Prayer in the Wilderness: Rector’s Reflection for March 18 2022

Psalm 63:1-8

This coming Sunday’s Psalm portion we hear this coming weekend is a beautiful piece of devotional writing, one that one again focuses on the foundational characteristic of God (and one we are therefore called to emulate as children of God) being chesed, or loving-kindness, giving oneself fully, with love, mercy, and compassion.

The psalm offers a vivid admission of vulnerability but also the loving trustworthiness of God. The first 8 verses of this psalm work both as a thanksgiving and as a plea for intercession. You could summarize it as three emotional and spiritual responses: desire--“I want and need you” (v. 1-2); worship— “I praise you” (v. 3-5), and confidence— “I trust you to protect me (v. 6-8).” The most important descriptors used for our relationship with the Almighty are a hunger and thirst for God, one that God completely satisfies.

At the center of the verses we see, we move from the metaphor of thirst to hunger, and we suddenly are no longer in the sanctuary but in the humble home, concentrating upon God as we lie awake in bed and as we wander about the house in the middle of the night. Thus worship is not merely tied to a particular time or place (10:30 on a Sunday morning, for instance) but to the commonplace moments in our lives—every activity is an opportunity to praise God, an outlook in which Brother Lawrence was a famous exemplar. The faithful life is described as one of hungering and thirsting for God – and always finding satisfaction and abundance, even feasting on God’s provision and presence. For while we are hungering and thirsting for God, yet still we are held tenderly in the palm of God’s hand.

Sounds good, right? But if we know what we don’t see, Psalm 63 becomes even more of a comfort to us where we are right now. The superscription for this psalm claims that it was written by King David in the Judean wilderness. David was on the run—because his son Absalom had staged a coup and rather than strike down his son, he and his followers had fled, as described in 2 Kings 15. The three omitted verses ask God to powerfully protect the king from those who seek his life.

Most of us may not be dealing betrayal of the level of Absalom against his father. But we certainly should all be able to relate to the disorientation and prolonged anxiety of being in the wilderness, and of feeling a significant amount of vulnerability and lack of control as we deal with war, division, and pandemic.

How would it change our perspective as we continue to navigate this wilderness if we took seriously the reality that God is always with us, and that we can use every moment to praise and worship God, to dedicate each moment—even the pandemic ones—to God? When we wake up in the night, to practice breath prayer—such as the Jesus Prayer, which can remind us to lean into the feel of God’s hand beneath us. Especially for Lent, the Jesus Prayer works:

(inhale) Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

(exhale) Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Or, the beginning of the 23rd Psalm:

(inhale) God is my shepherd,

(exhale) Therefore I lack nothing.

Or this simple focus on the physical breath:

(inhale) I breathe in love.

(exhale) I breathe out peace.

As we continue through this season of Lent and beyond, I want to encourage you to lean into the knowledge that God is filled with lovingkindness and is always alongside us. And perhaps you could try using a breath prayer. And make time for worship and devotion, mindfully, each and every day.

Image: "Woman Lying Awake in Bed,"1635-1640 and "Young Woman Sleeping," Rembrandt, both from the British Museum.

Filling the Gaps: Speaking to the Soul, July 15, 2021

A few years ago, my daughter Katie and I traveled to the Catalan region of Spain with my dear friends Joe and Joanie, her godparents, as a gift from them for her graduation We spent most of our time in Barcelona, but we also took a day trip to Girona and Figueres.

Girona, in particular, was fascinating. Founded in 79 AD, it had been defended (and conquered) repeatedly due to its strategic location along major thoroughfares in the Roman, Moorish, and Holy Roman Empires and beyond. Walls thus became very important in keeping the town safe, and there were a series of walls built throughout the centuries as the town needed to expand its footprint as it grew. Walking along its cobbled streets, which were themselves works of art, you could see walls that were 1500 years old. They were a beloved reminder to the people of this town of their resilience.

In some places, gaps were visible between the stones. In some of the bigger ones, artists created small figurines like the one above-- carved like an atlas (a support column carved in the shape of a man common in Greco-Roman architecture) in a charming show of whimsy. This atlas appeared as though he was trying to resume his position holding up the wall above him. And yet he was only about 6 inches high, in the midst of a wall that soared twenty feet high or more. But what we noticed was how he was perfectly positioned for the gap he was in, symbolizing resilience and initiative.

By the 12th century, Girona had attracted a thriving Jewish population, who lived in a segregated part of the town, as was common. Our guide took us to a former residence there, and as she spoke, we noticed another niche in the doorway just higher than our guide's head. This was the slot carved into the stone where the mezuzah had been. A mezuzah is a container holding a tiny piece of parchment that contains the prayer known as Shema Yisrael from the Book of Deuteronomy. Jewish people touch the mezuzah and the Torah portion within when entering the doorway as a way of remembering their adherence to the commandment to worship God as One. The guide explained the mezuzahs throughout the quarter had been ruthlessly removed when the Jews were forced to convert or be exiled in 1492. Thus, this niche was noteworthy by its emptiness, reminding us of people who HAD lived here, but who were ultimately unwelcome. And although recently, a few Jews have returned to the town, their presence will forever be changed within that community, but they look forward to the future.

When we entered the Old Town square, we had much to think about, and as we came through the dividing wall, I happened to look up and saw a surprise. A flowing vine had established itself between the minutest of crevices in the doorway casing, and protruded out about a foot, flaunting one lone flower at its end that swayed and danced in the breeze. As tight as the stone work was, that vine and the life it represented was determined to find a way, and find a way it did.

Thus, we had seen three kinds of gaps: one that was the better for being joyfully and playfully filled; one that had once been filled but now testified to and lamented an absence; and one that made visible a gap and an opportunity for growth that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Since this pandemic began, and as it continues, sometimes all we can see is the gaps. Other times, we walk right past them without noticing. I want to suggest to you that, especially during these last 18 months, we have been presented with all three of these kinds of gaps in our parishes, and, frankly, in every area of our lives, if we think about it.

Where have you filled some gaps in your life with something playful or joyful, something meant to bring a smile to the faces of those who come after you? (And if you haven't, it's never too late to start or too small a thing to make a difference.)

Where have you mourned a new gap in your life? Perhaps it was the loss of being able to be with friends and family; perhaps it is even the loss of a loved one who has died. Perhaps it was a job. Perhaps it is suddenly being able to worship only online, and the continued reminder of how much you miss being in person with friends and family. How have you sought to acknowledge that gap, honor it, and open yourself to the possibility of hope and comfort?

Where have you found new opportunities in your life for growth and change, new opportunities to lend a hand and help others? Where have you sought new life, new habits, new flourishing in your spiritual practices? There are unseen opportunities all around us.

Even in the midst of uncertainty, and change, and absence, there are all opportunities for reflection, for growth, for action as well. We have the magnificent opportunity to grow together as a community in Christ, stronger than before-- if we are all eager to be mindful of the gaps and seek to fill them. There are new needs that this pandemic has exposed, and new ways of being the Church and disciples in the world for which the world is crying out. And it all starts with each and every one of us seeing --and seizing-- the new niches we can fill for the glory of God, for the love of neighbor, and for the testimony to the love of Christ and his gospel of love in a hurting world.

Faithful disciples are called to proclaim a gospel of hope and of faithfulness, and that is more needed now than ever. How can you seek out new ways to fill the gaps, and make your parish, and her mission beyond her walls, stronger than ever?

This was published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 15, 2021.

Reawakening to Amazement: Sermon for the 4th Sunday After Epiphany B and Rector's Report for 2020

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. 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.

~~~~~~~~~~

In 2020 we have endured terrible losses, beloved members who have passed away, the fear of pandemic hounding our every step if we are wise. We are fortunate indeed that we have an understanding of faith which is grounded on the words “Love thy neighbor” as much as “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” so we have made willing sacrifices of our fellowship so that there WILL be a fellowship awaiting our return on the other side of this pandemic. Infection rates and the weather allowed us only a couple of outdoor Eucharists in the fall—but we know there will be more chances.

Every time I speak into a red dot in a tiny black box, I think about how much I miss you all. I miss the choir. I miss the altar guild. I miss Eucharist. But love calls us to place others’ welfare ahead of our own preferences.

While we long to return safely to worship in person, we have adapted as we can to continue offering worship, albeit online. I offer my extreme thanks to those who had the foresight to support this parish in planning for an eventual lockdown—we were not caught flat footed when it came. One of the unintended benefits of this technology has been to expand our evangelism to the outside world.

Just as with our Ashes to Go offering for the last two years, we have been able to worship with people who never might have through the doors into an actual church. We actually have new families joining the parish who have never worshiped inside our doors. We are now reaching out even all over the US who join us in worship, continuing the kind of reaching out to people where they are that Jesus demonstrated in the last few weeks’ gospels.

We offer some sort of programming every day of the week, circumstances permitting, except for Mondays and Thursdays, with Compline and Story Time being broadcast live twice during the week. I am indebted to Loretta Go and Gina Slobodzian for their willingness and their radiant presence as they serve as leaders of Compline.

We have managed to do this in an extremely frugal manner with the support of the diocese and the vestry—and Bill Scoopmire basically clipping coupons. If you pay attention, you can see new features every week, and those features are truly amazing. Where we have had to compromise, we thank you for understanding why that compromise was necessary. We can now broadcast live on Facebook, on St. Martin’s YouTube channel, and on our website, all at once.

I thank each one of you who have shared your appreciation with me or with the broadcast team for the time, study, and effort that goes into our broadcasts every week. Because our system is one that pulls from a lot of services and software packages, I am grateful for those who encourage us each week and whose comments lift us up—the Drakes who are still ushering, Kim Montgomery who is always seeking to help people when they have questions. I especially thank the broadcast team of Bill Scoopmire, Chris Marsh, Jim Fischer, and Scott Scoopmire, who handle so much with grace and a generous application of their time and talent. I am awed by the creativity and innovation of Denise Marsh, and all our parish musicians, who have found safe ways to continue to offer beautiful music for our worship.

In autumn, Bishop Johnson required each parish to form a Regathering Committee, and ours has met every other week and been a great support as we have continually adapted our plans to ever-changing circumstances—I think we might now be on version 9 of our COVID worship plan. My thanks to Tom Allen, Chelsea Brewer, Laura Limbaugh, and Chris Marsh for your dedication to this committee.

Thanks to the Committee and favorable conditions, we were able to have our first pilgrimage experience on Christmas Eve afternoon, in which small groups of parishioners could come, meditate while listening to fabulous Christmas music, and be anointed and receive communion from the reserved sacrament. We even had a gorgeous Christmas tree, thanks to Mary Pomeroy and Judi Batch. We hope to be able to continue with this offering as possible.

I thank Kirt Beckman for helping us obtain a disinfecting mister, and to Lincoln Drake and Tom Warrington especially for tending to the daily checking, disinfecting, and maintenance of the physical plant. Lincoln Drake’s devotion and leadership has saved this parish countless headaches and thousands of dollars—and we owe him all a huge debt of gratitude.

In October we lost a staff member with the resignation of Wendy Sain, and I thank Page, Denise, and Janet for working to help carry the load, especially in bulletins and communications. We are understaffed, but blessed with the talents and energy of these amazing women. When we finally managed to launch our new website, we received immediate benefits in its flexibility and ability to integrate with video—down to making this meeting much more possible than we ever could have experienced before. My thanks go out to Hope Jernigan for her design and redesign of the website once COVID struck, and to my son, our webmaster, Scott Scoopmire, who set up the members-only section and the ability to stream our services on the website.

We began the year with plans to ordain a new bishop with a wonderful diocese-wide celebration: COVID had other plans. Nonetheless, Bishop Smith was able to retire a few weeks after his planned date, and Bishop Johnson was finally formally ordained a bishop in the summer. More cause for amazement, and we had our first episcopal visit in October.

October was also supposed to be celebration of new ministry after I was formally called as St. Martin’s fourth rector, but a need for Bill and I to quarantine postponed that. I am your rector, and I have asked the bishop’s office if we can wait to formally celebrate that until we are able to meet again in person, perhaps this coming fall.

I am also grateful for the creativity and initiative you all have shown in maintaining our presence in the community in a time of lockdown. I am grateful to the Hankemeyers, the Drakes, and other members of the Lunch Bunch for delivering meals to hospital staff all around our parish when COVID first bit, and I am grateful for the outreach committee still attempting to maintain our holiday drives for Circle of Concern and Episcopal City Mission. I am grateful to John Lange and the Garden Committee for their steadfast planning and devotion in still eliciting a bountiful harvest from our garden for the assistance of those in need.

The guiding light who continues to make sure our children are engaged in formation is Sherrie Algren, who has made packets each month for the littlest members of our parish, for which our kids are truly grateful. I am also thankful for those who have met for our Lectionary Bible Study on Tuesdays. And I would like to see much more adult formation become a priority in this parish.

One financial picture starts with an amazing thing indeed: under some incredibly devoted leadership of Steve Brunkhorst, Page Andersen, Bob Ecker, Robin Ragsdale, John Lange, the late Wayne Peters, Bob Pomeroy, Barb Hankemeyer, Lincoln Drake, we completed our first capital campaign in 22 years as part of placing ourselves on a more secure financial footing. And we did this is a time of pandemic. Many thanks go out to each of you who have committed to this campaign—and to those who have already sent in contribution. I remind you that this is a three year campaign. So if you have yet to make or add to a pledge, it is NEVER too late.

Our stewardship campaign was completely conducted via email and mail due to the pandemic, under the oversight of myself with vestry support. The challenges of nor meting every week have meant that the stewardship campaign is still awaiting pledges from a sizeable number of households. Bob Ecker has done an outstanding job as our treasurer these last two years, and Page Andersen has turned over every federal rock she could find to secure PPP loans to help cushion the sustained economic shock of the COVID crisis that we endured. We have ended with a deficit smaller than we anticipated purely through their creativity and through the engagement already of capital campaign funds for capital improvements.

But the only good deficit is NO deficit. There is no deficit of fellowship here. There is no deficit of spirituality and faith here. There must be no deficit in our willingness to not just balance our budget but enable it to grow in discipleship areas that have been previously pruned back too far.

This has reminded us that stewardship is not an unpleasant task to be confined to a brief season, but is instead a year-round attitude of thankfulness, generosity, and courage that calls us to a frank assessment of how much St. Martin’s means in our lives throughout the year. Financially, we still labor under a deficit. And this simply must end. It is in our power to increase our revenue—there is no more cutting to be made. We are understaffed, overworked, and the deficit prevents us from being as nimble as we need to be, as this time of crisis has driven home.

In the last six years, this parish has gone from having four part- and full-time clergy to one. Janet Theiss is both a parish administrator, book-keeper, and woman of all trades, and we would be truly lost without her. Denise Marsh is so talented I believe she could make stones sing and woodpeckers play percussion. They both deserve our thanks—and our financial support to be able to do their jobs right.

There are so many things we should be able to do—send mailed Beacons once a month to parishioners who are technologically challenged, for instance-- but we simply lack the hands and hours to do these things. We can do this. And we must.

Too many people have been forecasting the death of the big-C Church for years in this country and throughout the West. As we hear in our gospel today, Jesus brings a new message of love and healing—and the people who witness it are astonished. Here was some good news they had never heard before.

The world right now is as hungry for this gospel as those townspeople in Capernaum were on that day 2000 years ago. And Jesus has placed this beautiful life-giving work into our hands. How can we NOT take it up with joy and gladness? We start by paying attention to the signs of beauty, wonder, healing, and rebirth all around us. We continue by being brave enough to be amazed, and overflow with that amazement so that we share this treasure with all those around us. It is then that devotion begins.

In her poem, “Mysteries, Yes,” Mary Oliver writes,

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.



We are called to love. To love boldly, profoundly, holding nothing back. This is the action Jesus sets apart as the sign of discipleship in his teachings. When we love each other, we truly live as God commands us to live, fully and radically alive. And they—the world— will know we are Christians by our love. And that love is our strength, the glue that holds our union together, despite this time of isolation, political unrest, and uncertainty. It is that love that makes us a people equipped for a time such as this. Attentive, amazed, and devoted to God’s ministry with all that we have.

Amen.

Preached at the 9:00 am online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church before the 2021 Annual Meeting.

Readings:

• Deuteronomy 18:15-20
• 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
• Mark 1:21-28
• Psalm 111

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+

Embodied Worship: Speaking to the Soul, August 20, 2020

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”—Romans 12:1-2


Chapter 12 of Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with a series of exhortations based upon the points Paul has made in chapters 1-11.

Paul begins by urging us to present our bodies as a sacrifice—a living sacrifice, an offering not made in a single moment to be burned upon an altar, but an ongoing offering of all that we are from that moment forward, an offering of our time and potential and talent to be put to the use of the kingdom of God for the life of the world.

Through our faith in Christ, we are called to transform our thinking and our way of life, so that what is pleasing to God is more important to us than the values of this world. Too often, we think of worship as a set-apart few moments in our busy lives, a respite from our ongoing engagement with the world. That is exactly what Paul calls us to reconsider. Instead, by unifying our whole selves with Christ, in aligning ourselves with his example of how to live a fully human, fully devoted life, our entire life becomes worship and honor and praise to God.

Our bodies and the way we use them and where we place them are a living witness to God and our understanding of God. We offer our entire self to God—all of us—as a “living sacrifice,” and that in itself is indeed counter to the norms and standards of the world. This is not a sacrifice of dead animals, as was common during biblical times. This is a “living” sacrifice, and of course sacrifice means both “to make holy” and “to give something up.” From the time we give ourselves to God, our lives change by this very real commitment. But what do we give up? Only that which would not be “good and acceptable and perfect (v.2).” As the body of Christ, our community is described by Paul as an alternative to the world, not conforming to it.

It was not too long into this pandemic that some Christians here in the US began to complain about the closing of in-person services at their churches, and some went so far as to claim that government mandates to limit gatherings of people infringed upon their freedom to worship. Yet if we take seriously what Paul is saying here, we are assured that worship is not just bound up in rites, no matter how beautiful; or communal singing of praise songs, no matter how uplifting; or even in sermons, no matter how illuminating. Of course worship online can feel isolating, but it also can be a powerful tool of evangelism. So long as people of faith set their hearts and minds on living a life dedicated to following the Way of Jesus in the mundane moments of our lives, true worship can never be halted.

When we worship, we unite the bodily and the spiritual planes of our existence. As members of faith communities, we devote precious time from our lives within the liturgy, and even in this time of online worship we nonetheless form communities online with the insistence that the liturgy can only exist with the work of the people. That is literally what the word “liturgy” means- the work of the people. It’s not a show or a performance, but a group endeavor and offering. This is why the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer insist on the active participation of the laity in the worship service- as readers, as lay Eucharistic ministers, as leaders of the prayers, as acolytes, and so on—and they are to be represented at the altar, along with deacons and of course priests and bishops. But the goal of worship is not to check off a box within the week’s activities. The goal of worship is to transform the way we live the rest of the week so that, in the words of a hymn of my childhood, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”

Beyond the shelter of the doors of the church, worship as daily living is a generous, mindful sacrifice, a worthy response to the grace of a God who offers us all that we are in the first place. Our lives, from our impulses to our actions, become a fully-realized testimony to the ethic of compassion and healing which lies at the heart of Jesus’s message. This offering of embodied worship is more precious and costly, as that way of being is lived out as a quiet yet forceful testimony before the sight and judgment of those unfamiliar with the beauty and value of living a life dedicated to something greater than themselves.

How can you live more deeply into the embodied worship to which Christ calls you today?

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for August 20, 2020, as well as as the Rector's Reflection in the Beacon for the week of August 16-23, 2020.