First Sunday of Lent - Sunday, March 1, 2020

Lent 1A 2020

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

For this First Sunday of Lent we get a story about Jesus who is fasting and praying in the wilderness for forty days and we are offered the opportunity to reflect on our own plans for fasting and self denial for the next forty days. But there’s a really big challenge here to identify this passage of scripture with who we are in 2020 America. This is a difficult set of lectionary lessons to bring to that expectation of explaining it as relevant to our problems today.

 So I thought I would start by sharing some of my favorite songs. I love Cole Porter songs because the lyrics are so clever and the tunes are all so snappy and fun. I also like the Beatles. But first, remember these clever lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round

They all laughed when Edison recorded sound

They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly

(They told Marconi wireless was a phony, it's the same old cry)

They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they're fighting to get in

They all laughed at Whitney and his cotton gin

(They all laughed Fulton and his steamboat, Hershey and his chocolate bar

Ford and his Lizzie, kept the laughers busy, that's how people are.)

But ho, ho, ho, who’s got the last laugh now?

This song is a list of some of the fools in history who turned out to be wise after all. This list includes people like the Wright brothers who were laughed at for dreaming about flight and those early explorers who realized that the world was not flat after all. All the prophets of the Bible were also laughed at and seen as fools until their prophecies came to pass.

There is a movement that is historically from the Russian Orthodox Church in which many people through history have taken on the sole purpose in their lives to be a “fool for Christ.” 

Some of these fools lived radically, deliberately flouting society's conventions by doing things like taking a vow of poverty, joining a monastic order or literally running naked through the streets. Everyone thought they were crazy. Everyone thought they were fools.

One of the most easily remembered saints who lived in this way was St. Francis of Assisi who was a rich young man squandering his inheritance before his conversion. His father was a cloth merchant and once, when young Francis was selling cloth and velvet in the marketplace on behalf of his father a beggar came to him. At the conclusion of his business deal, Francis abandoned his wares and ran after the beggar. When he found him, Francis gave the man everything he had in his pockets. His friends chided and mocked him for his act of charity. When he got home, his father scolded him in rage.

This sort of thing went on until his father took him to court to force him to renounce his inheritance. Francis not only gave up his fortune, he stripped of everything on him at the time, handed his clothes to his father and walked out of town completely nude!

These early “fools for Jesus” seems crazy and were laughed at. Yet they are our saints, our best models for how to follow Jesus.

The image of Jesus being led into the wilderness to suffer for forty days seems foolish too if you put yourself into the story. Imagine watching this scene where John has just said, “this is the one,” and then Jesus was baptized and then a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus gets out of the river and immediately leaves all that and goes alone out into the wilderness for more than a month without even a water bottle and a sleeping bag.

Jesus seems like a crazy fool from that perspective.

 Here, at the very beginning of his ministry, rather than take up arms or show power and might, he submits himself to torture, starvation and temptation. 

This story really is a difficult thing to understand and often is misinterpreted. Many Christians throw this in with the suffering on the cross at the other end of the story as part of a deal God made with the devil, a deal of substitutionary atonement. They believe that God let his only son be tortured and killed by humans to win us back from the evil one.

That’s really bad theology.

So, I want you to consider for a moment the possibility that Jesus was not tempted and starved in the desert on our behalf but rather that he starved and faced temptation in order to modeled for us how to face humility and suffering in the same way.

When I was about nineteen I was asked to help with the youth group at the church where I grew up.  In the Seventies there was a popular movement in clown ministry and this group wanted help starting a clowning group.  I was active in theatre at the time so we spent the summer developing this ministry and visiting nursing homes and the like, dressed as clowns.

I studied the theology behind the clowning ministry too.  It was an idea that servanthood is submitting our pride to become humble, and then reaching out to others to cheer them.  To “be a fool for Christ” was the unofficial motto of the movement (based on 1 Cor. 4:10) A clown becomes humble when he or she puts on the silly costume.

I returned to college that Fall, but when I went home for thanksgiving I was asked to join the group again for the Thanksgiving parade, complete with Santa’s sleigh at the end.  We were asked to lead the parade, which was very exciting.

We met, in costume, at the appointed time and place and were each given twelve large hot air balloons and very clear instructions. We were told to skip or dance the parade route down main street and pass out the balloons to children. The most helpful advice was to “zig zag” from one side of the street to the other.  “Give a child a balloon, the younger the child the better, then instantly move away from the crowd and look for the next child across the street.” Sounded simple enough.

It was one of the worst experiences of my life.

When I was finished, I was exhausted. Not just because I was not a runner and had basically just run two miles in the wrong shoes, but I felt disillusioned and sad. The people in that crowd were awful, mean and greedy. Each time I went to give a balloon to a child, angry adults would scream and curse me, “Hey clown!  Give my kid a balloon!” The advice to move away from the crowd quickly was well taken as I began to actually fear for my safety. When we were done, I sat on the fender of the church van with other exhausted and silent clowns wondering if this is how Jesus might have felt most days in his ministry. 

What are we then to make of the creation story and Jesus’ forty days with the tempter? I think we need to learn to be fools for Jesus in order to begin to understand how to follow Jesus. And that means we must, like Jesus, start with our own temptations and our own need for humility.

Our first temptation is, like for Adam and Eve, that we want to become like God.  That’s why the serpent told Eve if she thought for herself she would be wise like God. Who wouldn’t want that? To know the answers to all the whys? and have all the knowledge of the universe? But instead of enlightenment, she and Adam experienced shame. They exchanged fellowship with God for fear which caused them to hide from God. And they experienced the tragic loneliness of estrangement from one another and from creation. This is the state of life after the Fall.

That is still the state of life in America in 2020. We’re still a bunch of power hungry know-it-alls. Or at least we live among those who are power hungry know-it-alls. How can we learn to resist this sort of temptation? Can we be better Christians? Could it be we need to live as “fools for Christ?”  

Over two thousand years ago, just before this temptation of Jesus happened, one of the most essential teachings of yoga was given. It came through a story that took place, in of all places, on a battlefield. 

You may think of yoga as something that is about relaxation, strengthening or stretching muscles but all of that actually comes at root from long hours of prayer. If you’re going to sit and pray all day you need to take breaks and stretch. So monks who came up with stretches and poses which became incorporated back into their life of prayer.

It is told that the warrior Arjuna became paralyzed with doubt and fear just as he was about to be called to action on the battlefield. Luckily for him, his chariot driver just happened to be none other than the god Krishna. Krishna proceeded to reveal to Arjuna the teachings that would liberate him from his confusion. Doubt and fear gave way to awareness and strength through yoga.

Yoga, as translated in this story means "wisdom in action.” Krishna guided the soldier Arjuna to reflect on the source of his strenth and so he found his internal center, where he is free from fluctuations of the mind. Arjuna was transformed from fool to warrior.

Now, I just lost about half of you because when I mentioned Krishna you started thinking of those bald monks who wear orange and saffron colored robes and used to dance around and pass out daisies in the airport. You’re thinking of Hare Krishnas.

So, let me go back to Beatles songs. My Sweet Lord was written by George Harrison about (Hare) Krishna but The Fool on The Hill was written by Paul McCartney about the Maharishi (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). Both Hindu gurus from India who came to the states in the 60s and are now known as cult leaders. Their followers were thought of as crazy and eventually thought of as abusive.

Now, in 2020 Christians are seen as crazy and abusive. 

People must think so. Just one example is in those images today of that group of Episcopalians Against Gun Violence. If you look at group pictures of them on social media you will see a bunch of Episcopalian bishops wearing orange stoles with their traditional Rochet and Chimere vestments. It’s easy for non-Christians to think we’re a bunch of Hare Krishnas!

Maybe we all should be fools for Christ. But not all followers of Krishna were crazy.

Many centuries after the telling of the myth of Arjuna, Mahatma Gandhi would take these teachings about Krishna as guiding principles for his life.

Gandhi saw the battlefield as a metaphor for all our internal conflicts and Arjuna as the archetypal warrior within - one who sees through illusions to the truth and is able to act with courage and unwavering focus. 

Gandhi influenced the values of non-violent protest which shaped our Civil Rights progress. And yoga today brings many hurting people to recognize their own internal warrior - even if they have to look like fools in leotards to get there.

So, do you know what Krishna means? God. It is just another name for the same God we pray to and try to follow. It is just another name for the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness for forty days. It is just another name for the Spirit who leads us too.

Jesus didn’t just go off to make a fool of himself. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He was led by the Spirit. And we are too.

Those Crazy Christians. Our presiding bishop, Michael Curry has a book by this title in which he points out that we should be like the Jesus who was considered as just another crazy rabbi saying that “people who dare to live the way of Jesus in our own time will also be called crazy.” (Brad Paisley has a song about us crazy Christians too!)

In this story, Jesus may seem crazy to go into the wilderness and fast for forty days and face down Satan, but he is modeling for us how to suffer, how to become humble, how to pray. And if you look closely you will learn how this is the best way to find your internal warrior.

So, my friends, instead of running away from the suffering of our challenges, our fears, our struggles we are called to live into them. We are called to face our troubles head on and learn from them rather than avoid them. Even if it makes a fool of us.

And all along the journey, God is with us, even in the wilderness. The God of love lives in our hearts and guides us on.

Amen.

Last Sunday of the Epiphany - Sunday, February 23, 2020

“It’s all about Connection”

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, VA

February 23, 2020

Transfiguration Sunday, Year A

Exodus 24:12-18

2 Peter 1:16-21

Matthew 17:1-9

Psalm 2

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be always acceptable to you, Oh Lord, our savior and redeemer.

Amen

The other night I was sitting in my hot tub, smoking a cigar and working on this sermon (or more correctly, this sermon was working on me).

I spent that time gazing at the stars. 

It was a cold, clear night, and the stars were amazing.

I saw planes zip by, a meteor and then a satellite creep across the sky and then disappear as it went into the earth’s shadow.

It reminded me of gazing at the stars at sea back in my Navy days.

But, mostly it took me back to a warm, clear Arizona night in the summer of 1973. 

A group of friends and I were having a sleepover and, as we were wont to do, lying on our backs gazing up at the sky.

We watched the planes buzz by, maybe caught glimpse of an occasional meteor, much like I did the other night…but mostly that night we were watching for…Skylab.

Skylab was the first manned space station and in the mid-70’s there were four missions of three astronauts each that spent a few weeks in orbit and then returned to earth.

Back then space flight was a big deal.  We all knew about it.

And about every hour and a half, we could see it crawl across the sky.

Now I certainly remember the moon missions of Apollo, but I have a vivid memory of this particular night, watching Skylab.

I remember the sense of awe at the vastness of space.

I remember sensing my own smallness in that vast universe.

and I remember feeling connection to those three men nearly 300 miles up

I felt a connection to something else…something I couldn’t put words to then, but I recognize it now as connection to that vast expanse of creation and the God that loved it into being.

Connection.  It’s really all about connection.

In today’s Old Testament reading, we hear about God’s connection to Moses and, through Moses, to all the Israelites.

And today’s Gospel reading focuses on two mysteries that are at the core of our connection to God:  Incarnation and Transcendence.

Incarnation…God taking the form of flesh, joining us in this world of pain and tears.

And Transcendence…we beings of the flesh somehow transcending, moving beyond, this broken world and encountering God.

In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John recognized that this guy they’ve been following around is not just their rabbi,

he’s a great prophet like Moses and Elijah, but, somehow more…

he is the Word made flesh, God incarnate.

Ok, it took a 2X4 across the back of the head to make them realize it, but they finally got it.

They also see the fully human Jesus, transcend, transfigure into the universal Christ, fully God. God transcendent.

But, I think its important that we recognize that this was not only a transcendent moment for Jesus.

It was transcendent for the three disciples as well.

They saw Christ in his Glory.

And they saw the cloud and heard the voice, the same that Moses saw and heard.

They came into communion, in connection, with the divine.

It wasn’t their idea to climb that mountain. They didn’t do anything to prepare for it, they didn’t earn it, and, at the time, it appears they really didn’t even get it.

They might not have really recognized the enormity of that day until much later,

But connection they had, nonetheless.

It’s all about connection…with God…with each other. 

When we recognize that little piece of Christ, God incarnate, in someone else.

When we experience the awe and overwhelming joy in the presence of the divine

And recognize that we are invited, in every second of every minute, into that transcendent and everlasting dance of love with the Creator, the Word and the Spirit

Connection.

The story of the Transfiguration of our Lord is told in three of the four Gospels, only the Gospel of John leaves it out.

So clearly this is an important story.

And I think it is important for us to recognize that this episode wasn’t for Jesus’ sake.

If you look at the passages just before the story of the Transfiguration, Jesus tells his disciples.

 If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.[1]

You see Jesus was getting ready to enter Jerusalem for the final time. 

He knew what lay ahead of him…the cross.

And he knew what lay beyond the cross.

So he didn’t need the affirmation from the Father of the Transfiguration.

But his disciples did. 

They needed something to hold on to during the days and hours to come.

When they would see their teacher brutally tortured and executed.

When they would deny him.

They needed to know that they were still connected to that terrifying voice from the cloud that boomed out

LISTEN TO HIM!

And that they were connected to the God incarnate who touched them and said gently, “Get up and do not be afraid”

So the Transfiguration was intended for the disciples to experience that connection, to give them strength for the journey ahead of them.

The journey to the cross…and beyond the cross.

And Transfiguration Sunday, similarly, is intended to give us strength for our Lenten journey.

Our journey to the cross…and beyond the cross.

It is intended to show us the connection of The Father to the Son and the Son to the disciples…to us.

I tell you, it’s all about connection.

Now it’s unlikely that Jesus is going to come grab three of us and make us climb a mountain to achieve one of these moments of connection to the divine.  It’s up to us.

The real question for me is how do we get that connection?

How do we recognize the God incarnate when they show up in front of us?

How do we transcend this broken world and walk into God’s presence?

How do we connect?

Well there’s a reason they call it practicing religion. 

Because connection with the divine is all about practices

and it’s all about practice.

By this I mean there are practices, the things we do,

and we need to practice them, do them over and over again.

Because the fact of the matter is, that it is work to get these practices right, really, to get ourselves right, so we are ready to approach God.

We need to practice.

I would suggest that there are three practices we ought to be thinking about

1)                  Communal praise and worship,

2)                  Personal prayer and piety, and

3)                  Service to others

Praise and worship: where we make a joyful noise to the Lord, kneel together in prayer, or experience the infinite and all-powerful God incarnate in a cracker and a sip of wine.

Personal prayer and piety: where we study the scripture, fast, and pray in ways that allow us to drown out the noise of this world so that we can listen for God’s still, small voice.

Service: where we offer ourselves in service to others knowing that, when we do, we are offering ourselves to Christ.  And the mystery is that, when we do this, somehow, we recognize the Christ in others and, sometimes, in ourselves.

You heard earlier that we are only two days away from Shrove Tuesday…Fat Tuesday…Mardi Gras…pancakes!.

(By the way, I’m with Robbie, please don’t microwave the sausage).

That means Ash Wednesday and Lent is to follow.

Only three shopping days to figure out what you are going to do for Lent. 

And, if you are like me, you are waiting until the last minute to decide.

Ok, don’t panic, I’m going to help you come up with a Lenten practice.

As a good Catholic child, I was always expected to “give up something” for Lent.

The idea was deny myself, to suffer, like Jesus suffered for our sins. 

So I gave up chocolate (and later, beer) so that I would suffer during Lent.

As my faith has matured, I’ve developed some issues with the theology behind this.

First, I really like beer, but somehow the suffering of not having an IPA after work seemed to pale in comparison to what Jesus went through.

More importantly, the idea of suffering (for sufferings sake) is missing the point. 

Remember, we are asked to “metanoia” in the Greek text, which was translated as “repent” but more correctly means to “turn”.

We are asked to “turn” to God. 

We are asked to connect.

I’m suggest that you focus your Lenten practices not on ‘giving up something” but on connecting with your Lord and God and with God’s creatures here in this world…

Through praise and worship,

Through prayer and piety,

Through service.

For praise and worship, join us on Wednesdays at noon for communion or Wednesday night for our film series.  Or find a service somewhere else that works for you.

For prayer and piety, set aside time to read scripture or for contemplative prayer…fast on Wednesday (or Friday or whatever works for you)…or make time to commune with nature.

For service: stuff some coins in a UTO box; take some food to Red Door; volunteer at Our Daily Bread, the Clothing Bank, or for a new job here at Grace; visit a friend that is sick or lonely, or just hang out with the students at Red Door.

Practice your faith:  Worship, pray and serve.

I’m going to say that again…

Practice your faith:  Worship, pray and serve.

Because that’s the way we connect.

And it’s all about connection.   

Please pray with me:

Lord Jesus Christ, as we walk the way of the cross with you, help us to connect with you--and with our fellow creatures here in this world.  

Give us the wisdom and the discipline to practice our faith. 

Help us to transform ourselves through worship, prayer and service, just as you were transformed on the mountain.

In your name we pray,

Amen

[1] Matthew 16:24

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany - Sunday, February 16, 2020

Epiphany 6A 2020

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Matthew 5:21-37

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Later this morning, six of our brothers and sisters here at Grace will commit, or in one case re-commit, their life to Christ. Joy Hottenstein will be baptized and confirmed, Terry Nester will reaffirm his baptismal vows and four others will be confirmed including our acolyte - Ryan.

Preparing for this service has made several conversations about joining the church come alive for me this week.

One, which I shared in Grace Notes was about a mistake Samantha made, or maybe it was her spell check software. She misspelled Confirmation as Conformation several times as we prepared the bulletin for that service.

I thought it was funny. But Mark Carper pointed out that joining the church should be taken seriously and we should realize that it is conforming. We use the word confirm because the people say vows together of our belief in Jesus and our commitment to follow him and behave in certain expected ways. The clergy confirm the vows that the people make to support the persons who publicly profess faith in Christ.

But Mark is right. When we join we agree to conform to certain expectations.

What then does it mean to belong to the church? One rule of thumb I learned as a young person was that it means a commitment to supporting the church with “prayers, presence, gifts, and service”. The gifts are about money but showing up and praying for and with each other is important too.

Another rule of thumb I have heard used more recently is that membership means that you attend often and “have a relationship with the treasurer.” That last part is about money and the attendance part is so that we can spend time together and pray together in order to build community.

Some see joining any organization as like being on the same team. This means, however, that to be on one team is to be different than any other team. The teams for the church get segregated by denomination, cultural values, liturgical style and doctrine among many divisions.

The most profound questions to ask about what it means to be the church are along the line of elitism. Are we just a social club? Are we a tribe? Do we thrive on “us against them” perspectives which keep us in our corner, exclusive and not O.K. with the them in the equation?

Another way to consider this is, are we inclusive? Are we diverse? Are we open to anyone who wants to join us in prayer, sacrament and mission? Are we inclusive enough?

In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul defines the church as the body of Christ. This description of the church is very familiar. Jesus is the head, everyone has a part to play or a talent or gift or job. And it is “only God who gives the growth,” as the reading this morning says.

But in our tendency toward divisiveness, do we make the mistake of wanting to cut off a foot or pluck out an eye because we don’t like the way that part thinks or behaves, or believes? Do we trust that Jesus is in control?

While our tendency is to elevate certain spiritual gifts over others, Paul's words are a deliberate claim of even-handedness, even-giftedness. When it comes to how and in what ways God chooses to work in and through our commitment to faithful living, we are equal.

The Gospel reading today is the last section of the Sermon on the Mount. In it Jesus speaks of membership rather directly, though not using that language. He is talking about the Jewish law and there were certainly tribes among the Hebrew people who came together through the Jewish law.

Though it may sound like he is suggesting a new law with all those times he says, “You have heard it said something something but I say something something,” that’s not what he’s saying.

It seems as if Jesus is proclaiming, “You previously have heard this commandment, but now I am setting a new one before you, for the law was inadequate, insufficient, and is thus now no longer applicable; here is a new set of commandments to replace the supposedly outdated ones you previously followed.”

But that’s a misinterpretation.

Jesus is actually preaching not about replacement of the law but intensification of the law. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus calls his listeners not to avoid the laws of righteousness but to dig that much more into them, to align our lives that much more with the abiding divine values these commandments communicate, to commit ourselves to the transformative power of God’s law and commandments.

Among those laws is the commandment of reconciliation. Reconciliation is a prerequisite for coming before God at the altar. That is why we pass the peace so that we can make sure we are all in reconciliation with each other before communion. But what about those who are not here to pass the peace? What if broken relationships among neighbors, family, and friends are not just social obstacles among the larger community but a barometer for our relationship to God too?

Jesus constructs a particular kind of community, one organized around love and not power. It is a community that centers on trust, a trust that does not rely on oaths and vows but on the deep commitments God’s children make to one another. Such trust, such commitment is not born of human will but of God. Only God calls and makes possible such belonging. Only God does the growing.

I learned how to be in relationship with my neighbors from the church in which I grew up. And, since that was really all about how to behave within those social constructs, I learned how to live inside of that particular family and that particular church.

This was most revealing when I was sent to our church’s summer camp. There I learned that there were others who believed and behaved like my home church which validated my ideal that all people of the earth did, or should, see things our way.

It was the beginning of my path to elitism.

Fortunately, that path was interrupted early when some of my teachers invited me to dig a litter deeper and some of the preachers who came and went in that church talked about a Jesus who was not the Sr. Warden of our parish and didn’t look anything like that white guy with the too-long legs in the picture over the altar.

I began to learn to live into the Universal Christ. I began to learn to trust in the Jesus who died and lives for and within all people who will receive him.

To borrow from a number of authors, instead of the tradition of Believe, Behave, Belong - many summer camps for kids practice the opposite: Belong, Behave, Believe. Being a camper was being a part of something special. And everyone was a part of that specialness and so we all felt loved. Belonging is a deep desire in our hearts. Belonging comes first, then we learn from the community how to behave and what to believe.

Maybe it should be the other way around.

Many of our brothers and sisters who did not grow up in the church came to the church for belonging and are looking for how to behave and what to believe. Others of us, and this is true for most of us in this room, were raised in the faith and taught what to believe first, how to behave second and this gave us a sense of belonging. Maybe we have trouble letting go of that old way of belonging and need to check out what it means to belong now, here, in this world. In fact, instead of focusing on belonging, perhaps it would help to focus on becoming the body of Christ.

To truly follow Jesus, to truly become part of the Body of Christ, you have to do just that - become.  This means changing and growing always. If we already know everything, we can’t grow. If we are already right about everything we can’t grow. If we can’t practice forgiveness we are certainly stuck and certainly not practicing relationality.

When I was about 12 my friend Ava called one evening and invited me to go with her to a kite flying contest the next day. Ava was quite adventurous and I liked her ideas so I went out and bought a kite for a quarter at the market down the street and put it together that night with a little help from Mom and met her up at the high school practice field the next morning.

What Ava didn’t tell me was that this was a Boy Scout event. We were the only girls there. We had to sign in a pay 5 bucks each. She did tell me that part so I had 5 of my mother’s dollars in my pocket, but when we got to the head of the line the adult there said, “no”. He told us this was a contest for boys only.

Well, Ava had done her homework and argued that the stipulation in the advertisement in the paper said that you did not have to be a Boy Scout and said nothing about having to be a boy. The adult looked at another man who nodded and so we were in.

We also won one of the categories like highest or longest flight, I can’t remember. At the end of the day all the kids there congratulated the winners and encouraged the losers and forgot about gender or membership. We were joined in our love of kites and our love of our town, our community.

 That experience left me with the realization of what it means to join a group. It takes some profession, some passion. It also may mean taking a stand and will certainly involve some amount of initiation. But in the end it is a shared love of something and a shared community.

But the church is not a club. Joining the church means laying down our lives, dying unto Christ and picking up our cross and following him as committed disciples. It means keeping the commandments and staying open to all the possibilities that are out there in the people who God calls us to love.

Being a member of the body of Christ means an absolute, out-and-out conjoining of one with the other, a sister or brother in Christ. To exist in division, to see only difference and not the unity we are able to profess because of Christ, to demand conformity without the celebration of difference - this is to entertain the notion of dismemberment. If we follow the desires of dismemberment, we will find ourselves cut off from the very source of our life, our existence, and in a way, our ability to be most fully who we are. To what extent are we able to live out fully our callings if we are not able to rely on and give support to others to live out theirs?

Once again, we are reminded of our interconnectedness as a community of Christ. We need to keep learning how to be the body of Christ. We need to keep growing in God. I hope you will continue this conversation with me and with each other. Let’s name the ways we are complicit in divisiveness. Let’s put aside our desire toward elitism. And let’s do the difficult work of joining Jesus on The Way.

Amen.

Fifth Sunday of the Epiphany - Sunday, February 9, 2020

Epiphany 5A 2020

1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16]

Matthew 5:13-20

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Yesterday I went to Bristol to the church I grew up in to the funeral of a significant man in my life - my first voice teacher. He was the music director there and was a great teacher and his daughter was my age and one of my best friends. The preacher there said lots of really amazing things about Bill, some of which none of us knew because he was modest. Among the things he said was that we, in that community, were all blessed to have had him and his wife among us for 50 years and he thanked the family for sharing Bill with us.

This left me thinking about what it means to be blessed and I think I’ve had some light bulbs go on while pondering all of this.

One of my favorite movies is the Alfred Hitchcock 1954 classic “Rear Window.”  Now, maybe you don’t like Hitchcock or haven’t seen that one but the scene I want to tell you about today is simple to follow, even if you’re not a Hitchcock fan.

Raymond Burr played the bad guy and Jimmy Stewart played a globe trotting, thrill seeking, photojournalist in convalescence after a badly broken leg.  Now, this was 1954. They didn’t have much but old fashioned photography then - the kind you had to print onto photo paper in a dark room.

Now, after an accident while chasing down a story in Africa or some exotic location, he’s wheelchair bound in his city apartment and feeling useless. He’s so down in the dumps to have his wings clipped that he ignores his girlfriend, played by the gorgeous Grace Kelly who dotes on him daily while he stares out his rear window. That anyone, no matter how depressed would ignore a girlfriend as lovely as this Grace Kelly character is a sort of unspoken gag in this film. 

In the penultimate scene, the bad guy is coming at Jimmy Stewart in the pitch black of night.  Clever character that he plays though, Stewart hides his own eyes and takes pictures of his nemesis with those exploding ball type of flashes they had back then. The point wasn’t to get a picture of his assailant, it was the flashbulbs.

Now, we’ve got some young people here today so they may not remember, but most of you were, many years ago, actually blinded by those kinds of flashbulbs. In that movie, these flashes in the dark temporarily blinded Raymond Burr giving Jimmy Stewart time to get another flashbulb, and repeating this until he runs out of flashbulbs which gives him just enough time to stall before help comes.

Well, if you’ve seen the movie you know that a lot more drama comes before and after this scene and Jimmy Stewart ends up breaking the other leg at the end of the scene. But the happy ending is that he experiences a renewed sense of purpose in having solved the crime and his character starts paying more attention to his friends after that too, including Grace Kelly.

Today’s Gospel lesson comes just after this part of Matthew which is known as the sermon on the mount. We also call this small part of that long sermon of Jesus’ the Beatitudes. Today we hear images of The Salt of the Earth and The Light of the World from this same sermon. But this comes just after the part where Jesus has just explained the Beatitudes in which he listed all the ways we are bless-ed.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 1“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5: 3-10)

These blessings are often seen as a to-do list of actions we must take in order to become bless-ed, to become part of the Kingdom of God.  But that is a misinterpretation. The Beatitudes are not at to-do list of things to accomplish in life in order to be successful and get an “A” in Christian discipleship. We are not created to strive for blessedness.

Neither are the Beatitudes congratulations for a job well done. You have heard me say that we need to remember that we are already bless-ed. And that’s true. It is not, however an excuse to sedentary discipleship as if, since we are already bless-ed we don’t have to do anything. It is good practice to praise God in gratitude for all the ways we are already blessed but that’s not the end of it.

The Beatitudes are a recognition of who we already are as children of God. We are already blessed because we already are “poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” (Matt 5:1-12) We are already bless-ed - if we profess faith in Jesus and work to follow Jesus, to pattern our lives after Jesus, to act as his disciples. Though it is O.K. to name our bless-edness when we say, “I am blessed” or “have a blessed day,” the Beatitudes are not a to-do list. Neither are they a “get out of jail free” card.

We have been hearing lots of images in the lectionary readings lately of the Light of the World. Throughout the Christmas narrative we hear all about how Jesus has come into the world as light enters into darkness. The Wise Men followed the light of a star. John the Baptist showed all who would listen that Jesus is the Light. It is as if these gospel writers each take out a flashlight and take us on a tour through the darkness of life to see the real world to which we have been blind - that stuff of blessedness for which we are, or should be, grateful.

Jesus is the Light of the World. But today he tells us we are the Light of the World. The flashlight gets turned on us and we are commanded to shine.

This image of the Light of the World can sometimes overwhelm us and leave us fearful of God or worse leave us making fools of ourselves trying to figure out the source of that light, trying to pen down God.  Like a blinding flash in the dark, the very idea of the resurrected Son of Man, God become flesh, is so unfathomable we can feel left stumbling blind in the dark and either miss the point of His teachings or over think His miracles and we can end up making a big mess of things.

That is what happens when we take the Beatitudes as congratulatory or get caught up in the wonderfulness of being so bless-ed. We seem like braggarts to walk around exclaiming that we are blessed. Or we become show offs in our discipleship.

This is what some call “feel good philanthropy” - we do good works because they make us feel good, not simply because we just are disciples of Jesus and it’s the right thing to do. Because it just is what we do. Because it just is who we are.

Rather, according to today’s gospel lesson, we are called to live into our true being as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, true followers of Jesus.

The antidote to the mistake of a bragging show off form of Christianity is to form relationships: relationship with God, relationship with our neighbor, relationship with the Earth. Relationships with each other in our inner circles. Only, relationships with each other is the easy part.

At our Diocesan Council three years ago or Annual Convention, as we now call it, we focused on our brothers and sisters in Haiti.  Our guest speaker was a priest from the part of Haiti where we have some collaborative ministries. These missional ministries are not places where we just send money and food, they are parishes and schools where we have developed friendships. We raise funding to send people to form relationship in order to offer our best love of these neighbors.

What I have learned most about Haiti so far in this venture is the deep spirituality of her people. Our Episcopalian brothers and sisters in Haiti are so grateful and joyful in spite of their poverty that we Americans are humbled and inspired in new ways. They are happy because they have love among them.

Many of those who travel to Haiti or other impoverished countries, must keep in mind the need to care for these brothers and sisters and not just go down there to get our “feel good.”

Americans are apt to think of blessings as a sort of congratulations from God for purchasing a bigger house or a new car or landing a good job. In this way it seems like we believe God is congratulating us for these belongings or successes. The people of Haiti are teaching us that being blessed has nothing to do with possessions and everything to do with relationship, with hope and love and joy.

Several years ago, in a different diocese, I was assigned to a struggling parish as their deacon and spent about a year among them.  The assignment was to experience a parish other than my own as part of my formation for the priesthood, so I mostly observed.  They didn’t seem to notice I was there.  This was awkward. They were very caught up in some conflict that apparently had gone on for many years, so many years that I don’t think they knew anymore why they squabbled like the Hatfields and McCoys, they just operated that way in that church.

It was very painful to observe this, particularly to see them attack their Rector and each other over very trivial matters.  There was a small group of instigators at the middle of all this dysfunction and they did not seem to see the problem as theirs, and no one from the margins would challenge them.  And so life went on painfully in this way. 

One Sunday morning a newcomer came and sat down on the back row next to the widow Sue Hill.  (This is her real name.)  Now, newcomers came and went.  They might stay a few Sundays but usually they did not return once they witnessed the angst in this church.  But this older man, this stranger, he stayed.  He didn’t say much, he didn’t come to any other activities, he just sat quietly beside Mrs. Hill on Sunday mornings and Mrs. Hill talked with him during the passing of the peace and they made their way to the altar for communion together.

A couple of months went by.  The Rector resigned.  The fussing settled down some.  The parish still met on Sunday mornings with supply priests and the life of the parish went on unmoved.  One day, Mrs. Hill called me.  She said that she was looking for a priest to perform last rights for the stranger who had been sitting next to her.  She explained that she had been visiting him in and out of the hospital since the first Sunday he showed up. She told me what she had learned about him, his name, his story.  She said that a few of her brothers and sisters in Christ were helping and that they had taken care of most of this stranger’s needs.  He came to church that first Sunday because he had just been given a terminal diagnosis.  He had no living family, not much money and very few friends.  She did not explain why.  She probably didn’t ask him why.  She just reached out and helped him in the ways that he needed with the resources that she had.  Together, this small band of Christians ministered to this man and brought him love and peace in his final days.  In spite of the church, they were “doing church.” Rather, in spite of the actions of her brothers and sisters at church, Sue Hill was being the church.

Jesus is the light of the world, but in today’s reading from the sermon on the mount Jesus defines his followers as the same.  We are bless-ed. We are earthy. We are the light of the world. We are the lamp that does no good under a bushel. We are the flash in the darkness that calls out for help, that stands against evil, that creates hope, and love and joy.

We come to church to be transformed.  We read and study the Bible, we discuss discipleship, we work hard at liturgy. We seek the Holy Spirit as we break bread together and this is part of “doing church.” But where we are more likely to be transformed is in the action of mission when we become church.  When and where we seek out the poor, the sick, the weak and the lonely and not just so that we feel better about ourselves by serving others.  The true light shines when we actually enter into relationship, rather than just practicing feel good philanthropy. This is when we are transformed – out there, not just in here.

So, my brothers and sisters, go in peace to love and serve the Lord, enjoy the warmth of Him who loves us, the Light of the world, without letting yourselves feel overwhelmed by that light. Be the salt. Be the light. And Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Let loose all those ways we try to put God in a box, clear your vision enough to see and follow the Light of the world.  Stop trying to own the Gospel and allow the Light of the Lord to filter through in order that we might actually be the light of the world.  Then, and only then can we graciously do the work that God has given us to do.

Amen.

The Presentation of Our Lord - February 2, 2020

Soul Knowledge

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

Grace Episcopal Church

February 2, 2020

The Feast of The Presentation of Our Lord

Malachi 3:1-4

Hebrews 2:14-18

Luke 2:22-40

Psalm 84

May change bring hope, may hope bring love, may love bring change.  Amen.

It was February of 2014, and I was scheduled to go on a weekend retreat for youth ministers. 

But things were crazy at Tech kicking off a big project. 

I was working 80+ hours a week; I couldn’t sleep, and I was distracted, grumpy and tired all the time.

So, I told my wife, Elise, that I wasn’t going to go on the retreat.  I was going to hang around the house, knock out some chores and see if I couldn’t get my email under control.

She told me quite calmly that if I didn’t go on the retreat, there were several potential outcomes.

·       I would work myself until I got sick,

·       She would divorce me,

·       She would murder me in my sleep, or

·       Some combination of the three.

So I changed my mind and decided to go on the retreat.

And I’m so glad I did, it was an amazing weekend highlighted by a wonderful guest speaker that spent the entire day with us on Saturday.

It was the Bishop of North Carolina at the time…a guy by the name of Michael Curry, now our presiding bishop.

I knew something about Michael Curry after that day.

Of course, my head knew that he was smart and funny and an amazing teacher and preacher.

But my soul knew something else.

I knew that I was in the presence of someone holy…the real deal.

It wasn’t so much what he said or did, but his presence radiated something…the Holy Spirit.

He was filled with it…and I knew it.

I’ve had that feeling at other times, but never like I did when I first met Michael Curry.

I can only imagine how Simeon and Anna felt that day when they saw the Christ child in the temple.

Two country bumpkins show up in Jerusalem for the ritual presentation of their first borne son as an offering to God.

This ritual was practiced hundreds of times a year in the temple.

Mary and Joseph looked no different than hundreds of other poor, bedraggled, sleep deprived parents, bringing their newborn boy in for presentation.

Simeon probably paid no notice to them.

But there was something about that little baby boy.

He had brown skin, black hair and brown eyes just like all the other baby boys in Jerusalem.

But he was…different somehow.

He looked, sounded and smelled like every other newborn child.

There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of other folks in the temple who didn’t seem to notice anything about him. 

It even seems even Mary and Joseph didn’t get it.

We are told they were amazed at what was being said about their baby boy.

I have to wonder why.  Before Jesus was born, Luke tells us that the angel Gabriel visited Mary and said:

you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[1]

Then Mary visits her cousin, Elizabeth, who says to her:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?[2]

Then Mary breaks into the Magnificat.

So, Mary knew. 

Yet, somehow…she forgot.

Simeon and Anna knew, but everyone else in the Temple, including Mary and Joseph were oblivious. 

How did this happen?  How could some know and some just miss the Christ in front of them?

That leads me to a question that cuts to my very heart.

I may have seen the Christ in Michael Curry, but when Christ appears to me, as a child, as one of you, as a student at Tech, as a police officer stopping me for speeding, or as a homeless man in Richmond asking me for change…

Do I recognize the Christ in them?

Do I know? 

Do you?

Richard Rohr is an amazing theologian and mystic that you have heard both Kathy and I mention.[3]

Father Richard, suggests that there are two kinds of knowing. 

The first, is what we are most comfortable with, it is that knowing that comes from our heads. 

It is sometimes fact-based, sometimes not. 

It is a useful, essential in fact, kind of knowing but it is limited and  fallible.

The second kind of knowing that Father Richard posits, is more difficult, for me at least. 

He refers to it as soul knowing.

It is the knowing that comes from encounter with the Divine.

Those encounters could be

·       in a beautiful piece of music that Mason plays.

·       In the Eucharist or another moment in our communal worship,

·       In a gorgeous New River Valley sunrise,

·       In holding a newborn baby,

·       Or in prayer.

If we really want to recognize the Christ when they show up, we need this soul knowing, like Anna and Simeon had.

But how do we get it?

Perhaps we need to follow Anna and Simeon’s example.

Simeon was “righteous and devout”[4]

And Anna “never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.”[5]

Now, I’m not going to suggest we set up cots in the parish hall.

But I am going to look at my own life of devotion and prayer

And I urge you to do so as well.

How might this play out? Let me give you two ideas.

You all know that I’ve been spending less time here at Grace.

For the next couple of months I’ll be here about twice a month and then at Pearisburg and Pulaski the other two Sundays.

This is a real challenge for me.  How am I supposed to do anything as a deacon?

I mean seriously, how do I conduct a ministry when I’m only seeing folks once or twice a month?

I shared this challenge with my spiritual advisor last week. 

She observed that maybe my approach was wrong.

I was seeking to solve this challenge but putting things on my to-do list and then checking them off.

I was in my head.

Maybe I needed to focus on my heart…on soul knowledge. 

Maybe I need to go deeper.

She suggested I start praying to God to teach me to be a Deacon of the Church in the New River Valley.

To listen for the answer.

To know (soul know).

And then act on that soul knowledge and seek to be the Deacon that God is calling me to be.

Pray, Listen, Know and then Act.

If I’m honest, my track record is that I act first, then pray that I haven’t messed anything up…there’s just no time to listen much less know.

But I’m recognizing that I need to Pray, Listen, Know and then Act.

I’m working on this approach, and I wonder if it doesn’t apply to Grace as well.

While I haven’t been here for a while, know that I try to keep up with what’s going on and that Grace Radford is constantly in my prayers.

I know we are facing serious budget challenges.

I have been there before (personally, professionally and at church), and I know that, in the past, when the budget crunch came, I would stare at the spreadsheet in front of me for hours on end. 

Thinking of how I might cut expenses here or add a little revenue there.

That’s our natural tendency, isn’t it?

We think about how to add a few pledging units or save a few dollars on maintenance of the building.

We try to think our way out of problems.

Maybe the answer isn’t in the spreadsheet.  Maybe it’s not in our heads.

Maybe we need to go deeper.

Maybe we need some soul knowledge.

Maybe we should be praying to God to teach us to be God’s Church in Radford.

Then maybe we should listen.

Know (soul know)

And then act, work to be that Church.

Certainly, we can’t just toss out our to do lists and spreadsheets. 

They are necessary, but sometimes they just aren’t sufficient. 

Sometimes we need to go deeper.

Sometimes we need to seek that soul knowledge.

The good news is that you have a group that is doing exactly that.

The Way of Love guiding group, led by Ann Walker, is seeking to Know, Soul-Know, what we are called to be.

Support them, pray for them, join them in their effort.

As they follow the example of Simeon and Anna.

To Pray.  To Listen.  To Know. 

And then to act.

Amen!

[1] Luke 1:31-33

[2] Luke 1:42-45

[3] I highly recommend exploring Father Richard’s teaching.  One of this books, for example, The Universal Christ or the website for the Center for Action and Contemplation https://cac.org/ are great places to start.

[4] Luke 2:25

[5] Luke 2:37

First Sunday after the Epiphany - January 12, 2019

Epiphany 3C

Matthew 3:13-171

Grace Church Radford

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Dunagan

There’s an old saying among preachers that is meant to keep us modest. It goes something like this: No matter how good or bad you preach the more important things follow - the Creed and the Eucharist. I could stand here a babble for 12 to 19 minutes as I often do and you might not get a thing out of what I say and that would be fine because, in the Episcopal Church, we believe that the ancient words of the Creed and the Eucharistic prayers are far more important than one person’s interpretation and proclamation of Scripture.

So, the sermon is really no big deal.

Another thing that is important to remember is that Sunday is the first day of the week - not Monday. Because Sunday is when we are reminded of who we are as Baptized Christians, it is when we get rest and renewal and then we go out into the world for our work week.

There’s a funny line I remember in the movie “Oh God!” I’ll bet some of you are old enough to remember that film. John Denver played a normal guy who is visited by God in the form of George Burns who was only 75 when it was filmed in 1977. No need to revisit the movie. I don’t even recommend watching it if you missed it! But the line I remember is when George Burns is put on the witness stand in front of judge and jury and says in his oath, “So help me, me.”

When Jesus was baptized, I’ve often wondered if John Baptized him in the name of him. The one theological requirement for baptism is not that you are baptized by an ordained person (though that is required outside of “emergency baptism”) but that whomever does the sprinkling or dipping must use water and name the Trinity. So, if when you were baptized the baptizer didn’t say, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” it didn’t take! Well, you can use inclusive language translations of the trinity or maybe just say something like “triune God” but that is a theological requirement of baptism.

So, was Jesus baptized in the name of his father, the Holy Spirit and himself? Why did he need to be baptized anyway? It seems he is perfect, the one without sin who is in fact fully divine. Why would he need to have his sins cleansed if he doesn’t have any sins? John the Baptist was certainly thinking this when he tried to refuse to baptize him, but Jesus said, no. Make it so, “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

It’s not about washing away sins. It is about fulfilling prophesy. It is about putting things that were broken back together. It is about healing the anguish of a people lost and confused and oppressed. It is about a new beginning.

And so, in this new beginning, Jesus comes to John for baptism before he does anything else.

But if you notice, God is not ecstatic. The Creator is not jumping for joy, or so one reading by one scholar says.

God simply says, “I am well pleased.”  This is the response of God at the baptism of Jesus. The heavens open. There is a dove. God speaks. Well, technically a voice from heaven speaks (Matthew 3:17). It is as if there is another “epiphany” or “divine show” as discussed last week. We’re expecting a big show but God’s response is not of exponential proportions. It is not like the response shouted by fans at athletic events or concerts. No, in a kind of anthropomorphic coolness, the Creator is merely pleased or a better translation is that God is content. (The Greek word is eudokeo.) [1]

One might expect more than that. After all, according to Matthew, Jesus has been through a lot since making his journey from heaven to Bethlehem. He was almost killed by a deranged tyrant (Matthew 2:16); he had to travel hundreds of miles to Egypt and live as a refugee there (2:13); his parents could not return to their paternal birthplace because even the new ruler of Judea had some surly insecurity issues (2:23).  Now, a few decades later Jesus travels from this place, Galilee, to be baptized by John in the Jordan. Life has not been easy for the Prince of Peace. Surely, a baptism in the wilderness (3:1) would garner more applause.

It’s almost anticlimactic that God’s only response to the baptism of Jesus is that of “being pleased,” or  “content.” To be fair, Jesus hasn’t done anything - yet. He has merely appeared. Of course, this is a post-epiphany text. According to Matthew, Jesus hasn’t yet performed any miracle. At this point Jesus hasn't even spoken. A voice from heaven gives utterance. Jesus is silent. There is no parable, no prayer, no blessing. He has just “shown up.” (still quoting Crowder)

That’s the way beginnings are. After much ado of packing for a trip or getting the house ready for company, there comes a moment when all is done and all is right with the world and you can rest in the moment, enjoy the refreshment of the trip or the fellowship of the party. The Baptism of Jesus is, according to Matthew just so. It’s no big deal because it is the obvious moment of all things coming together.

I remember in my youth planning a surprise 16th birthday party for my friend Beth. Actually, I don’t remember it. I imagine I was very busy inviting guests, keeping the secret in order to surprise her, serving food and drinks and getting the house all ready. I imagine I did this with my mother and that we enjoyed it but I also imagine we were a bit anxious and busy in the days leading up to the event.

Beth and I reconnected recently through social media after years of not really keeping up and a couple of years ago she reminded me that I had given her a surprise party for her 16th. And didn’t remember any of that. Then she said that she would never forget it because it meant so much to her. And then she told me something I didn’t know and could not have imagined, that there was so much disfunction and angst in her home at the time that her family had forgotten her 16th and she would have had no celebration if not for me.

I didn’t remember the party until she reminded me because at the time I was in the mode of just doing what was right. It was nice. It was fun. It really wasn’t that big of a deal to hostess Beth’s party. Not to me and Mom.

Maybe it should have been.

I often think that we all make this mistake from time to time. We pray and sing and clean up the kitchen after coffee hour and then we spend lots of time checking on each other and serving the rest of the community all week. We do all this because it’s just what we do. It’s no big deal.

Maybe we should remember that it is a big deal.

Maybe we should listen for the very voice of God in the clouds making witness to our good works. Maybe we should be more intentional about why we are nice to each other, why we offer caring things like phone calls and meals and love for those who are home sick or all the ways we give to the poor, the homeless, the hungry; or all the ways we stand up for the oppressed. We’re just doing our job as Christians. It’s no big deal and yet it is the most important thing in all of existence.

Because we do good works through our faith.

We do these things and offer love to others because of our baptism.

There was a boy riding on his bike outside a church. The priest saw him and told him to come into the church and the boy said, “But they’ll steal my bike.” The priest explained how the Holy Spirit would take care of it, so they went inside. The priest showed the boy how to make the sign of the cross and told the boy to repeat it so he did: “In the name of the Father and the Son . . . Amen.” The priest said,”What about the Holy Spirit?” The boy replied, “It’s outside taking care of my bike!”

This Gospel lesson is the divine affirmation of Jesus; this is where the Spirit descends on Jesus. When we use the image of the Trinity we are trying to capture the complexity of the divine engagement with human life. Now, this is theology at its hardest: the Trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand. The Father is the image of the cause and creator of everything; the Son is the image of the revealer and redeemer; and the Spirit is the image of the connector with human situations and lives. The good news is that the Spirit can be both at the same time inside the Church and outside taking care of the bike.[2]

It’s no big deal. The trinity just is, whether you believe it or not. God is content at the Baptism of our Lord because everything is aligned at that moment and all is right with the world at that moment. Not when we sing Silent Night on Christmas Eve, but when Jesus comes up out of the Baptismal water. That’s the moment. Of course, it is also the moment that is in every moment. Inn a way, time stopped at that moment. The coming of God into the world changed everything and yet it is no big deal.

It just is.

All of life is a journey with peaks and valleys, good times and bad, dark times and light. And through it all the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end is constantly in our hearts at each now moment.

All we need to do is remember the times we were surprised and be content with them.

We make a big deal out of the stuff of the world. It’s a big deal when certain people talk or get recognized or gain accolades or awards or win the lottery. Success, wealth, power, these are the wants of the world that we make a big deal of.

But rather than seek the wants of the world, we are called to seek the hope of the Creator.

And listen to the silent Jesus, who just shows up on time and offers himself for service then empties himself on the cross (Philippians 2:4-8) that’s the real deal. We try to make a worldly big deal of the Christ event with praise and worship and claims to salvation but Jesus simply says “follow me.” It’s not a big deal in the terms of the world. It is the biggest of all things in terms of the Spirit.

This is why it helps to be silent - or at least quiet - at times of prayer and sacrament. We need to listen for the call of the silent incarnate God-in-Jesus. We need to remember our own baptism, our own need for cleansing and renewal through continual repentance. If we turn from the ways of the world and listen, we might just hear a voice from heaven exclaiming contentment. I think that is possible at any moment.

Amen.

[1] Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4307

[2] Markham, Ian S., Lectionary Levity. Church Publishing Inc.

Epiphany Sunday - January, 5 2020

Epiphany 2020

Matthew 2:1-12

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

When I was about 6 years old, my family was sitting in the dining room eating a meal. Our little house had a picture window in the living room across from an open door way so you could look from our front porch into the dining room.

It was just us four kids and Mom and Dad. There was no company so it must have been a Sunday after Church since that was the only time we would have actually sat in the dining room, or all sat down to eat at the same time for that matter. Whatever the occasion, it was during the Christmas season.

Now, I had never seen my mother afraid of anything, never heard her scream or flinch. Dad either. I come from tough stock, from folks who are not easily rattled and keep a stiff upper lip. But that day, when Santa Claus himself knocked we were all startled. That’s because Santa didn’t knock at the door - he knocked on that picture window. And he didn’t just knock, he banged on that big window and started shouting “Ho Ho Ho’s from the porch and I mean we all nearly hit the ceiling! Mom was screaming. Dad was screaming. My brothers were all running around and trying to hide under the table. It was like a bomb went off in our front yard!

But Dad went and let him in. And we all quickly realized this was not the real Santa. But it wasn’t a stranger either. It was our friend from church Wes Davis. Mr. Davis was a big man who could really fill out a Santa costume. But he also had a really big and unmistakeable voice. So I knew his wasn’t the real Santa. Having Mr. Davis surprise us like that was great fun and a family memory we still share.

Recently, I’ve been pondering how things have changed in our world from that time when neighbors stopped by unannounced and doors were left unlocked and strangers were invited in.

Radford is a rare and wonderful place in that most of us still live that way. But most of the rest of the world, as you may have seen in the news, seems to have gone crazy.

One of the things I have come to struggle with lately is the increase of distrust in our society, even in small towns like Radford. I’ve been reading a bit about this and found thousands of scholarly articles about our general distrust of government, distrust of strangers, distrust of people from other countries and cultures and distrust of other religions. I decided not to read all of that. It’s too depressing.

But I did some reading this week about the general distrust we have of each other. This is sometimes called tribalism. The theory of tribalism is that groups of like-minded people tend to stick with their own and distrust other tribes. The thing that really got to me as I studied this was the news that people don’t trust each other anymore even inside of tribes. The statistics that indicate this increase in distrust across the board are huge.

So, if Grace Episcopal Church is a group of like-minded individuals, statistically speaking, in recent years, our chance of distrusting each other has increased. But we’re not really surprised by stats that tell us we distrust anyone outside of our group - our parish - our town. We don’t trust the diocese, we don’t trust the bishop, we don’t trust the local government, the State, the White House, Congress other countries. Statistically speaking, in any group, we don’t trust any other group any more. But the more scary news is, statistically speaking, we are at risk of not even trusting each other within our smaller circles.

This is strikingly opposite the norm of just 75 years ago when trusting your inner circle and your government was at an all time high and people even trusted other groups and countries. As one scholar puts it:

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, while looking back at the first decade, we are reminded of the introductory sentences of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859/1997, p. 13: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”) We began the new millennium filled with great possibilities only to be met with 9/11. The first decade (of the 21st century) began with great prosperity driven by globalization only to end with global recession and growing distrust of organizations and those who lead and manage them. The decade that began with hope and optimism has given way to fear and pessimism.[1]

But as I said, I didn’t really study this academically. I’m just left wondering about the obvious question, “Who then do we trust?”

When Jiminy Cricket sang the iconic song, “When You Wish Upon a Star” to Pinocchio, we all sighed and believed that dreams really do come true. (Dreams to become the real persons we already are!) Now we laugh at fools who believe in wishing on stars and draw the blinds and don’t answer the phone and keep to our own devises - and by that I mean phones and iPads and laptops - devises - and you know the old saying about those who are left to their own devises!

Who do we trust?

When the wise men traversed afar to bring gifts and pay homage to Jesus, we are told they followed a star. They were astrologers - so they would have noticed a star which would lead them West - to Nazareth.

The symbolism of the star in this story is an answer to the belief of the day that the birth of a savior would be accompanied by celestial signs. In the Old Testament, a strange seer from the East, Balaam, spoke of a star arising out of Jacob. (Num. 24:17). So this is a really old story.

Some scholars will tell you that the religion represented among these visitors was likely Zoroastrianism which is the world’s oldest religion - older than Judaism.

We’ve wrapped the story of the Epiphany from Matthew in with the Nativity story from Luke and shoved the celebration of it to a fixed date on January 6th so that it rarely lands on a Sunday (like it did last year). So we’ve lost our awareness of the importance of this story amid the chaos of our celebration of the birth of our Lord and the end of our fiscal and calendar year. And that’s too bad because this story from Matthew is, in some ways, the more important story than Luke’s story.

The word epiphany means “to be manifest” or “to appear openly.” We have come to understand the word to mean something more like a surprise than a gradual dawning of new life.  I used to explain the meaning of the word Epiphany by reminding folks of that old TV advertisement for the tomato juice called V8 - “I could’ve had a V8!” But smacking our foreheads and acting surprised every January 6th is really missing the point. There is way more to this story than camels along side the donkey in the manger scene. This is the story of the whole world coming together because of the incarnate love of God.

These wise men or seers as they are more appropriately called, were real - though the number three is not in the Bible. The idea there were three is a tradition based perhaps on the trinitarian number of three but also to indicate at least three different cultures - or tribes.

These seers are a symbol of the incarnation coming into all of the world, of the nations coming together under One King. Other religious leaders from the near east who also believed in and were waiting for a messiah came to see and saw and believed that Jesus of Nazareth was The One sent from God to save the whole world.

This story took place much later than the Bethlehem story. These seers came to the house of Mary and Joseph so all that flight to Egypt part must have past by then and they were back home in Nazareth. It would have taken that long for them to get the news and travel that far. And Jesus would likely be a toddler by then.

It’s also important to remember that these events were providentially guided. We are not listening here to a story of good fortune, happy coincidences, and historical accidents. Jesus is the son of God, king of the Jews, and Davidic ruler. It is no surprise, then, that his life was not only divinely begun, but announced with extraordinary signs and preserved providentially from the threats of a jealous tyrant.

When she was in middle school, just a few years after her childhood days of Jiminy Cricket, Judy developed a huge crush on Donny Osmond. She had a poster of him on her wall that came from a teenage magazine. She listened to all of his music and watched him on TV. For her 13th birthday present her dad took her to Roanoke to a Donny Osmond concert. Judy was so excited! She dressed up and put on make up and dreamed of her chance to finally meet and fall in love with her idol. In her simplicity and naïveté she actually thought they would meet and she actually thought he would fall in love with her too and they would live happily ever after.

The first clue she was wrong about this was the mere size of the crowd. Their seats were way in the back. Then she noticed the large number of lucky girls who were standing at the front, right at the the stage. Some of them actually even got to touch Donny Osmond when he shook some hands and signed some autographs.

But Judy went home completely disillusioned feeling foolish for having believed in the Cinderella story that the media had sold to her and all of those other young people, like me, who had posters of superstars on our teenage walls. Nancy stopped believing that night that dreaming of and wishing on stars was anything more than foolish.

Jesus is not a superstar. And Epiphany is not a surprise.

Epiphany is a growing awareness of the love and presence of God - at all times, in all places, in and with all people. Epiphany takes a life time. Those lost souls out there who follow power and money and believe only in prosperity and live in denial of the one true God have lost their way by following the wrong stars.

Don’t forget, those lost souls have the same possibility of God that we do.

We believe that we sit in the real luxury of all the world when we sit in this sanctuary, when we take the time to learn more about this God who sent God’s only son, when we learn to pray and enter into relationship with God. We’re the lucky ones. Though we prefer to call it blessed.

That, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about. It is not about this building, no matter how lovely. It is not about even our elegant decorations, which are a beautiful symbol of our adoration of the incarnate God. No, this ancient story of the seers who came to pay homage to him lives on, not because of nativity scenes, but because the whole story lives on in our hearts. This old church could burn to the ground and we’d still have God - in all places, at all times, in each other.

The word seer literally means “see-er.” These were the wise ones who could see the magnitude of this Epiphany. We too can see all of this in our own wisdom. But what do we miss? To what are we blind? How do we need to open our eyes?

The basic question of “who do we trust?” then, becomes “how can we share this Epiphany?” How can we spread the Good News that God is incarnate in Christ? Always was. Always will be. Should we spend the money and dress up and adore the wrong star? Should we dress up like Santa and bang on the windows and doors of our neighbors? Should we even try? Should we wish upon Jiminy Cricket’s star and sing sweet songs and hope that will be enough?

The answer is in the Epiphany of your heart.

And, though I seem to be making fun of Jiminy Cricket’s song, he had something right. “Make’s no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you.” We just need to remember to desire the right stuff.

Instead of material things, we need to remember to desire what is good and true and right with God. We need to trust in the love of God enough to lead others to the story of the incarnation, which we can all trust. We need to remember to trust in God to lead us to the Christ child and then we can lead others there too.

Amen.

[1] Goldman, B. (Ed.), Shapiro, D. (Ed.). (2012). The Psychology of Negotiations in the 21st Century Workplace. New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203135068

Christmas Eve 2019

Christmas Eve 2019

Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

When my oldest niece was baptized, it was a very special event for my family. She was the first grandchild and my brother and sister in-law and her family all grew up together in the same church. So, both sides of the extended family knew each other and the whole community joined in the joy of her birth and her baptism. We really took seriously that morning the vow for all of the community to raise this child in the faith.

The moment of that event that I remember as most special was an impromptu moment at an in-between time. We had come really early to rehearse and then had to wait almost and hour until the service because the pastor had other groups to tend to and so we were standing around in the large narthex of that church. There were maybe a dozen family members in this circle and we were passing that baby around. She was about 9 months old and dressed in the christening gown that every female child of that generation would eventually wear for their baptism. (I still have it because my child was the youngest.)

As we passed Jessica around that day we each cooed and kissed and tickled and enjoyed her wide eyed gaze, her yawns and stretches, even her crying when it was time to feed her. I felt a bit sad when her mother took her away from this circle to feed and fluff her, with hopes she would sleep in heavenly peace later while we sprinkled her with the water of salvation.

Tonight is the night that changes the world. This is the night when we celebrate the coming of God into the world as a human. This is the Feast of the Incarnation and so here we are again, overcome with awe in our awkward struggle to understand this unfathomable event. The Christ event. That night when Jesus was born and nothing on earth was ever the same again.

Tonight we celebrate the greatest miracle of all time. And we focus our hearts for a moment on that image of an infant God being lulled to “sleep in heavenly peace” by all of us singing, as we each hold our little light with hopes that the “Christ child will enter in” to our hearts once again.

A couple of years ago, I was serving a small church and I was exasperated with the children’s pageant.  Well before Advent I had suggested a plan for rehearsals, costumes, casting and music – keep it simple and include all children who are interested.  As most efforts go, there were the usual problems.  I was frustrated and couldn’t keep up with the schedule changes. We could never find a time to rehearse with everyone there. I felt unappreciated, overwhelmed and greatly disappointed in the final outcome at dress rehearsal.  I was so convinced this production could be so much better if only people would cooperate!

But it was precious when the children lined up in cute costumes in front of families with candles and greenery and we all sang Silent Night together.  It was lovely, and I relaxed and enjoyed the moment - until I noticed a huge faux pas.

After the children got everybody feeling warm and fuzzy and they filed out of the chancel, where I was still sitting, I saw that in the chaos these little, inexperienced actors had left the baby Jesus behind.  A worn baby doll, wrapped in some outgrown blankie laying in a poorly painted shoe box, they left it, just laying there on the steps of the chancel, discarded! My thoughts swirled. Why didn’t we remind one of the children to bring all the props off stage! Someone would trip over it on the way to communion! Could someone please grab that doll?!  Could someone sneak over there unnoticed and shoved it up under the Christmas tree before it is seen?

I tried to make some meaning later of this image of the Christ child left behind. The abandoned Christ who stays anyway. The Christ who invites us to grow with him in our faith. But I was also left wondering if we somehow missed the point. I still wonder if we don’t risk missing the message of the Peace of Christmas.

The problem with this gift of Peace given us by the Prince of Peace is not that we take if for granted. The problem we still face is not our abandonment of the Christ child. The problem is that we think of this Peace, which comes from God, as something to be owned. We think that “the Peace of God which passes all understanding” is meant for each individual. And we think we can keep it for ourselves.

Most of us want world peace, and every person on earth wants peace for themself. We want peace of mind. We want that Peace of God to reassure us that our lives are meaningful that we are needed and useful. We want the Peace of God to bring us prosperity and health and happiness to our selves and our families. We want the Peace of God which was born in the manger on Christmas to fix our worries, ease our troubled minds and sometimes spite our enemies.

It’s O.K. That’s been our part of the story ever since that first Christmas. The disciples who first followed Jesus made the same mistake. They wanted a warrior king to free them from their oppression. They wanted reassurance of their survival and reassurance that their way of life, their culture, their traditions, their laws. They wanted all that to survive too. Like us, they misinterpreted the gift of Peace given by the Prince of Peace. They tried to own it.

But we know better too. We know that you have to share it to bring that peace to it’s fullness. You have to give it away in order for this Peace to change hearts. The Peace of God will change the world but only if we share it.

The Peace of Christmas is a miracle. But it is not one that we can own. We have to take it into the world.

The closest I can come to describing this miracle is to tell of another Christmas Eve miracle that happened 105 years ago this night, the Christmas Truce of 1914.

WWI was one of the deadliest conflicts of all time though also one of the shortest at just over 4 years. The death toll of that war was around a hundred million people. (If you include the 1918 world wide flu epidemic which came out of that war.)

John McCutcheon, a folk musician who many of you will remember as a Virginian, tells best the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 in his song called “Christmas in the Trenches.”  Here are a couple of verses:

It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung

The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung

Our families back in England were toasting us that day

Their brave and glorious lads so far away

I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground

When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound

Says I "Now listen up me boys,” each soldier strained to hear

As one young German voice sang out so clear

As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent

'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent

The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht.’ "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I

And in two tongues one song filled up that sky

The song goes on to tell the true story of a spontaneous truce among the troops in at least five different battlefields along both Eastern and Western Fronts on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914. It is amazing this happened, considering the lack of communication they had. These German and French and English soldiers really did sing together and share what meager luxuries they had like chocolates and pictures from home. Some really did play soccer. Some helped bury each other’s dead and prisoners really were exchanged.

The higher ups were not pleased with this lack of discipline and the following year “the brass” sent out clear orders against any truces.

But for that one day the Great War ended on those frozen fields along the fronts of WWI.

Or as McCutcheaon wraps it up:

It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung

The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung

For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war

Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more

The Peace of Christmas is a miracle. But it is not one that we can own.

We are commanded to give it away, to pass it on. The Peace of Christ is more about hope in an ailing world, love in a divided world and motivation to heal the world than it is about feeling better about my life, my circle of friends, my family. This Peace is not ours to own.  The Peace of God can only be experienced if it is shared. Moreover, we are commanded to share it with “the least of these.” That means we are merely messengers of this Peace.

We are stewards of this Peace.

We do not own it. It is only owned by the workings of the Prince of Peace.

So tonight, come to this table and receive the greatest gift of all time, the Peace of Christ which passes all understanding. Let your light shine as we sing “sleep in heavenly peace” to this infant king who will grow in our hearts to be our Lord. But don’t leave the baby behind when you leave this place tonight.

Take the Peace of the Christ child with you.

And share it.

And let Him grow within you, and among you and rejoice in His Peace.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Advent - Sunday, Dec. 15, 2019

Advent 3A

Matthew 24:36-44

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

I’ve been cheating. More on that confession in a moment.

Today is Gaudete Sunday or Rose Sunday. Gaudete is a Latin word which means rejoice and, in medieval times was the first word of the chant that was used for the processional on this Sunday. Gaudete started the first line, "Gaudete in Domino semper” - "Rejoice in the Lord always.” 

The pink candle on the Advent wreathe is lit and we talk about joy, one of those four Advent topics which the candles represent. Rose Sunday is thus called because of the old tradition of pulling out pink hangings and vestments and it was simply a lighter color of purple to represent a break from all the fasting and stern solemnity that was practiced. Many Episcopalian churches still do all that. Some only do it in Lent. 

Our way of remembering that old tradition is to light a pink candle and talk about joy. And that is good. 

This year some of us wore pink and we used this Sunday as a gimmick to collect underwear for the needy. Having some fun in that way does seem a break from the solemn and somewhat dark ways of our readings and worship services during Advent.

Years ago, when I first became an Episcopalian, the church I then attended really did keep the old Advent tradition of not decorating for Christmas until Christmas Eve. Or at least until the afternoon of the 4th Sunday of Advent. This tradition is one of keeping Advent by waiting for Christmas. And it’s hard to do. But I really benefitted spiritually from practicing this devotion of waiting. No tree. No stockings. No wreathes. No red and green. And, well, limited amounts of Christmas music. Especially that secular stuff about Santa and snow and romance.

Then I moved to another, smaller town and that church was even more strict about this tradition. There was a joke in that town that you could tell who the Episcopalians were in town not because they spoke to each other in the liquor store - but because they didn’t start decorating for Christmas until everybody else was taking down their trees. It sort of made me feel special to keep this devotion.

And then, about 10 years later, Love Actually came out, that zany British film that takes place in London in the last week before Christmas. With scenes all over London decorated to the hilt, I realized then that the Brits clearly don’t practice that old tradition anymore, so why should I?

You might think that’s a good enough reason to do away altogether with this holding off season of Advent but this is the only time of year we address this waiting thing. Advent is a lesson in waiting, of patience and anticipation.

And this is a really important part of our faith.

Especially in our times of instant gratification and busy-ness. Recognizing our need to learn patience and anticipation is imperative. These four Sundays are the only time of the year when we focus in this way on our longing for God. Advent helps us to reflect on just what it means to live in this in-between time of Emmanuel - God with us - then, now and always.

So, we hold off on Christmas decorations and music and too much merriment at church, as best we can, in order to feel that tension, in order to grow from the holding off season.

And some of us even still wait to decorate our homes. I usually do. But not this year. I’ve been cheating. That’s my confession.

I put up my tree and wreath early and finished decorating the first week of Advent! I’ve finished my shopping and I’ve wrapped all of my presents. And I’ve been streaming Christmas music and watching Christmas movies!

I’ve caved.  But it’s O.K.

And, to be honest, I’m not really missing out on the devotion of holding-off. Not in my heart. Not in my practice of my faith.

Since I’m allowing myself some folly this year, yesterday, I watched again for the first time since Kate was little, The Polar Express movie (based on the classic children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg). Tom Hanks plays several of the characters and they do that really cool thing of animation on top of real actors, what ever that’s called. That was such a new technology when I watched it with Kate 15 years ago that I got lost in the art of the animation and missed some of the meaning of the story. And for some reason I had not read the book. But now I get it.

It’s a story about doubt. And it’s a story about compassion.

We all face doubt in our lives. We doubt each other, we doubt ourselves and we doubt God. We doubt in the existence of God and we doubt in the loving actions of God. Some doubt the virgin birth, the resurrection, some even doubt the crucifixion. And, as you probably have heard, at least in the Episcopal faith, we believe that doubt can be a good thing. It’s natural and admitting our doubts and struggling a bit with doubt is an opportunity to grow.

But doubting each other, doubting ourselves, I think that sort of doubt hurts God’s heart.

The lessons during Advent this year have been a bit strange so far. We are in Year A and so we will spend the year with gospel readings mostly from Matthew. And Matthew tells the story a bit differently from Luke. Here’s an opportunity for us to study those differences and, if we can live into the tension, we can gain some new realization of the gospel story which perhaps we’ve never thought of.

Last week, on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, Matthew moved us back (chronologically speaking) to the expectation of Jesus’ coming in ministry in connection with John the Baptist (3:1-12). This week we stay with John the Baptist for Advent 3, but he is now in prison asking if Jesus is the one about whom he prophesied in our reading from last week.

Don’t let this seeming contradiction throw you. There is a lesson in it.

For Matthew, it is not that Jesus’ first coming was historical and his second coming will be eschatological: that is, apocalyptic. The Christ event is an event which means that the church is already living and always will live in this already/not yet way of Jesus. We do not live completely bereft and lost in the world while we wait for the return of the Lord. We live in the now. And the Lord lives here with us through the co-workings with the Creator and the Holy Spirit.

This story about John the Baptist in Matthew has two distinct parts. In the first section, John sends his disciples to ask if Jesus is the one who is coming and Jesus responds (Matthew 11:2-6). In the second section, John’s disciples have departed and Jesus discusses the importance of John with the crowd around him (verses 7-19).

John’s question is an Advent question: “Are you the one who is coming or should we expect another?” (Matthew 11:3). Matthew captures the tension of that already-not-yet experience by having John in prison ask whether Jesus, who is out there doing good works - now - is the one to come (eschatological)! In Advent we paradoxically wait for the one who has already come.

Jesus’ answer to John’s doubt is to send John’s disciples to report back to John what they have seen and heard. John cannot see and hear what Jesus is up to because he is in prison. He needs his friends to see and hear for him.

“Seeing and hearing” is a very important Advent lesson.

How do we see and hear Christ at work in our now times, in our neighborhood, in our community? How does Christ heal, offer life, and overcome oppression in today’s world? Where do we see and hear the love of the incarnate God at work all around us?

When the boy in the story decides to get on board The Polar Express and join the ride to the North Pole, he is given a choice and timidly decides to join the journey. He is hiding his doubt all along the journey. He doubts that any of the magic of this season is real. His friends also doubt. The girl doubts herself. The younger boy, Billy seems to doubt everything, even life itself.

But they also each practice compassion in their friendships. They help each other out along the journey. They help each other find lost things. They help each other form identity as compassionate believers. They hold hands in the dark. They work side by side.

Then our hero boy is given a silver jingle bell from the reins of the reindeer. It is a bell that can only be heard by those who believe. And he is the only person in the crowd that night at the North Pole who can not hear the bells. Until he does some quick soul searching and makes a statement of faith. When he says he believes, three times, suddenly he does hear the bell. And his heart is filled with joy.

I believe.

I believe.

I believe.

And he kept that bell for the rest of his life. And he could still hear it ring for the rest of his life. Even when those around him could no longer hear it.

Each of us has a place in our souls that is a prison for us. And each of us has a bell. We live with both in the in-between times, all of our lives. At times when we are in our prisons it is difficult to hear and see what the Lord is up to and so we need to call on our friends.

John went from the baptizer, the Prophet of the Most High to the dungeon of blindness and deafness. He was, after all, just a human.

We are called to be disciples. And the disciples in this story are the messengers. When the chief messenger is down and out these disciples bring good news and reassurance of what the Lord is up to - now.

“the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

And then, what happens? John gets not only reminded of the good news of the good works of the Lord, he is reminded of his very identity. 

“A prophet? More than a prophet. This is the one who was sent before me to prepare the way.”

And John, in this reassurance must have gone to his death in peace.

How then can we be better messengers? How can we be the eyes and ears of the here-and-now workings of the Lord to those who are lost in their prisons of doubt and confusion?

That’s the compassionate part.

When the bells of the Feast of the Incarnation are ringing loudly in our ears, when we feel that we see clearly, that is the time to go and reassure others. When we are in prison is the time to ask for help, to call on our friends in Christ. We need each other, we need to remind each other of who we are as disciples of Christ.

We are the beloved.

We are the bell ringers.

So, go and see. Go and hear.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Second Sunday of Advent - Sunday, December 8, 2019

Advent 2A 2019

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

I once got to hear a great preacher who traveled a long way to our church. He was an old friend of the rector who invited him to speak and even though none of us had ever heard of him, he drew a really big crowd.

Stephen was a clean cut, 50-something, average looking guy in khakis and an open collar which was different from what I had expected. His head shot in the promo was of a pressed and polished priest in full clericals and his professional bio listed him in the high company of bishops and archbishops and the talk circuit headliners. I was glad I got there early to get a seat.

Stephen began with a story about himself from an earlier time in his life. This was to set the stage for talking about how to draw new members to church. He told us of his entry to the church. He didn’t grow up in the church and chose the faith as an adult.

He said that in the 1960s he married quite young and he and his wife ventured into that “living off of the land” trend of the time. They had a baby early in the marriage and when the child was still in arms, they moved to a small town in Alabama. They got a little house and set up a vegetable garden and studied herbology and such. His wife had a loom and he was working on his carpentry skills while finishing his PhD dissertation. They wore natural clothes made only from 100% cotton or wool and they both wore their hair really long. He also wore a full beard which accented his blue eyes and helped protect his fair skin.

After some time, the couple, who had never been to church, decided to check out the local Baptist church.  Stephen didn’t elaborate but I imagined they wanted to become more a part of a community or get to know their neighbors better or study the Christian response to the social justice activism which was important to them. Or maybe they were just seeking a spiritual home.

They were swamped with welcome that first Sunday. The young family enjoyed all the attention, enjoyed the service and happily stayed for coffee hour.

Then, a small group of ladies approached them with some suggestions of how to get involved. You see, it was the third Sunday of Lent and they still didn’t have someone to play Jesus for their passion play on Palm Sunday. And Stephen looked just like Sallman’s portrait of Jesus!

And so, Stephen was type cast into the role of Jesus and on his fourth time ever going to church he found himself in white robes, riding an actual, real donkey down the aisle.

After he told us this story, the 50-something, years-later Stephen challenged us to spend some time pondering the ways we stereotype each other, especially newcomers. One of the comments he made was the old adage that “perhaps it’s not who you are but who you look like that matters.”

Perhaps we do use stereotypes too much in church. I think in many ways we have stereotyped John the Baptist. We focus on what we imagine he looked like. We have trouble seeing him as the Prophet of the Most High.

One writer imagining this said that “if John the Baptist were a member of (my) family, he’d be that loud uncle you invite to holiday gatherings with the secret hope that he’ll decline.” John was different, to put it nicely. He ate bugs, wore clothes made of camel hair, and talked loudly of radical ideas.

But if you got to know John, you’d quickly realize something important about the man: he was authentic. John was not radical for radical’s sake - he didn’t do these things for shock value or to garner attention from others. John lived differently than everyone else because, unlike everyone else, his single mission was made clear from the moment of his birth. As his father Zechariah prophesied: “you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.” (Luke 1:76-77). John’s job was to proclaim Jesus - the God-made-man who was also his cousin - and John devoted his life to Him, right down to the his choice of what we would now call “natural” attire and "organic cuisine.”

There is a new archetype in our culture, I think, and that is of the postmodern tour guide. We’ve had guides for centuries from Sacagawea to Harriett Tubman to the guide who welcomes Marine recruits to Reception Week prior to sending them to boot camp. And then there’s Tour guide Barbie who in Toy Story 2 jumped into her convertible and said,  “I’m Tour Guide Barbie! Please keep your hands, arms, and accessories in the car, and no flash photography. Thank you!”

At one time in own my life, I wanted to become a realtor. Relational as I am, I loved the idea of connecting people with their dream home. But when I realized the business of Real Estate is really sales and brokerage I realized selling houses was definitely not for me.

But still I love the idea of showing homes. The tour guide part of the job.

I remember a couple of times in my life when I was put in charge of a tour. One time it was a Christmas tour of historic homes, another time the campus tour for new student orientation and many times taking some visitor through the tour of the church I was serving.

My family recently went on a tour of the Biltmore and my niece, who works in the flower department there kept showing us hidden doors and back entrances which Mr. Vanderbilt had put in so that he could both escape and check on his guests.

What kind of tour guide are you?

In movies and TV shows these days, you often see the tour guide role done by a robot or a hologram. We’ve been playing with this science fiction image for decades and apparently it has come to be. In futuristic movies, the protagonist is desperate and in a hurry to either get away from or find the bad guy when he encounters this hologram, which looks like an attractive uniformed staff person and  the protagonist tries to get answers to find only a robotic smile and “have a nice day” trite. It’s almost funny but it’s really about our distrust of robots.

This reminds me that today’s world seems crazy. I think that the experience of the world as crazy comes from a fear of losing the human connections that have always guided us. We need to lead each other. Are robots and computer generated holograms really the best at showing us the way? Perhaps we need to leave that to real humans who know the hiding places and escape routes.

If we were to take this reading from Isaiah too literally, we might think we serve a crazy God, one who would put lambs in the same pen with wolves and infants next to snake pits and expect everything to turn out O.K.

John the Baptist seems crazy too. This story, of how God became one of us in Jesus has some really weird twists and turns like birthing a baby in a stable and the King crucified as a criminal not to mention that coming back to life part. But the prophet who comes to foretell this, the greatest prophesy of all time, is living in the wild. He is hairy and dirty and wearing animal skins like some neanderthal and living on bugs and honey!

He seems crazy!

Why wouldn’t God send somebody posh and chic? Maybe someone more approachable. I think I’d rather have a hologram of some useless, too smiley fake girl in a uniform! I’m not sure I would follow this wild man.

But crowds of people flocked to the river to be baptized by John. I wonder how they took him? He seems scary and rough. Yet this is the the one who will guide us to the messiah.

For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea. Says Isaiah.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

For the Earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

And a little child will lead them . . .

That little child, presumably a young boy, was leading the calfs and lions who had laid down in peace together. He was leading them to their food and water and shelter. This is not a reference to Jesus as a child - or even King David as a young shepherd - as we often interpret the poem. It is simply a metaphor of the simplicity of life in Christ. In this time of peace for which we wait, even young children will manage wild beasts.

If we really believe in the Prince of Peace, we believe that we can live in peace even with our worst enemy.

I’m not so sure we’re ready for that.

The lamb is food for the wolf, the calf is food for the lion. And we too treat each other like the food chain. We feed on each other’s anxiety and defensiveness and become embattled.

Isaiah is the great prophet who foretold that there would come a King who would bring this sort of peace, one with whom we can lay down our weapons and rest beside our enemies. One in which there are, in fact no more enemies.

Do you believe it? Do we still hope for this?

John the Baptist, the prophet of the Most High, brings the same message as Isaiah. But with a twist. John calls us out on our sloth as well as our warring. John calls us to repent, to turn around and to get ready for the Prince of Peace who comes after him. John baptizes with water and proclaims loudly that Jesus will baptize with fire. It’s hard not to take this guy seriously.

But we, instead tend to laugh at John. We see the oddness in this character. We see a crazy acting man living in the wilderness with wild hair. We imagine him as stinky and loud and scary and we laugh. We think of John as the announcer or the warm up band and pass over him to get to the good part of the story.

The part about Jesus, our savior.

Maybe we do this because we don’t really want to face our need for repentance. Maybe John seems too serious. Too scary. Too wild.

But John was joyful too. He leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when Mary and Elizabeth shared their joy and sang songs of joy. John was joyful too when he called his followers, peaching the Good News with excitement. John’s ultimate joy came that day his Lord came to the river to also be baptized.

So friends, for the Second Sunday of Advent this year, instead of focusing on the weirdness of John, instead of focusing on the sternness of this prophet who calls those church leaders a “brood of vipers,” instead of only talking about that repentance part, this year I want to invite you to think of the story of John a little bit differently.

Let’s all try to emulate John.

Let’s all become tour guides of the faith.

Let us too be prophets of the Most High. Bearers of light in the darkness.

Invite friends to church. Welcome newcomers and visitors with excitement. Live into the joy of our faith and show that joy to others. Give to those around you a tour of the spiritual house within your heart. Be like a little child who can lead even mortal enemies to peace. Be brave enough to welcome, even follow, the stranger, even if they seem weird. Be open and willing to be stereotyped as a crazy Christian, even if it means riding a donkey down the aisle.

Amen.

First Sunday of Advent - Sunday, December 1, 2019

Advent 1A 2019

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Well, the seasonal rush is on. It seems that every year our culture gets into a flurry during the 4th quarter.  This starts sometime between when the first Halloween decorations go up, which is apparently now as early as July, and it doesn’t calm down until along about January 2nd when the holidays are officially over.  No wonder we then collapse and get the blahs during January and February.

Amid all the increased activity during this chaotic season, I have seen more images of chaos on social media.  Last week I watched old footage of a brief video of a weather girl trying to report a hurricane from within the active hurricane itself.  You can barely see her with all the rain and high winds and debris flying all around her and her rain coat flapping and she’s screaming into the microphone at the top of her voice to tell us that the weather is really bad out here! Why do they do that?

Then, suddenly a stop sign still attached to its pole comes flying by and smacks up against her and knocks her down.  I assume she was not hurt by this.  She jumped right back up and didn’t seem injured.  But I had to laugh at the irony.  Is this a signnnn?  Or maybe we should already know to seek shelter during stormy weather!

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It is a sort of New Year’s Day since it is the first Sunday of the year in our liturgical calendar. This is also the beginning of Year A, so it’s also the beginning of the three year cycle in our lectionary. So with this theme of new beginnings, we are supposed to be talking about hope for the future rather than any sort of holding back of the seasonal rush.

According to many self help bloggers, this is the usual time when we are expected to start experiencing the holiday blues. Like the expectation to decorate early, eat too much and spend too much, our culture has us worried about money and weary from the fear mongering of our times.  It is very easy to catch the blues rather than the Spirit.

To make matters worse, the readings for the first Sunday of Advent are always a bit gloomy.  Of course, as in most story telling, you have to set the scene and remember that the people of the first century church were living in tough times. A bit tougher even than times are now.

When Kate was three, we drove from our them home in South Georgia to Bristol for holiday visits with family. That’s about an eight hour drive with all the extra stops you have to take and, as you know, you have a lot of extra stuff to pack when you’re traveling with young children.

On one particular trip, I spent most of the previous day packing so that we could leave early. So, early the morning of the trip I still had the task of packing the car and this took nearly an hour with Kate toddling around at my feet.

When we finally got her in the carseat in the middle of the back seat, the Jack Russell Terrier in the front seat and all our stuff settled in for the long drive I started the engine and put the car in reverse. As I began to back up out of the driveway, Kate said from the back seat, “Are we there yet?!”

I had to stop and laugh before I could go on. And, as it turns out, my little girl had just told her first joke! She was teasing me with the old adage that kids will drive you crazy with such travel questions.

An hour or so into the trip, though she fell asleep. But I had to stay awake to drive and I had learned why to never stop for a break when the child is sleeping. If you wake her up too early she’ll then need attention that will take even more time from the long trip, and make it seem even a longer time until we are there.

Today’s Gospel lesson is about being prepared, staying awake and ready. Like all Advent lessons, this is about preparing for the coming of the Lord. It is not, as we have come to think, about getting ready for our Christmas feast. It is about learning to live at all times in a sort of readiness for the act of God coming into the world, then and now.

It is a time for the renewal of our relationship with the God who comes into the world, now, at this moment, at each and every moment.

Advent is about hope.

I recently watched the movie Passengers in which Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are passengers on a futuristic space ship which is traveling 120 years to a new colony planet and all the passengers have been put into a medical state of hibernation in which you don’t age while asleep. I know, a bit much for extended disbelief, but if you can stay with that set up the two stars wake up 90 years too early partly because of a collision with an asteroid that causes problems with the fully automatic vessel. So, they are stuck in real time while the rest of the ship, crew included are still in hibernation mode. They cannot wake the crew and not going crazy seems to be their goal until fixing the ship becomes possible. It’s a good movie as sci-fi movies go.

It really fits with today’s Gospel though. Fantasy and sci-fi films come from our imagining of what the future might hold. We can’t help ourselves from pondering such things. We tend, in fact to live too much in the future. (That is, when we’re not living too much in the past.)

But Jesus says to not worry about trying to figure out the when and where of the future. Jesus instead says that we are to stay awake - now. Watch out fo what we learned from the great flood. Watch out for thieves in the night. Watch out for kidnappings!

It is an oft used misinterpretation of Biblical images like these, however, to use such lists of examples of why to be prepared as a means of fear mongering. Passages like this passage from Matthew (according to one scholar) have become “associated with the “Left Behind” series which takes these texts to refer to “the rapture,” when believers are airlifted out of the world while the rest of humankind suffers tribulation. And there’s lots of movies about that out too. Ron Allen https://goo.gl/Ox0U3g

In reminiscing about the traditions in her own home, of Advent calendars and Advent wreaths with specially colored candles, Diana Butler-Bass reminded me in one of her blogs that Advent calendars are a token of an ancient religious practice to mark sacred time. She says that this is one of the few aspects of the upcoming holiday season that remains nearly untouched by secularization or consumerism. So, for Christians, Advent is a time of waiting, listening and preparing - again - for the birth of Jesus. It is not a time for preparing for the celebration of presents and turkey dinners and decorating and baking and all that fuss.

In the Episcopal Church we practice the belief that the Holy Spirit is now. God incarnate is now.

The Holy Spirit is active in our lives at this and every moment. When we celebrate the Eucharist, we tell the story, we remember the past and the future - His death, His resurrection and His expected coming again. And at the moment when the priest breaks the bread we are filled with the experience of the remembrance that Christ died for us. At that moment, we simultaneously experience crucifixion and resurrection. The Holy Spirit is now. The Holy Spirit, the coming of God into the world, because of these acts of God in history, is happening right now.

And Diana Butler-Bass, seminary professor and well published theologian knows that.

But in her blog about all this she spoke of her own tendency for holiday depression.  She made lists too. She listed all the recent national problems that left her feeling personally down, as well as many of her friends and those she meets on social media. She listed all the things to be sad about these days. She focused on politics, hate crimes, division and violence and said, that she is, right now “just sad: blue,” she said, “really blue.”

So, she has decided to practice Advent with all blue candles in her Advent wreath instead of purple and pink.  She said that while shopping for the candles and greenery for her home Advent wreath, she picked up the usual customary colors. The purples, she reminds us symbolize penitence and the pink and white symbolize joy. But because she is personally not feeling very joyful she found herself drawn to some blue candles and bought four of those instead. Because blue is the color of sadness. Diana is having a blue Advent.

Our culture pressures us join the chaotic rush at this time of the year and holiday depression is on the rise because of this. The busy-ness of life increases and we seem to be celebrating chaos and despair instead of peace, love and joy.

But Diana is on to something. You see, in the medieval church the color for Advent was blue.  You may have seen this in other churches in recent years who are making the switch to blue from purple. For the church in the 10th century - and this was mostly a tradition in England and we and the Lutherans have carried it forward ever since - the color blue was the color for hope. So the color blue was the color for Advent.

Advent is not about penance, like Lent. It is of a different spiritual hue: It is a time of waiting, of expectation, of hope in the darkness. The blue candles symbolize the color of the sky right before dawn, that time when the deepest dark is just infused with hints of light. Advent is about hope.

Blue holds the promise that the sun will rise, and that even after the bleakest, coldest, longest night, the light will break forth, as the new day arrives.

Blue may be the color of sadness, but blue is also the color of hope.

Many faiths and religious traditions have sacred days or times of waiting, of anticipation, of the expectation of enlightenment — that light breaks through the night. Diwali, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice. Those sorts of holy days are celebrated when darkness surrounds, when all seems lost. When we hurt and think we have been abandoned, when all promises seem broken. That is when we light candles against the night, trusting and believing that a greater light will arise. When a single flame becomes a conflagration of compassion and justice. And hope.

For Christians, Advent is not a time of opening up little windows with chocolates as we await the really big booty of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. That is not what we are waiting for. We are waiting for light, for God to renew and heal the world, a promise that we understand to have been mysteriously embodied in a baby born in a manger.

Advent recognizes a profound spiritual truth — that we need not fear the dark. Instead, wait there. Under that blue cope of heaven, alert for the signs of dawn. Watch. For you cannot rush the night. But you can light some candles. Sing some songs. Recite poetry. Say prayers. Diana Butler Bass

So, my friends, this is my hope for you this year as you face yet another season of challenges. We may face adversities and big changes in the months and years to come but the Holy Spirit is now. The Incarnation is now. God’s coming into the world is always now.

So lay your blue candles at the altar and keep watch, keep awake, stay hopeful for God has already come into the world and nothing can separate us from that fact, that love, that peace and that joy.

Amen.

Last Pentecost/Christ the King - Sunday, November 24

Last Pentecost/Christ the King

Psalm 46

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Forgiveness - Christ the King -  Be Still - Hope

The Gospel reading this morning seems an odd one. Why would the lectionary committee (actually consultation) choose the story of the crucifixion to be read and preached on during a time when everyone is busy decorating for Christmas? This is a time to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus - not the death of Jesus. And this passage doesn’t even get into the Easter part of the story with the resurrection of Jesus.

I had you use your prayer books to read with Mark (the lector) my favorite Psalm. Now, the lectionary has two tracks and we usually follow Track 1 and I borrowed this psalm from Track 2 instead of having you read one of these canticles in Track 1. So, Psalm 46 is indicated as a reading for today. I didn’t do anything illegal!

The reason for today’s Gospel reading about the crucifixion is that today is the last day of the liturgical calendar. Next week with Advent 1 we begin a new year and anew three year cycle. So speaking of last things fits, but more importantly today we celebrate a feast day to honor the kingship of Jesus. Today is Christ the King Sunday. And in this reading we are faced with a very clear image of our King being crucified.

But our King is our King precisely because of his sacrifice for us on the cross. Jesus did not come into the world as a warrior king to win a battle against the Roman occupation and free the Israelites through bloodshed. Jesus came to shed only his own blood in order for us to experience true redemption. In order for us to learn to practice true gratitude and for us to learn to practice true forgiveness.

So, as we enter into this week of Thanksgiving, we have the chance to practice some gratitude about big picture events like Jesus’ sacrificial gift to us on the cross as well as all those many blessings we take special time this week to name and give thanks for.

With all that in mind, I want to say a bit more about gratitude and a lot more about stillness.

This time of year we are inundated with pleas for our charitable giving. This comes from the financial tradition of “year end giving” which was, at least in the past, created by the practice of earning ultimate interest on your money until the end of the year and then getting tax benefits for giving prior to December 31st. If you’re like me, all this really becomes overwhelming. Every ministry and charity swamps us with clever and moving pleas for supporting their cause and every cause is a really good cause. I find myself wanting to support all of them and I end up feeling sad and guilty that I can’t. Then I can easily go into a tail spin trying to choose where to send my charitable dollars. And then I’m so stressed out I can’t even pray.

What a mess!  And what a travesty of the Christian value of gratitude and giving from a grateful heart.

Gratitude is not at all what this mess indicates - some sort of chaotic battle for charitable dollars, in the mix of which is a great deal of distrust that these dollars are spent appropriately.

Gratitude is supposed to be something that happens when we are able to Be Still and Know that God is God. Gratitude comes from the deep place within our souls where we meet God and then turn to take the love of God to others in our lives.

Here is a little poem by Meister Eckhart which illustrates this point:

Becoming Empty

So you want to find God?

Empty yourself of everything -

Your worries and your hopes,

Your wishes and your fears.

For when you are finally empty, God will find you,

Because God cannot tolerate

Emptiness and will come

To fill you with himself.

“Be still then, and know that I am God,” says the psalmist on behalf of God and in an understanding of God as that great connecting spirit who longs for us to be one, longs for us to share with all people all the resources from God’s creation.

Be still then.

God is God, we are not. 

If we are to follow Jesus, there will be many surprises along the way.  But follow we must, because we can’t not follow because of our already-in-too-deep commitment to our Lord.  And so we try, we fail, we try again, we learn, we get better at it, we fail again, we sin, we are forgiven, we rejoice, we sin again, we return, repent, and try again.  Thus is the cycle of Christian discipleship.  We can never really reach perfection, but we strive toward it anyway. And we rely on forgiveness. But we also rely on getting busy.  We do, and we do, and we do.

Most of us say those magical three little words at least once a day,  “I’m too busy.” We’re too busy for friends, too busy for family, too busy for church, too busy for meetings, too busy for paperwork, too busy even for work.  There is always too much to be done, too much on our plate, too much stress, too much commitment.  When we stop, and sometimes we do stop, and evaluate why we are too busy, we tend to remember that much of what we are doing is intended as “The Lord’s work.”  We rationalize our doing as our answer to our commitment as Christians.  We see ourselves as justified by our works. Often we think we are following Jesus when we are not and yet at times we look back and see where we were right on track when we didn’t think we were.

Be still then.

Discipleship is not what we do, it is what we are.  We made a commitment at our baptism, “to follow and obey Jesus as our Lord” (BCP 303) and we “are sealed in the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever” in the waters of baptism. Why do we so often feel overwhelmed, discouraged or sadly long for the old times when church and the Christian life seemed to make more sense?

Our intention is good; it is to follow Jesus, by picking up our cross, by feeding His sheep, by going out into all the world.  That’s what He said to do, isn’t it?  So what is missing?  Why do we find ourselves feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and left wondering what difference getting into heaven has to do with it anyway?

Well, there is a gem in today’s lessons that gives us a hint at the answer to all this.  It is in the Psalm.  Beautiful, wonderful, Psalms 46.  “Be still, then, and Know that I Am God”.  In context, it is the answer to the question of who God is and who we are in relation to God.  “God has spoken, and the earth shall melt away.”  God is the powerful one. God is the authority.  “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble . . . God is in the midst of her . . . God shall help her at the break of day. ”  All this seems to boil down to the fact that God loves us.  Who are we in all this?  We are the objects of that love.  We are the recipients of God’s works.  We are the ones all the doing was done for, and the doing is already done.  “Come now and look upon the works of the Lord,” the Psalmist says, “what awesome things he has done on earth.  It is he who makes war to cease in all the world; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, and burns the shields with fire.

Be still, then, and know that I am God.”

Our Way of Love: Finding God guidance team, from whom you will soon hear much more about what they are up to, strives to add a little extra silence to our  meetings, a little extra silence to our doing, a little time to sit and ponder God’s word.

Silence is uncomfortable for most of us, it is difficult to sit in silence without running our to-do list through our thoughts, think about what we didn’t get done this past week, what we have to do this next week, what we’re going to do in the next moment.  Just sitting, being silent, being in the present moment, is difficult.

But if you just set aside a few minutes each day and give a little intention to begin quiet before the Lord, the difference in how you feel and the clarity of your call will amaze you.

Be still then.

Do you remember the story of The Little Red Hen? In the tale, the little red hen finds some wheat and asks for help from the other farmyard animals her friends the pig, the cat, and the duck. She asked them to help her to plant the wheat, but they all refuse. At each later stage of the story, the harvest, the threshing, the milling of the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread, the little red hen again asks for help from the other animals, but again they refuse and she receives no help at all.

So she says at each of these refusals, “Then I’ll do it myself!”

Finally, the hen has completed her task and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous non-participants eagerly volunteer to join her, but this time she refuses them. Since no one helped her with her work no one will help her with the eating part. So the hen eats the bread with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else.

When the hen finishes she decides to give her friends another chance. She says that next time she would be happy to make enough bread for herself, her chicks, and her friends if her friends help her do the work. The friends happily agree with that idea and say, "We will.” (Perhaps they might have said, “we will with God’s help.)

This story always bothered me, even as a child. It is supposed to have the moral of not being lazy, of being available to the community, to pitch in, to do your share of the work. But it seems to me that the Little Red Hen was too busy, and bossy and selfish in the end. Still, what if these friends actually shared the work and the meal instead of keeping to their corners and refusing to bend and to listen and to share? Maybe if they shared in this way and entered into community in this way they wouldn’t be either too busy or too selfish. And they would find time to pray and to thank God for all our many blessings.

Be still, then, and know that I am God.

I believe in my heart of hearts, that in these times of strife and division, the Holy Spirit is leading us to re-learn these ways: The Way of Jesus. The Way of Love. Jesus taught by example to always find time to go away to rest and pray. Jesus taught by example to live each step of the way in gratitude and faith. And this is why, when he was in that final hour on the cross, he was offering forgiveness to those around him.

When we can quiet ourselves and trust in the big picture of God’s call for our journey, Then we can slow down. Then we can truly practice gratitude. Then we can truly practice forgiveness.

“Be still, then, and know that I am God.  The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”

Amen.

Twenty-Second Day of Pentecost - Sunday, Novemeber 10

Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon

Grace Episcopal Church, Radford, VA

November 10, 2019

Proper 27 Year C

Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

May change bring hope, may hope bring love, may love bring change!

“Take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you.” 

That’s what God tells the Jews about rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem in our Old Testament text from the Book of Haggai today.”

“Take courage…work, for I am with you.”

That’s a good practical prophecy.  I can deal with that.

One of my continuing challenges in my formation as a deacon has been my practicality.

You see, I believe that faith must lead to action.

Jesus, after all, didn’t teach us much about the mysteries of the universe, although he hints at some of it in today’s Gospel; mostly, he taught us how to live…here…in this life.

Put another way, we are here at Grace for an hour or so a week…if that time, if what we believe, doesn’t change the way we live the other 167 hours of the week, what’s the point?

That’s where I’m coming from…

I’ve got to tell you, that Deacon School, wasn’t always that practical.

Now it’s not seminary, and we didn’t learn Greek or Aramaic, but they did teach us a lot of big words.

We’d learn words like “paraclete”—that means “the Holy Spirit” or “Parousia”—that means the “second coming of Christ” or “pericope”—that means a passage of the Bible.

Maybe some of you have done enough reading on theology or biblical studies that you’ve heard of these words, but I had not when I started.

Now, I’m not exactly sure why we use these words other than to maybe check and see if we did our homework.

And once in a while, we in the clergy are expected to slip these sort of words in our sermons to impress you with how learned we are.

So, in my effort to impress you today, I’m going to throw out another big word.  It’s “eschatology”—and that’s the study of what comes after this world, the end of the world or the end of times. 

Now both our epistle and Gospel readings today have to do with eschatology.

The second letter to the Thessalonians discusses the appearance of a “lawless one” prior to the return of Christ.

And in the Gospel of Luke the author quotes Jesus explaining how the next life is different from this one.

My reaction to all this is:  eschatology/schmeschatology

It’s not that I don’t care, I’d really love to know about the end of times and life after death.

I’ve got questions.

How will the Christ reappear?

And, of course the big one, will there be dogs in heaven?

And, I have to wonder, if there are dogs in heaven, what about cats, squirrels and birds?

And what about those thousands of stinkbugs I have squashed, vacuumed or thrown outside into the cold?

The point is not that I’m not interested. 

The point isn’t that I don’t have questions.

The point IS that we’ve been arguing about this stuff for 2000 years and we haven’t got very far.

The point IS that we’ve got work to do, right here and now. 

I don’t have time to waste preaching on that stuff and you don’t have time to waste listening to me.

Haggai, on the other hand, gives me some text I can work with.

“Take courage…work, for I am with you.”

Now tell the truth, some of you saw the reading from “Haggai” and thought to yourself, “Is that in the Bible?”

In fairness, it’s not a very long book, two or three pages depending on the version and near the end of the Old Testament sandwiched between Zephaniah and Zechariah.

Haggai was a later prophet.  He prophesied between August and December 520 BC when the Jews had just returned from exile in Babylon.[1]

and remember that the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 586 BC as they sent the Jews into exile.[2]

So, 66 years later, they were back in Jerusalem with the task of rebuilding the temple.

Now big projects like that can seem like they will never get done and it’s easy to get discouraged.

And it sounds like, as they looked on what they are building, they were disappointed and concerned that it wouldn’t measure up to the temple that was destroyed. 

Haggai even says, “Is it not in your sight as nothing?”

But Haggai reminds them that they aren’t building the old temple.  They are building the new one and it “shall be greater than the former.”

Take courage…work, for I am with you.

These are words that we should take to heart in today’s situation.

Take courage…work, for I am with you.

Because these are days that we need to take courage and we have much work to do.

It is no secret that the Church is not what it once was.

I wasn’t here to see it, I know many of you were, but I can walk the halls of Grace and see clear evidence that this parish was, at one point, full of children and young families.

Not so much, anymore.

Bigger picture, it is easy to find articles predicting the demise of Christianity.  A quick google search turned up articles entitled:

·         Christianity as we know it is dying

·         Church Attendance is dying.

·         Church as we know it is over

·         7 subtle signs your church is dying.

·         The church is dead.

·         Three symptoms of a dying church

·         The Death of the Church as we know it

It’s depressing.

It is apparent that the old way of being the Church doesn’t work like it used to. 

We are getting smaller and we are getting older. 

If we just keeping doing things the way we’ve always done it, it is reasonable to assume we will get smaller and older still.

This diocese closed a church in Bluefield last year and there are a handful of small parishes that are really just hanging on.

While we in the Episcopal Church aren’t in as bad a shape as the Church of England, there are articles discussing the “extinction” of the Church of England.[3]

Imagine that, EXTINCTION of the Church of England.

In these times we need to take courage and work, for God is with us.

You see, like the Jews in 520 BC, we too, are rebuilding the temple.

We are rebuilding the church. 

We aren’t where the Jews were in 520BC.  They were starting from ground zero.

We have a lot to build on, but still we are rebuilding, rebuilding a church that will work for the context in which we now find ourselves.

You may say, “How are we doing that?  I’m just sitting here in the pew hoping you wrap up this sermon soon.”

But we are!

We are in a process called “the Way of Love, Joining God”, which you have heard us mention.

We have a guiding committee of laity that is in a listening phase.

They are intentionally listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, listening to each other, listening to you in the congregation and to others in our community.

A discernment phase will follow in which we ask…and these are important questions:

 “Where is God at work in our community?” 

And “How might we join God in that work?”

Note, it’s not about what we are going to “do”.  It is about what God is doing.

Then there is an experimentation phase where we do quick, inexpensive projects and see what happens. 

Finally we reflect on what happened and learn from it.

Then we start listening again.

Again, this process is less about figuring out what we should “do” and more about a continuing effort to be God’s Church”.

Listening, discerning, trying stuff, learning and listening some more.

You know, the Jews in 520 BC didn’t need to build the temple that Solomon had built four centuries earlier. 

The needs of the community were different.

And today, almost in 2020, we don’t need to be about trying to “grow back” into the Episcopal Church (or the Grace Radford) of 1970.

We are called to just be God’s church

…here in Southwestern Virginia…here in Radford…TODAY. 

Whatever that means.

Now we aren’t going to throw out the hymnal or the prayer book or rip out all the pews. 

We aren’t going to make dramatic changes.  We might not make permanent changes at all.

But, I pray, that we will listen.

Listen to the Holy Spirit, to each other and to those around us and allow ourselves to evolve to be the Church that God is calling us to be.

A little scary, I know.

But take courage…and work, for God is with us.

Amen.

[1] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 9595-9597). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[2] Life Application Bible, Tyndale House Publishers:  Wheaton, IL, 1990. P. 1562.

[3] Siobhan Fenton, “Church of England ‘one generation away from extinction’ after dramatic loss of followers,” Independent, June 1 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/church-of-england-one-generation-away-from-extinction-after-dramatic-loss-of-followers-10288179.html retrieve November 8, 2019.

All Saint's Day - Sunday, November 3, 2019

All Saints C

Nov. 3, 2019

Luke 6:20-31

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

ineffable |inˈefəbəl|adjective

too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words : the ineffable natural beauty of the Everglades.

• not to be uttered : the ineffable Hebrew name that gentiles write as Jehovah.

My favorite A. A. Milne story takes place on a snowy day. I told you about it last summer, but here’s a brief summary. Pooh and Piglet are out walking in the hundred acre woods which is covered in snow. They come upon some tracks in the snow and become frightened but they try to comfort and encourage each other. Then they encounter more tracks, then a third set, then yet another set and they encounter these tracks with increasing fear. But before they, and the reader, realize the tracks are actually their own - because they are walking in circles around a spinner tree - Christopher Robin calls to them from above. He is in the tree. He climbs down, points out their mistake, laughs with them, comforts them and then leads them home. I love this story partly because, like any Winnie-the-pooh story it takes me back to my own childhood, a time of innocence and wonder. I also love this story because Christopher Robin, a child with the very name of Christ within his own name, comes down from a tree and resolves the fears of the faithful on their journey.

It also reminds me of the passage from Isaiah that says, “A little child will lead them” which is not so much about children as it is about the incarnation of a God who became man, which includes living through childhood. I have used this pooh story at other times to point out the difference between child-ishness and child-likeness. That is to say, the difference between undisciplined, demanding and greedy behaviors and the ability as an adult to take on the attitudes of innocence, wonder, amazement and joy. (A child may cry and scream when injured or hungry. An adult learns to bind his own wounds and get back to work.)

The opening collect this morning is my very favorite collect in the prayer book. It mentions that little phrase, “ineffable joy.” And I love that word, ineffable. I had to look it up the first time I encountered this collect years ago, and I was reminded that it means at root “un-utterable.” This is literally the name of God, Jehovah, which means “He whose name is un-utterable.”

If you remember, when Abraham encountered God in the burning bush God answered his question about what name to call him and God said, “I am.” The Jews took this to mean God is beyond a simple name and so Jehovah was used to denote this. So when we call God Jehovah, we mean that the name of God is “unutterable.”

So what then does it mean to live as “children of God” and to have “ineffable joy?” What does it mean to be a saint? Or at least to follow the example of the Saints who went before us.

I was ordained a priest five years ago next month. When the anniversary of an ordination or “ordiversary” as some clergy have begun to call it in jest, when this comes up each year, we tend to ponder our call in serious ways.

Traditionally, the ordinand spends some time getting to know the saint on whose feast day they were ordained. I was ordained priest on the feast day of a child. St. Lucy who was quite young when she was martyred.

Lucy lived in the 3rd century, during the Diocletianic era before Constantine lifted the persecution of Christians. Lucy was small and unnoticed and so she would sneak food to the Christians who were imprisoned. Ultimately she was caught and executed. Though this part of her story is clearly true, most of her story, as with many saints is myth and exaggeration. The images of her throughout art history are lovely though some are rather gruesome. She is often depicted with candles in her hair because her name means light and it is assumed she put candles in her hair in order to see as she would sneak to the prison at night because both hands would have been full of food. And because it makes a pretty picture, a young girl with candles in her hair. She is also often depicted with a palm branch for having victory over evil, but also with two eyeballs on a plate. Sometimes she is depicted with empty and bloody eye sockets. And we wonder why All Saints became Halloween!

The eyeballs, and her honor as patron saint to the blind, are because of a medieval myth that her eyes were gouged prior to her execution by the sword. As if her vow to lifelong virginity, feeding of the poor and imprisoned and a life lost at a very young age weren’t enough for sainthood. It turns out, some of the stories of other saints grew out of similar exaggerations. But rightly so, because these exaggerations were born out of outrage among the oppressed.

When I consider modern ideals about sainthood I also wonder about celebrity. We celebrate the saints, but it is in a different way that we celebrate the rich, the powerful and famous people in our time. We lift up “celebrities,” so called because they are celebrated, and we reward them with its of money and much ado. And yet we are frequently disappointed in our political leaders, musicians, artists, entertainers and athletes. We continue to see saints as humble, poor and maybe even unnoticed. Those who the church deems as saints are beatified by the church. Beatified is an English word which means “Blessed".

Which brings me to our beatitudes, the Gospel lesson for today when Jesus speaks of those who are blessed. It is a relatively long list and it seems everyone is saint-worthy by the time he is done.

This sermon begins with a list, but not with a list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” Too often, we try to make the Beatitudes into law. “Be merciful,” the preacher exhorts, “and you will receive mercy.” That may be true at times, but it is not what Jesus is saying here. The list we find here is in the indicative mood, not the imperative. It is description, not prescription. Jesus is not insisting that we become people who starve to see justice done - I suppose you either do or you don’t. What he is saying is that such people are already blessed of God. God looks upon such people with favor. God’s eye is on them; they will be happy in the end. This, says Jesus, is the way things are.

But if the Beatitudes are a description of reality, what world do they describe? Certainly not our own. “Blessed are the hungry,” says Jesus, but in our world the hungry don’t get their fair share of the abundance of food, they get left empty. “Blessed are the those who weep,” says Jesus, but in our world mourning may be tolerated for a while, but soon we will ask you to pull yourself together and move on. “Blessed are the poor,” says Jesus, but in our world the poor are dismissed as free-loaders. “Blessed are those who are hated,” says Jesus, but in our world hating the other side is not only widely practiced, it is expected. We don’t really live by these images of how the blessed should live. No, we live by those other beatitudes:

Blessed are the well-educated, for they will get the good jobs.

Blessed are the well-connected, for their aspirations will not go unnoticed.

Blessed are you when you know what you want, and go after it with everything you’ve got, for God helps those who help themselves.

Listen to what one of the scholars said of this text:

If we are honest, we must admit that the world Jesus asserts as fact, is not the world we have made for ourselves. And so, for now at least, we do not yet see all these things, “but we do see Jesus” (Hebrews 2:9). Jesus not only declares, but embodies this new world. And the old poem from Philippians promises that a day is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that a crucified man is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). Until that day, the Beatitudes stand as a daring act of protest against the current order. Jesus cannot very well insist that we be poor in spirit, but he can show us how to look upon such people with new eyes, and so gain entrance to a new world. On All Saints Day, the Beatitudes testify that it matters deeply whom we call “saint.”

The Kingdom Jesus proclaimed and embodied is precisely a new way of seeing, a new way of naming, and so a new way of being. The current regime sweeps aside those who Jesus declares are blessed of God, but we are invited to look again and discern a new reality that is coming into being. When we learn to recognize such people as blessed -- to call them saints -- we pledge our allegiance to that new world even as we participate in its realization. (Lance Pape, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2203)

So what does it mean to be a saint? Can we all, or any of us be saints? Is sainthood attainable? Is doing and giving our best effort close enough?

So friends, I hope that we might gain wisdom in our individual and communal journeys toward our efforts to answer the call of Him who first blessed us and called us “blessed.”

Let’s continue to seek and to do that which seems unattainable, with ineffable joy, and childlike rather than childish demeanor, following Him who models for us how to love unconditionally. May we praise God always as if we are daily amidst the entire world bowing before the throne of God, listening, knit together, elect, one communion, mystical, and full of grace. May we practice the virtues - prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and love, in all our best efforts, not because we are celebrated but because we truly love and celebrate Christ and His Church.

I will close by repeating our collect of the day. Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.

Amen.

Nineteenth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, October 20, 2019

Proper 24C

October 20, 2019

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Most of you have met my dog, Prancer. And some of you live with dogs. Dogs, as Pavlov proved, are conditioned animals. If you train them well, they will do whatever you want. If you spoil them, change the rules at random, ignore or over indulge them, not so much.

I read a great article yesterday about this same problem with raising children, but, while that is something worth thinking about, I won’t go there today.

Prancer was trained well.  Well, good enough.  He was trained to never get on the furniture, never beg for human food and you know, that whole house training thing went pretty well.  He is, for the most part, a good dog.  And like most dogs, he has his weaknesses.  If he catches the scent or sight of a squirrel I no longer exist in his universe and might not find him until said squirrel is sufficiently out of his nose and mind at which point he might have ended up in Pulaski if I let him off the leash. But that doesn’t happen, well much, and we get along pretty well.  Or, we used to.

When my lifestyle changed recently I started breaking the rules.  I started letting him on the furniture and sometimes going outside without a leash and worst of all, started feeding him from the table.

He still usually waits to be invited onto the sofa or my lap and stays close if outside off the leash, but he has new weaknesses associated with the joys of chicken and eggs.

So, Prancer has started begging and I have created a monster.  He is relentless. He stares with those big sad dog eyes.  He gently scratches my knee while I eat.  He paces. He wines. He sneezes. He sticks his cold nose on me. He jumps up on me without invitation.  Prancer in short has become persistent, a pest, a nuisance, a nag, and frankly a pain in the neck.

That is what this gospel lesson is about. It is about being persistent.

I suppose at times it is imperative to become a pest or a nuisance to get what you want. Persistence will eventually gain justice, as this widow does.  Or, being a pest will eventually get the other party to cave. This can be useful when seeking justice. To wear down your enemy can be an advantageous war tactic. In these senses it is possible to see persistence at times as a moral necessity.

But being a pain in the neck can also be immoral. Pestering someone to give over that which is not justifiably yours is not nice.  That’s the way bullies act, like the stereotype of bullies who threaten and cajole the lunch money out of the weaker or outnumbered kid.

So, how do we know when to be persistent and when to not be a pain in the neck?

One image that comes to mind is in that phrase, “pain in the neck.” I know, you’re thinking of a less nice version of that one which has more color, but perhaps this colloquialism comes from the literal pain one might have in one’s neck. I imagine this came from the image of burdening another person’s with a load around his neck. If I carry your book bag and mine too I will have a pain in my neck.  If I do this out of good will, because maybe you broke your ankle and need crutches and need help, it is a choice I make to be helpful. If you coerce me or force me to carry your burden, like I end up always picking up the tab because you tend to forget your wallet each time we meet for lunch, then you are a pain in the neck because I’m carrying an unjust load around my neck.

(Actually I’m pushing this meaning. The phrase dates back to 1900. Neck was substituted for ass as a more polite versions but you can’t say ass in the pulpit!)

So, in order to follow this parable, we have to buy into the basic point in the story that the judge was unjust. This is difficult to believe, especially at the time when the law usually protected widows, that a judge would not follow the law, especially with a widow was unheard of. I suppose that part is not so difficult for contemporary Americans to buy, however. We live in a time in which any person of authority is distrusted. While we are uncomfortable with the idea of an unjust judge, it is easy to buy when we see corruption and a lack of trustworthiness among politician. But that was not a problem among first century jews. So, the very premise of Jesus’ parable is shocking.

Another image of persistence that comes to mind is from the series of films about that boxer named Rocky. The first one was pretty good and has that iconic scene when Rocky finally gets in shape and runs up the steps of the Arts Museum in Philadelphia and jumps up and down, his arms in a victory pose.

I liked that part O.K. but I never really got the rest. Yeah, O.K. he is washed up but gets re-inspired, partly by a rare chance, partly by a girl. And he works really hard - that’s the persistence part - and then he wins the match at the end and all he really wants is to find his girl, Adrien. It’s sweet, it’s earthy, it’s all about the joy of succeeding against all odds through lots of hard work. That’s a good theme.  But I still don’t get why this was enough material for five sequels!

But then I read this from Biblical commentator, Brittany Wilson this week, about this parable from today’s gospel:

“The widow in this parable resists the exploitation to which she is being subjected. Like other widows before her, such as Tamar (Genesis 38) and Ruth and Naomi, the widow in Luke 18 takes matters into her own hands. Her persistence and call for justice is such that the judge characterizes her actions as those of a boxer. (That’s right, she said boxer! Hang on, I’m going to do one of those original greek word sermon examples so bear with me.)

Wilson goes on to say, “It is difficult to discern this boxing image in the New Revised Standard Version, which translates the judge’s words as follows: ‘because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming’ (verse 5). In the original Greek, though, the judge says: ‘because this widow causes trouble for me, I will give her justice, so that she may not, in the end, give me a black eye by her coming’ (verse 5). By using the verb hypopiazo, which means ‘to give a black eye,’ Luke situates the judge’s language within the arena of boxing metaphors.”

Well that is really rich. And it’s funny. A humerous image of a little old lady beating up the big ol’ man in power. Like granny protecting Tweety Bird against Sylvester the Cat or if you’ve seen the Madagascar movies, there is a stereo typical, purse wielding, old lady of whom the zoo animals, especially the lion are terrified. It’s funny, I guess. It is a demeaning stereo type though. I do love any image of strong women. Especially older women. My nearly-ninety-year-old mother is constantly reminding me that she is quiet capable of taking care of her self and I do believe it. And I am grateful for her stamina.

But the the humor in this parable is not one of comic relief. The humor here instead pokes fun at the powers-that-be. It’s a tactic Jesus uses to get his listeners to pay attention to what really needs to change.

And it’s a simple message. The law helps ground us when we need to stand up to corruption. The law is useful - until it is abused.

Maybe it’s the Christian in me, but I prefer stories of persistence to be about marginalized folks making a difference rather than powerful folks getting more powerful. I see there is a new film about Harriet Tubman coming out. Check that out for a story about persistence and perseverance.

Or here’s a better image for this particular parable. St. Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa, as you know, captivated the world in the 20th century as few other people have by serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. Her simple message was: “We are put on earth to do something beautiful for God.”

But she didn’t just go out, educated and ambitious, to conquer poverty. She started with prayer. She spent a great deal of time daily in silent and contemplative prayer.  Mother Teresa’s spiritual vitality can be described with many wise sayings she left us. Here’s another quote: “Don’t search for God in faraway lands. He is not there. He is close to you. He is with you. Just keep that lamp burning, and you will always see him.”

You see, this parable is not so much about brow beating the powers-that-be for justice as it is about the persistence of prayer. This is found in the first verse: “Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

So this message of this parable is a question. Will we persevere by praying always? Or will we lose heart?

By ending on another question, of whether he will find faith at his return, Jesus raises a number of additional questions for us. How do followers not lose heart and maintain the faith in light of the fact that Jesus is not returning as soon as many would like? How are we to act if God’s justice is not delivered according to our own timetable? How do we go on in the face of injustice if God’s ultimate justice only arrives “suddenly” (en tachei) at Jesus’ return?

In response to such questions, Luke maintains that we are to act like this widow. We are not to wait quietly for Jesus’ return and accept our fates in an oppression-ridden world. We are instead to resist injustice with the resolve and constancy of the widow. As Jesus explains elsewhere (Luke 11:1-13), prayer is not a passive activity but one that actively seeks God and pursues God’s will. Like the widow, we are to persevere in the faith, crying out to God day and night. This is what persistent prayer looks like.

Without prayer, we are only insistent on our way, on what we think the injustice is. With prayer we are much more likely to follow God’s way.

When I look back on the past few years of Grace parish, I see so much perseverance and persistence. Those of you who have stayed and have cared so much about keeping this parish alive and well have shown a great deal of ability to “not lose heart.” I admire that. I am blessed to have been called to be a part of it. But it is you who make this parish alive and well by being alive and well. And you can continue to do this through perseverance in prayer.

We quiet ourselves for prayer and sacrament and then we are sent into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, to love and serve the Lord. Prayer leads to action. Persistence aids both the prayer and the action. How can you nurture this path and this journey?

Amen.

Fourteenth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, September 15, 2019

Proper 19C, 2019

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace, Radford

When Kate was 3 years old, her aunt and I took her to Phipps Plaza in Atlanta and lost her. We were on the second level of Macy’s and took our eyes off of her for about 5 seconds and she was gone! We panicked of course. Kate’s aunt, a quick thinker, told me to watch the escalators near by while she checked the changing rooms. We didn’t realize we were both walking away from where she was hiding by doing this. I kept one eye on the busy escalator and kept glancing back at the round rack full of clothes where we were when she went missing.

Then, about 2 minutes later Kate came out from the middle of that rack and started looking for us. I saw her and ran back, intercepted her and then I found her aunt. It was a terrifying three minutes.

The Gospel reading today is another example of Jesus turning things upside down. Jesus is accused of welcoming sinners and tax collectors to the dinner table. What is interesting to note is the word “welcome.” This indicates Jesus is the host of the party, which is odd since he had no home in which to host a party. Maybe they just met on the corner and ate at makeshift tables. Whatever the case the Pharisees are after him again for not avoiding the less desirable members of their community.

Jesus tells two parables in response to their criticism of him. One is the familiar favorite image he paints of the good shepherd leaving the 99 and going into the wilderness to find the one lost sheep. We like to imagine Jesus himself coming to us when we are lost and bringing us back to the fold. We tend to think of this parable as a metaphor for Jesus coming to rescue Me.

The parable of the woman who cleans her house until she finds a lost coin seems to me the opposite of the story of the widow’s mite. Instead of suggesting that she give away all of her wages, the limited funding she has to feed her family, Jesus suggests here that she work hard to find and keep this coin.

In both parables there is rejoicing reminiscent of the Prodigal Son for whom the father has the fatted calf butchered and served up for a feast to celebrate. Jesus reminds us again and again that when we back slide and then repent and then get found, there is much rejoicing in heaven.

But if we dig a little deeper we can see that these parables are not so much about getting lost and found as they are about changing the culture of division and marginalization. Maybe that sheep didn’t just wander away. Maybe he was sent! Maybe that coin didn’t just go missing. Maybe it was taken! These parables are after all, on some level symbolic of the powers-that-be over taxing and oppressing the poor.

I think these parables are more about overcoming the divisions of a community than they are about the individual experience of getting lost and found like Kate did that day in Macy’s.

This reminds me of a Family Circus cartoon. Do you remember that strip by Bill Keane? I remember this one running gag in that strip in which the mother would be standing there scowling, holding some broken vase or some such household disaster and all the children would be standing looking up at her with overly innocent faces proclaiming, “Not me!”  And there would be a ghost in the background that apparently only the children could see named “Not Me” floating around causing all sorts of mayhem. This is the classic image of blaming others.

This is scapegoating.

The term scapegoat has a fascinating history. Today the word is used to refer to one who is wrongly blamed for something, but it originated with an actual goat.

There was an ancient Jewish tradition in which they believed that God ordained a particular day during which the entire nation of Israel would set aside work, and during which the priests would atone for the sin of the whole nation. This is still practiced and known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. What is not still practiced is the ritual of the scapegoat.

In this ancient ritual, the slaughter of two goats was required on Yom Kippur. Two goats were chosen for the ritual and the High Priest drew straws sending one to a quick and humane slaughter for a sacrifice to God and the other to carry the sins of the people. Originally the second goat was just cast out in the wilderness symbolically carrying the sins of the people away and left there to die. To prevent its return to human habitation however, the goat was eventually led to a cliff outside Jerusalem and pushed off its edge. Later they added ritualistic abuse of the poor animal beating him with sticks as symbols of the pain of the sins he must carry. This is reminiscent of the way Jesus was wounded on the way to His death.

But from this Day of Atonement ritual comes our modern term, “scapegoat.”  The goat was believed to be possessed with a demon who’s name was something that sounded like scape. This was their way of gaining atonement.

We don’t see atonement in that way now but we still scapegoat people. Families, exclusive groups, fraternities and sororities, and larger cultures all have a tendency to choose and abuse the newcomers to their group as the scapegoat. Or groups such as these scapegoat those whom they exclude from their group in order to define themselves as above or better. All of this comes from our human tendency of the need to blame others.

In these two parables we have examples of the ultimate option of scapegoating, only instead of a goat we have a lost sheep. Jesus suggests that we should go and find that sheep, rather than torture and sacrifice her.

Jesus is teaching the crowd here to move away from the old ways of sacrificing animals (and entire wages). He is inviting them, and us, to live a different way of life. It is not about ridding ourselves of things that should be lost, it is about finding and getting found. Rather than project the guilt of our sins onto the scapegoat, we are invited through this lesson to consider turning and finding our own way home. And I would add we are called to lead others home too.

Jesus calls us to seek out the lost sheep among the community, but we must first consider the ways in which we are lost and found.

The first letter of Timothy spells this message out in these words, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me . . . Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.”

We get found not so that we can get fixed and go to heaven. We get found by Jesus so that we can model for all those other lost sheep how to get back on track and follow the Good Shepherd in this life.

Jesus was scapegoated too. And, while this is no time to launch an argument for or against the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, it is sufficient to say that, unlike the poor captured, beaten and exiled goat, Jesus offered himself and emptied himself on the cross - an offering of reconciliatory love from, with and through the love of God.

When I was in 6th grade my favorite class was music. I loved singing in the chorus. For this choir the school combined all 6th graders so there were about sixty kids in that choir.

Mrs. Katron was the music teacher and when we all met together to rehearse we had to sit in the bleachers in the gym.

One day Mrs. Katron was rehearsing us, or trying to, and every kid in that gym was talking and playing with each other. Except me. I was waiting patiently for Mrs. Katron, my favorite teacher to teach us more about singing. I refused to respond to the kids around me when they invited me into their conversation. We were not supposed to be talking right now, we were supposed to be quiet and wait for instructions from the wonderful Mrs. Katron!

Poor Mrs. Katron kept trying to gain their attention until she became exasperated and banged on her music stand and yelled at us!

Then she made a threat. Once everyone was quiet, she said that the next person to so much as open their mouth would be punished.

The room was silent. I was impatient to get to the singing. I had become bored with this situation that I perceived to not involve me. So, at that moment, I inadvertently yawned.

Mrs. Katron thought I was mocking her with my open mouth.

I was the only kid that day who was following the rules and I got punished. I was forced to run sprints in the gym in front of may peers. I was humiliated. And I was furious.

Mrs. Katron was no longer my favorite teacher. She wouldn’t listen to me try  to defend myself. She used me as a scapegoat to gain control of her class and it worked. But she lost my respect and never regained it.

I remember that experience whenever I consider the plight of the scapegoat. And when I consider this parable of the lost sheep. I feel empathy for the poor thing and I want to go and find him. When I feel empathy for the lost, I too can see the ways I am lost and need to get found.

I hope you can empathize and see this too. Rather than waiting for Jesus to rescue us, let’s consider the other options here, the things we can do to participate in the rescuing of all the lost, lonely, marginalized people all around us, all the time.

So, go get found friends. And do some looking around you for the people in your life who need to get found too.

Amen.

Thirteenth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, September 8, 2019

Proper 18C, 2019

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Luke 14:25-33

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace, Radford

The other day I was cooking and I broke one of my favorite dishes. It was a Blue Willow bowl.  I was upset. But that was silly. It isn’t very expensive to replace and I have several others like it. So, I adjusted my attitude and swept up the broken pieces. But I stopped myself, or maybe the Holy Spirit stopped me, just before throwing it in the trash can. Instead, I cleaned and dried the pieces and put them away in a box with another broken plate from another china set which I had set away hoping to possibly mend.  I think I will start a collection of such broken pieces and when I’ve collected enough, I’ll make a mosaic for a table top or garden ornament or something like that. And somehow just hanging on to those broken pieces caused me to feel whole.

I had the rare privilege to sit in a pew Friday night while I enjoyed (our Music Director) Mason’s (Gottschalk) piano concert. I also got to linger at the reception, which is different from my usual running around on Sunday mornings. And, I noticed a couple of things about our buildings, some details that often are not noticed. One was that, from a certain angle and lighting, I could see scratches on the hardwood floors in the parish hall. The other was a couple of places where there are burn marks on the backs of the pews in the sanctuary.

Now, you might think I would criticize or call the Jr. Warden or form a committee to investigate repair options. But, no, I instead delighted in these minor flaws. The normal wear and tear on the parish hall floor reminded me of all the many happy moments at coffee hours and receptions and Bible studies and prayer groups that have gone on in this place for over a hundred years. I imagined the years of laughter, joy, running children, embracing the bereaved, deep thinking and deep prayer that has gone on in these two rooms through those years. The burn marks made me laugh too at the thought of someone, perhaps a youth, accidentally leaning too close to the pew in front with an individual candle at a Christmas Eve or some other candlelight service. I imagined a fluster of activity and blowing out of candles in fear of destroying with fire the pew in front of you.

These are scars. They may be minor and easily overlooked, but like the scars on our bodies they indicate a memory of good times and bad times, happy Christmases of yore or the sadness of funerals or the many struggles this parish has endured for nearly 130 years, before any of us was here. (Even Bette Wright!)

And this made me think of the brokenness of the human condition.

We long for perfection, we long for everything to go right all the time, we long for our vision of what we should be or what this parish should be. We long for things to settle on the good times, for happiness to set in and stay there. But we know that’s impossible and we inevitably are disappointed, hurt, angry, and grieve over the losses along the way. I’m talking about what happens in life to every person, to every family, to every organization, and to every church.

We are scared.

We are broken.

And we need each other.

And we need Jesus.

In our reading from Jeremiah today we hear the lovely story of when the prophet was led by the Lord to the potter’s house where he saw the potter working on a pot. As usually happens on pottery wheels, the pot didn’t turn out right, it spoiled. So the potter threw the clay back into a ball and got more water and started over and formed the pot in a better way.

This is a metaphor for God fixing us. It is also a metaphor for repentance. The Lord says to the people through Jeremiah, “Turn now, all of you from your evil ways, and amend your ways and your doings.” To turn around is the basic definition of the word repent. The Lord is calling for repentance.

But we don’t like that part about God planning evil against God’s people and we especially don’t like that part about God changing God’s mind. So let me clear that up for you.

What gets lost in translation here is the context of that repentance stuff. The Lord is saying to Jeremiah, and to the people of Israel through Jeremiah, that God will meet us there, God will meet us at that turning around place. God is saying, “Repent, turn around and I will turn around too.” God will repent too. This is not suggesting that God is not omnipotent, that God sins, or that God wants evil to come to us. Rather, this is the Lord seeking for the people of God to turn and come back to the Creator. And God will turn too and meet us there. God will meet us wherever we turn, whenever we repent.

Just like slipping up with that bowl the other day, I am broken too.  We are all broken. We are fallible. We are all human and we make mistakes and we do the best we can and we struggle to make ends meet, and we struggle to get along, and we struggle to understand each other, to forgive each other.

And we struggle to love our neighbors.

Life is difficult.

But. As Christians we enjoy the benefit of repentance. We can always turn things around. There is always help from a brother or sister in Christ. God always meets us there. God always meets us where we turn. God always meets us where we forgive and love each other.

In this story from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is asking his disciples to consider the long term commitment of becoming a Christian. He cautions against these enthusiastic newcomers who erroneously think they are joining a parade to freedom without the cross. And we don’t like some of what Jesus says here any more than we like Yahweh telling Jeremiah that God plans evil against us. Jesus tells his followers to hate! Hate your family. Hate your self. Hate your life.

Jesus turns to the large crowds following him and proclaims, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple”

No one considers hate a fruit of the Spirit. Hate is usually viewed as the antithesis of love. Hate is bad, right?

The key to understanding this teaching is the word, hate however. This is the ancient Jewish way of expressing detachment, of turning away from bad things.

To hate something or someone meant to turn away from that thing or person or behavior. It was about turning away from temptation and sin. It was not about degrading that person or destroying that thing.

The use of this word in the time this story took place is not that of the emotion-filled word we experience in the scream, “I hate you!” Were that the case, this lesson would shatter all the biblical calls to love, to understand, to forgive, to care for others, especially one’s own family. Hating one’s own life is not a call to self-loathing, to throw one’s self across the doorway and beg the world to trample on it as though it were a doormat. Rather, what Jesus is calling for is that those who follow him understand that loyalty to him can and will create tensions within the self and between oneself and those one loves. And in such a conflict of loyalties, Jesus requires primary allegiance. (Fred Craddock)

We are not called to fix each other, we are called to love each other, we are called to follow Jesus. And following Jesus means living into our brokenness, just as he was broken on the cross.

I can’t wrap up this sermon with talking about the cost of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century who was murdered by the Nazis in 1949, wrote about the cost of discipleship just a few years before he died. Bonhoeffer said that discipleship has been lost by the church. He taught this through the distinction between what he called “cheap" grace and "costly" grace.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus.

Cheap grace, according to Bonhoeffer, is to hear the gospel preached as follows: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." In other words, we are once-and-done forgiven so we don’t have to change and keep on changing.

Costly grace, on the other hand, confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus. It comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels (us) to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him. It is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:28-30)

So, God called Jeremiah to remind the Israelites that repentance is not a once and done thing, that we must always be willing to turn again to the God who meets us in that messy place of brokenness. And Jesus tells us through this lesson the same thing. If we call our selves Christians then we have to realize we are following him to the cross. His body is broken. We are broken. And only through constant prayer and forgiveness can we even begin to pursue a path of healing.

Nearly two years ago, as we were preparing to join in mutual ministry with your call for me as your pastor, I wrote my first Rector’s Corner blog in our Grace Notes e-newsletter. With today’s readings in mind, I want to share that essay with you again today. It went like this:

There is an old story about a novice monk whose chore was to carry water. Each day he would place a large pot on each end of a pole and carry both pots with the pole across his shoulders.  The water source was at the bottom of a long hill.  After filling these earthen vessels, he would slowly walk back up the path to where he would fill the cistern.

But there was a crack in one of the pots.  Each morning, when he finally reached the summit this pot would be nearly empty and he would have to return to the bottom of the hill for more water.  In fact this caused him to have to work twice as much to complete his chores.

He complained to the abbot and asked for the broken pot to be replaced. The abbot denied his request arguing this was not good stewardship.  The novice argued the extra work kept him from more time praying.  The abbot argued that the work was also good for him.

In the end, the novice obeyed and returned to his routine.

As the seasons changed and Spring came to the monastery, many beautiful flowers grew along the path on one side. There had been no flowers here before. The extra time spent carrying water in a broken vessel had brought beauty to the path because the water that dripped all along the path as he carried it nurtured an unseen need.  This delighted both the novice and the abbot.

This story reminds me that at times our brokenness carries out the beauty of the Kingdom of God in surprising ways.

We are all broken in some way and long for God to fill those broken places.  But this is not the best way to seek the Kingdom because the Kingdom is more about community than our individual wounds.

As we begin a new era together in this part of the Kingdom, let’s remember to allow our brokenness to act as a window for the love of Christ. Let us share the work, share the healing and share in our delight of God’s creation and action in the world. I believe that if we open ourselves in this way, both as individuals and as the community that is Grace Church, that we will grow anew into a surprising beauty like that of the flowers on one side of the monk’s path. (Grace Notes, March 2018)

Friends, we are still on that journey. And we are still broken. And while we do receive healing in our faith all along the path to Christ, we will always carry with us some amount of brokenness. Let’s never forget the cost of discipleship, the imperative to turn, turn, turn, always turning back to the God who meets us there.

Amen.

Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost - Sunday, September 1, 2019

Proper 17C, 2019

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

Grace, Radford

Last week I shared a memory of that old movie The African Queen as an anecdote to Biblical stories of perseverance (and liminal places). This morning, I want to share a story from another favorite movie. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it or not. I will tell the story within the story.

 I have often used this movie for teaching and preaching about Lent. But today we have a theme of hospitality so it came to mind.

The film is Chocolat which was released late in 2000.  It stars Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche and takes place in 1959, in a fictional quaint village in which the center of town is still the church.

The character played by Binoche, Vianne is a free spirited vagrant of sorts who seems to follow the wind from town to town. She shows up in this little town on a windy night. Within days, she opens an unusual chocolate shop, right across the square from the church. She has a clairvoyant ability to perceive her customers' desires and satisfy them with just the right confection and she coaxes the villagers to abandon themselves to temptation. This story unfolds just as Lent begins.

The local leadership of the village is rigid about morals and the keeping of religious rules, especially fasting during Lent. And everyone in the entire town attends services every Sunday. Except Vianne. She instead tempts them with chocolate and so you can imagine the rest of the conflict of the story.

And you can see why this is fodder for a lenten sermon. But there is a subplot that I want to tell you about. A minor character is an aging grandmother played by Judi Dench. She is grumpy and complains a lot about her ailments. The lead character realizes that there is a chasm between Judi Dench and her daughter. The daughter will not allow the grandmother to spend time with her bright and lovely 10-year-old grandson.

So, the protagonist, Vianne, intervenes and successfully instigates reconciliation in this family. This proves she is not, after all, the devil.

Near the climax of the film Judi Dench decides to hold a dinner party in her back yard. It is a beautiful night. Vianne cooks a meal that is unbelievably delicious. The guests are from all sides of the conflict in the story, and unlikely invitation list. But they come together anyway, to a long table under the stars and are transformed by this meal. They enjoy the delight of the food and atmosphere of a perfect evening. And then they all go off into the night which is like a fairy tale of mystical and joyous frivolity. A night such as that of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream when passions run high. There are fireworks, and coupling and fights and secrets and veritable running through the forest in full celebration of all the joys and delights that life holds.

But meanwhile, Judi Dench’s character, having been helped by her doting grandson back into the house and into her favorite chair by the fire, falls asleep to not wake. Everyone leaves her alone to enjoy their youth and splendor. She dies peacefully and happy. It is exactly what she wanted.

I share this image for a couple of reasons. The theme of hospitality is involved in this depiction of giving your own farewell a dinner party. But also depicted here are the themes of joy and delight in God’s creation. And the reconciliation of relationships. And the dangers of a rigid and doctrinal organized religion.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus is having dinner with a religious leader. Not just dinner but a Sabbath meal and not just any Jew but a respectable Pharisee. This is unusual compared to his frequent act of dining with sinners. He uses this gathering as a teaching moment, however. This is not unusual.

The setting of a communal meal is significant here. In Luke’s narrative, meals are symbolic of the anticipated coming of God’s Kingdom - a foretaste of the Messianic banquet. In the verses omitted from today’s reading, Jesus helps a moan with dropsy. He justifies his actions by asking who among them would not rescue livestock from a ditch even on the Sabbath.

This dinner takes place right after the story we studied last Sunday of Jesus healing a woman who had been bent over for 18 years - on the Sabbath. I remarked then how silly it seems for these religious leaders to focus on the letter of the law when a miracle has happened.

This week, at this teaching moment over the Sabbath meal, Jesus tells a parable about the preferred seating at a wedding banquet. He follows this with more teachings to further illustrate his point about the radical hospitality of God’s Kingdom. In God’s realm, worldly social conditions are turned upside down.

Palestinian feasts were arranged so that guests declined in groups of three. The position in the middle was the most favored place and was reserved for those with the most power, wealth, or social status. If a more eminent person arrived later, often the one in the highest place would be asked to step down.

So Jesus advises that it is better to sit at a less prestigious place at the table with the possibility of being asked to go higher. In a lower place, the worst that can happen is that one would remain in the same seat or be asked to move up to one befitting true importance.

Then he advises his hosts about who should be invited to dinner. When one sets out a banquet, it should not be for social equals or rich neighbors who will invite you in return. Instead, invite the poor, the maimed, and the blind, who cannot reciprocate. Through this will come blessings, and “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

That’s what I like about the story of that Judi Dench character who throws a banquet of reconciliation and celebration, invites a strange mix of people and hires the best caterer then quietly slips away into her right reward.

But there is another point to this story. This is not about getting into heaven. Here Jesus models for us how to treat each other, how to be hospitable, how to be merciful to the less fortunate, the sick, the marginalized.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews builds on these words of Jesus by giving examples of the “mutual love” the community is to exemplify. Such love manifests humility in which the needs of others are not less important than our own.

One aspect of this radical, unfailing love is to “show hospitality to strangers” who may in fact be embodiments of God’s presence.

This can be compared to a story from the 18th chapter of Genesis, which is not in our readings today but you must remember it. It is the story of when the Lord told Abraham that Sarah would bear a child in her old age. Sarah was eaves dropping on that conversation and she laughed. And the Lord heard her laugh and called her out on it when she denied laughing and said to Sarah, essentially, “No, really, I’m not kidding!” And this promise came to be.

But that story is set during a dinner party in which three strangers showed up unannounced and Abraham set out his best banquet for their guests. The icon image on the front of your bulletin tells this story.

This is a 15th century Russian icon. Icons are said to be “written” not painted. This is because they tell a story. In this icon you can see Abraham and Sarah’s house in the background and seated around a table are the three strangers who visited Abraham in this story from Genesis of which I have just reminded you. These strangers were later understood as messengers, otherwise called angels. (This is indicated in the next chapter.) That is why they have wings.

But the icon is full of symbolism and is interpreted as an icon of not just the three strangers who visited Abraham. They were later interpreted, and it is believed intended by the original artist as a depiction also of the Holy Trinity. At the time the icon was “written,” the Holy Trinity was understood as the embodiment of spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.

And here they are at dinner together.

The right angel symbolizes God the Father. If you’ll notice though, each angel seems both male and female in some way and so they fit the contemporary notion of “gender neutral.”

Anyway, the Father blesses the cup, yet his hand is painted in a distance, as if he passes the cup to the central angel. The central angel represents Jesus who in turn blesses the cup as well and accepts it with a bow toward the Holy Spirit. There are different interpretations, however as to which angel depicts which person of the Holy Trinity and yet, to me, each person of the Trinity is seen in each angel. They are one.

This is the ultimate image of Christian hospitality, the heavenly banquet. And, yes, we are all invited to that banquet in due time. In the mean time, we are called to offer hospitality to strangers, all strangers; those in need, the hungry, the destitute, the sick and the lonely.

How are we doing with that call? Surely the list of our good works is significant. But I ask you to consider this question: Is there some other way you can practice hospitality in this world, at this time? Can you quiet your busy-ness and listen prayerfully for God’s nudges for you to do something new, different, maybe even easier and more enjoyable - like hosting a party?

A year before his death in 1924, the great novelist Franz Kafka had a very unusual experience. He was strolling through the Steglitz park in Berlin and he came upon a young girl crying and heartbroken. She told him she had lost her doll.
Kafka offered to help look for the doll and prepared to meet her the next day at the same place.

He was unable to find the doll so he composed a letter  which was fictitiously "written" by the lost doll. And when they met again he read this letter to the little girl. It said, “Please do not cry, I have gone on a trip to see the world. I'm going to write to you about my adventures …"

This was the beginning of many letters.  He and the girl agreed to meet often and whenever they met he read these carefully composed letters of imaginary adventures about the beloved doll. The girl was comforted. When the meetings came to an end, Kafka gave her a new doll. She obviously looked different from the original doll. An attached letter explained why. It said, in the doll’s words, ”My trips, they have changed me …"

Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crack inside the wrist of the doll. In short, it said:  "Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

We have so many opportunities to show hospitality to strangers. What gets in our way? What fear has been driven between us and our creative urges to care in such a way as Kafka did? What holds us back from truly following those nudges of the Spirit to show hospitality to strangers?

I for one hope that we can work on this invitation to not only dine at the heavenly banquet but to offer hospitality on earth to the needy, “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Amen.