The Crooked Path of Trust: Speaking to the Soul for June 24, 2021

  

Isaiah 40:1-11

 

Today is the Nativity of John the Baptist. It’s an unusual feast day for many reasons. First of all, There are only three times when a saint’s birth date is celebrated -- besides the birth of Jesus himself, the Christian calendar celebrates the birth of the Virgin Mary, which is not discussed anywhere in scripture, and the birth of John the Baptist, which is. Further, the birth date of John the Baptist is dependent mathematically on two other feasts: Christmas, and the Annunciation. Because Mary is told that her kinswoman Elizabeth, John's mother, is already six months pregnant with John, John's birth is celebrated three months to the day after the feast of the Annunciation. And since John is born six months before Jesus, Christmas is now officially six months from today. For those of you who hate summer, which just now started, may this be a light of hope for you. You're welcome. 

 

The scriptures chosen for today all relate to the career of John the Baptist as a prophet and forerunner of Jesus the Messiah. We begin with the beautiful first eleven opening verses from Isaiah chapter 40, which includes the famous line that will be repeated in the gospel of Luke chapter 3: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” In the Hebrew imagination, wilderness and deserts are places of extreme stress, wild beasts, thirst, and chaos. It was a place where one could easily get lost. That's why the fact that the adult John the Baptist will spend so much time there makes him even more unusual of a person. 

 

In the most hostile of environments --wilderness and desert --the word of God comes to offer comfort, respite, and safety, despite Israel’s sinfulness and fault. It is in these most unlikely of places that God's comfort is offered and maintained. God’s comfort is a gift of grace in a time when all hope had been lost, when the fear of abandonment was seemingly permanent. Yet God’s promise remains true, and doesn’t depend upon human measurements of time to come to fulfillment.

As always, it is God who takes the initiative. At last, the light appears at the end of a long night. The Babylonian Exile, just like this ongoing pandemic, stripped the people of so much that mattered to them. Our own exile—from faith, from compassion, from dedication to community and true justice and equality—has also left us longing for meaning, for purpose. 

We think we can make our own pathways straight to success, to crushing our opponents. It’s part of the modern myth of independence that ignores how much we depend upon each other, and upon God. 

 

Yet our paths to God don’t have to be straight. It is often the most indirect, wandering stop-and start journeys that end up being the truest, because they don’t fool us into thinking that the life of abundance can actually be acquired. The broken road is often the road that leads us to God, because it strips away all our defenses and resistance to God.

The wilderness is no barrier to God-- God loves the wilderness just the way it is. God even loves the wilderness inside us, the one that often scares us, because God made us with the ability to appreciate the beauty of wild things and wild places. God is willing to spend a lot of time in the wilderness with us. It is us who want the wilderness leveled, not God.  Since when does God see the wilderness and respond with a construction crew and truck full of asphalt? God’s time is NOT our time, and God’s schedule is not our schedule. God likes to take the long way home, reminding us once again that God’s home is everywhere, wherever God is but not limited to one place.

 

John the Baptist’s life shows that the crooked path is also the path to true community, rejoicing in our interdependence. Where can you embrace the crooked path in your life today? 

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 24, 2021.

Peace, Be Still: Speaking to the Soul for June 17, 2021

Mark 4:35-41

Peace, be still.

It is the time of year that darkness descends like a curtain on the ground only reluctantly, when the long days stretch indolently like a satisfied cat. This is the time of year when the lure of the outdoors exercises a mesmerizing hold on those of us who love summer. As I sit outside among the ferns and hostas, you can almost watch new fiddleheads unroll frond by frond, like gears. The thrum of life rises up from the tree roots, a basso profundo droning song you can feel in your bones. Slow down. Pinpoint the moment when twilight descends to gloaming and then descends and kicks over into night.

Peace, be still.

I was sitting outside the other night, studying, until finally the lack of light here at Sewanee drove me inside. As I looked up from my text, and started to gather my things, I was stopped to see that fireflies were dancing around me under the broad oak that had been my place of respite in the summer heat. They were putting on a show just for me—and for the objects of their affection, of course. Their dance swirled on the current of these words as the Spirit breathed them across my skin:

Peace, be still.

This Sunday, Jesus will speak these words in response to the terror of his friends in a boat in a storm. His assurance stills the storm raging around them—and within their trembling hearts. Whether this day we encounter joy, memories of loss, the weight of tasks that seem daunting, or a crisis to prevail over, Jesus urges us to start by remembering that the most beautiful melody of accompaniment is that of our Beloved Jesus, his words a soothing caress and support for whatever we encounter.

Peace, be still.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 17, 2021.

Prayer 3060

In peace and gratitude,
we bow in prayer before our God,
and place ourselves within
the bounds of God's mercy.

Blessed Jesus,
You are God's honeyed Word made incarnate through
the loving gift of the Holy Spirit and Mary's assent:
guide us into the sweetness of life,
and may your teachings
ever be sweet upon our tongues and in our souls.
May we drink deeply from the well of your wisdom,
O Champion of the Oppressed,
O Light of All Seekers,
that we may repair the chasms within our communities
and seek new ways to dwell in communion with each other.

May we join to sing songs of hope
in unison with the heavenly host,
glorifying your Holy Name, O God Most High,
and be your healing hands to the hurting.
Come, Holy Spirit,
set our spirits afire with compassion,
and hold those for whom we pray
within the Heart of Hope.

Amen.

The Best Seed: Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6B

In the week that I have spent here on the Mountain at Sewanee, I've only had a few moments to walk among the trails that surround the domain. I’ve yet to get to their working farm, complete with chickens and goats, but that is on my list. But the forests here surround the School of Theology, which is on the periphery of campus.

These forests did not get here through human intervention (although they could certainly disappear that way). They got here through the processes of nature working as God created them. The seed falls to the ground, or even gets scattered by birds or deer. Those that fall where the conditions are right sprout. Some of those sprouts will get eaten, or fail to thrive, but that’s a pessimistic way to look at it.

Instead, we look at the forest, and we see the signs of God’s bounty and care for creation everywhere. And here’s a miracle: Each one of these trees started out as just a small seed! Some of them were here before we were born, and some of them will be here long after we are gone. 

Their growth is automatic—especially if we humans get out of the way. If we don’t try to “manage” the forest, or drive off the full range of creatures that keep a forest healthy, or pull out the herbicides and start blasting away at the plants that we term “weeds.” And our gospel today reminds us, that what one being sneers at as a weed, like the mustard seed, can be another being’s precious home, like those birds that gather in the branches after that mustard seed surprises everyone by becoming not just a bush, but a habitat.

Working in gardens all my life taught me one thing, though: If you like control, growing plants is NOT for you. There is way too much that can go wrong, even if you start from potted plants rather than from seed. The smallest thing can spell disaster as a plant moves from seed to maturity: too much rain. Too little rain. A late freeze. A marauding squirrel or grazing deer. Grubs. Mites. Moles, Gophers. Fungus. black rot. Drought. Hail. Even tornadoes.

That's why I admire the farmer in the first parable at the beginning of our gospel today. She tends to the parts that she can control, and she relaxes about the parts that she can't. She sows the seed, trusting that some of it at least will produce. And then she goes to sleep. That right there is a great big bit of wisdom: after you've done your work, take a nap.

But more importantly, she trusts God enough to let God do God’s miraculous magic that we can especially see all around us in creation. God makes the seeds sprout—not us. The fully grown wheat or the tree or the apple—it’s all hidden there, sleeping, waiting in potentiality in every seed that falls to the ground. Think of how miraculous—how gracious—that is!

Jesus tells us that the reign of God, and our role in it, is like this: God gives us the seed. Unless we scatter it, nothing will happen. So do it. Share the word of God in your words, yes, but especially in your actions—the hardest thing of all actually, because that requires that we LIVE by God’s values of love and faithfulness, and that means that it’s not just a matter of saying you’re a Christian—it’s a matter of living like Jesus, which is much harder.

Jesus gives us that seed to scatter. So that IS an important part of our role, and it often happens best when we are unaware that we are doing it—when people are watching us out in our daily lives.

But then, trust in the goodness and fertility of that seed and soil. Trust that God has the power to make that seed sprout and grow, and don’t worry too much about how it’s going to actually happen. You can’t manage the time, you can’t manage the season. No matter what, it’s not OUR timeline—we don’t have control over when the sprouting or the growing or the harvest time will come. As we’ve been through this time of pandemic, that’s an especially precious and important reminder, as we all grow impatient. We’ve learned to scatter seed in new ways here at St. Martin’s. Some of the best ways have been just by doing little things to show our love for others. Of course, there has been loss as well as growth. Some members have moved on. Some new people have come. So the seed keeps on growing wherever it will.

Yes, it’s important to do our part in scattering that seed. But Jesus tells this story of a bountiful harvest to a hungry people, and that is ABSOLUTELY good news. We know that the world around us is tired of the hothouse tomatoes that too much of modern Christianity offers them. They look so red and ripe—but they taste like cardboard. They don’t really nourish the longing within for the TASTE of goodness that comes from the Earth at God’s design.

But when the time of harvest comes, the people will be fed, and fed abundantly. For those who listened to Jesus’s story shouted from the boat on the sea, who KNEW what hunger was, who knew how unpredictable and marginal working the poor soil of Judea could be, Jesus’s words spun out a vision of hope and abundance that welled up joyously. For the struggling community for whom Mark’s gospel was written—small, persecuted, marginalized—they LONGED for the harvest that would signify God’s grace and abundance. And in our own time, right now, after months and months of fear and loss, aren’t we just as hungry for hope as they were?

God promises us the very best seed, asks us to scatter it, and then have faith and trust in the sprouting.

As I thought about this, I remembered, a charming little comedy that came out when I was a kid. It was called “Oh, God!” In the story, a supermarket manager named Larry, played by the musician John Denver, gets chosen by God, played by comedian George Burns, to spread a message of hope.

Larry is not a religious man, but God keeps gently appearing to him in various guises. And finally, although reluctant, he eventually does begin to share that God has spoken to him. Larry becomes the butt of jokes nationwide. The rush is on to disprove the story Larry tells. Theologians lock him in a room with a stack of questions in Aramaic—but God appears as room service and gives him the answers. Then, at God’s urging, Larry denounces a popular preacher as a fraud, and gets sued. In court, Larry attempts to prove the existence of God. Larry calls God to the witness stand, but nothing happens. Accused of pulling some kind of trick, Larry defends himself by arguing that, since everyone in court actually felt a bit of hope at the idea of God making an appearance, whether they could prove he appeared or not, that God deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Then God appears and takes the witness stand. He performs miracles—even disappearing right before everyone’s startled eyes. His voice delivers a final message: “It can work. If you find it hard to believe in Me, maybe it will help to know that I believe in you”

Later no proof of remains afterward of God’s being there.

Larry loses his job, and wonders what it all was for?

A few days later, he is driving down the street when he hears a pay phone ringing. He stops and gets out to answer it, and it’s God, suddenly standing right behind him dressed for a safari.

God models his safari outfit and does a turn. “How do you like it? I'm going on a trip to spend a little time with animals. I like animals, and sometimes I don't spend enough time with them.”

Larry sighs. “We failed, didn’t we?”

God acts shocked. “What are you talking? We did terrific! I gave a message of encouragement-- you passed it along. Now, we’ll see. You did good. We both did good. We’re covered!

Larry is still unsure. “Do you think anybody got the message?”

“You think we have enough apples in the world?” God asks

Larry is confused. “Apples?”

God nods. “We got all the apples we need. You’re Johnny Appleseed-- you drop a few seeds, and you move along. If the seeds are good, they take root. I gave you great seeds—the best!”

And then God reassures Larry once more, and disappears. Larry is left standing, smiling.

God has given us the best seed—we just have to trust enough in God to welcome that seed into our hearts and into our lives, and let it grow—to change us and make us bountiful in grace, in forgiveness, in love. Trust in the seed, and let the growing come naturally, but with hope and faith. Trust in God, knowing that God believes in us. And let the abundance sprout up within us.

Amen.

Preached for the 10:30 am online Eucharist from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, recorded and broadcast from the Chapel of the Apostles and forests of Sewanee, Tennessee.

Readings:

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Mark 4:26-34

Morning Prayer in Ordinary Time: Speaking to the Soul for June 10, 2021

An “Ordinary Monday”

is what the schedule read—
no bloodied saint to commemorate,
no special theme to be considered,
   no miracles to recount?

As if any day could be ordinary.

As if time were as green and long as
the season after Pentecost,
as it glissandos like a pennywhistle
   toward late November.

Nothing gold can stay,
the poet said. But it was certain
   he was no liturgist.
Nature’s first green goes brown
before this green season will sputter
like a guttering candle wick.

Here on the Mountain
the mockingbirds have been taught to sing
the name of God
as cooling rain slakes the thirsty ground:
   “Joyjoyjoyjoyjoy!”
uninterrupted by anything as prosaic
as Thunder--
who knows he can’t compete
with song such as this.

An ordinary day?
This is the day that

someone will learn that
the most beautiful word of all
   is “benign;”
and the baby with splinters in her knees
will pull herself up and
walk to cheers and applause like an Olympic gymnast.
This is the day that

someone’s journey to fame will end
in unexpected places--
   maybe even in Tucumcari--
and thirty years will spin out like gold,
well-lived, well-loved.
This is the day that

someone’s last breath
will give voice to ethereal voices
of loved ones long gone,
urging him forward,
and he will step into light,
   buoyant,
shedding the fear he’s trailed around his feet
like a forgotten shroud
to step into love eternal.
This is the day that

ashes will cradle a spark
and when uncovered
will set tinder-dry hills on fire-
   paradox,
renewing the forest.
This is the day that

friendships will flicker and dim through neglect,
and that “I love you” will present itself
in a dandelion bouquet fisted in toddler hands,
and a random kindness will
ricochet through six strangers,
   one to another.
This is the day that

someone will discover
that the God they have searched and longed for
during their brittle exile from mystery
is in the ragged gasp they draw as their head
   breaks the surface of awe,
grace in a shuddering gratitude
that floods into every cell.

No ordinary time
no ordinary gift
no ordinary breath
no ordinary blessing
   but extraordinary prayer,

which is every prayer.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 10, 2021.

Prayer 3051

God of Mercy,
we offer our hearts to You
in search of guidance in our waking, and
in praise of your vigilance during our rest.

May this day, O God,
be offered unto You and made holy
by all that we do as your children.
Where there is hatred,
may we carry the light of love into the darkest corners.
Where there is contempt,
let us embody compassion and loving-kindness.
Where there is neglect,
let us attend joyfully, to restore and reconcile.
Where there is suffering,
may we be strengthened by You to address it
and not count the cost to ourselves.
Where there is need,
let us answer it.

Where there is faith,
let us encourage it.
Where there is hope,
let us feed it.
Where there is love,
let us rejoice in it.

Beloved One,
Creator, Redeemer, Life-giver:
look tenderly over your children,
and fill us with the flame of wisdom
and the will to persevere in compassion.
Grant the grace of your comfort
to all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Greenwood and Not Losing Heart: Speaking to the Soul for June 3. 2021

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

The entire world has been hearing about the buried, hidden history of my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, this week. A century ago, one of the most self-sufficient, prosperous black communities in the United States was attacked by a white mob numbering perhaps a thousand, enabled and abetted by the police and the National Guard.

The pretext of the attack was the alleged assault of a white woman by a black man. Even though the authorities had doubts about the story from the beginning, the young man was arrested and held in jail. When word came that a white mob was coming to seize and lynch him, armed African Americans showed up, many of them veterans of World War II. A white member of the mob tried to seize a veteran’s gun, a shot rang out, and the rampage began. Machine gun fire raked the streets. Private biplanes dropped molotov cocktails on businesses and churches. The black-owned bank was looted. The black-owned Dreamland theatre was destroyed. Bodies were dumped into mass unmarked graves—or into the Arkansas River.

Many of those who survived were rounded up by the National Guard and held for days afterward, allowing whatever was of value to be pilfered. Afterward, insurance companies refused to honor claims, and the leaders of Tulsa rapidly rezoned Greenwood from residential to industrial, decreeing that all buildings must be made of brick.

You might think all of this would have destroyed the community, but just four years later, Greenwood was back. Buildings were rebuilt in the dead of night to evade the preposterous zoning requirements. Money was pooled and neighbors pitched-in. Greenwood became prosperous again, despite attempts to prevent its rebuilding.

Forty years after the Race Massacre had been scrubbed from the official histories, the push for gentrification and creation of the interstate highway system finally accomplished what rampaging mobs could not, and Greenwood – like so many minority communities around the United States—was taken by eminent domain as an interstate was routed around the white neighborhood and through Greenwood.

Greenwood lingered as a shadow of its former self when I first visited it as a young teenager.

My younger siblings had been blessed to have an amazing woman as their first-grade teacher at our elementary school in east Tulsa. Mrs. Ava Gibson was a slender, regal woman, a firm believer in the power of education to transform lives—one of the first African American teachers to be transferred into what was then a mostly white working-class neighborhood.

Our family adored her. Even though I didn’t get to have her as my teacher, she was available for any child at school. I remember one time I was having difficulty with some situation in my life and was sitting morosely, probably sniffling, on the curb outside the school by the parking lot, and she walked past me, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Don’t ever lose heart, now.” Those words stuck with me.

When Mrs. Gibson retired, she invited us to her home church, as we all celebrated her career and the impact she had on so many families on both sides of segregated Tulsa. Vernon Chapel AME Church was the only edifice left standing after the Massacre and destruction of 1921. And yet when we walked in, we were welcomed as if we had been attending this church our entire lives. The choir and band made the most joyful noise to the Lord I had ever heard in a place of worship. The pastor that day spoke of the incredible perseverance, dedication, and strength of will of Mrs. Gibson and her fellow congregants—and I am sure they all knew exactly what that meant in ways it would take us decades to discover. The Holy Spirit didn’t just visit that congregation on that warm late summer day—it practically busted out the windows and then dragged us all into the fellowship hall for a Sunday supper that could not be beat.

This Sunday’s epistle brought all those memories flooding back.

“Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

I suddenly remembered that reminder not to lose heart, even as the odds seemed great that I might do just that. I pictured Mrs. Gibson leading her charges single file through the halls at school—and never thinking about how far she had to travel to get to work each day, and how difficult and exhausting that had to be. I thought of her gorgeous brick church standing literally in the shadows of two highways, of the love of God that shone from her when she was teaching six-year-olds to love the liberating power of learning—and about how much we still have to fight to keep the full history of events like those in Slocum, Tulsa, East St. Louis, Chicago, Ocoee, Rosewood from being swept away or dismissed as “something that has nothing to do with today.”

Mrs. Gibson embodied grace, generosity, and endurance. She had to. And so did so many of the people who refused to be driven out of Greenwood, either in the 1920s or the 1970s. Her faith, her grace, and her dignity helped us all to aspire for lives that would lift us up and widen her horizons. May we all be so inspired, so led by the spirit, to likewise persevere in faith, and dedicate ourselves to repairing the breaches that still threaten us and our pursuit of liberty and justice for all, and the honoring of the dignity of all people. And never lose heart.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for June 3, 2021.

Prayer 3045: In continued remembrance of the Tulsa Race Massacre

In silent adoration,
we pray to You,
O Creator, O Reddemer, O Spirit of Truth,
and seek your guidance in our daily journey.

Author of Life,
inscribe your law of love within our hearts,
that we may be vessels of hope
and instruments of peace and reconciliation
in all we do today.

Merciful One,
you call us to justice
that flows like a river from our hearts:
may we confront the injustice we have inherited
with honesty and remorse,
and seek ways to restore
our relationships with our kindred.

Give us the will
to sacrifice and persevere in faith,
to build bridges among communities
and seek the common good for all.

Blessed Jesus, heal us of our fractured hearts,
that we may turn back to You rejoicing
and bring praise to your healing power in the world.

We lay our prayers before You,
O God of the Oppressed and Forsaken:
grant the blessing of your comfort
to all whom we lift before You.

Amen.

Prayer 3043: On the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre

God of Justice and Mercy,
we kneel before you in humble prayer
acknowledging our sins and divisions,
emptying ourselves of our pride
asking your aid as we seek your wisdom.

Give us the courage
to seek the truth where it is under assault,
and to seek to repair the breaches in our communities.
As children of truth,
may we acknowledge and repent
where we have profited from the lie,
and work to right the wrongs of our past
which have continued consequences today.

Holy One, we mourn for those
who lost their livelihoods and their lives
to the evil of racism, violence, fear, and envy.
We mourn for those who were forced into silence
by the demands of their tormentors
to preserve the edifice of power
founded upon the rock of exploitation and threat.

May we stand alongside the survivors
and work for true justice
as the foundation of peace and fellowship.
May we call for redress and reparation
to mend the fabric of community
and demand equity for the wronged.

Blessed Lord, give us the will
to put our shoulders to the wheel of unity
that is your vision for our lives together.
Help us to persevere
in the pursuit of righteousness and integrity
that is our duty to one another
as your children, O God of Our Ancestors.

Grant us the blessing of hope, O Eternal Light,
and rest your protection on those
whose cry is to You.

Amen.

Entangled Loves: Sermon for Trinity Sunday B

 

It’s a blessing that Trinity Sunday falls the day before the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. On May 31, 1921, a white mob attempted to lynch a black man accused of rape in an elevator in downtown Tulsa. Even though the police were dubious about the entire story, they arrested the young man. The Tulsa evening paper called for him to be lynched. Black veterans showed up at the jail determined to protect him, and a gunshot went off when a white man tried to seize one of their weapons. 

 

Within the next hours, forty square city blocks of one of the most prosperous black communities in the United States was reduced to rubble and ash. Twelve hundred buildings—churches, homes, businesses-- were destroyed, some by firebombs thrown from airplanes. Machine-gun fire raked streets filled with those trying to escape. Probably 300 African Americans died, bodies dumped into the Arkansas River or unceremoniously into unmarked mass graves. Although at first Tulsa’s leadership was appalled, soon, the story of that terrible time and the truth of the deadly consequences of division and hatred were buried, unmarked, as well. The estimated death toll of that day makes May 31, 1921 the day of the worst act of domestic terrorism in United States history.(1)

 

This massacre began with the great evil of division—the sin that denies our common bonds as humans, that encourages murderous jealousy and greed, that tries to divide us so that we are isolated and weak.

 

It is an unfortunate fact that we humans often find it easy to tear things down into their constituent parts. We categorize and separate. But to take a step back and see how all is connected, and to feel that as a reality, is a spiritual as well as a imaginative challenge. Yet scientists are discovering all the time how things we formerly thought were separate are actually united in community.

 

And so it is with us. We have a tendency to break ourselves off from the rest of creation as humans, and then we have the tendency to divide ourselves up further still, by race, language, gender, sexual identity. Chop, chop, chop. Some people even use the Bible to justify such division.

 

But creation tells a very different story, and science is just now beginning to catch up.

 

Physicists now talk about something called quantum entanglement. This is a phenomenon where when a group of particles come into proximity or relationship with each other, they remain influenced by each other even after being separated by distance. Though they separate, they behave as a singular whole. Ironically, many of these same physicists who are also people of faith see the similarity – including the difficulty of describing what this means—in the concept of the Trinity. 

It also reminds us of how even fleeting relationships can change us and remind us of our essential similarities. Even botanists are now seeing similar unifying principles where once only separateness was admitted.

 

In Fishlake National Forest in Utah, in the south-central part of the state, near Kanosh, just east of Interstate 15, south of Salt Lake City and Provo, there is one of the oldest and largest organisms on earth, nicknamed Pando. He covers over 106 acres, but Pando is estimated to weigh 13 million pounds, so he certainly is both more visible and largest in term of weight than any living thing found so far on Earth.  He is also 80,000 years old, born in the Pleistocene epoch, during the last Ice Age. He spent the three-fourths of his life before humans ever stepped foot on this continent approximately 15,000 years ago—indeed he has been alive for half the time that homo sapiens has roamed the planet. He survived and flourished at about the time of a massive die-off that killed three-fourths of large mammals in North America.

 

He (for he is male) is a colony of Quaking Aspen that has been named “Pando” (Lat. “I spread”) by the scientists who have studied him since his discovery in 1968. Above the surface of the ground, he appears as if he is simply 47,000 individual trees. However, under the surface of the ground, Pando is actually one genetically identical organism that spreads via vegetative reproduction, developing a complex and expansive root system that from which shoots rise to pierce the surface of the ground. 

 

Probably there were other seeds that sprouted on that same day and in the long years since. Yet Pando was born at the right time, and in the right place, and with the right characteristics for survival and endurance, as the rest of his generation have themselves subsided back before memory. As he grew, he raised his arms toward the sun, and with all the other trees of the forest, he sang songs of joy and praise before God, dancing in the breeze like David before the Ark. 

 

Pando was already old and wise by the time that stories of Moses were being passed from generation to generation at the juncture of Asia and Africa, thousands of miles away. He had barely begun living alongside humans by the time, half a world away, a wandering teacher named Y’shua began calling disciples along the banks of a small sea called Galilee. 

 

And Pando is not a solitary example. We are now finding that trees talk to each other through their root systems even across species. The beat of a butterfly’s wing on one side of the world can generate a storm on the other. All of this leads to one thing: Separation is an illusion. It also leads us to deny the nature of creation, and the nature of God. Being is relational. Our lives are entangled with others even when-- especially when-- we can't see it.

 

Trinity Sunday is our dedicated yearly reminder—hopefully we think about this more than once a year—that community lies at the very center of God’s inner reality. When the Bible insists “God is love,” it says so because at the heart of the mystery of God lies the Trinity: Holy Spirit, Son, and Father, all drawn together in mutual love that the flows outward to all creation. I deliberately wrote those in a different order than that to which most of us are accustomed, because even as some theologians affirm that each "person" of the Trinity is equal, there often seems to be a preferencing for God the Father to always come first, even though scripture itself often uses other orders. 

 

Why does this matter? Because it puts a sharp point to the lie that our lives within God are hierarchical, solitary, individual, or self-centered. God’s essence is joyful community, equality, affirmation, sharing. The relationship within the Trinity is often described as a dance, and there’s even a fancy word for that: perichoresis.  God’s very self exists in love, kinship, and community, and we are called to be children of God. Further, God draws us into the loving relationship of God through Jesus as Incarnate One in particular. 

 

There’s a story of a monk who was asked by a man if Jesus Christ was his personal savior.

 

“Nope,” the monk replied. “I like to share him.”(2)

 

Sharing is at the heart of God. It is at the heart of the life of faith. And it is at the center of the web of life and love that makes up the universe.

 

We are made in the image of God, and whatever that vague phrase might mean, it has to mean that we are called, with our free will, to choose to live a life worthy of God. To live a life in which we see the concept of the Trinity as a beautiful mystery, yes, but as a beautiful challenge to us all to let love’s call sing out in our lives. If we might truly take hold of the truth that our lives were meant, from the time of creation, to be entangled with each other in love, fellowship, and kinship, how might we be changed?

 

Through Christ, the Beloved Son, we are taken into the very heart of God. We are called to inhibit the same spaces and graces that Jesus himself inhabited as one of us. And it IS possible to love that much and that freely. It’s countercultural, but it is possible. We are called to live as Jesus lived, here on earth, yes—a life that had a beginning and an ending. 

As theologian Mary LaCugna states:

 

“Living trinitarian faith means living God’s life: living from and for God, from and for others. Living trinitarian faith means living as Jesus Christ lived, in persona Christi: preaching the gospel; relying totally on God; offering healing and reconciliation; rejecting laws, customs, conventions that place persons beneath rules; resisting temptation; praying constantly; eating with modern-day lepers and other outcasts; embracing the enemy and the sinner; dying for the sake of the gospel if it is God’s will. Living trinitarian faith means living according to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit: training the eyes of the heart on God’s face and name proclaimed before us in the economy; responding to God in faith, hope and love; eventually becoming unrestrictedly united with God. Living trinitarian faith means living together in harmony and communion with every other creature in the common household of God.”(3)

 

We are all one, held together by the love of God that is the heart of God. May we rejoice in our entangled lives, and our entangled loves. Only then will we know the peace and justice of God.

 

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17
• Psalm 29

Citations:

1) See Tim Madigan, "Remembering Tulsa: American Terror" in Smithsonian Magazine, April 2021, at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tulsa-race-massacre-century-later-180977145/

2) Related by Scott Cairns, in "The End of Suffering," in Image Journal, Issue 52, 2006, at https://imagejournal.org/article/the-end-of-suffering/  

3) Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, 400-401.

Prayer 3042: For Trinity Sunday

Blessed Trinity,
we turn our hearts to You
that you may lead us into community and grace:
hear the prayers of your people,
O Life-giver, Creator, and Savior.

Move over the chaotic waters of our souls,
O Spirit of Renewal,
and create within us new life
woven together in silken threads of faithfulness.
Breathe your justice into us, O Creator,
as we proclaim our origin in your precious Word
and seek the path of our Living Savior.

Teach us to look into our own hearts
with honesty and integrity
that we may purify what needs to be reformed
and strengthen our will to love without limits.

Draw us deeper into your divine dance,
O Holy Three, Mysterious One,
our lives entangled with each other
and with all creation,
that we may rejoice in each other
as reflections of the love at God's very center.

Merciful One,
cast the mantle of your truth upon our shoulders,
and embolden us to be your witnesses.
Grant the cooling balm of your lovingkindness
over all those who seek shelter and care,
as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 3041: Rooted in God

God of Abundance,
we lift our hearts to You
to be filled with holiness and hope
as we journey through this day,
praising You with all our being.

Mold us, O Creator,
Lead us, Lord Jesus,
Teach us, O Spirit of Truth,
that we may seek the path of true peace
founded on justice and reconciliation.

May we labor with joy this day
to seek the glory of your Name
by our faithfulness,
by our compassion,
by our walking gently with one another.

Draw us under the cool green shade of your love, O God,
and may we welcome all
to come join us there,
beneath the canopy of grace
You stretch over us,
and especially over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Wonder at the Center: Speaking to the Soul for May 27, 2021

The writer Annie Lamott observed that there are three basic prayers: “Help!” Thanks!” and “Wow.” She wrote a book about it.

Scripture attests to that as well, especially in the psalter. But it reorders Annie’s list a bit. “Help!” certainly comes first in most people’s experiences, and “Thanks!” certainly follows. But “Wow,” as an expression of wonder, seems most appropriate and necessary as the middle. We pray for God’s help; God rides in clothed in might and yet hearing our humble, often unsteady plea, assuring us that no need is too small for God’s notice; and after that brush of divine presence, then we give thanks.

“Help!”
“Wow!”
“Thanks!”

This morning, we hear of the glory and wonder of God in Psalm 29. If you step back, and look at Psalm 28, you find a plea for help. In Psalm 30, you find thanksgiving for help. Psalm 29, one of the oldest psalms, declares God’s power and glory.

The first surprise to most listeners is that this psalm mentions other gods, sometimes translated as “heavenly beings” or “mighty ones.” It’s plausible. But what if, as Calvin translated, “gods” instead means mighty rulers here on Earth, those who think they are god-like? Then this psalm could be looked at as a call for humility in the face of divine power, to “know our place” within the created order.

We are compelled here, to recover the “wow!” within our lives, especially our spiritual lives, a welcome reminder. Many people, both within and without communities of faith, have lost a sense of wonder and awe in the world around us. Especially as adults, we too often are prone to try to explain away or domesticate mystery in our lives, to brush it off in an attempt to declare ourselves the masters of our surroundings.

Even in our spiritual lives.

Too often, we try to put God into a nice tiny little box—maybe only polishing God up and bringing God out on Sundays or special occasions. If we do think about God’s power, it’s often only when we are in trouble, and want God to “save” us. Yet even there, we try to erect fences around our relationship with God. Save us—give us help– but please don’t demand anything of too unguarded of us as we go about our busy, world-focused lives.

Yet God will have none of it, as we are reminded of God’s power in Psalm 29. God’s mere voice is emphasized again and again as a physical force that reordered nature—which is only logical for the One who spoke creation into being from disorder. Psalm 29 tells us God’s voice is one of splendor and explosive force. We hear the repeated descriptions of the power of that voice, nine times over in these few direct verses.

How does one respond to such an awesome reminder of God’s wondrous might? The psalm reminds us that our proper response to God is “Wow!” Listen, for in verse 9: “And in the temple of the Lord, all are crying, ‘Glory!’” And then the psalm concludes by predicting the saving help of God, leading to the deliverance gratefully received in Psalm 30.

We sometime do not know how to pray, or the words we think we need. Psalm 29 reminds us not to worry about that. Just recover the sense of awe and wonder that is in the middle of all our encounters with the Holy One, who loves us enough to call us again and again, and that is more than enough.

Help! Wow! Thanks!

The center of prayer is the embrace of wonder and awe.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 27, 2021.

Prayer 3039: Spring Rhapsody

God of the Honey Bee,
God of the Lark,
God of the Aspen Grove,
we join with all your creatures
in a chorus of praise and worship.
We are upheld by your almighty hand;
all that we have and are is yours,
and we bow in gratitude before you.

May we echo the humble thanksgiving
sung out by cicada and tree frog,
who praise You and your provision without ceasing.
May we find delight in the labor you set before us,
as the hummingbird does.
May we lift our arms to you in praise
like the oak as it stretches skyward.
May we constantly sing your praises
like the wind that weaves through pine-needle
and sets them to resonating in joy.

May we open our hearts to your guidance
for our own sake and the sake of the world,
led by wisdom of the Spirit of Truth,
enlightened by the example of the Prince of Peace,
rooted deep in the verdant garden of the God of Life.

Holy Trinity, One God,
envelop us in your mercy and grace this day,
and place the kiss of your blessing
upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 3038: For recovery from illness

Bright Morning Star,
be our signal and our guide through this day.

Grant us the wisdom to seek out your truths, O God:
may they melt upon the tongue,
sweeter than honey,
and nourish us in righteousness and integrity.

Give us a thirst for justice, blessed Jesus,
and a will to persevere in goodness,
standing alongside the oppressed,
and led by your example of compassion and grace.

O Great Physician,
guide the hands and the hearts
of all medical staff and caregivers,
as they perform their sacred tasks of healing.
Pour out your strength, O Giver of Life,
to those who seek healing and recovery.

By your sustaining hand, O Merciful One,
help us to tend to the needs
of the hungry, the homeless, and the suffering,
and grant your peace and comfort
to all for whom we pray.

Amen.

Speaking to the Soul: Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

There is a viral video that is making the rounds right now. A young woman decides to tell a story to her dog, named Zeus. But this story uses all of his favorite words, including “park,” good boy,” “handsome boy” “I love you,” and, the big one, “snacks.” Apparently at the sound of the first favorite word, her dog gets very excited and attentive.

But as the story goes along—and it’s not a long story—the dog realizes that these words are not promises, but instead are, from his perspective, a cruel joke. You can see the dog sitting there, thinking, “Park? We’re going to the park? Wait-- why are we not going to the park?” 

“Good boy? WHO’S the good boy? I am the only good boy! Who is this other good boy, because it can’t be me; she’s not petting me. Why does she keep sitting there and talking and not following through on her promises?”

With each new favorite word woven into the story of her imaginary trip to the park saying “I love you” to some unknown “handsome boy” and munching on “snacks,” the dog gets a stunned, shocked look on its face. The words lack any follow-through, and the dog realizes he’s been had. He finally stalks off in disgust as his owner keeps prattling on, and snickering at his response. As she ends the story with lots of uses of the word “snacks,” the lowest blow of them all, the dog has had too much, and starts barking—which in his language obviously means, as a toddler I once knew would say when she was disgusted with someone, “Shut up, you crazy lady. You’re drunk.”

In our story from Acts today, through a gift of the Holy Spirit, Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, gathered for an important Jewish festival in Jerusalem, suddenly hear the gospel of Jesus proclaimed in their own languages. Even though the people talking obviously are not native to their homelands and languages. These complete strangers, natives of dozens of lands in which Jews had been scattered during their many exiles, hear about a story of incredible power, filled with wondrous words, words of promise. And just like poor Zeus, when some of them hear this amazing gospel, itself filled with wonders too great to keep in, some of the listeners react in disbelief and suspect, despite the early hour of the morning, that those who are speaking to them in a frenzy of joy, are drunk.

In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.

In a kind of reverse of the curse of the Tower of Babel, now these disciples, many of them simple country folk, have just learned to speak other people’s language. I think that’s an important point for us too in the Church today: we are called to speak to people in their own languages first, rather than expect them to immediately understand the language of Christianity.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.

This language, this grammar of grace, was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

The Holy Spirit, Triptych by Filippo Rossi

The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.

As we were discussing these readings in Bible study this week, we reflected with a sense of wonder what it would be like to have those around us really understand what we are saying. Too much that we say gets lost along the way from one person’s mouth to another person’s ear. And the more people become different from us, the worse that lack of understanding often becomes. And yet here are these followers of Jesus, seized by the Spirit, pouring out into the streets and speaking and being understood by people who come from vastly different cultures from those of the disciples.

But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.

As I talked about last week, story is one of the most powerful forces in the world—and story is bound up in language—language that can hold nothing back, or language that can attempt to limit access to the good news. And we have to give up the idea that we can domesticate Jesus for our own purposes, or that we should hold the Holy Spirit at arms’ length because we fear being seized by love and sent out into those streets just like those disciples all those years ago.

Language is powerful—just as the wind that is often a symbol for the Spirit is powerful. Language can help span divides, soothe grief,-- and spark conflagrations too. Especially when language is used to divide, to wound, to taunt, or to assault the very basis of the truth, as we have experienced these last few years.

We are called, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, just like those disciples, to the proclamation of the power of love.

Willie James Jennings, in his commentary on the Book of Acts, call this moment, “The beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open. Indeed it will be a community created by the spirit precisely in the breaking open.”(1) The gospel launches a revolution of the intimate, because in speaking of the love of God, we are called to be vulnerable and unguarded in sharing the story of God’s unifying love in a world that only profits by division and turning us against each other in competition or downright hatred.

The story we hear today is the story of the first great promotion of the gospel of Jesus since his execution and resurrection. These last 50 days, they had been an insular little community, locked behind doors, afraid even though the assurance that Jesus most often gave were assurances to not be afraid and instead be at peace. He said those two things—don’t be afraid and peace be with you—so that the disciples would be able to share in Jesus’s work, and he offers us the Spirit to help us now. 

Sharing in Jesus’s work of redemption, reconciliation, healing, and salvation in the here and now is, after all, the entire point of being a follower of Jesus. It’s not just to hoard away the gospel or cut off people from its promises. Our work, just like those disciples, is to go out and speak the good news to all we meet in language that they understand. It’s to let the Spirit lead us without fear.

Let’s face it—we are very much like those disciples locked away in that upper room. We too have been locked away out of fear for a very long time—it seems like forever—as this pandemic has come in waves and surges at us. Yet take a step away from this most recent scenario, and you could say that the institutional church is very much in the same spot.

Too often, we in the big-C Church sit back and wait for seekers to come to us, ignoring the fact that most of those who have turned their backs on religion have heard its practitioners using language that scapegoats others, or that emphasizes selfishness over mission in the world. Too often some who claim the name of Christ try to lock away the gospel. They talk more about who is not allowed in, about who is NOT allowed to be treated as full members of the Body of Christ. They even talk about withholding communion from people. They talk in the language of control and power, rather than in the language of good news about Jesus.

But on this birthday of the Church, we are being asked to take seriously our call to allow the Holy Spirit, as our companion in the Way of Jesus, into our hearts and then send us out into the streets.

To go out into the streets seek out those different from us. We are called to share our story—the story of how Jesus has changed your life and mine through his love, his healing, his transformative welcome of all. We are called not just to use beautiful words, like that poor dog heard from the lips of his owner, but to follow through with fulfilling the promises those words offer. Because the best words always are tied to actions.

We are called to meet people where they are, and speak the truth of love, especially in the face of hatred, paranoid division, and falsehood. We are called to care for the vulnerable—even the vulnerable ones we do not know. We are called to talk about mercy and grace, remembering the mercy and grace we ourselves know have received repeatedly, from God and others. Full stop.

If we talk about forgiveness, and we must, we ourselves must model forgiveness and mercy, bringing it to life in a world too given over to anger, suspicion, and nurturing grievances until they swell and explode like road kill in the summer sun.

If we talk about salvation, and we must, we have to model the kingdom values of Jesus—the grace that doesn’t keep score, but instead gives freely and generously to everyone, whether the world would count them as among the “deserving” or not. We must not look for the least we can do, but the best we can give.

If we talk about love, and we must, we must embody love. This is especially important in this time of division and hate, and in this time when too many openly scorn any idea that we have obligations to each other to act in ways that protect each other, even at our own inconvenience or sacrifice. The church, of all places, should be a place of concern for those we encounter, a place that strives to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, a place where we maintain our parishes not as locked rooms but as launching points to go out and proclaim the gospel in a language all will understand, however long that take.

We may not be perfect at it. We ourselves are still learning Jesus’s language of love, community, and reconciliation today. But it is the language that alone can unify creation as God intended from the beginning. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.

In a world that focuses on the temporary, we are called to speak of the eternal. In a world that focuses on transaction in all relationships, we are called to transformation and embrace. As disciples, we are called to embrace rather than shun the power of the Holy Spirit, and speak to the soul. Let us dedicate ourselves, this Pentecost Day, to speaking—and embodying-- the miracle of love.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, 2021.

Readings:

• Ezekiel 37:1-14
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37
• Acts 2:1-21
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Citations:

1) Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible), p. 27.