Prayer 4028: Inspired by John 6:1-15

Blessed Savior,
who in the feeding of the five thousand
showed how even a little is more than enough,

place your hand over us and bless us
who have a little faith but a great hunger
to imitate your fidelity and generosity;

who have a little understanding but a great need
to walk in your integrity and wisdom;

who have a little strength but a great desire
to emulate your loving dedication to freeing all
from oppression, denigration, and injustice.

May we offer our little to you,
trusting that it will be transformed into enough,
made great by your love and redemption.

Holy One, may we walk the good road of your mercy,
and bring our hearts into alignment by your love and grace.
Grant your comfort and blessing
to those whom we now name.

Amen.

Being Enough: Speaking to the Soul, January 13, 2022

John 2:1-11

The failure of hospitality that Jesus encounters while he and his mother are guests at a wedding jumps out at me every time I read our passage from John for this coming Sunday. I have always found it fascinating that this miracle, which only occurs in John’s gospel, is the first of the seven signs in that gospel. It’s rather a small miracle, after all, performed off the main stage in a tiny backwoods town in a tiny backwoods region that no one gave much thought to.

Hospitality back then was a much bigger deal than it is nowadays. The notions of hospitality in the culture of first century Palestine often required people to take in strangers into their own homes, and to give those same strangers whatever they requested, even if that meant that the host had to do without.

When you read carefully, probably the only people who knew that a miracle had taken place at all were Jesus, his mother Mary, a handful of servants whose arms were probably aching from toting perhaps 180 gallons of water around, and some of his newly-called disciples. The people hosting the wedding apparently had no idea what happened. And yet, if the wine had actually run out, especially in that culture, it would have brought shame down upon the hosts. After all, wine was a symbol of the blessing of God, of the abundance of God’s gifts. It was also a matter of practicality, being safer to drink than water at that time.

And here’s where our gospel speaks to our time today. We live in a time in which cries of “There’s not enough!” pervade nearly every single second of our lives. We live in a consumer society, one that only functions if people are led to believe that the way to happiness is through how much they can accumulate. “He who dies with the most toys, wins” say the bumper stickers. And so people toil away, so that they can spend, so that maybe they cannot feel the emptiness inside that is the foundational cause of our discontent to begin with.

But then it goes deeper. Society tells too many of us that we ourselves are "not enough." Not skinny enough. Not smart enough. Not tech-savvy enough. Not pretty enough. Not young enough. Not old enough. Not talented enough. Not rich enough.

And that extends outward. We are told that there is not enough to go around. We have to ruthlessly, zealously guard what little we have, because the scarcity mindset that runs our culture has convinced us that there is never enough.

But that’s where the miracle is. Jesus comes to us in our common struggles just like he showed up at that small town wedding, and assures us that, no, there IS enough. Every time we gather around God’s table, every time we share what we have with others and don’t worry about running out for ourselves, we participate in the abundant life and love of God, where there is always enough, and more besides. Where the best stuff is just as available at the end as it was in the beginning.

Just as Jesus turns water into wine, Jesus works within ordinary people, like you and me, because he knows we have the potential to be transformed by his gospel into the good stuff- the best- by God’s transforming love and call to each of us. We are enough—and Jesus chooses us to work his miracles in the world today. That’s more than enough.

This essay was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 13, 2022.

And Then a Miracle Occurs: Sermon for Ascension Day B

There’s a cartoon I really love that I saw years ago, I’m not sure where. It is one of Sidney Harris’s great cartoons depicting something about science—in this case, physics. It depicts two male professors standing in front of a blackboard. One professor has obviously spent hours working on some sort of physics problem, with formulas and scientific notation to the left and to the right. But it’s in the middle that he is stuck. He has now called in one of his colleagues to help him. In the middle of all the notation, there's a single phrase in English in all caps. “THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS.” The second professor points at that phrase, and wryly comments, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.”

I thought of that cartoon as I was thinking about our readings for Ascension Day and as I was doing my research, which is called exegesis, as I prepared this sermon. Here at the end of the Easter season, we preachers get a lot of really hard stories to try to explain or make vivid in our preaching. To be honest, the entire span of Easter can be really hard to make relevant to people who live in such a secular, supposedly scientifically flavored world. Actually I feel like I should put asterisks around that last phrase given the refusal of a good chunk of the public to believe in even the simplest scientific things like, you know, medicine. And the scientific method. And logic.

But anyway. For a preacher, the whole sweep of Easter is like that cartoon, especially step two. I mean, think about the events we hear about that just do not make ANY sense on their surface: Resurrection. Jesus being unrecognizable by even his closest friends, popping up in locked rooms all the time like a ghost, which itself isn’t a very reasonable explanation either. And now Jesus zooming around on clouds.

Telling important truths about how to live one’s best life, how to treat others ethically and justly and end up actually benefitting from it, trying to keep people from being turned off by the word “sacrifice,” is hard enough already. But tell those truths while they are all wrapped around “and then a miracle occurs,” and everyone becomes all skeptical about that detail and completely tosses aside the real point of the story.

Let’s take a look at the story of the Ascension as an example. The action here may possibly begin on Easter Day in Luke’s telling--- but that strips out all the post-resurrection stories from John, so best not to dwell too much on that. It’s clear he changes his mind by the time he writes the Acts version, and states that it is 40 days after Jesus’s resurrection, which is why Ascension Day always falls on a Thursday in actuality. Our reading from Luke answers the questions many of us had at the beginning of Acts: what was Jesus doing to those 40 days after his resurrection? He was opening the apostles’ eyes to the scriptures, just as he had done to the disciples he had met on the road to Emmaus earlier.

Too often we get caught up in the how and the where of this story. HOW did Jesus go up? WHERE did he go, exactly? I actually read something about the Jesus Seminar denying that this had happened at all. One member, supposedly ordained, talked about how Jesus even right now would only be in the vicinity of the constellation Cygnus (The Swan). Even if he was moving at the speed of light. And then there was some blathering about Einstein thrown in just for fun.

I mean, what? Really? THAT’S what you are going to focus on? High school physics?

The “how” of this event can be a distraction. But when people keep trying to pop the balloon of wonder when it comes to faith, it sometimes gives me a pain in the neck. It also shows that for all their supposed sophistication, they do not understand, as Jesus did, that we live our lives by scientific laws, yes, but we TELL our lives through the power of story, which is more powerful and influential than the power of a thousand supernovas. Stories are the most powerful thing in the human imagination. People have laid down their lives for the sake of a story. Story is about the meaning we make of our lives. And it seems awfully easy to completely mishear and therefore misinterpret this story we receive in two complementary forms today a story that is in service to a bigger story.

Here’s the deal. The apostles and disciples in Luke’s telling saw a vision of Jesus ascending upward. In their understanding of the universe, there were three important places: Earth; below the Earth, and above the Earth. God’s realm existed above the Earth, which is pretty vague. It’s like someone asking you how to get to Clayton from Wildwood, and you pull out a map of North America and wave in a general rightward direction around over it. Not helpful.

And the ascending wasn’t the first time scripture had recorded such an event: the Prophet Elijah had ascended as well, had been lifted bodily to heaven, and he was provided a really impressive chariot of fire. Talk about theatrics! Talk about tearing apart the heavens! This thing is so amazing that the rock band Journey wrote a song about it, and they are hardly known for their production of Christian pop music. In the story we hear from the person who wrote both Luke and Acts today, Jesus simply steps aboard a cloud and up he goes. AFTER, one last time, reminding his beloved friends what is really important. After reminding them what the scriptures really mean, and what they are to do, which is to proclaim the good news of God’s love and care for creation to all the nations on the earth. To not just stay where it is comfortable, but to go out and witness to strangers about who God is as revealed through Jesus.

The brief account at the end of Luke has the disciples rejoicing and worshiping at this sight, and then going to the Temple. In Acts, it’s more subdued. Up Jesus goes, and the disciples just stand there astonished. They’re left standing there with their jaws sagging open. They’re rooted to the spot—until two men in white robes, meaning angels, basically tell them to snap out of it and get on about their business. Top stop being spectators, and to start being witnesses.

It’s the “getting on about our business” part that we, as Jesus’s disciples in this time and this place have inherited as our solemn obligation and, I would say, even our joyful work.

What is the business they—and we—are supposed to be getting on about?

It’s about telling the story. To be witnesses, not spectators.

Telling and living out in our own lives, proudly and without shame, the story of what really matters.

Not a discussion of particle and wave and energy equals mass conversion squared. But the story of God—a God who I believe set up all those natural laws and often bent down and whispered into Einstein’s ear to give him a nudge in the right direction, seeing as how he was a prophet in the way he shook physicists loose from a whole lot of what they thought they knew for certain.

Don’t just stand there, looking to see what other parlor tricks God has up God’s proverbial sleeve. Go out and tell the story. Go out and tell people WHY Jesus matter. Start with in your own life. What has Jesus done for you? And please don’t start with following him means you have a great place to hang out with your friends on Sunday mornings. That’s NOT the story either.

What has Jesus done for you, and for the whole world, and why does it matter? Because once you tell THAT story, you become a PART of the story.

After we pull ourselves out of the weeds that these ancient stories can lead us, especially when we don’t think about the overall picture, we remember that the Christian life is NOT one of passively sitting around and singing hymns, as great as those are, or looking at stained glass windows, as beautiful as those are, especially around here. No the Christian life is one of witness. It’s one of evangelism – oooh, that scary word again. Evangelism we can accomplish by words, or by actions in living out the love of God in our lives every single day as if God was watching us, as that Bette Midler song repeated.

What’s the truth of the story we are called to tell and more importantly be a part of? Some people want to make it about sin and shame. But that’s NOT the story. That’s the setting of the story, not the story itself.

Jesus came to show us how to be fully human and yet fully holy as the way of getting the absolute best out of life—the most peace, the most satisfaction, the most happiness, the most justice.

He did this by reminding us of the importance of compassion, as he went about healing, and he healed people because he truly saw them and the burdens they carried, and didn’t turn away but instead stepped forward to help lift the weight of those burdens of every stooping shoulder.

He came to remind us of the importance of humility as a virtue, and of repentance and forgiveness in healing up all the broken relationships we encounter: within our current selves and our childhood selves, between our families and friends, among our neighbors and even with the strangers we encounter. Our gospel states our call straight out: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Jesus’s name to all nations” and “You, as my disciples, are witnesses of these things.”

Repentance and forgiveness
to be proclaimed in his name.
Salvation in the restoration of creation
to the beauty and balance breathed into it
at its dedication as good.

Jesus did not leave us bereft,
but clothed us in power from on high--
not the power of compulsion,
or fear-mongering
but goes to bring our joys and sorrows
into the very center of the Triune God.

What a glorious opportunity we have! What a joyful, hopeful message we have to share! The heart ascends with Christ.
Jesus goes because his work is complete. He now turns it over to us. And our work is ongoing. We share with Jesus the ongoing work of creation, of healing, of love in a world that sorely needs it. We can walk away from this story today, and walk into being part of the healing of all the world’s pain, by both telling the story, and then LIVING OUT its principles of compassion, of hope, of generosity, of reconciliation, of justice.

That’s when the miracle occurs.

AMEN.

Preached at the 10:30 Online Eucharist in Time of COVID19 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Miraculous in Wisdom: Speaking to the Soul, May 28, 2020

Psalm 104: 25-35, 37

The last ten days I have been back in my hometown, caring for my mother who has suffered a stroke. I’ve been working with my sister to get her medical care and to clean, update, and prepare her house for her release from rehab, doing all within our power to keep her out of a nursing home or assisted living. One of the things we had to do was go through old photographs and assorted detritus from our childhoods. Born in the 60s, I am a child of the 80s, and there have been many fashion experiments that we have discovered in old photographs that have brought fits of laughter in the midst of our anxiety and exhaustion.

I found a box out in the garage of a lot of my college stuff—posters of Magnum PI and the Beatles, a calligraphy print of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, old notebooks, and cassette tapes. When I was in college Christian pop and rock had just become a big deal. Although I didn’t listen to a lot of that type of music (my tastes ran more toward classical, new wave, and indie artists), I did like Amy Grant, and she did a lovely, simple song based upon Psalm 104’s celebration of creation. It’s a simple song: the sound of night insects, then a legato guitar arpeggio, and then the simply sung lyrics and melody, straight from our portion of Psalm 104 we will hear on the Day of Pentecost. You can listen to it on YouTube. Each layer of sound is reminiscent of the steps and stages of creation, from simple to more complex.

One of my favorite lines of this section of Psalm 104 is “In wisdom you have made them all.” When I was a kid, sitting in science class and learning about the amazing diversity of life was a religious experience for me. There are creatures that live in extreme cold, extreme darkness, extreme heat. There are giant amoebas called xenophyophores that live six and a half miles below the surface of the Pacific. There are bacteria that eat oil that have developed in the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a species of walking stick insect in Borneo that grows to over a foot long.  There’s the Venus Flytrap. There’s the seahorse. There’s the platypus. There’s the sea urchin. There’s a plant called “dancing grass” that visibly moves in response to sound.

The psalm celebrates the splendor and order of creation and the absolute generosity and sufficiency of all the works of God. Once again, as in Psalms 8 and 9, we are reminded that all that we have and all that we are are gifts from God. In this reading, we see mountains being turned into something insubstantial by the power of God—this time they smoke. God is the seat of ultimate power-- but that power is used for blessing far more than for curse. There are abundant images of plenty- use of words like “manifold,” “all,” “full,” “great,” “wide,” innumerable,” “filled,” “endure forever.” All of the images but one remind us of gifts. The one reminder that this generosity is in itself something that we enjoy but do not earn is found in v. 29: “When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to dust.” Our time on earth is short in our sight but is nonetheless a gift.

The first 24 verses of this psalm retells the story of creation from Genesis, but we get the SparkNotes version here. The order in verses 25-29 echoes Genesis --as well as evolutionary theory (I’ve always felt that the laws of physics are some of the most amazing miracles and signs of God’s love for us). First there is the sea, full of life, then come crawling things out of the water and onto the land, and some things become great. I have always thought of the Leviathan as a dinosaur-like creature, so that’s the image I get there, as well. And then there is the mention of the breath of life as in Genesis 2. The sea here is represented as a place of creation, which is different than how it is often depicted elsewhere in scripture, as a place of chaos, disorder, and storms.

I have heard people claim that they don’t believe in miracles. And yet, they are all around us: the blaze of a rainbow against a dark prairie sky after a thunderstorm of percussive force. The firing of synapses, electric impulses timed just right, as a baby stands upright and toddles her first few steps. The frilled beauty of wildflowers, so easily discounted, but greater in loveliness than Solomon in all his glory. And this week, watching my mother relearn words and go from simple demands to sentences and paragraphs and names, finding creative ways including drawing and metaphor to attempt to get around the roadblocks the injury to her brain has created. In the same seven days that reminds us of the breadth and beauty of creation, my mother has been recreating her connection with language and speech, facing her long recovery with realism but also with hope, faith, and perseverance. I know that her deep faith informs it all, for my mother’s relationship with God has not been shaken one bit. These small but consequential miracles remind me of God’s ongoing creation and care for us, granting us comfort and peace in the face of struggle and trial. The works of God are indeed without number, and the grace of God undergirds each miraculous moment.

O Lord, how many are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all!

This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 28, 2020.

Look!

As we learned how to read, were we 
beginning to forget to look, 
our young eyes caught in tangles of print 
so that imagination was choked? Were we 
trapped at that remove from ourselves? 

Or did we begin to see a new way, with eyes 
that widened in the amazement of reverie, 
memory, invention? As we peered 
between the words, could we make out 
shapes and colors beyond them?

What did our inside eyes make of 
the black marks on creamy paper, on onionskin? 
A dream of angels turned real, perhaps. 
A wooden boat on a lake. Three small loaves 
fragmented to fill all those empty mouths 

and baskets. Or this: a blind man 
opening his eyes so that the first face he sees -
a vision, surely - is Christ's, spittle 
still shining on the quick fingers, 
his mouth saying urgently, Look! 

—Luci Shaw (1928- ) from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

The Miracle of Being Here: Sermon for Proper 25C, the 20th Sunday after Pentecost

Okay. Now I know some of y’all love fall and all. The mere thought of pumpkin spice everything probably makes more than one heart around here go all a pitty-pat. 

Me? I am a girl who sees pumpkin spice macaroni and cheese as a sign of the apocalypse, and yesterday when I was in Home Depot they had already started busting out the cinnamon-marinated straw brooms (and WHY is that a thing???) and back in the back they were already getting ready to tear down the Halloween decorations at 10 pm next Thursday and start slapping up the inflatable Buddy the Elf lawn ornaments, and then, Good Lord, it’s winter. 

And y’all remember last winter, right? That was enough winter last year to last me five winters. 

When I was a wee little towheaded tomboy, summer was my jam. Summer meant freedom. 

And one of the best sounds to me of that summer freedom was the raspy chorus of the cicadas and grasshoppers, who actually are related to locusts, that reached a peak in the late afternoons from the trees overhead. Their song to me meant the joy of the freedom to be out of the house, riding bikes or playing baseball with my friends, afterward laying in the cool green shade reading science fiction or Mad magazine and then hiding them from my mother who would have NOT approved of my taste in reading material. 

The green cicadas were the annual ones. But when I was twelve, I witnessed my first hatching of the periodical cicadas. 

These cicadas come in 13-year and 17-year cycles, and that year one of the 13-year cycles brought swarms of what we mistakenly called locusts out early and strong. They were bigger, they were black with glowing red eyes. In other words, they were creepy and cool. They also had a slightly different song than the annual ones, and I was fascinated by the fact that the sounds could carry for over a mile, weaving with the other cicadas’ as well as grasshoppers’ song into a kind of locust fugue. 

Those childhood memories came back to me vividly in the summer of 2015. Do you remember what happened that summer? The 13-year cicadas and the 17-year cicadas BOTH hatched in the same summer. It may have been terrifying to many of you, but to me it was awesome. I did feel a little guilty about laughing and watching a grown man who looked like he was a member of the Hell’s Angels run screaming and flailing across the parking lot at the Home Depot in Kirkwood as a swarm of cicadas chased him, but mostly I just enjoyed it and the sound of their songs merging together. 

But in the Bible, swarms of insects, especially locusts, were serious business. They could literally eat people out of house AND home. Remember, locusts were so feared that they were used as an actual PLAGUE by God in the Book of Exodus. This was no phenomenon that only happened in Biblical times, either. In 1874, a plague of Rocky Mountain locusts so vast that they blotted out the sun over an expanse of twelve states and territories pretty much ate all of the Great Plains down to stubble. It was kind of their last hurrah, because by the 20th century this kind of locust had become extinct. 

I tell you these stories to explain to you the context for the resounding hope and relief heard in our readings from Joel and Psalm 65 today. The Book of Joel was written in response to a cataclysmic plague of locusts that spread over several years and nearly drove the people of Israel to starvation. That time of trial, though, is receding in the background as the prophet speaks to us this morning. Instead, what we hear in our verses today is a vision of restoration, renewal, and rejoicing. The land, which has nearly been picked clean by clouds of insects that were said to resemble moving walls against the sky, is going to be brought back to flourishing. The time of terror of looming starvation is over. 

Right in the midst of the reading for today the people hear the promise of recovery and even future flourishing, with overflowing grain, wine, and oil, which are always the three symbols of the good life. Regardless of what has been endured in the past, a new day is upon the people. They are called to rebuild the foundation of their community by faith and thanksgiving. 

And then Joel goes further, and promises a pouring out of God’s own Spirit upon the people: 
“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; 
    your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
your old men shall dream dreams, 
   and your young men shall see visions.” 
 The terror of the locust will be swept sway, and the abundance of the Earth will be so profound that the fear of starvation and being wiped out will itself fade away. Instead, in addition to a physical renewal, the people will experience a SPIRITUAL renewal. 

And I wonder if you recognize this promise in Joel as one we heard at the start of this summer, on Pentecost Sunday? Because this is the very passage in Joel that Peter quotes from on that very first Pentecost after those who see the disciples out in the streets praising God after the Spirit is poured out upon them—and instead they get charged with being drunk before noon. Remember that? It’s that kind of renewal, regeneration, and hope that seizes the people in Joel, and the early Church after they had just gone through the trauma of the crucifixion. 

 “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; 
    your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
your old men shall dream dreams, 
    and your young men shall see visions.” 

They will join with all creation in singing God’s praises—which is what Psalm 65 describes. This abundant spirit that God asks us to welcome into our lives is the spirit of renewal of this community of faith and our commitment to the work of the wider Church at play in the fields of the Lord. It’s a vision of the reinvigoration of our sense of community and mission beyond these doors in the name of Love Incarnate. 

Psalm 65 carries forward that spirit of hope and renewal, singing out with thankfulness God’s grace to us even when we sin, and shouting out with joy God’s ongoing, creating spirit in the world around us. And even though it’s in no way a dependable translation, I do like the way theologian and pastor Eugene Peterson rendered this psalm in The Message Bible: 

Silence is praise to you, 
   Zion-dwelling God, 
And also obedience. 
  You hear the prayer in it all. 
We all arrive at your doorstep sooner 
   or later, loaded with guilt, 
Our sins too much for us— 
   but you get rid of them once and for all. 
Blessed are the chosen! Blessed the guest 
   at home in your place! 
We expect our fill of good things 
   in your house, your heavenly manse. 
All your salvation wonders 
   are on display in your trophy room. 
Earth-Tamer, Ocean-Pourer, 
   Mountain-Maker, Hill-Dresser, 
Muzzler of sea storm and wave crash, 
   of mobs in noisy riot— 
Far and wide they’ll come to a stop, 
 they’ll stare in awe, in wonder. 
Dawn and dusk take turns calling, 
  “Come and worship.” 
Oh, visit the earth, 
   ask her to join the dance! 
Deck her out in spring showers,
   fill the God-River with living water. 
Paint the wheat fields golden. 
   Creation was made for this! 
Drench the plowed fields, 
  soak the dirt clods 
With rainfall as harrow and rake 
   bring her to blossom and fruit. 
Snow-crown the peaks with splendor, 
   scatter rose petals down your paths, 
All through the wild meadows, rose petals. 
   Set the hills to dancing, 
Dress the canyon walls with live sheep, 
   a drape of flax across the valleys. 
Let them shout, and shout, and shout! 
   Oh, oh, let them sing! 

I love this version because the sense of the miraculous, the abundant glory and generosity of God around us saturates each verse. And even though the word is never used in any of our passages, what speaks to me, especially from the Hebrew scriptures today, is a sense of gratitude and a naming and claiming of the everyday miracles that too often get overlooked in our busy-ness and short attention spans. 

I am convinced that we need to hear this word of abundance and gratitude today in the modern Church. We’ve been told that the plague of locusts is at our door. We’ve been told that believing that God exists is pointless to so many. The idea that God is still active in creation as depicted in Psalm 65 is sneered at as old-fashioned, passe, anti-scientific. 

I am convinced that part of the reason why so many people who feel the absence of the holy yet turn away from faith feel that way has to do with the smug, self-centered, self-righteous faith that is the public face of Christianity in far too much of the world. You know the kind. The kind that stands in the public places like the smug hypocrite in our gospel passage, who congratulates himself for not being a sinner, a loser in his own eyes. The kind of person who has made his own sense of superiority and self-righteousness his god, without an ounce of compassion, love, or empathy for others in his shriveled, grinchy heart. 

Friends, that is not the gospel that is proclaimed here in our doors, nor, hopefully, is that the gospel we proclaim with our lives once we leave here. 

The gospel we proclaim is a gospel of radical love, radical welcome, radical grace—which is actually redundant. Grace by its very nature is radical. Grace by its very nature is abundant. It is the gospel, fueled by abundant and generous grace, with the pouring out of God’s spirit setting our hearts ablaze so that we can BE Christ’s eyes, heart, and healing hands out in a world. 

The miracle and abundance of God’s grace is not only our foundation as the people and the seekers and the disciples of St. Martin’s parish. That abundant love that we receive is just as overflowing as that grain, wine, and oil in the prophecy of Joel. It what calls us together in this place, and joins us together not just to love one another but to embody that love out into a world as starving for it as if a plague of locusts had swept through and taken everything down to the ground. 

I discovered this poem a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share it with you. The poet, Marilyn Nelson, has written a series of poems about a monk named Abba Jacob, who is full of sage observation. Here’s the story she tells in her poem “Abba Jacob and Miracles:” 

One day Abba Jacob 
was praying in a sunbeam 
by the door in his underground cell, 
and the brethren came to him 
to ask him about miracles. 
One of the elders said, 
My mother's spirit came back 
and turned out all the lights 
the night we gathered for her wake: 
Was that a miracle? 
Another said, One spring evening 
a white rainbow of mist 
passed over our heads: 
Was that a miracle? 
They went on like this 
for several hours. 
Abba Jacob listened. 
Then there was silence. 

Big deal, 
said Abba Jacob. 
Miracles happen all the time. 
We're here, aren't we? 

We’re here, aren’t we? And isn’t that the real miracle that undergirds all the other miracles we encounter every day? We are here, and we are called to embody the abundant and generous love of Christ with joy and gratitude. THAT’S a miracle in this day and age. 

Here’s the thing: when it comes to miracles, I am convinced that there are three kinds of people in this world. 

First, there’s those who deny the existence of miracles, and see the world ticking along, predictable and dull and maybe even cruel, every day. 

Then there are those who only use that word for the really big stuff, like the tumor that rather than growing blinks out of existence and, despite all probability, disappears or the tornado that skips your block or the car that enters the intersection and shield the family crossing the street from being hit head on by the speeding car that tears through the intersection on a red light headed straight at them. For these people, miracles are when the odds are defied and the laws of nature get leapfrogged. 

Then there are those who see miracles everywhere. 

I’d like to ask you to consider being one of the proud members of group number 3. 

This poem reminds us that miracles surround us, but we miss them most of the time. We make it harder on ourselves to see the abundance of miracles that crowd around us because we too often look for the dazzling, the shockingly out of place. 

But let's try this: Close your eyes. 

Breathe. 

Whether it feels easy or difficult, here right within us is a miracle, one that happens without thought and cannot be stopped by a mere thought. 

Even though it happens on average for each of us 16 times a minute, 960 times an hour, 23,040 time per day, 672,768,000 in a lifetime if we live to the age of 80. 

If we witness the first one for someone, we acknowledge it as a miracle, and if we witness the last one for someone, that also can be a miracle nonetheless. 

We love that breath when it powers a beautiful sung note. Some of us get impatient when it powers a shout or a yell or a sour note on a beginner’s clarinet that shrieks like a banshee. But even then, that breath behind that sound is a glorious miracle, a reminder that there is someone here, among us, requesting our attention and hoping, really, for our kindness and care and protective acceptance in response. 

This community is a miracle. A miracle as real and necessary as breathing. And as we consider how we can support this community, we are really considering how we can support each other. We’re here, aren’t we? 

It’s important to remember that we are given the gift of each breath, and each day from God. Jesus constantly teaches us to use each one of our precious days to make the most of this life. As we all pray to increase our commitment and support for this community and each other in the coming weeks, 

I hope you consider the spirit of renewal and hope that is stirring in this place, and determine to help build a firm foundation at St. Martin’s that will endure for years to come. I hope your prayers lead you to go all in in the building together of a Beloved Community here that proclaims a message of ongoing renewal through the creating power of God active in the world right now, in miracles both small and great. 

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on October 26, and at 8:00 ands 10:30 am on October 27, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Joel 2:23-32Psalm 652 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18Luke 18:9-14