Another Pentecost Story

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37-39)

This coming weekend we will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. In normal times, there is a lot going on for this festival day. Often there are baptisms or at least an opportunity to renew baptismal vows. In some denominations (where the Bishop is not required for Confirmation) it's Confirmation Day. Some people like to call it "the birthday of the Church," a recognition that the Day of Pentecost marks the beginning of a community called to seek and serve Christ in the world, as the Holy Spirit comes like wind and fire. And besides all of that, we get to wear red.

The liturgical timing for this day comes to us from Luke, in the sequel to his gospel that we know as The Acts of the Apostles. Fifty days after Easter morning, and ten days after the Ascension, the Holy Spirit comes like a mighty wind, with tongues of fire. Her arrival essentially reverses the Tower of Babel story. In that old Genesis story, the narrator offers an explanation for why there are so many different languages in the world. When people speak different tongues, communication is much more difficult, which makes community more difficult. But on that Pentecost day in Jerusalem, on the fiftieth day after Easter morning, the Holy Spirit comes to make communication possible again, as each hears the good news proclaimed in their own native tongue.

There are many good sermons to be preached on that reading from Acts 2 about wind and fire and speech and hearing and community and new beginnings. I expect to hear a sermon like that when my bishop preaches this Sunday for a diocesan-wide liturgy which I will watch with on-line with many others. Come, Holy Spirit!

In this place, however, I am going to let that familiar story stand and tell you a different Pentecost story. One that I hope will shed some light on the main one.  One that may be less familiar. This other Pentecost story is rooted in the fourth gospel, in these strange verses from the seventh chapter of John posted above. In fact, it's not even required to read them this weekend. The first option for the Gospel for this day is from John 20, where Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into the frightened disciples on Easter evening. (He and Luke didn't get their chronologies synched up!) The John 7 text is a back-up option on a week when most preachers are focused on Acts! I don't think it ever comes up at any other time in the three-year lectionary cycle.

So I suspect that the verses from the seventh chapter of John are far less familiar than either Luke's story in Acts or John's in the Upper Room. Yet they ultimately reveal something important about God’s Holy Spirit and the meaning of this day. So, let's go...

John’s story is told in the future tense: it’s about the Holy Spirit that Jesus promises he will send after he has been glorified, after finishing the work he has come to do. So if we are putting this into a timeline, we are going back to the public ministry of Jesus, before his crucifixion. In John's Gospel he doesn't just come there for the last week of his life. He comes multiple times and on this particular occasion he is in Jerusalem for the Festival of Booths—in Hebrew, the Feast of Sukkot. 

Originally Sukkot was a fall harvest festival, like Thanksgiving. But it had also become a time for Jews to remember the central narrative in their life together: the Exodus, and particularly their forty-year sojourn through the Sinai Desert. There they had begun to learn how to put their whole trust in God’s grace, one day at a time. There they had begun to learn that God would be faithful to the Covenant even when they were not. Our Jewish neighbors celebrate this festival to this day, often building their dwellings in the back yard of their homes where they eat their meals and sometimes even camp out. Building these “tabernacles” serves as a reminder of what it was like to be a people “on the move”—a people who lived in tents.

Anyway, it's the last day of the festival. For John there is a word-play here as well. In the opening chapter of John’s gospel you may recall that John puts all his cards on the table when he speaks of the Incarnate Logos: the Word that has become flesh to dwell among us. Literally, that word for dwelt among us is “pitched tent” among us. That verb form is the same as the word tabernacle in today’s reading—these “booths.”  Isn't that cool? 

So if you are reading the fourth gospel in Greek, the language in which it was written, you can’t miss it: the Word-that-tabernacled-among-us is about to do something important at the festival of tabernacles, on the last day of this great festival. Ready? 

One of the liturgical practices that occurred on that last day was a kind of parade. As I imagine it in my mind’s eye it would be something like what we do on Palm Sunday: the priest would lead a procession of the whole congregation to the Pool of Siloam and draw water into a golden vessel. Drawing water is a really big deal in the Bible. People would be singing and scripture would be read, perhaps words such as those we will sing on Sunday in our diocesan liturgy, from the prophet Isaiah:  

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. (Is. 12:3)

And then the water would be carried to the temple and poured into silver bowls around the altar. To people remembering their time in the desert, water is a very powerful metaphor. And even to people who have never spent time in the desert, we get it that water means life. An absence of rain at this time of year and there are no tomatoes and cucumbers in August. The right combination of both water and light is crucial: and Sukkoth is all about both water and light. It is written in the Mishnah (the oral traditions of the Torah) that “whoever has not seen the joy of drawing water has not experienced joy in his life.” This festival was (and still is) about that joy and about God’s abundant blessings.

So on the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. This metaphor is a familiar one to us who feel drawn to the fourth gospel, the gospel from the beloved disciple.  You may recall the Samaritan woman at the well, for example: Jesus told her that he is the living water, and those who drink the water that he offers will never thirst again. 

What comes next is important, though, and the punctuation is tricky in Greek. In fact, scholars have been arguing about it since the second century. It’s ambiguous: is Jesus saying that He is the river of life? This would ring true and fit in nicely with that conversation he had with the Samaritan woman at the well. 

But he may be saying something much more radical than that, and in fact there is a very strong case to be made for the more radical reading, which is why that is the choice that the translators of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) have made: out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water. Not just out of Jesus’ heart, but out of the disciples’ hearts! Wow! Out of your heart and mine—shall flow rivers of living water.

What if that's the right translation? What if it's the right theological claim for this day,this reminder on the Feast of Pentecost that among the many many gifts of various tongues and people hearing good news in their own language, and fire and wind and the breath of life itself, that there is even more: you and I are called to become rivers of life and to allow these living waters from God to flow through us. To flow into our homes where so many of us are fortunate enough to be tabernacled right now. Into our scattered faith communities at a time of diaspora from our buildings. Into the world around us. The Holy Spirit comes to renew the face of the earth! And She does that work, starting with us. With the believer's heart. Wow!

I suspect that is a very scary idea for most of us. But I think it is precisely what John’s Gospel does mean to say, not just in this obscure little text, but from those very first words about the Word that has tabernacled with us until the hour when “it is finished” on the Cross and Christ is Glorified, and until God sends the Holy Spirit to finish the job.  If the Father truly is in the Son, and the Son is truly in the Father, and if we really are in Christ, then we participate in the Divine life. That, Jesus says, is what the Holy Spirit is sent to do: to facilitate that process so that the waters of life might flow through us.

Isn’t that scary? But of course even though John tells the story differently, it’s what Luke is getting at as well. The metaphors are different but this is what the Feast of Pentecost is all about. Just from another angle. It's not about a historical event; but about how truly amazing things begin to happen when the Holy Spirit shows up in our lives. People like Peter, who was a bit of a screw-up before, are now equipped to do “infinitely more than he could ask or imagine.” Persecutors of the Church, like Saul, are transformed into committed disciples. Ethiopian eunuchs and Roman soldiers start finding their way into a community where women and men have an amazing story to share. Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water. 

Out of the hearts of people like us, too. I know we don’t feel like that every day and right now a lot of us are feeling weary and beleaguered and parched. Sometimes we lose hope. Sometimes we feel like sinners who are unworthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under God’s table. But the Spirit comes anyway. The Spirit comes to blow through us, bubbling up inside of us to heal and to renew and to strengthen and to comfort and to prod and to transform us. The Spirit comes like wind and like fire—and yes, like rivers of living water to lead us into all truth and health and joy and peace.  

Before she unsuccessfully ran for President, Marianne Williamson wrote these words, sometimes incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela. Some may remember them from the film, Coach Carter. I think they have everything to do with these words from the seventh chapter of John’s Gospel, and with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This little light of ours - this little light of mine and this little light of yours: Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine! Come, Holy Spirit! Let rivers of living water flow through us - to renew the face of the earth. 

Prayerful Waiting

Celebrating Holy Eucharist in the Judean Wilderness

The season of Lent—those forty days before Easter—is about way more than trying not to say “alleluia” or giving up chocolate. This past Lent we gave up our church buildings, a fast that has continued through the Easter season. Many people who have been sitting in the same pew or preaching from the same pulpit for many years and even decades have experienced tremendous loss and dislocation. 

Even so, this past Lent (like all that came before it and the ones that lie ahead) was an invitation to prepare for the new life that the risen and victorious Jesus offers to us. It’s a time to get ready by taking a spiritual inventory of our lives and then making whatever amends and course corrections that will get us to turn (and re-turn) to God.

But Lent also gives us a vital metaphor for the journey of faith: we journey into the wilderness. We head into the desert for forty days. Why? Because the Gospels tell us that after his Baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus went out into the Judean wilderness to be tempted by Satan for forty days. And why did he do that? Because his own people, God’s own people, had spent forty years in the Sinai Desert as they journeyed from slavery to freedom. This metaphor connects us with important aspects of the spiritual life, and gives us a window through which to see our own lives, because sometimes we may find ourselves in the desert. Sometimes life is really hard. Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of trials and tribulations, sorting through loss and grief. This is simply a part of life’s journey.

If you read the Torah, especially Exodus and Numbers, you see how hard leadership is in the desert. Moses risks burn-out but when he equips others, he also loses control. The people do a lot of grumbling, and they blame Moses. And God. They remember (incorrectly) how great it was to be slaves in Egypt: oh, the melons and the cucumbers.

Lent gives us a way, liturgically, to be assured that when we find ourselves in such places in our own journeys that we can remember that we are not (as it may at first seem) in a godforsaken place. There are dry and uncharted aspects of the journey, to be sure. But even there, God’s blessings and miracles abound. Even there, angels minister to us. Even there, there is manna and water, one day at a time. Even there, God helps us to find the courage and strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other, as we continue to make our way toward the Promised Land. It is a slow and circuitious journey through Sinai, to be sure. But ultimately, as we proclaimed on Easter morning, the Lenten journey leads us to the empty tomb where we dare to make our song. Even at the grave. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

These past forty days or so since then have given us an opportunity (as a Church mostly in pandemic exile) to reflect on the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives. The Easter life we share in Christ’s name binds us together in community, where we experience God-with-us whenever two or three are gathered together in Jesus' name. Even on Zoom. It’s been an Easter season, so far, like none other – and our alleluias have mostly been broken and muted ones. Even so, even now, we make our song. And we trust that Christ is risen indeed and never was confined to our buildings anyway. Alleluia! 

Marking time by liturgical seasons can become silly if we take it too seriously, and sometimes liturgical Christians are literalists not that different from Biblical literalists. But for me this way of marking time, of changing seasons, is a helpful metaphor and lens for living the Christian faith, which is not just one long extended mountaintop experience. Our lives will have seasons that feel like Lent, and seasons that feel like Easter. And of course just ahead is all that “ordinary time."

So, going back to Ash Wednesday, forty days of fasting in the desert and since Easter morning, forty days of feasting as the risen Christ keeps being revealed. But of course there are not just forty days of Easter, but fifty. Forty days into the Easter season (on Thursday) we will mark the Feast of the Ascension. It will still be Eastertide. But the last ten days of Easter will represent a shift. The last ten days are a bit different from the first forty.

As Luke understands the chronology, Jesus goes out to Bethany to say goodbye to the disciples, and then he ascends to the right hand of the Father. Don’t get too stuck on the ancient world’s three-tiered cosmos: the point is that the Risen Christ is no longer so obviously among the disciples breaking the bread and eating fish. Next weekend we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, on the fiftieth day, the Feast of Pentecost.

How might we describe these last ten days of the Easter season, this time between Ascension and Pentecost? I want to suggest that it is a time of waiting. It is about letting go of Jesus, even as we pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Our collect today suggests some level of anxiety, because an uncertain future always brings with it some anxiety. And so we implored God: “Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit, to strengthen us, and to exalt us…” As the epistle reading from First Peter puts it, we are invited to “cast all [our] anxiety on [God], because he cares for [us].”

Now I don’t think that Jesus has a calendar in hand, ticking off the days until forty when he goes out to ascend to heaven and then ten days later the Holy Spirit arrives right on schedule. As I said above, liturgical calendars tell a lie in order to reveal a deeper spiritual truth. That deeper spiritual truth is that every day of our lives does not feel like either Lent or Easter. There are also these “in-between” times. And the Sunday after the Ascension, before Pentecost, is one of those times.  Christ has ascended, but the Holy Spirit hasn’t yet shone up. And so we wait. And we pray: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit. We do our best to cast our anxiety on God, because we trust that God cares for us.

In Holy Week, I blogged about Holy Saturday as a similar kind of time. I resonate with this right now, as perhaps you do as well. I also commend to you a superb reflection recently shared by Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE, which you can read here. Brother Curtis reminds us that...

...the English word “patience,” comes from the Latin patientia which is a “quality of suffering.” And suffering you are as you wait patiently, hopefully, sometimes desperately for a resolution. Patience also means dependence, exposure, being no longer in control of your own situation, being the object of what is done. Living life patiently is very difficult to do.

I find myself reflecting on some of the waiting times in my own life. Some of them even seem to find their way into my dream life lately.

¨      I remember waiting for the first day of school with a mixture of hope and fear? Every year but especially the first day of elementary school, or of high school, or of college. I can also remember, perhaps more appropriate at this time of the year, counting off the days until the last day of school, waiting for summer vacation to begin and longing for wiffle-ball and sand castles and long bike rides and kick-the-can.

¨      I remember waiting after graduating from Wallenpaupack Area High School almost forty years ago, with that same mixture of hope and fear I felt in elementary school as I thought about moving from a small town to attend college in a big city: saying goodbyes to friends I’d known my whole life and wondering what my life would be like apart from the life I’d known forever. Waiting for that next chapter to begin and wondering, and trying to let God carry my anxiety.

¨      I can remember waiting for my wedding day, and waiting for each of my two kids to be born and counting the days. Graham came earlier than expected and James arrived later than expected but both came into the world in their own way, on their own timetables: a good reminder to parents that we are not in charge.

¨      I remember waiting to hear about each job I’ve held and the ones where I was not their first choice, as Hathy and I waited for the search committee to decide, to make a decision, even if it was no; and praying it would be yes.

¨      I have been at enough bedsides to know that there is also another kind of waiting: waiting for death.  I pray that like my old pal, St. Francis, that when death comes for me it will come like a sister or brother, like a friend who is not to be feared. But these days of COVID-19 put all of that up for grabs.

There are times of waiting in every season of our lives. I imagine these last ten days of Eastertide as something like some of these other “waiting times:” a time of expectation; a time filled with no small amount of anxiety and fear about what comes next. A time of waiting that, as Brother Curtis puts it, is so difficult, and yet so promising. 

Cast all your anxiety on God, because God cares for you.

We worry (or at least I do) through seasons of transition that life will not go on. That somehow we will never be comforted. Change can be scary. But I’ve become convinced it is less change itself and more the loss that makes us anxious. Change is about letting go and letting God. But in the midst of all of that powerlessness (and learning to let God be God) it can be pretty scary.   

Notice what the disciples do in our reading from Acts after Jesus leaves at Bethany: they went back to Jerusalem, to the room upstairs. The Upper Room. Peter and James and John and Andrew and Philip and Thomas and Bartholomew and Matthew and James and Simon and Judas and some certain women. (Luke doesn’t seem to remember all of their names, or maybe he doesn’t think their names are important enough to list; except of course Mary, the Mother of Jesus.) They devoted themselves, constantly, to prayer.

They prayed and they waited. We can do that. We need to do that right now, in this time of waiting. In this time of transition. In this time when it is unclear what the future will bring. The liturgical calendar is not an end in itself. It’s a guide that helps us to reflect on the journey of faith. It helps us to reflect on how God is at work in our lives and the life of the Church and the life of this world. May these last ten days of the Easter season, this time between Ascension Day and the Spirit’s arrival on Pentecost, be a time for us of prayerful waiting.

We try to wait with wide-open eyes and with ears that hear. We wait for God to send that Spirit of Comfort, the Counselor, the One who will lead us through all seasons of change toward deeper truths and new insights: that Spirit who gives us strength and courage for facing whatever challenges may come our way. In order to embrace the new we have to learn to let go of the old. We have to navigate our way to a new “normal.” By God’s grace, in part what times of waiting can teach us is that God is always about doing new things. And that God will never leave us comfortless.

What we pray for, as we mature in faith, is not that everything will stay the same, but rather, that our times of waiting will lead us to new places and to new insights and new possibilities. Those, I think, are gifts the Holy Spirit brings—whether She comes like a mighty wind or as a gentle breath.

Come, Holy Spirit…breathe on us, breath of God…and fill us with life anew.

Do not leave us comfortless. Come and empower us for the work of ministry. Come and renew us, and renew the face of the earth. In the meantime, help us to wait: sometimes expectantly and patiently, sometimes pacing back and forth with our blood pressure rising. But always trying, with God’s help, to more and more put our trust in You, the One who has created us from the earth, in You, the One who has redeemed us through Jesus Christ, in You, the One who sustains us through Her very own breath. Amen.

Mars Hill

St. Paul on the Areopagus ("Mars Hill") 

It's still Easter! This coming Sunday will be the Sixth Sunday of Easter. The readings for the day can be found here. This reflection focuses on the reading from Acts 17. 

The “snapshot” we see of St. Paul standing in front of the Areopagus in Athens has always been an image that captures my heart and my imagination. Let me try to explain why.

When you hear “Athens” -  think Cambridge or Berkeley or Ann Arbor. Rome is the center of power in the first century world (think Washington, DC.) But Athens still remains the center of intellectual life, a “college town” if you will. So when Paul goes up on “Mars Hill” (that’s what Areopagus means) think of him in the middle of Harvard Square with all the M.I.T. and Harvard types around him.  

The story actually begins six verses before where the lectionary picks it up at Acts 17:16.  Paul has come to Athens ahead of the Silas and Timothy. He’s there alone, waiting for the others to join him. He is a man with some time to kill in a great and wonderful city with art and street musicians and theater and a Starbucks on every corner.

But Paul hates it. It’s just a fact of life I guess. Some people love college towns and get a feeling of exhilaration. Others find all that talk of Foucault and Derrida a bit much. Paul is “deeply distressed" according to the narrator. He’s deeply distressed because everywhere he looks he sees idols. Don't forget, even though he is now a follower of Jesus, Paul has been raised a Jew, and trained as a Pharisee. He remembers the Torah, and he is not a fan of graven images that claim to be "god."

So he does what Paul does best: he starts arguments. But, of course, in a town like Athens, this is precisely the way to make friends! Academics love to argue! Paul goes into the synagogue and then in to the market place where he argues with the Jews and with the Epicureans and with the Stoics. Some respond to him the way tenured faculty sometimes do. Dismissively. “Who is this babbler?” they ask.

But others are intrigued. Or maybe just amused. Paul may be out of his natural element but his passion and his ability to make the case for what he believes is credible. And Paul is no idiot, to be sure. He's just a faithful Jew who believes that Jesus is Messiah; not a Greek philosopher. 

So that’s how we have come to be on Mars Hill as Paul begins the discourse in this Sunday's reading: “I see how extremely religious you are in every way...” Now as readers of the Bible (and not just lectionary texts) we can hear the irony (and no small amount of sarcasm) in that statement. because we know that when Paul was out walking the streets of Athens he has become distressed. No, deeply distressed. Because he has seen what to him looks like "a city full of idols."

But he doesn’t stand on Mars Hill and say that. He doesn’t stand up and say, “You idolaters. . .” What he says is: “I see you are clearly looking for something. I see that you are seekers…” I get it that you are clearly looking for God. You seem to be religious but not very spiritual! (If, by spiritual, one means allowing the (holy) Spirit of the Living God. to fall afresh on us.) So while there is no doubt irony here, I also hear a genuine desire on Paul's part to meet these people where they are and to take their seeking seriously. Paul notes that in his sightseeing he has found an inscription “to an unknown god” and that becomes his opening. 

Notice Paul doesn’t begin with Jesus. He gets there at the end when he speaks of the One raised from the dead. But he doesn’t begin there. He begins with the notion that there is a God who has created the heavens and the earth. He begins by asserting that all human beings are really one family. And if all people are created in God’s own image, then it follows that all people have some longing and desire to connect with that God, however repressed or distorted that may be.

Paul begins with their yearning. Because he seems to recognize that city full of idols is also a city filled with people who are longing for something more, something real, something authentic and true. So Paul doesn’t tell them they are all going to hell. Nor does he say, “Jesus is the answer.” They haven’t yet asked him a question! 

Rather, he engages them. He points them toward something that conveys more wisdom than Stoicism or Epicureanism have to offer. He identifies the God of creation with the “unknown god," a God who is not made of gold or silver or stone who is bigger than all the art in this city and bigger than the imagination of the greatest scholars in this city, a God who has sent his son into the world to judge and redeem it and has raised him from the dead.

Now at that point, Paul loses some of them. They find resurrection too big a pill to swallow. But we also are told that some of them joined the community of Jesus’ followers; including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris. And some others.

I began my ordained life on a college campus, with some of my closest friends in the Philosophy and English Departments. A number of them could not quite make the leap of faith. But they were deeply curious and true seekers. The philosophers were asking questions of meaning. The lovers of literature knew that there was some great literature in the Bible and they were especially drawn to Job and Ecclesiastes, which ironically get too little “air time” in most congregations.

Those forms of Christianity that dismiss matters of the mind worry me. We are, after all, called to love God not only with our whole hearts and souls, but also with our whole minds. Intellect cannot take us all the way to faith though. There is a “leap” that we must take beyond intellect if we wish to believe. What Thomas the twin teaches us (and what St. Anselm will later remind us of) is that “to believe is to begin to see.” That is, faith opens our eyes to even greater understanding. The goal for Christians is not to prove faith. If you proved it, then it wouldn’t be faith! It would just be another idol! The work of the Church in every age is to help make Christianity credible. It is to not be afraid of the intellect, because faith is a matter for both head and heart.

Practically speaking, I think about what this means for our theology of evangelism. One of my heroes in the history of Missiology is the sixteenth-century Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, who was a missionary to China. Ricci learned the language and the culture of the people among whom he lived. He dressed as a Confucian scholar and came to serve the royal court as a mathematician. (Those crazy Jesuits!) Only then did he begin to speak, much as St. Paul did centuries before on Mars Hill, about the God he knew in Jesus. Ricci assumed, in other words (as St. Paul does in today’s gospel) that the God who created the heavens and the earth and all people from every tribe and language and nation was already at work in those people and in their culture. He was not bringing Truth to people with no truth. Rather, he was building on what they already knew and starting with their yearning.That leads to a very different kind of evangelism  than many of us are accustomed to.

What does all this have to do with us? Too many Episcopalians are scared of being evangelists. Although that is beginning to change with the Presiding Bishop we have right now. Before Michael Curry, the best Episcopal evangelists I saw in the parish I served were the kids. Kids would invite their friends to come to Sunday School with them or a Palm Saturday event to see the live donkey, or to sing in a choir or to come bowling with the Youth Group. They weren’t afraid to extend an invitation to “come and see” without any agenda and without anxiety. And without being afraid that people might mistake them for a fundamentalist in so doing. They invited, and welcomed, and connected their friends to something real.It happened enough times that I begin to understand that they did naturally what many of the adults found so difficult. I think that like the evangelist St. Paul and missionaries like Matteo Ricci and bishops like Michael Curry they got it.

What would our evangelism look like if more of us did? First of all, I think we cannot dismiss the culture out of hand. We can and we must critique it, because there is much in our world that is idolatrous and that is not life-giving. But critique takes understanding and discernment and engagement; not a sense of moral superiority. Where do we see in our own popular culture, in music and in film and in the arts, some sense of yearning? Where do we see “altars to an unknown god?” How do we as Christians learn to speak the language of our mission field, which is no longer as far away as China.

Yet it also seems to me that our culture is shaped by the values of Wall Street and Madison Avenue and Hollywood and the Pentagon. And the continued effects of racism that go to the very roots of this nation’s history.We do need to name what is idolatrous as idolatrous. But can we see, as Paul did on Mars Hill, that the love of money or of power or of nation, while indeed idolatrous, is also a sign of longing for meaning? Can we find the "unknown gods" in our town time and connect with those?

How do we engage this culture and learn to speak the language of modern-day Epicureans and Stoics while also recognizing that we have “good news” to share that goes beyond those other ways of knowing and thinking and being in the world? How do we listen for the yearnings of our friends and neighbors who want something more, and then invite them to "come and see," trusting that God is already at work in their asking of the questions? And trusting, also, that we are part of a faith community that welcomes the big questions?

One of the big challenges that progressive Christians face in this time and place is that we’ve let the fundamentalists define the terms for way too long. Evangelism isn’t about threatening people with hell and handing them a tract. Nor is it about a marketing strategy that teaches us how to grow a congregation by offering people what they want. Rather, evangelism is simply an extension of who we are as baptized persons. It’s part of the deal, a part of our Baptismal promises, that as we grow in faith and learn to articulate our faith we are called to share that good news. Right now, when people are living in isolation and anxiety, they are looking for connections. They are looking for meaning. Those occasions can, if we dare, become our own Mars Hill experiences, as we bear witness to the love of God we have known in Jesus Christ a love that requires all of us: body, mind, and spirit.

Dame Julian

I'm a day late here, but better late than never. Yesterday was the day when the Episcopal Church remembered the life and witness of Dame Julian of Norwich. I thought about her all day, and quoted her a couple of times. But the day was full and I did not have time to sit down and write. Even so, here goes, because I think her life has something to say to us right now.

Did you know that she has not been canonized in the Roman Catholic tradition? I am sure I knew this once and then forgot it. We don't have such a formal process of naming holy women and holy men to be commemorated in the Episcopal Church. We are used to singing a song of the saints of God and using this term to refer to all the baptized, even as we hold up those who were lights in their generation and seek to emulate their faith. But for my money, Julian belongs in the upper echelon of that great cloud of witnesses.

Julian was an English Anchoress who had a rough personal story. At thirty she went though a terrible illness and almost died, to the point that she was given last rites. But more interesting even than that, to me, is the larger social and political in which she lived. Between 1348 and 1350, in those formative years when Julian was a little girl at Norwich Elementary School, the plague killed between 75 million and 200 million people. It reduced the world population by like 20%. Just think about that for a moment: one in five dead from a horrible disease.

As I write these words 275,000 people have died globally from COVID-19. In the United States, that number is about 75,000. In Massachusetts it is nearly 5000. This is stunning and frightening and so very sad, and we know there will be more death. All of us will be impacted and find ourselves one or two degrees from those who have lost their lives. 

Just over a century ago, the 1918 Flu Pandemic took the lives of 50 million people globally, and about 675,000 Americans. My grandmother lost family members to that disease, as I blogged about here back in March. Julian of Norwich was on my mind then as well, as she was yesterday. 

I am reasonably confident that one in five Americans will not die from this pandemic, and also that it will not be as bad in the end as 1918. That puts it into some perspective for me. But it's pretty awful. Yesterday I met with my spiritual director on Zoom - words I never thought I'd utter - he in the same small room at the Monastery where we always meet and me in my kitchen. Strange, but I'll save that for another time. We talked for a while about how "we" (meaning the Church) have been here before but that "we" who are living today have never seen anything like this before. No one wants to hear from the drunk uncle who "walked to school uphill both ways" when our kids can't even go to school today. 

We are - yes, I'll say it again - in uncharted territory. At lease we who are among the privileged. My head hurts some days and I get to the end of a long day and I'm just wiped. And I'm male. I'm white. I live in an upper-middle class neighborhood. I have my job and so does my spouse. We are doing fine. And it's still hard. My spiritual director shared with me that he is reading Howard Thurman right now and he said that was intentional, that he needs to hear the voices of people who have more experience in navigating almost insurmountable odds to find hope in these days. He's right, of course. He almost always is. 

We are experiencing grief and fear and terror and confusion and the end of a world that was comfortable for some of us but also unsafe for a 25 year old black man to go for a run in. The world is coming apart at the seams, it seems. And while that may be frightening and it may go on for some time, I am trying to take the long view. 

This brings me back to Dame Julian. As terrible as all of this is for us, I cannot even now begin to imagine what it was like to live through the Black Death. Or even 1918. Think about the impact on families and social institutions facing that much loss. The aftermath of the plague led to religious, social and economic upheavals that it took Europe 150 years to recover from. Now that is a slow recovery! 

And yet it was in the midst of all of that, that Dame Julian knew and rediscovered that God is love, and that God’s love is all embracing, and that in the death and resurrection of Jesus we know that God is with us no matter what. To her, Christ was “our courteous Lord.” 

How English! How lovely! 

In the midst of all of that, she wrote these words, given to her in a vision by Christ:

I can make all things well;
I will make all things well;
I shall make all things well;
and thou canst see for thyself that all manner of things shall be well.

May it be so for us. May we know and trust "our courteous Lord" as this Easter season continues to unfold, trusting that all manner of things shall be well.

Postscript:

After reading this post, a friend sent me this lovely folk song, which I commend to you.

Thomas, Redux

I have made a not-so-subtle move on this blog during the pandemic that I want to be more explicit about today. In my role on the Bishop's staff I often say that I'm an itinerant preacher. I'm in a different congregation most weeks of the year. Sometimes it's directly related to congregations going through pastoral transitions. Other times, I'm called upon to do what we call "supply work" - to be a substitute priest if one of our clergy is on vacation or family leave or sabbatical. But most Sundays I'm in one of our congregations, usually as the preacher, somewhere in our diocese.

So in "normal times" this blog is a place where I usually post those sermons. I try to always include a picture of the church as a way to offer context. My hope is that for most readers my ruminations offer another voice to complement what they may have heard from their own pastor that morning, and that we point together to the risen Christ who shows us the way to the living God. 

I also hope it offers a glimpse of what a diocese looks like as I move from small to medium to larger congregations, from rural to urban to suburban. Most lay people (and even most ordained people) tend to be...well, more parochial. There are many, many gifts in parochial ministry: you get to go deeper and strengthen relationships. But there is a breadth to diocesan ministry that also helps one to see what it means to be "Church" beyond the walls of a particular building. I hope that my blog posts allow those who travel with me to get a glimpse of that. 

But I'm not getting out these days. My work is not "essential" work in this sense, and our buildings  have been empty on Sunday mornings, even though the Church is alive and well. So I have not preached a sermon  since March 8 when I was at The Church of the Reconciliation in Webster. 

Instead of posting sermons, I have been posting reflections here and doing so earlier in the week.- usually on Monday mornings. These reflections are not situated in a particular time and place, other than perhaps my home and my awareness of the current situation many of us find ourselves in. But I hope that by offering some thoughts and ideas to preachers and those who will hear sermons preached on Sunday mornings that I'm now "priming the pump." I've watched in awe as my colleagues have adapted to the current situation and continue to learn how to go live on Sunday mornings. That has got to be exhausting! I know some are not preaching regular "sermons" but are inviting conversation and reflection on the texts of the day. I think that's great. I hope these posts might be helpful in that work of opening up the Word. 

I've written sermons for most Sundays for over three decades now and in that process, I have learned to pray with scripture. While I try (with some degree of success) to read more scripture each week than just what's coming up in the lectionary, that plan for reading the Bible (an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, an Epistle reading and a Gospel reading for each week of the liturgical year) shapes my prayer life week after week. Because I have been at this for some time, I've seen these texts before. The lectionary is a three-year cycle, which means I've now been through it ten times!  But it does not get old for me and besides, when I circle back to a text three years from now, I will be different - and the world will be changed - even if the Word of God remains.

All of this is by way of saying explicitly why I'm sharing these posts on Monday mornings now; so that I can offer some thoughts on the coming week. Rather than being a "finished" sermon these ruminations are offered to invite your own reflections and prayers during the week ahead. This coming Sunday will be the Fifth Sunday of Easter. The readings appointed can be found here. 

There are potentially many very good sermons to be preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter and probably some rabbit holes, too. Acts (which I've been trying to call attention to in these posts throughout The Fifty Days of Easter) is focused this week on the first martyr, Stephen. Notice his last words echo words of Jesus: he forgives his murderers and he offers his life back to God. As the day's collect reminds us, even those of us not called to martyrdom, we are not simply called to worship Jesus. We are called to follow in his footsteps. We are called to imitate Christ, as Stephen does. It sounds cliche but we are meant to ask, "what would Jesus do?" or at least "what would Jesus have me do?" Even when it's hard. Especially then. 

So in this time when there is too much death all around us we can remember that what makes our own deaths holy is work we do for ourselves, and even before we take our last breath we can practice forgiveness on a daily basis so that when we die it is well with our souls. And we can, on a daily basis, commit (and recommit) ourselves to God our Maker, who formed us from the earth to which we will all one day return.

Both the Psalm and the reading from First Peter are ripe with possibilities as well. But I'm drawn this week to Thomas. I know the gospel reading is not about Thomas, but it's his second Easter appearance. Remember Trusting Thomas? The one who says "my Lord and my God!" 

In today's reading we get a "back flash" to an earlier moment in Jesus' earthly ministry. These verses are often read at funerals, and I think chosen by families because these words bring great comfort to people who have put their trust in Jesus as the way, and the truth, and the life. In the context of John’s Gospel, this is the beginning of what the scholars call the “farewell discourse.” It is the last night of Jesus’ earthly life—Holy Thursday—and that is why the disciples’ “hearts are troubled.” 

Anyone who has ever kept vigil with a dying loved one knows something of the emotional energy of that Upper Room, of wanting to say goodbyes and of trying to take care of unfinished business. Anyone who is unable to keep that kind of vigil as is now the case during this season of pandemic feels that tremendous loss. Especially many pastors I know are finding this to be so difficult. Even more difficult than not being able to gather together on Sunday mornings in the flesh. Too many people are dying alone. 

In any event, Jesus is giving instructions to the disciples on how to carry on with the work he has begun after he is gone. He is summing up what his life has been about and pointing the disciples to a way forward. He is explaining what it means to be the Church. I think of this material as similar to the Book of Deuteronomy, where Moses is giving his own farewell discourse and summing up forty years in the wilderness, as God’s people prepare to enter into the Promised Land. At the heart of Jesus’ farewell discourse in John 14-16 is a lived-out parable –the washing of the feet—and a new commandment “to love one another as I have loved you.”

And so we heard Jesus explaining that he must go to prepare a place for them. But they should not let their hearts be troubled, because they know the way to where he is going. It’s like a preacher rolling along in a sermon or a professor who is gaining momentum in her lecture. Only everyone listening is starting to get a little lost. It takes that one student who is willing to raise his hand and say, “excuse me professor, can we back up?”

Thomas is that student. “Lord, we do not know where you are going. So how can we possibly know the way?"

It is in response to Thomas’s question that Jesus says: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” It is important to hear those words in context: Jesus is essentially telling the disciples that he will be their GPS, that he will lead them where they need to go, that he will be with them throughout the journey; however long it takes and wherever it may lead them. 

It's important to be clear that Jesus is not uttering these words as a threat to unbelievers which is how it sometimes feels when I see these words on a highway billboard. I've even seen translations in those contexts that add the word "only," which seek to turn them into a weapon: Jesus is the only way, you either have him or you don't! Clearly this is not the text with which to begin a serious interfaith conversation. But above all, it's not what Jesus is saying! These are "comfortable words" addressed to intimate friends; a confession of faith that will help them to carry on. They are, on our own lips, a confession that helps those of us who have been sealed and marked and claimed as Christ's own forever to know who we are and what we are about. As Ralph Vaughn Williams understood, this is a call to follow.

Knowing this, and living this, is what it means to be God’s Easter people - or at least moving in that direction. Our work is to keep putting our trust in this risen Christ, as we learn to live one day at a time, embracing each new day as sheer gift. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Twice then, in these fifty days, we've seen Thomas not as the "doubter" as he is so often labeled, but as one who is fearless. One who will ask the question that leads to deeper faith. Sadly, while Jesus was a master at encouraging this kind of engagement, too many of us were wounded by pastors and Sunday school teachers and sometimes even parents who said, "put your hand down! No questions!"

But our questions lead us to deeper understanding and to the living God revealed in the risen Christ, who welcomes the questions. How can we possibly know the way, Jesus? Stick with me, kid! I'll be with you all the way. No matter what. Come and follow me. 

Without Shame or Fear

The Proper Preface for Holy Eucharist in The Book of Common Prayer during the Advent Season goes like this:

Because you sent your beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life; that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing. (BCP 378)  

Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of New Hampshire is a friend and former colleague of mine, having served as rector of Grace Church in Amherst before being elected Bishop. He has written a book that takes it's title from this Proper Preface. It's quite good. In fact, I read it before it was published and had the opportunity to write one of those little "blurbs" recommending the book that is on the back cover. Pretty cool, huh? I'm almost famous! I'd share what I wrote here but the book is in my office and I'm still working from home; as I recall it was pretty brilliant though!

I've been thinking about this book - or at least this Proper Preface - during this pandemic for a rather odd reason. I've been "binge watching" a Netflix show called Shameless. Until I just Googled it, I didn't realize it was based on a British series. In any case, I described it to a family member as This Is Us on steroids! It's intense. It's raw. It's sad. It's about the poor dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher (played by William H. Macy) on the south side of Chicago. Frank is drunk most of the time. The mother, Monica, left the family when they were very little but she does show up occasionally. She suffers from severe bipolar disorder. The show is focused on the impact that these two parents have on their kids. The oldest daughter, Fiona (played by Emmy Rossum) basically raises her younger siblings. She is admirable and capable and determined. Yet all of that "responsibility" also takes a huge toll on her. She never gets to be a kid herself. Eventually she starts making her own bad choices. The title of the third episode in season four is "Like Father, Like Daughter." Yes, that sums it up. Shame is passed on from generation to generation.

So, I've been watching this show and pondering it's brutal honesty. It's intense. It's not everyone's cup of tea, for sure. Yet the Gallaghers are quite likable, at least to me they are. Their lives are hard and they make lots of bad choices. It's both their fault and not their fault because, well, because life is complicated and being poor and from a rough neighborhood is hard enough but having a drunk father like Frank and an absent mother like Monica makes it that much harder. But at some level it's also on them, because pain that is not transformed is transferred.

Shameless? No, that's ironic. Shame-filled.

In his book, Bishop Hirscheld reminds his readers that shame is "the master emotion." It can be internalized and become part of our inner landscape. It distorts our sense of self.  Shame, he says, not only reminds us over and over again of our mistakes; it tells us that we are a mistake. The consequence is that we no longer seem safe in our own skin.

This didn't occur to me when I first read Rob's book and wrote that little blurb, but I tend to notice and preach on fear a lot more than shame. It occurs to me in this time of pandemic (when I have a lot of time to reflect on what it's like for me living in my own skin) that there is a narrative I see over and over again in scripture, where faith casts out fear. Fear, as I understand it, paralyzes us. Faith and hope and love liberate us. Hope allows us to imagine the world as otherwise. I have spent a lot of time thinking and praying about all of this over many years. Attentive listeners will hear it in so many of my sermons and it is a very Biblical idea. Every time an angel shows up in the Bible it's to tell God's people, "do not be afraid."

But what I've been "ruminating on" lately is that shame is almost as important in the Bible as fear, and I've given it far less attention. Going back to the Garden of Eden, but popping up again and again as the narrative(s) unfold.

Take Peter, who on the last night of his teacher's life, says, "I do not know the man. I do not know the man. I do not know the man." Cock-a-doodle-doo. I think that my explicit thinking and preaching on such a moment has tended to be focused on fear. Peter's afraid of being arrested. He's afraid for his life. What he gets later - this is what unfolds in Acts during the Easter season - is that he's no longer afraid, but has been transformed by Easter to be fearless. Or we might say, hopeful.

And I stand by that. But right there before my very eyes all these years has been something else: shame. Peter is exposed by the fire that night and exposed is a shame word. He is not only afraid; he's ashamed of himself. He may even wonder if he's a mistake, if he's no rock at all. What is the antidote to shame? Trusting that the God who created us in love and redeemed us in love still sees us through the eyes of love?

So I'm pondering these things, these days. I don't have it figured out and maybe I never will. But I want to pay attention to shame more. I take my friend, Rob as an inspiration to do that and when I get to my office I'm going to re-read that book. But I also look to my fictional friends, the Gallaghers, as well. And my own life, because I have experienced both fear and shame along the way.

By the time Advent rolls around next time, I want to be praying that Proper Preface in new ways, with new insights, wondering what a life without shame or fear really looks like. Every now and again we do get glimpses. And praying for that kind of full and abundant life that rejoices in the God who is with us every step of the way.