Prayer 4029: Inspired by Psalms 138-139 in the Daily Office

O God,
you are our safe harbor; our shelter and our keeper:

   we lay open our hearts before your throne.

Before I yet breathed
you knew me and had me
   within the bowl of your mercy:
in you, O God, do I trust,
for you are ever with me
in rejoicing or in travail--
   in trouble or tempest you remain steadfast.

In sundering sea or thundering wave,
   you steady me and strengthen me by your grace.

With the eyes of our hearts
may we see your imprint in the world around us,
O Redeemer and Lover of Our Souls,
that we may tell out your goodness in the world
   in all we do or say.

Cast the mantle of your presence, Lord Christ,
over all those who call upon you for help,
especially those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Known, Called, and Transformed: Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany

Even when I was a kid, I read anything I could get my hands on. Given that my parents were older when they had me, and therefore my grandparents were older when I came along, and also that we didn’t have much money so most of our books were second-hand, that meant I did a lot of reading that usually was more common among older generations of kids. My step-grandmother handed me a battered Hardy Boys book she’d found at a garage sale, probably to get me to stop bugging her during one visit. And it was during reading that book that I learned that one could make one’s own radio from what was called a crystal radio set. This intrigued me. And so, since I was also a big fan of Radio Shack, because they gave you a free 9 volt battery each month, I discovered that they still sold those kits, even in the 1970s.

So I saved up my lawnmowing money and my babysitting money one summer, and for once, rather than buying books with my cash, I bought a crystal radio kit. This was a bare basics model, but when I was done, I had a functional AM radio with a solitary earpiece as well as a speaker, and I had learned a little about circuits and coils and all kinds of stuff. I could listen to the radio at night without my parents being any the wiser. I especially loved listening to Cardinals games, when the reach of KMOX made it all the way to Tulsa at night.

In making that radio, I learned a little bit about how radios worked at their most basic level. Making helped lead to understanding.

Perhaps that’s why our psalm today particularly resonates with me. Our psalm expands upon the idea we’ve heard throughout Epiphany of being known intimately by God who is our Mother, Father, and Creator. Psalm 139 reminds us that God’s knowledge of us is complete, even as we cannot possibly presume to know God in the same way.

Sadly, some of the most beautiful and humbling verses of this psalm are among those omitted today, and I think they make a vital point, so I want to include them here:

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit?
   Where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you were there;
   If I make the grave my bed, you were there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning
   And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me
   And your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
   And the lights around the turn to night,”
11 Darkness is not dark to you;
   The night is as bright as the day;
   Darkness and light to you are both alike.

These omitted verses make a valuable point about human nature. It is true that we often FEAR being known that much. Someone who knows us that intimately would know our faults, our pettiness, our dishonesty, our cowardice as well as our moments of courage, compassion, and wisdom. We want to manage our own PR. We want to selectively put on display only our best versions of ourselves—and sometimes don’t want to admit our failings even inwardly. We want to believe that we can bury our flaws and our faults, our sins and trespasses, so deep they can never be found. When we find out how deeply we are known by the One who loves us, our response may be to flee. It’s often that way. We feel the blessing of God’s presence with us, and know that God is “our portion and our cup.” We radiate with that blessing. And yet, the minute we think we have God all figured out, that’s when we get off track. Deep down, we think God is like us. We humans tend to judge others harshly, and we project that attitude on God as well, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the doctrine of grace that makes our approach to God possible at all. Deep down, we think that God can only love the best versions of ourselves, because that is too often how we work in relation to others and their flaws.

Yet the second we think we can hide from God, we are lying to ourselves. God is with us always—not just in good times, and certainly not just in bad times. And God is not only with us, but God KNOWS us. Three times it is stated that God knows us intimately—and the knowledge of that simply boggles the mind of the psalmist. In the last part of the psalm that we read today, we are reminded that God not only knows us, but has made us, each and every one, which implies an even more intimate level of knowing.

We live in a time of great turmoil. And I am grateful for these words of this psalm at this time. I see this psalm being sent to us at this time as a true sign of God’s grace. God KNOWS us—and yet loves and treasures us anyway. Even when part of what makes us who we are includes our anger, our spite, our recklessness, and the very real damage we inflict upon others. Even then, when the thought of that love is overwhelming, and we just “know” in our hearts that we don’t deserve such love, that love nonetheless remains. God is with us throughout our fallible, messy lives. God’s love penetrates whatever veils we try to draw around our present or around our past. We sometimes pray, “God have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Yet, the promise is there within those words: God DOES have mercy on us, sinners as we all are, because we are known and loved with a fierce, unending love that is beyond our imagination.

We are all naked before God, like Adam and Eve in the garden. Yet God is with us, loving us, knowing us in all our victories as well as in our darkest, meanest actions. God is with us, loving us, from our first breath to our last. God’s hand is upon us, pressing upon us and at the same time bearing us up with a love that cannot be denied, not even by sin or by death.

Deep in our hearts, unless one is without a conscience, and there ARE people like that, we know the shortcomings of our own lives, the places where our nerve has failed when we could have chosen to do right but instead went along with the crowd.

That’s why most of us resist the idea that God knows us that deeply and completely, and yet STILL calls us to share as disciples in ministry to the world. Yet each of us who call ourselves Christians also must accept that we have been called to transformation of our lives and to discipleship—to carrying God’s good news out into the world. A world that as we have been seeing for the last many months, is groaning our in pain and distress.

We see Samuel called by God in our first reading, and we see Philip and Nathanael called by God in our gospel. When Philip tells Nathanael that Jesus is the one predicted by Moses and the prophets, but then he includes a contradictory detail—Philip adds that Jesus comes from Nazareth. This information actually works against Jesus, for none of the messianic prophecies claimed that the Messiah would come from Nazareth. No, the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem, as part of the House of David. But Nathanael is willing to go take a look.

Nathanael at first fails to understand who Jesus is, just as the boy Samuel misunderstood who was calling him and speaking to him. Yet Jesus tells Nathanael that he had “seen” Nathanael under a fig tree, and this causes Nathanael to believe that Jesus DOES have the special powers that the Messiah would have. Just as in our psalm, we have Jesus as the Son of God claiming to know a person intimately, even though he and Nathanael had never met.

Once again, we see God through Jesus reaching out to us and seeking us, knowing us even better than we know ourselves. God calls to us, but we can choose to respond or not. And Jesus could have said a lot of things about Nathanael—he could have shamed Nathanael for being a cynic, or for passively sitting under a fig tree. Instead, Jesus calls out the characteristic about Nathanael that Jesus most wants to bless, the quality of honesty and lack of deceit that we ALL need more of, especially after living through a century that has been marked by demagogues repeating dangerous, bloody lies until they become powerful weapons against reason, integrity and truth. Jesus calls Nathanael one who is without deceit, and Nathanael is transformed by this assessment to begin to live into it.

When God calls to us, we are changed. The call we hear is to a new identity with new possibilities, a new understanding of ourselves. That new understanding is predicated upon God’s knowledge of and love for us, asking us to open up our eyes to have an epiphany in our understanding of ourselves as well as of our understanding of God. When Jesus calls to us, we are really being called to see ourselves in a new light, in a new way.

We may feel unworthy of our calling to be disciples of Jesus—and we may use that excuse to confirm our natural inclination to keep our faith quiet rather than to share it. The problem is, that natural inclination then leads us to fail in our duty to be witnesses and workers rather than mere claimers of the privileged status of Christian, especially when that claim is used to claim superiority over others as we see too often today.

This reading always comes around the observance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday on January 15. When we find our courage to urge others to “Come and see” failing, it is good that we are surrounded by, as the saying goes, “so great a cloud of witnesses” as the saints who have gone before us. Dr. King’s legacy was to not just invite but to challenge the white majority in this country to “come and see” a God who called all people of faith to demand justice and equality among all of God’s children by truly “seeing” that the historical system of laws and attitudes were meant to oppress, silence, and disenfranchise people of color. Dr. King invited all of us to come and see and follow a Jesus who made his home among the outcast, the oppressed, and the marginalized. Dr. King’s words from more than half a century ago confront the challenges we are facing in 2021 boldly and presciently:

“One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage.”(1)

Coming and seeing is a start, but of itself is not enough. Proclaiming that you believe is not enough. Jesus calls his disciples not just to listen, but then to follow. To take a different path than they had planned. To upend their lives in the name of the outrageous truth about the power of love in a world in which oppression lies and tells us we are always alone and vulnerable.

God has searched us out and knows us—and loves us completely. Knowing us as we truly are, God calls us to a life of action and virtue as God’s children. I have seen you, God says. Now come, and see—and be transformed.

Come and be open to seeing—let us be brave enough to admit we need transformation in our personal and national lives. Come and see, and confess where we have closed our eyes to the damage of dishonesty about ourselves—and take hold of God’s call to see honestly our own faults and blindnesses about the struggles of others—and be transformed. Come and give thanks for God’s grace—for a God not of vengeance and violence, but a God that knows us and loves us as petty as we can be—and step out onto a new path in which we truly live by the creeds we claim, as kindred who live lives worthy of our calling as children of God in truth, in integrity, and in mutual love.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO in time of COVID19.

Readings:

1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)

Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

John 1:43-51

Sources:

1) The Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Love in Action," delivered April 3, 1960, published in Strength to Love, p. 31.

Prayer, day 2044: for times of sorrow or trial

In peace, we pray to You, Lord Christ,
our hearts and faces upturned and open to your glory.
Holy One, You are our shepherd;
we therefore rejoice,
and offer you our thankful hearts,
centering our lives in You.

You gather us into your arms, Blessed Jesus,
and carry us in safety and love.
We rest within your mighty embrace, O Redeemer;
You cover us in the mantle of your grace and truth.
Each breath we take is precious in your sight, O God;
you know our lying down and our rising up.
We know that we are yours forever;
nothing can separate us
from the love and mercy of God our Savior.

Lord of Life, Prince of Peace,
You strengthen the trembling;
You comfort those who mourn;
You bear within You those who have fallen.
We can endure and overcome all things through Christ;
in You we root our trust and our hope.

Holy One, we place before you
the names and cares of all who call upon You this day,
and ask that You grant them peace and solace
by the power of the Holy Spirit as we pray.

Amen.
1110, adapted

Known, Loved, and Called: Sermon for the Second Sunday After Epiphany B

One of the things I liked to do when I was a kid was to make models. When I saved up my money from babysitting or mowing lawns, if I could be dissuaded from buying a book, I would sometimes buy a model kit to build. Being a complete history buff and science fiction nerd, the completed models I made are somewhat eclectic: a 1940s era Willys drag racer straight out of American Graffiti; a P- 51 Mustang airplane; a bi-plane; the Space Shuttle Enterprise with jet airplane to carry it; a Star Trek USS Enterprise; an X-wing and a TIE fighter from Star Wars. And one thing I learned about making these models: putting them together, piece by piece, made you much more intimately acquainted with these machines than simply looking at them or reading about them, even through a simple plastic model kit.

Yet the knowledge I gained from building a model of those machines is really scant knowledge, indeed. I really only learned about the outward appearance of those models—what was on the inside, what made them work, was still a mystery to me. To really know those machines, one would have to make a complete, working version—even better would be making one from scratch. Our psalm expands upon the idea we’ve heard throughout Epiphany of being known intimately by God who is our Mother, Father, and Creator. Psalm 139 reminds us that God’s knowledge of us is complete. However, that love and intimate knowledge of us presents us with also our greatest challenge.

If you look all through scripture you will see two interesting, competing stories emerge: we want to know God and we are terrified to know God. We want God to love us, and yet we resist the change that that love entails. And so we try to hold God at arm’s length. Yet, the second we think we can hide from God, we are lying to ourselves. God is with us always—not just in good times, and certainly not just in bad times. And God is not only with us, but God KNOWS us. In fact some form of the word “know” is used four times in the first five verses. Again and again we are reminded that God knows us intimately—and the knowledge of that simply boggles the mind of the psalmist.

God knows us and loves us even when we think such bitter thoughts that, in the wonderful turn of phrase of Anne Lamott, would "make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”

Because God loves us. Even when we are wallowing in all our pettiness—God loves us enough to call us out of that, too. Some of the omitted verses of our psalm today make that point, so I want to include them here:

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit?
          Where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you were there;
          If I make the grave my bed, you were there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning
          And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me
          And your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
          And the lights around the turn to night,”
11 Darkness is not dark to you;
          The night is as bright as the day;
          Darkness and light to you are both alike.

These omitted verses make a valuable point about human nature. We want to believe that we can bury our flaws and our faults, our sins and trespasses, so deep they can never be found. When we find out how deeply we are known by the One who loves us, our response may be to flee.

It’s often that way. We feel the blessing of God’s presence with us, and know that God is “our portion and our cup.” We radiate with that blessing. And if we are really honest, we realize that that blessing also contains a challenge: the challenge of saying yes to God’s love, and the power of that love to turn our hearts inside out, and our lives upside down.

God knows us, God loves us, God knows what makes us tick—and still God calls to us to share in God’s work. We heard stories this morning of God calling to Eli to bear God’s message of repentance to a people who have wandered from God’s dream for their lives. We see God’s love in Jesus calling Philip and Nathanael to follow him, and to help carry his message of healing and reconciliation to those on the very margins of empire, to those who are oppressed in both body and spirit by the weight of poverty and injustice.

In the gospel today, Nathanael at first fails to understand who Jesus is, just as the boy Samuel misunderstood who was calling him and speaking to him. Just as in our psalm, we have Jesus as the Son of God claiming to know a person intimately, even though he and Nathanael had never met. Once again, we see God through Jesus reaching out to us and seeking us, knowing us even better than we know ourselves. God calls to us, but we can choose to respond or not.

God knows us, and since most of us can be honest with ourselves, that also means that God knows all of our flaws. If you look back at the story of Adam and Eve, you may remember that once they really knew THEMSELVES to be naked, their first impulse was to hide from God, although the assumption is that they had been walking around talking to God in their altogether all the while before their disobedience. Yet it was not their disobedience that made them want to hide—they had already justified that to themselves. It was their nakedness before God that made them dive into the bushes when they heard God coming.

Even in our most flawed and fragile moments, the miracle that hovers over us is that God loves and treasures us as God’s most beloved children, even when part of what makes us who we are includes our anger, our spite, our recklessness, and the very real damage we inflict upon others. There are times when even we in the Church surrender to the economy of scarcity that is the foundation of so much of our world today, and some seek to lock others out, or draw bright lines separating “us” from “them.”

Yet once we acknowledge the woundedness within ourselves and within our relationships with each other and with creation, we can then mindfully and joyfully embody the economy of abundance that is the foundation of God’s knowledge of and love for us. God knows and loves us so much that God gives us an example in Jesus to emulate. “Follow me,” Jesus calls. How far are we willing to go to do that?

God’s knowledge of us, God’s love for us, and God’s call to us extends to everyone—no matter what. God’s love calls us to unity, to common cause in the quest for justice and abundance of life for all. We worship a risen, living Savior, one who is present for us right now, and in this season of Epiphany we are called to both follow his light, and embody it into the world—a world that all too often works in shadow and revels in division—in other words, a world that needs that light more than ever.

Through the promises made at our baptism, when we see the face of Christ at all, we see it not just in our families and loved ones, not just in the persons sitting next to you right now, but in the prisoner, the refugee, and the stranger. As Christians, whether living in the first or the 21st century, we face every day a hundred interior negotiations between what we say we commit to as disciples of Jesus Christ, and what we commit to as people living in—and to a large extent being called by Christ’s values to resist-- a post-modern society.

As Christians, and particularly as the people of God gathered here at the Church of St. Martin, we are together celebrating and giving thanks right now, and that’s a radical act too: to give thanks in this time and place, gathering around this common table together to celebrate Jesus’s call to follow him, to accept his invitation to take up the beautiful work of love. Being known and beloved by God calls us to renewal and reconciliation for the life of the world. We are called to remember that following Jesus means turning our orientation not inward, but outward, opening our hearts to God AND to those who exist on the margins, where Jesus devoted his earthly life.

By the power of God’s love for us and all of creation, God’s Spirit is constantly moving over us, calling us to reconciliation and renewal. In Psalm 51, the psalmist prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” And I am convinced that anyone who really thinks about it knows that this is a brave prayer indeed.

We want God to love us, but real love shakes you up and spins you around, and we aren’t too sure we want that. We often like to think we can manage relationships. The miracle is that God’s love is not manageable. It’s not reasonable. And yet love is the signal marker of the way spent walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Love that binds us together, both here around this rail at the Eucharist, and as we are then strengthened and sent out into the world as beloved disciples of Jesus.

The love of God doesn’t just settle over us, but calls us to action—God calls us to partnership, not passivity; God calls us to be fertile ground for God’s ongoing work in the world. Through God’s love, we are called to be healers, reconcilers, restorers, witnesses. In short: disciples. God knows us—and calls us to be partners in the restoration of creation. That’s a miracle, too.

It’s also a challenge. Every day we get met with a new crisis, a new outrage, a new attempt to separate and divide, and we all know that the object of division is to conquer, and let the spreading gloom steal away our hope. Yet it is in that moment that the real work can begin. It is when we fear we have lost our path that the need for a new one can guide us home. In the words of the poet Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

God knows us, and calls us to be the very best versions of ourselves we can be, because God has faith in us to share in building up God’s kingdom. Healed, restored, renewed, brought together as one here at God’s altar, we hear God’s call to us as God’s beloveds is a call to engage with the ongoing creation God is working within us and around us. The journey awaits, and we get to do it together: known, loved, and called to partnership by Love Incarnate.

Amen.


Preached at the Church of St. Martin, Davis, CA, on January 14, 2018.

Readings:
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Citations:
(1) Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (1999), pp. 130-131; (2)Wendell Berry (1934- ), from the essay "Poetry and Marriage" in Standing By Words (1983)

Photos:
The calling of the boy Samuel; The calling of Philip and Nathanael; Adam and Eve hiding from God in the Garden of Eden; the altar party at the 7:45 service at the Church of St. Martin, Davis.

Known and Loved Despite Ourselves: Speaking to the Soul, January 18, 2015

One of the things I liked to do when I was a kid was to make models. When I saved up my money from babysitting or mowing lawns, if I could be dissuaded from buying a book, I would sometimes buy a model kit to build. Being a complete history buff and science fiction nerd, the completed models I made are somewhat eclectic: a 1950s era Willys drag racer; a P- 51 Mustang airplane; a bi-plane; the Space Shuttle Enterprise with jet airplane to carry it; a Star Trek USS Enterprise; an X-wing and a TIE fighter from Star Wars. And one thing I learned about making these models: putting them together, piece by piece, made you much more intimately acquainted with these machines than simply looking at them or reading about them, even through a simple plastic model kit.

Yet the knowledge I gained from building a model of those machines is really scant knowledge, indeed. I really only learned about the outward appearance of those models—what was on the inside, what made them work, was still a mystery to me. To really know those machines, one would have to make a complete, working version—even better would be making one from scratch. Our psalm expands upon the idea we’ve heard throughout Epiphany of being known intimately by God who is our Mother, Father, and Creator. Psalm 139 reminds us that God’s knowledge of us is complete, even as we cannot possibly presume to know God in the same way.

Sadly, some of the most beautiful and humbling verses of this psalm are among those omitted today, and I think they make a vital point, so I want to include them here:

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit?

    Where can I flee from your presence?

7 If I climb up to heaven, you were there;

    If I make the grave my bed, you were there also.

8 If I take the wings of the morning

    And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

9 Even there your hand will lead me

    And your right hand hold me fast.

10 If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,

    And the lights around the turn to night,”

11 Darkness is not dark to you;

    The night is as bright as the day;

    Darkness and light to you are both alike.

These omitted verses make a valuable point about human nature. We want to believe that we can bury our flaws and our faults, our sins and trespasses, so deep they can never be found. When we find out how deeply we are known by the One who loves us, our response may be to flee. It’s often that way. We feel the blessing of God’s presence with us, and know that God is “our portion and our cup.” We radiate with that blessing. And yet, the minute we think we have God all figured out, that’s when we get off track. Deep down, we think God is like us, and that God can only love the best versions of ourselves.

Yet the second we think we can hide from God, we are lying to ourselves. God is with us always—not just in good times, and certainly not just in bad times. And God is not only with us, but God KNOWS us. In fact some form of the word “know” is used four times in the first five verses, if you count the word “knowledge,”- and I do. Three times it is stated that God knows us intimately—and the knowledge of that simply boggles the mind of the psalmist. In the last part of the psalm that we read today, we are reminded that God not only knows us, but has made us, each and every one, which implies an even more intimate level of knowing.

God knows us, and since most of us can be honest with ourselves, that also means that God knows all of our flaws. If you look back at the story of Adam and Eve, you may remember that once they really knew THEMSELVES to be naked, their first impulse was to hide from God, although the assumption is that they had been walking around talking to God in their altogether all the while before their disobedience. Yet it was not their disobedience that made them want to hide—they had already justified that to themselves. It was their nakedness before God that made them dive into the bushes when they heard God coming. 

As the Episcopal Church is forced by recent tragic events in Maryland to confront our own nakedness, and some feel compelled to point out the nakedness of the person responsible for the tragedy, I see this psalm being sent to us at this time as a true sign of God’s grace. God KNOWS us—and yet loves and treasures us anyway. Even when part of what makes us who we are includes our anger, our spite, our recklessness, and the very real damage we inflict upon others. Even then, when the thought of that love is overwhelming, and we just “know” in our hearts that we don’t deserve such love, that love nonetheless remains. God is with us throughout our fallible, messy lives. God’s love penetrates whatever veils we try to draw around our present or around our past. We sometimes pray, “God have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Yet, the promise is there within those words: God DOES have mercy on us, sinners as we all are, because we are known and loved with a fierce, unending love that is beyond our imagination.

We are all naked before God. Yet God is with us, loving us, knowing us in all our victories as well as in our darkest, meanest actions. God is with us, loving us, from our first breath to our last. God’s hand is upon us, pressing upon us and at the same time bearing us up with a love that cannot be denied, not even by sin or by death.

(This was first publish on the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 18, 2015.)

Photo: Adam and Eve eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, facade of Sainte Chappelle, Paris.