2021

In July 2020, five months into the pandemic, I began to build time for walking into every day. It was a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health in a time of pandemic. Instead of sitting in a car on the Mass Pike for two hours each day, I'd walk. 

Since then, over the past eighteen months, I've walked over 3,100 miles: basically from Boston to San Francisco. Most of those miles were on the Central Mass Rail Trail, from West Boylston to Holden, and then back again. 

One year ago - six months into this practice - I resolved on January 1, 2021 that I would walk the number of miles in this year (2021) which is roughly 5.6 miles a day. I wrote about that here. As of today, I have achieved and surpassed that goal, with three days left in the year. 

As I said, it's been a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health. It's a way to be outside even in the short days of a New England winter. Most of the time I walk in the morning. I've walked with family and friends and even made a couple of new friends. I've run into people I have known for years. But most of those miles have been on my own. It's been a practice of putting first things first and of paying attention. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I may not know what a  prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention. The truth is that's a big part of prayer. 

I plan, God willing, to keep walking in 2022. Since I like having goals and since I'm a visual person, I'm going to try to walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail in 2022. It means stepping it up a bit, since the distance from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine is about 2200 miles. That will require a little more than six miles a day I'll have a three-month sabbatical in 2022. I hope to put in some miles in The Holy Land this May and then in Spain in October. I'd also like to figure out how to walk at least a few miles that are actually on the AT, at least where it comes through Massachusetts in the Berkshires. But mostly I anticipate walking most of those miles on the rail trail. See you out there! 

Yet, and Still: The Nativity of Our Lord

Tonight I am serving at St. Luke's in Worcester. Merry Christmas! 

The poet, Edmund Hamilton Sears, was born in the Berkshires on April 6, 1810. He was an ordained Unitarian minister who served congregations in Barnstable, Wayland and just up the road in Lancaster during the middle years of the nineteenth century. He wrote the words to “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849. 

I know we just sang it but I need some help with this sermon and I want to introduce you to what may be a new tune for some, with Ken’s help. It’s the one found on page 90 in your hymnals. Let’s just sing the first verse to get used to it:

        It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old;
        From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.
        “Peace on the earth good will to men, From heaven’s all gracious King!”
        The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.

Sears suffered from depression, or as it was called in the middle of the nineteenth-century, “melancholy.” At the time he wrote this hymn the world was in a real mess: Europe was at war and the United States was at war with Mexico. Of course that was nothing compared to the deep national divide over slavery and the Civil War lurking on the horizon. Sears was feeling that the world was “dark and full of sin and strife” and that as such, the world was unable to hear the songs of the angels. The way he wrote the poem makes more sense to me than the Hymnal version does. For some inexplicable reason the editors of The Hymnal 1982 inverted the second and third verses. Here is how he wrote them:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled, two thousand years of wrong.
And man, at war with man, hears not, the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.  

Still thro’ the cloven skies they come, with peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats, o’er all the weary world.
Above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering wing 
And ever o’er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing. 

The key there, I think: yet and still. That’s why that order matters. Yet there is sin and violence in the world; and still the angels sing. Yet we live in a noisy world of strife; and still the heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world. If I were the to give a title to this Christmas Eve sermon it might be yet and still.

Then comes what is for me the most poignant and pastoral stanza, one that was omitted in The Hymnal 1982. I am told however that other hymnals (including the Lutherans) kept it. It is addressed to all who feel personally exhausted and worn out at this time of year—all who feel just plain tired and lost and scared. But you get the sense that like most preachers, Sears is talking first and foremost to himself. Now that you know the new tune, let’s try that verse, found on the back cover of your bulletins:

All ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low;
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.
Look now! for glad and golden hours, come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.                                       

Look now! Rest...and hear. Some have criticized Sears’ poem as being too unscriptural. Others have criticized it for not being Christ-centered enough, pointing out that the Christ-child is not even mentioned. (Insert eye-roll emoji here!) I’m about halfway through this sermon and in choosing to focus on this hymn I could be accused of the same. But I’m not too worried. For one, there are other hymns and shortly we will gather at the Table and break the bread. And second, we all know who’s birth we are here to celebrate on this holy night. 

But for the record, Sears was very Christ-centered. While nineteenth-century Unitarians challenged the doctrine of the Trinity, they still saw themselves as deeply loyal to Jesus and to the Incarnation. “The word of Jesus opens the heart,” Sears told his congregations, “and touches the place of tears.” As for scripture, the story as Luke tells it features angels from beginning to end. Angels are all around this story. 

Literally angels are God’s messengers: they deliver a word from heaven to earth. And so an angel comes to Elizabeth and Zechariah to announce that she will bear a son in her old age. And the angel Gabriel comes in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy to Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to man named Joseph, announcing to Mary that she is pregnant. And of course as we heard tonight, the angel speaks to the shepherds, announcing the birth of the Savior and sending them to Bethlehem to see for themselves. And then there is a multitude of angels praising God and singing: “Gloria in exgelsis deo…” Glory to God in the highest! 

I confess to you that I don’t tend to see angels in my mind’s eye like they are portrayed by Renaissance artists with the big wings. I tend to be much more of the Frank Capra (Clarence-in-“It’s-a-Wonderful-Life”) school. But however you see God’s messengers, Sears is claiming that it is their song that we must listen for. That the angels’ song goes on and on throughout the ages, but mostly that it goes unnoticed. Unheard. It goes unheard because the drumbeat of war and strife drowns out the song of peace on earth and good will to all. Hush the noise, the poet says: hush the noise ye men (and women) of strife to hear the angels sing.  

Our job, not only on this holy night but in our daily lives is to be still enough to hear the angels singing, so that we do not lose hope. On this Christmas at least as much as as in 1849, we need hope. We need to know that God is still at work in the world and in our lives. From there we can take it one day at a time. This poem is addressed to the Church—to you and me as people of faith. That is what hymns are for. Whether you were here every week of Advent or not, we are challenged tonight to listen, for it is in the quiet that we enter into the mystery of the Incarnation in decidedly new ways.   

Living at this moment in human history, I think it’s very normal to feel the melancholy and even despair that Sears felt when he wrote this hymn. It’s easy to feel that we don’t quite measure up or that the world is falling apart. It’s easy to feel discouraged and then in response to try to numb it all. But the word from heaven to earth on this holy night is that a child is born, a Son is given. The good news—the gospel—that the angels sing of is of Emmanuel, God-with-us right in the midst of all that other stuff. 

The angels sing “Gloria” and then we are invited to join their song. The Church’s mission is to keep singing Gloria because that word truly does have the power to heal and transform us, a word that can sustain and equip us for the work of ministry in the year ahead. We who may well be feeling that life’s crushing load is too much, and our forms are bending low as we toil along the climbing way – this hymn speaks to us across the decades to stop. Listen. Hear the angels singing Gloria in excelsios:  

        Glory to God in the highest heaven. And on earth, peace among those who God favors.

And then join the song. It’s ok if you aren’t much of a singer – the angels have got the melody line covered. Ultimately Sears imagines all of creation joining the song – people from every tribe and language and people and nation. In the meantime, our work is to keep practicing, like any good choir.

Sing Gloria, in word and in deed, in this place and where you live and work. Sing glory to God in the highest. Sing and imagine peace on earth, peace among the nations, peace at our tables, peace in our neighborhoods. And then let it begin with us.

Let’s sing the last verse of Hymn 90 together, before we confess our faith:

        For lo! The days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old 
        when with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold,   
        when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
        and all the world give back the song which now the angels sing.

The Third Sunday of Advent - St. Luke's Worcester

The Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Advent can be found here. 

You brood of vipers! Who warned you? Bear fruit worthy of repentance!

I once read that preaching should mimic the text being preached on. So doxology should be preached in ways that praise God. And prophetic texts in ways that challenge God’s people. Laments can help us to find ways to articulate grief and loss. And so forth…

Sometimes that means that as a preacher that I need to remember that I’ve been entrusted to convey a message larger than myself, and that preaching from the lectionary means that sometimes I have to stretch out of my comfort zone in order to speak in a voice that may feel less natural for me.

Today is one of those days. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, in a congregation that is waiting expectantly for an interim to arrive, left to my own devices I’d prefer to preach comfortable words today. My pastoral instincts would kick into overdrive: comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak tenderly to St. Luke’s…and tell them everything is going to be alright.

It will be. But what we get today is the second week in a row of John the Baptist. The rhetorical scholars tell us that as he unpacks his message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins at the Jordan River that he is engaged in exhortation. So this sermon, if done right, should exhort all of you. (And me too!)

But let’s be clear: exhortation is not finger-pointing, although I know that John’s words can sometimes sound that way to our ears. His rhetoric, like his clothes and his diet and the desert where he delivers his message, is wild and untamed. This is not brie and chardonnay in the ‘burbs! John is very direct. Even so, exhortation when done correctly is about speaking the truth in love – and about encouraging us all to work on the only person we can really change: ourselves. In the twelve-step practices, which can be helpful to all of us, #4 is about making a fearless moral inventory of ourselves. To me, that’s what exhortation is about.

The essence of John’s message is that he exhorts us to live our lives in conformity with what we say we believe. He isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know. He is simply exhorting us as we gather here on this Third Sunday of Advent to live our lives in synch with what we profess to be our core values as followers of Jesus.

Notice that John the Baptist isn’t running after people on a street corner in order to chastise complete strangers. Those who hear his words have chosen to go out into the Judean Desert to listen to him. Later on in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus will remind the crowds that anyone who went out to see John the Baptist knew before they went that they weren’t going out to see some reed shaken by the wind (Luke 7:24) or a man dressed in soft clothing (Luke 7:25) John offers no smooth words. To encounter John is to encounter a great prophet like the prophets of old. (Luke 7:26-28) To encounter John is meet a truthteller who speaks with a sense of urgency and immediacy: Now is the time is Now for repentance! Sleepers awake! (You brood of vipers!)

If we aren’t careful, churchy words like “repentance” can start to become little more than cliché. We are tempted to domesticate such words, but when we do that they become nothing more than a passing feeling of guilt or shame. We’ll get over it the same way we get over a passing moment of indigestion. In fact, the word “repentance” is not about how we feel. It comes from a Greek word, metanoia; which means “to turn around.” Metanoia requires change. Repentance is about getting our act together and sometimes it’s like those old GPS before Apple and Google Maps that would say, “recalculating…recalculating.” Advent is a timie to recalculate and get back on track.

For John, what matters is not how fervently we pray or how often we make it to Church—although presumably those things can help us to better remember who we are and who we are called to become. What matters in the end, however, is how we act in the world and quite specifically with how we behave in the work God has given us to do.

“What should we do?” the crowds ask John. “Share your stuff,” John exhorts. It’s as simple as that. John isn’t here to make us feel guilty about not doing enough for our neighbors in need but to exhort us to allow God work in and through us to do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine, by cultivating generosity in us and by imploring us to live simply so that others may simply live.

“Even tax collectors came to be baptized,” Luke tells us. And they, too asked, “what should we do?” And John tells them, “do your job with integrity…don’t be greedy.” And some soldiers also came to be baptized and they asked him what they should do and he told them not to misuse their power, because when soldiers walk into a village with guns people are usually pretty scared. They shouldn’t use fear or intimidation to become bullies because they are called to something better than that, something nobler than that.

You can fill in the blanks. I think the possibilities are endless and you don’t even need to be a Biblical scholar or a Canon to the Ordinary to figure out what this text means! Formulate any question around any profession and ask John the Baptist what you should do on this third Sunday of Advent. The answer will be the same. Some professors and teachers came; some lawyers and some cleaning ladies and some priests and some engineers and some politicians and some hairdressers and some librarians and some nurses and some business people and some cops and some social workers and some students. All of them came out to the wilderness and said to John, “what should we do?”

And John speaks across the centuries and channels his inner Coach Belichek: do your job. If you are called to pick up the trash, then pick up the trash. If you are called to teach a child to read, then teach that child to read. If you are called to change the bedpans, then don’t leave it for the next shift to do. If you are called to enact a law on behalf of the constituents who elected you to office, then tell the special interests where they can go and do your job. If you are called to be a student then don’t miss the opportunity to learn.

There is a line in a film I saw many years ago, Broadcast News, with William Hurt and Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks. The character played by Albert Brooks is talking with Holly Hunter and he says to her:   

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance, just a tiny bit.

 Exhortation isn’t figure pointing. It isn’t about yelling at strangers on a street corner or preachers going all “hellfire and brimstone.” It’s about reminding the gathered community that has been tempted all week to move the line just a little bit and lower their standards that we have a higher standard. It is to exhort the Baptized community to act like and to remember that we have been claimed by Christ and sealed and marked as Christ’s own, forever. Several times a year we renew that covenant and remember who we are:

• a people who renounce Satan and all the evil powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God and all that draws us from the love of God;
• a people who turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as Savior and put all our trust in his grace and love, following and obeying him as Lord;
• a people who continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship by breaking bread and saying our prayers;
• a people who persevere in resisting evil and whenever we mess up,  repent and return to God; 
• a people who proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
• a people who seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbors as self - no exceptions;
• a people who strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. 

Oh yeah, one more thing: we do all of those things with God’s help. We do not walk alone. We do all that supported by a community of faith that loves us one day at a time. That is who we already are and we are called to become by growing more and more into the full stature of Christ. No one should pretend that any of that is easy. But surely it isn’t all that hard to understand it. When we speak ill of a neighbor, that’s not love of neighbor. When we feed gossip that hurts another person, that isn’t love of neighbor. When we take short-cuts in our work that erode people’s trust in their government or their schools or their churches or their healthcare or the company they work for, that isn’t love in action either.

“What should we do, John—to get ready for Christmas?” We should do what we all know we are meant to do, the work that God has given us to do. We should act in ways that make the world around us a little bit more loving and a little bit kinder and a little bit more peaceful and a little bit more joyful and a little bit more hopeful and a little bit more life-giving. We should act in ways that set the bar a little higher. We should let our little lights shine, and not curse the darkness. And when we do these things we know we’ve had a pretty good day. And tomorrow?  Just plan on getting up to do it again, tomorrow, too, my friends in Christ. That is how we prepare the way and make the path through this world a little bit straighter. That is how we make a highway through this wilderness we have been living through. In so doing we point beyond ourselves to the One who is greater than John and greater than the Church: we point people to Jesus. Third Advent reminds us that we don’t have to be messiahs. We just need to do our jobs.

A Celebration of New Ministry: The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

I am tempted to call on my boss here, Bishop Fisher, because he loves these two verses almost as much as he loves the story of the feeding of the five thousand and Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising. In fact, to be more precise, what I have heard him say is that they may well be the most important verses in the Bible.

I love them, too, and I think for the same reason. Let me see if I can channel Doug for just a moment. These words situate the birth of John the Baptist, preceding even more familiar words we will hear about in less than three weeks about the birth of his cousin: “in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered…this was the first registration, when Quirinius was governor of Syria…” These words insist that what we believe, what we claim about the Incarnation is not a fairy tale. It’s not “once upon a time” stuff.

Ministry is not a fairy tale either. Ministry is not “once upon a time.” Context matters. Always. Martha you know this – you’ve been at it a while. And Christ the King/Epiphany, you know it too. You’ve been at it a while as well, first separately and then together and now through COVID years which I think count like dog years. Many of us first hear and follow a call to ordained or lay ministry with wide-open eyes. But the world is too dangerous right now for anything but truth and too small for anything but love, so we need to be real. It requires our all and there are not many easy days.  

And so we gather at then end of the first year of the Biden Presidency, when Charlie Baker was governor of Massachusetts, and Jim Hazelwood was bishop of the New England Synod of the ELCA and Doug Fisher was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass, still in the midst of a global pandemic that has taken lives and sapped our energy. We gather here during the first year of the ministry of The Rev. Martha Sipe at Christ the King – Epiphany when the Word of God came to God’s people in Wilbraham. 

Now what? What is the narrative that will be written by you, together? What is the "good news" that comes next?

For decades we mainline Protestant types have been talking about the end of Christendom. But it seems to me that a global pandemic has finally made that real. Really real. There is no going back: not to the 1950s nor to the 1980s nor even to Advent 2019. We are called to be the Church in this precarious moment as we light that second candle and as we wait in hope. Like John the Baptist it is now our time to prepare the way for what lies ahead.

Martha didn’t exactly get to pick this day. It’s a challenge to coordinate two bishops’ calendars, so you get what you get. But I admire her decision to lean into it and embrace it. It’s Advent which is not Lent. It has a different vibe. It’s short and quiet and intense. We try to train our eyes to see better in the dark as we light those candles, one by one, looking for signs of hope and peace and joy and love in this congregation (and others like it) and in the neighborhood and in our homes.

Before 2020, I resisted Zoom meetings. Honestly, I loathed them. I wanted to be in the room where things were happening and I would prefer to drive some distance than sit at my computer. I have had to adapt just as the leaders here who worked on a profile and then on calling Martha here had to adapt. We have had to figure it out together and before I go further let me just say that as close as we Lutherans and Episcopalians are to each other our call processes are not the same. I’m so grateful for my colleague Steven Wilco and for the ways we remained flexible with each other from beginning to end. And thanks to the leaders here for bearing with us with patience and kindness and gentleness. We had to figure out a lot of it as it unfolded. You did well, good and faithful servants.

I think that it can be tempting to see an occasion like this as an ending. All that hard work after Karen’s death and through the bridge ministry of Barbara. Thanks be to God for both of their ministries and for the many signs of hope and joy and peace and love through it all, even in difficult times. But in truth, we gather today to begin again, with God’s help. It seems to me that today is exactly the right time for this particular celebration of new ministry: this Second Sunday of Advent in the year of our Lord 2021. We dare to see (or at least to look for) new beginnings in the signs of endings all around us. To explore new possibilities, with God’s help.

I don’t know the politics here about singing Christmas hymns in Advent. I have never felt called to be the Chief of the Liturgical Police Department. But what I love about Advent is that those hymns are to me just about the most beautiful ones in the church’s repertoire. Silent Night on Christmas Eve is great; I’ll give you that. But for my money that deep yearning of Advent literally does prepare us for the dear savior’s birth and without them we lose our way.

• Creator of the stars of night, your people’s everlasting light…
• Sleepers, awake!
• Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free…
• There’s a voice in the wilderness crying, a call from the ways untrod...
• Comfort, comfort ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our Lord.
• Prepare the way, O Zion, your Christ is drawing near!
• The king shall come when morning dawns... 
• Come, O Come, Emmanuel...

So here is the deal, my siblings in Christ: I don’t care if you are wearing blue or purple or even rose. Or if you didn’t get the memo and have on a white or red stole or even if you are a proper Episcopalian wearing cassock, surplice and tippet – it’s all good. We are in this together in this time, for better or worse, to wait. Not anxiously but expectantly. Not in fear, but in hope. Come, Lord Jesus.

There is an Advent prayer offered to the Church by Walter Brueggemann. It’s called “The Grace and the Impatience to Wait.” I commend the whole prayer to you but it’s that use of the word “impatience” that I want us to consider for just a moment this afternoon. I would likely write an Advent prayer asking for the grace and the patience to wait. That’s because I’m no Walter Brueggemann! And also because I am not very patient, so I’m always asking God for any help I can get on that.

But patience is a luxury of privilege, I know, when it comes to seeking justice in the world. The grace and the impatience to wait suggests something else, I think. It suggests a sense of urgency, yet without the freneticism and anxiety that can take us off the rails. It suggests something like the ministry of John the Baptist and for that matter of Jesus of Nazareth – the urgency of Mark’s Gospel, maybe – where everything is happening immediately. Episcopalians (and I am guessing Lutherans too) don’t always embrace impatient waiting which it seems to me is a kind of active waiting. It means a willingness to do the work God has given us to do, now, rather than kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with. And so we tend to have yet another meeting about how we might someday have another meeting to consider the possibility of perhaps having one more meeting and then appoint a committee to work on a plan. Against that grain, Walter prays for us all:

Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our finger tips.

Martha, I’m a Pennsylvania boy, born and bred. But for 35 years I’ve been a New Englander and for the past 25 of those I’ve lived in Central Massachusetts. Welcome. We are all so very glad that you and Tricia are here. We are grateful that you said yes. It’s a good place to live and to serve.

The work ahead is in some ways very new and exceedingly difficult. We are all beginners again, I think, even those of us who rely on decades of pastoral experience. Because context is everything and because you are now called to this particular work in this particular place as we prepare for the second year of the Biden Presidency when Hazelwood is still bishop of the New England Synod and Fisher is still bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass. (And Lord have mercy upon you having to deal with not one, but two bishops!)

But in other ways, I think, the work to which we who are called is also still familiar, as familiar as it was on the last night of Jesus’ life when he took a towel and poured water in a basin and commanded us to love one another. Love these people, Martha. They are a mixed bag as you have no doubt already discovered. Some of them are hard to like. Even so, love them all. Love them because Jesus told you that you have to. Love them because it’s the only way to prepare for a heavenly banquet where all are welcome. Love them not because they deserve it, but because they need to be reminded of their Baptismal Promises and because God loved them first. Love them enough to also set clear boundaries.  

Christ the King/Epiphany. Love Martha and love Tricia, too. Not because they are perfect. But because this work has always been so very hard and is so much harder these days. Love them because some among you will make it even harder than it needs to be. And Martha especially will carry that in her body, all that emotional work of leading a congregation: the anger, the fear, the grief, the disappointment, the yearning and the possibilities. All of it. Love her because what keeps clergy going is not the paycheck, but knowing that somebody notices. When you decide that you must write a note to Martha to “speak the truth in love” please let it be a word of gratitude and not an anonymous nastygram left under her door. 

I had a senior warden when I was a parish priest who used to tell me, “we need you well.” She was a wise woman and she still is and she had no problem telling me when I was wrong. But I always knew that she really was speaking the truth in love and not hiding passive aggressive behavior behind those words. All of you do your part in helping Martha to stay well in doing this good work. 

There is a song – I think of it as more of a hymn – by Ingrid Michaelson that goes like this:

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts
Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts
So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess
And to stop the muscle that makes us confess
And we are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys

So my friends: be gentle with each other, in brittle times. That goes in both directions. Love one another through it all. Be patient and kind – not arrogant or rude. The world can be a brutal place; let this congregation be a laboratory where First Corinthians 13 is embodied – where it takes on flesh. Why? So that the neighbors will know you are Christians by your love.

And so that the light will keep shining in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

Wisdom and Courage for Living These Days

Many singers and church musicians are fond of quoting the phrase, "the one who sings, prays twice." It's good theology. 

A corollary to this truth, however, is that hymns are in fact prayers set to music. Sometimes the music gets in the way of the text, or distracts from it, or even overtakes it. The goal, it seems to me, is for the tune to enhance the prayer and breathe deeper meaning into the words. When that happens we use all our senses to pray, and indeed pray twice or maybe even more than that.

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote the words to God of Grace and God of Glory in 1930 for the dedication of The Riverside Church in New York City. There is an excellent reflection on this hymn that I commend that can be found here. 

I do hope you will read it, like now. When you do (but even if you don't) I want to highlight two points the writer makes. First, Fosdick wrote the hymn for the tune, Regent Square. When the Methodists paired his words with CWM Rhondda in 1935, however, it stuck. (I love it that Fosdick was not amused; noting that "the Methodists have always been a bunch of wise guys!") I find myself wondering what he would have said about Episcopalians who felt the need to offer a third tune in The Hymnal 1982, Mannheim, which I've never heard sung before and that's fine by me. By the way, since I'm already well down this rabbit hole, I'll add that I tried for longer than I care to admit to find a version of some choir or church singing this prayer the way the poet intended it to be sung, paired with Regent Square (which is a lovely tune by the way AND familiar) but no one seems to have done that or at least has not recorded doing so. I am tempted to revise my funeral plans to request that Fosdick's preferred tune be used when I die. I should add that I have nothing against CWM Rhondda, although I can't say that about Mannheim. I just find it odd that if we are going to have two choices in the Episcopal Church we didn't offer the one the poet preferred... 

OK, moving on! The second point that Dr. Hawn makes in the Discipleship Ministries reflection linked above (please do read it!) is the more important one to this post: Fosdick wrote these words in the throes of the Great Depression and between two world wars. "Cure us from this warring madness," indeed...

The prayer that I have been praying lately is like a litany that repeats at the end of each verse: "grant us wisdom, grant us courage..."

• for the facing of this hour
• for the living of these days
• lest we miss thy kingdom's goal
• serving thee whom we adore

The words seem to have "worn well" even nine decades later. I commend the entire poem/prayer to you and maybe someone serving a parish or singing in a choir will humor me and sing it to Regent Square one of these days and then let me know how it goes and send me the recording...

But for this post, in facing this hour and living these days (so that we do not miss the kingdom's goal and more faithfully serve the One who has created us in love) I'm struck by this plea for wisdom and courage. I'm struck now, as I have been for many years, that these two need to go together. Wisdom without courage can become something sheltered in an ivory tower. Courage without wisdom - well that can be just dangerous. But wisdom and courage together? That combination can change the world. It seems to me this is a worthy prayer not just for individuals but for faith communities. It seems to me worth remembering that it was written to dedicate a church, a great church at that, one that continues to serve the neighborhood committed to social justice.   

I have a love-hate relationship with congregations as I think most clergy do. They can be petty and myopic and forget that they are a manifestation of the Body of Christ on a weekly basis. Vestry meetings can be places where wisdom and courage are in short supply. And yet...I remember traveling to Alabama on the fiftieth anniversary of Jonathan Daniels' martyrdom and hearing a vestry member who kept bringing up integration in his parish until he wore them down. He showed wisdom and courage for the living of those days. 

While it may be possible to follow Jesus on our own and it may indeed be true that God can be at work in the neighborhood whether or not the church shows up, I still have not figured out how we share the love of God in the neighborhood without gathering a people committed to that purpose. When people gather to tell the old old stories and break the bread and say the prayers they form community; it seems to me that wherever this happens, it is going to look something like a congregation. And it also seems to me this week after celebrating All Saints Day is as good a time as any to remember that we are called to serve on governing boards and to preach from pulpits and serve at altars and greet newcomers as people who are trying, with God's help, to be saints of God. 

To say this another way, when congregations fulfill their purpose and live with wisdom and courage, they can be light and salt and yeast in the neighborhood. And the world so desperately needs congregations to live this way now as perhaps never before, or at least now as "not since the 1930s." The world needs for the Church to be the Church. Grant us wisdom. Grant us courage. For the living of these days. 

Gratitude

Last Sunday I was the preacher at St. Mark's in East Longmeadow, one of our congregations in the midst of a clergy transition. I usually try to post sermon manuscripts here early in the week but here it is, Friday, and I'm getting to it. Fortunately, I think both transition and gratitude are themes for at least the month if not the whole year! 

Meister Eckhardt was a German mystic and theologian who lived through the end of the thirteenth century and then well into the fourteenth. That’s a long time ago, I know. The world has changed. But I’m not so sure people have changed. So see if this isn’t right. Eckhardt said this: “if the only prayer you ever said is thank you, it would be enough.”

Much closer to our own time, Anne Lammott wrote a little book a few years back on prayer called Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. Think about it. Think about your own prayer life. Sometimes we need God’s help, or maybe a friend’s help. We need to learn how to ask for that help, knowing we do not go it alone. And we can cultivate our capacity for wonder and curiosity – all part of wow which I pray a lot of in October.

But it seems to me that for Lamott, thank you prayers are the link. We thank God because when we need help, God hears us and is a very present help in time of trouble. If we don’t cultivate thanks, the alternative to counting our blessings is to collect grievances. We become resentful rather than thankful people, and so we literally can become blind to all that wow stuff.

So today’s sermon is about cultivating the practice of gratitude. As you come here today, what are you grateful for? It may be the single most important practice for healing the soul.

I am going to do something today I don’t do nearly enough as a preacher: I’m going to be silent for just thirty seconds. What I want you to do in that thirty seconds is to count your blessings. Think of all that you are thankful for in your life, right now. If you have a pen or pencil you can write some of them down. Maybe later today you can take a little longer and try to come up with 100 things – I bet it won’t take you very long. Let me prime the pump. I’m thankful for work that challenges me and gives me hope. I’m thankful for my health. I’m thankful for my spouse and two amazing young men we’ve raised together. I’m thankful that even though the Red Sox didn’t make it all the way to the World Series this year they exceeded expectations and gave us October baseball. I’m thankful for the beauty of the earth, especially in October and especially here in Massachusetts.

So what are you thankful for today? We’ll do it silently. Go…

“If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough.” Thank you, God! Help us to be people who take time every day to count our blessings and not our grievances. Amen.

Gratitude is the theological foundation of what it means to be stewards of this good earth: caretakers of all that God has given us. It’s all gift, to be received and enjoyed. But as we try to teach our children and grandchildren, when someone gives you something, remember to say “thank you.”

One of the things I am so very thankful for in my life is the work I’ve been called to as a member of Bishop Fisher’s staff. On many days it is difficult and challenging work and as with any job that deals with people, there are plenty of opportunities to be annoyed. But on all days there is joy and a sense of purpose. I began my ordained ministry in 1989 on a college campus. I thought of my vocation as something like a “Protestant Jesuit.” It turned out, though, that I fell in love with parish ministry when I served two parishes: Christ and Holy Trinity in Westport Connecticut as their associate rector and then as the rector at St. Francis, Holden for fifteen years.

I was content and grateful there with work that I found meaningful. When Bishop Fisher was elected as our ninth bishop, however, he asked me to come and work for him. It was hard to leave Holden and I didn’t really know much about what it would take to be Canon to the Ordinary. It also meant, at 50 years old, that my wife and I needed to buy our first home since we’d lived up to that point in church-owned housing. (I do miss having a property committee to take care of repairs!)

Even so, well into my ninth year of this work, I find there is so much to be grateful for. Among other things, you get to walk through times of transition with congregations like this one. Last weekend I was in Great Barrington where they celebrated a new ministry with their new rector, Tina Rathbone. Two weeks before that I was in Northampton where they celebrated a new ministry with their new rector, Anna Woofenden. I get to see how the story continues and get a glimpse of what the next chapter will look like. I’m very grateful for that.

I know there was a lot of emotion when Peter left. It’s possible to have more than one feeling at once, of course. It’s possible to be happy for the Swarrs, but worried about the future of the parish. It’s possible to be glad for them to return to Maine and wish they’d stayed here through the challenges of the pandemic. I spend a lot of my time with congregations sorting through these sorts of things, and I find it’s easier to navigate a retirement than a relocation. But even so, these moments are again opportunities to give thanks and to cultivate gratitude. To have loved and lost is always better than to have never loved at all. Much good work was done here in the last chapter of your history; thanks be to God.

It helps to begin to move forward when there are faithful lay folks and a capable pastor available to serve as interim. Today I want to say that among my long list of things I’m thankful for is Sandi Albom and for your wardens, vestry, profile committee members, and search committee members. You are blessed, St. Mark’s. To use a sports metaphor, you have a deep bench. People are finding and claiming and using their gifts. Thanks be to God!

I cannot tell you for sure when your next rector will arrive. The short answer is, in God’s time. I can tell you that I’ve passed some qualified names along to your search committee. We will see if there is a match in there. What I can tell you for sure is that Peter Swarr is not one of those names and neither is Paul Briggs. Each had their turn. Whoever leads you next will help you to write the next chapter, not re-write the last one. I encourage you, therefore, to let God do a new thing here, among you and make  your hearts ready to step into that with courage and wisdom and faith.

Now I know that some people think that preachers should never talk about money; that clergy should stick to matters of faith. But I want to remind you that Jesus talked about money a lot, and I’m a follower of Jesus. He talked about it more than anything else except the Kingdom of God. He knew that people cannot serve God and money. As Bob Dylan paraphrased it many years later: you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Let it be the living God, not money.

There is so much in this congregation for which to be so incredibly grateful. Families, a sense of purpose, a commitment to the neighborhood, a deep bench. One of the things though that adds stress here is money. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But here’s the thing: just as in families, getting into debt can cause tensions and stress and anxiety. So, too, in congregations. When a parish has enough resources to do what God has called them to do, they can focus on that instead on how to meet payroll. In times of clergy transition there are some who say they will “wait and see.” I encourage you, in gratitude for what has been and what will be, to ignore that temptation and step up your game. As you have already been doing.

One of the real struggles in some congregations – maybe here – is that a deficit of thousands of dollars seems insurmountable. In the old days sometimes there were benefactors in congregations who could write out a big check. But now, in most places, we all need to do a little. We all need to share our widow’s mite. We all are invited to go a little beyond and if we all do that, we find there is enough. Even a $10,000 deficit in a congregation with 100 pledges is just $2/week more per person. Let me say that again because you probably didn’t expect math this early in the morning: if any one of us had credit card debt of $10,000 we would be rightly worried. But that kind of debt should not scare a vestry. Because if 100 people all kick in $2/week more over the course of 52 weeks, that deficit is erased in a congregation and that allows the community to focus on the work God gives us to do.

What is that work? We heard it again in today's gospel reading from Mark. It really is simple. Simple to understand, at least. Much harder to live it, one day at a time. We are called to love God and to love our neighbor. Jesus didn’t make that up as some new thing as is made clear in today’s reading from Deuteronomy and in the exchange  with the scribe. Everyone agrees that this goes to the very heart of Biblical faith – of Old Testament faith. Love God. Love neighbor. All of them.

We’ve been through a lot in the past two years in this diocese, and even in congregations that did not have to say goodbye to a much-loved rector, it has been a challenging time. Many are feeling weary.

Yet I believe that the purpose and need for the Church has never been greater, at least in my lifetime. We live in polarized times. I’m told you are a diverse group here politically and theologically. Good for you. You are learning, with God’s help, in a polarized world – to love one another. And when you do that, you bear witness to your neighbors of another way to be in the world, a way that leads to abundant life.

Don’t “wait and see” what happens when a new rector comes. It’ll happen. I don’t know when, but it will happen. In the meantime, the world is too small and too dangerous for anything but love right now. Go “all in” as followers of Jesus so that St. Mark’s can continue to bear witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ – and then go out and love your neighbors. All of them. No exceptions.

Ordination and Celebration of New Ministry: the Rev. Anna Woofenden

Today it was my honor to preach at the Ordination to the Priesthood of the Rev. Anna Woofenden, at St. John's in Northampton. Since Anna is already serving that parish, first as Deacon-in-Charge and now as their new Rector, the occasion also was an opportunity to celebrate this new shared ministry. 

Over the past three weeks, our Old Testament readings have been coming from the Book of Job. We’ve not read the whole book, but we have gotten the contours of the narrative. It will conclude next week and we won’t circle back again until 2024. So I could not resist this text, on this occasion.

Let me review… Job had it all: a strong faith, a beautiful partner, well-adjusted kids, financial security, good health, and lots of friends. And then the bottom fell out. He lost it all overnight. It sounds a bit like a fairy tale and maybe it is just that, taking place as it does “once upon a time in the land of Uz.” But we don’t need to go on a quest for the historical Job to find truth in this story. What is so scary is that these things can happen to people we love. They can happen to us. Bad things do indeed happen to good people every day, and Anna, as you and David will no doubt find yourselves saying more than once to Jarena over the years: life is not fair.

We have all met people who have way more than their share of troubles. What is amazing to me, and quite frankly scary to me, is just how quickly a well-ordered life can unravel. The pandemic has reminded us of this in new ways. But truth be told it can happen in any time or place and not just once-upon-a-time in the land of Uz.

In the reading we heard last weekend, Job complains to God. It’s a time-honored tradition for people of faith. Atheists don’t wrestle with theodicy, with how a good and powerful God allows bad things to happen. Bad things happen to all kinds of people: religious and spiritual-but-not-religious and agnostics and atheists alike. But it’s only the theists who need to work it out with God. So we hear Job crying out to the God whom he feels has abandoned him. He needs to find God because he wants his day in court. He wants to make his argument. He wants to make his case before the Almighty because what has happened to him…is not fair. Job is no whiner. His complaint is justified and his questions go to the heart of Biblical faith. Why is there so much pain and suffering in this world, especially of the innocent? And more poignantly and existentially: why me? 

Today the story continues and God shows up like a whirlwind in the midst of thunder and lightning! Imagine that! Imagine yourself praying for a sign, praying for God to show up and it happens just like that. Only God doesn’t show up sheepishly to be cross-examined by Job. Nor does God show up with answers as to why the just suffer, or to be more specific why this bad stuff has happened to this particular good man. God shows up with God’s own set of questions. Job had one question for God: “why me?” God literally comes at Job with a whirlwind of questions:

• Who is this…? 
• Where were you…? 
• Who determined…? 
• Who stretched…? 
• Who has put…? 
• Who has given…? 
• Can you lift..? 
• Can you provide..? 
• Can you send…? 
• Can you hunt…? 

One interpretative trajectory of this whirlwind speech focuses on the sovereignty and inscrutability of God. God gets to be God, not us. God’s questions remind Job (and more importantly the reader of the Book of Job) that God’s ways are not our ways. That isn’t an answer to the question of human suffering. But it is a kind of re-framing.

Another interpretive trajectory starts at the opposite end, with Job. One thing about suffering (and this is an observation based on experience, not a judgment) is that it can make us very self-centered. Our world can get smaller and smaller. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her work on the stages of grief, spoke about isolation and depression as stages one who is going through loss has to navigate. That is very real, I think, and part of what has happened to Job and maybe to some gathered here today. Granted, Job’s friends are real schmucks. Nevertheless, Job’s very real pain has led to isolation and it feels as if even God has abandoned him.

So notice that God’s whirlwind speech points Job outward to the natural world. I once took a class on Job that was team-taught by a Biblical Scholar and a Professor of Pastoral Care. The latter insisted that we misunderstand and confuse pastoral care with being nice. So we think a good pastor (and by extension, God) ought to focus with Job on his loss and ask him how he is feeling about that. But in fact that kind of approach can inadvertently contribute to keeping a person stuck. This professor argued that God is like a tough but wise therapist who helps Job make a break-through to a new place. So one might hear God’s whirlwind speech as something like this: 

Job: you need to go on a whale watch and consider Leviathan that I made for just for the sport of it. Or take a walk along the ridge of the Grand Canyon. Or go hike the Appalachian Trail, and camp underneath Pleides and Orion. Or go grow a garden! Or just go for a walk on a clear fall day in Northampton and consider the glorious array of amazing colors. Consider the lilies of the field, Job….take a breath. Just breathe.

Now this trajectory isn’t mutually exclusive from the first one. In fact, I think they are really just two sides to one coin. The first focuses on God’s sovereignty and the second on human limitation. But in both cases we are reminded that the job of being the Almighty is not open. In both cases we are reminded that we aren’t in control.

Anna, you aren’t in control either. You are a rock star and a published author. But even this day is not all about you. And I can say those words because I know you know this already and agree. You are a deeply humble servant leader. I’m saying it to remind the rest of us that ministry is a team sport and that Anna isn’t called to be the messiah here; that job is taken also. But today we get an image of who the workers are and it’s not just the members of this congregation but also our bishop and his team and your clergy colleagues. We are all in this together. We are fellow servants in the vineyard and that harvest is indeed plentiful. There is plenty of work to be done. Priestly ministry is meaningless if we don’t understand the ministry of all the baptized. Read the late Verna Dozier if you don’t believe me! An occasion like this is an invitation to us all to recall the Dream of God.

And the occasion of a Celebration of Ministry is an invitation to return to shared purpose. The world desperately needs the Church to be the Church right now. Northampton desperately needs St. John’s to be a shining light and a beacon of hope. Not to be a little club or a political action committee or a place for private spiritual thoughts, but to be the Body of Christ. To be a place where the broken are healed and where questions of faith are taken seriously. To be a place where mercy and compassion and hope are at the center of our life-together. The neighborhood needs for you to be real and authentic and faithful. Those young people on that campus in the backyard need for you all to do the work God has given you to do!

Some of you know we have a program in this diocese called “Loving the Questions” which is a place for discernment of ministries, ordained and lay. I worked on the initial prototype of that program with Robin Carlo and Nancy Strong that has now come into its own under the leadership of Jenny Gregg (who preached at Anna’s diaconal ordination) and your very own Craig Hammond. We took as our inspiration those words from Rilke:   

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

I wonder: what if God’s whirlwind speech with that barrage of questions is meant to move us to be people willing to love (and to live) the questions together?

And I wonder: what if we are, right now, on the verge of some kind of “great awakening” about what it means to be followers of Jesus in this time and place? It wouldn’t be the first time, Northampton!

I know it’s popular to talk about a Church in decline. But I think we are a Church where God is about to do a new thing. (Have you not heard? Have you not seen?) That new thing may include some dying, but dying never gets the last word. Even at the grave we make our song.

I heard and saw and felt the Holy Spirit at work in this search process from beginning to end and I had a ringside seat. It began with this Swedenborgian pastor sitting in my office and telling me about her journey and why she felt called to this very day. (I had to Google Swedenborgian the second she left my office!)

And it began when the former rector of this parish, Cat Munz, asked me to lunch and told me she was going to retire. That very same afternoon my phone was ringing and there was someone named Nancy Harvin on the other end of the call. And then a long interim period interrupted by a pandemic. And a whole, faithful process unfolding here and it all converges today. I could not possibly see, at that point, how these two things would come together. I could not control it if I wanted to. Canons don’t get to be “god” either. The inscrutable God gets to be God and the Holy Spirit never stops.

The Living God claims and marks and seals us and calls on us to keep loving the questions and to keep living the questions toward a common purpose. That same God calls and shapes and forms disciples to be the Church in this time and place.

Anna does not come here as a rookie. If you Google “Anna Woofenden” you’ll find yourself on a website called The Garden Church, which I hope many of you already know about. And you’ll read these words:

Rooted in the Christian tradition and Swedenborgian theology, the Garden Church provides a living experience of encountering the Divine in community, scripture, nature, and the life of useful service, and being the church together on multiple levels. Through worshiping, working and learning together, feeding the hungry, and addressing the needs of the local community, this church is living sanctuary for all who seek a place to grow, to love and be loved, and to belong. Creating a place of spiritual community where God’s love is made visible as people are fed in body, mind, and spirit.

Today marks a new beginning, for sure. And we give God’s thanks. But St. John’s, you’ve been here for a while now, learning how to be Church. And Anna’s ministry is a continuing ministry in a Body of Christ that has many members. In that spirit, I offer two friendly amendments to those words about The Garden Church and then I will sit down.

First, I think this is also good Episcopal theology. It’s good Christian theology. There is no need to “renounce” the tradition that formed and nurtured you in the past, Anna, as you and St. John’s move forward. Bring it all with you into this part of the Body of Christ, to our diocese and to this parish. And in so doing, help us to see and claim this Anglican via media with new hearts.

And second, this is what I pray now happens not only at the Garden Church, but here at St. John’s and across our diocese, always with God’s help. Let this, too, be a place “where God’s love is made visible as people are fed in body, mind, and spirit.” 

Love one another. Outdo one another in service. St. John’s: love your new rector and love David and Jerena Grace too, as living members of this living body. And Anna – love these people. Love them all, even the ornery ones.

And then go out and love your neighbors. All of them. No exceptions.

James Morrison Miller

Last weekend we gathered to celebrate the life of my Uncle Jim at the Hawley United Methodist Church. I was asked to preach the sermon and now share those words here, especially for those who knew and loved Jim but were not able to join us. 

Colonel James Morrison Miller died almost exactly two years ago, just prior to the COVID pandemic. The reason, initially, for the delay in having a funeral was not COVID, it was Arlington National Cemetery, where his body was eventually laid to rest. And then, of course, the world changed. 

Where to begin? On March 1, 1963, Jim Miller turned 31. (Exhibit A: my son, Graham, who will turn 31 in a couple of weeks. “All my life’s a circle,” sings the prophet Harry!) A couple of weeks later, Jim’s baby sister gave birth to her firstborn: yours truly. At some point not too long after that I was baptized across the street at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and Uncle Jim agreed to be my godfather. 

 In my junior year at Wallenpaupack, I received a handwritten letter from Alexandria, Virginia listing ten universities that he thought I should consider. It meant a lot and I feel badly that I don’t still have that letter. But I can still see the handwriting and I can still remember some of the names on there, each with a couple of sentences describing why it had made the list. It included places I ended up applying to (like Georgetown and University of Pennsylvania and Duke) and others (like Princeton and the University of Michigan and Stanford) that I did not. It was a kind gesture and it helped in that first big life decision. But it was more than that: I felt seen and the list of universities suggested to me, even at the time, that my uncle had confidence in my future. Every kid needs a cheerleader or two beyond your parents, who are sort of obligated to believe in you. 

I landed at Georgetown at the same time that Jim was finishing up his distinguished thirty-year military career at the Pentagon, a career that had included service in Germany, Korea, Viet Nam, Detroit, and Chicago. It was during those undergraduate years, from 1981-1985, that I really got to know both Jim and Terry. (As it turned out it was just three years, not four, since I went away to Scotland for my junior year.) During those years I called Kings Court my home away from home and especially in the summer after my sophomore year, when I lived in their basement for three months and commuted with Congressman Jim Sensenbrennner (who lived across the street) into work every day to work in Congressman Joe McDade’s office. 

Jim and Terry were always gracious to me, maybe even especially as people who had not been parents themselves. It would have been enough, what I’ve been telling you about. But it went to a whole new level after April 30, 1982, when my father died. On May 1, it was Jim and Terry who came to see me to deliver that devastating news. I think from that time on, when I needed a male figure in my life, Jim really rose to the occasion and truly became my godfather. 1982 was a blur and I can probably be forgiven for being a bit self-focused in the aftermath of my dad’s death. But even at the time I was aware that Jim had left the Army which had been part of his life since high school at Valley Forge to work for Metro. He retired on a Friday from the U.S. Army and went to work the following Monday to begin a new civilian career! 

Here is what I want to say about that and it’s equally true about his life after his retirement from Metro when he became a full-time euphonium player, much to Terry’s chagrin: he did transitions pretty seamlessly. Now maybe his teen-aged godson wasn’t going to hear all the details. I get that. But I think it’s more than that. I think he was not the kind of guy who really understood the character in that Bruce Springsteen song who sits around thinking about Glory Days. He was more like the character in that other song of Bruce’s who realized that These are Better Days. He simply did not have a feel-sorry-for-yourself gene. (I’m pretty sure he got that trait from his mother, who also lacked that gene!) 

When Jim was serving the United States Army, he was all in. But when it was done, it was done. He didn’t sit around thinking about it. He changed his clothes (literally) and went to work for Metro. As a fifty-year old man, the Colonel became a civilian and as far as I could tell, he did it effortlessly. And then, as I said, after retiring from that job, he did it again, devoting himself to playing in local bands and practiced, practiced, practiced. And then when Terry died and he fell in love again and became a step-father along the way, again he rose to the occasion. 

All of our lives have “chapters.” I wasn’t there for all of the chapters in Jim’s life, but as far as I can tell, he was willing and able to turn the page and begin each new chapter as the story of his life unfolded. What allows a person to do that? 

Well, I do think role models help and as I said, I think his mother – my grandmother – was pretty good at that too. Having lots of interests helps too, and enjoying projects. He had that down. 

But there is more than that, I think. Internally, I think it takes integrity in the deepest meaning of that word. Everyone here knows Jim Miller was a man of integrity. He had high principles and he held himself (and others!) accountable to those principles. He was honest and hardworking and disciplined and truthful and interested in the world and (my personal favorite) he liked to eat on time. When he was supposed to sum up his whole military career for the Class of ’54 at West Point (and as you can tell from the display of medals he could have had a lot to brag about!) he wrote: “Colonel James M Miller hopes to be remembered for his integrity and as a good friend and good husband.” 

Integrity, for sure. But I also want to notice that integrity connotes another meaning beyond principled. He was an integrated person. His identity was not wrapped up in what he was doing at any given moment, even work, but instead in who he was. This is especially rare for men of his generation. I see it sometimes with clergy who literally don’t know who they are when they retire: the role of pastor or priest has taken over their soul. That may be strong language, but I don’t think it’s too strong. 

Jim Miller transitioned through each chapter in his life with integrity because in each place he was himself. He knew who he was. That is something, I think, to emulate and to honor about his life. 

We didn’t agree on politics. I had arrived in Washington just about eight months into Ronald Reagan’s first term. While we were not afraid to talk politics, here is something that might surprise you (and I think he’d back me up on this): we were not as far apart as one might think. He was not as conservative as most of his military friends. And in the early 1980s my Democratic leanings were left-of-center, I was a fan of Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley. That didn’t meant we didn’t disagree; we did and sometimes passionately! But there was also not as wide a chasm between us as one might think and we both were built to look for common ground. Each of us had deeply held beliefs and they weren’t the same. Yet we could talk about them, and did, and always knew that love was stronger than politics. 

That love was made manifest most especially in our mutual affection for sharing a meal together. On time. I think mostly in that time between the Army and his civilian career when Aunt Terry was working hard selling real estate, Jim took over the kitchen and probably once a month he’d swing by and pick me up on campus and I’d spend a night or two in Alexandria and I became his sous chef. Many times we’d make a stop at Maine Avenue for fresh fish. He cooked like an engineer and he could carefully explain the difference between mincing or dicing or chopping an onion – I admit to being far less precise. We’d cook up meals that were always ready to serve at 6:30 PM sharp. 

He also bought wines that I could not afford on my beer-drinkers salary and the one that captured my imagination was from the Sancerre region of France, a favorite to this day. For decades, I would call my uncle up on a random night when making something from Pierre Frainey’s Sixty Minute Gourmet or having just opened a bottle of Sancerre. 

I think this is how we remember those we love but see no longer. It doesn’t matter what it is: it might be a cardinal, a butterfly, a song, or a place. In those moments our loved ones are never far away. They are not “up there” in heaven. And they are not only in our hearts or our memories, either. They are, in some deeply mystical way, with us. They are among that great cloud of witnesses who have run the race before us and still cheer us on. And when we see that cardinal or butterfly or sip that Sancerre or bless and break and share the bread, we remember them. They are with us. 

The Church defines a Sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. In other words, we take water and oil and we claim that we are beloved of God and nothing in all creation can separate us from that love. We take bread and wine, gifts from this good earth, and we say that they bind us together with the living God, that the risen Christ is with us when we eat and drink and we remember that upper room. 

For me, the words we heard today from Isaiah are true in large measure because at a crossroads in my own life, that table in Alexandria was set with rich food and fine wine and not even death can ever take that away. 

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. 

My uncle was not a big churchgoer. But I do think he was a person of faith. And he was definitely a big influence on my faith. There is a prayer we say sometimes in The Episcopal Church, we pray for those who have died in the faith of the Church and then for “those whose faith is known to God alone.” I think Jim and God were on good speaking terms even if he didn’t show up in Church very often. And I say this not because I need to believe it. I actually believe that God’s grace is so expansive, so amazing, so deep and broad and high that it includes everyone. No exceptions. We don’t earn that grace. 

So I’m not worried about my uncle in some existential way. I know every time I sip a Sancerre that when our mortal bodies give out life is only changed, not ended. Rather, I want to say is this: he was a person of faith in the truest sense. His word meant something. He loved and he learned to love in ways that were changed in relationships. I like to think that Susie and I in particular (because of our time at Georgetown) prepared him to become a good step-father. He was set in his ways, for sure. But Judith was not Terry and Mercy was a whole new thing. Because he was a man of integrity and a guy who lived in the present-tense, embracing each chapter of life, he kept learning that each stage in life, these are better days. 

I’d be remiss not to say a word about Parkinson’s and what a caring and devoted partner Judith was to him through it all, and how strong and courageous he was to the end. There came a point in there when I knew I couldn’t call him up anymore to talk about Pierre Frainey or the Sancerre I was sipping and I think I began then to say my goodbyes, internally. 

But love is stronger than death, and love is stronger even than Parkinson’s. I am truly grateful for the life and witness of Jim Miller and glad for this son, big brother, husband, uncle, step-father, great-uncle and friend. Colonel: you are indeed remembered for your integrity and as a good friend and good husband, today and always. 

Well done, good and faithful servant.