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I have always found it reassuring that the gospel reading on the first Sunday after Easter is about doubt. Other readings move around the calendar from year to year, but on the Sunday after Easter, we always hear the story from the gospel of John of Thomas, the disciple who needed more proof. There’s such an air of pragmatism about this, as if to say, yes, we’re celebrating this remarkable story of resurrection for 50 days, but being human beings, we know the questions are lurking there – so let’s get them out in the open. Did it really happen? And what are we supposed to do with it, anyway?
The Thomas story is I think included in John for us, for all the countless generations who have come along after the events of Jesus’ life took place and so have no tangible connection to them themselves. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet who believe, Jesus says – pretty much all of the church throughout the ages, in other words. But even if we just take it as a story of Thomas himself, it’s helpful to know that someone right there had a hard time coming to terms with the resurrection, that it wasn’t a slam dunk life-changing experience, but one that needed processing and figuring out even for those who were eye witnesses. The disciples often provide that reality check in the gospel stories – right there with Jesus throughout it all, often they don’t seem to get it any better than we do. But Thomas does get it – he just takes some time getting there, and needs Jesus to help him do so. And that I think is the real model for us.
Much of the gospel of John centers on the
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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
All around the world people are greeting each other with these words – particularly our Orthodox brothers and sisters, who this year are celebrating Easter on the same day as we are. Khristos anesti! Alithos anesti! It replaces Hello, how are you? for a few days in some countries. A great way to remind ourselves in everyday ordinary moments that things have changed – that something has happened. Because we need reminding.
We just heard the story of two women, Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary.’ They were the some of the same women who stayed at the cross when Jesus was crucified. And now they’ve come to the tomb. They were at the cross; the disciples, you remember, weren’t there at the cross – they had fled in fear. And now the disciples aren’t there at the tomb. They’re somewhere else, disillusioned and afraid. But here come the women, at dawn.
And there’s an earthquake and the stone rolls away and an angel appears, and the guards at the tomb faint. But not the women. They listen to the angel, who says to them, Don’t be afraid! Jesus is risen. Come and see the tomb. And then go and tell his disciples to get to Galilee, where he’s meeting them. The guards are still lying there unconscious and comatose, but the women run to do as the angel tells them. And on their way, they meet Jesus, risen just like the angel said. And he tells them the same thing, Don’t be afraid – go tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee. And off they go.
Here’s one thing that’s amazing about Easter in church. Even though most of the year when we read stories from the gospels we hear about
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When my son Benjamin was 7 weeks old, he developed a fever that landed him in the hospital for 4 days. It turned out to be viral meningitis, which sounds worse than it was – he never really was very sick, and he recovered quickly. But with such a little baby, they take every measure to be sure – so he was tested for all kinds of terrible things, and he and I had to stay together in the hospital until they were quite certain all was well. We were there in mid-December, including December 12, the day of the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I had a lot of quiet time to reflect and pray and worry. And on that day I found myself talking to the Guadalupe, begging her presence, knowing that she of all people knew well what it was to lose her son. I don’t know if it’s true what some people tell me, that there’s a special bond between mothers and sons – maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s that early scare, or maybe it’s simply that with this my second child I’m more able to relax and love him – but the idea of losing my little boy fills me with dread I can’t even voice. And on this day, this Good Friday of remembering Jesus’ death, I can’t help but think of Mary losing her little boy.
John is the only gospel that includes that detail of Jesus on the cross, giving his mother Mary into the care of his beloved disciple John. In many ways I find the Jesus in John’s gospel less human than in the others, but this one little exchange opens this window into the very human relationship between Jesus and Mary. Luke is the one who gives
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It’s a dramatic day today, with two very different scenes: in one, the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, with the crowds shouting Hosanna! and spreading palm branches before him; and in the other, the long night of Jesus’ arrest and trial and his torture and death. In the first story I imagine bright sunshine and birds singing along with the people, lots of hubbub and excitement – the hustle and bustle of the city and of a great parade, all the rowdiness of crowds outdoors. And Jesus is poised in the midst of it all, giving somewhat mystical orders to his disciples to procure a donkey and colt, confidently claiming the symbolism of the old prophecies of the Messiah king. And we celebrate it ourselves by singing one of our loudest and most confident hymns, ‘All glory, laud, and honor,’ and we march along with our palm branches in a way completely different from any other Sunday. In a very public, right out there in the neighborhood kind of way – this is a story to be proud of, it looks like.
But we don’t get to relish that scene for very long, for before we’ve gone too far into the service we hear about the other scene instead. Isaiah talks about one who is beaten and despised; the psalm cries out, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble.’ And then we heard the other part of Jesus’ story, what happens just a few chapters later in Matthew’s gospel: Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, and being put on trial before the religious leaders and then the Roman governor, and his best friend deserting him, and all those crowds of people who had just been shouting for joy now shouting for him to be killed. And Jesus
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Have you ever come to a place where you have given up all hope? Has it ever felt like God waited just too long to help? That’s what I’ve been thinking about from the gospel we just heard.
The last of our long Lenten gospel readings. And what a powerful one. Mostly it’s a story we think of as the raising of Lazarus. But really, that part only happens at the end. And so the story is even more about Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters – and about the long wait before the miracle comes.
All three of them, it seems, were close friends of Jesus, a family with whom he was deeply intimate. Judging by the order in which they are named, Martha was the oldest and Lazarus was the baby brother. And Lazarus, their beloved brother, and Jesus’ dear friend, falls terribly ill, so they send for Jesus. And Jesus does not come. And Lazarus dies.
And the next day, Jesus does not come. Nor does he come the following day. It is only when four days have passed, when all hope has been abandoned, that Jesus shows up. The belief at the time was that the life force of the body stayed nearby for three days – but by four, it was gone. And by four days, the body would be beginning to decompose. And only on the fourth day does Jesus come.
And it is not as though he were unavoidably held up, or far away, unable to get there in time. The story says he tarries – he stays where he is two more days on purpose.
When he finally does come, before he’s even got to the house, Martha comes out to see him. We don’t know the way she greeted him. But I
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In the New York Times this last week there was a story about a private school in Manhattan called Friends Seminary, a school that was founded in the 18th century by Quakers. The Quaker meeting that began the school is now having doubts about staying connected with the school. It’s not uncommon for churches and their schools to part ways, usually because of liability issues or the school getting too big for the church to manage. But in this situation, the meeting is concerned that the school has become un-Quaker. Tuition is over $32,000 a year, and so only a fairly elite tier of students attend. Since Quakers have simplicity and equality as core principles, this rubs many of the meeting members the wrong way, you could say. The Quaker process, however, does not allow for taking a vote about such things – you sit in silence together when debates heat up and wait for consensus. So there have been a lot of discussion, with a lot of sitting in silence, and no clear decision yet.
It happens that I’ve been reading about Quakers this last week, in particular about their views on money as I prepared the adult ed forum for this week. Their practice is to be very intentional about money, always conscious of who is affected when they think about buying something or taking a new job – which is partly why they were historically such good businesspeople, very frugal and conscientious in their management of things. And it struck me in my reading, and in this current situation, that being a Quaker is very, very difficult. No question is simple and straightforward – their principles are unyielding and their commitment to integrity is absolute. But just how to apply those principles in any given situation, always
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Last November I attended an 8-day conference called CREDO, something the national church offers to all clergy. It’s a chance to get away and reflect productively on what’s working in your life and what needs to change, spiritually, vocationally, financially, in your mental and physical health. My conference was at a gorgeous camp in the swampy coastal lowlands of Georgia. There was lots of time built into the schedule for quiet and reflection and long walks, all of it balm to my tired soul. During one stretch of quiet time I sat and wrote in my journal, reflecting yet again on one of my perennial problems, my inability to take the time to deeply engage with God. Always I feel the thirst for God, but rarely can I or do I really drink from the well. Suddenly I slammed the journal shut. I was tired of thinking about it. Here I had 45 minutes till our next worship service – I was going to go sit and pray, darn it. But where should I pray? I fretted. Go to the chapel, came the response. Yes, but they’ll be setting up for the service in the chapel, it’ll be all noisy in there, I countered. Go to the chapel, it came again. Fine. I went to the chapel. No one was there at first. I sat in quiet, eyes closed, settling into the peacefulness. After about 5 minutes, the door banged, and in came one of the leaders of the conference, getting ready for the service. I sighed and settled back into silence. Then came more people, arriving for the service. I settled again, and sat.
But suddenly I became powerfully thirsty, so thirsty I was convinced I was dehydrated. When I’m dehydrated, I faint, and I suddenly felt thirsty
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This week the news has been particularly horrible to read. At the beginning of the week we saw pictures of the devastation by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Then we began hearing about the problems with the nuclear reactors, and about how paralyzed the leadership in Japan seems to be at addressing the crisis. We’re familiar with the pattern of tragedy in the news – a terrible calamity happens, the death toll is calculated, survivors are found, the story recedes from the headlines. But this is a tragedy that seems to be getting worse and worse, rather than better with time. And as the fears about the reactors have risen, WWII survivors have relived the horror of Hiroshima; more recent memories of Chernobyl or even just Three Mile Island have replayed in many minds. I’ve remembered the nuclear fear of my childhood, when it seemed possible that Russia could decide to bomb us at any time. The already staggering tragedy going on Japan has now touched all of us, and it has stoked all of our fears.
And when we’re not reading about Japan, we’re reading about Libya – the brutality there, and now the possibility of our involvement in stopping it. Heartbreaking and scary all at once.
This week also happened to be the week that Jim and I had an appointment to meet with an attorney to begin drawing up our wills, something we have put off for far too long. It meant that Monday evening we spent pulling things together and talking about who should be guardians to our children if we both died. And since our attorney also recommended considering advance directives for health care, our drive to Berkeley to the appointment on Wednesday was filled with discussion about what kind of end-of-life decisions we
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When I was a young girl I went through a period of playing with horses – not real horses, but the model Breyer horses with the beautiful flowing manes and raised hoofs all sculpted out of plastic. I coveted new ones, and whenever I could save up my allowance I would go buy one, looking over all the models and planning which one I wanted to buy next. With the horses I would act out various imaginary adventures for hours.
My great-aunt Edna, then in her 80s, would come occasionally to stay with us, and she came to visit while I was in the grip of this particular enthusiasm. One day while she was out of her room, I wandered in. There on the bed was her handbag, and before I even quite realized what I was doing, I reached in and pulled out a $20 bill – and pocketed it. Later that same day I went to the toy store with a friend – and with that $20, I bought a beautiful Breyer horse.
Well, it didn’t take long for my aunt to notice the missing money, and she mentioned it to my dad, who then sat me down and got me to admit the ugly truth. Since by then the money was spent, he paid my aunt back himself – I had to apologize – but I got to keep the horse, which seems amazing to me as I look back on it. But maybe my dad realized what would happen – I never could play with that horse without feeling kind of sick about it, and ashamed. And I certainly never, ever again took something that wasn’t mine.
Temptation – and its consequences.
Today we hear two different stories of temptation – the archetypal one of Adam
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Have any of you ever had a mountaintop experience? By that I mean, an experience that was spiritually thrilling beyond anything else you’d felt, a time when you felt close to God and everyone around you, at peace with yourself, in love? Sometimes feelings like that come when we’re on a retreat or a weekend like Cursillo, or on a trip into the wilderness, or when we have our first child. I remember as a teenager going to spiritual renewal weekends, what a high I would be on for a few days when I returned. Or the thrill of backpacking up above treeline, how deeply settled I feel when I’m up there. But however wonderful, that feeling of exaltation doesn’t last, does it? Sometimes it’s only a little while, sometimes a few days – but eventually, we have to go back to work, we have to balance the checkbook and clean the bathrooms, we have to sit in traffic as we drive back across the Central Valley, and it all fades away. It’s the nature of mountaintop experiences that they don’t last. But that doesn’t mean they don’t change us.
I think we use the term ‘mountaintop experience’ because of the very story we heard today, the story we call the Transfiguration. It’s a story that comes in each of the synoptic gospels, and we always wrap up the church season of Epiphany, this season we’ve been in since Christmas, with this story. Before we go into Lent – the valley of Lent, you could say – we hear about the mountaintop. It’s an amazing story. Jesus takes his best friends and closest followers up the mountain and something incredible happens – he becomes dazzling with light, his clothes shining white, and Moses and Elijah, two pillars of the Hebrew
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I have a habit of worrying. If I’m not sure of how something will be, I worry about it, at night, in my sleep, during the day, while I’m thinking about other things…worry worry worry. My mother is a worrier too – I came by it honestly. But I don’t want to be a worrier. I’d rather sit more lightly to things, roll with it all more easily – but it’s hard. So those words Jesus speaks, do not worry about your life, are such a balm to my soul. I long for that kind of trust, to simply rest and trust that God has things in hand.
But even as given as I am to worry, I am amazed – appalled, even – at the level of anxiety in our culture. We live in what seems to be a terribly fearful age. Dangers seem to loom around every corner, far more than I remember they did when I was young. Is it really a more dangerous world? Or is it that we simply worry more – perhaps because we know more about what could go wrong? Take parenting, as one vivid example. For every time you read something like Dr Spock, who begins his book with, don’t worry, you already know how to do this, and babies are stronger than you think, you hear about 25 other voices telling you of all the horrible things that can happen to your child. Genetic mutations while they are in the womb – so you should have several tests to be sure things are ok before the baby’s born. Especially if you’re – gasp! – over 35. Complications in childbirth – so you are urged to follow the medical advice of doctors throughout. Illness and injury to babies and toddlers –
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So the word gospel means good news – when we read the gospel we’re meant to hear in it good news for us and the world. Which is why in the Episcopal tradition we end the reading of the gospel with, ‘The Gospel of the Lord…Praise to you, O Christ.’ But there are some days when the gospel reading may not leave us feeling quite like we heard good news. My preaching professor in seminary said that in preaching, we always needed to bring the good news – in other words, a good sermon shouldn’t just be a harangue from start to finish. You can have some haranguing in it, but you have to wind it up with the good news. Well, today’s clip from the sermon on the mount seems to be more harangue than good news – to be fair, it’s still just the middle of the whole sermon. But we get several commandments from Jesus in that reading today, and then if you weren’t yet feeling overwhelmed, it’s wound up with one ultimate commandment: be perfect.
Now before you run screaming from the room, let’s explore this a bit more. How many of you here would call yourself a perfectionist? How many of you don’t call yourself that but…you can’t stand it when you make mistakes, you get irritated with other people when they make mistakes, and you work more than you should? Or if that’s not you, then how many of you were raised by a perfectionist? Did you always feel loved, even if you got dirt on your dad’s shorts or crashed the car or got a B in biology? Yeah, none of perfectionism is good, is it? But looking at the gospel reading today, it looks like God is a perfectionist too. ‘Be perfect,
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Our 4 year old, Frances, loves hearing stories – and somewhere along the way it became enshrined in ritual that Mom or Dad telling her a story can get her through anything: long walks home, teeth brushing, and so on. After several months – years – now of ‘tell me a story,’ it’s easy to run out of ideas. But happily, Frances has started offering suggestions. So she and I are now embarked on a series of Frances and Aidan stories, about a brother and sister who are almost but not quite like a future version of Frances and Benjamin. A regular occurrence in their relationship is arguing and putting each other down, sometimes escalating into yelling – until Mom or Grandpa or someone intervenes and they apologize and remember they love each other. It’s a pretty obvious theme, and one I not so subtly hope will offer a way forward for Frances when her own brother grows up enough to be a pest. Siblings have a way of bickering and fighting – but hopefully, also a way of reconciling and loving each other fiercely. Something like what we can do in community.
I talked some last week about how Jesus wasn’t always nice – how he didn’t always say things that made people feel comfortable. Today’s gospel would be a good example of that. This is sort of the ‘if you thought you were doing well, think again’ text. It’s not enough not to murder – don’t even get angry and insult people. It’s not enough to steer clear of adultery – don’t even think about it. And if you divorce, it’s even worse. By these standards, every single one of us has broken God’s law. With standards like these, how can we not? So what do we do?
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We’re spending several weeks with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and it occurred to me this week – it’s kind of strange to preach a sermon on a sermon, isn’t it? It sort of feels like trying to coast in on someone else’s good ideas. But then, I suppose that’s what preaching on scripture always is. And of course, a sermon from 2000 years ago in a different culture and place doesn’t always translate directly for us – even if it were written down verbatim, which it’s unlikely this was. Some scholars, despite the story I told last week of visiting the Mt of Beatitudes where Jesus preached this, think that he didn’t really preach it all as a long sermon to the crowds anyway – that it was really more likely instruction for his inner circle of disciples. But whomever it was for originally, we have it now. And today we heard, You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Well, what does Jesus mean by that?
So let’s think for a few moments about salt. We sometimes use that expression, the ‘salt of the earth,’ in describing someone – and by that we usually mean that they’re good, dependable people, perhaps not the most intellectually fired up or well-educated folk, but people you can trust to be what they say and do what needs to be done. It’s a compliment, but perhaps not the most shining compliment in our culture. We get that phrase from this scripture, of course. Beyond that, salt is a natural element that we tend to take for granted in our well-refrigerated culture, but it was essential to preserving food when there were no other means of doing so. It also seasons the food, keeping it from being
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One January several years ago, I went on a pilgrimage to Israel. It was one of those tours set up for clergy, in the hopes that we would be inspired to one day take a group of parishioners on a similar pilgrimage (with the same company, of course). It was a whirlwind 8 days of driving around in a bus and jumping in and out of various holy places – not my preferred method of seeing a place, but ok enough for a first experience. One of the places we visited was the Mt. of Beatitudes, the site revered as the place where Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount, what we just heard from today in the gospel. The site of that sermon is on a slope high up above the Sea of Galilee, with a wide-open vista to the south over the sea and the surrounding mountains and hills. It was very green this time of year – like California, the rains bring green to what is usually a dryer place – and the morning we were there, the sun was shining warm and the sea was perfectly calm. It was an amazingly beautiful day to be outside.
And God surprised me there. It was only the second full day of our travels, and we had already visited numerous holy sites in Nazareth and Cana and Mt. Tabor (the site associated with the Transfiguration). I was one of the few non-English clergy in the group, and we were led by two English priests who had prepared a liturgy for us in each holy place. One of those priests is a friend of mine, but we differ somewhat on how we approach worship. And by the second morning I was already sick of the worship. Every holy site had
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I’ve always liked that hymn we just sang:
They cast their nets in Galilee, just off the hills of brown; such happy, simple fisherfolk, before the Lord came down. Contented, peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too.
It starts off so gently. Just a whiff of foreshadowing at the end of that first verse…before the Lord came down…and then that unsettling bit in verse two about broken hearts.
Growing up in a fishing family in the 1st century, I don’t think you don’t have a lot of options. You don’t have the leisure to consider your vocation, to agonize over different careers and places to live. You simply do what your father does, helping out in the family business. It’s simple and straightforward, but let’s not romanticize it. Were they happy simple fisherfolk? Maybe – but maybe they were hopeless and despairing fisherfolk too. Or maybe they were simply doing the day-to-day thing to survive, without stopping to ask whether they were happy or not. Probably that’s most likely. And then Jesus came along and changed everything.
I know someone with a story like this. She was the daughter of doctors and had always assumed she would grow up to be a doctor. When it was time to apply to college, she applied to a university in the Midwest with a good premed program, and got in. A few months before she was to start, she went to a party with some friends – and there she met a guy she really liked – really, really liked. As they chatted, she asked him where he was going to college in the fall, and he said, ‘Western. Where are you going?’ Without thinking, she blurted out, ‘I’m going to
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So, with that gospel reading, we’re still…in the beginning. As we kick off this new year, we’re still hearing the beginning of the stories about the adult Jesus. Today we heard John’s version of Jesus’ baptism story – last week we heard Matthew’s version. And then the gospel reading went on to tell of the beginnings of Jesus’ recruiting campaign – starting to gather the circle of disciples who would follow him through his few years of ministry, and who would carry that ministry on after he was gone. For us starting out together in our ministry here at ECA it’s all good timing – the parallels between what we’re hearing about Jesus and our own story are just so perfect. No, I’m not Jesus, and you’re not here to follow me – God forbid on both counts. But maybe some of you are here checking me out, this new rector you’ve heard tell of, and seeing where this church, rector included, might be headed. Some of you might be interested enough to come along and see what happens, and maybe even to invite others. I hope that will be the case – and I’m excited to see where this journey takes us.
So today’s story fits for us, but it had a different use in the early church: this story from John functioned as a piece of propaganda, if you will. John the Baptist had quite a following of disciples and hangers-on before Jesus came along, and many of them may well have thought John was the long-awaited Messiah. Starting off with this narrative about John’s disciples becoming followers of Jesus is the evangelist’s not-so-subtle way of saying, come on over everyone, it’s Jesus, not John, who is the Messiah. John the Baptist himself speaks to Jesus being one
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We’re celebrating today the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. It’s the feast that marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: in each of the 4 gospels, Jesus is baptized, and then begins his work of preaching, teaching, and healing. Today we heard the version of the story from the gospel of Matthew, in just a few short verses. And it has this interesting exchange between Jesus and John the Baptist. John is baptizing in the river Jordan, drawing crowds from Jerusalem and all the countryside with his fierce preaching about repentance and purification. Jesus comes out to see him as one of the crowd, and John looks at him and says, ‘You want to be baptized by me??’ Jesus responds, ‘It is fitting for us to do this’ – and so John baptizes him, and the dove descends upon Jesus and the voice is heard, this is my Beloved. It’s a curious scene. Why is Jesus being baptized, exactly? And what does he mean by what he says to John?
First I think we have to explore what baptism means. And as I say when I prepare people for baptism, it means a whole lot of things. Over the centuries since the Christian practice of baptism began, it has accumulated many meanings, as most of our symbols have. Baptism means for us new life, cleansing from sin, the death of the old, repentance, belonging to community, initiation to the church – and more besides. It’s a little unclear just what baptism would have meant to John the Baptist and those seeking his baptism, however – it wasn’t a widespread practice of the time, from what we can see. The language of the gospels focuses mostly on John preaching about repentance, about the need for Israel to turn back to
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We have the gift of an extra Sunday in our Christmas season – extra time to settle into the feast of the Incarnation, which of course does last for 12 days, whether you’ve still got your tree up or not. And what a gift for us here, as we start together on the incarnation of our life together. I wasn’t able to be with you on Christmas Eve, but I do get to celebrate the last part of Christmas with you. It’s the perfect season for starting out together. We’ve known about each other for a long time – I knew about you and a few of you knew about me way back in July, and then over the months, more and more of you have come to know more and more about me, and I about you. But only today are we putting flesh on it, so to speak, all of us meeting each other and starting the long adventure of getting to really know each other. We’re incarnate to each other starting today – not just as a set of hearsay or ideas, but real people, starting real relationship together.
It’s rather like getting married, actually. After a period of courtship – writing letters, phone calls, progressing to visits across the country – we decided to get engaged. We planned our marriage, set up the house, got our parent’s permission (Bishop Mary), and now here we are, married. I suppose the wedding ceremony will be the installation later this month, but legally now, we’re a done deal. And so now we start learning about each other in earnest, learning what it’s like to live together. We’ll learn all kinds of things to love about one another, things to cherish and delight in together. And probably we’ll learn things
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Sunday services 7:30 a.m. - Rite II
11:00 a.m. - Rite II
(child care available)
Sunday school
10:10-11:00 a.m.
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