August 2, Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; John 6:24-35

Bryan Cones

As I was reflecting this week on today’s passage from Exodus, I couldn’t help but think of another “feeding story” of sorts, this one less miraculous. This one’s not in the Bible though, but part of another “canon”: the Hunger Games trilogy for young adults by Suzanne Collins.

The scene I’m thinking of comes as the heroes Katniss and Peeta are coming to the end of their “victory” tour after surviving their first trip to the arena, which culminates in a grand banquet at the presidential palace. The juxtaposition of the poverty and unrest of the districts, and the starvation in their own District 9, and the conspicuous consumption of the Capital is put in sharp relief by that feast. Those few invited to the party, eager to taste every delicacy, routinely consume a beverage that causes them to expel what they’ve already eaten—blessedly off camera—so that they can begin again. The Capital embodies a hunger and thirst that can never be satisfied. Katniss and Peeta are repulsed at the obscene behavior—as the author means us to be as well.

What a contrast to the story of the Exodus: Having just escaped an ancient equivalent of the Capital, the Israelites are now beginning to miss the “fleshpots,” the slave food that their Egyptian masters provided. God responds with free food for a free people, the miracle of the quail and manna—sustenance that rains down from heaven falling on all the people equally, providing what today’s psalm calls the “bread of angels,” which is “food enough” for everyone says the psalm.

It’s a tale of two very different stories, stories that produce two very different worlds, and different accounts of what it means to be human together. As Americans and as Christians, we inevitably inhabit both of them.

I don’t think it much of a stretch to suggest that Collins’ Hunger Games is a dystopian riff on the most negative aspects of our society and global economic system, which produces extravagant wealth and luxury for a few, and bare subsistence for many. The story of Exodus on the other hand doesn’t suggest extravagance or luxury—the heavens don’t rain down red velvet cupcakes or tiger shrimp or buckets of wine. On the contrary, there is both restraint and limit: There are rules that govern the divine abundance. Each Israelite can only collect what they need for the day; any manna kept overnight will rot and be worthless. At no point can the Israelites forget that they are dependent on God’s open hand. It is enough—an abundant enough, but not infinitely so. It’s an “enough” that asks a divine question of the story that drives our American cultural imagination, with its high value on the production and acquisition, even the hoarding, of wealth.

It also proposes a divine question to us who live in this society: Just how much is “enough”?—recognizing that being able to ask the question reflects the privilege of having one’s needs met. When does one’s own share and use of the divine abundance become instead a “fleshpot,” something that reflects our enslavement rather than our freedom? When does a savings account, or a retirement account, or even a parish endowment become an end in itself?

These are deeply spiritual questions that cut to the heart of who we are and who we are called to be. They are also political and economic and social questions about what it means to live with other people in community, about our duties and obligations to one another in society. As those who are baptized, and therefore those who share the privilege of partnering with God in the care of the poor and vulnerable, in the healing of the world, and in the revelation of the reign of God, they are questions we cannot avoid asking, for our own well-being and that of our neighbors. At its heart, the question that lies beneath them all is: By which story shall we live? And what difference does it make?

I am struck by Jesus’ promise in the Gospel of John, to those who feed on the wisdom of the story he tells: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” What Jesus is promising is the opposite of the glorification of hunger and thirst in the Capital: It is the freedom from being driven by the need to possess and consume. It is the freedom from the slavery of striving to keep up, of feeling ourselves always in a deficit, always lacking something, never good enough.

It is not only the physical freedom of having “enough,” it is the spiritual freedom of knowing ourselves as creatures, dependent on a faithful God and called to relationships of justice and freedom with others. It is the freedom we practice as we celebrate this Eucharist, through which we are shaped in the pattern of divine abundance that produces enough for every living thing. Imagine if that freedom we practice here shaped not only our hearts, but the whole creation in which we live and are called to serve.

July 19, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 2:11-22

Bryan Cones

In modern Israel there is a wall, that divides the Israelis from Palestinians. It was proposed originally in the 1990s and built beginning in 2000 to prevent suicide attacks, and in some ways it has been successful at that, but it has also come to symbolize the almost intractable divide between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the profound inequity in the quality of life on the different sides of the wall, with Israelis living in relative wealth and security and Palestinians in concentrated poverty and insecurity. The wall starkly embodies the distinction in the first reading: On one side lives the “commonwealth of Israel,” while on the other side live “strangers to the covenant of peace.”

It’s hardly the only wall of its kind to embody such a distinction—the Berlin Wall was like it in a way, as is the system of fences and walls that continues to grow along the U.S.-Mexico border. Chicago used to have an impressive wall of high-rise projects, the Robert Taylor Homes, along the Dan Ryan Expressway, which, along with that expressway, served to remind Chicagoans where, depending on their color or class, they were supposed to be. Even with those high-rise buildings torn down, it’s pretty easy to see where all over Cook County, those walls still exist, marking who lives in the commonwealth and who is a stranger.

Those are the kinds of separating walls the writer to Ephesians is talking about: dividers that separate one kind of human being from another, often as a reflection the hostility between them, and to distinguish who belongs, and who does not. Ephesians is probably referring to a specific wall in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, that separated the “The court of the Gentiles” from the area reserved for Jews. That outer wall warned that anyone from outside the people of Israel risked death if they passed beyond the boundary. That “dividing wall” separated Jew from Gentile, “members of the commonwealth” from those “without God.” Embedded there we can still hear that ancient hostility, between Jews and Gentiles, as well as our modern ones: Christian and Muslim, rich and poor, immigrant and native—you get the idea.

In the face of these dividing walls, and frankly contrary to reality both now and then, the writer of Ephesians makes the shocking claim that Christ by his death has broken down that dividing wall, and erased the hostility that created it. In place of the wall, there is now a new building, made up of living stones, with Christ as the cornerstone. The border where there once was a wall, with hostile forces on either side, now stands the dwelling of God on earth, Christ in his living body, the church, the symbol of the “new humanity” God is creating in Christ.

Ephesians is talking about us, of course, the people called to stand in place of the wall or maybe even at it, as witnesses to the new, reconciled humanity in which no one is a stranger to the commonwealth, but all are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

That’s a grand vision but hard to square with the actual hostility that besets our world, hostility that burst forth again this week in Chattanooga, and that continues to endure all over. It’s so widespread that I wish the writer to Ephesians would have given us a few more tools for living as the reconciling edge of this border zone. I have been thinking of a couple tools that have been helpful to me, and I wonder if they might be helpful to you.

The first has to do with noticing in ourselves and being mindful of the seeds in us of the hostility that divides us from other people, those times when we find ourselves reacting in anger or fear, and taking the time to be curious about them. I remember when David and I lived in our old condo, our neighbors moved and sold their place to two brothers. I noticed in myself anxiety about my new neighbors—the two brothers were African American— and it took me a while to admit that the source of my fear were the kinds of racist attitudes and stereotypes about African American men that I would never want to admit, but that clearly were still at work in me.

That experience made me wonder what other unacknowledged fears lurk in me, and those irrational responses are good signals to me to be mindful of what’s really going on. That embarrassing experience of my own racism has made me more curious about how those same fears are at work in my city or in our country, and how they have produced the dividing walls that keep me and us from experiencing that new humanity in Christ.

The second tool came from our Friday morning group that gathers at Panera after our 7 a.m. Eucharist. We were talking about how to be helpful to people experiencing difficulty of various kinds, things like violence or addiction, and I think it was Richard Adams who counseled that we should seek always and above all to be kind, because we never know what is going on inside another human being or what is happening in their lives. His counsel made me wonder what dividing walls might be torn down simply by kindness, and by giving everyone we meet the benefit of the doubt, and trying to learn more about their stories.

I don’t really know if practices like mindfulness and kindness can break down the walls that separate people from each other, but they seem like the kind of tools that might make a difference. At any rate, the vision and promise of a new humanity, healed of division, in which no one is a stranger to the covenant, in which everyone is a citizen and a member of God’s household, and a church devoted to that vision, makes me eager to keep trying.

July 5, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Baptism of Albert John Murphy Gill

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 2:1-5, Mark 6:1-13

Bryan Cones

Well, Albie, before we finish what we started just a few minutes ago and baptize you, it’s my job to tell you something about what your mom and dad and godparents and all of us together are signing you up for in your baptism. Lucky for me—and you don’t know this now, and probably won’t believe it in about 13 or 14 years—you parents are both wise and brave. And since they are the ones who will be leading you the most in this Christian way, I thought I would share with you what they told me about why they wanted to bring you to church to be baptized.

The first thing they said, and it’s very wise, is that they wanted to pass on to you a sense of awe and wonder about this world we live in and of which you are a part. It is special to them to have you baptized outside, here by our big lake, Lake Michigan, which reminds us of all the great waters that God created at the beginning of everything,  and called them all very good. We all come from these holy waters, and so do you, and so it makes sense that we use water to begin our life as Christians, to affirm that we come from God’s good creation, and that all creation shares in the promise of life and blessing in Christ that we celebrate in baptism. They also remind us that creation is the very first way that God speaks to us, and so with eyes of faith we see all nature as full of the glory and grace of God.

The second thing your parents told me—and this is how I know they are brave—is that they don’t know how to do this alone, they don’t know how to nurture you to fullness by themselves. Now it turns out that in addition to being a part of God’s household, you are also a citizen of the U.S., and while there’s good things and bad things about being a part of this country, one of the bad things is this terrible idea that we are supposed to do everything on our own, that it’s somehow possible to live our lives and raise our families, and flourish without help from other people. So it’s a pretty brave and wise thing to admit that we need each other.

And so your parents have brought you here to us: We’re called the church, and we agree that we need each other, and especially all of our differences of age, and culture, and color and language and ideas, to become the people God is calling us all to be. And the church is a lot bigger than just us here, and there are many ways to be church, and many ways to be a family,  and many way to be a human being, and here together we do our best to learn from all of them, because we agree with your parents that we don’t know how to do this on our own.

And the last thing your parents want to give you is a story, one that we in the church all share. In the first place it’s the story of a people, the people of Israel, and how God made them a people and led them to freedom, and taught them how to live together. That first reading today from Ezekiel is from their story, part of which is the struggle about just how to be faithful. And we’re all working on that pretty much all the time.

The second part of the story is about a person named Jesus. Those of us who follow his way—and you are about to become one of us—see in the way he lived and died and rose again, what God looks like as a human being, and so Jesus is the way we become the kind of people God has made us to be.

There’s a lot more that I could tell you about him, but you may be getting bored already. What I will tell you is that he told all of us that small people like you, teach us how to follow the way of God more closely. I think that’s because you remind us how to look at the world with new eyes, full of awe and wonder, and that we need each other not only to survive but to flourish, and that the best stories are the ones we tell over and over.

So, Albie, we are really grateful that your parents brought you to us today to be baptized, because you remind us of why we have chosen this way to live, and we are all at your service as you begin this journey.  So if your parents still want to have you baptized, and I know we want to baptize you, then let’s all stand together and renew the Baptismal Covenant that is the beginning of our life together and our guide along the way.

June 21, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 38:1-11, Mark 4:35-41

Bryan Cones

When you picture the scene in today’s gospel, how do you see it? What does the boat look like? Does it have sails? Is it covered, with a cabin? Does it have oars? Is it just big enough for all the disciples? Is it crowded? Can you feel the wind? What about the water—is it already in the boat? Are you wondering if it is about to sink?

How about the scene of Job in the whirlwind? By this time in the story Job has now lost everything: all his possessions are gone, his children are all dead, his wife and his friends have abandoned him, even his body is covered with sores. What does God’s voice sound like? Is it deep, or maybe high? Is it loud—or just a whisper? What does it feel like to be Job in the whirlwind? What does this encounter with God feel like? Are you comforted? Frightened? Angry?

Both passages today describe crisis, and by entering into these stories, perhaps we can feel what it’s like to experience or remember crisis: They are both existential in a way. Job has asked that most basic of questions about life: Why me? What have I done to deserve this calamity? It is the kind of question one might ask when we get a dreaded diagnosis, or we lose our jobs, or have some other tragedy befall us, such as when a person filled with hate and racism enters our church and shoots nine people at a Bible study. Why them?

 The gospel story seems even more immediate, a matter of life and death, and so maybe harder to relate to: The disciples are wondering if they are going to survive, and not at all sure if they will. Maybe this is a bit harder to imagine, at least it is for me, but when I have looked at pictures of migrants crossing from Africa or the Middle East to Europe, in rubber rafts bursting with people and about to sink, I think I see at least an illustration of what it might feel like.

Our readings today have different endings: Job ends in the middle of God’s speech, while the gospel story resolves with a demonstration of Jesus’ power. Later in Job, God restores to the main character everything that he lost.

But I’m not sure we should be so quick to move to some resolution, given the events of this week and what has been happening in the world, as if the Bible provides easy or pat answers to the storms and whirlwinds of life. The world seems to me more in crisis, and I wonder what Christian faith has to say about living in crisis, and the feeling of being in crisis, whether they are more personal like Job’s, or more immediate like those migrants in the boat. And I’m not sure that our stories in this case are necessarily very comforting. But I do think they suggest some things to think about.

One thing I think stories suggest is simply that we can’t escape the crisis: There is no getting out of the boat— or at least if you do, you aren’t going to make it. Sometimes being faithful means standing in the whirlwind, listening for the holy questions God may ask us. I think God may have questions for us about Charleston, questions about why we continue to tolerate this kind of violence in our culture, and what we might do to stop it, or God may have questions for those of us who are white, about why we continue to tolerate racist attitudes among white people that continue to victimize people of color, and most especially African American people. I think God may be asking us the kinds of questions that may take a while to answer.

Another thing I think these stories suggest is that faith and safety don’t necessarily go together. When I imagine that boat in the gospel, it is open to the elements, open to the storm. To be Christian is to be open to the world, and sometimes that let’s someone dangerous in, as our siblings in Charleston found out. One element that makes the case of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church so frightening is that its members were practicing the kind of welcome we preach, which made possible the intimacy of that violent act. I’ve heard people suggest that churches need to beef up security, by which I presume that means keeping some people out of the boat. I’m not sure we can do that and remain true to ourselves.

The last thing these stories suggest to me about faith in crisis is that we can’t do it on our own. Part of Job’s misery was that his friends and his wife had failed him; and if you’ll notice in the gospel story before the storm there were “other boats” with Jesus: Where did they go? It takes all those other boats, and all those other people, to pass through the storm to the peace Jesus promises. We are all in this together, and surviving is not something anyone can do alone.

So what’s the good news? Beyond our Bible stories, today, there is one more story that might give us something to be hopeful about: As I drove up to Wilmette this morning, I had to avoid all those runners, doing the Race Against Hate, a memorial for an African American man killed by a white supremacist right in our own backyard. That race hasn’t yet brought Ricky Byrdsong back to life, and it certainly hasn’t done away with the hate and racism that just claimed nine more lives in Charleston, but it is maybe a port in the storm, an image of what we might accomplish together in crisis, and, I hope, a sign of fairer weather ahead.

June 14, Third Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34

Bryan Cones

When I went on retreat at the end of April, I deliberately chose a place in Georgia, north of Atlanta, knowing that no matter what “spring” was doing in Chicago, they would already have the real thing down there—which we in June just barely seem to have now! And I wasn’t disappointed: all the flowers were in bloom, all the trees were leafed out, and I had even already missed the early flowers, which were just beginning to sprout up here.

 Of all that life, though, what captured my imagination were the oaks: twice as tall as they ever grow here, not nearly as big around, but with huge canopies that filtered the light and the air. Even the smallest breath of wind made a rustling. The trees were so grand that beneath them it seemed they held up the sky; and truly they were holding the ground, with deep roots that held soil on the steep hills. They were for me living signs of the faithfulness of God.

I was thinking of those oaks as I heard today’s first reading, asking myself why the prophet Ezekiel needed to preach to trees: “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD,” says the prophet, as if they need reminding. In his own time, Ezekiel isn’t talking about trees, of course, but about how God was going restore Israel. And yet, couldn’t God’s word come to the trees? Why wouldn’t God address the trees? They too are God’s creatures, though unlike people, they don’t need to be reminded to be faithful.

I was thinking something similar about the parables in today’s gospel: The first seems straightforward enough: The kingdom of God is something like a rich harvest that grows from a scattering of seeds. That sounds great—plenty of food for people to eat. But that second parable about the mustard seed: Who would want a giant bushy weed, no matter how small the seed? Then again if we look closely at the parable, we see that the mustard bush isn’t really for people at all; it’s for the birds of the air to nest in. In this story, the kingdom of God is literally “for the birds.”

These parables, one about trees, another about plants and birds, have got me wondering about just whom the kingdom of God is for: It might be tempting to allow these just to be analogies, which they are, of course, stories to point us to a lesson for human beings.

But if the kingdom of God is about something bigger than us, if it is about all of creation, then perhaps these stories are really for my oaks, and for the birds. The reign of God is not just about human flourishing, but about the flourishing of all creation, including the trees and the birds, and Lake Michigan, and the Chicago River, and all the other lakes and rivers, and other birds and trees, wherever they are.

It would be tempting now to start moralizing about the environment and about climate change and pollution, all of which are a terrible danger not only to humans but to my oaks in Georgia, which will never survive the heat, and to the birds and other species who are losing habitat, and to the countless living things that will become extinct if we human beings don’t change our ways. And I hope we all agree that Christian faith obliges us to do something about those things.

But before we get there, I wonder how we might first allow these stories to shape our imaginations in ways that might make it clear why we why care so much about creation. I wonder how these stories might help us to be curious about, or to be struck with awe by a vision of the reign of God that is ever so much broader than any human hope or need, so broad that it encompasses the entire Earth and every living thing, the whole creation, all the stars and planets and galaxies, and not because they are useful to us, but because God values them all for their own sake, and they, too, are coming along to the fullness of redemption.

Our privilege as those made in our own particular image of God, is to know in our beings that in every tree, in every bud about to bloom, in every garden, in every bee whose work brings forth fruit, in every wave along the lake, and the fish within it, in every sunrise and star twinkle, God is doing the work of bringing forth kingdom, in hidden ways we cannot know or see, and the fullness of which we can’t really anticipate. It’s going to be a surprise, and not only for us, but for everything God has made and called very good.

May 31, Holy Trinity

Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

Bryan Cones

Ah, Holy Trinity—I’m sure it’s everyone’s favorite feast, better than Christmas and Easter put together! We will have a Holy Trinity shamrock hunt for the kids after church, and then we will all decorate triangles, God’s favorite shape. No?

Kristin and I were joking that today is the only feast of a “doctrine” in the Episcopal Church, a church not know for being exceedingly doctrinal— what we call an “idea feast.” An “idea feast” sounds terrible, doesn’t it— like celebrating the Feast of the theory of relativity. How can you make church even more boring? Celebrate an “idea feast”! While we are at it, let’s have a Feast of the Nicene Creed— I’m sure it would be very popular.

Now you might think, that, sometimes being a heady crowd, we Episcopalians might like a good “idea feast.” The Trinity is like a theological brainteaser: 3 = 1, 1 = 3 I have a feeling our Zen Buddhist friends would encourage us to meditate on the Trinity as a koan, a paradox or riddle meant to break our categories, and lead us to enlightenment, to help us see that the Trinity is not something meant to be “understood” at all. Our brains may not be very helpful here.

Even the scriptures today seem to invite us to get out of our heads. Isaiah’s vision isn’t rational at all: He responds with absolute terror to his vision of a cartoonishly large God, so big the hem of the holy robe fills the temple. And I don’t think anyone in their right mind would put those creepy six-winged angels on a greeting card.

John’s ever-cryptic Jesus confounds Nicodemus, “a teacher of Israel” who can’t seem to understand that you have to be “born again” to receive Jesus’ wisdom. Nicodemus tries to understand it, literally, and so he misses the point, completely.

Paul, too, when he describes life in the Spirit isn’t talking about something intellectual: The ecstatic cry of “Abba! Father!” is the biblical equivalent of O-M-G—a mind-blowing moment of grace.

All of which suggests to me that on this “idea feast” it would be a good idea to turn off our brains for a minute, to remember that we can experience God not only in our heads, but, even more profoundly in our spirits, our bodies, our guts.

So let’s take a moment to remember your own foundational experiences of God: those experiences of “something more” the ones that keep you coming to church, no matter what you think about the Trinity or the creed.

Maybe it was the first time you felt your child move within you, or that first intake of breath of a newborn followed by that first exhale and cry of life. Maybe it was the last breath of a loved one, when you could almost see their Spirit return from whence it came. How about the time someone told you they loved you, and you believed it, or you told someone else that you loved them, and meant it completely. Or that first time you felt it in their body and in yours, if you know what I mean. Or maybe it was the time you really were “born again” in that evangelical sense— overwhelmed by the saving love of God in Jesus, and yes, even Episcopalians have had that experience.

Or perhaps your experiences of God are more everyday: the wonder of beholding your garden begin to bloom, or the excitement of seeing that first tomato start to form. Maybe you see God every morning in the children you work with at school, or in your own children, or the times you notice the unshakeable faithfulness of your best friend or closest family member. Maybe it’s the sense of pride you feel in knowing that you helped or healed someone today, or that by your work made the world a fairer or safer place. Perhaps there was a moment when you realized that by singing, or playing music, or repairing something, or making something beautiful, or cooking a meal, or serving it, or giving a gift to someone who asked, that you participated in the repair of God’s creation, that you were God’s partner today in bringing forth the reign of God.

Now let’s turn our brains back on: I wonder if you notice what I am noticing about my own experience of God: that my feeling of “something more” that I call “God” involved another person, or another living thing, or some other part of what God has created. My experiences of God have always involved discovering myself  in a relationship of love or joy or wonder or kindness or beauty or peace or justice or freedom, with something or someone else. How about you?

I wonder if that is why our Christian tradition has always insisted that our primary way of talking about God is not as some lone deity ruling over everything, but as a relationship, never one person without the other, and in the biblical tradition, never really God without creation. Even Isaiah’s giant, terrifying God needs a prophet.

Perhaps that is why we Christians at our best are so concerned about those relational values, about love, which the very nature of God, about justice, which is love acting from a distance, about peace, which is the foundation of love and justice, about freedom, which makes possible relationships of love and justice and peace.

We are concerned about those things, not because God from on high has ordered them, but because for us God is that pattern of loving, just, peaceful, free relationships, into which we, the offspring of the Holy Trinity, are invited to take part, so that those divine patterns might be revealed more fully in the world God so loves.

May 24, Pentecost

Bryan Cones

Acts 2:1-21

I grew up in a church named for the Holy Spirit. It was called “Holy Ghost” Catholic Church. You might think because of our name, we were maybe a little more Pentecostal than your average Catholic Church—we were in East Tennessee, after all, and other Christians who invoked the “Holy Ghost” spoke in tongues, said “amen” a lot during the preaching, and their services went on for hours. Up in the hills of Appalachia, some of them even handled snakes.

At Holy Ghost, we didn’t do any of that: Father Henkel, although a good pastor and lovely man, preached more or less the same sermon every Sunday, the choir sang the same anthem after communion, and our services lasted exactly 45 minutes. Even the service times were inscribed on the front of the church, in stone no less. And definitely there were no snakes.

Despite our name, I’m not sure we captured the “spirit” of the Holy Ghost, at least not as the Spirit appears in today’s first reading. The character of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles is disruptive—there’s an uproar whenever the Spirit blows in. The Spirit is not the kind of presence that would encourage carving anything, even service times, in stone.

Today’s reading from Acts starts with disciples in an upper room, retired from public life, scared and still grieving, until they are overwhelmed by this new presence of the Holy Spirit. They are forced to speak out, and speak in tongues that are not their own. This Spirit disrupts their situation, not only the physical boundaries of their room, forcing them outside, but other, even more significant boundaries, boundaries of language and culture every bit as solid then as now. The Spirit insists on leaping over those differences and speaking to everyone. The Spirit even makes Peter—boundary-keeping Peter— her spokesman: If the Spirit gets her way, she’ll possess everybody: everyone will be a prophet, everyone will be a priest, just as the prophet Joel promised.

And this is just the first time the Spirit will do this: The Spirit is constantly speaking up as a character in the Acts of the Apostles, sending the apostles across every border, inspiring the Philip to baptize an Ethiopian eunuch, whose body, by the way it had been changed, excluded him from Judaism; the Spirit then “falls on” Gentiles in the house of Cornelius without the permission of those Jewish Christian apostles, and goes on to lead Paul all over the world to spread the good news. The Spirit of God respects no boundaries. In fact, the Spirit seems to be constantly erasing them.

Being disruptive is so much a part of the Spirit’s character, symbolized in that wind that blows where it wills and the fire that burns where it pleases, that I would hazard that disruptiveness is one of those sure signs of the Spirit’s presence. I remember the first time I experienced something like that in my first year of college: I went to the Catholic student center, where I met a religious sister. She seemed both cool and with it and a faithful Catholic, of course. So I asked her about how she accepted and understood the teaching that women couldn’t be ordained in the Roman Catholic church. She said, “I don’t. It’s sexist.”

I remember my moment of surprise, the feeling of having the set-in-stone religious certainty I had learned at Holy Ghost disrupted. It was initially uncomfortable, and yet it began a long journey of learning to think in new ways. I wonder what other habits of mind, or habits in relationships in our lives or our society that seem so set in stone might be ripe for the disrupting presence of the Holy Spirit, even it can be a little uncomfortable. I wonder how we might keep a lookout for our own moments of discomfort in such situations, and ask what the Spirit might be up to.

I’ve been thinking of all the disruptions we have been experiencing in our society this year, events like the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore. I’ve been wondering if those painful, disruptive moments are also a signal from the Spirit? Are they signs of the Spirit’s presence? Is that grief and anger and frustration what the Spirit’s “groaning” looks like in creation? And if so, what is the Spirit calling us to do?

Last Monday I was in downtown Chicago with about 100 other clergy and laypeople from many denominations and religious traditions, who felt moved by the Spirit to disrupt the day and eventually traffic in the Loop. We were there because we wanted to disrupt the story many of our leaders have been telling that because we have money problems in our state and city it is somehow OK for us to abandon our duty to the poor and vulnerable, even though we live with great wealth all around us. And some of our members got arrested to make that point. Is that kind of disruption Spirit-inspired? Can that be what it means to be children of the Spirit?

Those are the kinds of questions that we must answer for ourselves, but I would like to propose that to be children of the Spirit, may sometimes mean being disruptive children, questioning the received wisdom, whether political or economic or religious, or even the ingrained habits or our families and relationships. It may mean daring to cross the boundaries that separate human beings from each other, the boundaries that inscribe injustice, that perpetuate racism, that keep people poor and vulnerable and oppressed. This Spirit of God may well push us into uncomfortable places, even encourage us to take risks.

All this takes discernment—that prayerful listening to the Spirit for what to do next. As we discern it may be helpful to remember that this disruptive presence of the Spirit is not destructive; it has a holy purpose: to open spaces for human flourishing, to make room for the reconciliation and liberation of the reign of God, the redemption not only of our bodies but the bodies of everyone, even the body of creation itself.

And that’s worth a little disruption.

May 10, Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

Bryan Cones

Sometimes it has been suggested to me that church is boring. So if you have said or thought that, I something to tell you: Sometimes, I agree.

Take this Sunday, now the one-two-three-four-five, Sixth Sunday of Easter—and we still have two more to go! And I’ll admit to being a little bored with Easter now.

The readings for instance: Every Sunday we’ve been reading from Acts of the Apostles, and pretty much every Sunday has featured Peter standing up in front of some crowd and saying: Jesus, the guy you crucified, has been raised from the dead, and now you have to believe in him to be saved. And after six Sundays I want to say: OK, OK, I got it: Jesus was dead, now he’s alive. You don’t need to tell me again.

Then there’s the first letter of John we have been reading every Sunday, which says over and over and over again, repeating and repeating, then saying again, in as many ways as possible, the exact same thing: Love one another. After six Sundays of that, I’m ready for a good rant from St. Paul, like when he tells those terrible Corinthians to stop getting drunk at the Eucharist, or even when he makes fun of the Galatians for being so stupid that he has to write in big letters so they will understand. I’m not sure St. Paul actually ever really got the “love one another” memo.

And if that wasn’t enough, the gospel, having now run out of the all the stories about Jesus’ resurrection, is saying the same thing as First John: Love one another. OK, OK, we get it! Let’s move on.

Maybe we are even getting bored with the liturgy: I never get tired of it, but sometimes I’ve wondered if any of you are thinking “Great, here come Kristin and Bryan again to douse us with that bucket of water. We get it: We’re baptized! Point made.” Maybe this Easter stuff has run its course— too much of a good thing.

Thank goodness this week there is a little comedy, there in the first reading, when the Holy Spirit “falls” on those Gentiles. I’ve got this image in my head of the Holy Spirit minding her own business, then tripping and falling on those Gentiles: Splat! Yuck! I’ve got Gentile all over me.

And that “yuck!” was actually probably the reaction of those first Jewish Christians, most of whom indeed found Gentiles gross—unclean—and for that reason among others refused to eat with them. Our reading today makes it sound like Peter was thrilled that this had happened, but it was really a huge argument in the ancient church, and St. Paul tells us that he and Peter had a shouting match over whether Gentiles could become Christians without becoming Jews first.

The Holy Spirit falling on those Gentiles was a big surprise—an unpleasant surprise for those Jewish Christians, who discovered that the dying and rising of Jesus they had been preaching about wasn’t just for them: God was calling everybody, everybody, everybody, even those gross Gentiles, into this new family of the church.

Maybe Easter still has some surprises for us, even after six weeks, even after 2,000 years.

As most of us know, five young women in this parish have been preparing for confirmation, and were confirmed yesterday by Bishop Christopher Epting up at Christ Church in Winnetka. I’ve been thinking about what it is they have committed themselves to, what all of us who have been baptized and confirmed have committed ourselves to. And it strikes me that Christian life is this strange combination of boring repetition along with startling surprises. And I don’t think you can have one without the other.

I at least need that boring repetition, the reading of the same stories about Jesus over and over, the constant reminder to love one another, that splash with blessed water, as a constant reminder of who we really are: God’s beloved children, for whom God gave everything in Jesus. And we need reminding because there are plenty of voices out there in the world eager to tell us what they think we are or should be.

It strikes me that we have confirmed these young women just as they enter high school, a time of life full of messages about what you have to do to belong, about what is cool and not cool, full of opportunities to be sure, and full of temptations as well to believe that there is something lacking in us, even something wrong with us, that we are not beloved just as we are, that we have to dress a certain way, or own certain things, or belong to the right group to be loved and accepted. That’s a terrible lie that gets told in all kinds of places, and not just in high school. And that’s one reason why we come back here week after week to remind each other, and allow God to remind us, of the holy truth that we are loved just as we are, and that we should love one another just as we are.

And then when we’ve gotten good at repeating and remembering that, we can start to be surprised, surprised by all the many ways God wants to show that love for us. Sometimes the surprises are joyful, wonderful friendships, new jobs, a partner to share life with, births and graduations and anniversaries and confirmations, moments in life when it’s easy to recognize God’s grace and blessing.

And when we get really good at repeating and remembering who we are, even the more unpleasant surprises of life, the failures and lost jobs, illness and grief and even death, we come to discover in those moments as well the surprising ways God can be with us still, loving us and blessing us just as we are.

So, Signe, Julia-Claire, Sydney, Kelly and Alice, I think I can safely speak for many people here when I say how happy and grateful we are that you took this next step of your Christian journey with us. I hope you will stick with us through all the boring parts, and let them work on their magic on you, so that you always remember that you are God’s beloved daughters, just as you are, and that we in this church love you, too.

And I hope you will share with us your surprises, the joyful ones for sure, and we hope they will be many, and even the ones that are hard or sad. That’s what we are here for. That’s what it means to be the church, this people who remembers how God loves us in Jesus, so that we can learn how to love not only each other, but everybody, everybody, everybody else God has made.