The Crooked Path of Trust: Speaking to the Soul for June 24, 2021

  

Isaiah 40:1-11

 

Today is the Nativity of John the Baptist. It’s an unusual feast day for many reasons. First of all, There are only three times when a saint’s birth date is celebrated -- besides the birth of Jesus himself, the Christian calendar celebrates the birth of the Virgin Mary, which is not discussed anywhere in scripture, and the birth of John the Baptist, which is. Further, the birth date of John the Baptist is dependent mathematically on two other feasts: Christmas, and the Annunciation. Because Mary is told that her kinswoman Elizabeth, John's mother, is already six months pregnant with John, John's birth is celebrated three months to the day after the feast of the Annunciation. And since John is born six months before Jesus, Christmas is now officially six months from today. For those of you who hate summer, which just now started, may this be a light of hope for you. You're welcome. 

 

The scriptures chosen for today all relate to the career of John the Baptist as a prophet and forerunner of Jesus the Messiah. We begin with the beautiful first eleven opening verses from Isaiah chapter 40, which includes the famous line that will be repeated in the gospel of Luke chapter 3: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” In the Hebrew imagination, wilderness and deserts are places of extreme stress, wild beasts, thirst, and chaos. It was a place where one could easily get lost. That's why the fact that the adult John the Baptist will spend so much time there makes him even more unusual of a person. 

 

In the most hostile of environments --wilderness and desert --the word of God comes to offer comfort, respite, and safety, despite Israel’s sinfulness and fault. It is in these most unlikely of places that God's comfort is offered and maintained. God’s comfort is a gift of grace in a time when all hope had been lost, when the fear of abandonment was seemingly permanent. Yet God’s promise remains true, and doesn’t depend upon human measurements of time to come to fulfillment.

As always, it is God who takes the initiative. At last, the light appears at the end of a long night. The Babylonian Exile, just like this ongoing pandemic, stripped the people of so much that mattered to them. Our own exile—from faith, from compassion, from dedication to community and true justice and equality—has also left us longing for meaning, for purpose. 

We think we can make our own pathways straight to success, to crushing our opponents. It’s part of the modern myth of independence that ignores how much we depend upon each other, and upon God. 

 

Yet our paths to God don’t have to be straight. It is often the most indirect, wandering stop-and start journeys that end up being the truest, because they don’t fool us into thinking that the life of abundance can actually be acquired. The broken road is often the road that leads us to God, because it strips away all our defenses and resistance to God.

The wilderness is no barrier to God-- God loves the wilderness just the way it is. God even loves the wilderness inside us, the one that often scares us, because God made us with the ability to appreciate the beauty of wild things and wild places. God is willing to spend a lot of time in the wilderness with us. It is us who want the wilderness leveled, not God.  Since when does God see the wilderness and respond with a construction crew and truck full of asphalt? God’s time is NOT our time, and God’s schedule is not our schedule. God likes to take the long way home, reminding us once again that God’s home is everywhere, wherever God is but not limited to one place.

 

John the Baptist’s life shows that the crooked path is also the path to true community, rejoicing in our interdependence. Where can you embrace the crooked path in your life today? 

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 24, 2021.

Peace, Be Still: Speaking to the Soul for June 17, 2021

Mark 4:35-41

Peace, be still.

It is the time of year that darkness descends like a curtain on the ground only reluctantly, when the long days stretch indolently like a satisfied cat. This is the time of year when the lure of the outdoors exercises a mesmerizing hold on those of us who love summer. As I sit outside among the ferns and hostas, you can almost watch new fiddleheads unroll frond by frond, like gears. The thrum of life rises up from the tree roots, a basso profundo droning song you can feel in your bones. Slow down. Pinpoint the moment when twilight descends to gloaming and then descends and kicks over into night.

Peace, be still.

I was sitting outside the other night, studying, until finally the lack of light here at Sewanee drove me inside. As I looked up from my text, and started to gather my things, I was stopped to see that fireflies were dancing around me under the broad oak that had been my place of respite in the summer heat. They were putting on a show just for me—and for the objects of their affection, of course. Their dance swirled on the current of these words as the Spirit breathed them across my skin:

Peace, be still.

This Sunday, Jesus will speak these words in response to the terror of his friends in a boat in a storm. His assurance stills the storm raging around them—and within their trembling hearts. Whether this day we encounter joy, memories of loss, the weight of tasks that seem daunting, or a crisis to prevail over, Jesus urges us to start by remembering that the most beautiful melody of accompaniment is that of our Beloved Jesus, his words a soothing caress and support for whatever we encounter.

Peace, be still.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 17, 2021.

Prayer 3060

In peace and gratitude,
we bow in prayer before our God,
and place ourselves within
the bounds of God's mercy.

Blessed Jesus,
You are God's honeyed Word made incarnate through
the loving gift of the Holy Spirit and Mary's assent:
guide us into the sweetness of life,
and may your teachings
ever be sweet upon our tongues and in our souls.
May we drink deeply from the well of your wisdom,
O Champion of the Oppressed,
O Light of All Seekers,
that we may repair the chasms within our communities
and seek new ways to dwell in communion with each other.

May we join to sing songs of hope
in unison with the heavenly host,
glorifying your Holy Name, O God Most High,
and be your healing hands to the hurting.
Come, Holy Spirit,
set our spirits afire with compassion,
and hold those for whom we pray
within the Heart of Hope.

Amen.

The Best Seed: Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6B

In the week that I have spent here on the Mountain at Sewanee, I've only had a few moments to walk among the trails that surround the domain. I’ve yet to get to their working farm, complete with chickens and goats, but that is on my list. But the forests here surround the School of Theology, which is on the periphery of campus.

These forests did not get here through human intervention (although they could certainly disappear that way). They got here through the processes of nature working as God created them. The seed falls to the ground, or even gets scattered by birds or deer. Those that fall where the conditions are right sprout. Some of those sprouts will get eaten, or fail to thrive, but that’s a pessimistic way to look at it.

Instead, we look at the forest, and we see the signs of God’s bounty and care for creation everywhere. And here’s a miracle: Each one of these trees started out as just a small seed! Some of them were here before we were born, and some of them will be here long after we are gone. 

Their growth is automatic—especially if we humans get out of the way. If we don’t try to “manage” the forest, or drive off the full range of creatures that keep a forest healthy, or pull out the herbicides and start blasting away at the plants that we term “weeds.” And our gospel today reminds us, that what one being sneers at as a weed, like the mustard seed, can be another being’s precious home, like those birds that gather in the branches after that mustard seed surprises everyone by becoming not just a bush, but a habitat.

Working in gardens all my life taught me one thing, though: If you like control, growing plants is NOT for you. There is way too much that can go wrong, even if you start from potted plants rather than from seed. The smallest thing can spell disaster as a plant moves from seed to maturity: too much rain. Too little rain. A late freeze. A marauding squirrel or grazing deer. Grubs. Mites. Moles, Gophers. Fungus. black rot. Drought. Hail. Even tornadoes.

That's why I admire the farmer in the first parable at the beginning of our gospel today. She tends to the parts that she can control, and she relaxes about the parts that she can't. She sows the seed, trusting that some of it at least will produce. And then she goes to sleep. That right there is a great big bit of wisdom: after you've done your work, take a nap.

But more importantly, she trusts God enough to let God do God’s miraculous magic that we can especially see all around us in creation. God makes the seeds sprout—not us. The fully grown wheat or the tree or the apple—it’s all hidden there, sleeping, waiting in potentiality in every seed that falls to the ground. Think of how miraculous—how gracious—that is!

Jesus tells us that the reign of God, and our role in it, is like this: God gives us the seed. Unless we scatter it, nothing will happen. So do it. Share the word of God in your words, yes, but especially in your actions—the hardest thing of all actually, because that requires that we LIVE by God’s values of love and faithfulness, and that means that it’s not just a matter of saying you’re a Christian—it’s a matter of living like Jesus, which is much harder.

Jesus gives us that seed to scatter. So that IS an important part of our role, and it often happens best when we are unaware that we are doing it—when people are watching us out in our daily lives.

But then, trust in the goodness and fertility of that seed and soil. Trust that God has the power to make that seed sprout and grow, and don’t worry too much about how it’s going to actually happen. You can’t manage the time, you can’t manage the season. No matter what, it’s not OUR timeline—we don’t have control over when the sprouting or the growing or the harvest time will come. As we’ve been through this time of pandemic, that’s an especially precious and important reminder, as we all grow impatient. We’ve learned to scatter seed in new ways here at St. Martin’s. Some of the best ways have been just by doing little things to show our love for others. Of course, there has been loss as well as growth. Some members have moved on. Some new people have come. So the seed keeps on growing wherever it will.

Yes, it’s important to do our part in scattering that seed. But Jesus tells this story of a bountiful harvest to a hungry people, and that is ABSOLUTELY good news. We know that the world around us is tired of the hothouse tomatoes that too much of modern Christianity offers them. They look so red and ripe—but they taste like cardboard. They don’t really nourish the longing within for the TASTE of goodness that comes from the Earth at God’s design.

But when the time of harvest comes, the people will be fed, and fed abundantly. For those who listened to Jesus’s story shouted from the boat on the sea, who KNEW what hunger was, who knew how unpredictable and marginal working the poor soil of Judea could be, Jesus’s words spun out a vision of hope and abundance that welled up joyously. For the struggling community for whom Mark’s gospel was written—small, persecuted, marginalized—they LONGED for the harvest that would signify God’s grace and abundance. And in our own time, right now, after months and months of fear and loss, aren’t we just as hungry for hope as they were?

God promises us the very best seed, asks us to scatter it, and then have faith and trust in the sprouting.

As I thought about this, I remembered, a charming little comedy that came out when I was a kid. It was called “Oh, God!” In the story, a supermarket manager named Larry, played by the musician John Denver, gets chosen by God, played by comedian George Burns, to spread a message of hope.

Larry is not a religious man, but God keeps gently appearing to him in various guises. And finally, although reluctant, he eventually does begin to share that God has spoken to him. Larry becomes the butt of jokes nationwide. The rush is on to disprove the story Larry tells. Theologians lock him in a room with a stack of questions in Aramaic—but God appears as room service and gives him the answers. Then, at God’s urging, Larry denounces a popular preacher as a fraud, and gets sued. In court, Larry attempts to prove the existence of God. Larry calls God to the witness stand, but nothing happens. Accused of pulling some kind of trick, Larry defends himself by arguing that, since everyone in court actually felt a bit of hope at the idea of God making an appearance, whether they could prove he appeared or not, that God deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Then God appears and takes the witness stand. He performs miracles—even disappearing right before everyone’s startled eyes. His voice delivers a final message: “It can work. If you find it hard to believe in Me, maybe it will help to know that I believe in you”

Later no proof of remains afterward of God’s being there.

Larry loses his job, and wonders what it all was for?

A few days later, he is driving down the street when he hears a pay phone ringing. He stops and gets out to answer it, and it’s God, suddenly standing right behind him dressed for a safari.

God models his safari outfit and does a turn. “How do you like it? I'm going on a trip to spend a little time with animals. I like animals, and sometimes I don't spend enough time with them.”

Larry sighs. “We failed, didn’t we?”

God acts shocked. “What are you talking? We did terrific! I gave a message of encouragement-- you passed it along. Now, we’ll see. You did good. We both did good. We’re covered!

Larry is still unsure. “Do you think anybody got the message?”

“You think we have enough apples in the world?” God asks

Larry is confused. “Apples?”

God nods. “We got all the apples we need. You’re Johnny Appleseed-- you drop a few seeds, and you move along. If the seeds are good, they take root. I gave you great seeds—the best!”

And then God reassures Larry once more, and disappears. Larry is left standing, smiling.

God has given us the best seed—we just have to trust enough in God to welcome that seed into our hearts and into our lives, and let it grow—to change us and make us bountiful in grace, in forgiveness, in love. Trust in the seed, and let the growing come naturally, but with hope and faith. Trust in God, knowing that God believes in us. And let the abundance sprout up within us.

Amen.

Preached for the 10:30 am online Eucharist from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, recorded and broadcast from the Chapel of the Apostles and forests of Sewanee, Tennessee.

Readings:

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Mark 4:26-34

Morning Prayer in Ordinary Time: Speaking to the Soul for June 10, 2021

An “Ordinary Monday”

is what the schedule read—
no bloodied saint to commemorate,
no special theme to be considered,
   no miracles to recount?

As if any day could be ordinary.

As if time were as green and long as
the season after Pentecost,
as it glissandos like a pennywhistle
   toward late November.

Nothing gold can stay,
the poet said. But it was certain
   he was no liturgist.
Nature’s first green goes brown
before this green season will sputter
like a guttering candle wick.

Here on the Mountain
the mockingbirds have been taught to sing
the name of God
as cooling rain slakes the thirsty ground:
   “Joyjoyjoyjoyjoy!”
uninterrupted by anything as prosaic
as Thunder--
who knows he can’t compete
with song such as this.

An ordinary day?
This is the day that

someone will learn that
the most beautiful word of all
   is “benign;”
and the baby with splinters in her knees
will pull herself up and
walk to cheers and applause like an Olympic gymnast.
This is the day that

someone’s journey to fame will end
in unexpected places--
   maybe even in Tucumcari--
and thirty years will spin out like gold,
well-lived, well-loved.
This is the day that

someone’s last breath
will give voice to ethereal voices
of loved ones long gone,
urging him forward,
and he will step into light,
   buoyant,
shedding the fear he’s trailed around his feet
like a forgotten shroud
to step into love eternal.
This is the day that

ashes will cradle a spark
and when uncovered
will set tinder-dry hills on fire-
   paradox,
renewing the forest.
This is the day that

friendships will flicker and dim through neglect,
and that “I love you” will present itself
in a dandelion bouquet fisted in toddler hands,
and a random kindness will
ricochet through six strangers,
   one to another.
This is the day that

someone will discover
that the God they have searched and longed for
during their brittle exile from mystery
is in the ragged gasp they draw as their head
   breaks the surface of awe,
grace in a shuddering gratitude
that floods into every cell.

No ordinary time
no ordinary gift
no ordinary breath
no ordinary blessing
   but extraordinary prayer,

which is every prayer.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 10, 2021.

Prayer 3051

God of Mercy,
we offer our hearts to You
in search of guidance in our waking, and
in praise of your vigilance during our rest.

May this day, O God,
be offered unto You and made holy
by all that we do as your children.
Where there is hatred,
may we carry the light of love into the darkest corners.
Where there is contempt,
let us embody compassion and loving-kindness.
Where there is neglect,
let us attend joyfully, to restore and reconcile.
Where there is suffering,
may we be strengthened by You to address it
and not count the cost to ourselves.
Where there is need,
let us answer it.

Where there is faith,
let us encourage it.
Where there is hope,
let us feed it.
Where there is love,
let us rejoice in it.

Beloved One,
Creator, Redeemer, Life-giver:
look tenderly over your children,
and fill us with the flame of wisdom
and the will to persevere in compassion.
Grant the grace of your comfort
to all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Greenwood and Not Losing Heart: Speaking to the Soul for June 3. 2021

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

The entire world has been hearing about the buried, hidden history of my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, this week. A century ago, one of the most self-sufficient, prosperous black communities in the United States was attacked by a white mob numbering perhaps a thousand, enabled and abetted by the police and the National Guard.

The pretext of the attack was the alleged assault of a white woman by a black man. Even though the authorities had doubts about the story from the beginning, the young man was arrested and held in jail. When word came that a white mob was coming to seize and lynch him, armed African Americans showed up, many of them veterans of World War II. A white member of the mob tried to seize a veteran’s gun, a shot rang out, and the rampage began. Machine gun fire raked the streets. Private biplanes dropped molotov cocktails on businesses and churches. The black-owned bank was looted. The black-owned Dreamland theatre was destroyed. Bodies were dumped into mass unmarked graves—or into the Arkansas River.

Many of those who survived were rounded up by the National Guard and held for days afterward, allowing whatever was of value to be pilfered. Afterward, insurance companies refused to honor claims, and the leaders of Tulsa rapidly rezoned Greenwood from residential to industrial, decreeing that all buildings must be made of brick.

You might think all of this would have destroyed the community, but just four years later, Greenwood was back. Buildings were rebuilt in the dead of night to evade the preposterous zoning requirements. Money was pooled and neighbors pitched-in. Greenwood became prosperous again, despite attempts to prevent its rebuilding.

Forty years after the Race Massacre had been scrubbed from the official histories, the push for gentrification and creation of the interstate highway system finally accomplished what rampaging mobs could not, and Greenwood – like so many minority communities around the United States—was taken by eminent domain as an interstate was routed around the white neighborhood and through Greenwood.

Greenwood lingered as a shadow of its former self when I first visited it as a young teenager.

My younger siblings had been blessed to have an amazing woman as their first-grade teacher at our elementary school in east Tulsa. Mrs. Ava Gibson was a slender, regal woman, a firm believer in the power of education to transform lives—one of the first African American teachers to be transferred into what was then a mostly white working-class neighborhood.

Our family adored her. Even though I didn’t get to have her as my teacher, she was available for any child at school. I remember one time I was having difficulty with some situation in my life and was sitting morosely, probably sniffling, on the curb outside the school by the parking lot, and she walked past me, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Don’t ever lose heart, now.” Those words stuck with me.

When Mrs. Gibson retired, she invited us to her home church, as we all celebrated her career and the impact she had on so many families on both sides of segregated Tulsa. Vernon Chapel AME Church was the only edifice left standing after the Massacre and destruction of 1921. And yet when we walked in, we were welcomed as if we had been attending this church our entire lives. The choir and band made the most joyful noise to the Lord I had ever heard in a place of worship. The pastor that day spoke of the incredible perseverance, dedication, and strength of will of Mrs. Gibson and her fellow congregants—and I am sure they all knew exactly what that meant in ways it would take us decades to discover. The Holy Spirit didn’t just visit that congregation on that warm late summer day—it practically busted out the windows and then dragged us all into the fellowship hall for a Sunday supper that could not be beat.

This Sunday’s epistle brought all those memories flooding back.

“Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

I suddenly remembered that reminder not to lose heart, even as the odds seemed great that I might do just that. I pictured Mrs. Gibson leading her charges single file through the halls at school—and never thinking about how far she had to travel to get to work each day, and how difficult and exhausting that had to be. I thought of her gorgeous brick church standing literally in the shadows of two highways, of the love of God that shone from her when she was teaching six-year-olds to love the liberating power of learning—and about how much we still have to fight to keep the full history of events like those in Slocum, Tulsa, East St. Louis, Chicago, Ocoee, Rosewood from being swept away or dismissed as “something that has nothing to do with today.”

Mrs. Gibson embodied grace, generosity, and endurance. She had to. And so did so many of the people who refused to be driven out of Greenwood, either in the 1920s or the 1970s. Her faith, her grace, and her dignity helped us all to aspire for lives that would lift us up and widen her horizons. May we all be so inspired, so led by the spirit, to likewise persevere in faith, and dedicate ourselves to repairing the breaches that still threaten us and our pursuit of liberty and justice for all, and the honoring of the dignity of all people. And never lose heart.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for June 3, 2021.

Prayer 3045: In continued remembrance of the Tulsa Race Massacre

In silent adoration,
we pray to You,
O Creator, O Reddemer, O Spirit of Truth,
and seek your guidance in our daily journey.

Author of Life,
inscribe your law of love within our hearts,
that we may be vessels of hope
and instruments of peace and reconciliation
in all we do today.

Merciful One,
you call us to justice
that flows like a river from our hearts:
may we confront the injustice we have inherited
with honesty and remorse,
and seek ways to restore
our relationships with our kindred.

Give us the will
to sacrifice and persevere in faith,
to build bridges among communities
and seek the common good for all.

Blessed Jesus, heal us of our fractured hearts,
that we may turn back to You rejoicing
and bring praise to your healing power in the world.

We lay our prayers before You,
O God of the Oppressed and Forsaken:
grant the blessing of your comfort
to all whom we lift before You.

Amen.