April 9, Palm Sunday

Deacon Sue Nebel

Palm Sunday.  The beginning of Holy Week.  A marker event in the life of the Church.  We do things differently on this day.  Today, instead of coming into the building through various doors to gather for worship in this space, we went to Puhlman Hall.  A place where we usually gather after the Sunday liturgy, not before.  A large crowd of us gathered there.  Noisy conversation, excited children—a sense of anticipation of what was to come.  After the palms were blessed and distributed, we headed out the door, parading along the sidewalk.  Singing “All Glory, Laud and Honor” and waving our palms.  We must have been quite a sight. People walking or driving along Wilmette Avenue couldn’t help but notice us.  Those familiar with Christian tradition probably nodded their heads, saying to themselves, ‘It must be Palm Sunday.’  Others may have simply wondered, ‘What in the world are those people doing?’

Good question.  What in the world are we doing?  We are remembering. We are remembering the story in the Gospel lesson that we just heard.  Jesus entering Jerusalem, riding on a colt.  Hailed by his followers as a king.  To remember something is to recall it, to relive it. To remember is to re-member, to become part of it.  We do it again and again in our lives.  Remembering, reliving events. Experiencing them again in all their detail. This desire to remember propels us to go on pilgrimagesto religious or historical sites.  To visit significant places in our family history.  We want to be in those places. be part of them, if only for a short time.  Claim their part in our own story. 

As we come to Palm Sunday and look ahead to Holy Week, we begin a process of re-membering.  Becoming part of the story of the last days of Jesus’ life.   We remembered Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with our own parade and rejoicing. We will do it again later in this service when we hear the Passion Gospel.  We will hear it read by several people, taking the roles of people in the story.  We will have our own active part. At the beginning of the service, we joined in in acclaiming Jesus as king.  In the Passion Gospel, we will be part of the crowd demanding that Jesus be crucified.  As we move forward through Holy Week, we will continue to re-member. A meal together. Foot-washing. Standing at the foot of the Cross

The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a joyous, seemingly triumphant event.  And yet, in the version from Luke that we heard this morning, there is an ominous note.  In the crowd are some Pharisees, members of the group that Jesus has confronted time and time again in his ministry.  Responding to their criticism, their arguments, their warnings.  Here in the midst this celebration of Jesus as king, they call out to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”  I think this is more than the usual objection raised by these leaders who want to preserve Jewish laws.  Maintain the status quo. I think the Pharisees are warning Jesus, “You are doing something dangerous.”  It is highly unlikely that this jublilant crowd, proclaiming Jesus as king has gone unnoticed by the Roman authorities.  The Gospel writer focuses on Jesus and his followers.  But is not hard to imagine soldiers or other officials of the ruling government lurking around the edges of this scene.  Taking note of the crowd, the words.  The potential threat to their power.

Our Palm Sunday parade this morning was a kind of public  event. We moved outside  of our building and processed to the church in demonstration of our faith.  We didn’t have to worry if the Wilmette police were hanging around to monitor our activity.  We were claiming a set of priorities, different from much of the world.  But we were hardly posing a threat to civic order.  Yet, this day has its own kind of ominous, dark tone to it.  The events in the world around us, especially those of this past week.  The use of chemical weapons in Syria.  The military action taken by the United States in response.  Heightened tension in the Mideast. A sense of uncertainty, even fear, about what might happen permeates the festive mood.  In the past few days, as I anticipated what we would do here this morning, I wondered to myself, ‘How can we participate in this joyful event in an atmosphere of concern and worry?’ Then I realized that people have been doing this for years, for generations.  Remembering. Being part of.  Entering into the story of Jesus, the stories of Holy Week.  The entry into Jerusalem. The last meal with the disciples.  Betrayal. Arrest and trial. Death.  People have done this in times of peace and prosperity. They have done it in the face of upheaval and conflict in the world. They have done it in spite of sadness, loss, or pain in their lives.  They have been faithful.  Journeying in solidarity with Jesus, as he moves through the final days of his life to the Cross. 

Today, we join with the long line of Christians who have made this journey throughout the years. Today, we—the faithful in this time and in this place--carry the tradition forward.  Holy Week is here.  Let the journey begin.

Palm Sunday; Year A

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11;  Luke 19:28-40

Passion Gospel: Matthew 26:14-27:66

April 2, the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Meghan Murphy-Gill

John 11:1-45

On Wednesday night this week, Andrew, Albie, and I got back from New Orleans, where we’d spent about eight days with our friends and their daughter. Over the course of our vacation, we’d wandered the streets of the Bywater neighborhood, taken streetcars to the gorgeous Garden District, and eaten a lot of 50-cent oysters.

We’ve known our friends for almost a decade and a half. I befriended them shortly after moving to Chicago. My friend was with me the night I met Andrew.

Our friends are atheists. They have been their whole lives. And when we first met, our faith intrigued them. They had lots of questions, asked through a sort of side-eye. Later on in our friendship, it threatened them. I know that because last year, my friend told me so.

She is one of my closest and oldest friends--and yet, with her, I explicitly avoid talking about faith, because I don’t want her to think I’m judging her. That’s what had threatened her in the past, and it caused a rift in our friendship. We didn’t talk for several years. But somehow, now God always comes up. That’s usually thanks to her.

For her, faith is totally nuts. So she has a lot of questions about how Andrew and I, who have so much in common with her and Tim, could have such fundamentally different belief systems. But she is into the idea that Jesus was someone who preached justice. She has hippie roots and and so enjoys the idea of Jesus as a sort of radical hero of the people. She recently confessed to me, because she knows how important this community has become to our family, that she wishes she had something similar--a group that regularly practices rituals that celebrate community and justice--just without the whole God part of it. “That’s fair,” I’ve told her. “But you’d probably be welcomed anyway into an Episcopal community if you really want all those things.”

The problem is not just that she doesn’t believe in God; she thinks central Christian beliefs are weird, if not potentially dangerous--particularly our belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. She worries that Christians are not concerned enough about this life we all share in. I think that to an extent, she’s right.

Freda and I found ourselves in another conversation about faith last week. We were soaking in a hot tub while our kids slept. The night air was cool. The oleander blossoms occasionally unmoored from their branches and fell softly from the tree arched above us. (It was seriously amazing.) We were sipping the Sazeracs I’d made everyone--probably how we ended up in such deep, theological conversation. As usual, we disagreed about a few things: I believe in God. God does not factor into her beliefs about the world. I believe that Jesus was more than a nice guy who lived about 2000 years ago. She’s not convinced.

But we agreed on most things, and especially this idea: This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

One of my favorite theologians, Edward Schillebeeckx once told a gathering of theologians: Extra mundum, nulla salus.  There is no salvation outside of the world. It’s a sort of retort to the conviction, “There is no salvation outside of the church,” a sentiment of breathtaking exclusivism once commonly held by the Roman Catholic Church that just doesn’t go very far in today’s modern world.

Schillebeeckx’s expression captures what one scholar calls his “grace-optimism.” He believed that it’s in creation and human life, where we encounter God.

When we love one another--through friendship--we embody God’s love. Friendship is then a sacrament of divine love. It offers us a glimpse into God’s love for the world.

Mary Catherine Hilkert wrote in America magazine after Schillebeeckx’s death that “These human ‘fragments of salvation,’ as [Schillebeeckx] called them, are a share in the final triumph of God’s grace, which was promised in a definitive way in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Christians are called to participate in the living story of Jesus by ‘writing a fifth Gospel with their lives.’”

In other words: This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

I wonder if this is why Jesus weeps for his friend Lazarus in today’s gospel. He knows this to be true. When Jesus dined with Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary had anointed Jesus with fine oil and her own hair. There is no question that Jesus enjoyed the richness of life, that his friendships were real.

Perhaps Jesus weeps because he knows his own death is imminent, that the day when he no longer eats and drinks with his friends in this life is coming. He was fully human, so it stands to reason that he was afraid, worried, and lonely in those fears. What confusing times those must have been for him leading up to his arrival in Jerusalem.

John tells us that Jesus was “greatly disturbed” when he arrives at the tomb. What specifically do you think was disturbing him at that moment? I’m not convinced he knew for sure he’d be performing any miracles that day. I think there was a lot of hemming and hawing on his part. But that when he came face to face with the reality that his friend was dead, in a tomb, he was moved.

And then he brought Lazarus, dead four days, back to life.

It’s an astonishing miracle. It’s so supernatural that it seemingly flies in the face a professed sacramental imagination.

But Jesus didn’t call Lazarus’ ghost or spirit out from the tomb.

He called out to Lazarus himself who walks out of the tomb smelling of the very death he has experienced and risen from. It is Lazarus in body and spirit. “Unbind him, and let him go,” Jesus commands.

This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

This is a profound, sacramental moment in the life of Jesus. He is revealing who he is. A grieving friend. A human person. And also God who is the source of life. This moment is sacramental because it offers us a glimpse into God’s love for the world.

“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus says to Martha.

Now, the friendship I share with my friend is not the same as seeing a someone raised from the dead. And to be honest, I’m a little wary of experiencing such a thing. But I believe. And in my friendship, I see the glory of God, not just in spite of our differences, but probably because of them.

March 26, the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

The Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 26, 2017

John 9:1-42

Don’t think of an elephant.

Okay, what are you thinking about right now?

That’s actually the title of a book I find pretty compelling, written some years ago by a linguist named George Lakoff. He writes about the way our minds create patterns of understanding, which he refers to as frames. Once that frame is set, all you need is one word or prompt to evoke whatever that frame is. So, my guess, you all have looked at a photo, or read a book, or visited the zoo, or gone on safari, and seen an elephant. Maybe you have even ridden one! When I was growing up, we had Packy the Pachyderm, our beloved elephant at the Oregon Zoo. Packy was born there in 1962, and we celebrated his birthday every year with a peanut butter-flavored birthday cake for everybody who came to the zoo. Whatever your own elephant story, you are very likely to already have a pattern, or a frame, which helps you to understand what that creature is. And that frame is probably so clearly set for you that even as I tell you not to think about an elephant, you’re thinking about one. Aren’t you?

Well, that’s the author’s point. And another of his points is that once you have that pattern of understanding set, it’s very, very difficult to change it. If someone tells you that elephants are tiny, or that they have fins and exists only under the water, or that they are carnivorous…you’re likely to dismiss that information. The more outrageous the statement, the more inconsistent with our version of reality, the more likely that each of us is not just to dismiss the information, but also, potentially, to dismiss the person who shares it with us.

And the more dear that a frame is to you – the more it says something important about who you are, or what is true about your family or the community you have chosen, or about the nature of the God you worship, or the way you live your life – the more likely, the author says, that you are to protect your frame. The more likely you are, and I am, to shut down the person or the thing that might disrupt what we believe to be true.

---

The frame of understanding that the disciples have in today’s gospel is that blindness is a kind of sacred punishment. Somebody has to be at fault, someone must be to blame, for this person to exist in this state of being. It makes things more logical, right? Because if someone has done something wrong, then their actions must carry some kind of divinely proportionate response. So, it follows, that if you don’t do something wrong, then you won’t face into that sort of consequence. Right? And so the chaos is managed. Right?

Well, no, actually. The disciples ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Then he goes about the messy work of restoring the man’s sight, with spit and dirt and a pool called Sent. And as the man begins to see, the disciples lose sight of their frame – because the one that would call him a sinner no longer holds.

---

The neighbors and other folks in the community have only known this man as blind. They understand him as a blind man who begs. And that frame is so firmly set that they don’t even recognize the man who has received his sight – even when he tells them who he is.

“Isn’t this the man who used to beg?” they ask.

And some say yes, and others say, “No, it is someone like him.”

He says, “I am the man.” He says it again. He says it again.

The people ask, “How were your eyes opened?” And he tells them.

“Where is the man who did this?” they ask.

Without having Jesus there, without seeing the miracle for themselves, will they risk this scandal of trust? Will they trade their old frame for a new one?

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The Pharisees love the law. They believe it to be a gift from God, and they claim Moses’ authority as they interpret those 613 commandments, the commandments that have been handed down from generation to generation. These are the frame that God has given the people Israel, the Pharisees believe, these are a guide and an explanation of how to live righteous and faithful lives.

It turns out that the day that Jesus spread mud made from dirt and his own spit on the man’s eyes, was actually the Sabbath. And one of the most important of those 613 commandments, in fact one of the very special 10 commandments, is the one that calls people to set aside one day every week for rest and worship and study.

But not, apparently, for the doing of miracles.

When the neighbors and those who have seen the man born blind as a beggar bring him to the Pharisees, the Pharisees ask the same questions of the man that his neighbors have already asked. But instead of asking where the miracle-working man is, the Pharisees cast doubt: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others ask: “How can a man who is a sinner do such things?”

Holy people follow the rules. Sinners are the ones who break them.

The frame is set, and so the chaos is managed. Right?

To preserve their understanding, the Pharisees need Jesus to be the villain of this story – they need for him to be the problem, the rule-breaker, the sinner…and never, never the hero.[1]

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Even the man’s own parents distance themselves from this miracle that defies understanding. When the authorities call them forward, they claim their son, at least, but not the transformation that now makes him dangerous.

The parents are afraid. They live in a community governed by a frame that says the Pharisees’ authority holds, that living according to the rules of Torah reflects righteousness. They recognize that anyone who calls Jesus the savior will be cast out of the life that they know. So when it comes down to it, they “put their own safety ahead of his welfare.”[2]

“We know that he is our son, and we know that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that he can see now, and we do not know who made it possible. Ask him!” they say.

---

Almost everyone fails the man born blind, from the disciples who want to blame him as a sinner, to the community that doesn’t recognize him because he is no longer dependent, to the religious leaders who want to condemn Jesus for transforming in a way that doesn’t square with their practice, to his own parents who abandon him even as they seek to protect their own well-being.[3]

The only two figures who remain steadfast in this story are Jesus, and the man whose sight has been restored. He tells the truth and he tells the truth and he tells the truth again.

“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” the authorities ask. And they drive him out of the synagogue.

---

Chaos is a scary thing. And our frames of understanding become dear to us indeed.

In the end, Jesus learns what has happened. He goes to find the man whose eyes he smeared on the Sabbath, and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man whose sight has been restored answers, “Tell me who he is, so that I can believe in him.” Jesus responds, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.”

“Lord, I believe,” the man says.

---

Jesus never promises us that we will not face chaos. Boats find their way into storms, people we love get sick and die, temptation confronts us in spaces of wilderness. There is never a divine promise that we get to avoid the scary stuff of this life; stuff that shows us time and again that we are vulnerable, that we are, in fact, not immortal.

I think that in this story Jesus destroys the frames people have set because, finally, our frames will not protect us from the chaos, either.

But God so loves the world that he comes into it. In the person of Jesus, God comes into the chaos. In this story, he spits into dirt and uses the mud he has made to help a person see. In another, he promises living water. Soon, he will raise the dead.

And soon again, he will pick up his cross.

[1] Deborah Kapp. “Pastoral Reflection,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2010: 118.

[2] ibid, 120

[3] ibid, 120

March 19, the Third Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

The Third Sunday in Lent – March 19, 2017

St. Augustine’s Church

John 4:5-42

They’re not supposed to talk to each other.

That rule might be more regularly observed today, right now, even, in this political and religious climate, than it is by Jesus, back in the day that finds him headed to Galilee from Judea, by way of Samaria.

This conversation takes place in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, at a public place. It stands in contrast with the exchange Jesus has in last week’s gospel, which takes place at night, in private. And this time, instead of a respected Pharisee named Nicodemus, Jesus talks with a woman, a Samaritan woman whose name we don’t know.

Conversations change us; or they can, anyway. They have the power to change what we believe – to change our minds, to change our hearts, to build connection. “In John’s gospel, (believing) is synonymous with relationship.”[1] You can’t have one without the other. And conversations pave the pathway to that taking place.

So it’s the middle of the day, and Jesus is tired out from the walk, so he sits down at the well as his disciples go to try to find some food.

The unnamed Samaritan woman comes to draw water. Jesus asks her – commands her, really – to give him a drink.

The text tells us that Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common. So she asks him a question, her own equivalent of Nicodemus’ “How can this be?” from last week. Jesus responds with a statement as confounding as what he said to Nicodemus. His answer draws her farther into a conversation that I can’t imagine she expected to have, when she left home earlier that day with her empty water jar.

He tells her to call her husband. She responds that she doesn’t have one. He answers already knowing that, knowing what she has not shared – that actually she has had five husbands, that she is not married to the man she is with now.

She calls him a prophet, and she asks about worshiping in Jerusalem instead of on the mountain that her people, the Samaritans, hold sacred. He calls her to worship in spirit and in truth.

She mentions the Messiah. “I am he,” Jesus says.

Just then, the disciples return. And they are astonished.

---

Look at where this conversation begins: “from a place of reciprocal vulnerability.”[2] Jesus is tired and alone. He needs a drink of water, but doesn’t have a cup or a bucket. The woman whose name we don’t know has been left alone five times. She longs for the water that Jesus promises, water that means she’ll never be thirsty again.

Look at the questions she asks. These are not questions with foregone conclusions. These questions reveal a curious mind and an open heart on the part of the woman who asks them. She is willing to ask without knowing. Her questions invite Jesus farther into the conversation. Her questions lead Jesus to reveal his identity to her.

And look at the time they take. Some conversations never even get started, because the rules of convention or engagement or personal protection prevent them from happening. And there is so much evidence to prove that this would have been – maybe should have been – a conversation that never took place. “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans,” the gospel passage tells us. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask of me, a Samaritan?” the woman challenges. The whole thing is as confounding as looking down into the depths of that well. But they take the time it takes. And the scandal of that fact is something we see revealed in the disciples’ reaction on their return. They are astonished, the text tells us. They want to know why he is speaking to her, the text tells us…but the disciples apparently don’t want to know enough to actually ask, because they don’t. That's the conversation that doesn’t get off the ground here.

Finally, look for surprise. The first time that Jesus reveals his identity as Messiah in all of John’s gospel is not to his disciples, or to the high priests, or to the crowds he teaches, or to his family, or to his closest, most faithful friends. The first time in the Gospel of John when Jesus reveals his identity as Messiah is to a woman considered so insignificant by whoever first told this version of the story that they didn’t even bother to find out her name; and not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman; and not just a Samaritan woman, but one who has been married and left and married and left, five times. Jesus shares the good news of who he is, with her. For God so loves the world.

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Think of the conversations that have changed your own heart and your mind, that have created the foundations from which new relationships have grown in your life. What were the ways you found yourself willing to be vulnerable, to hold that space with the other person or other people who were willing to do the same? What questions did you ask, or respond to, without forced or assumed answers? What kind of time did you take? The best conversations can feel like time outside of time, in my experience. Is that how you’ve experienced them too? What surprised you? How were you changed?

It seems to me that we could do with more of these kinds of conversations in our lives and in our shared life, right now. It seems to me that we would be blessed by spaces of reciprocal vulnerability, by questions we really do want to know the answers to, by the gift of time together, by the kind of surprise that we can hold as sacred. It seems to me that there’s not enough of any of those things in our lives and in our shared life right now.

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They’re not supposed to talk to each other, Jesus and the Samaritan woman. But they do, scandalized disciples notwithstanding. And the Samaritan woman is changed, because of it. And it’s not just her – the Samaritan woman’s whole community is changed, because of it.

She leaves her water jar at the well and goes back into the city, where she says to the people, “Come and see. Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Can he be the Messiah?” And they do come and see. They believe in him, because of what she says. They ask him to stay, and he does. And as they come and see and hear what he says, more people believe. “We have heard for ourselves,” they say, “and we know that this is the Savior.”

They’re not supposed to talk to each other.

And she is changed; they are changed; we are changed, because they do.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4839 Thanks to Karoline Lewis for the frame she set in her column this week, which informed the structure and content of this sermon.

[2] ibid

March 12, the Second Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17

This past Tuesday morning, I was supposed to be in the city for a meeting at the Diocesan Center.

But I couldn’t get there. Not the way I thought I would, anyway.

When I tried to turn onto Sheridan Road from Evanston, it was blocked. So I turned another way, couldn’t get through to the main roads by that route, either. There were police officers everywhere, it seemed, and helicopters pulsed the air overhead. Every place in Edgewater was jammed up. I tried to keep going and turning where I could, gave thanks for the fact that Siri has a better sense of direction than I do. I wondered and wondered again what was going on.

Eventually, I learned, as you likely know, that it was a bomb threat. It was a bomb threat against children at the Jewish Day School…a bomb threat against the teachers and staff who serve there…a threat against everybody in that neighborhood and in this city who expected to be able to go about their everyday lives on a Tuesday morning.

---

We don’t know much about Abram in the time before God calls to him in today’s first lesson. The twelfth chapter in the book of Genesis picks up after a long genealogy that includes explanations of who lived where and for how long, who their children were, and so on, all the way down to Abram. So we know Abram has family, and we know he lives in a place called Haran, which, it turns out means “crossroads.”

And we know that God tells Abram to leave all that.

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” God says.

To the land that I will show you?!

“I will bless you…so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the ones who curse you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

“So,” the text tells us, “Abram went.”

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Nicodemus goes to Jesus at night, in today’s gospel reading. The time of day matters, in John’s gospel. Maybe it’s because Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and so he approaches Jesus on the sly in the hope that no one will see him go. Maybe it’s about the symbolic confusion of darkness, as opposed to the clarity of light. Or maybe it’s as simple as the fact that evening is the traditional time to study Torah. Whatever the reason, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. And what follows is a conversation that involves Nicodemus – who is clearly a smart guy – basically saying, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. How can this be?” …And it involves Jesus says a series of things in response that are perhaps not super-helpful in moving Nicodemus toward that understanding he seeks.

After that comes this well-known and frequently-memorized verse, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” That verse is followed by another, not-so-well-known or well-memorized verse: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

So we have the first reading, in which God calls an unknown and imperfect man named Abram, standing at a crossroads, who will be known as Abraham and celebrated as the father of faith. God calls him to give up what he knows in favor of the blessing that God promises.[1]

And we have a gospel story between a smart Pharisee and the Savior, in which Nicodemus asks: “What are you about?” and Jesus responds: “Love. God’s insistent love for you and for the whole world.”

Even though John 3:16 can get used to generalize, or as a litmus test about who’s in and who’s out, God’s story of love is always particular. “For God so loved the world…” happens person by person by person. God loves Adam when he breathes the first breath into him. And God loves Eve and Adam, offering them clothes as protection when they have to leave the Garden. God loves Noah, and his family, and all those animals as they board the boat. God loves David, the youngest son out taking care of the sheep, who will become a great king. God loves Mary, who says Yes. And God loves Martha, who fusses over dinner. God loves the disciples as they come, one by one, to follow Jesus. God loves the paralyzed man by the pool with nobody to help him in. And God loves the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. God loves Peter, even as he swears an oath and says for the third time before dawn: “I do not know the man.” And God loves Mary Magdalene, who stands confused at the tomb, until she hears Jesus say her name.

God loves them all. God blesses them as a blessing.

And so I hold these passages, and the lessons that they have for us. I claim their authority for a world that needs to know right know that God’s repetitive and insistent message is not condemnation, but love…that God’s pervading promise is blessing and salvation.

I hold these passages in trust that God’s story of love is every bit as particular right now as it is throughout the stories of the Bible.[2] Because if it is, then “For God so loved the world…” means that God loves the refugee dad doing everything he knows how to do, to help his family survive as strangers in a new life. It means that God loves the lesbian student who is living into her identity. It means God loves the woman who was shamed by a judge in court. It means God loves the man who used to get by doing construction work, and can’t anymore. It means God loves the Lakota Sioux chief who chants today, right now, even, in front of the Washington Monument.

“For God so loved the world…” has to mean, this week, that God loves every single child who had to leave their classroom at the Jewish Day School in Edgewater on Tuesday morning, and that God loves every single officer who ensured their safe return.

“I will bless those who bless you,” God says. “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

People of St. Augustine’s Church, I call you to live as the theologians you are.

I call you to look for the God Sightings in your lives that show forth divine and insistent actions of blessing and love.

I call you to claim those moments, and witness them to a world that knows too much of condemnation and terror and isolation and sneering cynicism.

In your words and in your actions, I call you to proclaim release from those things we know too much, from all that would separate us from one another and from God. I call you to insist on God’s promise, with us and for us.

Because God so loves the world. Because in you all the earth will be blessed.

[1] Donald P. Olson “Genesis: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Volume 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 52.

[2] Thanks to Karoline Lewis for her column this week that framed the idea for much of this sermon: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=4835

March 5, The First Sunday in Lent

Deacon Sue Nebel

The first Sunday in Lent.  A new season in the Church year.  New colors.  New patterns in the liturgy. The changes in Lent are particularly striking.  Not only do we change colors—from the bright, bold green of the Epiphany Season to the plainer, simpler beige and oxblood.  We strip the worship space down.  Everything is simpler.  o altar hangings.  No flowers.  Less music. For communion, glass chalices instead of silver.  And, of course, we put the joyful Alleluias away.  We will not hear them again until Easter.  Most of the seasons in our Church year begin with the celebration of a significant event in the life of Jesus and the life of the Church: Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost.  The seasons then continue for several weeks, or in the case of Pentecost, a long stretch of months.  Not so with Lent.  Lent begins in the middle of the week.  Quietly, without fanfare and celebration. Ash Wednesday. A simple service.  The mark of ashes on our foreheads.  A stark, gritty reminder of our beginning and our end: dust. With that, we enter into this season of forty days—actually more than forty, when you add in the Sundays.

In the Ash Wednesday liturgy, the priest invites us into the observance of a holy Lent. A time to focus on ourselves.  Ourselves in the core relationship of our lives: our relationship to God. It is a relationship marked by movement.  Closeness and distance.  Drawing near and pulling away. Lent is a time when we acknowledge the things that draw us away from God.  We make intentional efforts to turn away from them.  We try to simplify our lives.  Perhaps moving at a slower pace, maintaining a simpler diet.  Making an effort to get rid of unneeded things, clutter.  Resolving to spend less time on the Internet or social media. Lent is a time when are intentional about drawing closer to God. Strengthening and deepening our faith.  Carving out periods of quiet time and space in our daily lives.  Trying a new spiritual discipline..  Engaging in study and reading.  

On this first Sunday in Lent, we are a starting point, the beginning of a new part of our journeyOur readings for this day give us stories of other beginnings, other starting points in the human story. The first reading takes us back to Genesis, to Creation.  God has created the first human beings, man and woman, and placed them  in the Garden of Eden.  There, God tells them, they may eat from any of the trees, except one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It starts out so well.  These new beings, in harmony with God, surrounded by abundance and goodness.  Then the serpent intervenes. He convinces the woman that, if she eats the fruit from the forbidden tree, she will become like God.  Heeding that voice, she eats and then shares the fruit with the man.  In that moment, they see themselves with new eyes, as naked.  They feel shame and cover themselves. The close and harmonious relationship with God has been broken. They listened to a voice that was not God. A power working against the purposes of God.   

We hear the voice of temptation again in the Gospel lesson. This time it is the voice of the devil himself.  This encounter takes place in the wilderness, a place where Jesus has gone immediately after his baptism.  After forty days of fasting, he is famished.  The devil appear, ready to test Jesus and, no doubt, stop him before he can begin his ministry.  He begins by hurling challenges at Jesus.  First, appealing to his weakened, famished state, the devil commands Jesus to turn stones into bread.  When that doesn’t work, the devil dares Jesus to throw himself down from the high pinnacle of the Temple and trust that God will send angels to rescue him.  No, Jesus responds, he will not test God. Finally, the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain where he can see the kingdoms of the world.  Worship me, the devil tells him, and all this is yours.  Once again, Jesus refuses.  He will not listen to this voice.  He will remain faithful.  He will serve only God. 

What we get in this Gospel reading is a bare bones account of this dramatic confrontation.  We are told that Jesus has been in the wilderness for forty days, but we hear nothing about what those days were like for him, except that he fasted.  Three temptations from the devil. Each time Jesus responds with a line from Hebrew Scripture.  The writers of the Gospels are really good at reporting. They are not so great at fleshing out the details.

 The name Anne Rice may be familiar to some of you.  She is probably best known for her novels about vampires.  What is not so well known is that she wrote two historical novels about Jesus’ early life.  Based on solid study of Scripture and scholarship, she approaches Jesus’ struggle to come to terms with who and what he is with the eyes of a story- teller. In Christ Jesus: The Road to Cana, Rice devotes an entire chapter to the encounter between Jesus and the devil.  I want to share a few highlights with you.  .

Rice describes Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness in detail.  It is a bleak, difficult time.  Jesus struggles with physical hardship: cold and wind He sleeps in dark, damp caves.  He is besieged by many voices in his head, all competing for his attention. When the time in the wilderness nears its end, Jesus is bedraggled.  His clothes are rags, his sandals falling apart. But Rice makes it clear that, at his point, Jesus knows clearly, and affirms, that he is God.  The voice he must listen to is the voice of God within him.  When the devil dares him to turn stones to bread, Jesus imagines steaming, freshly-baked bread.  He can smell it.  He can taste it.  He nearly faints, but still resists the temptation to give into his hunger.  In Rice’s novel, Jesus’ responses to the devils’ challenges go way beyond quotes from Scripture.  In fact, the devil mocks him when he uses the words of others.  What the devil gets is engagement in full-blown theological arguments with Jesus.  I will not go into detail. They are quite long.  But I will tell you that the verbal sparring provides a strong sense of what is at stake for the devil. How much he has to lose in this confrontation with Jesus.

What was most striking to me in Rice’s treatment of the encounter in the wilderness is the devil himself.  I had always thought of this story taking place in a sort of semi-darkness.  The devil a dark, shadowy figure at the edges.  Not so in the novel.  The sun is shining.  The devil is a young, handsome man.  Here is what Jesus sees:

He was about my height, and beautifully garbed. . .like the figure of the King.

He wore a linen tunic, embroidered with a border of green leaves and red

flowers, each little floret glistening with gold thread. The border of his white

mantle was even thicker, richer, woven as the mantles of the Priests are woven,

and hung even with tiny gold bells.  His sandals were covered with gleaming

buckles.  And around his waist he wore a thick leather girdle studded with

bronze points, as a soldier might wear. Indeed a sword in a jeweled scabbard

hung at his side.  His hair was long and lustrous, a deep rich brown.  And so were

his soft eyes. [p. 185]

This is a disguise, part of the devil’s strategy.  He comes to Jesus, appearing as Jesus would look as a man at the height of worldly power and riches.  This, he tells Jesus, is what you could be.  The idea of being God is a delusion.  Abandon that.  Jesus, as we know from the Gospel, will not fall for this.  He is solidly grounded in the knowledge of who is: the Son of God. Steadfast and faithful, he is ready to leave the wilderness and begin his journey of ministry.  

As we begin our Lenten journey, individually and in community, I invite you to take these stories with you.  Hold onto them.  Make them part of you.  Embrace yourselves as children of God. Desiring to be in close relationship with God.  Yet prone to desires and actions that draw you away from God.  Claim yourselves as followers of Jesus.  Affirm the belief that God is at the center, the core of each of us.  God at work in the world through us is the strongest power of all.  Let us acknowledge that the life we have chosen, the life of discipleship is challenging.  But we will keep at it.  Step by step.  Day by day. 

And so, this day, as we move forward together into a new season, I wish you a holy Lent.

Lent 1; Year A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

February 26, The Feast of the Transfiguration

Kristin White

Matthew 17:1-9

 It is good for us to be here.

We’re a meaning-making people, I believe, ready to put to work the intellects that God has given us. Maybe this is amplified by the fact that I’m a preacher, that seemingly everything is potential material, but I am constantly walking around and trying to interpret what is happening – in the world, in my own life – to fit those pieces to an arc that will hang together, one that will in some way make sense, offer something to share, something to learn.

I left in January for an almost-two-week pilgrimage to the Holy Land with no idea of what to expect. In the company of almost 40 meaning-making colleagues, most of them priests, four bishops, one deacon…all of us accustomed to leading, in our own way, all of us used to being responsible, all of us prepared to interpret.

From the time even before our plane left Newark for Tel Aviv, two things became clear to me on this pilgrimage: 1) I was not in charge. And 2) I had no idea what all this would mean.

Our flight was delayed in leaving the States, and the group flying from the West Coast was affected by the storms there, so the reshuffling really began before the pilgrimage did. But, a little punchy with a lack of sleep, and with the customary good-natured awkwardness of people who don’t yet know each other well, we found our way.

Each site we visited had a kind of order to it. We would go to the place, hear for a few minutes from our guide Ghassan about what it was, about the historical significance, and his confidence of its authenticity (or not). And then we would celebrate a simple liturgy: someone would read a passage from the Bible that related to that place, we would sing a hymn, and conclude with a prayer. And then we would have about 10 minutes to look around and take pictures, before getting back on the bus and going on to the next site. We did that five or six times a day, with a break for lunch and dinner, some time for fellowship in the evening, and then enough sleep to wake up and do it all again the next day.

We went to Mount Tabor at the end of our first full day in Israel, believed by the western church to be the place of the Transfiguration in today’s gospel.

It’s an actual mountain, such that we weren’t able to stay in our regular tour bus and get to the top of it. Instead, we got out of our big bus and into little mini-buses, driven by guys who drive those little busses up and down that mountain all day every day…which gives them an ease of speed and a confidence at taking those hairpin switchback curves leading to the top and to the base…it was a kind of ease and confidence that I, as a passenger, did not experience.

But we arrived. And it was good for us to be there. This was one of the places that had been reshuffled – we were supposed to have gone the day before, but it had all been moved and sandwiched into the next day after our delay. It was the end of the day, so we had to hustle a bit through the liturgy before the church was closed for the evening, had to jockey with other groups for space. And then it was dark, and we were all going in separate buses when it was time to leave. I found out later that my friend Kate had waited for the last bus, watching for me because she was worried I’d be left behind (I had gotten on the first bus, because I was worried about being left behind…both of us shared concerns about my questionable navigation skills without benefit of the group and our guide).

I can tell you we drank fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice at a stand in the parking lot while we waited for the buses. I can tell you that the voices of 37 fellow pilgrims who would become my friends over those next 11 days, singing harmony under the dome of that church, took my breath away.

I can tell you two things: 1) I was not in charge, and 2) I still don’t know what it all means.

And it was good for us to be there.

Jesus leads Peter and James and John up that same high mountain in today’s gospel. His face shines. His clothes are the brightest white. He talks with Moses and Elijah, who are there with him.

“It is good for us to be here…” Peter begins, and he keeps going.

And then they’re all enfolded in a bright cloud. (When has a cloud ever been bright, in your experience?)

Within the cloud, a voice: “This is my son, the beloved, with him I am well-pleased. Listen to him!”

Peter and James and John fall down, terrified. Jesus tells them to get up, says that thing that Jesus says: “Do not be afraid.” It’s just him with them now. Moses and Elijah are gone.

As they come down the mountain, Jesus tells them not to tell anyone about this, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.

What was that like for Peter and James and John, can you imagine? Just the walking up that high mountain is no small thing, and then all that they see in the vision, the bright cloud and the voice inside of it, the falling-down terror and then Jesus’ call: Do not be afraid…the command not to talk about it until some mysterious date in the future, which also defies explanation and understanding. What would they even say?

And yet. It was good for them to be there.

What I can tell you is that there was blessing to be found in not being in charge for those two weeks. There was blessing to be found in not being responsible to interpret, to make meaning.

Because instead, we pilgrims had the chance to encounter: places that I had only ever known by chapter and verse. I can tell you about the frescoes inside the dome of the Church of the Transfiguration. I can tell you about one of the first women bishops of the Church leading our celebration of Eucharist on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, at the place where we believe Jesus told his disciples: “You give them something to eat”. I can tell you that there’s a divider through the middle of the muddy Jordan River which serves as a border between the countries of Jordan and Israel, one that soldiers patrolled the baptismal site on both sides with machine guns, and that doves flew over our heads as we renewed our promises: “I will, with God’s help”. I can tell you about the 2,000-year-old olive tree I saw in the Garden of Gethsemane. I can tell you that on January 20, I laid my forehead against the Western Wall and prayed, and wept.

And we had the chance to encounter people: five of us staked out the very back seats of our bus by the third or fourth day; we would sit and talk together for the rest of the trip. I could tell you about Ghassan, our guide, an Israeli Christian who grew up in the Old City of Jerusalem. Christians are a minority of only 2% there now, and Ghassan’s family has lived in Jerusalem for more generations than I know. But he said that the times are so hard for his family there, that he would leave with them tomorrow if he could. I could tell you about the teenage Muslim girls we met at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron. Someone in the group asked permission to take their photo. They agreed, asked that we send it to them. The girls smiled to each other as we left, and said, “We’re going to be on Facebook.”

There hasn’t been too much time to think, in the weeks since I’ve been home, but once in a while I have wondered if the need to make meaning, the need to be responsible, might keep us from entering the bright cloud of encounter. I wonder what blessing might come of our willingness to suspend that need for a time. I wonder how we might be changed, because of it.

Those disciples saw something dazzling and profound, there with each other and with Jesus. They saw something they did not understand and could not explain. They were terrified. Whatever came next, their lives would be changed forever by what happened on that mountain.

And yes: it was good for them to be there.

February 18, The Burial of the Rev. F. Richard Adams

Kristin White

The Funeral of the Rev. F. Richard Adams – February 18, 2017

St. Augustine’s Church

Luke 24:13-35

Allison Jacobs is six years old. She has known Richard Adams all her life. In fact, her mom Amy grew up at this parish, and she used to babysit Richard’s children. And Richard’s children would grow up to babysit Allison and her older sister Emma.

Allison is one of our resident theologians here at St. Augustine’s. She thinks a lot about God and people, and a good part of one wall in my office is dedicated to her illustrations on those subjects. As she and her mom drove to church the Sunday before last, Allison and Amy must have been talking about life and death and God and Mr. Adams.

I stand outside most Sunday mornings to say hello as folks come to church. Allison started sharing her thoughts with me from the moment her car door opened, while she was still on the other side of the street.

“Rev. Kristin, I think God gives everybody two hearts,” she said. “God gives us one heart to beat and to keep us alive. And God gives us the other heart to love.

“Rev. Kristin, I think God gave Mr. Adams the biggest heart of all,” she said.

---

 “Did not our hearts burn within us?” the disciples ask in the gospel lesson that Richard chose months ago, to be read at this service, on this day.

As they say it, those disciples are filled with – what – joy and wonder and awe? – at the glimpse of a moment, when they see Jesus and recognize that it’s him…and then he’s gone.

But that is not how this story starts out. This gospel story begins at the point of heartbreak. Jesus died on the cross three days before. The sky went black, the curtain at the Temple tore in half from top to bottom.

These two followers of his are walking from Jerusalem to a nearby town called Emmaus. They meet a stranger, not recognizing that it’s Jesus. The stranger sees these two sad men and asks them what they’re talking about as they walk.

“Are you the only one who doesn’t know?” they ask, and then they tell him…about himself: the cross and the tomb and the three days.

“But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they say. Can you hear the heartbreak in their words? Have you said those words? I have. I have said them as I rubbed my fingers together, clutching after something that wasn’t mine to hold. “We had hoped,” they say. "We had hoped."

The disciples go on to tell the stranger about the women, that morning, and their vision and the angels and the confusion. The stranger calls them foolish, and then he goes on to teach them about Moses and the prophets.

As they get to the village, the disciples ask him to stay. And he does. As they sit at the table, he picks up a loaf of bread. He blesses it, and breaks it. And they know. And then he’s gone.

---

The Rev. Frank Richard Adams lived life with a great big heart. He knew the kind of heartbreak that causes a person rub his fingers together, clutching after something that isn’t his to hold onto. And he knew what it was to feel such awe and wonder and joy that his heart burned within him.

I met Richard through his words before I met him in person. Richard, together with Allison’s mother Amy, crafted St. Augustine’s Parish Profile, the document describing St. A’s as this church searched for a new rector, now more than five years ago. A friend of mine had a copy of the profile. He gave it to me, saying “This is your church.” I read it. And it was. And it is.

Richard was one of the very first St. A's people I met, when he came to interview me at my former parish, and then again when I continued in the process here.

Writing was a vocation of his, but surely not the only one. In December of 2015, Richard’s long dream of being ordained to serve as a deacon of the church became reality.

A deacon’s role is to interpret the needs of the world to the church, calling us to action and service. Richard used his vocation as a writer in his ministry among people who had been incarcerated. He helped them write their way out, and back into a world outside the prison walls, through his work with St. Leonard’s Ministries. He spoke with candor and hope about his life in recovery, inviting others to live into their own. He served alongside the Rev. Ed Bird at St. Andrew’s Church, which stands right next to St. Leonard’s House. He served for as long as he was physically able to. And for as long as he was able, he read the gospel lesson at our Friday morning celebration here in St. Augustine’s chapel.

All of these were sources of joy for Richard. But the greatest reason that his very big heart burned with awe and wonder was his family. Susie and Luke and Ted and Jonathan and Sarah and Katie, your dad loved you so very much. He delighted in you. He was so proud of you, of your families, of your children – his grandchildren.

Richard called me at the end of January, the day after his Katie, as he called you, was engaged to be married. He had fallen a few days before, was in a care center trying to regain his strength. He was so excited that Katie and Sebastian hoped to be married right here at St. A’s. He told me he was looking forward to getting stronger, to coming back to church.

Oh, Richard. We had hoped.

It would be our last real conversation. A few days later, Richard was admitted to Intensive Care. His children and grandchildren and friends all surrounded him, kept vigil at the hospital, at his bedside.

The Saturday before he died, Katie and Sarah asked me to come and pray. As we said Amen, Richard’s oxygen alarms began to sound. He knew. I would come back later that night to pray Last Rites. He prayed the Lord’s Prayer along with us. The words of that prayer would be his last. And three days later, he was gone.

“Did not our hearts burn within us?” the disciples ask.

Listen and watch for those moments of awe and joy and wonder, the all-too-fleeting glimpses of recognition that come as we walk this journey, as we share in fellowship. Come back to them. Come back, and come back again. Come back once more, and keep coming.

You are here today because you have known or learned from or been loved by a man with a very big heart – a heart that had been broken, a heart that burned with joy.

How does your own heart beat within you more strongly now, because of it? How has your own heart grown to love even more?