too much of our public life is based on the fear that if we allow others to have something, it will diminish US somehow. This is an idea diametrically opposed to the message of God's unmerited and unbounded love that Christ brought into the world. And that we, as Christians, as called to give to each other. When our hands are closed into fists, they can hold nothing. It is only when we open our hands as we do our hearts that we can actually receive and hold that love that passes understanding.

To everything there is a season

 This morning, one of the readings in the daily office was one of my favorite passages in the Bible:

There is a time for everything,
     and a season for every activity under the heavens:
  a time to be born and a time to die,
     a time to plant and a time to uproot,
 a time to kill and a time to heal,
     a time to tear down and a time to build,
  a time to weep and a time to laugh,
     a time to mourn and a time to dance,
  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
     a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 a time to tear and a time to mend,
     a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

When I was in college I had one of these rectangular posters of these verses in calligraphy. It moved with me to three dorm rooms and one apartment, and somewhere after I moved to St. Louis, it disappeared.

In these last few weeks, I have experienced all of these different times, it seems. A friend who just had a long-anticipated baby lost someone close to her just a few days later. The love for her child is taking root here in the midst of spring. I thought about this as I worked in my garden uprooting dead stumps of plants and some strange weed to which I am apparently allergic. I worked at killing this weed as well as the Chinese honeysuckle and this huge crop of cottonwood and pecan tree shoots and milkweed vines that overwhelm my yard with the least relaxation of vigilance.

It is the same way with my heart. Just as with many other people, I carry so many scars and weaknesses from my childhood, from the times I have been hurt, by my tendency to anger, by my impatience, by my arrogance and hubris-- there is so much from which I still need to heal, and so much that I have done that I need to endeavor to heal in penance and regret for losing sight of how I SHOULD think and act. I am particularly prone to being afraid of taking really big risks for fear of being rejected. And yet, I am called to do these. The one who loves me most of all calls me to be the very best me I can be, and when I fail in that, who knows how that affects those who see me stumble?

I need to tear down the walls I erect around my heart, especially those walls I place between myself and God. I need to build up my trust in the goodness of those around me as a reflection of God's love. There are times when I have wept, when instead I could have been laughing-- my mother recently gave me a very sentimental possession which had belonged to my father, who has been gone now for over 6 years, and at first, I wanted to put it as far away from me as possible, since touching it reminded me of the day I lost my dad all over again. Another of my dear friends lost her mother this winter, and she is sorting through the accumulated treasures of a life that lasted nearly 100 years. Imagine the things that had happened during that time!

One of the things her mother had kept was my wedding invitation that I had sent her nearly 24 years ago. It was so well-preserved, and the fact that she actually went to my wedding and stood up for me is still a memory that I will always treasure, especially since my only grandmother-like figure, my step-grandmother, was unable to be supportive of me on that day. But my friend's mother, mother-in-law, and step-grandmother were there for me. What a blessing! What treasured memories of their love do I still have, and if people like that love you, nothing can really be as dreadful as all that. We all move from mourning what we have lost to celebrating what we have at least had. And I have had the love of all these wonderful people in my life.

There is a season for everything. Everything but love, which endures every moment, and is the purest sign of God's amazing, uplifting presence with all of us.

The politics of division

This Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, we will hear the story of the Tower of Babel and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the apostles, resulting in them speaking in a myriad of languages.

We are hearing these readings when the Anglican Communion still struggles to remain unified. We are hearing these passages when our country is more divided than ever-- by race, by class, by gender, by sexual orientation, by religion, by politics. Unity is a great dream, but unity is also at the same time a great challenge.

The problem is, we are often not honest with ourselves when we say we want unity. We want people to be unified with us through agreeing with us and validating our position. We want unity to occur when others move to US, rather than being forced to move to THEM. We want unity on our own terms.

Which is why we never get it at all.

We say we want unity, yet we worship individualism. Note, I said "individualism," not "individuality." "Individuality" is the reservoir of various characteristics which make us unique from others. "Individualism" is the idea that the interests of the individual to act independently are of paramount importance. A companion word in the political cant of the times is the word "liberty."

 Those who currently like to imagine that their liberty is being taken away by nebulous forces are fond of quoting our founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Jefferson famously said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants." What people do not understand is that he said this attempting to justify the most horrifying excesses of the French Revolution. When this quote is used today, it lacks this context. For instance, many people also do not remember that this is the saying that was sprawled across the chest of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, when he was captured after killing and maiming hundreds, all in the name of his own "liberty" which he claimed the federal government was attacking. Patrick Henry, of the famous "Give me liberty, or give me death!" exclamation, was a slaveowner, as was Jefferson, which certainly was understood by those of our founding generation as being the absolute opposite of liberty. And neither Henry nor Jefferson ever actually served militarily during the Revolution, greatly reducing the chances that the blood to be spilled in defense of liberty would be their own. I am not saying that they were not great patriots, but their words did not always match their deeds, as is so often the case for all of us.

In modern society today, we see the same people bemoaning the alleged crisis in "morality" also trumpeting the right of the individual to trump any consideration for one's fellow human beings or citizens. This hypocrisy is generated by a failure to think about what these terms actually mean.  Questions of morality only arise when one lives in the society of others. Further, these questions almost always arise when one is seen to be violating the community standards of morality by expressing one's individuality in a way that is seen as being detrimental in some way to the functioning of the group. You might even say that those accused of immorality are actually living in truth to their individuality.

The handmaidens of unity are compromise, civility, and kindness toward one another. Vitriol and hatred are poison to society. It is time we remembered this, both in the affairs of our Anglican Communion and in our political discourse.

Resurrection Faith

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The LORD is risen, indeed! Alleluia!


As we now enter the magnificent season of Easter, I seek to contemplate the miracle of the abiding love-- unmerited, amazing love-- that Christ has for me.

 I want to rededicate myself to a Resurrection Faith-- a faith that responds to that grace by seeking to reflect the love of Christ into the world. A faith that drops the mask of cynicism that I often adopt to protect my fragile, broken heart and instead open myself up to the joy of life that rises like dawn from the deepest darkness that I allow to settle over my soul.

For Jesus endured all-- all for the sake of love. How can I at least not attempt to reach out my hands to those I encounter each day? How can I not attempt to live according to my best impulses rather than my worst?


A Resurrection Faith is one that calls us not to just love God out of fear of the terrible punishment we think we deserve for our manifold sins, but calls us to love God through living out the Great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." 

A Resurrection Faith calls me to not just rest upon the saving power of the cross but to always seek to bear my own crosses of pride and vanity and self-centeredness. I then pray to leave them at Golgotha, and tear them down as the hateful banes that they are to walking in the true path of Christ.


A Resurrection Faith calls me to the work of building up rather than tearing down. A Resurrection Faith raises us all from the dead, and calls us to be alive in each moment and in each other. A Resurrection Faith calls us to be, not just profess.


As one of my favorite hymns sings in my heart:


I want to walk as a child of the light;
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world;
the star of my life is Jesus.

In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.

I want to see the brightness of God;
I want to look at Jesus.
Clear Sun of righteousness, shine on my path,
and show me the way to the Father.


In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.
I’m looking for the coming of Christ;
I want to be with Jesus.
When we have run with patience the race,
we shall know the joy of Jesus.


In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.


Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

When bad things happen to good people

One of the biggest, omnipresent questions that linger over our lives as Christians is to try to answer the question of why good people suffer. It's human nature to want to believe that faith in some power-- be it detachment, as the Buddhist believes; or Jesus, as the Christian believes; or karma, as the Hindu believes; or guru, as the Sikh believes-- will then magically lead to all of our suffering being eliminated.

We all want to find that magic bullet that protects us from anything unpleasant in our lives. We want to find some power that raises us above the plane of suffering.

We want to be rewarded for having faith, even though that turns the meaning of faith upside down.

It's human. Childish, but human. The fact that good people still have to deal with bad things is also one of the "proofs" that critics of religion use to mock religious belief and to claim that there is no God.

But no one is immune from tragedy, or pain, or illness. Being a good person doesn't get you a free ticket from God, because the world as created by God does not work that way. We all have to deal with illness, with pain, with sadness, with heartbreak.

This week is the start of Holy Week, and we begin with Palm Sunday. Here is the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to loud shouts of joy from the people of the city! Here at last is the Messiah, who is supposed to kick butts first and ask questions later. Here is the one who is supposed to be a great military and political leader and lift the yoke of oppression once and for all from the neck of the people of Israel.

But...

Our perspective from the 21st century allows us to know that those aspirations the people had for Jesus are not going to be fulfilled. Instead, we know that these shouts of joy will lead to the suffering of Jesus-- the dark events that happen AFTER the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The remembrances of Holy Week emphasize that the triumphal entry into Jerusalem is quickly followed by the betrayal, arrest, and trial of Jesus. He will be handed over for execution after having been judged so dangerous that the only suitable punishment is death.

As Christians, we are reminded of this fact this week as God's own son, Jesus, undergoes betrayal, trials, and suffering. Friends will sell out Jesus for money. He will be charged with blaspheming against God for his criticism of religious authorities. His other friends will abandon him and even deny that they know him. He will be beaten. He will be mocked. He will be tortured to death.

The incarnational aspect of this is that Jesus shares all the joys and sorrows that we do. He loves, and he loses those he loves. He is celebrated, and he is despised. He lives, and he suffers and dies. He has experienced the entire range of human experiences. Even God's son was not spared suffering.

If the story ended there, we would not have much to go on. However, this week begins Holy Week. The story of Jesus does not end at the cross....

Jesus is with us in our pain, sorrow, and suffering. Jesus shares those experiences with us in good times and in bad times, as we are reminded in this Sunday's reading from Philippians 2:5-11:

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who although he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness..."

Jesus is not here among us to take away suffering and pain. Jesus is here among us to help us bear suffering and pain, because he has endured it himself.