The Gift of Interdependence: Sermon for All Saints/All Souls' Day, Year C

There are certain parts of scripture that are beautiful poetry and resonant truth, passages that burrow their way into the wider culture, like the first verse of Genesis, or the Ten Commandments, or the 23rd Psalm. These are often familiar to people even if they don’t consider themselves religious.

One of the things that makes scripture enduring even beyond people who identify as followers is the universal truths they contain. Our gospel today contains one of them: the golden rule. Which we heard right there at the end of the gospel: treat others as you want to be treated. It shows up in every religion on earth, from Hinduism to Buddhism to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It’s so simple—and yet so important. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all really followed just that one little commandment?

Some of these universal truths in scripture even make it into popular culture, especially music. For instance, back in the 1980s, there was this new band called U2, three of whom were Irish Anglicans, who burst onto MTV with their first US hit-- a driving rocker called “Gloria.” This one was not the song the St. Louis hockey fans sing to bring good luck—it was about Glory to God. I know! Being sung on MTV.

Then a but later there was a new wave band called Mr. Mister that even had a hit based on a poppy, upbeat take-off of the Kyrie Eleison, or Gloria, that is right there in our prayerbooks on p. 361. Unbelievable, right?

When I was in college, I had a poster in my dorm room of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, written in calligraphy. It goes like this:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to reap;
a time to kill, and a time to heal,
a time to break down, and a time to build up…
and so on.

This was more old school—it had been turned into a folk song called “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the 1950s by Pete Seeger, the coolest banjo-playing grandpa ever, and later covered by the Byrds in the 1960s. Years later, my own kids heard it in the soundtrack of the movie Forrest Gump.

This passage was comforting to me because it pointed out that there is balance in life: for every time to be born, there is a time to die, for every time to plant, there is a tie to harvest and then clear the fields for the next year, for every time of killing there is also a time of healing, and so on.

The gospel we hear today from Luke is one of those kinds of passages that can almost be that familiar. We just heard Luke’s version of “The Beatitudes.” The name comes from the first two words of each of these sayings in Latin, beati sunt, which means “Blessed are.” In the original language that Jesus spoke, however, they are in the same pattern as the very first verse of the Book of Psalms, which in some translations starts “Happy is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly.” The word for “blessed” and the word for “happy” is the same word.

So, if you had never actually read this passage, you might think that the Beatitudes are about happiness, right? About being blessed by God.

Not so fast.

While the specific things that are listed that makes one blessed are certainly counterintuitive. Note the conditions that Jesus says makes someone blessed: being poor, being hungry, weeping, being hated and treated hatefully on account of your faith, as we just heard.

Who here thinks any of those things, on the surface, sound like happiness?

Most of us would argue quite easily that being poor, or hungry, or sad, or the object of hate would be the exact opposite of being a condition of blessedness. Being in those categories sounds more to most of us like curses. No one want to be poor, or sad, or treated hatefully—not if they can help it, any way. And maybe you notice that, as in the passage I mentioned from Ecclesiastes, Luke provides us with some balance. Luke then follows the four blessings with four warnings for those who have the means to help others, yet turn away. To those who see the blessing of responsibility as a threat and a curse.

Jesus holds up those who are oppressed by poverty, sorrow, or oppression as having good things awaiting them, and he warns those who are in more favorable circumstances to use remember the mutuality and interconnection that binds the community together. The Beatitudes remind us that we have responsibilities to each other, and that those responsibilities are actually blessings.

November is Native American Heritage Month. Each day this month the diocese will be sharing daily posts celebrating and honoring Native culture, Native people, and Native history. The 505 will feature Native prayers and translations of scripture from across the Episcopal Church. While there is more than a little bit of irony that the month chosen to highlight Native American achievements would also be the month that contains Thanksgiving, there is also a certain harmony in that too, given the importance of gratitude and mutuality in Native ethics especially regarding the importance of community for the flourishing of life. Today is also the day we officially launch our annual giving campaign, which also focuses on the importance of gratitude for the gifts we have been given and strengthening our parish community for the flourishing of our shared life of faithfulness, fellowship, and service. And all these things are woven into our living out the Beatitudes in our lives, in striving to be saints of God.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, biologist, professor and member of the Citizen Pottawatomie Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer explains the connection between thankfulness and the strengthening of community:

Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them.... [D]uties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking “What is our responsibility?” is the same as asking “What is our gift?” (Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 115)

How life -changing would it be to think of our responsibilities as gifts? I remember how proud I was when I was growing up when I became old enough to be trusted to operate a lawn mower, or to babysit. Can you remember when a newborn baby or puppy or kitten was first placed in your arms? You KNEW that responsibility was a gift—how we embraced it and knew it for the privilege that was! Native wisdom aligns with Jesus’s teaching on the Beatitudes to insist that our special gift from God as humans made in God’s image is to embrace responsibility, service, and empathy rather than avoid them. To see the web of generosity that supports us, and to joyfully embrace our place as part of that web.

That is also the heart of stewardship. Our budget is about balance, too. Balance between our obligations and paying them yes. Balance between our expenses and our income. Balance between when we get from this community and how we support it to help it grow and witness. This too is a sacred balance. It is a balance that gives life, rather than takes. This responsibility, too is a GIFT.

A commitment to live lives of outstanding gratitude and generosity is woven into scripture—and into the lives of the saints we also celebrate today. They lived lives of abundant faithfulness and generosity—and if we don’t mean to be one too, as the song goes, then what are we doing here?

Too often our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. But it is this simple: scarcity breeds fear, and fear strangles faith.

Let me say it again: Scarcity breeds fear, and fear strangles faith. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. Scarcity lures us to break the bonds of fellowship and deny the truth of our interdependence upon each other, upon this earth, upon God.

The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the Saints we celebrate today. As a matter of fact, the word for saint is right in there. “Beati”—is the beginning of the word “beatify” which means to recognize someone as a saint. And the entire point of this day is to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made.

Jesus isn’t trying to scare anyone into submission, ever. But Jesus does remind us to use the gifts we have been given for something greater than ourselves—for each other, and for the world. The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: no matter what we have or don’t have, whether wealthy or poor, whether sinner or saint, we cannot depend upon our own resources to be blessed. It doesn’t work that way. The key to being truly blessed is to truly be a blessing—to acknowledge our reliance upon God, no matter what our situation. Happiness begins with acknowledging that God’s grace and mercy are not only necessary, but also real and present in our lives.

As for us, sitting here, as we remember saints of God, we remember people who, in ways small and great, were willing to be cursed, to go against the logic and the dominant culture around them, in order to testify to the God Jesus came to bring to flesh and bone before our eyes: the God who always takes interest in those who are humble in spirit, and yet filled with awe and wonder at the wonder of this God-infused creation of which we are a part. And saints are those who see with the eyes of Jesus the belovedness of everyone, regardless of any other condition.

Jesus calls us to discover within ourselves the same greatness of faithfulness and abundance that reflect God’s imprint in each of us. May we find blessing in the balance between responsibility and gratitude,  b between obligation and gift, for the flourishing of each other, and the wider world.

Preached at the 505 on November 5 and at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on November 6, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

Citations:

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013), p, 115.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Speaking to the Soul, November 3, 2022

This Sunday many of us will celebrate the transferred Feast of All Saints, officially observed on November 1, combined with the Feast of All Souls, which falls on November 2. We will remember those we have lost and gone to be with the saints, yet whose lives continue to touch ours.

The gospel reading is Luke 6:20-31, when Jesus sits down on a plain to teach the crowds, and we receive one of the two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels.
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Luke’s version reminds us to love our enemies, to do good to those who wish us ill, and be generous to all who ask regardless of what we might think of them.

I give special thanks this year for this gospel, heading into next week. So many of us are anxious because of the election on Tuesday. We have already heard people, long before voting began, anticipating the worst and vowing to resist violently by turning against their political opponents. Violent political rhetoric has intensified.

This is NOT the American way, nor is it the way of people of faith. But such talk does have precedent in American history.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a fractious election that featured the vote split among four candidates. After the electoral college met in December of 1860, states began attempting to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Seven states had already announced their decision to split by the time Lincoln addressed the nation in his first words as president. In his First Inaugural Address, he appealed to calm, to reason, and to affection, to shared history and values. Lincoln closed with this plea:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

In the end, Union prevailed, albeit at a great and terrible cost. Unity is yet harder to come by, even now, although it is never too late to turn aside from division to embrace hope.

Consider the list of blessings from Luke. Each of them refers to better angels of our nature. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for you WILL BE…). Is. Present tense. And so too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves, to work for the common good, guided by the better angels of our nature.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, November 3, 2022.

Unbound: Sermon for the Feasts of All Saints' and All Souls

 

One of the traditions I appreciate from our Latinx kindred is the tradition of the ofrenda. This is an altar which is decorated with names, photographs, and other mementos of those who have passed away. I usually put up a picture of my Dad near his name—and often one of his pocket knives. He collected them. This year, even though we have been back with in-person worship since the beginning of October, the number of funerals we have had precluded putting up the ofrenda again this year.

This pocket knife is also a reminder of the first time I saw him cry. It was when I was moving out to go to college. Sitting in his aluminum lawn chair in the driveway as the King of the Neighborhood, he watched me pack the car, and then he reached into his pocket and handed me this knife. He wanted to make sure that I had one of his treasures, not just because it was so practical (it’s a knife! It’s a screwdriver! It’s a narrow prybar! It’s a hole-punch! It’s a pencil sharpener! It peels apples! It’s a bottle opener!) But he also wanted me to have a reminder of him—as if I needed one.

He asked me for a nickle, because my Dad taught us that giving someone a knife was bad luck. So I dug around in the pockets of my shorts and found a nickle and gave it to him. As I climbed into my 1966 Mustang that he and I had worked on to move my stuff to the dorm where I would live, he burst into tears and hugged me, telling me how much he would miss me.

I was shocked. First of all, this was the man who hadn’t cried in front of us when his mother died. Secondly, I was going to college IN TOWN, so I was literally moving about seven miles away. When I could catch my breath—my Dad had the strength and build of a lowland gorilla—I reminded him, as practically as a hungry teenager can be, “Daddy, I’m going to be back in a couple of hours. The cafeteria isn’t open, and now I don’t have any money—not even a nickle.”

My Dad later admitted he had spent three years dreading my leaving, and so soon my leaving was all he could think about. Even though, unlike most of my high school friends, I didn’t move to Stillwater to go to OSU but was literally ten minutes away from our house in East Tulsa. I was the first kid on his side of the family to go to college, and so this was a new experience for him. His crying was a new experience for me and one I did NOT want repeated. And soon we got to where we could laugh about it—especially after I promised that I would come over and watch Monday Night Football with him at least every other week (and also do my laundry for free—I’m no fool).

But it’s so often like that with all of us, isn’t it? We spend too much of our lives dreading something, until that the thing we dread overshadows the beauty of now and even the hope of the future. Grief in all its forms is a natural part of life, and a natural response to some of the biggest changes we will encounter. Time rolls along in a blur, and suddenly we look up and a decade has passed. And yet the sharpness and ache of losses can rise up unbidden like a zephyr. All it takes is a sudden flash of memory—like when I opened a drawer a few weeks ago and found this knife my dad sold to me from his collection for a nickle as I moved into my dorm.

In our gospel today, weeping and grief also play a prominent role. We just heard the story from John of Jesus weeping over his friend Lazarus, even as he prepared to raise him again from the dead. Nonetheless he wept. And for a long time I didn’t understand Jesus’s weeping in that moment any more than I understood my Dad’s weeping back in August of 1982. Yet over the years of hearing this story, I have come to appreciate the fact that Jesus, in all his power and his glory, nonetheless reminds us that feeling and expressing grief is a completely human thing to do.

Jesus’s grief over his friend Lazarus is a grief he also shares with his friends, Lazarus’s sisters. In openly sharing that grief, Jesus hallows, makes holy, the grief we all experience at various times and losses throughout our lives. We are reminded that grief, like most pivotal experiences in our lives, like most weights we have no choice but to try to carry, is meant to be shared. Grief is an indicator of love, part and parcel of the vulnerability of opening your heart to others. Jesus also, once again and critically, calls us to embrace that vulnerability that comes packaged like a K-Mart blue light special whenever we allow ourselves to hope for the future. 

 

To be clear: Jesus models empathy, compassion, and solidarity, three things that seem to have become extinct in too much of our public life—even among too many self-identified people of faith. He doesn’t approach the grieving sisters and tell them what he is feeling, making his grief the centerpiece. He listens to them and shoulders their feelings of hurt and sorrow. He grieves alongside them, in solidarity with them. Throughout this story, Jesus speaks and acts from the center of love. Jesus is not at that moment the teacher, but the listener and the learner. This is what we are all called to do with those who mourn.

When Jesus calls Lazarus forth out of that tomb, he calls Lazarus with the voice of love-- not into his old life, but into a new life, a life of resurrection and hope. This is a story of death and life held in tension, as of course it is for us all at every moment. And then I focus on the last words in this story. Jesus urges those present to help unbind Lazarus from his grave-clothes. Lazarus can’t really be free of the prison of death until he is unbound-- with the help of others.

We in the West in particular take great pride in the belief that each person is completely responsible for his or her lot in life. The myth of the “Self-Made Man” or “Woman” looms large over the cultural landscape in the Western world especially. And this is one myth that I am certain does no one any favors. It leads to denigration and shame on the part of those viewed as “unsuccessful,” and to hubris and self-delusion on the part of those who are considered “fortunate.” It insulated us from any notions of gratitude. It denies the concept of grace—that idea that we receive blessings we do NOT deserve from God out of God’s incomprehensibly enormous love for us. That denial of grace received is also a denial of grace’s embodiment in the world—a grace we are called to embody as children of God. Too many only give when they expect a tangible return on their investment. Yet grace is NOT transactional.

Examine today’s gospel story again, and it becomes clear that a vital part of the miracle of Lazarus’s resurrection is not just his new life, but his restoration to the community with the help of the community. As family and friends unbind Lazarus, they also let their own fears and dreads drop to the ground. Perhaps Lazarus’s bandages symbolize all that holds us within the grip of sin and death, separating us from true communion with God and each other: our angers, our jealousies, our vanities, our competitiveness which always comes at the expense of others, our malaise, our lack of empathy, our compulsion toward dominance and power, and our festering wounds from the past that we often use as excuses-- and simultaneously seem vindictively determined to pass along to others.

Too many of us live our lives in fear of death—and that goes for communities of faith, too. Especially now, as we are told the church is declining or that it will not survive this current crisis, as some doomsayers predict. So we allow death to overshadow life. And while we do that, we cannot truly live. We are often unaware of the things that weigh us down, so that grief subsides to grief. We cling to what we know and habits of thinking and doing even if they hurt us, even if those habits and modes of thought leave us locked in patterns of helplessness and hopelessness. I am convinced that we cling to the familiar that does us no good because that familiarity is more comfortable than getting a hand free to take hold of something better. We gouge out a path of anxiety in not just our hearts but the hearts of those around us. Those old patterns only serve to deny love the power to heal, even when we name that healing as our most ardent wish.

And that has too often been the case in our own lives here too much of the modern Church. We hold the power in our hands to proclaim a gospel the world desperately needs; to seize back the lie that greed is good, that it’s clever to take more than you give, that even charity and generosity will only be encouraged if there’s a tax-write-off as an enticement. To celebrate how little we give to enable our common life together, rather than rejoice that we can use what we have to make a real difference in the lives of others. To embody the same empathy and generosity that Jesus did.

That last line in this story of Lazarus also reminds us even when we answer the call of Christ, there are other loving hands waiting to help free us and welcome us into new life. We can’t always unbind ourselves, but we can be grateful for those who are there to help. It is only when loving hands reach out to release us from our bonds that we can walk free. That’s why Christ calls us to follow him in that family and community known as “Church”- that ragtag rejoicing host of witnesses remembered as saints that extends from antiquity to friends, family, neighbors, and even strangers who themselves are attempting to shed what binds them too.

Lazarus had been shut away, his memory eventually to be forgotten forever, yet the voice of love spoke the breath back into his body. Loving hands helped him discard the raiment of death, and welcomed him back into the light. We long for that quickening, too—to be set free to live with the integrity and compassion that is the foundation of the life to which Jesus calls us to not just imitate but make our own. Like Lazarus, we have to shed those bindings of scarcity and hopelessness, so that we can walk out of the dank tomb and feel the light and love of resurrection. We remember the saints and souls who have gone before us for what they gave, not for what they held back. It’s just that simple. That’s what lives on.

And what a gift this resurrection faith is! It calls us to answer the call of love with love, to engage in reciprocity in all things: to celebrate our inter-connectedness, to our ties to each other. To acknowledge where, with the help of God and our community, we have been unbound from the things that hinder us, and to then accept the challenge to be a similar force for freedom and justice to those around us. To be able to celebrate our shared bonds, we are called to be brave enough to do what we can to enable our shared future together—not just for ourselves, but for those communities that we are called to serve and help reconcile—to welcome the refugee, help the struggling, share the light of Christ with the lost. This is our common purpose and honor—to share in this work of redemption and rebirth with Jesus Christ our Savior, who invites us into this holy responsibility in love.

All the fears we leave behind make us lighter for the journey ahead of us, and leave our hands open to receive the good things that lie before us. We are assured there will be companions with us on this journey. The hands that unbind us are just as important as the words that call us into the light, because they witness to us as well about the love of Christ in our lives—and carry it forward. 

 

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

Reading:
John 11:32-44

What Do You Expect?: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, 2020

One of the benefits of having parents who were older than your friends’ parents is that you then have relatives who are mostly older that your friends’ relatives. My dad’s parents were born in the last decade of 19th century, for instance. Seriously. 130 years ago. My Mom’s dad was the baby of 17 children. We spent lots of time in my childhood in the backseat of a car, unbuckled, driving hours to visit the dozens of great-aunts and-uncles and second cousins so old we called them aunts and uncles too. With no idea of how crazy it seems now, we’d spread out on a mattress in the back of a truck camper or station wagon, going to this relatives’ house or that one, all over the prairie west of Oklahoma.

Then when we got to wherever we were going, we would be around really old people. But I looked at it as people who has SEEN and EXPERIENCED things. I would listen to the stories of their lives and learn about my family’s history. One of my great-grandfathers on my Dad’s side, for instance, was the meanest so and so in seven counties on both sides of the Red River. He was a moonshiner who terrorized his family (it wasn’t explained like that but I read between the lines). He married a Native American woman, but refused to register the children on the tribal rolls because then they would have been excluded from schools for white children. Now, anyone in the county could see that these kids were half Native. But they went to the white kids’ schools because everybody was too afraid of their father to challenge this. This was one of the few benefits that accrued to his descendants from his meanness, but it was not an insubstantial one.

Sometimes, the older folks would actually talk to us kids rather than send us out to play. I remember I was helping one of my great-aunts make a blackberry cobbler one time in her tiny kitchen in the part of the clapboard house that had dated from territory times. It was about a million degrees in that kitchen, but she had cool sweet lemonade and the Cardinals game on a tiny radio, and so that helped overcome a lot of my resistance at being forced into the women’s sphere of life while the men sat in the breezeway and played dominoes and smoked. 

She told me all kinds of stories while we worked, but one statement buried within one of them has stuck with me until this day: “Well, what do you expect? Because the lower you set your expectations, the more likely it is that they will be fulfilled, but leave you dissatisfied.”

I don’t know why that moment struck me so vividly. But it has stayed with me for decades now, and has been one of the most encouraging mantras of my life.

Expectations can shape your perception of the world, for the good, or for the bad. Looking back over my life, I see how my aunt’s wisdom has played out again and again. If you expect something to fail, you make it that much harder for it to succeed, and you even may take steps, consciously or unconsciously, to enable that failure. If you expect something to succeed, you will invest of yourself to help make that thing succeed, and you will be more likely to persevere to make that success a reality.

Look at how the post-war American public school system was proclaimed a failure twice in the 20th century. The first time was during the Cold War, when the Soviets were supposedly beating us technologically. But at that time, we decided we expected better. The answer then, in the 1950s, was to pour federal money into the schools to improve them, and also to desegregate them. And our schooling system, from kindergarten to college level, even with its rampant inequalities, became the envy of the world.

The second time our schools were declared failures was in the 1980s. But this time, the answer was to siphon funding away from schools—and for forty years we have slashed state and local tax support for our schools. We also resisted fully implementing desegregated schools when we realized that it would mean desegregating our neighborhoods, and you can still see this at work here in St. Louis. Those with means began setting up a partially-privately funded tier of schools, and siphoned even more money and support away. We let criticism become expectation. And now our schools are struggling and gasping for air, even as we pile more demands upon them. And the states who have most slashed funding to schools have seen their populations and economies dwindle.

I am certain NONE of us expected 2020 to be the rollercoaster it has become. And we had some expectations shattered yesterday, didn’t we? We expected to have a little celebration, but, then Bill and I learned that our daughter had tested positive for COVID19, and that exposed us, potentially. We made the decision to postpone our Celebration of New Ministry out of caution and love for each other. But rather than be disappointed, instead, we can just adjust ourselves back to anticipation. Yesterday, also, I expected then to be leading this service from church—and yet for the sake of all whom I love, here we are back in the Church of My Basement, surrounded by my own wall of saints and icons, until we finish our fourteen days of quarantine.

Our gospel today is about expectations. Actually, our gospel almost EVERY day is about expectations.

In today’s gospel, we hear the first part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount—the most famous part, probably: the Beatitudes. What we may not hear are the expectations that Jesus is challenging in each one of the eight statements he makes. Yet he names groups of people, starting with those who struggle with the disappointments of this world, the poor in spirit, the ones who struggle against hopes being dashed, with instead being the recipients of God’s abundance and generosity. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for they WILL BE…), except for the first and the eighth statements, which say that the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted are blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Is. Present tense. The kingdom of heaven is inbreaking right now. Those who expect it can see it, and work for it, even in the midst of a pandemic. For it is during times of crisis that we humans can shake off our isolation and worship of self, a selfishness which only leads to feeling more vulnerable. We can instead remember that united we stand, and divided we most certainly will fall.

Especially as we deal with expectations at war with fear and division this week as we await, finally, Election Day, with a mixture of relief and dread, we need this reminder. So too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all. Politics is about how we live with each other—partisanship is the disagreement about the basis of our common life. But our life together is political in best sense. As Christians, we are called first and foremost be a people of faith, hope, and love. We need to be people whose expectations are grounded in abundance. Yes—we actually NEED this, in order to sustain ourselves in the times of struggle.

And the WORLD needs us to be those people too. If we don’t witness in our lives to God’s abundance and presence in the world, who will? That’s the expectation that shaped the influence of all the saints we remember today. They looked, and saw what was, but then lived into the expectation of God’s grace and abundance. They didn’t have to be perfect to do that. They just had to open themselves, even a tiny bit, to being channels of God’s grace.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves.

The world, especially the economic and the partisan world, tries to shake this out of us, of course. That world wants to convince us that scarcity and poverty in spirit rules the day and haunts the night. And here we see it again—expect that you will never have enough, and you will never feel that you have enough, no matter how much you actually have. The more you hold back, the less generous you become—and that applies to stewardship and church budgets as well. Those who are blessed are those who see what could be, and work and give to make that a reality and be a part of that reality. Faithful hope is the price of admission. Those who are blessed are those whose expectations are grounded in knowing that hope can be a more powerful instrument than faithlessness in changing the world for the better.

The gospel is a long, narrative story of expectations being shattered when the reign of God breaks in. The peasant teenager named Mary didn’t expect to have that angel pop up in front of her and call her “Favored One.” Joseph didn’t expect to have to explain a pregnant fiancée. Those shepherds didn’t expect to see the heavens break open and see the constellations swirl in beat to a hallelujah chorus. The Magi expected that special baby to be in a palace, not a hovel. Nobody expected a great prophet to come out of Nazareth. Nobody expected a carpenter’s son to be a healer and teacher, much less a savior.

And the gospels themselves are located with one single plot of scripture, as my beloved teacher and Psalm scholar Clint McCann would remind us repeatedly in seminary. And that plot is the reality of God’s grace. Genesis chapters 1-9 are about God’s relationship with the world- as Genesis 9 reminds us, God covenants with humanity, every creature, and even with the earth itself God calls us to embody justice by showing us that justice is grounded not in retribution, but in forgiveness and mercy—grace again, and the prophets attest to this even as they rail against human faithlessness.(1) 

We are called to live our lives as Christians by taking seriously the hope and grace that is at the heart of God’s relationship with us. When we are transformed by this good news, this outpouring of blessing even upon those the world denigrates or overlooks, we move into the realm of the power of expectation—beyond the tension of what IS, to the assurance of what WILL BE.

What do you expect? What you expect becomes what you look for, and that then leads to what you see—or don’t see. As we remember the saints in our lives, let us decided, right now, today, to let those expectations lead us to the proclamation of the kingdom of God and the abundance of God’s dream for us, right here, right now.

Amen.


This sermon was preached at the 10:30 livestream worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church during Coronatide on November 1, 2020, the Feast of All Saints.

Readings:

Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

Citations:

1) The Rev. Dr. J. Clint McCann, Jr., "The Hermeneutics of Grace: Discerning the Bible's Single Plot," in Interpretation, January, 2003, pp. 5-15.

Prayer, day 2836: the Feast of All Saints

We ever abide under the loving gaze of the Almighty:

Lord, hear our prayers
whispered from beneath your wing.
You know the ache of our hearts, O Redeemer,
at the suffering of the world:
give us hearts overflowing with your compassion,
that we may bear your grace and mercy
into the darkest hour of grief
as well as the brightest dawn of hope.

Let us sing a song of the saints of God
by the testimony our lives give
in the eyes of the world.

May we ever be led by the example of the righteous,
those who humbly serve God and their neighbor;
who defend the oppressed and forgotten,
and advocate for the liberation of the poor;
who run toward the imperiled
and lay down their lives for others.

By the power of the Holy Spirit,
console and soothe the hearts of the mourning,
and grant your peace and relief
to all whose hope rests within your love,
O Merciful One.

Amen.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Reflection Before the Election

This Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints on the day it actually occurs in the calendar, and we will combine with it our observation of the Feast of All Souls, which normally falls on November 2. We will remember all those we have lost, those who have gone to be with the saints, and whose lives continue to touch ours.

The gospel we will hear will be Matthew 5:1-12, when Jesus sits down on a mountain to teach the crowds, and we receive one of the two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, 

     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, 

     for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, 

     for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

     for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, 

     for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, 

     for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, 

     for they will be called children of God."

I especially give thanks this year for this gospel being before us as we head into next week. Many of us are anxious for an extra reason in the next few days: the election on Tuesday. We have all heard people, even before voting began, anticipating their idea of the worst and vowing to resist violently and to turn on their political opponents.

This is NOT the American way, nor is it the way of people of faith. But it does have precedent in American history.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a fractious election that featured the vote split among four candidates. After the electoral college met in December of 1860, states began attempting to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Seven states had announced their decision to part by the time Lincoln addressed the nation in his first words as president. In his First Inaugural address, he appealed to calm, reason, and affection, to shared history and values. Lincoln closed with this plea:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

In the end, Union prevailed, albeit at great and terrible cost, but unity remains harder to come by, even now. Yet it is never too late to turn aside from the forces of division, and embrace hope.

Look back over that list of eight blessings from Matthew. Each of them refers to better angels of our nature. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for they WILL BE…), except for the first and the eighth statements, which say that the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted are blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

Is. Present tense. And so too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves.

During these next few days and weeks especially, I bid your prayers, and know that I pray for each of you as well as our nation and our world. No matter what the results on Tuesday or however long it takes, I pray for us all to be bold witnesses and peacemakers who stand for justice, unity, and respecting the dignity and worth of every person.

There will be special services at the Washington National Cathedral on both Sunday at 3 pm CST and Wednesday at 11 am. I also ask you to join me for a special prayer service online at 7 pm on Tuesday streamed on Facebook live at St. Martin's Facebook page.

In Christ,
Leslie+

Prayer, day 2469: 21st Sunday after Pentecost (Feast of All Saints, transferred)

We ever abide under the loving gaze of the Almighty:
Lord, hear our prayers
whispered from beneath your wing.
You know the ache of our hearts, O Redeemer,
at the suffering of the world:
give us hearts overflowing with your compassion,
that we may bear your grace and mercy
into the darkest hour of grief
as well as the brightest dawn of hope.

Let us sing a song of the saints of God
by the testimony our lives give
in the eyes of the world.

May we ever be led by the example of the righteous,
those who humbly serve God and their neighbor;
who defend the oppressed and forgotten,
and advocate for the liberation of the poor;
who run toward the imperiled
and lay down their lives for others.

By the power of the Holy Spirit,
console and soothe the hearts of the mourning,
and grant your peace and relief
to all whose hope rests within your love,
O Merciful One.

Amen.

Bless. Offer. Pray. Give. Do.: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, (tr.) 21st Sunday After Pentecost

Many of us, when we think of the Beatitudes, first think of Matthew’s version, the one we will hear next year on the Feast of All Saints. Matthew’s version is given from a mountain, and his is sometimes more difficult to understands. For instance, he starts off “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” When I was a kid, I always wondered what being poor in spirit means, and those puzzling words often drew my attention away from the rest of the reading as I kept turning over that add phrase in my head. 

Luke’s version of the beatitudes is much more straightforward—and it is not directed outwardly at “them.” In Luke, Jesus’s first statement is personal: “Blessed are YOU who are poor, for YOURS is the kingdom of God.” Not “THOSE” but “YOU.” What Jesus is doing by speaking directly to us with blessings is this: to remind us that God is alongside us, especially the poor, hungry, or those in need of relief. When Jesus pronounces his “woes” in this reading, it can be uncomfortable to many of us who are NOT poor, the same was that last week’s gospel can make us uncomfortable when we realize that we are all prone to being judgmental and thinking ourselves superior from those on the margins. 

Yet when you set Jesus’s blessings and woes side by side in the Lucan version of the Beatitudes, you understand too that what is especially outrageous is those who hoard wealth in the face of the poverty of those on the borderlines of their lives, filling themselves full in the face of those who are hungry, and laughing at the weeping of those undergoing trauma and tragedy. Actually it doesn’t even require laughing. Indifference is just as bad. And we see too much of that at work in the world around us. The Beatitudes call on us to renounce that indifference, and instead claim kinship with those on the margins, just as the saints of the world still do in ways small and great to this day. 

Professor Richard Swanson points out that the word in Greek translated here as “poor” (for that is the language of the New Testament as we have received it) is ptochoi. He then muses upon another word, a Greek verb, that begins with “pt:” ptuo, which means “I am spitting,” which shouldn’t surprise anyone who grew up watching cartoons—that probably still is literally the sound of spitting in our head: ptooey. 

What if we understood Jesus’s first words here, then, as “Blessed are you who are spit upon, for yours is the kingdom of God?” How would that change our understanding of the beatitudes? And let’s face it: in this upside down world in which we live, if we TRULY express Christian values in the face of the idolatry of the individual that falsely has aligned itself with American Christianity, the risk of being spit upon is not negligible. 

As we celebrate the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls today, we remember people who, in ways small and great, were willing to be spit upon, to go against the logic and the dominant culture around them, in order to testify to the God Jesus came to bring to flesh and bone before our eyes: the God who always takes interest in those who are humble in spirit, and yet filled with awe and wonder at the glory of this God-infused creation of which we are a part. And saints are those who see with the eyes of Jesus the belovedness of everyone, regardless of any other condition. Those people who are saints, even when not perfect. 

I know it’s hard for us—it’s certainly hard for me. When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, trauma. Those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy, like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.

I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes. 

The culture of the Beaitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the Saints we celebrate today. As a matter of fact, the word for saint is right in there. “Beati”—is the beginning of the word “beatify” which means to recognize someone as a saint. And the entire point of this day is to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made. 

As we sing in one of my favorite songs for this feast, "I Sing A Song of the Saints of God." The third verse is a vivid reminder that there are saints all around us: 

They lived not only in ages past; 
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school,
or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains,
or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God
are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

How do we go about being blessed and being a blessing to others, like those saints? There at the end of our gospel passage today, if you listen, are the verbs for living a Beatitude-shaped life. Take a look and mark them out: 
Listen.
Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Pray.
Offer.
Give.
Do. 

 “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” 

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do. 

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.

That’s the kind of life real saints embody for us. 

They listen. 
They love. 
They do good, even in—ESPECIALLY in—the face of evils big and mundane, no matter the cost.
They bless, where others laugh in spite and malice. They pray, where others shrug, and in praying, they take responsibility for change. 
They offer, where others take.
They give, where others turn away.
They DO, embodying the Christ-shaped life.

That’s the kind of love that lives on even after our death, as we remember our loved one who are gone from us but not forgotten. What makes them live on in us is their love, their companionship, their support. All the other stuff is just chaff that blows away in the wind.

The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: no matter what we have or don’t have, whether wealthy or poor, whether sinner or saint, we cannot depend upon our own resources to be blessed and to be a blessing to others. It doesn’t work that way. The key to being blessed is to acknowledge our reliance upon God, whether we are deserving or not in our own minds, that doesn’t matter. To know that God’s grace and mercy are not only necessary, but also real and present in our lives. That changes our perspective from fear to fullness, which is what the beatitudes are all about.

The gift of the Beatitude-shaped life is the gift of acknowledging our own need for others, our own need for God. To be standing in the need of mercy and receive it is to be blessed. To be standing with others helping you stand when you can’t go on is to be blessed. As Pastor David Lose notes, “For what is the promise of mercy to those who are not weak, forgiveness to those who have not sinned, grace to those who do not need it, or life to those not dead? It is at best meaningless and more likely downright offensive.”

Hear again our Savior’s words: Listen. Love. Do good. Bless, Pray. Offer. Give. Do. This is the way of being a saint of God, and we mean to be one, too. 

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on November 2, and at 8:00 and 10:30 on November 3, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18Psalm 149Ephesians 1:11-23Luke 6:20-31

Citations:
1) Richard Swanson, Commentary on Luke 6:20-31, November 3, 2013, at Working Preacher.
2) David Lose, "Losers," October 28, 2013, at Dear Working Preacher.

The Lazarus Heart: Sermon for the observance of All Saints'/All Souls' Day

Today we celebrate and commemorate the combined feasts of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. We remember the faithful departed-- those who have witnessed to us the love of God in our lives and in the world.

So, today, I want to tell you three love stories.

The first is the love story of Naomi and Gladys.

Naomi Feil is a Jewish social worker and therapist who works with patients with Alzheimer’s and other dementia that causes loss of communication. She visited 87-year-old Gladys Wilson to try to help Gladys communicate, because Gladys had late stage Alzheimer’s disease, and was mostly non-verbal after a stroke as well.

Gladys spent most of her days moving her left hand repetitively, unable to speak. Naomi uses gentle touch and music to connect with people with these illnesses. There is a video of her visiting with Gladys—have any of you seen this?

Naomi starts by sitting in front of Gladys at eye level and speaking gently with her. Eventually Gladys focuses on Naomi and Naomi starts to sing to her, songs of Gladys’s childhood in the African American church tradition. Apparently Gladys had been a devout churchgoer from the time she was an infant, and so Naomi starts singing “Jesus loves me” in rhythm to Gladys’s movements. 

Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so,
Little ones to him belong,
They are weak but He is strong.

As the song begins, Gladys changes from shaking her arm back and forth to tapping in beat to the music on the arm of her chair and then on Naomi’s arm, and Naomi sings in rhythm to the tapping, so that Gladys is now taking the lead in the speed of the song.

Yes, Jesus loves me;
Yes, Jesus loves me;
Yes, Jesus loves me--
the Bible tells me so.

Gladys’s eyes are closed at first, but when Naomi asks her, Gladys opens them and looks straight at Naomi. Naomi then asks Gladys if she feels safe with Naomi and safe with Jesus, and Gladys replies “yes.”

Naomi then begins to sing “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands,” and Gladys begins singing along, sharing the song—Naomi sings “He’s got the whole world…” and Gladys whispers forcefully “in his hands.”

He's got the whole world in his hands!
He's got the whole world in his hands!
He's got the whole world in his hands!
He's got the whole world in his hands!

Together, they sing the entire verse of the song together. Even though Naomi is Jewish, she sings Christian children’s songs to Gladys, and gives Gladys the gift of communication back, if only for a moment. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and I’ve probably watched it dozens of times since I first saw it. I've cried every time I've seen it too-- and not just because I'm a sap, although I am, but because something this beautiful should be worthy of our tears of appreciation and wonder.

It is obvious that Naomi has learned and sings this song to Gladys out of the love, respect, and empathy that fuels her work with the elderly and disabled, people who are often locked into their own worlds. In that moment Naomi is Jesus to Gladys.

I was thinking about that video of Naomi and Gladys as I was thinking about our scriptures today. Here we are at the beginning of November, and there’s a lot of change that happens in November. Baseball season is bitterly over. The clocks change. The nights get longer. Thanksgiving is coming up, and the day after Thanksgiving, most Americans rampage out to buy more stuff mere hours after they have commemorated thankfulness and gratitude.

The days get colder, and there’s usually a lot of rain here in St. Louis. There’s usually an election of some kind, and this year’s especially is fraught with anxiety, nastiness, and fear. We liturgical Christians are coming to the end of the liturgical year. In other words, it’s dark, cold, damp, and tense.

And somehow, this is the season when we inevitably have stewardship campaigns. Because, why not? Awesome, right?

Our readings today are meant to remind us of God’s constant presence and love in our lives—a love that extends even beyond the grave. We commemorate the saints in our lives who have shown us the way of God, and as I was thinking about saints right now, one of the saints I thought of was Naomi singing to Gladys and making her feel safe, restoring to her a sense of security, peace, and connection, but most of all the assurance that she was known, valued and especially loved, even in the grip of an illness that causes confusion, frustration, and anxiety. I thought of the doctor at Tree of Life Synagogue and all the first responders who ran TOWARD the sound of shooting. Those are some of my saints right now, the righteous ones leading us to see the love of God.

Watching Gladys reconnect, reawaken, and respond to the call of love was like watching someone literally come to life again. It was a kind of resurrection.

This bring me to my second love story.

 Of all the people in scripture, there are only a few of which it is said that Jesus loved them. We all know that Jesus LOVES us, just as Naomi sang to Gladys, and Jesus had disciples and apostles and a mother and brother and sisters, but there are very few people singled out as Jesus’s friends. Lazarus, and his sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany are three of those people. John’s gospel makes it clear that Jesus loved this family especially, as his friends.

Yet even as much as Jesus loved his friends Lazarus and Martha and Mary, Lazarus still dies, leaving Martha and Mary potentially destitute in the culture of that time. And Jesus weeps over the loss of his friend. He feels the sorrow of that parting and the bitterness of death as much as any of us do.

So one thing I think this reminds us is that loving and being loved by God does not mean that we will be protected from bad things happening to us, even pain, suffering, illness, and death. Even Jesus is not protected from loss, and from mourning the losses he encounters. As we have recently heard in the letter to the Hebrews, the fact that Jesus has experienced everything we have, sorrow and loss as well as joy, makes him our great high priest.

That’s part of the assurance we have in Christ. If you live long enough, there are many losses you will experience. Yet even through those losses, Jesus’s actions in this story remind us that God’s love is always with us. As the reading from the Wisdom of Solomon reminds us, even in death we are never separated from the love of God, and that is the third love story we hear today.

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster, 
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace. 
For though in the sight of others they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality.

Love never dies, even when our bodies wear out and our earthly lives here end. Love doesn’t protect us from loss—some, in the throes of heartbreak are despairing enough to think that if they don’t love, they will never experience the pain of loss again.

Yet, even this is not so. For love is what carries us through loss. Love is what, over time, dulls the sharp edges of loss and sweetens the ache of memory until we move to being grateful for the blessing of love in the first place.

Just like Lazarus, the call of love calls us out of the tomb of our lives of fear, anxiety, loss, and despair. Just like Lazarus, the call of God to us to new life through faith and resurrection restarts and reawakens our cold hearts of stone, calling them to beat anew in our chests. God calls us to wakefulness, calls us to stumble out of the desperate darkness that enshrouds us, to pull the veil from our eyes, so that we may truly see, truly love, truly be free.

Through the love of God, calling to us through even the deepest darkness, we stumble into life and are restored to hope. The abundant, generous, unfailing love of God in our lives gives us the courage, the heart, to carry on whatever may come, sure in the knowledge that we are never alone, that we are one in the Spirit and one in the Lord, as the song of my childhood goes.

The heart of Lazarus beats again to the call of love. Oh, that we could all welcome the Lazarus heart to beat anew within us! God calls us through love to awaken, to be set free from the bandages of fear, hatred, suspicion, anger, and resentment that keep us dead to the full humanity implanted within us and within each other.

God calls us to be unbound, and be set free, just like Lazarus, through love.

The love of Naomi in calling to Gladys through song, the love of Jesus calling to Lazarus from the grave, the love of God in calling us to resurrection and new hope, new faith. There’s freedom there—true freedom. Freedom rooted in hope and community, bound up in love and empathy for one another.

Love calls us to walk from the darkness to the light, and it is the darkness that helps us see how precious the light is. Love that is perceived not by just the eye, but by the resurrected, Lazarus heart.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on November 3, and at the 8:00 and 10:15 am services on November 4, 2018, at St. Martin's Church, Ellisville. MO.

Readings:
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44


Notes and Images:
1) The Unbinding of Lazarus
2) Video from Youtube. Naomi Feil is one of the founders of Validation Training, a compassionate and empathetic method to use with patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimers, etc. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including The Validation Breakthrough.
3) Jesus singing with Lazarus, Mary and Martha.
4) Jesus weeping
5) Icon of the Souls of the Departed in the Hand of God.
6) The Empty Tomb
7) Giotto's depiction of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus.