February 21, Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35

Bryan Cones

One of my first culture shocks as a Roman Catholic exploring the Episcopal Church was this thing called “coffee hour”: “Are you coming to coffee hour? Please join us for coffee hour. We will gather for coffee in the parish hall/undercroft, etc., etc.” As a Roman Catholic who took his Sunday Mass obligation pretty seriously, this coffee hour thing seemed a bit overmuch, sometimes even feeling more like an obligation than an invitation. Wasn’t celebrating Eucharist enough? And why couldn’t be it “coffee 20-minutes-or-so”? I mean, really: What does coffee hour have to do with salvation, whether mine or the world’s?

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers?” asks the Baptismal Covenant. The apostles’ “fellowship” is evidently as important as their teaching, along with the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Is coffee hour or its equivalents part of that covenant? And what kind of “fellowship” are we talking about? Because if it is, coffee hour is indeed important for salvation, both ours and the world’s. But that seems to promise a lot in a cup of coffee.

Not that I don’t get the importance of Christian fellowship to address that basic human concern: the desire to be known, to have a community in which we can express and share what is dearest to us or what concerns us most, whatever is at the heart of who we are. Believe it or not, I even hear that need in today’s first reading. If I listen for the deep human need that Abram shares with God, underneath all that covenant stuff and animal sacrifice, it’s the basic unfulfilled desire for a child of one’s own: one to love and cherish, one who will remember that child’s parents, one who will carry on a family legacy. Abram wants that desperately, and the lack of an heir, if you read the whole story, causes a lot of trouble in his marriage and his family. (See the story of Hagar and Ishmael, innocent victims of that marital trouble.)

I can imagine a present-day Abram or Sarai needing a certain kind of fellowship. It’s the kind in which the question, “How are things going for you?” is sincere, no matter what the answer; it’s the kind that has space both for “We’re expecting a baby!” and “Things aren’t going very well at all, and sometimes I feel like it’s never going to get any better. Sometimes I feel like giving up.” That is indeed the kind of fellowship that could contribute to a person’s salvation. Is that the kind the baptismal covenant is talking about?

Jesus, too, in the gospel today, could use a kind of fellowship. At some point he must have felt like everyone was out to get him, both Herod and Jesus’ religious opponents who suggest Jesus leave town before Herod does him in. Jesus has a response both smart-alecky and tender, but I wonder what it was like for him, not only to feel like somebody, or a lot of them, was out to get him, but also to know that there really were people out to get him!

Nowadays I wonder what that’s like for other people in similar situations, for an African American teenage boy, for example, who might justifiably feel like the world is out to get him, constantly blaming him for problems not of his making, and seeing examples in young men that look something like him—LaQuan McDonald, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown—that suggest a combination of some people and a whole society may indeed be out to get him just because he is a Black male of a certain age. What kind of apostolic fellowship might he need? Is that the kind the baptismal covenant is talking about?

I understand that last week the Lenten conversation after church turned to racism and its effects on all of us, and there was hunger for more conversation like that. What kind of fellowship makes that conversation possible? Is that the kind the baptismal covenant is talking about?

For me it’s the kind in which I know I am loved enough that I can risk revealing my ignorance as a White person about what it’s like to be African American or any person of color in a White majority or White dominant society, knowing that inevitably I will also reveal the way racism still operates in me, and how being White brings me so many unearned benefits—just because I look like I do.

I can only guess at the kind of fellowship an African American person might need for that kind of conversation. But in light of what friends and colleagues who are African American have shared with me, I wonder if it might be at least the kind in which it’s OK to express and share the justifiable anger and frustration that comes from having to explain for the umpteenth time how hard it is just to drive while Black in Chicago or on the North Shore, without even mentioning the other forces that make life as an African American difficult in our society, or adding the complexities of being African American and transgender, or African American and a man, or a woman, or gay, or African American and successful, or African American and poor.

Is that the kind of fellowship the covenant is talking about? If it is I’d have to say that it is indeed the kind that might save the world. And if you need a little proof for that, look to the apostolic fellowship of the historically Black churches, which not only have sustained many African Americans through this centuries-long struggle, but also spilled out into streets and up to lunch counters, and marched across bridges in Montgomery, Alabama, finally to win a single step on the long path to justice. Apostolic fellowship can be powerful force to reckon with. Is that the kind the baptismal covenant is talking about?

So what does coffee hour or its equivalent have to do with salvation? It looks like it could have a lot to do with salvation, especially when it bridges the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of the bread and the prayers, which we make present in ritual in here, with our everyday lives of faith in the world out there. It may do that by fostering real, authentic relationships of love and justice and mercy and understanding, of which this world is in desperate need.

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers? I admit, the “coffee hour” part was a stretch for me, but upon reflection, I can honestly respond wholeheartedly: “I will, with God’s help.”

February 14, First Sunday of Lent

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Deacon Sue Nebel

It is a moment of great delight for me when I hand off the Gospel Book to one of the children standing around me and tell them to take it to Children’s Chapel. There they gather in a circle hear the Gospel story once again and reflect together about it. I was tempted this morning, as I sent them off, to add the words, “It’s a great story!” A great story it is, one that I anticipate will engage the children easily. Jesus and the devil. Good guy vs. bad guy. A contest of “I dare you.” How will Jesus do in this one?

Good question: How will Jesus do in this one? We fully expect him to win, of course, but it won’t be easy. The setting for this confrontation with the devil is the wilderness, where Jesus has gone immediately after his baptism. He stays there for a period of forty days, eating nothing. The devil arrives on the scene to tempt Jesus. To test this man who is supposedly the Son of God. To find out how strong and powerful he is. Can he be won over? The devil is a formidable adversary. His first challenge is on the personal level. Knowing that Jesus is weak from hunger after his long time of fasting, the devil says to him: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus responds that one does not live by bread alone. He will not give in to a temptation to satisfy his own personal need. There is much more to life than his own self-interest. Well, that approach doesn’t work, so the devil decides to think bigger. To appeal to the human desire for power. Showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, the devil offers him glory and authority over them. On one condition: that Jesus will worship him. To this temptation, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” This Jesus is steadfast in his faith and unshakably loyal to God. He will not be deterred from that. All right then, if Jesus is going to throw quotes at him, the devil will try that tactic. He takes Jesus to Jerusalem, high up to the pinnacle of the temple. There he dares him: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ’On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”. Jesus doesn’t bite on this one either. He counters with another quote, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” The devil is no match for Jesus, so solidly grounded in God. He wins in this confrontation, hands down.

This story of the devil’s effort to tempt Jesus, to draw him away from God is more than a story about Jesus. It describes a fundamental pattern of our lives, the push-pull. back-and-forth dynamic of our relationship to God. A pattern rooted in baptism. The rite of baptism asks us to turn away from evil. To turn and pledge our loyalty to God. I think it would be worthwhile at this point to take a close look at what we promise. I know that some people find it helpful to have a visual resource, like the printed page, in front of them when someone is talking. So, I invite you to take the Book of Common Prayer out from the rack in front of you. It is the red book with a cross on the cover. You may need to share because there are usually only two in each pew.

Now, turn to page 301. At the beginning of the rite of Holy Baptism, the candidates for baptism are presented. If they are adults, they present themselves and speak for themselves. If we have children or infants, parents and sponsors present them and make the commitment on their behalf. Then comes the Examination. You don’t get to just walk up to the font and have holy water poured over you. You have to respond to questions. Big questions. There are six of them. First, three renunciation, or turning away, questions:

• Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
• Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
• Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

Look at what we have in these three questions. First, evil as big picture, cosmic forces. Satan, our friend the Devil. And God. The second question focuses on evil in the world, forces that destroy the goodness of human beings, communal life. Things like the desire for power and control, domination and oppression. Systemic forces such as racism, sexism, and economic inequality. And then, third question: Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God. Evil is personal. A me-first or my-interests-over-anyone-else’s mind-set. Words and actions that diminish others and separate us from God.

After the three renunciation questions, we shift to affirmation. The person to be baptized has said “no” to evil and is now ready to say “yes” to God. The very first question names that shift as an act of turning:

• Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept his as your Savior?
• Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
• ·Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?

What is asked for here is allegiance, trust, and obedience. Commitment to Jesus, a promise to follow him, to live according to his teachings.

During this first part of The Examination, the six questions, we are an audience of sorts. We watch and we listen. Then, our role changes. We are asked if we will support the person in their life in Christ. We respond, “We will.” At that moment, we enter into the action. We become active participants. We join the person who has just made a commitment and renew our own promises, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant. It is on page 304 The Baptismal Covenant consists of questions to which we respond. Questions about what we believe. Questions about how we will live our lives. How we will live out our faith in our words and actions.

Here at St. Augustine’s, in the season of Lent, we are going to reflect on these questions, a different one each week. This week’s question is: Will you persevere in resisting evil and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? An appropriate choice with today’s Gospel lesson about Jesus and the devil confronting each other in the wilderness. Temptation and resistance. Wouldn’t it be great if that were the end of it? Jesus triumphs and we’re done with the problem of the devil. But it doesn’t end that way. The final line is the lesson is: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time. The devil isn’t giving up. The struggle will go on. Wouldn’t it be great if our baptismal commitment to turn away from evil and turn to Jesus were a simple, one-time thing? All done, all set, let’s move forward. It doesn’t work that way.

Will you persevere in resisting evil and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? The Church, in its wisdom, recognizes that the question is not if we will fall into sin, but rather when. Our struggle is against evil in its many forms is on-going. So, we asked. It asks us to recognize our failings, or wrongdoings. To express sorry and regret. And to ask for forgiveness. And then to return. To re-turn. To repeat that fundamental action of baptism. To turn to Jesus. Resolved to be stronger in the wilderness of our lives. To be better in the work that Jesus wants us to do.

February 7, Feast of the Transfiguration

Kristin White

Luke 9:8-43a

Mountains are not exactly practical places. They’re steep and craggy. You have to watch your step, or, chances are, you’ll stumble – with serious consequence. There’s usually no water nearby unless you have a way to melt snow, and no comfortable place to sit, much less to build a house.

But the view.

It’s good for you to be there, when you are.

Good enough, in fact, for the time you’re there, to make a person forget the precariousness of it, forget the lack of easy footing, forget thirst and the wish for a comfortable place to sit.

And I have to say, I find it kind of delightful to talk about mountains here in Illinois, which as it turns out is the second-flattest state in the country (thank you, Curious City). The flattest? Florida, it turns out. But that’s a different podcast for another day.

Anyway. In this story of the Transfiguration, Peter and James and John go to the mountain to pray. As Jesus prays, his face changes and his clothes turn white. Moses and Elijah show up with him in glory, they talk about Jesus’ departure from Jerusalem. Peter and James and John see this through some kind of a sleepy haze – “It’s good for us to be here,” Peter says…like he does…”let’s build three dwellings.”

Many of us have places we have returned to over the course of our lives, land that we have known with parents and grandparents, places we tell stories about as we put our children’s feet on ground that we have walked.

My family has camped at Paulina Lake in Eastern Oregon since my Great-Grandmother Hazel took her children there when my grandmother was five years old. Hazel was trying to keep her children safe during the influenza pandemic in 1918, so she took my grandmother and her siblings away from Portland and to this remote place far from the city. They would return to the Lake every summer of my Grandma Rae’s childhood, and she would in turn raise her own children there in the summers as well – my dad and his brothers, Dick and Pete, their sister Molly. Paulina Lake is where I learned to fish, where I got lost in the woods more than once, and where Grace walked on tiptoe as a Native American Princess Hunter. Paulina Lake is where we scattered my grandfather’s ashes, and a few years later, my grandmother’s with him.

The lake is set inside a dormant volcano crater, with a peak high up above it. Every time we’re there, John and I make a point of hiking all the way to the top, all 7,994 feet of it. You can look out and see everything, it seems like…miles and miles and mountains and mountains and mountains.

After the work of that journey, it’s good to be there.

Peter didn’t know what he was talking about with those three dwellings up on the mountain, through his sleepy vision – the author of this gospel makes a point of saying so. A cloud overshadows the disciples, and they’re terrified, and voice inside the cloud says, “This is my son, my chosen…listen to him.” And then Jesus is alone. And they don’t talk about it at all.

The last time we hiked Paulina Peak was nearly four years ago. I had just met several of you in the interview process, put everything I had in the months leading up to it in discerning this call telling me that you were the church God was leading me to serve. There was still snow on the Peak as we hiked it in July – John threw snowballs at me from the trail when I started to lag. We found some German tourists to take our picture at the top, next to the elevation sign. And it was good for us to be there, good to look out on land that I have known my whole life and before, even as I knew in my bones that we’d be leaving again.

There’s a part that gets left out of this gospel, that second half about the next day. It’s bracketed off in our lectionary book, an optional thing to include after the shining and the white clothes and Moses and Elijah and that “It’s good for us to be here” business from Peter.

It’s the next day, when Jesus and the disciples have come down from the craggy precariousness of the mountain. And there’s a crowd, with somebody’s kid needing help. The disciples can’t do it themselves. But Jesus can, and he does, and he chastises those disciples just a bit, and then he gives the boy back to his father.

John and Grace and I left the next day after our hike in 2012. We said goodbye to our family, gave thanks because it had been good to be there, drove our rental car back around the lake and down a dirt road, out of that sleeping volcano.

In the shadow of another mountain a little while later, I had a phone call from Karl Anderson. He was head of the search committee here at St. Augustine's, calling to let me know that the committee had recommended the vestry call me as rector. Did I mention that we were in the shadow of the mountain? That was important in that moment, because as soon as Karl shared the news, my phone went dead…cell service interrupted by a very large hunk of rock looming over me. (And they kept silent, the scripture says…) John has pictures of me walking around a country highway holding my phone out trying to pick up a signal so I could call Karl back and say YES – it would be very good for me to be there.

We need both of those pieces of the gospel story, it seems to me. We need the precariousness and impracticality of a mountaintop in our lives – even the hard work of getting there and the confusion that sometimes comes. We need to take in the mystery and the majesty of a God who has known us since before we were born, a God who can take our breath away…and then, when we find it again, to find it with the whisper: “It is good for us to be here.”

And we need those otherwise bracketed verses of ordinary time on the next day – the call to come back down off that mountain, to return to life among the people, hear our own needs and respond to other people’s. We need the practical, the earthy, the reminders of our own limitations that we really can’t do this all by ourselves. But we can, with God, with one another.

It is good for us to be there, on the mountain.

And it is good for us to be here, on this flat land, with each other.

January 31, Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Kristin White

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

"And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

I was nine years old the first time I remember hearing First Corinthians 13 read. I was in church at the time, at a wedding, and serving as an acolyte – for which I remember getting paid $5. That part seemed kind of awesome at the time.

I remember trying to imagine what it looked like, to see something through a glass dimly (and wondering why you wouldn’t just go ahead and shine it up like my dad would have with the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, so you could see whatever it was more easily.) I remember the priest, Fr. Waldron, warning the couple ahead of time, sternly, not to kiss for too long.

There’s a part missing, though: a piece of a verse that doesn’t show up at the end of the scripture passage from the first letter to the Corinthians that Bryan preached last Sunday, the same piece of a verse that doesn’t show up where today’s reading from that letter picks up today. It’s the very last half of a verse from the twelfth chapter, and for some reason it just gets dropped:

“And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

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Bible scholars will tell you that Paul would never have intended for today’s second reading to take the place of honor that it has, as the customary reading at weddings. It has become a standard, after all – lots of nice, good-feeling stuff about love (appropriate for a wedding, it seems), and no angry God language about who gets in and who suffers eternal condemnation (also helpful for a wedding, especially when there may be lots of visitors who might have in fact avoided church because of such things). Scholars would say that Paul’s letter was written as a warning and a corrective to the church, not as the safe adornment of a romantic moment, or as the text of greeting cards and coffee mugs.

But a still more excellent way? Love is more than ornamentation, Paul would say. God’s love is more. God’s love is the shape and substance of that excellent way.

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Bryan talked in his sermon last week about the fights that the people of Corinth were having at the time of this letter. They were valuing some gifts above other gifts, which led to valuing some people above other people…and you can imagine the fallout from that.

The Christian faith, which was called The Way during Paul’s lifetime (a still more excellent one, right?), drew all kinds of people. Sure, it included the Jews who had followed Jesus from the early days of his ministry, and also the Gentiles who had up to that point led pretty separate lives, and other groups of people as well. There was great disparity between the groups themselves, too: wealthy and poor, landowners to homeless, lepers and those who had been healed, women, men, children, slaves, tax collectors, soldiers. It was a diverse group, almost from the outset.

They didn’t all always get along.

They didn’t all always value each other’s gifts, or always act in ways that could be described as kind, or patient, or helpful.

They didn’t all always wait for dinner until everybody got to the table.

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The trick of this text is that it invites people to seek that still more excellent way – a way which is neither saccharine sweet sameness where everything is always awesome and everybody thinks alike and dresses alike and talks alike; nor can it be the sniping and Darwinian segregation of cafeteria mean kids on the first day of freshman year. No, that still more excellent way commands something more of us. It promises, instead, that those who follow Jesus would practice the kind of radical love for everybody that possesses a fierce and steadfast imagination of what is possible. It calls us to be the kind of beloved community in which unity and difference can flourish together.

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My own academically guilty confession, which might scandalize my Bible professors, is that I don’t actually have a big problem with this passage being used at weddings. Sure, it fits nicely among the baby’s breath and pink carnations of that wedding I remember serving in 1980. But this letter from Paul, it also has muscle and grit.

Anyone who has been married or partnered knows that relationships where we match our lives with another require those very things. Marriage is hard. However much a person believes, bouquet in hand or buttonniere on lapel, that they will think and act and live in similar ways with the person opposite themselves throughout the whole of their lives…well, there are few things like living together to bring our differences into sharp relief. Without much notice, we can find ourselves in moments when we don’t always value each other, or see what the other brings as gift at all, or feel like holding dinner until that other person has gotten to the table. Sometimes, everything is not awesome. And our faces are up against that glass now smeared with our tears, and seeing dimly indeed. Yes, Paul’s letter fits here, too.

It takes muscle and grit to find that more excellent way, whether in the lived reality of marriage and partnership and family, or honest and committed life in community. Especially when everything is not awesome. Especially when we can’t see the other side. To choose the practice of love again and again and again as our shape and substance requires more than platitudes and superficiality; it takes more, sometimes, than we might realize we have.

Because, let’s face it - when we’re hurt or tired or frustrated or scared, it’s easier to be impatient or unkind. But God’s more excellent way offers something different than that to the people who were the church at Corinth so many years ago, to the people who are the Church today: what abides is faith and hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.

God’s love, robust and determined and persistent and active love, is what bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God’s love is the love that never ends.

And that still more excellent way gives us the shape and substance as people and as a people, in “God’s unshakeable grasp (of love) on our lives. (That) is the source of our greatest security and, (so), our freedom to actually be patient and kind, to bear all things and not insist on our own way.”[1]

We live the modern translation of this letter’s call in a hundred different ways and more at St. Augustine’s. In a little while, we’ll gather in the parish hall to talk about what that has looked like over the past year, and what we envision together for the future.

Before we do, though, I want to thank you for the honest and determined and practical and deep, deep love that you show for one another in this church, and for a world that starves for the very thing that you are.

As we enter today’s Annual Meeting conversation, thank you for choosing love as the shape and substance of our life together, for recognizing that all we do and everything we will talk about today grows out of that context. Thank you for trusting that without love, our planning and mission campaigns and buildings and budgets and advocacy in the service of justice all lose their meaning. Yes, these are righteous and worthwhile things for us to do. And before and after and throughout it all, this beloved community is called to be a community that practices love.[2]

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That piece of a verse that got lost from the reading between this week and last is not lost at all at St. Augustine’s Church. I’m grateful…so very grateful…to be in your company as, together, we continue to find God’s still more excellent way.

[1] Jerry Irish, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. 306.

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2734