Prayer 3336

Tender Creator,
whose hand has cradled us
through the hours and dreams of the night,
shelter and shepherd us
as we carry your good news into the world this day.

Make us seekers of wisdom,
reflectors of light to those who wander,
companions to those who are isolated.

Make our lives a living prayer of praise and gratitude,
and a testimony to your grace and hope.
Make our hearts a fertile field for your truth
that we may be fruitful in our service
to You and to others, Most Holy God.

Beloved Savior,
the creation is resplendent with your glory,
your abundant love dazzles
from greening trees and children's laughter
and the generous hearts of elders.

Come, Holy Spirit,
endow our spirits with courage and hope,
and place your hand of blessing over those
for whom we now pray.

Amen.

Image: Creation of the World, Lyuva Latskiv, Ukrainian, 2019, oil on gessoed board

Prayer 3162

Holy One,
we lift our heart before You
like empty basins
to be filled with wisdom and mercy.

We give you thanks, O Creator,
for sun-dappled mornings:
may our prayers arise to you
like the morning mist rises from the hills.

We offer our repentance
for the wrongs we have done others, O Savior,
for our carelessness before You and our neighbors,
for blindly seeking our own way
rather than keeping our feet and hearts
within your path of wisdom and grace.

Spirit of Truth,
grant us the will to turn again toward love
that reveals itself in compassion, generosity, and humility,
in placing ourselves at the service of others
as Christ exemplifies.

Bless the hands and hearts of healers, protectors, and teachers,
of those who sacrifice for our own flourishing,
that we may do likewise.
Blessed Trinity, Eternal One,
give your angels charge over those in need, anxiety, or grief,
and pour out the balm of your mercy
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

The Least We Can Do: Homily for Ash Wednesday 2021

Lent is a season that I doubt many people say that they look forward to. First of all, there is a broad swath of American Christianity that scarcely pays this season any notice. Then there is the common misconception of most things about Lent in popular culture. 

 

Even people who are NOT religious seem to know plenty about Mardi Gras, with its party-in-the-streets, purple green and gold, king cake eating, Southern-Comfort-drinking, bead-tossing, zydeco-dancing, costume-wearing, “laissez le bon temps rouler” attitude. One last chance to party it up before what is commonly held to be seven long weeks of denial and surrender during what in most of the US is the coldest part of winter.

 

After the big party comes Ash Wednesday, the official start of Lent, and to outsiders it can seem to be filled with morbid reminders of human mortality. It’s a day of fasting after the feasting of Mardi Gras—and THIS meaning of the word “fast” is one most of us view with at worst dread and at best resignation.

 

Christians who observe Lent are often asked “What are you going to give up for Lent?” Give up. As in surrender. As in submission. And these are very uncomfortable words. 

 

Then there’s the actual idea that you must offer up some beloved habit or treat for those seven weeks, denying yourself the pleasure of chocolate, or dessert, or soda, or caffeine, or swear words, or refined sugar, or red meat. You know—all the things that help us do the adulating during the day. And the giving up of something that our body may crave with the idea that it will make us more spiritual perpetuates some unhelpful stereotypes about suffering and pleasure, not to mention exaggerating the supposed divide between body and soul. Done right, Lent reminds us that our bodily existence is a gift from God, not something to deny. 

 

Too often, all of the things we associate with Lent can threaten to overwhelm us with distraction rather than leading us into a deeper understanding of how much God loves us and pursues us throughout our lives. Worst of all, it gives us the idea that God wants us to be deprived, or even miserable. As if devotion to God can’t lead us to true joy and praise! 

 

I fear we have allowed Lent, and much of our church-going experiences, to become transactional rather than transformational. We say we believe in Jesus, but we avoid following him. We get hung up on saying the right words to get into heaven, and forget to do the right things so that we can stake our claim in God’s love and abundant mercy right now. Instead of wonder, we scoff. 

 

We spend too much time eating the bread of anxiety. We hold ourselves back, thinking it will keep us safe, or we worry what our friends would think if we started placing God’s commandment to love each other at the center of our existence, rather than our own fears and suspicions at the heart of our day. 

 

Too often, we end up doing the least we can get away with, in the hopes that we can forget that we are God’s, and we are also God’s beloveds. We turn our backs on people and associations if they do not cater enough to us. WE put up our defenses rather than really allow love in, for fear of being hurt—and yet the binding of our hearts does far more damage than any potential heartbreak could cause.

 

Jesus urges us to a better way. In our gospel we are urged to enter into fasting and self-examination with joy and gladness, knowing that offering just this little thing to God still leaves us enormously outmatched by the gifts that God offers to us. 

 

The name of the season on Lent comes from the Middle English word for "Spring." We have it all wrong: Lent is a time of new growth, of anticipation, of hope, and of looking forward in joy and gratitude for the breaking of winter’s grip on our frozen hearts. Jesus calls us to joyfully embrace the turning into the greening of our spirits into a renewed commitment to God and each other.

 

The love that Christ offers to us, especially during Lent, is one of self-giving, of generosity. That love elicits in us the impulse turn upon its head the notion of doing “the least we can do” in our relationships with God and with each other—of avoiding the common responsibility and care we owe each other as fellow-creatures. When we seek to offer a sacrifice to God, may we remember that the purpose of a sacrifice is not pain and denial, but to make ourselves holy, and making ourselves holy is a step toward making ourselves whole. 

As we are marked with the ashes today, ashes derived from the palm fronds from previous Palm Sundays, may we remember that the ashes originated in rejoicing, in proclaiming Jesus as our ruler and Lord within our lives. And let us wear those ashes with joy, with hope, as people of love.

 

As we are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return, may we remember that ashes are not just a sign of mourning but a reminder of our union with all creation, and that being dust makes us kindred of the stars that dance overhead, and set ourselves the task, during these 40 blessed days, to be drawn back into the knowledge of our one-ness with all things, our fellowship with even the most common stuff of creation, and be drawn therefore into love and care with each other and with all the whole earth, that we may we dies to the casual sins of complacency and disdain that so pervades too much of our world, and instead live in gratitude and joy --starting today and for the rest of our lives.

Let Lent begin the thawing of our gratitude—formed by the hand of God, who breathed life into us from God’s own Spirit, the God who then gave us God’s Son as the ultimate sign of how beloved we all are—all of us. No exceptions. I am convinced that living out our days embodying that truth would be the greatest, most holy fast and offering of all. Nothing more, and nothing less, than all we are we are called to offer to each other, and to God.

 

And that is the least we can do.

 

 

 

Amen.

Preached at the online noon service on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO

Readings:

• Joel 2:1-2,12-17
• Psalm 103
• 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
• Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Attention, Amazement. Devotion: Speaking to the Soul, January 28, 2021

“They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority!”—Mark 1:27


Even though it is annual meeting season, and like many of us, I am busier than a moth in a mitten, I also realized at the end of December that I was absolutely being worn out by the stresses and strains of the COVID pandemic. I needed some little thing for me.

So I promised myself that I would read for pleasure every day for at least 20 minutes. There were plenty of books piled around the house, but many of them were more for my vocation than just for fun or for savoring. So I decided to start reading a book of essays by the poet Mary Oliver entitled Upstream, because I have started writing poetry again—haltingly. Her insights into the creative process are delightful. But within the first thirty pages, I was stopped in my tracks by this sentence:

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

I’ve been turning that small sentence over and over in my head the way your turn a smooth river rock over and over in your hand or in your pocket, tucked away. The more I thought about it, the more the words rang true.

When we were children, the thing we yearned for most was attention from those we admired: our parents, or older cousins or neighbors. When we became the big kids, we noticed little kids wanting the same from us. Hopefully we kindly obliged as much as we had been obliged when we ourselves were small.

Likewise, when we were small, many of us fastened upon often the most ordinary things that completely fascinated us. Chin propped on hands, watching the orderly dotted line of ants moving in and out of an anthill. Searching through the day for a four-leaf clover, and along the way noticing the variations in the edges, tones, and patterns on all the rejected clover-leafs. Watching the industrious uncoiling of the tongues of sulphurs, Monarchs, or blues as they competed with the bees for the clover or drank from the fallen, exploded sandplums under the trees. Learning how to tamp down your natural reaction when a bee landed on you until you could allow one to crawl across your hand with no fear because you know how not to startle it.

I remember thinking how amazing it was that this bee would have visited this flower, and I would never have known it were I not here to see and notice it right at that moment—and that all around the world, there were millions of bees contemplating millions of clover flower that I would never get to see. I became aware of how many hundreds of bees would visit this patch of clover in my backyard every day, whether I was there to observe them or not, and then later I was given a piece of wild honeycomb by my Dad’s mother, whom we called One Granny, and saw where the bees’ destination as they flew away from me was, and marveled at how they could help create such sweetness from flowers that weren’t particularly pretty or sweet. I learned that bees made honey, but butterflies did not, nor did they make butter.

I learned to start paying attention. And certainly that started me on the path of devotion to creation in to the majority of all its quadrillions of living creatures (not so fond of cockroaches or grubs or water snakes, all of which gave me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest). But I learned something else: the path to devotion ran straight through a way-station called amazement. I was young, and therefore brave enough to be openly amazed and filled with wonder. I didn’t care if that amazement could be mocked by others as being naïve—I was lucky enough not to even know that some people sought to be above amazement, thinking it made them look knowledgeable and worldly.

And as I listened to Bible stories read to me by my mother, I began to notice when in the Bible it stated that a character was amazed, such as this Sunday, when we hear still in chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel how Jesus’s teaching and healing amazed those in the synagogue who witnessed them.

I like to think of the joy they felt—Mark’s gospel doesn’t have Jesus’s hometown crew them turning on him with a “Just who do you have the nerve to think you are” fury. Instead, the crowds seem genuinely open to the possibility of something new coming from the most unlikely of people. I imagine them going back to their homes and telling the story over and over again to their family, and watching their kindred’s eyes fill with wonder as they themselves open to the possibility of seeing something new. Something they might not have noticed was new had they not been paying attention.

That attention is the beginning of all Epiphany stories, in fact, and it is steeped in the willingness to surrender to wonder and amazement, no matter how foolish it might seem to indulge in hope in a society that seeks to crush our imaginations and dull our senses. And I imagine that was why some were willing to abandon their shovels and their lathes and their nets, and follow Jesus out into a world that needed to be shaken to attention. To be brought back to amazement. And led to devotion.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 28, 2021.

Prayer, day 2562

Merciful One,
Blessed Trinity,
in harmony You surround us in love:
may the melody of my heart join with yours, O God,
the rhythm of my heart resound with joy
and each beat become a prayer of gratitude.

Send me out where You will, O Holy One:
guide and direct my steps this day
that all I do
I may do in faith and hope,
in witness to your grace and compassion.

May your peace be upon our heads,
as gentle as a mother's touch,
that we be lit from within
by your lovingkindness without end, Lord Christ.
Heal us and seal us as your own,
and pour out the healing balm of your mercy
upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2527: For the Helpers

O Great Provider,
Beneficent and Compassionate One,
we lift up our hearts in prayer,
seeking to center ourselves in your mercy,
that we may be a blessing to others this day. 
You are the Ground of Our Being
and Source of Our Hearts:
we give thanks for your blessing and love. 

Merciful God, strengthen the helpers today: 
those who work for healing; 
those who seek to ease suffering and pain; 
those who comfort the lonely 
and stand alongside the abandoned; 
those who work for true peace 
founded on justice and equality; 
those who welcome the stranger and refugee;
those who live out their lives as love in action. 
And then, O Wisdom,
make us helpers, too.
For this is true worship:
to serve You and serve each other.

Each breath we take is a gift from you, 
O Creator and Redeemer. 
As faithful people, 
may we turn our intentions toward compassion. 
May we reflect hope against despair,
light against darkness,
and enlightenment against division and prejudice,
O Light of the World.

Holy One,
we know that you are with us and alongside us
in joy as well as in sorrow or pain:
grant that the blessing of your peace and presence
may be made visible to all,
especially as we lift up these beloveds to You.

Amen.

Prayer 2370

Let us draw near in our hearts to God
whose hand sustains us in tenderness and peace.
Our praise we offer to the Lord of Life,
and we lay our petitions at your feet, O Savior,
asking your blessing and renewal to rest upon us.

Give us strength for the day before us,
and the heart to work for the release of captives,
the welcome of refugees
and the care of the forsaken,
that we may claim the name of Christ
only by walking in his ways.
May we proclaim the beauty of the gospel of Jesus
through the integrity and hope that informs our lives,
renouncing cruelty, avarice and falsehood,
purging our hearts of all callousness.

Beloved Savior, take us by the hand
to pull us up to the higher ground of love,
and grant your blessing upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2348: For Independence Day

Most Merciful God,
your blessings are without number,
and we worship You alone with joy and gratitude.
Make us lovers of peace
who embody your lovingkindness and compassion in all the world.
Lead us to surrender our vainglory
for the better portion of prudence, gentleness, and equity.
Cleanse our hearts of division and selfishness
and fill them with your abundant grace and wisdom.
Teach us to lay down our swords
to take up empathy and wisdom as our armor.
Remind us that the greatest treasure is love and knowledge of You,
O God of all the nations.
Open our hearts to receive your blessing, O Holy One,
that we may be healers and doers of good.
Rest your hand of comfort and grace, O Redeemer,
upon all who call upon You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2244

God of Glory, God of Grace,
You envelop us in arms of mercy:
We lift our hearts to you,
filled with thankfulness and praise.

Anoint us
with the power of the Holy Spirit
that we may walk in your light today,
turning aside from sin and selfish pride.

Grant us the wisdom to obey your commandments,
that we may live fully into our new life in Christ.
Lord, draw your protection over those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 2047: Dedicating the day

Merciful One,
Blessed Trinity,
in harmony You surround us in love:
may the melody of my heart join with yours, O God,
the rhythm of my heart resound with joy
and each beat become a prayer of gratitude.

Send me out where You will, O Holy One:
guide and direct my steps this day
that all I do
I may do in faith and hope,
in witness to your grace and compassion.

May your peace be upon our heads,
as gentle as a mother's touch,
that we be lit from within
by your lovingkindness without end, Lord Christ.
Heal us and seal us as your own,
and pour out the healing balm of your mercy
upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 1953: Making Our Lives an Offering

Most Merciful God,
Earth-maker, Redeemer, Life-Giver,
we lift our hearts before You in oblation and praise.
You have given us life, O God,
all that we are as your gift,
that we may be your peace and blessing in the world.

May we hear and live into your call to us,
and live in love and charity with each other.
May your Spirit move over us
as it moved over the waters of creation,
and awaken the full humanity within us.
May we honor You and praise your goodness
and be your hands of healing
reached out in blessing over all people.
May we turn toward the path of wisdom,
and ground our lives in deeper knowledge of You.

Be with us this day, O Lord,
and bless and comfort those for whom we pray.

Amen.
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