Embracing the Interruptions

'When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.'

--Mark 5: 21-43

Not to be presumptuous, but I’m going to guess that hardly any of you enjoys being interrupted.  Am I right?  I know that I don't!  Interruptions are especially frustrating when we’ve set ourselves up for a task that demands our best effort, such as:  when we’re pouring over our job, have started an important project in our yard, or have finally settled down to read that book someone recommending.  We start to get focused on the task at hand, and then suddenly along comes something or someone that throws a hitch into it.  Once that happens we channel our inner Charlie Brown and then trudge off to begrudgingly attend to the interruption, even though we would very much rather attend to our much more important work.  

We've all been there, Charlie Brown.

That relationship between work and interruptions is something that one of my spiritual heroes, Henri Nouwen addressed.  Father Nouwen was a Dutch priest, philosopher, poet, professor, and social activist.  After 20 years teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, he devoted the remaining 10 years of his life to living and serving among the L’Arche Daybreak Community in Toronto, which was made up of adults with severe physical and emotional disabilities.  As he put it in his book In the Name of Jesus, he moved from the best and brightest at Harvard, those who wanted to rule the world, to men and women who had few or no words and were considered, at best, on the margins of society.  In that and several other works, Father Nouwen talks about the struggles of that move, how so often he just wanted to do the basic ministerial work of teaching and administering the sacraments, but so often he would be interrupted by the needs of someone in the community, such as a man with Tourette's Syndrome interrupting a mass. It got really frustrating at times, but over time Father Nouwen came to see those interruptions as a gift from God. At one point he wrote, “I used to complain about all the interruptions to my work until I realized these interruptions were my work.”  

Father Henri Nouwen, who died in 1999.

Isn’t that interesting?  Many of us, I suspect, become so focused on accomplishing a task, sometimes even a task to which we believe that God has called us, that we do not see God’s presence in the person or thing that interrupts us.  The interruption could not possibly be a gift from God, could it?  It took Father Nouwen years to learn that, but one person for which it did not take so long was Jesus. 

This past week's Gospel text shows Jesus being interrupted not once, but twice!  Jesus and his disciples land in a Galilean town and are immediately met by Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue, who asks Jesus to help his sick daughter.  Whatever it was Jesus came to do in that town has gotten interrupted.  Still, Jairus is an important person, so we can forgive this interruption, which somehow doesn't feel like a nuisance.  Not so with interruption number two, which sees a woman stop Jesus in the crowd.  See, even Jesus' interruptions get interrupted!  This woman has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years—which not only has left her in tremendous debt and physical agony but has also made her perpetually unclean according to the Law.  No doubt those around are thinking that Jesus should just move on, especially; after all, this woman is of no social value, but Jairus is, and his daughter should obviously take priority.  Jesus instead meets the woman and engages with her, and in doing so he not only restores her to physical health but also restores her to the community.  This only happens because he allows himself to be interrupted.  

Notice how Jesus does not treat the woman like an inconvenience, nor does he complain that he doesn’t have time to go and complete the task of healing Jairus’ daughter, even though many in the crowd were complain that she is already dead.  Perhaps it is because Jesus does not treat time as a commodity, as something that can be controlled, like so many folks do; after all, we cannot “waste” our time, can we?  We cannot devote time to something that is unimportant, right?  This is partially due to our western, post-Enlightenment, Protestant work ethic that has formed us to think that there is actually such a thing as a task that is wasteful, and that we should treat our time like our money, carefully.  Jesus, however, is neither western, nor post-Enlightenment, nor Protestant, and thus does not do this.  He does not choose which person is more important—the woman or Jairus’ daughther— and he does not show frustration at either interruption, which pulled him away from the ever-important work of prayer.  Instead he treats both interruptions as opportunities to show God’s love and mercy to not only these people but all those who witnessed the two moments of healing and all of us who have heard the story after it happened.  For Jesus, the interruption was the work.  

A catacomb's fresco depicting Jesus being interrupted by the woman with hemorrhages.

Last week I was faced with a situation in which I was interrupted in the midst of very important work by someone seeking help.  It was Tuesday, and I was in the middle of preparing for our vestry meeting, getting my notes done and setting up for our pre-meeting worship, when a man came by the church needing food and gas.  “I don’t have time for this,” I literally said to myself (and to God) as I walked down the hall to meet him.  But I realized when talking to him that this interruption was the work that God was calling me to in this moment.  So what if I ended up being late for vestry?  So what if other tasks I had planned to complete that day were not finished?  This interruption was my work.

What is the work of the church, brothers and sisters?  According to our Book of Common Prayer, on page 855, which is part of the Catechism or Outline of the Faith, the mission of the Church, that is, the work to which every one of us is called, is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ", and it goes on to say that we do so "through prayer, worship, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the promotion of justice, peace, and love."  When this is our work, and these are the ways in which we accomplish that work, there is no such thing as an interrption.  What's more, there is no such thing as wasted time, meaningless tasks, or unimportant people.  For this is our work, just as it was Jesus' work. 

So the next time you are faced with some kind of interruption to an important task, I wonder what might happened if you saw that interruption as a gift from God?  What if, instead of resisting the interruption out of frustration, you saw it as an opportunity to live into the very work that God has called you to as part of the Church, the Body of Christ?  What would it look like if instead of having clenched teeth, you had open hands and received the interruption just as you receive Jesus each week at the Holy Eucharist?  This is what we are called to, brothers and sisters.  Because for us, like Jesus, the interruptions are the work.

Weathering the Storm

'When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”'

-Mark 4: 35-41

I know what ya’ll want me to write about this week…the priest’s honeymoon.  As most of you know I recently got married, and my wife Kristen and I wanted to use our honeymoon as a chance for a pilgrimage to Greece, so that we could see the sites and walk in the footsteps of the early fathers and mothers of our Christian faith.  In a word, it was amazing!  We are looking forward to sharing in greater depth and detail many of the places we went, what we saw, and the conversations that we had, but for now I will give you a bit of a preview.

The ruins at ancient Corinth.

Given that our weekly lectionary is focused on Paul's letters there, it seems fitting to tell you about Corinth, one of the cities we visited.  It’s still very much a lively city, and it has been for the better part of 5000 years.  While there we spent a good deal of time in the ruins of the ancient city of Corinth, where we saw the temple to Apollo and the agora, and even took part in a Portuguese mass being celebrated by a group of pilgrims from Brazil.  Somewhere in those ruins was the place where the Followers of the Way met, a misfit congregation made up of Jews, Greek-speaking Gentiles, rich folks, and poor folks, and all the while they could barely agree on anything—which is why not only Paul, but also Clement of Rome, wrote two letters apiece to this bunch.  Our modern ears listen to Paul’s words to the church in Corinth and figure they must have taken root at some point, but according to historical markers in Corinth itself, “St. Paul preached the Gospel here unsuccessfully.”  It’s true.  Corinth did not become a hub for Christianity in the ancient world the way Ephesus or Rome did, and by some standards it could be deemed a failure due to its in-fighting and the fact that neither Paul, nor Clement, seemed to get through to them.

This whole notion of what a successful church looks like really hit us when we visited the six monasteries of Meteora, which is the mountainous region of western Greece.  There was as a time when the mighty peaks were home to as many as 24 monasteries going back to the 12th century, but now six remain.  

One of the monasteries of the Meteora (pictures were not permitted inside the worship spaces, unfortunately).

At each monastery we visited the chapel, and the front room of each chapel was decorated with gorgeous frescoes.  When we looked closely, though, we were struck by images of men and women being beaten, torn apart by lions, skinned and boiled alive, beheaded, and other gruesome pictures.  These were the martyrs, all of whom died for their faith, all of whom could be considered failures.  In the Monastery of the Transfiguration, the largest of the Meteora monasteries, we not only saw these images but also a separate room, the ossuary, which housed the skulls and bones of many of the monks who had died.  It was jarring, to say the least.

You may hear these stories and be thinking why the Eastern Church has such a grim view of the faith: calling Corinth an unsuccessful venture, surrounding worshipers with gruesome images of the martyrs’ deaths, and making a room full of monk bones viewable to the public.  But truly, brothers, and sisters, it is not a grim view, but rather it is a particular orientation that the Church in the East understands.  It is not an orientation toward success as the western world, and indeed many churches in this country see it—that is, successful means physical growth, financial prosperity, and everyone being happy—but rather it is an orientation toward living lives of faith in Jesus Christ, day after day, through every kind of storm imaginable, in the hopes that in life and death one may become more and more Christ-like themselves.   

In our story from the first Gospel this morning we hear of a raging storm on the Sea of Galilee that was causing fierce panic among Jesus’ disciples.  So freaked out were they that they wondered if Jesus himself even cared that they were perishing.  But in the midst of the storm Jesus speaks the same word that he spoke when he drove out his first demon back in the beginning of this Gospel—he tells the storm “ πεφίμωσο,” which means, “Be still and silent.” It is only when those disciples orient themselves toward Jesus that the storm becomes bearable.  

Jesus calming the storm.

"Storm clouds are a-raging all around my door," said Bob Dylan, "I think to myself I might not take it anymore."  We experience the storms of our lives and say the same thing:  how long can we take it?  We meet those storms in or personal lives and wonder how long we can endure the storms of unemployment, addiction, the death of a loved one, or a disease?  We meet them in our communal lives, as well, including our churches, our towns, and our country. For the past couple weeks we have found ourselves in a particular storm of political and moral severity at the southern border of our country.  Many feel that this storm, like others that have come before,  is continuing to tear us apart, not unlike the in-fighting that plagued Corinth. Certainly a number of faith communities find themselves caught up in this storm, unsure of what to do. How long can we take it, some people are saying?  Will we be able to endure the next storm when it comes (and come, it certainly will)?  What are we to do as we feel like we are perishing beneath the tempest of morally righteous anger and political blame-throwing?  The answer actually lies in the way we worship.

"Lex orandi, lex cretendi," the old Latin saying goes—"the way of worship shapes the way of belief."   It’s sort of the unofficial motto of the Anglican Communion.  If you want to know what Anglicans believe, come and experience our worship. Each Sunday—including this past one—we read from the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and we process the Gospel book itself into the congregation. Everyone stands for the reading of the Gospel, something we do not do for the Old and New Testaments. As the book passes by everyone in the congregation turns and orients themselves toward the Gospel.  It is a physical action that is something we do so often that we don’t even think about it beforehand.  It’s in our DNA. But it’s more than physical. It is an emotional, mental, and spiritual orientation toward not only Jesus' words but his life, his death, and his resurrection. It is this orientation toward Jesus that allowed the church in Corinth to continue—in spite of modern historians calling it unsuccessful—and it is this orientation toward Jesus that made it possible for the martyrs to face their deaths and for the monks to house their bones as a testament to their faith  because success is not about growing numerically or being vindicated in our opinions—whether they be social, political, or religious—no,  Christian success (oxymoron though that may be) means continuing to live into the faith, continuing to become more Christ-like, no matter what storms rage around us.  For like those disciples in the boat, if we orient ourselves toward Jesus we can hear him say, "Why are you afraid?"  There is no need to fear anything when our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies are oriented toward Jesus. This is how Paul can write to the splintered community in Corinth and commend them for all that they have endured:  hardships, beatings, imprisonments, and hunger, and how he can be crazy enough to say to them that though the world says they have nothing they actually possess everything.  They possess Jesus Christ!  So did those martyrs on those frescos.  So did those monks.  And so do we!  No matter the nature of the storm, when we orient ourselves toward Jesus we can endure and continue to live out our faith.  That is our goal, our mission, even unto our deaths, because THAT is what success means to a Christian.  

"If you weather the storm through the wind and the rain, you can still ride a bike with a rusty old chain," wrote another singer-songwriter.  "There’s life on the other side of the pain," she wrote further, "but you’ll never ever ever be the same."  Jesus is there in the storm with us, though he may be on the cushion, he is still there.  He is there in the storm of your life.  He is there in the storm at the southern border.  He is there as he was  with his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, as he has been with every Follower of the Way who has felt like they are perishing.  When we orient our whole selves in his direction, toward the way of Jesus, the way of love and mercy and the goodness of God, we too can weather any storm, we can find life on the other side, but we will never be the same, for we may find ourselves becoming just a little more Christ-like.

For the Love of Jesus

I don’t have a meme or a soundbite.  There isn’t anything snarky that I can say, no takedown that I am able to throw out there on social media or from the pulpit.  All I have right now is a heart that is broken and a spirit that is shaken, and all I can do is weep with the rest of the Body of Christ.  

While away on our honeymoon in Greece my wife Kristen and I had limited access to wifi and thus could not keep up regularly with the goings on in the world.  Yet when we occasionally were able to post pictures of our travels we saw scenes from home showing what was happening at the US-Mexico border.  The hot-button topic of immigration had, it seemed, reached a boiling point with the implementation of the so-called “zero tolerance policy” that was literally ripping children from their parents at the border, placing them in cages that hearken to the forced encampment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.  We were both sick over what we saw, and as we sat in the Grotto of St. Paul, outside the ruins of ancient Ephesus in Turkey, we looked upon the frescos of Jesus and saints like Paul and Thekla, and through our tears we prayed.  It was all we could do.  

I did not preach this past Sunday due to having just returned from that trip, but I was blessed to hear our retired deacon do what deacons do best:  preach truth to power.  He named the sins of hatred that have infected the hearts of many alleged followers of Jesus of Nazareth and compelled us not to give in to such rhetoric, but rather to focus on the mustard seed moments, those tiny morsels of grace and love that, when watered and nurtured by God, grow mightily and conquer such hate.  I am grateful for my brother’s words that day, but as I return to the church office and my regular routines there is much that troubles me about what is happening in our country, and what’s more, how far we are from doing anything about it.

When I say “we” I mean folks like me; that is, white, middle-class Christian folk.  The truth is that the current situation on our border does not directly affect most people like me.  I live in a state that is not on the border and preach to a congregation that does not have a single Spanish-speaking person in it.  Since returning from the honeymoon no one has asked either my wife (who is also a seminary-educated minister) or me what we think of what is going on down on the border.  Furthermore, there is little outrage over the fact that the current administration in Washington is citing Scripture (badly, I might add) to condone their policies and the procedure of separating children from their families.  If anything I am seeing social media post after social media post from folks like me—again, white, middle class Christians—showing no compassion for these children and citing passages of Scripture (again, badly) that they claim as grounds for such behavior.  And all I can wonder is which Jesus they actually know.  

When he was still the bishop of my diocese, The Most Rev. Michael Curry (you know, the Royal Wedding guy) told us clergy to be mindful of something:  “There is a difference,” he said, “between Jesus and JAYSUSUH!  The former comes preaching the Good News of love for God and one’s neighbor, but the latter comes preaching judgment and condemnation.”  Too many of the folks like me seem to prefer the latter.  That is the only explanation that I can come up with for how anyone claiming to follow the Way of Jesus of Nazareth can possibly condone the actions of the current administration.  Such actions have repeatedly denied the humanity of refugees and immigrants, even though Jesus’ own family lived as refugees in Egypt, and has touted the power and authority of the state over that of one’s own conscience, even though Jesus himself was killed by the state for an unjust cause.  Thus, all I can reckon is that such folks who support such actions are not actually followers of Jesus, but rather of JAYSUSUH!  

For if one were to truly follow Jesus one would hear his words echo in his or her heart:  “For I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matthew 25)”, “Do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6)”, “Give to anyone who asks of you (Matthew 5 and Luke 6)”, “Whoever is not against us is for us (Mark 9)”, and I could go on.  At the core of these and all of Jesus’ saying is the clear message that to love God and to love one’s neighbor is the greatest of all commandments, meaning that love is the foundation of everything that it means to be a Christian.  If there is no love, there is no Jesus.  Again, to quote Bishop Curry:  “If it ain’t about love, it ain’t about Jesus of Nazareth.”  Truth.  

But what is most unsettling to me is the willingness of many alleged Christians to go along with a sinful administration simply because they are in power and because St. Paul once wrote to a frightened congregation in Rome, which was teetering on the edge of extinction, to follow those in authority for the sake of their own survival (Romans 13).  What such folks fail to remember, however, is that their allegiance and loyalties and identities do not lie in authority figures, nor in America itself.  To be a Christian means that Christ, and Christ alone, is our identity.  There is nothing else!  This is what Paul means when he says “there is no male or female, slave or free, Greek or Jew, but all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3).”  Jesus Christ, the living embodiment of the love of God, is the ONLY allegiance to which we pledge ourselves.  To put the laws of government, or even the words of St. Paul, above those of Jesus Christ is heretical.  Period.  

I do not expect much to come from this blog post; after all, I do not have the sway or the celebrity to affect any serious change with it.  But I am a priest in Christ’s holy catholic and apostolic Church, tasked with preaching the Gospel in word and action, no matter where I go and no matter to whom I go.  This post may bring you a sense of hope, and for that I am glad.  It may also anger you, and for that I do not apologize.  It is time that Christians everywhere take back the sacred and holy name of Jesus and take back the truth of his Gospel:  that love is the only way.  We will not succeed by flinging mud at one another, and we will not succeed in any sort of political coup or uprising.  This is not the way of Jesus.  Instead, the way of Jesus is the way of modeling love for others, even if they are incapable of accepting it.  This is what I will continue to do, with God’s help.  

For those still unsure about how to feel over the recent goings-on along the border, ask yourself if any of this is of Jesus.  If the answer is no, then outrage is a perfectly acceptable thing to feel.  But what you do with your outrage is much more important.  Do not give in to the temptation to repay evil with evil.  Put your outrage into action.  Call your representatives and tell them to live the way of Jesus; after all, they’re all supposedly Christians.  Keep modeling love, even when someone is hurling insults your way and preaching a false gospel about security or some other made-up excuse.  And whatever you do, pray and preach with abandon and with the fire and passion and love of Jesus Christ.  

I leave you with the only thing I could think to pray this morning when my wife and I did Morning Prayer.  Here is the Prayer for the Human Family:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son:  Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and peoples may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer, pg. 815

We Bind Unto Ourselves

St. Patrick's Breastplate being sung at the Matriculation ceremony at General Seminary.  The song starts at 0:44. 

Each fall at General Seminary there is a ceremony in the chapel called Matriculation.  Even though it takes place close to a month after students have already started classes, it’s considered the moment when you officially become part of the seminary community.  There is an Evensong liturgy, the dean asks if you will subscribe to the duties and character benefiting the ministries of the church, and you sign your name in a book that goes back to the seminary’s founding in 1817.  As each new student comes forward to sign that book the organist breaks out into St. Patrick’s Breastplate, that great prayer of the 4th century Irish bishop, which most Episcopal parishes were singing last weekend for Trinity Sunday.  St. Patrick’s Breastplate is long, maybe the longest song in our whole hymnal, and at Matriculation it would often get stretched out to 20 minutes to cover all of those students coming up to sign.  Still, it was at that ceremony in the fall of 2009, when I signed that same book while surrounded by my classmates and my mother, who was making her first ever trip to New York City, that I first fell in love with that song, which was played at both of my ordinations and will be played at my wedding this Saturday.

What is it about that song that gets me every time I hear it?  It’s not so much the music—because, let’s face it, it’s kind of a tough song to sing—but it’s the words of Patrick's prayer.  I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity.  I bind unto myself the virtues of the starlit heaven.  I bind unto myself the power of the great love of cherubim.  I bind unto myself the power of God to hold and lead.  Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.  Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.  That is a powerful, powerful prayer.  It is the prayer of someone who longs for one thing:  relationship with the living God, by which he may be bound together with God through the wonder of creation, the redemption of that creation by Christ, and the grace of the Creator Spirit to sanctify and sustain.  The reason I fell in love with St. Patrick’s Breastplate was because that’s what I wanted, what I still want, to bind unto myself the strong name of God in Trinity, to be in relationship with God, just as God is in relationship with Godself.

That is the beauty of the Trinity, of a God existing in relationship with Godself, and very truly, we see it everywhere we look.  The German astronomer Johannes Kepler looked at the very solar system and saw the Trinity—comparing the sun to God the Father, the planets to the God the Son, and the stars and space between them to the Holy Spirit.  In our daily lives we see it in the relationship between the flowers, the wind that carry the flowers’ seeds, and the soil that bears those seeds and gives the flowers new birth.  We even see it on a subatomic level, in the relationship between protons, neutrons, and electrons.  The very building blocks of all life in the universe is this three-way relationship!  Gregory of Nazianzus called it perichoresis, a divine dance between the three persons of the Trinity.  But it’s really just God existing the way God always does: in relationship.  The prayer of St. Patrick that we pray when we sing that song is our own desire to be in that kind of relationship, not only with God but with each other.

William P. Young was not a scholar or theologian when he wrote the novel The Shack; in fact, he was just a ordinary person who had been through some excruciating times.  His own relationships had been beaten up pretty badly, but he wrote his book as a gift to his family, as a means of trying to explain who God was in his life through the story of a man who spends a weekend in a shack with the three persons of the Trinity. (It's a story every seminary should require its students to read!)  The crux of his own personal theology can be summed up in a scene in the book (and later film) in which the protagonist Mack is standing with God the Father—portrayed as a curvy black woman—and they are watching God the Son—Jesus—and the Holy Spirit—a young Asian woman—interact in the back yard.  Mack notes how they help each other, move with each other, almost dance with each other, asking or expecting nothing in return from the other.  “Is that what you meant for us?” he asks God. God smiles and says, "Yes!" That was the plan, that humanity would be in relationship with each other in the same way that God is.

(Left to Right) Jesus, Mack, God, and the Holy Spirit from the film version of The Shack.

Thist is what we bind unto ourselves, my brothers and sisters.  We bind unto ourselves the very possibility that we might love one another as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another.  We bind unto ourselves the hope that such a love can change the world.  On Saturday, June 2 my fiancee  Kristen and I will stand before God, our families, our friends, and many of you, and we will bind unto each other the promises that we will make to love and support one another, to dance with one another, and to let our relationship with each other find its meaning and purpose in the relationship of God, so that our relationship may be a reminder of that, a beacon of hope to a world that has forgotten love.

Kristen and me before a round of Star Wars Trivia at our local brewery.  (Note the Trinity shirt!)

You see, that is the power of love.  The love that you have with your partner, with your family, or with your friends is merely a reflection of God’s love for Godself and for God’s world.  Imagine what it would be like if we all could look at each other and see the relationship between Godeself in one another.  That is the kind of love that is as strong as death, the kind that can never be destroyed, the kind that can, in fact, change the world if we let it.  This, brothers and sisters, is the love unto which we all bind ourselves.

The bulletin for our Trinity Sunday celebration at Good Shepherd this past weekend featured this picture on the cover:

You can see the three persons, but you may also notice that there are four sides to the table and one spot that is empty.  That’s your spot!  Because the Trinity is not some theological rubix cube for us to solve.  It is a relationship in which we are invited to participate with God and with each other because, simply put, God loves us.  When I sang St. Patrick’s Breastplate at General Seminary in the fall of 2009 I knew that fact in a way that I never had before.  Today I hope you know that.  I hope your own relationships are strengthened by the One who is the very embodiment of relationship.  May you bind unto yourself that strong name of Trinity, that strong love of God, the power to hold and lead you.  May you seek relationship with one another, dancing with one another and creating a world where love truly is the way.  This is what Kristen and I will pledge ourselves to on Saturday. This is the relationship I pray we will all pledge ourselves to as partners with God in this divine dance of the Three in One and One in Three.

Light the Fire

"When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."

--Acts 2: 1-4 

A little more than three years ago I came down to Asheboro, North Carolina to meet with the search committee from The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.  It was a pretty good meeting, considering that I'm here now, but to be honest, I still had a few more interviews with other churches to go, and Good Shepherd still needed time  to discern if I was the right person to call as their 15th rector.  So as I got ready to leave, the last thing I said to the search committee was, “We will all trust in the Spirit.  She rarely makes a mistake.”  I, for one, do not believe that she did.

A 12th century Bavarian fresco depicting the Trinity.  Note that the Holy Spirit is seen here as a woman.

Folks often wonder why I use the feminine pronoun to describe the Holy Spirit.  There’re theological reasons behind it, namely that Hebrew—the language Jesus read—and Aramaic—the language he spoke—use feminine words to describe the Holy Spirit, and if we go back to the writings of the Jewish Testament—namely the Wisdom books like the Psalms and Proverbs—we see spirit, breath, and wisdom, all feminine words, used to describe God.  But on a personal level using the feminine reminds me that God encompasses all genders, for God is pure love, and agape, the Greek word used by Jesus to describe the love that God embodies, the love that we are called to practice as followers of Jesus, is a feminine word.  So, yeah, I will always defend using ‘she’ when talking about the Holy Spirit.  

It is the Spirit that makes it possible for us to live out agape love. The Spirit inspires us with that love that we may go into the world and share it.  Such was the case on the Jewish festival of Pentecost long ago. Picture the scene:  the 12 apostles—it was 11, but now Matthias is counted among them—are huddled together in that upper room, utterly confused, filled with anticipatory anxiety of what is going to happen next now that Jesus has gone into heaven.  He said he would send an advocate, but what kind of advocate?  How will they know who this person is when she—or he—arrives?  We can feel the tension and we can understand because we have all been there.  We’ve all been in mourning for the losses we have experienced, afraid of what is coming next. And then…WOOSH!!  Like a mighty wind she blows through. This is the same holy breath that breathed on the waters of chaos and said, “Be still,” now blowing on them, but this time not bidding stillness, no, but filling them with agape love, which sets their hearts ablaze.  This is who drives those frightened 12 into the streets to tell everyone—regardless of where they were coming from or even what language they were speaking—of the life-giving, wonder-working, all-powerful love of Jesus Christ.  With the Spirit’s power igniting the hearts of all those gathered, the Church is born.  

An icon depicting the Day of Pentecost 

By now most of y’all have seen Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s homily at the Royal Wedding this past weekend.  I wondered if there might even be some folks who showed up to church on Sunday because they saw that homily and wanted to know more about this Episcopal Church thing that that preacher is connected with.  Bishop Curry’s message was simple and clear, yet it was powerful:  Imagine our world when love is the way, he said, no child would go to bed hungry, poverty would become history, and the world would be as a sanctuary.  We would treat one another as children of God, lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more, borrowing from that great African American spiritual.  All Episcopal clergy should be grateful to our Presiding Bishop for leading the charge and inspiring us to preach with such abandon last weekend, even if our messages were not quite up to his standard.  Nevertheless, the significance of his message cannot be overstated.  Here was a black American evangelical preaching in a chapel that survived the Norman conquest and two World Wars, surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of royalty, recalling slavery and the power of love to sustain and heal.  It was exactly what the whole world needed to see and hear on such an occasion.  You can watch the entire homily in the video at the bottom of this blog post.

We needed to be reminded of the power of love, and that, brothers and sisters, is exactly what Pentecost, the great feast we celebrated on Sunday, is about.  On this day the God of love lit a fire in the hearts of those men and women gathered in the streets of Jerusalem.  Do we dare let it happen again?  Do we dare let God’s fire burn in our hearts, so that we may, as Dr. King said, discover the redemptive power of love?  Like most churches, Good Shepherd wore red for Pentecost; after all, it is the color of the Holy Spirit and fire.  We also wear red on the feasts of the martyrs, those who died for their faith, but we do so less for the red of their blood spilled and more for the red of the passion with which they lived their lives of faith.  Our Pentecostal prayer for our parishes, our communities, and this whole great big world that Jesus loves so much is that we will be filled with that same passion and fire to go into the streets and to love with abandon.  Hal David and Burt Bacharach were right—what the world needs now is love, sweet love, for it is the only thing that there’s just too little of.  When we look at a world that is filled with so much violence, so much hatred, so many divisions of us and them, haves and have-nots, what we need now, more than ever, is the passionate and redemptive love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ. 

That’s the love that our Lord poured out on the cross, the love that the Advocate rained down upon the Jerusalem streets, the love that we pray may be poured out on us once more.  Bishop Curry paraphrased the 20th century Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in that same wedding homily, but the full quote goes like this:  

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”  

That fire lit up the world at creation and burned in the prophets who spoke of God’s justice rolling down like a waterfall upon the all people. That fire burst out of Jesus of Nazareth from every fiber of his being, and now, on yet another Pentecost, we pray that we too may harness that energy of love and once again discover the fire of God’s passion, mercy, and dream of shalom.  That’s what the Jesus Movement is all about, and what the Episcopal branch of that Movement is all about.  That’s what Bishop Curry preached on, and that’s why Esquire magazine (yes, Esquire!) was quoted as saying:  

"We really did not expect to get inspired by a Royal Wedding, but there you are; now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to join the Episcopal Church!”  

One headline echoing those sentiments called Bishop Curry's message about love "radical." It ain’t radical if it’s true!  What was preached on Saturday, is the power of of the love of God to break through into this world, inspiring and propelling us to be agents of that love to the broken and vulnerable, the wealthy and the powerful, and everyone in-between.

Pentecost marks the anniversary of the start of my ministry as rector of Good Shepherd.  I said to our folks on my first Pentecost with them that I did not know where the Spirit would lead us, and while I still don't know for sure, I do know that if we trust her we will get where God wants us to be.  That, I believe is true for all of us, no matter where we find ourselves in life.  If we trust the Holy Spirit and let love always be our guide, then whether we find ourselves in church buildings or out in that great big world, we will do the redemptive work that inches us ever closer to the Kingdom.  For if love is our guide, and if love is the fire that burns within us, then we cannot help but know that we are, all of us, children of God.  When we know it for ourselves, then we can know it for our brothers and sisters, and we can share it with them, and together we can set this world ablaze with God’s love and transform this old world into the new one that Jesus so often spoke of.  

Another Pentecost selfie with the fine folks of Good Shepherd, Asheboro

My prayer for all of us is that we will let the Spirit’s fire burn in us, empowering us for the work of ministry, the work of light and forgiveness in a dark and unforgiving world.  May you be filled with that fire, brothers and sisters, may love burn in you this day, and may you listen to and trust the Spirit.  She NEVER makes a mistake!

Here is the full homily from The Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop & Primate of the Episcopal Church, at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex

He Choo-Choo-Chooses You!!

'Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”'

--John 15: 9-17

When I hear or read this passage  I can't help but think of one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. In it Lisa offers a valentine to her classmate Ralph.  The card shows a crazy looking train with the tag line "I choo-choo-choose you!"  Well, that's Jesus folks, the one who will always choo-choo-choose us, even in the times when we don't choo-choo-choose him.

Pretty sure Jesus would have given out this Valentine.

Here in his Farewell Discourse, his last teaching to his disciples before his arrest and crucifxion, Jesus tells them that while they did not choose him, he chose them. He even goes so far as to call them friends. Think about that for a second. Plenty like Moses, David, and Joshua had been referred to as servants of God, but friends?!  That's pushing it. Still, that's the level of intimacy that Jesus offers his disciples. It is a friendship grounded on a commandment, a mandate--the very mandate we got on Maundy Thursday--to love one another.

Years ago when I was playing baseball in high school I had a coach tell the guys on my team, "You don't have to like each other, but you do have to love each other."  At first that didn't make any sense to us, but we came to figure out that, while we may not always get along or agree with each other, we did have to respect each other. We did have to know that we were in this thing together, and that we could count on each other when the chips were down. That's what it meant for our team, our community, to love one another.

This past weekend seven of our awesome youth from Good Shepherd came together to build community and abide in love at our spring lock-in. We played games like moonball, where we had to work together to keep a ball in the air as long as possible. We tried new methods and had to communicate with each other, but we managed to do it 30 times--a North Carolina record! We had a scavenger hunt around the church where we learned more of the fancy church names we use for stuff--like corporal and purificator--and in doing so grew in our identity as Episcopalians.  We learned more about each other through ice breaker games. And we worshipped together at a midnight mass in the chapel, where we heard this gospel.  At that worship our kids heard Jesus call them friends and heard him say to them, "I chose you."  I asked our kids what this gospel meant to them. These were some of their responses:

"I think Jesus is telling us that he wants to relate to us as an equal, that he comes to us like everyone else, not holding his power over us."

Another response:  "It's a two way street. Jesus does his work to befriend us, and we have to do the same thing."

And:  "Friendship with Jesus isn't something that's unattainable."

Our kids get it, y'all!

They get that what Jesus calls us into is friendship, not servanthood. It's not a relationship where we have to fear Jesus, but one in which we can lean on him, trusting that he is always there. What's more, he calls every single one of us into that kind of relationship for the purpose of not only being his friend, but holding and supporting one another in friendship as well. That means loving one another  even when we don't like one another. As we each build beloved community in our respective churches and towns we may not always agree, but we must always remember that we are in this thing together. It's true for our kids as they build their community together, and it's true for each of us as we discern who it is God is calling us to be in our communities of faith.

What I said to our kids last Friday night at that midnight mass, I say to you now:  remember that Jesus choo-choo-chooses you! Yes, there are times when we don't choose Jesus. It was true for the disciples, and it's true for all of us. We neglect others. We choose not to pray. We pass judgments based on the way someone looks or the decisions their made with their lives.  We mess up in every conceivable way.  Yet he still chooses us. He still chooses you. And he will.  Time and time again Jesus will choose you. Here's the best part:  there's nothing you can do to convince him otherwise. You can't earn it!  That's what grace is. You literally can't mess this friendship up!  We need only to believe it and to abide, as a branch abides in the root vine. When we abide in his love, when we realize that it is something that is freely given to us, then we are spurred into action to show his abiding love to a hurting world. When we realize Jesus has chosen us then we choose to be his hands and feet and heart to our community--in our churches, in our towns and cities, and in our world. When we realizeJesus has chosen broken, mistake-prone folks like us to be his friends, then we choose to number among our friends the poor, the outcast, and every kind of broken person the world would tell us to reject. But in order to do so we must first remember who we are:  friends of Jesus.

I wonder:  what does it mean to you to hear Jesus call you his friend?  What does it mean knowing that he choo-choo-chooses you?  For me it means knowing that no matter how many mistakes I make, he is always there, calling me to do nothing more than to abide in him and his love. It means freedom from the tyranny of what Martin Luther called the terrified conscience, wondering whether or not I am saved, because I know he has chosen me and will continue to do so again and again. And because I know, it means I am able to show his kind of love, the kind one cannot earn, the kind that's always available, to every person I meet. That what it means for me.  What about you?

As some of you know my all time favorite saint is Dame Julian of Norwich, whose feast day was Tuesday of this week. In a vision she once saw something the size of a hazelnut in the palm of God's hand and heard a voice saying to her, "This is everything I have made. And I made it all for love."  In a time of plague, war, and death, Dame Julian knew what it meant to be a friend of Jesus, what it meant to abide in his love, what it meant to know Jesus had chosen her. This is how, in spite of her hardships, she was able to hear Jesus say to her, "All manner of things will be well."  I was blessed to see how our kids knew that last Friday night, as they prayed, worshiped, and built community together--all for the love of Jesus and one another.  That love will stay with them, as the one who calls them friends will never leave them. And he will never leave you. He will always choo-choo-choose you. He will always love you, so that you can love one another, so that you can remember we are all in this thing together.  After all, that's what friends are for.

Dame Julian and the hazelnut. 

One Flock, One Shepherd

'Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”'

--John 10: 11-18

 Jesus and his pals at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at General Seminary

For years when I would hear the story of the Good Shepherd I would immediately think of my chapel at General Seminary—the Chapel of, you guessed it, the Good Shepherd.  At the front of the chapel, behind the altar, is a reredos with nine statues—Moses and Elijah on the outside, the four Gospel writers (two on each side), Peter on the left, Paul on the right, and in the middle is Jesus.  I called them Jesus and his pals.  Jesus stands there, holding a shepherd’s crozier and cradling a little baby lamb in his arms, while the mama sheep looks up from Jesus’ feet.  All of the other statues are looking in Jesus’ general direction, but he is focused on that little lamb, holding it to his chest, their eyes meeting.  He knows that lamb, knows its story, and has brought it home because, after all, he is the Good Shepherd. 

There is a lot of layers to that word shepherd for us Christians.  In a great many churches the spiritual leader is called the pastor, another word for a shepherd—except for us Episcopalians, who use the term 'rector', which means 'ruler', but that’s a different sermon!  Speaking of us Episcopalians, our very name is connected to the notion of shepherdship.  We we get our name from the fact that ‘episcopal’ means ‘bishop,’ and our name reflects the hierarchy of our church, with the bishops being the shepherds for a whole collection of churches, which is why our bishops carry those big shepherd croziers, just like the one Jesus has at my seminary chapel.  Oh, and how many rectors and pastors and bishops have you heard refer to their congregation as their flock?  Yeah, a bunch.

I find that fascinating, and a little disturbing.  For a person in my position to refer to the folks in y’all’s position as “my flock,” is to insinuate that I am somehow the shepherd of this flock.  The truth is that no pastor, no rector, no bishop—for that matter—is the shepherd of the flock.  That role belongs only to Jesus, who is the described as the Good Shepherd.  The Greek word used is kalos, which does not just mean that something is good, but rather that it has a quality about its goodness that makes it lovely, special, even holy.  That's the kind of shepherd Jesus is.  If anything, the rest of us are the Mediocre Shepherds.  We council and we administer sacraments, but we ourselves are flawed.  Too often we fall into the trap of trying to be perfect, trying to make everyone happy, trying to impress upon our clergy colleagues that our particular flock is the best, the one that finally figured this Christian thing out, the one that has absolutely no problems whatsoever!  And when we try to be perfect, guess what happens, our people try to be perfect.  That is a recipe for disaster!  The truth is that perfection is not the point of our Christian journey.  Discipleship is!  A disciple is one who follows, and that is what we are called to be—that’s all of us, you and me both!  Furthermore, discipleship begins with the realization that we are, all of us, part of this one great big wonderful flock with this one Good Shepherd, who calls us each by name, who lays down his life for us, and whose love and mercy for us endure forever! 

Many nights when we were in seminary my dog Casey and I would go into the Chapel of the Good Shepherd to pray or practice a sermon or to just vent to Jesus.  I would look up at that statue and so often wish that I were that lamb.  Oh how I wanted to just feel held in Jesus’ arms!  How I wanted my Good Shepherd to call me by name.  When the tears would start to well up a little in my eyes I could feel the telegraph on my heart:  “You are mine, Joe!  And I love you!”  I was that lamb all along.  Even now, as I continue to live into my role as the spiritual leader of a different Good Shepherd, I am reminded from time to time—in quiet prayer, while standing at the altar, or hearing our children and adult choirs sing—that I am still that lamb.  I am still held in the arms of my Good Shepherd, and I understand that so much of my call as a priest in his Church is to remind the people I meet that they, too, are that lamb in his arms.

A closeup of Jesus and the lamb at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd.

That includes you, brothers and sisters.  You are each the lamb in his arms, and he calls you each by name!  As he searched out that little lamb and brought it back home he has searched you out and will continue to bring you home whenever you are lost.  He lays down his life for you freely so that you can know what life really looks like, and what’s more, so that you can share the abundance of your life in him with those you meet.  He said there were sheep who did not belong to his flock, but that he would bring them also.  So much of the pain of this world is the result of the fences and walls that we have erected, keeping others out of our flock. We say that it is in the name of security, bur really it’s a lack of compassion and mercy and love—the very values our Good Shepherd lives out.  We see people everyday who are hurting, who are broken, who need a shepherd.  Imagine what would happen if we told them they were loved and treated them with that kind of love.  Imagine if we told them they were held in the arms of Jesus, that he calls them by name, and that his love has saved them.  Imagine if we built bridges instead of walls and invited them into his flock.  What kind of flock, what kind of beloved community, might we sheep create in the name of our Shepherd? 

I mentioned how I usually think of the chapel at General Seminary whenever I hear the story of the Good Shepherd, but over the last couple years I think of a different statue.  It sits in the columbarium of our church here in Asheboro.  It is still Jesus the Good Shepherd with his lambs, but there is no crozier or group of pals around him.  Instead, Jesus kneels down and meets his lambs where they are.  It's super vulnerable, and even a bit jarring to someone who sees it the first time.  But this vulnerable posture, I have found, is the very posture with which our shepherd meets us.  Perhaps it is there to show his sheep the way that we are to meet with one another.  

The Good Shepherd and his lambs in the columbarium of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro

You know, they say that sheep are pretty dumb animals, so it seems a bit funny that we would use such imagery to describe our lives as people of faith.  Yet in spite of their lack of intelligence the sheep listen to and follow their shepherd—they are disciples, if you will—and we are no different.  Discipleship does not mean expecting our mediocre shepherds and our church communities to be perfect.  We all make dumb decisions sometimes, after all.  Discipleship means remembering who we are, and whose we are.  Who we are is a part of the flock that is the family of God, and whose we are is Jesus Christ's, and there is nothing in this world that will ever take that away.  In spite of the divisions we see, the pain that we inflict on each other, and the bad news that we hear all the time, we will not stop proclaiming the Good News of love and mercy and salvation that belong to all people.  For we are all one flock with one Good Shepherd.