Homeward Bound

Last night we had a big winter storm across New England, including Worcester. While I was supposed to be at St. Luke's today, we landed on Zoom for Morning Prayer instead. I still shared my sermon in that virtual context, however. The manuscript follows. The readings and collect for the day can be found here. 

There is a lot going on in this Gospel Reading today. Over almost three decades now of ordained ministry, I’ve preached on it before. Here’s the “Cliff Notes” version of the standard Rich Simpson sermon on this portion of Luke 4:

Hometowns are tricky. People knew you way back when. In my own case, growing up in Hawley, Pennsylvania, no one could have predicted that Little Richie Simpson would grow up to be a canon. Trust me. No one. And they remember every embarrassing thing I ever did. I grew up in the United Methodist Church but even if there was an Episcopal parish there, I’d never consider serving it.

Now I’m not Jesus – you all know this very well, of course. I’m just trying to be Rich Simpson. But Jesus faces the same challenge, right? They know who he is – he’s the carpenter’s kid. He’s Joseph and Mary’s boy. They are proud of him, of course, hometown boy made good. But hometowns also want to be sure you don’t forget where you came from.

So that’s it. I could go on a bit longer but that’s the gist of my standard Luke 4 sermon and perhaps some of you can identify, especially if you come from small towns. It isn’t just messiahs or clergy who face this, I’m sure. A therapist or a professor or a doctor might face similar challenges. Prophets generally aren’t listened to in their hometowns, because you need a bit more “mystique” to be a prophet.

But something else really struck me this time, this year, with the help of some friends I study the lectionary readings with each week. We noticed that Jesus kind of picks this fight. He sets the terms.

Now, I’ll grant you that underneath the surface it  might have been there the whole time. Underneath the polite smiles, when “all spoke well of him” even then when they said “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” perhaps it was in the same way a Southerner might say, “bless your heart!”  Who does he think he is now? Better than us? 

Jesus could have ignored that. But instead he goes right after it: doubtless you are about to say to me “doctor heal yourself” but let me tell you about the widow of Zarapheth and Naaman the Syrian!

And then: notice how quickly polite turns to rage. The neighbors turn into a mob. This is where I want to offer sermon 2.0, a pandemic 2020 update. Because isn’t that where we’ve come as a society? We all seem to be kind of brittle and on edge. Hi, nice to meet you. Wait – you don’t agree with me? Get out of here – forget about being Facebook friends – forget about being friends – you are what’s wrong with this country. 

It can turn on a dime and the anger – the rage – is not limited to one side in my experience. The comments in the newspapers – even comments on religious news – turn vicious so fast. We are all engraged, it seems, all of the time or at least too much of the time.  

And I’m aware that this may be me just getting older: my own little nostalgic self remembering a simpler time when I was a kid growing up in my own little town and everyone was polite. Maybe they were or maybe I was unaware. But this text suggests it’s not all that new, really. Polite can turn to rage – and seems to – very quickly in this old text from a couple of thousand years ago. They drive Jesus out of town and try to push him off a cliff.

Where does that rage come from? I have an idea. I think it is born out of unresolved grief, and unfulfilled expectations. It’s about what we do with disappointment, I think, or more accurately what we do when we don’t deal with disappointment in healthier ways. We behave badly.  

Stay with me for a moment, will you? Most of my work, especially in the last decade, is with congregations. And a big chunk of that work is dealing with clergy transitions. We are in the midst of one here, now. No one size fits all but we plan to take some time to pray and think and reflect and we are glad that Bishop Marty is coming here as your interim to help you with that work as we look toward the future.

You’ve been through a lot, St. Luke’s. COVID has affected us all but before COVID you all were sorting through a whole lot of stuff with Tim as he tried to sort through a whole lot of stuff in his life which was private until it wasn't, and then it became very public.

The stakes are high for all of you. And Marty will disappoint you. How do I know this? Because he’s human. And because you are human. He will make some mistakes; even bishops do, trust me. 

And also, you have some expectations, each of you. Some are realistic and some are not even close to reality. And sorting through all of that is always about sifting through disappointment. You may want to drive him out of town if he gets too close to painful truth. Please don’t push him over a cliff.

Over the time I served in Holden I experienced this more than once, and it was always exhausting. I did make some mistakes. And sometimes people hoped I’d be someone I could never be. Often it was my predecessor they wanted me to be but sometimes it wasn’t so clear, even to them. Mostly we got through it, although not without some scars.

But what I notice now – in this time of pandemic – is that the stakes feel higher and our filters are, less filtery. Disappointment and grief can quickly turn to anger and even rage. I see it happening all across our diocese. Sometimes it’s on a vestry. Sometimes it’s with a staff member. Sometimes it’s the clergy. Underneath the rage is disappointment and fear and grief. Almost always.  

I think by reminding the hometown folks of the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, during the days of Queen Jezebel, what Jesus is saying is something like what I say to congregations from time to time: look, it’s always been hard. There never were good old easy days in ministry. It’s always been hard because…people. Jesus goes back to Elijah and Elisha but he could just as easily have gone back to Jeremiah – whose call we heard today. It’s not a call that evokes singing, “Here I am, Lord, is it I Lord…I have heard you calling in the night.” It’s a call that evokes this response: why me? Are you sure there isn’t someone else you can send? I kind of had other plans for my life, actually…

So Jesus has a terrible day in today’s gospel reading. I mean really awful, after I’m sure he had hoped he’d be welcomed back as hometown hero with a ticker-tape parade. Instead they want to kill him. He needs to get used to that because eventually on a Friday afternoon it’ll happen.

I don’t know if you saw any of the communications from Dr. King’s family this month but they said something similar. We’ve sanitized MLK day and now act like everybody loved him and cheered him on. But that’s just not true. Even if it takes some critical race theory to uncover the truth, the truth is that the FBI was trying to get him, and the politicians were angry with him, and even the liberal white clergy were telling him he needed to be patient. And eventually an assassin’s bullet caught up to him in Memphis on April 4, 1968, not an easy year in American history.

The moral arc of the universe may indeed bend toward justice. But God, it’s an awfully long arc. 

So what do we do with our anger, our hurt, our disappointment, our fear, our exhaustion, our confusion? Direct it outward in rage? Heaven help us, but history has lots of examples of just that, and so does our present day.

But there is another way. There is a better way. Can we agree today, here, among this baptized community about to embark on a new chapter: can we agree that we are called to that alternative way? To the only way that ever moves us forward, the way that Jesus of Nazareth called us to, and St. Paul reminded the Church in Corinth about, and Dr. King reminded Americans in the middle of the last century about. To the Way of Love that our Presiding Bishop can't stop talking about. 

I invite you to read, mark, and learn, and inwardly digest these words, as followers of Jesus Christ, as you begin again:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Gathering at the Water Gate

This Sunday, I am again with the people of St. Luke's, Worcester. They will have their Annual Meeting today. Normally when a rector is in place, it's an opportunity to offer an Annual Address and to reflect on past, present, and future. Although I know the congregation well, I'm not their rector - nevertheless I tried to offer some thoughts about past, present, and future. The readings for the day can be found here.

When Jesus returned to Galilee to teach in the synagogues, he entered the synagogue where he had been brought up to do some teaching. When he stands up to read there is a tiny detail I want you to notice with me.  

We are so used to people standing up to read from the Bible that it is easy to imagine Jesus opening up the King James Version of the Bible to find his lines in red letters! But of course that isn’t what he does. What he does (in a world before the printing press) is to unroll the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

The Bible that Jesus learned, marked and inwardly digested wasn’t a bound book; it was a library of scrolls. And in today's gospel reading, he unrolls one of those scrolls...

Of course, you say. Big deal, Simpson. But I think if we mean to take the Bible seriously, that begins with knowing what it is. In our bound Bibles, Ezra and Nehemiah appear as two distinct books. But in a much earlier time, they were one single scroll. So I want us to unroll that scroll today and rediscover what is there…

In the very first lines of that scroll we read that “it is the first year of King Cyrus of Persia.” (Ezra 1:1) We should remember that these ancient empires of Persia and Babylon have modern names: Persia is Iran and Babylon is Iraq. Essentially what has happened is that Iraq has ceased to be a threat, but now Iran is because Cyrus of Persia has defeated the Babylonian army. In the logic of the Middle East (where the enemy of my enemy is my friend) this has the potential to be good news for the exiles who are still living in Babylon. (In fact it is in just this same context where the word “gospel” or good news does in fact first get used, by the prophet Isaiah.)  

Cyrus issues an edict that allows the exiles to return home. He almost certainly does this for his own benefit, not because he is a nice guy. His advisors tell him that it doesn’t make sense to leave these exiles in Babylon, but rather, that if he allows them to go home, they will rebuild their temple and their homes and their lives and then they’ll have to pay taxes to Cyrus. So this is Realpolitic on Cyrus’ part—it’s imperial economics, not theology.

But who cares? If you are a refugee who has lived for decades in exile, what do you care what Cyrus’ motivation is? As far as the scroll of Ezra-Nehemiah is concerned, the hand of God is at work in all of this. This is the dawn of a new day.

And who are we to say that they weren’t right?

It is very difficult to know how exactly God works in and through our failed global policies and at a much more personal level, sometimes our bad decisions, our mistakes, our broken relationships. But if we trust the message of Christmas—that God-(really)-is-with-us—then don’t we also need to trust that God is even now made “manifest in gracious will, ever bringing good from ill…” as that great Epiphany hymn puts it. (“Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.”)

And so the exiles do return home. As you unroll the scroll of Ezra-Nehemiah, the story unfolds. They rebuild the temple. They rebuild the city walls. And then they begin to repair the other breaches too, the city itself. They restore streets to live in. Dare I say that they try to “build back better?” Most of all, in the process, they begin to re-build their lives. They can’t go back in time, so they begin to move forward. Let me say that again because maybe that is important for us: they cannot go back in time. They can only move forward. Do you see where I’m going?

Building programs always create some conflicts and the scroll is honest about those. One of the conflicts is that some people are more focused on building their own homes and need to be prodded to take care of the temple. Another is that the old-timers who remember what the temple was like before the exile aren’t convinced that the new plans are an improvement over the old tried and true ways. These conflicts are a reminder that there is nothing new under the sun. People are people, and that fact always makes life interesting. Faith communities are challenging in the best of times, and nearly impossible in the worst of times. Why? People! 

I’ll be honest: I don’t think this scroll is the most riveting in all of scripture. In many aspects it is quite mundane. But I’ve also found, in these years of pandemic we find ourselves in, that I’m discovering and rediscovering gems in Holy Scripture I either never knew were there or had forgotten about. I also appreciate, the older I get, the mundane. I am, the older I get, less patient with lofty goals and pie-in-the-sky thinking and more interested in asking what is the next step we can take. And then the one after that.

Our current experience, now two years of pandemic with some ups and downs and some twists and turns along the way, opens us up to hearing good news in new ways and new places. So I bet you haven’t heard a lot of sermons on Ezra-Nehemiah but hey – I bet no one here has lived through a global pandemic before, either.

We have not been in exile for seventy years even if it feels like that some days. But the metaphor is more powerful after two years of isolating and masking and vaxxing than it was a few years ago. We are all tired. The most introverted and least social of us are weary of all this and yearn for human connections. So those words from another exilic prophet speak to us across the centuries: comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem. (Worcester, too…)

So, in the chapter we heard read from this Ezra- Nehemiah scroll today, we heard these words. Listen again, with some context, for a Word of the Lord:  

All the people of Israel gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the scroll of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the Torah before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the scroll of the Torah. And Ezra unrolled it in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he unrolled it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, "Amen, Amen," lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So they read from the scroll, from the Torah of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the Torah. Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."

This is about an assembly, a congregation gathered to hear and read and mark and learn from the Torah. But it’s also and even more importantly about the God who is ever bringing good from ill, the God whose best days are not in the past but lie ahead. In this little scene we see the beginnings of a re-formed community dedicated to the Torah and prophets. It’s the dawn of a new day but there are still the same core principles. And so it was a long long time ago when the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea and then at Sinai, Moses first brought the tablets down. But it is, at the water gate, in a new time and place, suddenly real again: not as a distant memory but as that which enlivens the faithful for the work that lies ahead. My friends in Christ: this is indeed “good news.”

Annual meetings are not always considered “high holy days” in this diocese or anywhere, really. They usually draw in only the most dedicated of insiders. You know who you are – the “usual suspects.”

But that’s ok – it’s where we begin again. As St. Luke’s prepares to welcome an interim very soon, what are some of the ways this parish can build a community focused on mission and purpose – not purpose from the good old days of Elvin or Stoddard or Hicks or Burger, but in ways that recognize God-with-us now? How will this parish find ways in the days ahead that bind this community together in love? What does that work look like and if that sounds too much like a diocesan bureaucratic question then let’s get even more mundane: what’s the next step? As you welcome your interim, what do you yearn for in the first 100 days? Maybe that’s far enough to try to think ahead right now. But in those days, in this next quarter, how can relationships be deepened: with God and among God’s people?

How is God bringing good from ill, even now – and what does the Lord ask of you? Annual meetings are about mundane things like budgets and elections. But both of those also serve a larger purpose. A budget is a plan for ministry. And elections are a recognition that in our polity, all the people share the work of ministry. The year ahead will not be a time when everything naturally just “falls into place.” If we’ve learned anything over the past two years I submit it is that. After the exile we do not and cannot return to innocence. Rather, the invitation is to rediscover the God who is in our midst, the God who is ever bringing good from ill. The God who is about to do all kinds of new things.

I can hardly wait to see what unfolds. Always with God’s help.

The Baptism of Our Lord: First Sunday after Epiphany

Tomorrow morning I was scheduled to be at St. Luke's in Worcester. The senior warden just called me to say that with freezing rain in the forecast, they are going to cancel worship in the morning. My sermon was written, though, and I share it here for anyone from St. Luke's and anyone else for whom church may be cancelled tomorrow. Stay safe. The readings for the day can be found here

The font is the one at St. Mark's East Longmeadow;
not St. Luke's in Worcester.
But it's one of my very favorites in the diocese. 

The conventional everyday meaning of the word epiphany is about having that kind of experience where you suddenly realize the essential meaning of something; that sense of illumination that comes when you grasp a problem or a situation at a new or deeper level. An “aha moment.” The light bulb over our head goes on! An epiphany!

Literally, the Greek word επιφανεια (“epiphanea”) means “to show forth” or to “make manifest.” These weeks that fall between the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem on January 6 and our destination on the Mount of the Transfiguration give us space in time to reflect on the ways that Christ is being shown forth in our lives and made manifest in this world. These weeks of the Epiphany Season give us windows along the way to consider how the light continues to shine in the darkness and how God is being made known to us in the midst of our everyday lives. As Eucharistic Prayer C puts it: we ask God to “open our eyes to see [God’s] hand at work in the world about us.” (BCP 372) Maybe along the way there will even be some “aha moments.”

This past Thursday the wise guys finally made it to Bethlehem. A cold coming they had of it, says the poet: the worst time of year for such a journey… If they had been three wise women, say the memes, they would have been on time and brought far more practical gifts. They were, says the tradition, goyim, i.e. gentile astrologers. So the “showing forth” of this Jesus beyond God’s chosen people begins with that moment and the offering of their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Today we gather at the Jordan River for the Baptism of Our Lord. The voice comes down from heaven and claims Jesus as God’s own beloved. We are meant, I think, to hear that voice of the Spirit addressing us by name as well, as we remember our own baptism.

We, too, are God’s own beloved. If you hear nothing else I say today, I pray you will hear that. You are God’s beloved and you are called by name. You are sealed and marked as Christ’s own – forever – by water and the Spirit. That claim on you is way more real and true than any other old tapes you may still have running that suggest otherwise. The ones that tell you that you are not smart enough, or not good looking enough, or not cool enough. Let those tapes go in this new year, or at least mute them so that you hear the one true voice that calls you by name, God’s own beloved. As we let that sink in, we are called to live like we believe that claim. Or, as our opening collect for this day puts it, “to keep the covenant [we] have made and to boldly confess [Jesus] as Lord and Savior.”

This “epiphany” about the God who loves us is deeply rooted in the Old Testament narrative, as we heard in today’s reading from the forty-third chapter of the prophet Isaiah. (Actually the scholars call this prophet “second Isaiah” to distinguish him from the writer of the first 39 chapters of Isaiah.) The context in which this prophet writes is at the end of the Babylonian exile. The good news that is being announced to a weary people is that they do have a future; that God is not finished with them yet. They have grown a little too used to life in Babylon, however; so second Isaiah’s job is to convince them to risk the journey back home. To not remember the former things, but to journey toward the new thing that God is doing.

Even if you don’t know anything at all about the history of Israel, however, you can feel the hope and energy in this text. This is a writer who knows that God is reliable and trustworthy. And because God is reliable and trustworthy we have nothing to fear.

Thus says the Lord,

 who created you, O Jacob, who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

Richard Rohr has noted that there are 365 verses in the Bible—in both testaments—that say, “fear not.”  He suggests that there is one time there for every day of the year. Every time an angel shows up that is where they always begin. Do not be afraid, Joseph. Do not be afraid, Mary. Do not be afraid…state your name! Do not fear for I have redeemed you and I called you by name and you are mine.

It seems like the people in the Bible are a lot like us: they spend way too much time being afraid. Afraid about tomorrow or next week or next year; all of which are beyond our control. Afraid of conflict, afraid to speak the truth because it might offend, afraid of failing.  Afraid about how many Greek alphabet soup variants are still out there after delta and omicron. We can spend our lives being afraid, and if we are not careful then we never actually live. Fear immobilizes us. So time and again the angels show up and say to God’s people: fear not! When we hear those words, when our ears are open and we listen for the voice of God, what God says is that we belong to God. And that we have been called by name. And then: 

           When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

 These words remind me of the twenty-third psalm, that great poem about putting our trust in God alone. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. This poet, too, knows that no matter what—whatever the world can throw at is—that God-with-us will not leave us alone.

             Because you are precious in my sight,

and honored, and I love you.

These are extraordinary words. So many people speak so much nonsense about God, even in God’s own name. I have to tell you this: the commandment about not taking the Lord’s name in vain is NOT about swearing. Some people just have potty mouths! It may not be polite, but that has nothing to do with the Ten Commandments! The prohibition about not invoking God’s name with malice is about not saying things about God that just aren’t true. Like when people use God’s name to justify their own hatred and bigotry and claim that God hates the same people they hate. Or that God makes natural disasters to punish people that the speaker doesn’t like.  You’ve got to be taught, as Rodgers and Hammerstein put it: You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate. But that’s not Biblical faith no matter how much those folks claim to be speaking for God.

In truth, God loves all the little children of the world. God so loved the world that the Word became flesh: that is the great mystery of the Incarnation that we ponder anew in these weeks of Epiphany. Jesus came into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. That is the heart of the matter for people of the Book. The great theologian Karl Barth, who both read and wrote volumes and volumes and volumes of theology said everything he ever read or wrote he had learned in Sunday School and it could be summarized like this: Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.

My siblings in Christ, this is really very good news. And it is news that we need to proclaim boldly to all the world, every day this year and beyond, one day at a time:  Fear not. Jesus loves you. We love you! And that love can transform this world.

The liturgy, the creeds, the Bible, the message at font and table is the same: God loves us. Everything else follows from this truth: God wants us to love God back and then for us to show that love by loving one another. This, in a nutshell, is the whole of the Christian life. Right? Love God, love one another. On these two hang everything else.

You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

I know a lot of Episcopalians really groove on Lent. But Lent can be distorted if we are not careful. Lent can be about getting over-focused on our sin and feeding shame along the way. But what Lent is really for is an opportunity to get clear on the things that keep us from embracing the truth of the gospel: the love of God that has been made known in Jesus Christ. If we do Epiphany well, then the forty days of Lent give us a chance to strip everything away, especially the false idols and our various addictions and all those things that separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Lent will then give us an opportunity to move toward true repentance which is not the same as paralyzing fear or shame.  What the desert can teach us, with God’s help, is that we don’t need more money or status or better clothes or a bigger house or a faster car to be loved. Because we are already God’s own beloved, precious in God’s sight.

From that holy place comes love for God, and ultimately love of neighbor. From that holy place we discover again and again and again our core mission as God’s people: to serve the world in Christ’s name. A mission to keep on loving, as we have been loved. The late Archbishop Desmund Tutu said it this way: 

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

I think we honor the witness of all the saints by seeking to emulate them just a little bit. May this year ahead be an opportunity to look for ways to do that – little aha moments that change us all for good.

Second Sunday of Christmas

Today I was at  Holy Trinity in Southbridge. Readings for the Second Sunday of Christmas can be found here.

Ask any lay reader: even when the Old Testament names are unpronounceable, most of them would still rather read about Melchizadek than those long run-on sentences that St. Paul is so famous for. You know them when you hear them because you find yourself scratching your head at the end when the reader says “the word of the Lord” and you are not certain whether to respond “thanks be to God” because it is, or because the reading has finally and mercifully concluded!

Today’s reading from Ephesians doesn’t seem so bad compared to some of the epistle readings we get over the course of a year, But that’s only because we are reading it in English! In Greek the first fourteen verses of the first chapter are one long breathless sentence, followed by a second long sentence that goes from verses 15-23. The entire first chapter of Ephesians in Greek, in other words, is just two very long sentences, from which we heard about nine verses extracted today. It’s like Paul got started and just couldn’t stop. It is one long breathless stream of praise:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing and made us his children and has freely bestowed grace on us all and forgiven us according to the riches of his grace and lavished upon us an inheritance with the saints and so I give thanks constantly for all of you and pray that you will be given a spirit of wisdom and truth to know and serve God in all you do and with God you can do infinitely more than you can ask or imagine and so you will live in hope to the end of the ages…

The whole thing is doxology: praise God from whom all blessings flow! That’s a great way to begin a letter to a first-century congregation, and a great way for a twenty-first century congregation to begin a new year of grace together. Especially a congregation in the midst of a clergy transition, in the midst of a pandemic that will not quit.

In the years I served as a parish priest, it was my practice to visit shut-ins right after Christmas and Easter, to take them communion and to deliver goodie bags put together by one of the church angels at St. Francis, Holden. Always, those visits were a joy that renewed my faith. I continue to be amazed at the wisdom of people who are very often facing difficult challenges and loss, yet who in the midst of great hardship continue to bear witness to the joy and goodness of life. They are inspiring, and it truly takes my breath away to be in the presence of people who sound so much like St. Paul not because they are intentionally mimicking him, but because their own faith has brought them to a very similar place. They count their blessings daily and they thank God for a community that continues to remember them.

Meister Eckhardt once said that if the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it would be enough. It is perhaps the most important practice of all if we want to grow in faith to cultivate gratitude. But let’s face it: it’s easier to do that when the stock market is soaring and its 72 degrees outside and the days are long.  I’m talking about people who live with chronic pain, who have lost more loved ones than are left, who have had to leave their family homes, who have buried a child… Yet, in spite of all these things (and not as an act of denial but as a courageous act of faith) they begin and end each day with a simple prayer: praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

Gratitude does not stop with thanking God. As we heard in the epistle, there is a direct line from praising God to giving thanks for God’s people as fellow travelers in life’s journey. Paul is in the habit of taking time to say thanks for the Body of Christ as a whole and specifically for the congregations of Christians in Ephesus or Thessalonica or Rome or Corinth and for specific people in those congregations like Chloe and Timothy and Aquila and Prisca.

What a great way to begin a new year together. Thank God for the whole Church, including witnesses who have gone before us like Desmond Tutu. Thank God for the Episcopal Church and our Presiding Bishop, Michael and for this diocese in central and western Massachusetts, from 495 to the New York border. And for our bishop, Doug. For this parish, Holy Trinity, Southbridge. For your wardens and vestry and the sick who we will remember today and those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. In thanksgiving for the faithful work of Richard over these years and in anticipation of the arrival of Judith. Praise God from whom all blessings flow for these companions along the way.

I love that word: companion, which comes from two Latin words that literally mean, “to bread with.” In her book, Take this Bread, Sara Miles shares the story of her journey from being a committed atheist to a practicing Christian. It began when she wandered into an Episcopal Church and was welcomed to the Table to receive the Sacrament. She writes in that book:

I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where even the despised and the outcasts are honored.

You can run a long way with that one sentence to what it means to be Church in this time and place. God feeds us all, embraces us all, and commands us all to love one another. It is a very ordinary, and yet subversive, thing to be a Eucharistic community, which is just a fancy theologian’s way of saying a “thankful community.” Week after week we take the bread and bless it and break it and give it. We give thanks to God for the gifts of the earth and for being in our midst, and we proclaim that where there is one bread, there is but one body; broken to be sure, but still one.

You know it’s still Christmas for a few more days. All twelve days, not just Christmas Eve, are an invitation to celebrate the gift of God-with-us in Jesus Christ: Emmanuel. But that gift requires a response from us. God is a Giver, but as with all gifts there are three possible responses that can be evoked.

We can say “no thank you.” There are lots of variations on this: we can return the gift or can re-gift or take it to Good Will. But whether it is returned or unused if it is not received or valued it is of little use to us. We will have the experience, but miss the meaning.

Or we can receive a gift begrudgingly. I would venture to say we all have some experience with that. “Thanks.” we mumble…but it’s not what we mean because we don’t like cardigan sweaters or we look washed out in that color or we don’t drink scotch. Our tastes are fickle and we can be polite without being truly thankful.

I suspect and hope, however, that we all have some experience at least with receiving a gift that means the world to us with profound gratitude. It is not usually or even often about what it costs in terms of dollars, although in my experience there is a cost in the deeper sense. We treasure gifts that are given from the heart and are touched because the gift itself symbolizes a relationship: someone who knows us and cares for us and wants to express that love. When we receive a gift like that there are no words to adequately express our joy; there is no thank-you note that can express how we feel. We are transformed by that kind of gift and breathless with gratitude. It changes us at some deep level to be loved in such a way. Thank you, we stammer…this is exactly what I wanted…I just can’t believe it, it’s perfect…

The gift of Christmas is Emmanuel: God-with-us. That may not be what we expected or even prayed for. Often we want God to fix our messes or reward our good behaviors (or even to punish our bad ones so we can be reassured that there is a moral equilibrium in the world and in our lives.) We may pray that God will make us safe or secure or get us into the college we long to attend. It is quite possible to take that journey all the way to Bethlehem to behold a child and miss the point: that this God who dwells among us, very God of very God, is like us in every way save sin. Jesus is born and cries and laughs and dreams and loves and fears and doubts and hopes and wonders and as we heard in today’s gospel reading, even worries his parents as a pre-teen. And ultimately he is executed by the state as a criminal on a cross. And on the third day, the tomb is empty…

We are free to refuse that gift of that singular life given to us and the world at Bethlehem. Or we can offer a perfunctory and polite “thanks” and get back to business as usual, back to the “real world” which asks so little of us and yet takes so much from us. Or, we can accept that gift and allow it to heal and transform our lives. If we dare to come and behold him, it can leave us as breathless as St. Paul and our lives are suddenly filled with doxology. Gratitude transforms our lives and begins the process of making us a new creation in Jesus Christ. It opens the doorway for us to become disciples who will risk everything for Christ’s sake.

It makes you almost want to sing, doesn’t it? To go tell it on the mountain and over the hills and everywhere! Jesus Christ is born! It makes you want to give something back. But what can we give? Christina Rosetti posed that question in the early part of the twentieth century in the hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and this was her answer:  

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a Wise Man I would do my part;
yet what I can, I give him: give my heart.

What’s next for this parish in this new year of grace? There are some knowns and some unknowns as there always are. I pray that the journey that lies ahead for you will be full of grace. Go like the magi, who are still on their way to Bethlehem. Go out into the world grateful for the many gifts God has given to you, and ready to bring your own gifts to the Child. What can you give? Give your heart.