Sing Alleluia!

St. Francis Church on May 18, 2013 - when we said goodbyes.

On this Fifth Sunday of Easter, I served at my former parish, St. Francis Church in Holden. The sermon text was Psalm 148.

2500 years ago, which is to say even longer ago than Jesus walked the earth, Heraclitus said that: No one can step in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, nor is it the same person.

I’ve been thinking about this since Pat asked me to come back and be with you during his sabbatical. I left here almost exactly six years ago to the day, after serving as the fifth rector of this great parish for more than fifteen years. It’s a joy to be back among you and yet I do so aware that you are not the same parish I left, and I am not the same priest who left. For those who do not know me, my name is Rich Simpson and I serve on Bishop Fisher’s staff as Canon to the Ordinary…

These are really great readings today – a veritable preacher’s feast. We could be here all day! But lately I’ve been working on the psalms a lot. Or, more accurately, they’ve been working on me. And today’s psalm, Psalm 148, is especially good.

The psalms are really hymns of wonder, and love, and praise. They are prayers that express just about every emotion a person might feel in a relationship with God, which span the same emotions of human relationships. And not just the happy ones! Whether the relationship is romantic or not, as you all know relationships have the potential to go deeper. But relationships are also complicated. I think our experience with God mirrors this and the psalmists reflect all of this. Sometimes the poets are disappointed in God. It feels like God hasn’t held up God’s end of the bargain. Jesus himself, you will recall, draws on one of the psalms, Psalm 22, before he takes his last breath on the cross. My God, my God – why have you forsaken me?

So, I love the psalms because they provide for what my teacher of the psalms, Walter Brueggemann has called “the basis for an earthy spirituality.” They awe us to heaven, but they are also prayers rooted in earth. They lead us through disappointment and failure and hurt that never get the last word, as well through the mountaintop experiences of joy and triumph and hope. Taken as a whole, the psalms can lead to a more purposeful and deeper awareness of who God really is.

At weddings, I sometimes point the young and beautiful (but also a little naïve) couple to their grandparents, to see what the vows they will exchange are all about. Not all rainbows and sunshine. But a commitment to “richer and poorer” and to “sickness and health” that is taken seriously will not be easy.

And friendships are the same, right? Make new friends, but keep the old. I’ve gotten into the habit, in my fifties, of making time each year for at least one long weekend in California with a group of college buddies; guys who knew me before I was ordained. People with whom I share a long history. People around whom I can never get too full of myself.

One thing I’ve learned is that even death doesn’t end relationships. Some of you may recall that my dad died when I was a freshman in college. He was thirty-seven at the time and just last month we marked the thirty-seventh anniversary of his death. He’s been gone as long as he lived now. But here is the thing – and I mean this quite literally. The older I get the thinner I experience the veil between life and death. The saints triumphant are never far away. My father still appears from time to time in my dreams and is rarely far from my thoughts.

And as I watch my two boys, now young men, I see glimpses of him from time to time in their faces or maybe just an expression, or gesture. Many of you here watched Graham and James grow up alongside of Hathy and me. Now they are, at least for the moment, both Jersey boys. Graham is 29 and will receive a Masters degree in Public Policy at Princeton in just two weeks. He’s looking for work to stay around there for another two years as his girlfriend enters into the same program that he just completed. James is 25 and working as a structural engineer in lower Manhattan. He beat his older brother to a Masters from UC Berkeley just one year ago. And while he’s been both living and working in Manhattan for a year now, he’s moving out to Hoboken, New Jersey a week after Graham graduates. So they find themselves in New Jersey, where Hathy and I began our married life, in Madison when I was in seminary, at Drew.

I don’t mean to sound nostalgic. But those of you have been here a while will, I hope, forgive me a bit of that. Our family lived a big and important chapter of our lives around the corner from here and those fifteen years included more concerts at Rice and Davis Hill and Mountview and Wachusett auditoriums than I can count. And Little League games and soccer games, too. But this trip down memory lane is also with a homiletical purpose: because I was talking about relationships and how they change and grow and deepen. Or they stagnate and die. That can happen too.  

Relationships need to be tended to. And so, too, our relationship with God. Where we can get stuck, I think, is when we keep relating to God the same ways that we did in Sunday School or in Confirmation Class. But the psalms are there, I think (and maybe more than any other writings in all of Scripture) to help keep us in relationship; to keep us growing and learning and changing. This is why they play such a central role in the prayer of monastic communities: because they express the joys and the challenges of keeping God at the center of our lives through all of the chances and changes that befall us in this life. Because they speak to the heart and not just the head.

Random fact: did you know you can walk from Egypt to Israel, through the Sinai Desert, in about a week. Really. If you are bored sometime, put it into Google maps (as I did this week) and start just north of the Red Sea. You don’t even need a miracle of parting waters if you begin there and walk across the Sinai Desert. It is 170 miles. Covering thirty miles a day is ambitious, but Google says you can make it in 57 hours. So if you walk for eight hours a day, that’s a week. Moses was a proud man who did not ask for directions, of course. Miriam could have gotten them there faster if he’d only listened.

But clearly there is something more going on here than male ego. Why forty years? Why four decades of wandering? Perhaps the Biblical narrative means to suggest that the journey of faith isn’t a direct route, and that the move from slavery to freedom takes a lifetime. It’s more like that labyrinth behind St. Clare House than it is like the Mass Pike. The psalms get that. And they take us on a labyrinthine journey into a deeper relationship with God. But the last six of the psalms are like the original hallelujah chorus. They are all about praise.

• Psalm 145 – A David song of Praise: “Let me exalt You, my God and king and let me bless your name forevermore.”
• Psalm 146: “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, O my soul…” 
• Psalm 147: Hallelujah, How good it is to sing praises to our God…” 
• Psalm 148, our psalm for today: “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise the Lord from the heights, praise God, praise God, praise God…”
• Psalm 149: “Hallelujah, sing to the Lord a new song…”
• Psalm 150, the last page of this amazing hymnal: “Hallelujah! Praise God in the holy temple…let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah!”

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah…

There are seasons of our lives when those alleluias may get buried for a while. It’s hard for us to sing praises when we are hurting or we feel abandoned or lost. We “bury those alleluias” during Lent, I think, to represent what that is like when it’s hard for praise to be on our lips. But we can’t hold them in forever. We make our song again on Easter morning and throughout these fifty days. Alleluia. 

Alleluia. Alleluia. We do this because in the end this is most truly who we really are and are meant to be: “Easter people.” One of my favorite lines in the Burial Office is when the priest says, “even at the grave we make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Sometimes those alleluias are muted by grief, to be sure. But they take us to the heart of our relationship with the living God. And those last six psalms get that.

In the “Catechism” of The Book of Common Prayer (on page 856 if you want to check my source here) the question is asked: “What is prayer?” And the answer is: Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words. And then the question is asked, “What is Christian prayer?” And the answer is that it’s a prayerful response to the Trinity: the God who knit us together in love, the God who redeemed us on the Cross, the God who keeps goading us in love to new and abundant life. One God in three persons.

And then this question: What are the principal kinds of prayer? The answer: adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition. Ann Lamott has distilled even those down to three in her book: Help, Thanks, Wow. Sometimes our prayer repertoire can get truncated into just “help prayers.” We can get focused solely on intercession and petition, asking God to do stuff for us or for those whom we love. And those are important prayers, of course. And sometimes we might even pray a prayer of penitence and that’s good too because it can lead us to amendment of life. But it can also keep us stuck on feeling unworthy. We need to remember that penitence is not an end in itself, but the pathway to return to the God who already waits with open arms, in love.  

But I think the Church, and most of us Christians, need more praise on our lips and in our lives, and today’s psalm is a good place to start. It’s cosmic. The whole creation sings “alleluia” every morning when the sun comes up and the birds begin to sing along. And some days we have eyes to see, and hears to hear and some days we even join in the song. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Praise is not a denial of injustice in the world. It’s more like a protest song that helps us to remember that injustice will never get the last word, because even now God is making things new, and because love is stronger than death. Even at the grave, we are invited to get busy living, and to live into becoming an Easter people who dare to sing. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.  

The fifty days of Easter keep teaching us to sing alleluia throughout our lives, so that by the time we reach our own end, songs like Psalm 148 will be the songs we know best. How can we keep from singing? Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, also called "Good Shepherd Sunday." The readings for today can be found here. You will notice that the second reading comes from John's Revelation. Two years ago, during my last Sabbatical, I spent a lot of time praying and reading and reflecting on Revelation. My theory was that it's a book the Church needs to rediscover and claim - not as a code that predicts the end of the world but as a Word of the Lord that empowers the Church for mission. The sermon I'm preaching this weekend at St. Stephen's in Pittsfield represents some of the fruit from this previous labor, and my desire to reclaim Revelation as a sacred text that speaks to this time and place. 

Imagine a world where there is incredible uncertainty about the future. Yet, even in the midst of all of those signs of uncertainty, there also remains tremendous denial. It’s a way to cope, of course, when the problems seem insurmountable. So there is not just personal denial but corporate, social, political, and economic denial. The world feels like it’s catipolting toward an inevitable disaster.

Imagine a once-mighty nation where democratic ideals first took hold, but that now seems adrift. All that remains is a desperate attempt to hold onto power and control. But the problems go deeper than politics or the economy. The moral fabric of this society is coming apart at the seams. It feels like there is no longer any sense of  “right” and “wrong:” sexual immorality is rampant, injustice seems to be the norm, and violence is so much a part of daily life that it goes virtually unnoticed. The visionaries and prophets and dreamers are nowhere to be found.

Imagine a Church in this society comprised mostly of well-intentioned good folks, but who are without a clear sense of purpose. While they may be commended for their “patient endurance” and for some acts of charity, they have abandoned the commitment to love boldly in the name of Jesus. They have a hard time loving even each other, not to mention their neighbors or their enemies. They have become complacent, asleep, and lukewarm; unsure about what if anything they can do to make a difference even locally. They feel powerless and trapped.

With very few exceptions, most Christians are not being persecuted for their faith. In fact the problem is that their conformity to the world around them is so complete that there is very little to distinguish them from their neighbors, and therefore little to vilify or persecute. On those occasions when someone does take a stand that is counter to the conventional wisdom, they are more apt to be harassed or ridiculed for failing to conform to social norms and expectations than they are to be persecuted.

The society I’m describing, of course, is the Roman Empire in the latter days of the first century. You all figured that out, right? (Any parallels to our own time are purely coincidental.)  Under Emperor Domitian, the Roman Empire had become a mere shadow of the glory days of the Republic. The old days of the Senate, and the engineering genius, and thinkers like Cicero and Virgil were distant memories. And the Church I’m describing is located in one of the provinces of that failing empire, Asia Minor; what we would call Turkey today. We know something of their struggles by reading one of the most difficult books in all the Bible to interpret. The Greek name is the Apocalypse, which means “Revelation.” Not plural. Not “Revelations.” But the Revelation of John, the Unveiling by John. Think of Asia Minor as something like a diocese. Within that region, there were congregations, including Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea. Together, they are described collectively as I’ve already mentioned: as well-intentioned and patiently enduring tough times, yet without a clear vision or commitment to making disciples.

So the Revelation of John is a wake-up call that paints a picture of what genuine fidelity might look like in the context of a dying empire. Partly because of the political context and partly because of the genre of literature it is, it’s heavily laden with metaphorical language and symbols; a kind of “code language.” Cracking the code, though, isn’t like translating from Morse code, as some have supposed. The challenge isn’t about finding what the number “666” means, or the word “Babylon” means as if those had one-to-one correlations in a distant future. Seeing and hearing this message has more to do with where we stand. It’s about getting ourselves into the right place to see with John what he saw with such clarity from the Island of Patmos.

In fact, there is a lot of talk in this book about “seeing” and “hearing” and at least in this way it very much echoes the ministry of Jesus. Those who wish to understand need “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” Jesus said. What is required is discernment. I think of that unforgettable scene in “The Dead Poet’s Society,” when the teacher played by Robin Williams has his students stand on desks to challenge their perspectives. Remember? He is inviting and cajoling them to take notice of the world from another angle. It’d be like me coming in here today and encouraging all of you as you enter into this time of transition and discernment to switch up your seats and move to a new pew for a season. Scary, huh?  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer exhorted the Church in his day (which was during the rise of Naziism in Germany – another hard time to be the Church) to “be communities able to hear the Apocalypse.” Bonhoeffer suggested that the way to do that is to stand with those who suffer violence and injustice. The problem is that in spite of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and outcast, the Church throughout its history has been prone to forget that part of the gospel. I’m not talking about acts of charity here, although those are important. I’m talking about trying to see the world from the downside up. Hanging out with the people who attend Cathedral here in Pittsfield and talking about the economy and healthcare from their perspective.  

Visionaries need to stand on the peripheries. When we risk standing with those who suffer violence and injustice, we begin to see and hear things we would otherwise not be able to see or hear from our normal places of privilege and comfort. I think about Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the gulags of the former Soviet Union. I think about Rosa Parks sitting in the back of all those buses for all those years until finally one day she said “enough already.” The seer who writes the Apocalypse stands in such a place, at the periphery of the failing empire, on a tiny little island in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor called Patmos. He writes as a Christian who dreams of a Church where Easter faith is practiced on a daily basis, a Church where people dream big again. When John thinks back to the fifties it’s not like us – it’s not about full Sunday Schools during the post-war boom in population. When John thinks of the fifties he is remembering the missionary vitality of a Church on the move, of new church plants in towns like Corinth and Ephesus and Philipi and even the heart of the empire itself: Rome. He imagines a Church where hope is in the air and where members strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being. A Church that knows what it means to take up their cross to follow Jesus.

John offers strange images—images made even stranger in the intervening 2000 years since they were first written down. But what he sees and then describes for his readers in the seventh chapter of this Apocalypse remains fresh even to this day, and I believe it still has power to heal and to transform and to invigorate the Church for mission. If we dare to look, and to listen, we too might be prodded and jarred from complacency. He sees a great multitude, which no one could count. That in itself is a word of hope to beleagured congregations in every age; congregations which may feel burned out and worn out and perhaps isolated, or feel that they must do it all. In that “great multitude” of disciples, that no one could count!—there is much to ponder, for it is a reminder that we are not alone and that we are a part of something here and now that is much bigger than we realize. I must tell you it is perhaps the greatest gift of diocesan ministry for me because I can picture those gathered even now not just in these pews, but in Williamstown and Sheffield, and headed east to Greenfield and Southwick and Fitchburg and Westborough. On any given Sunday, across this diocese, we may still be a small denomination. But there are more of us gathered to break the bread and share the cup even in this small denomination than we sometimes realize.  

In John’s vision, they don’t all look alike. They come from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and they speak many languages. It is the Lamb at the center that defines who they are; not their nation-states or their flags, nor their creeds nor their denominations. Not their socio-economic class nor skin-color nor sexual orientation. It is this Lamb who unites this pluralistic community into One Body singing one song: “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb!” It is He who matters, above all else, for it is he whom these saints worship day and night.

The promise remembered is the promise foretold. And it still has the power to enliven the Church for mission. In a world where children go to bed hungry in this richest nation in the world, the seer imagines no more hunger. In a world of gun violence the seer imagines no more tears. In a world where the water in Flint, Michigan is not potable, the seer imagines no more thirst. No more hunger. No more tears. The Church is called to work from the nightmare that is, for so many, toward the dream God has for this world. The Church is called to do justice, and love mercy and walk humbly with God. That begins by learning to not be afraid.

This fourth Sunday of Easter is sometimes called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” That’s the theme for the day:

• Today’s opening collect that reminded us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd who calls us each by name; 
• The 23^rd Psalm which is almost certainly the most widely known of all the psalms even among those who know little else from the Bible—describing a shepherd whom we can rely on. 
• The gospel reading from the fourth gospel that reiterates how the sheep hear their shepherd’s voice, calling them by name.

But it’s this strange text from this even stranger Apocalypse that draws me into the meaning of this day even more than all the rest, and captures my imagination and I hope yours, too. It stands as a bold reminder to the Church in every age that no matter how tired or weak or confused we may feel in a world that seems as if it’s gone stark raving mad, we must not lose hope. That hope is always directed to us as persons, to each by name. But it’s all about us. We are part of a much larger whole, part of Christ’s Body through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

By keeping our eyes open, and focusing on the Good Shepherd—by listening for his voice amid all of the noise of the world—and by being willing to change our point-of-view from that of the dominant culture around us by standing with the most vulnerable on the fringes of society, we have a chance to become the kind of communities that are able “to hear the Apocalypse.”

And in our hearing, there is always the chance that we may actually become doers of the Word we hear. Followers of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who calls us still, by name. May we proclaim with our lives what we profess with our lips, as we become agents of reconciliation and instruments of peace who share even now in the work of feeding the hungry, and wiping away the tears of all who mourn, and of becoming the beloved community, for Christ’s sake.

A Walk in Jerusalem

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord. Amen. (A Collect for Fridays, from The Book of Common Prayer, page 99) 

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you, for the honor of your Name. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer, page 101) 

It has been said more than once that if you want to understand Anglican/Episcopal theology, then come and pray with us. Lex orandi, lex credendi, loosely translated, means "the law of prayer is the law of belief."

Getting to a theology of the Cross is not easy and many, many books have been written on this subject. Too many of them are, for this priest, profoundly unhelpful. Atonement theology - that is to say, asking how the Cross reconciles God and humankind - is a very tricky business.

But I would offer this as a starting point: the message of the cross is not about convincing God to love a sinful humanity. Rather, it is evidence of the extent to which the God of love is willing to go to embrace us: God so loved the world. How much? Enough to accept death on a cross. The reason for this is to convince a sinful humanity that God really is all about love.

For me, the two collects above are very solid prayers that can help shape a life-giving theology of the cross. The contours of these prayers, and I believe of our theology (lex orandi, lex credendi) are that when we choose to take up our own cross(es) as followers of Jesus we discover that it really is the way of life and peace. Pain and death never get the last word. And second, that Jesus' arms are stretched forth for a reason: love. God's loving embrace on the cross is meant to inspire us, who walk in the way of the cross, to love our neighbors. All of them. My understanding of the second half of the second prayer is NOT that we must convert everyone in the world to Christianity, but rather that they see, in us who have been claimed by Jesus in Baptism, the face of Jesus. And in that face, they see love.They will know that we are Christians (even if they are not) by our love.

On the last day of our recent pilgrimage to the land of the Holy One, we walked the Way of the Cross. Our guide was The Rev. Canon John Peterson, who was formerly the dean of St. George's College in Jerusalem for many years. John literally wrote the book that many Episcopalians use to pray the Stations of the Cross - called A Walk in Jerusalem. I've done this walk, and used this book, many times before. But walking this path with John as our guide was one of the highlights of this most recent pilgrimage for me.

As we gathered in the courtyard at St. George's at 5:30 a.m John asked us to please not take pictures but to be open to everything on the way. "Take it all in," he said, "and let it be part of your prayer this morning. I tried to do that. Along the way we met other children of Abraham. Some Muslims coming back from The Dome of the Rock where they had spent the night in prayer. Some Jews, on their way to pray at the Western Wall. Fellow Christians, from around the world - also carrying their crosses, and others who came and touched our cross with reverence and still others who made the sign of the cross as we passed by.

We saw the city begin to wake up as all cities wake up on a Saturday morning: trash collectors and shop keepers and all the rest as this amazing city prepared to face a new day. We walked through these streets as countless other pilgrims have done at least since the eleventh century. The fourteen stops along the way invite reflection and commitment to open our eyes to see God's hand at work in the world around us. Too often in my "normal" walking I am focused on destination. Actually, too often I'm not walking at all but driving on a highway. The invitation to open our eyes as we walked has profound implications for what it means to be followers of Jesus. Indeed, our whole pilgrimage was about following in the footsteps of Jesus who was always on the move, always on "the Way."

John told us that he wrote the book in order to preserve the powerful prayers of his former colleague at St. Georges, Brother Gilbert Sinden, SSM, who was the director of courses at St. George's from 1979-1989, and was an editor of the Australian Prayerbook. He describes Brother Gilbert as "a beloved figure of wide girth with a gift for revealing the Bible and the Church so that 'you suddenly understood what you had not known before.'" These prayers are, to paraphrase Walter Brueggemann, prayers that are rooted in earth, and awed to heaven. One of those prayers, at the 8th station (where Jesus meets the weeping women of Jerusalem) goes like this:

For all women everywhere;
Especially for those who have to watch husbands, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, friends, or lovers go to war; for those who mourn loved ones killed or wounded in violence not of their own making; for the women of Jerusalem today: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Palestinians, Arabs, Israelis, Armenians and others; And for the women we know in our own lives who are standing beside us;
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. 

Our rising to pray at 5:30 am with a 12-hour homeward flight at midnight from Ben Gurion Airport made for a very long last day. Yet I would not have it any other way. For me the entire pilgrimage came together in this final walk through the city streets. Jesus said often, "let those with eyes to see, see and those with ears to hear, hear." It takes practice to keep our eyes and ears (and hearts) open to what is happening in our very midst.

I pray for that kind of awareness as I walk through the streets of Worcester, and Springfield, and the towns where my work will take me in the days that lie ahead in Southwick, and Pittsfield, and Holden, and Wilbraham. I pray for the wisdom and the courage to keep my eyes and ears open, in order to reach forth my hands in love, so that others may see and know the love of God made flesh in Jesus.

Repairers of the Breach

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

    the restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58:12)

I write this post from the land of the Holy One, reminded once more how complex the thoughts and feelings are for those who make this journey. Tomorrow our band of pilgrims from the Diocese of Western Massachusetts return home. 

On the one hand, it is extraordinary to walk in the places we read about in the Bible, and in particular to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Some are skeptical of "exact places" (and it is said that holy places move) but here is the thing: working backwards, through the 11th century Crusader churches to the 4th century Byzantine Churches to 1st century Roman markers, you begin to realize that pilgrims from around the world have been coming to these same places for centuries to pray and to remember what happened there, whether or not it happened there or a mile or so from there. The birthplace of Jesus and the Shepherd's Fields, the Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the five thousand, the healing of the man in the Pools of Bethsaida, the Palm Sunday Walk, the agony in Gethsemane, and even Golgatha and the empty tomb. Are these the exact places? Who can say. But just as our pilgrims have come to these places to sing, and to read the relevant Scripture passages, and pray, we can say that at the very least these places have been made holy over many centuries by countless numbers of pilgrims from many tribes and languages and peoples and nations. 

Is that enough? It is enough for me. Some places feel thinner than others for me, to be sure. But taken as a whole, this journey is worth making. And for me it has been worth making more than once.. Each time I come I feel connected to these holy places in new ways. 

That is all, "on the one hand..."

On the other hand, each and every time I have come this way I have realized there is no pure spiritual journey into the past here. Rather, one encounters life and politics and injustice and confusion and hope literally on top of these "holy" places. Walls are erected and settlements are built and the UN tries to moderate. Israeli citizens vote and debate in the Knesset over issues that seek to balance peace and security. Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, seek to make a life for themselves and a better life for their children. The United States, far too often, has it's thumb on the scale. And so too, small but mighty Anglican congregations gather across this diocese not only to pray for the peace of Jerusalem but to work for it by funding schools and hospitals. That work is not easy because ministry is never easy. 

It is this "other hand" that breaks my heart again and again. Here we encounter the human condition which always means encountering human sin. Even as we pray that grace might abound all the more, we walk the way of the cross and we know that the world is complicated and the human soul is a mess - and even our righteous deeds are far too often like filthy rags. In the past I have left here wondering if I were King for a day, what would I do to "fix" this contested place? In truth, I have less and less a clue as to what that would look like. I love my Jewish cousins here and I love my Muslim cousins here and I love the increasingly small percentage of Christian cousins here. We are all children of Abraham. 

At times there is an absence of war and a cessation of hostilities but imagining peace on earth, and good will to all, is exceedingly difficult. But this much I know: talking about these political challenges is an integral part of this spiritual journey. We who pray at the Church of the Nativity and believe in the Incarnation cannot just be spiritual without also being religious and that means also being political. We cannot pray in Bethlehem without going through that Security Checkpoint and past that Wall that has literally surrounded that little town into an open-air prison. 

Telling the truth is not the same as being partisan. And besides, if I were to be partisan I don't even know where I'd begin. But as I leave this place I want to remain informed and engaged and aware of the ways my own government has the potential to be a force for good or a force for evil in this land,  and many others. I want to do my part in helping us to be a force for good in the world. And at the same time, knowing that governments work for their own self-interest, to work with Christians, Jews, and Muslims to do this work together. 

We are called to be repairers of the breach, I think, both in this holy land and closer to home. To stand in that breach and to work at building and then strengthening relationships. Being here means being able to pray for people by name. It seems to me that in the economy of God that will not be lost. To yearn for peace and justice by listening to the stories of those who live here and to seek their welfare first, rather than our own strategic advantage, is at least a beginning. 

I leave here hopeful. Not naive, nor even optimistic, but hopeful that the arc of the moral universe really does bend toward justice. And so I will continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And for justice and peace on the West Bank. And then for wisdom to be an instrument of peace, in whatever way I can be. 

The prayer shown on the left comes from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. I want to be more of an "ordinary radical" in my day-to-day life. I want to be a peacemaker, in this way. And I want to join with other peacemakers to interrupt injustice, without mirroring injustice and to disarm evil without destroying the evildoer. I want to listen and learn, not ignore and put my head in the sand. I want to hope, not despair. I want to work with others to find that third way which is neither fight nor flight but "the careful arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice." I want to follow the way of love which is still revolutionary. I want to be a repairer of the breach. Always, with God's help.