Blessing Beyond Boundaries: Speaking to the Soul May 18, 2023

The rogation procession begins at the parish door, 

in ages past a lion leading the way,
priest and people tracing and beating the parish bounds,
icons aloft, each footfall a proclamation of hope and gratitude–
saints old and new, invoking and being invoked,
that our labor may ever serve each other
and you, Lord Christ, as you ascend.

Creator God,
who laid the foundations of the earth,
and filled the sky with light both by day and by night,
we ask that you bless us this day.

New life springs up from freshly turned soil,
each furrow tracing the hills studiously,
gratefully drinking in the spring rains
like a child at breast.

Bless the fields, our holy ground and succor,
that they may thrum with the song of the diligent bees,
who help make our harvests bountiful,
orchard blossoms releasing a redolent sweetness,
scenting the air with hope.

Bless the skies, dappled with dawn,
that they may bring forth sunshine and rain in good measure,
sustaining the tender plants as they burgeon and bud,
sun gazing benevolently, enticing seed to sprout,
clouds and wind reviving the sleepy dance of ripening grain.

Bless our common toil, our labor and industry,
as we offer our strength and skill
for the sustenance of your people,
that we may minister and midwife
your renewal of the gravid, engraced earth,
that the gifts yielded to us may bless one and all,
even to the communion we share,
offering and gift,
born of earth, hearth, and Spirit.

Ever enclose us within your bounds, O God,
and call us safely into your fold and embrace,
that we may flower and bloom anew
awash in wonder, sustained by goodness.
in kinship and in kindness to your glory
clothing the earth anew.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 18, 2023.

Image:  Jules Breton - La Bénédiction des blés en Artois, 1857

Being Where Jesus Is: Speaking to the Soul February 10, 2022

Sometimes we need to hear a message several times before it sinks in. Perhaps that is what was running through the minds of the group that produced the Revised Common Lectionary as they considered this Sunday’s readings. We hear the same message three times in four readings.

The message embedded in Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1, and Luke 6:17-26 is this: Those who put their trust in God are those who are blessed, or truly happy. Sounds good, yes?

Consider also the flip side, to help keep ourselves honest: Those who trust in themselves and become the center of their own attention, and thereby turn away from trusting God, will suffer woe.

Blessed are those at the margins, Jesus tells us—and he urges us, and in particular the whole Church, to make those margins our home. Those who are comfortable so often believe in their own ability to put themselves in a position of comfort. Putting trust in God and God’s promises is hard—we tend to come up with work-arounds that in the end undermine and even blunt our sense of God’s presence with us.

The Beatitudes provide another broad brush-stroke in Jesus’s instruction about the priorities of God. Even before Jesus’s birth, in Luke’s Gospel, we hear revelation after revelation about God’s love for those that society might deem “losers:” the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outcast, the notorious sinner. First there is the Magnificat, with its proclamation that God has filled the hungry with good things, while the rich God has sent away empty. Mary’s is a raised-fist shout of defiance repeated by her son thirty-some years later. We heard it again a few weeks ago, when Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Freedom, release, contentment, jubilee. These are the gifts God gives to those who allow themselves to trust in God, rather than trust in the working of the human will.

In the gospel passage for this Sunday, notice that Jesus addresses his remarks to the disciples–not necessarily to the crowd around him, but to those who will become the Church. Jesus has just finished calling the last of the disciples and is giving them their marching orders: If you want to live a godly life, deposit your hearts and souls into the love of God, into reflecting God’s kingdom values. Jesus, who just a few weeks ago reminded us that his ministry inaugurates the in-breaking of God’s kingdom in the world, now leads us to understand God’s love of those who are marginalized.

As the self-professed heirs of the apostles, Jesus is always with us in ministry. But I want to turn that around for us as well. To be the Church, to truly live a life of faith, we also must be where Jesus is.

Where Jesus is, there we must be also, if we are to actually be disciples, and not just fans (here’s my nod to the Super Bowl). And Jesus calls us out into the deep waters and into the margins. As we seek to witness to the life and vitality of the gospel in our hearts and in our parishes, Jesus calls us, right now, today, to cast our nets our wide in sometimes deep water, and do the hardest thing of all for modern people: to reflect God’s priorities, not our own, in all we do.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, February 10, 2022.

Prayer 2567

Almighty One,
we glory in your truth
and are refreshed by your abundant care:
open our ears to hear your word
as we center ourselves in You.
May we be a blessing today,
speaking words of justice and love
that we may make visible the gospel of hope
and enact your healing will in the world.
Spirit of the Living God, 
set our hearts aflame 
to bring about the beauty of God's kingdom, 
and grant your benediction upon us 
as we place our cares and concerns before you.

Amen.

Prayer 2556

Almighty God, set your seal upon our hearts 
as we rise and seek to be a blessing
in this day that You have made:
glory and praise be yours forever!

Save us from the presumption
of speaking only
and not opening our ears
to hear your blessing
breathed through even the winter trees. 

May we ever know your call to faithfulness
echoed within the thrum of our hearts,
beating out your repeated blessing
through the miracle of this day, your gift to us 
to practice reconciliation
and take up your healing work in the world.

Blessed Savior,
may our hearts blaze with your love today, 
that we choose to walk in integrity and hope,
tearing down the barriers we erect by fear and distrust
when we fail to treat one another with honor and dignity.

As we bear your Name, may we embody your truth.

Bless the hands that heal and minister today,
and grant your peace to those for whom we pray.

Amen.