Prayer, day 2630: Holy Saturday in time of COVID-19

Most Merciful God,
in the silence before dawn
as the world pauses and turns in sleep:
hear our prayer.

Hold open the gate into our hearts, O Christ,
and bid us to enter with You into life eternal.

We are prone to wander far astray,
even from ourselves:
but You, Lord Jesus, are the Truth and the Way.

Let us abide with You this day,
keeping silent watch
in a garden far away.

Let our spirits rise on the wings of angels,
as we wait, and watch, and weep.

Dry the tears of those who suffer or mourn,
and let your healing pour over all in your embrace, O God.

We join the prayer of all creation,
carried aloft by our soul's longing:
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Lord, hear our prayer.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2629: For Good Friday in time of COVID-19

O God,
for You alone my soul in silence waits.
Into your hands, O God, I place my spirit,
for I know indeed that You are my home and my shelter.
We turn to You, O Merciful One,
and remember the love you have embedded
in each breath we take.

Lord Christ, you took on the cross,
the point where darkness and light meet,
and opened your arms to embrace us eternally:
may we kneel at your feet and repent,
crucifying our fears, our divisions,
our callous indifference, 
o live eternally in You.

Blessed Jesus, You are lifted up before us,
offering yourself in freedom to lay down your life
to overthrow the power of death:
may we take up our cross of love, and follow,
embracing the light of God.

Spirit of the Living God,
You sustain us in every moment:
abide within our hearts,
and grant your protection to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Never Cast Away: Sermon for Maundy Thursday, 2020

In 2000, Tom Hanks starred in the movie Cast Away. It told the story of Chuck Noland, stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific after the cargo plane he was traveling on crashed in a violent storm. As a systems analyst for FedEx, Noland was obsessed with efficiency and was a workaholic, which is why he never managed to marry his longtime love, Kelly. 

 Chuck survives the crash over the ocean, and awakens on shore of an uninhabited island the next morning, having no idea where he is because the storm had pushed the plane far off course, and this means that no one will know where to look for him either. 

Thanks to Chuck’s incredible attention to detail and experience as a sailor and outdoorsman, as well as the providential washing up of many of the packages that had been on the downed plane with him, Chuck manages to survive his initial first few days, dancing with joy when he is able to start a fire, subsisting largely on a diet of coconut and crab. 

He tries several times to escape the island, but the combination of a sharp coral reef and devastating surf always pushes him back to shore, sometimes injured. He contemplates killing himself, hating his feeling of helplessness and isolation. He suffers from terrible loneliness, and the only human face he ever sees is inside his now broken pocketwatch, a photo of his beloved Kelly, whom he often stares at as we tries to sleep. One day a volleyball washes up on shore, and he draws a face on it and names it Wilson after the manufacturer, giving him someone to talk to. 

Eventually he resigns himself to remaining there on that island, to keep a signal fire going, living in a cave during the rainy season, keeping track of the winds and the tides. After four years, two fiberglass walls of what looks like a port-a-potty wash up on shore, and Chuck realizes that the tide has brought him a way to escape, as he can use this as a sail to propel him past the surf and the reef if the wind and tide are right. 

He spends weeks making rope out of bark, and lashes tree trunks together, waiting for the wind and tide to be most advantageous, and then finally sets off. 

Once he gets out into the open sea, his sail blows off and he is adrift again. He even loses Wilson as his raft loosens and the volleyball falls overboard. Overcome with grief, he collapses on the raft and continues to drift, only to miraculously come into sight of a passing freighter ship. 

He is rescued and returned to his home, only to find that he had been declared dead and buried, and that Kelly has married and had a child. Although they eventually meet and realize they still love each other deeply, they come to the realization that she has a new life, and let each other go. 

Heartbroken, Chuck goes and visits Stan, one of his good friends from work, and talks about what he has lost and gained since being stranded and returned. As the rain falls outside, Chuck recounts what had happened: 

“We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her.

Because I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing. 

And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. 

And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... 

And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. 
But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. 

Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”(1) 

As we enter into the last days of this extraordinary Lent, we too may feel we are adrift. Like Chuck, many of us are struggling with uncertainty, anxiety, fear of the unknown. All that we have known has been changed by this terrible pandemic in much the same way that Chuck was on that island all alone. 

Our tendency to take pride in our own independence has been brought up short by a growing realization that we are all deeply dependent upon each other and interconnected, as we have talked about previously since this global health crisis has caused us to suspend in person worship. We've instead been urged us to stay apart from our friends and neighbors and remain largely in place if we can. 

And just this week, we have suffered the death of one of our own here at St. Martin’s, and many of us feel a profound grief and sense of loss as this pandemic has touched us personally and heart-breakingly. 

Like Chuck, many of us are coming to the realization that we are not as in control of our circumstances as we once thought we were. Like Chuck, too, though, as people of faith we understand the power of love to sustain us. 

And so here we are at Maundy Thursday—a day when we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist in a time when we can’t celebrate it together. Yet we have each other. We have community. We keep on going, upheld by bonds of love—love, even in the midst of heartbreak. 

In our readings, we hear the beautiful story from the book of Exodus, and are reminded of how we stand in solidarity with our Jewish neighbors as they begin Passover. We hear Paul’s recounting to the Church in Corinth of how the Holy Eucharist was instituted—the same precious words we have been fasting from for the last weeks. We hear the gospel story of Jesus humbling himself and washing the feet of his disciples at a time when we haven’t been able to touch each other for nearly a month. 

Yet we are not cast away or adrift. For tonight we are reminded of the power of love, love that sustains us despite separation or distance, just as it did for Chuck in that movie. Because Maundy Thursday recounts the last night Jesus was with his friends and disciples, knowing he was about to be betrayed. 

Jesus is getting ready to leave his disciples—and he wants to show them what true love is. 

Love is service. Love is sacrifice. Love is being vulnerable. 

Maundy Thursday inaugurates a holy period of three days’ time which our forebears called the Triduum- the “three days.” This is when the movement toward the cross becomes inexorable. If Jesus was crucified and died on a Friday, then that means he was betrayed on a Thursday- tonight. This is the night we are reminded that, no matter what happens, Jesus loves us, and we are to love each other just as extravagantly and open-heartedly. 

 Love literally surrounds the story we hear tonight. It is LOVE that marks us to the world as followers and disciples of Jesus. Love for each other. Love that is tied up in ACTION, not in sentiment or mere warm feelings, but love that calls us to truly serve each other—love wrapped up in justice. 

Love that is tied up in each precious breath. Love that is tied up in hope for what the tide might bring tomorrow. Love that right now is embodied in doctors and nurses and care-givers giving of themselves for the care of others, often at their most vulnerable. 

It is not only Jesus’s love for the disciples that glorifies God—it is by the disciples’ love for each other that everyone in the world will know the name of Jesus. Not by judgment, or by cherry-picking Bible verses, or by fear-mongering with threats of smiting. But by putting on the armor of love and commitment to each other in the face of a world beset by fear, loss, and anxiety. 

It is a holy time for us. As our first reading reminds us, it is also a holy time for our Jewish neighbors. We are united with them in remembering, as our reading in Exodus reminds us: “This shall be a day of remembrance for us.” It is a time to remember that God’s reconciling work is our work too. We are both drawn together around tables of remembrance--as they begin to celebrate Passover, and as we remember and move toward the sacrifice on the cross that Christ continues to make for us. 

We are called to receive and then embody a love supreme that admits no lessening due to mere distance. An all-encompassing, active love that we are asked to allow to reign over us from the cross to the tomb and beyond. A love that we remember and give thanks for every time we gather. 

During this Coronatide, we are being sent out into the world in reality as we have never been before—literally dispersed and deployed for the life of each other. The words are more than just words this year-- we are truly sent out into the world, to remember that we are called to serve God by serving others as well in a time when so many need that love and connection and care. 

We are being called to a new awareness of how vulnerable we are, certainly, but also to see that as a gift and blessing for us in our relative comfort. However, we must then consider how much more that is magnified for the poor, the homeless, the outcast, the sick, the friendless, refugees. 

And then we are called to act. 

Our gospel imperative is more than just words. The balm of Christ’s love calls us to action right now—all of us woven together into a web of mutual love and dependence. Sinners. Saints. Happy people. Scared people. Angry people. Hurting people. All one. 

This is how we are called to live. Together. Serving each other. No one expendable. No one unworthy of grace and care. 

Declaring our unity with each other, even as we remember and also look forward to sharing Communion in person as well as in spirit once more. We’re called to gratitude in letting down our barriers and allowing other members of our beloved community to care for us in a way that is completely opposed to the rhythms of most of modern life. 

Nourished and called to peace. Called to be vulnerable together so that we can remember what it is like to allow ourselves to be cared for with nothing to gain, and to remember the example of Christ calls us to serve each other in complete purity and parity, that there will be no outcasts among us, and none will be left adrift. For where there is community, there is love, and there is hope. 

Tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide might bring? 

Amen.

Preached at the Maundy Thursday service online from St. Martin's Facebook page, and recorded in my basement during a time of pandemic, April 9, 2020.

Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Prayer 2628: Maundy Thursday in time of COVID-19

Photo from 2019; this year COVID-19 will prevent us from worshiping in person.

Lord Jesus,
you taught us
that to serve others
is the greatest way to love and serve God:
help us also accept the honor
of being cared for with grace.

May we be fed and filled
by serving and being served,
and feel your tender hands
take hold of our feet, and our hearts.

Holy One,
help us shed our fear of being vulnerable,
that we may love You and each other fully,
and be healed by love ourselves.

Help us to join hand and hearts
in the true spirit of thy Holy Communion, Lord,
no matter how the space between us is measured,
to be strengthened and united,
giving thanks to You
and interceding for the entire world and its cares.

Bless those for whom we pray,
O Merciful One,
and pour your comfort like a balm over them.

Amen.

Love Bids Us Welcome: Speaking to the Soul, April 9, 2020

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”—John 13:24-25 

The lines above are from the service for Maundy Thursday, and from the gospel many of us will hear at that service.

But we live in a time of pandemic, a time in which many of us have been fasting from communion for these many weeks—yet we have hopefully never fasted from Eucharist, from thanksgiving, from the gift of love that Jesus urges us toward.

Even as we worship separately from each other in a tine of quarantine, we share in the living reminder that we are to love one another— even in the face of difficulties, differences, even in the face of anxiety.

As the Anglican poet and priest George Herbert wrote five centuries ago, when discussing the Eucharist in one of his poems, love bids us welcome. Love roots itself in our very being and transforms us. And we are still in need of that transformation, centuries later. In this time of pandemic, we are called to overcome the fears that might separate us, and instead some into a fuller understanding of our essential unity and interconnectedness.

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus makes it clear that we can’t serve God unless we are willing to also serve each other. Jesus calls us to make ourselves holy, and to be disciples who work for the repair of the world. This is a sacrifice of praise, of thanksgiving, and hope. A sacrifice we can celebrate together even across physical distance.

When we gather together, even in this time when we gather online, we are nonetheless engaged in a radical act to remake ourselves, and by doing so, remake the world, to reflect the continuing presence and healing of the world by God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we consider over these next days the paths that lead through the dark wilderness of betrayal and sacrifice, how can our own hearts not break a little?

Yet, let our hearts break.

Let them crack open, so that the light of Christ can shine through the cracks and illuminate our inmost selves. Let that light in and illuminate all the hurts, all the betrayals, all the losses we still hold within those broken hearts.

Let’s let our hearts break open, for only when they are open can they be filled.

Then healed, renewed, let us fill those same hearts with joy, and peace, and thanksgiving for Christ’s love for each and every one of us, and for the love we have for each other. Especially in this time of fear and anxiety, we are called to celebrate the power of love, as we enter these three holy days where we remember how much Jesus answered evil with love.

As we raise our open hands let us raise our open hearts, healed and renewed by the power of love, to receive the Body and Blood of our Savior, who did not die to save us long ago, but lives today in you and me and in all of us, who is with us at this altar right now, loving everyone around this table.

Let us receive Jesus Christ, who continues to save us and love us during every minute of our lives and beyond, bringing us to new life filled with love and service and thanksgiving for each other.


This was published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 9, 2020.

Prayer 2627: Wednesday in Holy Week

Blessed Jesus,
bend near,
and grant us your healing,
that we may dedicate ourselves
to following in your footsteps
as the world cries out Hosanna!

Save us, O Lord,
from hardness of heart,
and awaken us unto our common humanity 
and our dependence upon all your wondrous creation.

May we link hands and hearts
with courage, charity, and faithfulness
against those who would divide us
through fear, greed, and want;
may we instead empower love in our lives
and be the hands of Christ in a hurting world.

Merciful One, kindle a spirit of service within us,
and bless and comfort all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2626: Tuesday of Holy Week

Lord Jesus Christ,
we worship you and praise you,
grateful for your tender compassion in our lives.

May we make our hearts gentle,
reshaped by the power of your grace and mercy,
that we may testify to your truth, O Lord and Savior.

May we resolutely resist the lies of this age,
O God of Truth,
nor take advantage of others in the name of profit.
May we cast off the works of darkness and deceit,
and live instead with integrity and holiness,
that we may be a fit habitation for Christ.

Bend near, O Holy Spirit,
and bring us to new life in God,
and grant your blessing upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2625: Monday of Holy Week

Almighty God,
we give you thanks for this day,
and turn to you for strength and guidance
as we seek to be your hands and heart in the world.

We confess to you our sins and offenses:
forgive, O God of Mercy,
that we may make recompense to those we've wronged,
and be guided instead by charity and kindness.

Help us embody compassion and reassurance,
and be the healing hands of Jesus
to those who are anxious, isolated, or afraid.
Lead us, O Savior, into solidarity and empathy,
and place our common welfare
at the center of all we do. 

Spirit of God, inspire us;
make us beacons of love and hope
and a priestly people in a hurting world.
Grant the balm of your peace and comfort
on all who turn to You, O God of All,
especially those whom we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 2624: Palm Sunday

Come among us, Blessed Savior:
may we shout Hosanna and praise your grace!

Come, be our help,
as we seek your face in the humble,
in those hungry for justice
from the One Who Brings Hope to Us.
Unfurl your blessing before us
as a palm frond bursts forth from the trees,
and raise up a shout of glory!

May we lay down the cloak of suspicion
with which we shroud our hearts,
and instead shout for joy as you are revealed among us.

May we be led to embrace your truth:
that we all are called beloved,
as you minister to us in tenderness,
O Holy One of God.

Accept our praise, O Merciful One;
unify us in faith and compassion
as we ask your blessing
to enfold those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2623

Be among us, Lord Jesus,
as we make our prayers to You.

Be among us, O Almighty One,
as we meditate upon your Word
and remember your saving help.
Be among us, O Spirit of Truth,
to guide our hearts, minds, and souls
and make them holy offerings to our God.
Be among us, O God,
as storms rage without and within,
and lead us to safety and reconciliation.

May peace, justice, compassion, and love reign
in our lives today, O Merciful One.
May we embody God's grace in our words and deeds,
and testify always to your mercy and care as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2622: Based on Psalm 23

Let me give thanks and praise to God,
my shepherd and provider,
who claims me and unfailingly loves me as God’s own. 
I lay all my trust at the feet of the Almighty,
Lover and Seeker of my soul. 

God leads me into verdant, abundant pastures
filled with all I need, and gives me rest and security. 
God restores and refreshes my soul,
tending and guarding my inmost being. 
My Shepherd sees my weariness, and lifts me up;
guiding me in right pathways,
that I bring honor to God’s Name. 

God, You shield me with your strength and vigilance;
may I always remain at your side. 
No matter what terrors or trials approach me,
I am not afraid 
for You, 
Emmanuel, 
are with me, even if death overhangs me. 

O God, You provide for me plentifully and exalt me,
even as my enemies look on,
helpless to harm me. 
You have consecrated me
and blessed me abundantly,
and the cup of my blessings overflows
like a spring in the desert. 

O God, your promise to love me
envelops me in goodness and mercy,
following me as my companions throughout my life. 
I am secure in God’s arms,
and my home is with you forever,
even into eternity.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2621

Our praises rise before you,
O God Most High;
Our prayers rise unto You,
O Redeemer, Our Lord Jesus Christ;
Our fears we lay before you,
O Holy and Eternal Abba, Father and Mother.

Our hopes we breathe in from your Eternal Love,
O Savior;
Our resilience we draw from you,
Abiding Holy Spirit,
who lifts us and prepares us for our work in your kingdom today.

O Creator,
we turn into your embrace for solace and strength,
and lay before you those needs for whom we pray.

Amen.

All One: Speaking to the Soul, April 2, 2020

On Tuesday, March 30, we remembered the great English priest, poet, essayist, and preacher John Donne in our calendar of saints. His words have been on my mind a lot lately, along with Dame Julian of Norwich. Both of them wrote beautiful, uplifting words in a time of war and plague. It struck me how much we can learn right now from the wisdom of those who lived through the sweep of pandemic all those centuries ago.

Donne was stricken in November, 1623, with what was termed a “relapsing fever,” so-called because it often seemed to ease, only to come back as the patient seemed to be recovering and kill him or her. For twenty-three days the poet lay on what he thought was his death-bed, but despite his fear, he pulled himself together enough to ask for writing materials and began recording a meditation a day on life, death, and God, which he later published as Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions the following year. These meditations are neglected masterpieces, and can be read for free online.

Donne’s upifting message in Meditation XVII, even as he lay deathly ill, was inspired by hearing a church bell toll nearby, which communicated that someone had died. Deaths were so common then from plague and other illnesses such as typhus that sometimes the bells would be rung even before the person had actually died. In his fevered state, Donne perhaps wondered if the bell was ringing for him, and he simply had not been told he was near death. The relief he no doubt felt as he survived that ringing of the bell then led him to express the deep truth of our interconnectedness to each other. Meditation XVII began this way:

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

As in-person worship has now been shut down for at least two more months in my diocese, our embodiment of unity and interconnectedness as a praying people and as a faithful community has become ever more important. The parishes may be closed, but the Church has been deployed, as a popular meme going around the internet challenges us. We have been fasting from Eucharist by necessity, and yet our spiritual communion nonetheless call us together to re-member our love and common bonds across physical distance. As Donne notes, spiritually, our common heritage as children of God calls us to share each other’s joys and burdens. He urges us to take literally the idea that we are all joined together as members of the Body of Christ.

Rather than despair about himself as he lay fearfully ill, Donne’s first thoughts were not about himself, but about his relationship with others, especially the deceased, whom he did not know. He started with the truth that every single person is abundantly beloved by God. In our own time, the cultivation of empathy which this current pandemic can nurture within our culture will not only slow the spread of the disease to us, but to those around us whom we probably will never know.

This is precious balm for our souls as we ourselves are facing the surge of this illness. We are all only as healthy as the most ill person among us. This is not only a statement of enlightened self-interest. This is not only a goad for us to return to the ideals of the common good and civic virtue that has been in reality a far-too-elusive goal throughout our history. Perhaps we can learn how spiritually toxic and physically damaging our delusion that we are not actually dependent upon some of the most overlooked and undervalued people in our society, especially the care-givers, the nurses, the teachers, the grocery and pharmacy workers, the sanitation workers and food-service workers, among others.

Donne’s words reveal an incarnational truth for us right now, nearly 500 years later. They are grounded in the idea that we are all made in the image of a God who loves us enough to come into our history in Jesus and to live, teach, suffer, and die for each and every one of us.

In my sermon for last week, I shared these famous words from later in Donne’s brief meditation:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Perhaps this pandemic can remind us to remember how radically inclusive Jesus’s vision is, the same dream that God has had for us from creation onward. One of raising us to new life and new communion with God, with each other, with all creation. Just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, so we can be raised to new life too, starting right now. We share a common breath given to us by God. The heart of Jesus’s message, contrary to what we see represented in popular culture, is not self-centeredness, but community—community rooted in abundant grace, abundant mercy, abundant hope and faith in each other. Abundant life through love in action for those we know and do not know. And our lives right now depend on cultivating those attitudes, on scrupulously avoiding anything that might harm another, not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the most vulnerable among us.

If any of us is injured, we all suffer. We share a common life. That’s what communion is really all about. May we see in each other the beautiful, tender face of Christ, and continue to lift each other up and care for each other, rejoices with each other, mourn with each other, and stand with one another. We are all one.


This was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for April 2, 2020.

Prayer, day 2620: Inspired by Matthew 19:13-14

Lord, night is over, 
and we give thanks to You for the gift of this new day: 
may we use it for the bold proclamation of your love. 

Blessed Jesus,
with loving hands and compassionate heart
you welcomed the little children to come to you: 
you rebuked your disciples for their hardness of heart. 
Help us to unstop our ears
that we hear the cries of the little children in our midst, 
crying out from detention for mothers and fathers, 
seeking food for their hunger in a land of plenty. 
Awaken us to their cries, Lord Christ, 
and let our silence not condemn us. 

May we thus live into the wisdom and compassion 
that are the foundation of your path, 
that our souls may flourish within You, 
O God of Salvation. 

Spirit of the Living God, 
who sustains us by mercy and upholds us by grace, 
hallow us to the service of God today, 
and pour out your blessing upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.