Prayer , day 2914: 2nd Sunday after Epiphany

Almighty One,

You have searched us out and known us,
and nonetheless loved us as your very own,
and the miracle of your love leaves us breathless.

We marvel at your mercy and grace, Lord,
at your love which knit us together at our birth:
our spirits are restless until they abide in You.

With joy we gather at your altar today
answering your call, O Savior, and seeking your truth
that we may live into your dream for us,
united as your beloved children.

Help us to see your face, Lord Christ,
in each and every person,
your beauty in every blade of grass,
your voice in the wind stirring the winter fields.

Make us people of light and bearers of joy, O Holy One,
offering our gifts and our hope to the world in your Name,
singing your praises in tune with all creation.

Fill us with a discerning spirit, Beloved Jesus,
that we may be strengthened in faith,
and led by your wisdom and reconciliation
to the path of redemption and justice.

God of Abundance,
Prince of Peace,
Spirit of Compassion,
encompass us within your embrace,
and give your angels charge, we pray,
over those we remember before You.

Amen.

Prayer 2913: In union with all that is

God of the Sparrow,
God of the Infinite,
You hold all that is within your light.
All that you have made is beloved,
fashioned through your wisdom
by the skill of your hand.

May we be beautiful instruments in your hands, O God,
and may you draw from us
the melody of true justice, mercy, and peace,
fed by our communion within You.
May we ever seek your wisdom,
and humbly extol your mystery and infinite compassion
that we may seek these qualities within ourselves,
and witness to you in all our ways.

Your eye is upon us
like the bright eye of the nuthatch and wren,
who trust in your providence
and call us to do likewise.
You draw the universe together
through the force of attraction,
galaxies, nations, families
all drawn together by your call to love and communion.
and the gravity of the life we share.

Guide us now, O Light and Love Everlasting,
that we may walk in the way of peace and hope
standing alongside each other and all creation
in fellowship and affinity to your precepts.

Grant the shade of your peace
to all who seek You,
to all you who hunger for justice,
and to all who long for healing and rest,
especially those whom we now name.

Amen.

Prayer, Day 2912

Eternal Breath of Life,

inhabit our hearts and minds;
transform us by your grace
that we may witness to your beauty.

In wonder and awe,
we consider the works of your hands, O Creator,
and see with new eyes
the glory of your radiance in every living thing
formed by your wisdom.

Call us into renewed understanding
of your gospel message of love and compassion, O God,
and set us aglow by your Spirit of Healing.

Extend the canopy of your mercy
over all whose hope is in You, Beloved Lord,
as we pray in your Holy Name.


Amen.

Being United, Being Unified: Speaking to the Soul January 14. 2021

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

The church at Corinth involved a group of people who straddled the world between the Greek philosophy and the developing ethos of Christian morality. The question in the reading we will hear this Sunday from 1st Corinthians is addressed to those people who lived 2000 years ago, and yet cuts straight to the heart of one of the greatest challenges that face Christians today: can something be legal, and still be morally wrong? That’s the problem laid before us in the first verse of our reading. Anyone who has considered the issue of adultery will appreciate that the question’s answer must be, “yes.” Just because something does not violate the law does not mean that it is beneficial, to paraphrase verse twelve. The thirteenth verse extends this question further: do we let legal things- for instance alcohol, food, the search for pleasure of various types—dominate our lives?

The struggle to be unified, to be willing to consider others’ needs alongside your own and uphold the virtue of the common good within the Corinthian church is a struggle that rends American society right now, as recent events have shown. Paul reminds the individuals who make up the church at Corinth that they are no longer simply individuals; they are a body, the Body of Christ. Some members of the Corinthian church used a legalistic argument to continue to visit cult prostitutes, arguing something like: if one no longer believes in the gods the prostitutes serve, one is not engaging in idol worship even in visiting a temple prostitute.

Think this doesn’t apply to us? Anyone who has struggled over what to do with a found wallet has dealt with much the same dilemma, or the Christian employers who rationalizes paying his employees as little as possible. It comes down to this: just because you CAN doesn’t mean you should. All children of alcoholics have to decide if they are going to be able to control what happens after they take that first drink, and all people who have found themselves imbibing too much have to evaluate to see if they should continue drinking.

For months, pleas have gone out to wear a mask during the COVID19 pandemic, but some spurn such appeals as limits on their personal freedom rather than seeing them as a simple way to express concern for those around them. Politicians accept gifts from lobbyists and then vote in favor of lobbyist concerns even if they are against constituents’ interests, and when challenged, point to the fact that such behavior is not against the law—even as it violates the spirit of actually being a “representative” for one’s constituents. As we have heard in the last week, calls for “unity” that lack both accountability repentance for previous divisiveness smacks of gaslighting, not of justice or reconciliation. Being one body means actually feeling others’ pain as our own, and prioritizing an outward- oriented concern for the common good, even if it costs us something to alleviate a wrong.

As Christians living in 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 a post-modern capitalist society, based as it is on a heartless calculus of a few “winners” and a large pool of “losers.” Paul is reminding us that being a Christian involves answering to a higher standard. What is allowed is not always for the good, and that certainly applies to matters of law and economics. Sometimes it feels like this needs to be engraved over every legislative chamber, courtroom, and voting booth in the land. The battle between what we are able to do and what we should do arises from the fact that law and morality have never fully overlapped.

Our reading from 1st Corinthians specifically deals with an embodied morality, particularly in matters of sexuality in a specific cultural context. We live in a society that at once worships and vilifies all matters pertaining to the body. Ultimately, however, the point Paul makes is not denigrating the world of the flesh. Instead, he is making the point that it is through the body that we are united with Christ- not just metaphorically. Being united with Christ also unifies us with each other, as members of the body of Christ. Further, Christ did not merely clothe himself in a human body, but he became God incarnate. He did not masquerade as a human body- Christ HAD a human body, and through that experience in that body Christ lived, loved, suffered, and died.

As Christians, we have to be aware that what we do with our bodies and our actions through those bodies matters, not just to ourselves, but to those who are joined with us in the body of Christ. What we do reflects upon all who share our affiliation as Christians. Does what we do increase love, or does it increase division? This is a vital question for us today.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 14, 2021.

This was written as President Donald J. Trump was impeached for the second time in his term in office for incitement of the rebellion of January 6, 2021.

Prayer, day 2908

Loving One, we ask that your kingdom come on Earth,

and peace and equity reign throughout this land and all lands.

Help us to lay willing hands to the plow of justice
as we seek to turn the soil of suffering into a field of hope.
Help us to plant seeds of compassion with each step,
and make our hearts the fertile ground
to bring the common good to life.
Help us to tend
the tender shoots of faith in You and in each other
to create a verdant field of witness
to the love we bear each other without distinction.
And lift up those who struggle,
comfort those who mourn,
soothe those who are anxious.

Amen.

Tearing Back the Heavens: Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord

As I began to ponder these readings at the start of 2021 and the start of this week, there were two things that my mind associated with these passages. One was Call the Midwife, the wonderful British series on Netflix that my husband and I have become absolutely besotted with during the COVID19 pandemic. The other is a book that I began reading last week called The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, a series of essays edited by Anglican priest/scientist John Polkinghorne.

The former is a touching bit of entertainment. The latter is a work that combines theology and science in attempting to make sense of God’s ongoing work of creation in history. But they both share one common viewpoint: there is no new life without cost.

In Call the Midwife, young mothers in the postwar East End of London labor—usually with the assistance of midwives’ encouragement as their only pain relief, to bring their babies into the world—a world that is filled often with poverty and misery as well as the strength of the human spirit. As I learned when I became a mother, even with all the advantages of modern medicine, there is a real reason why they call childbirth “labor.” And as I learned in the years afterward, all of parenting should rightly be called “labor,” too. The labor that brings life new life into being is not simply a static moment in time, nor does it occur without pain and suffering as well as joy and love. All is bound up together, and is ongoing.

In The Work of Love, and in the work of W. H. Vanstone, whose writing inspired the essays within, multiple writers attempt to illuminate the ways in which science and theology shape our understanding of a God who is ever-creating, ever engaged with the world that was and is and is to come. As organisms evolve, their evolution cannot be explained by natural laws or selection alone, for, as anyone who ever watched the movie Jurassic Park knows, randomness is also shot through all creation, and some may attribute that randomness to God.

Science aligns with scripture in revealing to us a dynamic picture of a world involved in continuous and incessant change. Creation—the creation of new life—is not limited to a single moment in time, but is ongoing—as our friends in New Zealand insist in their prayer to God who IS CREATING the heavens and the Earth. God's action as Creator is both past and present as well as future: it is continuous. The scientific perspective of a cosmos, and in particular that of the biological world, as developing continuously in time. So it is in nature, and so it is within us, God IS creating ever anew within us, and asking us to be partners in that creation is one of God’s greatest compliments to us.

And any time there is change, any time there is transformation, there can also be resistance. Thus I and all of us were brought up short by the events of Wednesday in our nation’s capitol. We witnessed the forces of resistance to change, specifically the forces who cling to notions of superiority based on race and privilege, abandon their claims to lawfulness and order and instead engage in destruction, violence, and subversion.

I went from contemplating the beauty of the opening words of Genesis to seeing the ugliest impulses generated in our political life play out before my horrified eyes. Unbidden, the opening words of Psalm 130 echoed through my head and heart as I watched the chaos in our national capitol unfold: “Out of the depths have I called to You O Lord: Lord hear my voice!”

As I watched the forces of chaos, conspiracy, and division rampage through the halls of democracy, all I could think of was the depth of the waters into which our nation was treading. But sometimes profound shocks can lead to a shaking off of the willingness to accept the banal, everyday evils that creep and infiltrate into our moral framework.

Deep waters, which in Genesis are the canvas upon which creation springs forth, became a murky symbol of loss of control and danger. From my TV screen, I heard person after person, on both sides of the aisle as the events of the day spiraled more and more out of control, protest that “this is not who we are.”

But we can’t fool ourselves. When violence, intimidation and murder are elicited from a mob this easily, we must face the uncomfortable truth that, yes, somewhere within us, this IS who we are.

But it is NOT who we are called to be.

In our gospel reading, Jesus leads us by example into the waters of baptism to give us the courage and endurance to strain toward who we are called to be. In Christ, we are called to be one people, united by our common heritage as being beloved children of God. The waters of baptism are the waters of creation, of new life that is centered in hope, faith, and embracing the miracle of the panoply of life all around us. The waters of creation from which we all spring, the waters of baptism which are the gates to eternal life for which we all thirst, call us to resistance against the anarchy, intimidation, and mob rule that swirled violently around us, and continues to threaten unless confronted.

Repeatedly in so short a passage as we see in our gospel today, border after border, barrier after barrier will be ruptured, but ruptured not in the name of violence and oppression, but in the name of LOVE and true justice. The Jordan River itself is the boundary between the wilderness and the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey. It is on that border, that marginal space, that John the Baptist stands, enticing the people to repent and be baptized.

What’s fascinating to not here is that our reading today takes place beginning a mere four verses into Mark’s gospel. Jesus here is a cipher—John gets the more thorough treatment: we hear him described by how he dresses and what he does. What he says gets described, even if not quoted directly. Jesus gets no description at all. Jesus is silent. What Jesus sees is described, but that is only possible if someone else saw it too.

If Mark were a journalist, he wouldn’t be a very good one. If Mark were a cameraman for an NFL game, he would be fired, because his camera is on the tight end, dutifully blocking away on the end of the offensive line, instead of the quarterback, and the quarterback has just decided to keep the ball and call his own number.

So, if we are to learn anything about the incident, we have to focus on that tell-tale line: “He saw the heavens torn apart.” In the Jewish depiction of the world, the heavens weren’t just a place of fluffy clouds. The heavens set a cap on the universe. The barrier between heaven and earth was there for the protection of humanity, for the establishment of order.

In the Jewish scriptures, when the heavens were torn apart, as in Isaiah 64, it was so that God could come down-- and mixed into the hope for this was a healthy dose of fear. The Jewish cosmology perceived the sky as a dome that held back flood waters and the armies of heaven, when they were stirred. Tearing open that dome would destroy the order and categorical purity of the universe. Similarly, this was also akin to the curtain in the Temple that set apart the holy of holies to be torn in two, for it was said that to enter through the curtain was to enter back into the first day of creation—a place outside of time and space, before the universe itself was formed (taking us back to our first reading). This, of course, is related as happening after Jesus’s death on the cross.

For the heavens to be torn open, God would be tearing the roof off the universe for the purpose of coming down—a prospect that reorders the barricades of power in the human world as much as in heaven. And so what then traverses the gap in the dome?

The Holy Spirit. It “descends like a dove upon Jesus,” we are told. Those of us who are familiar with doves have seen their heavy bodies descend onto the lip of a birdbath or upon a branch—it’s like watching a heavy cargo helicopter touch down. But the Greek here doesn’t say the dove alights on Jesus—it implies that the Holy Spirit ENTERS into Jesus.

Thus we are reminded that the Incarnation represents a rupture, a breaking through of God’s power and glory and power into our walled off little reality. Here is the subversive heart of Christianity. The incarnation is not about order. The incarnation is about reordering, and about opening ourselves to the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit in all its power and unpredictability. The in-breaking of God destabilizes all our attempts to hold God at a distance, to control God to fit our own needs, to make God our wish-fulfilling servant rather than the other way around.

God’s in-breaking into the human experience as represented here today by Jesus's baptism reminds us that God's justice destabilizes notions of human justice and order. Jesus submits to baptism in the Jordan not because he needs to confess his sins but so that he can align fully in sympathy for and alongside us, frail fragile human beings who do need to confess our sins and repent.

Jesus’s ministry on earth is ever oriented away from pacification of evil or tamping down our proper response to injustice and oppression. No, far from it—Jesus comes to set the captives free, to proclaim liberty and favor tot the oppressed, to heal those suffering in body or spirit rather than casting them out or claiming that they deserve their fate as some sort of punishment. Jesus is a Man for Others. Jesus becomes flesh to show us how to orient our priorities toward the Other in our midst too—to really perceive their suffering, to respond with compassion and empathy, and to work for God’s justice to be implanted on earth. God's justice emerges as a call or a demand for responsibility to the Other.

For we are called as Christians to follow Jesus into the waters of baptism, and to ourselves be opened to the power of the Holy Spirit within our own lives. It’s an amazing journey parents commit their children to when they are baptized, and not to be taken lightly. It will require the remainder of our lives to be shaped by, and it’s one that lays out for us the requirements for living a fully human, fully God-directed life—a life of integrity. A life of resistance to evil. A life described in our baptismal covenant as requiring faith, a commitment to learning and intellectual rigor, a determination that the good of community and the protection of the vulnerable within that community is the greatest obligation of the command to love God.

It is seeking to serve Christ in all persons, especially those the world despises, and that we might be prone to despise ourselves. It is about understanding that when people riot in the name of “law and order,” what they are really trying to impose is peace without justice, a peace founded on injustice and the denial of rights to others in the name of protecting their own rights. What they are trying to impose is oppression and tyranny. It is a mockery of true justice, a demand for control that merely seeks to overpower and terrify rather than enlighten.

This is not a gospel passage for the faint-hearted. But neither are the times in which we live. Jesus is transformed by his experience in the Jordan to immediately get up and do battle with evil, for here is what the next 2 verses after our gospel reading say: And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now is not the time to embrace the powerful ongoing creation within us that began at our baptism. Now is the time to reject the demagoguery that seeks to conquer the power of the people through division in favor of remembering the shared sacrifice, integrity, justice and compassion that is the foundation of virtue, generosity, and decency.

Perhaps we can begin to instead embrace the transformative power of God to aid us and to enact creation within us in becoming a beloved community, guided by values of shared burdens, shared dreams, and shared sacrifice for the common good. The Spirit is calling us to reclaim our humanity—in the name of Jesus to stand for right, integrity and honor. Creation and its drive for life over the forces of death is washing over us anew. Let us wade into the waters of a new creation, and labor for a new birth of freedom and justice in our communities.

Amen.

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

Readings:

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Prayer 2907: The Baptism of Our Lord

Holy God,
who revealed your wisdom to us
through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ:
hear our prayers, we pray.
Help us to seek out
and welcome Christ into our hearts and minds.
Help us to follow the light of your love, O God,
to walk in holiness with each other.
Make us more faithful to your word,
and more true and loving to our brothers and sisters.
Forgive us
for the times we have failed to honor You and each other,
and set us back upon the solid ground of faith.
Thank You, O Spirit of Hope and Healing,
for bending near to us:
comfort these,
beloved and precious,
who turn to You in all their needs.


Amen.

Being Who We Are Called to Be: Speaking to the Soul, January 7, 2021

Genesis 1:1-5

Mark 1:4-11

Yesterday was a day when we teetered on the brink of deep waters—waters that, if they were to close over our heads, threaten to overwhelm us and all that we hold dear. Since there has already been too much of that kind of loss during these last nine months of pandemic, the events many of us watched unfold yesterday felt almost too intense to be borne. I went from working on exegesis on the readings assigned for this Sunday on the baptism of Jesus, to being glued to my television and twitter for much of the afternoon. I went from contemplating the beauty of the opening words of Genesis to seeing the ugliest impulses generated in our political life play out before my horrified eyes. Unbidden, the opening words of Psalm 130 echoed through my head and heart as I watched the chaos in our national capitol unfold: “Out of the depths have I called to You O Lord: Lord hear my voice!”

As I watched the forces of chaos, conspiracy, and division rampage through the halls of democracy, all I could think of was the depth of the waters into which our nation was treading. Sometimes, though, profound shocks can lead to a shaking off of the willingness to accept the banal, everyday evils that creep and infiltrate into our moral framework.

Deep waters, which in Genesis are the canvas upon which creation springs forth, became a murky symbol of loss of control and danger. From my TV screen, I heard person after person, on both sides of the aisle as the events of the day spiraled more and more out of control, protest that “this is not who we are.”

Such statements are more than just a bit of empty protest. When violence, intimidation and murder are elicited from a mob, we must face the uncomfortable truth that, yes, somewhere within us, this IS who we are. There is a size-able portion of our population that denies kinship with those who differ from them, who see difference as threat. The fact that this is done by people who also claim identity as Christian is a problem that affects all of us who profess to be disciples, because their very public identity becomes a net the watching world casts over all who proclaim the name of Jesus. The ties that bind become a snare that we strain against to escape.

But that admission is the necessary first step to repentance and redemption. We are too prone to lash out at perceived threats. Admitting that tendency can help us shed our old skin and embrace who we are called to be. And that is exactly the rebirth at the center of baptism— giving us the courage to let go of our instinctive defensiveness to embrace the new life we are called to in Christ.

In our gospel reading for Sunday, Jesus leads us by example into the waters of baptism to give us the courage and endurance to lean toward who we are called to be. In Christ, we are called to be one people, united by our common heritage as beloved children of God. The waters of baptism are waters of creation, of new life that is centered in hope, faith, and embracing the miracle of the panoply of life all around us. The waters of creation from which we are born, the waters of baptism which are the gates to eternal life and for which we thirst, call us to resist the anarchy, intimidation, and mob rule swirling violently around us yesterday.

Where can we find solid footing for what today may bring? Perhaps these events can finally drive us to reject demagoguery in favor of remembering the shared sacrifice, integrity, justice and compassion that is the foundation of virtue, generosity, and decency. Perhaps we can begin to instead embrace the transformative power of God to aid us in becoming a beloved community, guided by values of shared burdens, shared dreams, and shared sacrifice for the common good.

Almighty God,
we boldly proclaim your Holy Name
and lift our hearts to You in praise.

Living Savior,
our brother in baptism,
our model for holy living,
we embrace you with all our might:
lead us and guide us as your beloveds.

May we make straight the way of the Lord
by all we can contribute as your witnesses,
and represent the gospel of love and inclusion
in all we say and do today.

Draw us to enter joyfully, O Lord,
into the discipleship to which you lovingly call us
through the waters of baptism and beyond.

Purify our wills to reflect your lovingkindness
and help us turn aside from all evil,
embracing instead the pure truth
that calls us to be advocates for others,
walking in integrity and bold ministry in the world.

Spirit of the Living God,
fall afresh on us and bless our common life and labors today,
and let the peace and comfort of God
rest like a dove upon all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer. day 2903

Creator God,

we marvel at your wonders all around us.
This day is your gift to us:
guide our path through each hour,
that we may testify to your mercy and lovingkindness
and bear your love into the world.

Come, Precious Lord, Reconciler and Friend,
place your hand of wisdom upon us.
Let the works of our hands
be always works of our hearts,
that we may praise and glorify You with all we are.

Come, Fairest Jesus,
place your hand of compassion among us,
that we may forgive as we have been forgiven,
that we may honor your image in each other
and truly walk in unity, kinship, and love.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and place your hand of healing upon us,
especially all whose cares we place before you.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2902

Most Merciful God,

who calls us to mercy
even as we ourselves receive mercy,
we bow before You in humility and wonder
as we sing our your praise.

May your commandments
be a song in our hearts, centering us
on loving kindness,
doing good,
and walking humbly with You, Our God.

May we sing the melody of your love and faithfulness,
and draw the world to You
by our witness to your beauty, O Savior.

May we be brave enough
to pray for your Spirit to seize our hearts
and make them fully yours, O Lord,
that your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Pour out your blessing
like the healing balm of summer rain
on the dry ground of our thirsty spirits,
and grant your peace and comfort
to those whose hope is in You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2900- Feast of the Epiphany (transferred)

Lord Jesus Christ,

you reveal the light of God to all creation,
and draw hearts to worship God from all peoples:
accept the meditations of our hearts
as we rise and praise you this day.

May we each make manifest to others
the hope that is in the Name of the Lord
and the Love Incarnate that comes into the world
in your humble birth and life, O Christ.
May we embody your healing power
and seek to follow in your ways, O Savior,
and faithfully testify to your wisdom and grace
at work in ourselves, and in the world around us.
Help us to shine with a holy light
and place our gifts at your feet, Beloved Jesus,
that we may carry your reconciling love within us
for the life of the world
and the restoration of peace and justice.

Breath of Heaven, breathe upon us;
fill us with the Holy Spirit
and make us the face of Christ for those we meet.
We ask your blessing, comfort and presence
to rest upon upon these beloveds
whom we remember before You today.

Amen.

The Light That Illumines the Beginning: Sermon for Christmas Day, 2020

It has been a most unusual year. It is only fitting then, that we begin our Christmas Day worship with the start of the most unusual of the four gospels in the Christian scriptures. While only Matthew and Luke mention anything about Jesus’s birth, Mark begins with events within human history, even if Mark starts with Jesus already being grown. The author of John’s gospel, the last of the gospels to be written, decides to take us back much further in time--- in fact before the beginning of time itself, before human memory, to the start of creation. To the luminous, fertile darkness that was the womb of God’s creative energy and initiative.

For Christmas Day, after hearing the beautiful account of Jesus’s birth from the gospel of Luke last night, we instead hear the beginning of John’s gospel. John’s gospel begins with linking Jesus with the very act of creation. If in the beginning, God was creating, therefore, God was also redeeming.

And indeed, we put a lot of pressure on beginnings. Start out on the wrong path, and by the time you realize it, you are so far off course that the trip may be hopeless. At a beginning of a relationship, everything is fresh, and no one takes the regard of the other for granted, or lets their warts hang out for all to see or acts contemptuous. Consideration is at an all-time high. We treat each other gently, investing in listening, attentiveness, and generosity.

Christmas was placed in the Christian calendar centuries ago not in the spring, when it probably occurred, but just after the time of the Winter Solstice, which can occur anywhere from December 21 to December 23, whenever here in the Northern hemisphere the North Pole is tilted the furthest away from the sun, resulting in the longest night of the year.

On that day, we only have nine hours and 28 minutes of daylight. Once we round the corner of the solstice, we start tacking on minutes at both sunrise and sunset, and the days begin the creep ever longer. Already, here we are 4 days after the solstice this year, and we have added four minutes of daylight—two at sunrise, and two at sunset. The Solstice was celebrated before Christianity as the rebirth of the light—and our gospel we hear today firmly links Jesus with the birth of light as well.

Thus even the earth proclaims the birth of the light again, after months of shortening days. We Christians sometimes ignore the physical proclamation at this time of year of the return of light into our lives. Most of us, living in a post-modern world, have long ago lost touch with the vital importance of the turning of the seasons. We do not anxiously search the skies for signs of when to plant, when to harvest.

But this year, we did have a wonderful excuse to look to the skies during this week leading up to Christmas—the much anticipated reappearance of the so-called “Christmas star” which is actually the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, two of the largest planets in our solar system. This sight appears ever 20 years, but for the first time in 800 years, this Great Conjunction happened very near the winter solstice—and Christmas. 

The last time this happened, Parisien artisans were building the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. We can imagine their awe as they looked up in the early hours of Christmas morning—and just for once, people all across North America stepped out together to look up at the sky in awe, and remember the story of another time that people saw this light blaze in the sky, and associated it with the birth of a baby who would grow to become the center of billions of people’s hopes and dreams.

Even today, people imagine that the “stars” are portents of events in their lives—even if those stars are comets, or, in this case, planets reflecting the light of the Sun back at us. This year, in the midst of this pandemic, we have been blessed with a reminder of the wonder of the coming of Jesus into the world right up in the sky above our heads. What is usually not even noticed has become a gateway to awe and wonder. And that is a beautiful metaphor for the birth of Jesus if ever there was one.

Now, misleadingly, this year’s “Christmas star” wasn’t in the east. Here in St. Louis it was actually in the southwest for us. Jupiter and Saturn’s conjunction, visible to the naked eye but even better with a pair of binoculars or a telescope, was a living reminder that there actually WAS a star that noticeably and suddenly “appeared” at the time of Christ’s birth. And if you missed seeing it, Jupiter and Saturn are still close enough that you will notice how together they make a brighter object in the sky than they ever could accomplish apart. Rather than making the appearance of the Christmas star LESS magical, our knowledge reminds us of the importance of how we as a community of faith can both magnify each others’ light, but also by our actions lead others to Christ, as humble as we are.

In a year in which we have been separated from the ones we love by the fear of this pandemic, that leading us from dwelling on our separation to our essential unity is a precious reminder, indeed, and much needed. But perhaps the next fact can provide some consolation about the powerlessness of physical distance to truly keep anyone separate. Because here is another fact about the so-called “closeness” of Jupiter and Saturn in the sky: they really aren’t close at all. It is only from our perspective that they appear to draw close.

In reality, Jupiter and Saturn are actually 456 million miles apart. That’s not exactly adjacent. The truth is, this celestial show only works if all THREE of our planets are in alignment. Earth, Jupiter and Saturn are lined up right now. The seeing of this celestial event only happens when we ourselves are in the correct place, with our faces turned toward the darkness, outward. And it is only by the gift of darkness that we can see this light. Darkness and light work together in partnership. During the day, the blazing of this planetary alignment is veiled from our eyes.

The first words of the Gospel of John are the same ones as begin the Bible in Genesis: “In the beginning…” This is deliberate—and also places layers of layers of meaning for our enlightenment. This is the beginning of the Gospel. It echoes the beginning of Genesis, which means “Beginning.” Yet this beginning in John 1 is BEFORE the beginning in Genesis, which does not appear in the prologue until verse 3. John’s beginning roots God’s word, which we understand as Jesus, as existing before creation and thus before the beginning of time.

There is no nativity story in John’s gospel filled with angels and shepherds and cattle. The Word of God, Jesus, does not even become flesh until our final verse, verse 14. Instead, there is a philosophical, mystical song of the Word being rooted not in human time and experience but before creation—indeed as the agent of creation. This Word is described as God’s partner in creation and is strongly associated with creation itself, especially bearing life and light into the universe, much as Wisdom was described in the book of Proverbs.

Some might argue that this gospel reading we hear takes us too far away from our focus on Bethlehem and a little baby born in the humblest of circumstances, lying in a manger surrounded by animals and shepherds. Calling Jesus “the Word of God” is so… impersonal. Dehumanized. And Christmas is the pre-eminent celebration of the incarnation—of God taking on human flesh. But John also refers to Jesus as “the light.” The light about which John the Baptist will testify and point toward, the same way that star we saw in the sky is described as leading shepherds and Wise men to the humble scene of a young family with a brand new baby.

I am convinced that we are being reminded about how our closeness, our love, the light we shine into the world as disciples of Jesus, has nothing to do with physical proximity. We ourselves can blaze with love, which is the true light of Christ, even while we stay socially distant—and indeed, that distancing provides us with the perspective to see how unified we really are. Here in the time of darkness, we celebrate a rekindling of light—the light of God. May we look with awe and wonder on the joy of the newborn Christ-child, the Son of God entering time, taking on human flesh, opening a new way for God to be revealed to us and to show us the way to live into our full potential as humans. For many of us, that is indeed the best beginning of them all.

Amen.

Preached at the online Morning Prayer service broadcast from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on Christmas Day at 10:30 am in time of pandemic.

Readings:

What Christmas Is All About- Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2020

It usually happened every year of my childhood at the end of November or the first week of December. No matter what else is going on in our lives, we kids would demand that nothing interfere with our ability to take part in this cherished ritual. I'm not talking about Black Friday -- I'm talking about the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which first aired in 1965, just months after my birth. As hard as it is for kids nowadays to believe, this cherished classic was broadcast one time only every year, and until the invention of the VCR that was the only time that you could see it. It was probably the best thing that Coca Cola ever sponsored, in my Pepsi-loving humble opinion.

It was also one of the friendliest and gentlest ways to remind people of the reason for this particular season. The opening scene shows Charlie Brown and Linus walking through town and toward a pond to go ice skating with their friends. Charlie Brown suddenly stops and leans against a snow covered wall, which was a common backdrop in the Charlie Brown comic strip for when Charlie Brown was having a philosophical conversation with Linus, who was always wise beyond his years. Charlie Brown stares off over the wall and says to his friend, “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. I just don't understand Christmas, I guess.”

And even all these years later, we know that Charlie Brown is not alone in sometimes feeling stressed, or let down, as much as filled with joy and anticipation during Christmas. In just the last few years, a tradition of blue Christmas services have sprung up mostly across the progressive end of the Christian spectrum to acknowledge and to make space for people who find Christmas to be an experience that can be a struggle as much as it can be a gift.

Charlie Brown's friend Lucy advises him that it might help him get in the Christmas spirit if he directs the Christmas play that the rest of the kids are putting on, even though Charlie Brown is more likely to get things wrong than right most of the time. And over the course of the show, we see that Charlie Brown knows what Christmas is not about: it's not about commercialism, or Christmas decoration contests, or asking for a bunch of gifts—not even real estate, which is what his friend Lucy wants every year. After Charlie Brown brings home a scraggly pitiful little Christmas tree to be the centerpiece of the play, only to be laughed at and mocked by the other kids, Linus steps in to remind everyone what Christmas is really all about.

Standing in the center of a single spotlight Linus recites from memory the King James version of the gospel we heard tonight from the second chapter of Luke, in all its simplicity and beauty. Linus then leaves the spotlight, walks over to Charlie Brown, and says “That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

With all the commercialization of Christmas that has gone on in the last century, especially since the invention of advertising, it's sometimes easy to forget that there's any sort of spiritual meaning of Christmas at all. Christmas has become a holiday that begins after Labor Day and fully occupies 25% of the year. . It’s about Santa Claus, and elves, eggnog, the smell of cinnamon everywhere whether you like it or not, and the mad frantic buying and wrapping and delivering of gifts. Christmas is about debating whether “Baby, It's Cold Outside” is playful or creepy; hearing Eartha Kitt coo at “Santa Baby,” or about whether Christmas itself crowds out other holidays of other faiths that happen to fall at this time of year.

Christmas has become a holiday that too often is severed from its religious anchor as being about the incarnation of Jesus through his mother Mary’s willing cooperation. Too many people can go all the way through Christmas season forgetting about the miracle that, as our reading from Isaiah reminds us, “a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; And he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

What lies underneath Linus’s gentle reminder to Charlie Brown and his friends is that Christmas is about reminding us that God is always active and engaged in the world. The sending of God's only son to live and heal and teach and care for us as one of us is itself a reminder that God always takes the initiative in reaching out to creation, and all our readings today reinforce this point. We do not approach God without God approaching us first.

Our reading from Isaiah reminds us that God brings about God's Kingdom of justice and righteousness -- this does not depend upon our own human abilities alone but trusts us enough to call for our discipleship in helping to bring it about, just as the incarnation could not have happened without Mary’s willingness to be the servant of the Lord. In Isaiah, the required human action comes in seeing: seeing a great light, which actually means seeing the world's cruelties and corruptions , and yet nonetheless insistently perceiving God at work within this world. Even in the smallest things.

Our psalm picks up this thread, observing and noting what God has done an is doing in the world --seeing God's works and blessings, ascribing and naming them specifically as being God’s gifts to us, and then being glad—or being grateful—for what God has done. Even more importantly, our Psalm reminds us that worship is over everything else a call to action.

One does not passively worship God by sitting in pews or by singing praise songs, no matter how catchy the tune. That’s entertainment. Worship goes beyond that—to carrying the meaning and glory God out into the world and making it visible for all to see in how each Christian live their lives.

God is working in the world—and thus this prophecy in Isaiah is as yet complety unfulfilled. Those who expected a great warrior king like the thrilling stories of David with his slingshot are going to be profoundly disappointed with the kind of King Jesus truly is—one who builds up rather than destroys, one who heals rather than wounds, one who comes not to overturn the Law, but to fulfill it, in Jesus’s own words.

This child who is born to us will grow to be a man who shows us what it is to be fully human—fully made in the image of God. One who will call us out of our own narrow view to a compassionate, passionate engagement with the world and especially with those who are suffering or oppressed in mind, body, or spirit.

Christmas is about hope. Christmas is about faith—faith in God and in each other. Christmas is about love. Love in action. Love found sleeping in a manger, leading us to the way of life we were meant to live from the beginning.

At the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas show, Linus wraps his special blanket around the poor pitiful little stick pretending to be a tree, and the other kids gather around it and decorate it. When they step back, it has been transformed from a scraggly stick to a beautiful, sparkling tree. the gift of love and care has taken something that was ragged and frail and turned it into a delight and a blessing. Just as Jesus taking on our flesh as a human who is also the son of God transforms us and challenges us to ourselves be a delight and a blessing to all whom we meet: all nations, all races, all creeds, all people.

That’s what Christmas is all about.

Amen.

Preached at the 8 pm Christmas Eve online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville on December 24, 2020 in Coronatide.

Readings:

Isaiah 9:2-7

Psalm 96

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

From Yes to Witness: Sermon for Advent 4B

The angel rode a rope of light down through the stars, and landed lighter than a dust mote right behind the old priest.

Gabriel, whose name means “God is my strength,” watches old Zechariah fussing about with a light in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, glides in behind him and down like a feather and promptly startles a year off the old priest’s life. The angel loomed up out of the shadows like a gargoyle for an instant, but then the radiance that rolled off Gabriel like as an afterglow from the heavenly courts lodged behind the old priest’s left eye and began to grow like a rising moon on the horizon.

The angel told the priest to not be afraid, calling him by name, Zachariah, as if that would reassure the old man that she was friendly, but you might as well tell someone to decide not to breathe. Gabriel relays the message, a prophecy about a child, complete with child’s name, and what the child will mean to the people of Israel. Now other people, when they’ve gotten the full treatment—spotted the wings, the glory, the rising light in the eye—they’ve gone straight to laughing, or singing, or both. Not Zechariah. Despite his fear, Zechariah doubts the words of Gabriel. In return, Gabriel gives Zechariah an affronted version of “Do you know who I am?’ and as a lesson, Zechariah is struck mute for nine months.

Six months later, Gabriel slides down that rope of light again, but this time to Galilee. The angel expects to see a slight young woman, this Mary, gown and hair making her seem larger than she is, near a locked garden to remind us of how pure she is. Gabriel touches down lightly, like a dancer, a dancer who spends most of her time in the air and not earth-bound.

Gabriel takes a step back at the determined light coming from Mary’s eyes as she looks up from her book. A stem of lilies appears in Gabriel’s hand—trumpets to announce that the walls of sin and death will fall before the power of Love Incarnate. Lilies offered-- offered and accepted, and at the moment Mary touches them they become brighter white, and a sweet scent twines itself around the room.

The angel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. Although she’s a very young woman, her response is interesting: she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else. Where are all those signs of “favor?” Is she rich, well-connected?

Yet just as with Zechariah, Gabriel assures her that she shouldn’t be afraid and addresses her by name. In place of being told her prayers are being answered, she is assured once again that she has the favor of God.

And so in these verses we hear in our gospel are the seeds of the so-called “Angelic Salutation,” the Ave Maria, or “Hail Mary:”

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners now,
And at the hour of our death. Amen.


And Mary considers this. That same light that filled Zechariah’s eye blooms within Mary’s dark gaze, and begins to glow.

But Gabriel explains to her exactly how it’s going to happen—that she will bear her own child. To give credence to this prediction, Gabriel references Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Where Zechariah scoffed and was made mute, Mary ponders, and gets the last word: Yes. At the moment Mary declares herself a servant of the Lord, violets spring up outside the window where angel and maiden meet.

You would think that she would be the one who would refuse to believe that she had found favor with God, given her lowly station as a probably barely-teenaged peasant girl living literally in the middle of nowhere. God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God.” As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, she is the supreme example of cooperation and collaboration with God and human free will.

This is an important point. Mary agrees to do this absolutely of her own volition—she had the ability to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.” Her choice. Her song. Calling us to our own witness.

And yet this week’s gospel reading leaves us hanging. Puzzlingly, in this year we don’t get the record of the longest conversation between two women in the entire New Testament—Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth, and Mary’s resulting prophetic shout of liberation, The Magnificat. Luckily, the Magnificat is today’s canticle.

It is clear the two prayers—the Hail Mary and the Magnificat—are meant to be considered together. At the Annunciation Mary says yes to God. In the Magnificat she explains why she said yes. She moves for yes to the angel, to joy and proclamation with Elizabeth. She says yes so God’s economy, God’s reign, God’s household, God’s justice can be brought to life and embodied amongst us, starting with Mary. Yes to love, yes to mercy, yes to restoration and stretching all the way to dusty roads running to and from Jerusalem and back again.

The Magnificat erupts from Mary’s throat as a song of joy and triumph the moment Elizabeth and Mary see each other. One young, one old, but these two women share the longest conversation between two women in the New Testament, reveling in a bond not just of kinship or shared expectancy, but of two people who know the power of God in their lives.

And Mary’s song moves from joy to power, from being full of grace to being full of fire. Mary goes from the Mother of God to God’s disciples with a full-throated roar that would make Elijah, Isaiah, or Jonah weep for envy. Mary creates a song so powerful that its singing has been banned on slave plantations, in India under the British raj. In Argentina during the reign of the dictator Pinochet, mothers of the disappeared were banned from singing the Magnificat as a protest against government terror on its own citizens.

The Magnificat is a threat to unjust regimes everywhere, for it clearly realigns the world and names the work of a God who is not waiting until tomorrow to act. Mary speaks with certainty from the other side of oppression. God HAS pulled down the corrupt mighty from their thrones. God HAS filled the bellies of the hungry. God HAS lifted up the lowly—starting with Mary herself. And God asks us, like Mary, to join in that work, and against injustice anywhere.

As a prophet, as a freedom fighter, Mary herself is suffused with light. After that assent to God’s holy messenger, with the acceptance of the offered lily, Mary is no mere vessel. She offers her very being to God—and to the raising of her son. She says yes, not because she expects that being “favored” bit to translate into being blessed by wealth or renown. She says yes, and then in the Magnificat waves the banner of true equality which is justice and God’s real reign set into motion.

Mary says yes, because she knows that when King David wanted to build a palace for God, David was also trying to domesticate God—to place God within a gilded cage, rather than in the human heart and as the center of the human community, where God longed to reign. With Mary’s yes, God is restored to live among us and within our hearts again. To live as one of us to show us that we can live by not the iron law of devouring each other but in compassion, amity and justice.

She says yes to show us the courage we are given when we say yes to God, when we consent to raise our field of vision from our own navels to the horizons of hope that is God’s invitation to live in a different better way than by our own blindness, brokenness, and prejudice. She says yes to encourage us all to allow the Son of God to grow. Within us, under our hearts, and to bear him forth into a world that STILL does not know the beauty of his gospel. We are all called to give birth to Christ in the world, and mother his gospel to those who need his good news the most.

Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice to say yes and to see what HAS already happened by the hand of God in our lives. It is up to us to choose to assent—or not. To lift our eyes from our own feet to the horizon of God’s grace that. is waiting to fill us up to overflowing as well.

Our choice is this: will we bear Christ into the world—or not? Do we want to unlock the chains of fear, hopelessness and distrust that bind us to the ways of fear, or do we want to be free-- Free to offer our opened spirits like a bowl to be filled with the promise of salvation, to respond in faith and courage to God’s plea to live not in wood or stone building where human hands can keep God safely locked away, but within our hearts?

How would it change our perspective and our lives to go from confining Jesus inside a box of our own making, and instead to make Mary’s song our own:

My soul overflows with the greatness of God,
My spirit sings unending praise to One Who Saves,
the One who lifts up the lowly servant
who dares to be the instrument of God Most High.
Surely, from now to time unending
All generations will see that I have been blessed.

What would it be like to allow the power of hope and assurance of God’s steadfast presence to make its home with our spirits? What could we do? What could prevail against us?

May we have the courage to say yes. Yes to bearing Jesus in our hearts, and in our lives, in our words, and in our deeds. Yes to our souls magnifying the greatness of our God in our life and in our work. Yes to making ourselves a true home and witness for God, forgiven, healed, and renewed.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service in Coronatide from St. Marin's Episcopal.  Church, Ellisville, MO. 

Readings:

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

Canticle 15

Prayer, day 2886: The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Almighty God, we sing your glory,
joining the joyful song of creation
as our souls sing out your greatness!
How beautiful upon the treetops
is the rising light of morning:
O God, you bless us beyond measure with beauty
and our hearts kneel before you in praise!

Give us your favor, O Redeemer,
in leading us to consent to your will in our lives,
that we may join our hands in unity
in the pursuit of justice and peace,
pulling down oppression from its throne,
filling the hungry with good things from the bounty we have.

Strengthen us to bear you into the world, Blessed Jesus,
as a mother carries her child
close to her heart.

Holy One, place the protection
of your mighty arm and heart
over us this day,
and guide us in paths of gentleness and compassion.
Stretch out the awning of your mercy, Beloved Savior,
over all who rest in your care.

Amen.