Living in the Spirit

Homily for Sunday, July 26, 2012

Psalm 85   (Responsive reading #540)

Proverbs 9:1-6

John 6:56-69

 

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” As arresting and disturbing as those words are, we Christians understand that Jesus is using symbolism. He is not speaking literally, and we know that was his custom. Most of his teachings were symbolic since he usually instructed in parables. But the significance of his words cannot be understated. Jesus reminds us with these words that he gave his flesh and life’s blood for us in dying on the cross. In the sacrament of the communion, the bread and the wine join us to Jesus and to one another.  As hard as these words are for  the disciples—they say, “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?”—Jesus wants them and us to know that he is always as much with us and within us as the very food we eat.

After Christ spoke those difficult words—“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them”—some of his followers abandoned Him. Although they did not fully grasp what He was saying, they understood one thing: the way of Jesus was a hard way. They didn’t listen to his next words: “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  No, we don’t literally eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood whenever we take communion. But through the power of the Lord and the mystery of that power, the spirit of life that calls us together at the feast enters our hearts and souls and lightens the way.

The disciples often seemed to have trouble deciphering the symbolism in the words of Jesus. I understand the frustration Jesus sometimes expressed when they didn’t comprehend his meaning. You see, I spent 30 years as a high school English teacher, and teaching symbolism was my stock-in-trade. These days, teachers seem to be held in such low esteem by American society that I am generally reluctant to reveal my former profession. I am also well aware that for many people, English teachers were not their favorites. Still, I came to understand and I still believe that an ability to decipher the meaning of the many symbols we encounter in our lives is very important. For Christians, it is most crucial to grasp the symbolism in the words of Jesus.

“Why bother with symbolism?” some of my students would ask. “Why can’t this guy say what he means straight up?”  My answer? “A symbol arrests your attention and has an impact. You will remember it and recognize it if you encounter it again.”

If you think about it, the Old Testament prophets, and Isaiah in particular, associated Jesus with signs and symbols generations before his birth. In Isaiah 7, we read, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel”…and in Isaiah 9, “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us, authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Remember what the angels told the shepherds on the starry hillside near Bethlehem? “This shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”  The infant Jesus was recognized first by the symbol of his poverty: his crib was an animal’s trough. All of the things this baby will grow up to represent can best be conveyed through symbols.

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise the young Messiah grows up to speak in symbolic language. He understands the weight symbols carry. What if, on the night of the last supper when Jesus shared the bread and wine with his disciples he had said to them, “Every time you have dinner together and share bread and wine, think of me”? They probably would have responded with the equivalent of these words: “Sure, we’ll think of you, old pal” and then gone on with their lives, forgetting. Knowing human nature as he did, Jesus said instead:  “ Take, eat: This is my body which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me…Drink this, all of you: This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”  These shocking, powerful, symbolic words stayed with the disciples and formed the institution of the Holy Eucharist.  Because of that symbolism, every time we break Christ’s body and drink his blood, sharing the bread and wine, we remember that Christ died to save us and that he is always with us, within us, in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s lesson from Proverbs, with Lady Wisdom as the central figure, contains symbolism that connects it closely to the Eucharist. Wisdom is depicted by Proverbs as the feminine aspect of God, God the mother if you will, and in this story, she is behaving in very motherly ways when she prepares a dinner, mixes the wine, and sets the table. If a symbol is something familiar from ordinary life that is used to stand for a larger idea, then Lady Wisdom, as a mother figure who is hospitable, inviting, and nurturing, is a strikingly recognizable symbol of wisdom operating as inclusive love. She, like Christ, invites all to her table, saying, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”

I say she invites all of us, even though the text says she calls to the “simple,” which may mean the unwise. When God addresses us humans, it is not a bad idea to admit we are “simple” in her eyes, don’t you think? In another sermon, I quoted musician T-Bone Burnett on humility. Old T-Bone says, “As soon as you think you’re being humble, you are no longer humble.”  I believe the same could be said about wisdom. It is certainly humble, and probably wise, to consider ourselves simple, and Jesus modeled both simplicity and humility in the way he lived his life. To all of us who struggle with being truly wise, Lady Wisdom tells us to “walk in the way of insight,” to seek to be understanding and compassionate, and in that way we will “lay aside immaturity” and grow into mature wisdom.

So, if you are like me, knowing what I’m supposed to do and being able to do it can be very different things. Maybe, instead of over-thinking everything, we can simply try to live our lives as Jesus did. And how did Jesus live his life? In love; in fellowship with everyone he encountered; in caring for the poor and sharing in their poverty; in healing the sick; in offering comfort to the suffering; in thanksgiving for the blessings received from God. When Jesus calls himself the “way,” this is the way he means.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, a life lived in the way of Jesus will bear certain fruits: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” The guidance of the indwelling Spirit will bring us to the understanding, compassionate maturity Lady Wisdom asks us to manifest in our daily lives. Psalm 85 expresses how these fruits become apparent with these words: “Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

Striving for wisdom, coming together in community, modeling our lives after the life of Jesus—this sounds like real work, as if living a Christian life is a project we undertake. Well, it kind of is.  And in the nature of a project, it can be left undone and fall into neglect if we only work at it every now and then.  Working on this project, we can struggle when we try to figure out how to do faith. Like many of the abstract ideas that symbolism is supposed to represent, faith can be a mystery and a challenge.

I’d like to share with you some words on the faith project by a former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Father Edmund Browning: 

For me and for every other faithful Christian I know, the life of faith is a daily challenge…The things that happen in this old world puzzle and sadden me. I do not understand God’s plan much more often than I understand it. To me, faith is not very dependent on understanding. It is, rather, a decision about where I will put my life’s energy. I choose to live with reference to God, and that choice orders other choices in my life…I know that our faith seems like superstition to some outsiders…But the religious project is NOT about superstition. Superstition is all about magic: controlling events in this world by drawing on the power of another. Faith is not about controlling anything. It is based on the undeniable fact that human existence is brief and fragile, and on the careful hope in a larger reality…People of faith know they are going to experience the same sorrows as everybody else. We just affirm that we never face them alone.

That is what the bishop has to say about faith, and he clearly considers himself to be one of the simple ones…a very wise man, indeed. Working every day simply to live as much in the way of Jesus as we can, we become by doing.  We find peace as we seek it. We show the simplicity of wisdom when we choose to trust that God is on our side. And when we turn our thoughts inward, we are assured that Christ abides there.                   Amen.

"Taste and See That the Lord Is Good"

Homily for Sunday, July 29^th

Lessons:

Psalm 34 

2 Kings 4:42-44

A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, "Give it to the people and let them eat." But his servant said, "How can I set this before a hundred people?" So he repeated, "Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the LORD, `They shall eat and have some left.'" He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the LORD.

Ephesians 3:14-21

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

John 6:1-21

Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Collect:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Homily:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

In this valley, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good is a long-standing tradition.  Today we will honor the many good cooks Graves Mill has produced by carrying on an old chapel tradition with our 5^th Sunday dinner on the grounds. Breaking bread together, sharing our blessings with one another, we commemorate Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand. 

Seeing that the Lord is good has also been a blessing of this valley. Since its first settlers arrived in the 1700s, the breathtaking beauty of Graves Mill has attracted people and made them want to stay here.  For those early colonizers, many of whom came from the British Isles, this place must have looked like home.  Graves, Jenkins, Hawkins, Lillard, Estes, McDaniel, Berry—these are just some of the family names of the folks who found our valley and these blue mountains as familiar as England, Scotland, or Wales.

In Friday night’s opening ceremony of the Olympics, the landscape, history, and culture of the British people were celebrated. Being an English major and an unapologetic Anglophile, I loved the whole show.  The pastoral scenes, with green pastures, milling sheep, and Glastonbury Tor in the distance certainly reminded me of Graves Mill. Unlike Britain, where the industrial revolution overshadowed the rural culture, Graves Mill has remained a farming community. A hundred years ago, there was a narrow gauge railroad that ran all the way from Somerset in Orange County right by this chapel and up into the mountains, built by a lumber company. Imagine how many trees they must have extracted from these hills to make their investment in a timber train  worthwhile. Now, I don’t know if any trace of the railroad remains. I’ve never come across one. The idyllic rolling pastures have prevailed.

The setting for today’s famous gospel story takes place on such a pastoral hillside. Jesus, the good shepherd, has attracted quite a flock around him, hungry for his words and loath to leave.  He certainly could have said a prayer of blessing over them, dispersed them, sent them home.  But that was not his plan. As in the story of the prophet Elisha, Jesus wants to demonstrate the gracious generosity of God to the 5000 people gathered near him. His disciples are in disbelief when he says he will feed all 5000 of them with five loaves of bread and two fish.  After Jesus tells the people to sit down, he himself says a prayer over the food and passes among all of those gathered, giving them bread and fish, enough to satisfy their hunger and some to spare.  As in the Last Supper, when he breaks bread and shares bread and wine with his disciples, Jesus shows us how to value the intimacy of dining with others.

Prefiguring the sacrament of communion, when we break and share the body and blood of Christ, the feeding of the five thousand represents a fundamental facet of our faith: love.  We love one another enough to take care of each other’s most basic needs.  Feeding hungry people is simply what we are supposed to do.

Surely some of those 5000 believed magic had been performed on their behalf, and believing that, they wanted to make Jesus their king. This miracle, however, is not about magic, and it’s certainly not about the power of kings. A king would deal in gold and silver and jewels, in all the trappings of majesty, NOT in simple barley loaves and fish. A magician, like a genie, might grant you three wishes or help you to win the lottery, but a magician would have no interest in feeding you. Bread is simply not the stuff of power or magic.  It is the stuff of Jesus and of everyday life.

Both in the way he represents his own body as bread and in the way he feeds bread to the multitude, Jesus tells us that he is part of our everyday world. He is with us and within us.  It’s not magic…it’s just love. And like life, love is an everyday miracle that we tend to take for granted.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Amen.

A Meditation on Fear and Faith

Homily for Sunday, June 24, 2012     Buck Mountain and Graves Chapel

Lessons:

1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11,19-23) 32-49

Psalm 9: 9-20

2 Corinthians 6: 1-13

Mark 4: 35-41

The Charlie Brown Christmas special, which has been airing every December since I was a child, features those famous Peanuts cartoon children, creations of the late Charles Schultz. Of course, we come to realize as we grow older that Charlie Brown and his fellow inhabitants of the Peanuts world are really more like miniature adults than real children. In the half-hour Christmas special, Lucy van Pelt convinces Charlie Brown that he needs some advice from his psychiatrist—that would be herself. She charges a nickel for her services and then pelts dear Charlie with questions about the things he fears.  Finally, she asks him, “Do you think you have pantophobia?”  Charlie asks, “What’s pantophobia?” and Lucy replies, “The fear of everything.”  Charlie Brown doesn’t hesitate a second before  replying, “That’s it.!”  Dear Charles Schultz really understood the human condition pretty well.

Fear.  It is almost always with us, and since fear concerns the future, what may be, it keeps us from being fully present in the current moment, where life is, almost all of the time, pretty wonderful. The future we tend to inhabit in fear is not a real place. God can’t be found there. When we are lost in our fears, we isolate ourselves from God. Even when the present time we are experiencing is painful or difficult, staying focused on what we need to do to get through it and turning to God in prayer will always have a better outcome than letting ourselves succumb to fear and push God aside.

Anxiety. Worry. Sorrow. Anger. Fear can be at the root of all these feelings. If I’m anxious about a task I’ve been given, it’s probably because I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it—I may fear I lack the time or the skills to complete the job satisfactorily.  If I’m worried about a loved one who is late in arriving home, I may fear he has been in an accident.  Sadness can be the result of fearing there is no hope, that what I’m experiencing now cannot get better. Even the bluster of anger can disguise the fear beneath it—a parent may react with a burst of anger at a child who could have hurt herself doing something foolish or dangerous.  Fear compels. Fear also fascinates.

Picture this: You are a teenager, put in charge of your younger siblings and cousins at a family gathering. In a game of hide and seek or tag, you are IT, and you stalk your prey. When you come upon a gaggle of the little tykes, you shout “Boo!” They squeal in an instant of genuine terror, run off in all directions, but then scamper back to you, giggling and eager for more. We seem to learn as children that fear can be fascinating fun. Our relationship with fear is a complicated one.

We love scary stories and scary movies, even though a simple reminder of one, say hearing a few seconds of the Jaws theme song, can send our hearts racing.  I wonder if our childhood games are descended from the training primitive parents gave their children in how to hunt (or evade) the very dangerous beasts that inhabited their world. Prehistoric people lived in a world fraught with immediate danger—surviving from one day to the next was their sole preoccupation.  Fear and the adrenaline-charged responses to it were lifesaving.

So does human prehistory explain why fear is still so much a part of our lives? For most 21^st century Americans, at least for those of us here today, simply surviving from day to day is not a challenge. We sleep in comfortable homes, trust that our cars will start when we plan to drive somewhere, have access to decent health care when we need it, and don’t live anywhere near saber-toothed tigers. Yet, we often persist in letting fear compel our thoughts and motivate our actions. Christ may very well say to us, as he said to the disciples in the midst of the storm, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”  Christ entered history 2000 years ago to offer an alternative to life-usurping fear.  

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”  Today’s lesson from Mark is one of those gospel moments when I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the disciples who awaken Jesus to hear those words. Storm-tossed at sea in a small wooden boat, they seem justified in their fear. But the key word Jesus speaks is “still.” They know Jesus, they have seen him perform miracles, and he thinks they should know by now that He can be trusted to save them.  As to the rest of us Christians, fear comes easily to the disciples when they forget the essential message of our faith. We no longer need to fear death.

So why does David get it right? Why is the boy David not afraid of Goliath? Is courage the opposite of fear?  To Saul and to David’s brothers (and probably to every other onlooker) David’s going out to meet the giant Goliath in battle must have appeared more foolhardy than courageous.  This is the people’s first introduction to David, who will go on to become Israel’s greatest (and most beloved) king.  Over the course of his long life, David makes some terrible mistakes, but his confrontation with Goliath is not one of them. He may look like a simple boy with a slingshot, but he is well-armed. The source of his courage is his faith, and it is faith that is the opposite of fear.  After the ugly giant taunts and curses him, David responds, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.”  David depends on the Lord for his victory over certain death, and his faith is rewarded. It is that kind of trusting faith Jesus wanted from his disciples in the storm- tossed boat.

Paul says to the Corinthians, “I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”  In these brief words, I believe Paul is alluding to the aspect of child-nature that makes faith easy for the young. Children are very trusting, and that willingness to be vulnerable may be why Christ said, “I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In today’s world, we wish children were not so trusting, and parents and grandparents hover nearby, teaching them not to speak to strangers. We wish fear could always be just part of a game for our children. Remember how  children return to play so easily even after they have been terrified by IT?  They are able to put aside their fear because they trust that the grown-ups in their lives will always be there to protect them. The Lord wants all of us, like children, to believe in him with complete trust, to embrace him like a sister or a mother, a brother or a father, and not avoid him like a stranger when we are afraid.

We defeat fear with faith. We can also overcome fear with love.

Like a modern-day soldier, it is not only David’s love of God that sends him into battle with Goliath.  He also loves his country, his people, and his family.  I bet we all have personal stories of someone we know who stood strong in a fearful situation because of love.  Our best example of the connection between love and faith is Jesus Christ himself. Knowing the gruesome cross was coming, he persisted in following faithfully the path before him so that he could give his life for us. As we say, there is no greater love than this.

If the fear of death is our most basic and underlying fear, then we have not fully accepted the self-sacrifice of Jesus as a price he paid so that we might have life eternal. Like the disciples in the boat, we still become fearful for our lives in every storm. Jesus’s words are intended for us: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

He invites us to let go of our fear and let him protect us.  Amen.

The Good Shepherd

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Lessons: Psalm 23 1 John 3:16-24 John 10:11-18

Although today is the 5th Sunday of April, and that means a day for a 5th Sunday dinner at Graves Chapel, it is the 4th Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday. Have you ever considered the ways in which the Graves Mill valley can be called a sheep fold? Leaving Wolftown on 662 and heading toward Graves Mill, up the steep hill past the Pentecostal church, you come to an old stand of trees on both sides of the road, forming a long shady canopy that feels almost like a tunnel. Emerging, on the left you see the fields of Lawrence McDaniel’s farm, then his beautiful old house standing high on the banks of the Rapidan and facing the river. That canopy of trees has always been a demarcation for me; it is the entrance to the world I think of as home, the entrance to the valley we call Graves Mill. The poem I wrote some years ago about it I called “Open, Sesame,” as arriving beneath that canopy of trees has seemed (and still does) like the opening of a gateway to the place I most want to be. Since the valley ends above the chapel and the entrance is also the only exit, the valley, the home of my childhood, is an enclosure. No wonder it has always seemed like a really safe place to me! It is and always will be my refuge of choice.

 When I was a child, many of the farmers in Graves Mill raised sheep, and with the steep hillsides, that makes perfect sense. Marietta and Hume Lillard had a large flock of sheep, and I can remember seeing the sheep dotting the hilly fields and following Marietta into their sheep barn. Once she gave me a little lamb to keep as a pet and bottle-feed with cow’s milk. I don’t know if its mother died or rejected it, but Lambie-Pie, as I named her, came home with me one day when I was about three years old. Lambs are very sweet and soft and non-threatening for toddlers. My little poodle Freddie is soft as a lamb and about the same size as Lambie-Pie, but my three-year old granddaughter is very cautious around Freddie because he barks. No one could be made afraid by the bleating of a lamb.

 You may have seen a widely dispersed photograph of my great uncle Buck Hawkins holding a lamb. (The photo is included in the book about Jones Mountain and inspired a poem by Col. Bacon.) In the photo, Uncle Buck, who was a giant of a man, is holding a tiny lamb in his arms. That embrace is a kind of enclosure, too. So, for me, the ideas of the valley, of the enclosure, and of sheep pens are all closely linked in my memory to the nature and safety of home. The shepherds who looked for and found the infant Jesus were very real to me. The idea of the Christ as a diligent and loving shepherd is also one I can comprehend and be comforted by.

 From now until Pentecost is the season of Easter, and Easter is definitely a time for shepherds and sheep, a time for new lambs to be born. The connection between Easter and the Jewish holiday Passover is an inseparable one. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples, since they were all faithful Jews. In their ancient history, when Moses freed the people from slavery in Egypt, God instructed them to paint the blood of a slain spring lamb on the lintels and doorposts of their homes. By this sign, God’s angel of death would know to pass over and not take their first-born children, as he was destroying all the first-borns of the Egyptians.

 Easter is the new Passover for Christians. The Lamb of God, as we call him, Jesus Christ, the first-born of God, was sacrificed to save us. This is what we most fundamentally believe, and we affirm that belief when we say, “O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” It is in his other role, as good Shepherd, that Christ gathers us to his bosom and tenderly gives us the mercy we are so in need of.

 I bet that right now you can call from memory an image of Jesus holding a lamb—there are so many versions of this scene, on stained glass windows and in children’s illustrations. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd,” and there are no more comforting words in all of scripture. We are all as vulnerable as lambs at various times of our lives, and the idea that Jesus, like a good shepherd, is there to care for and protect us brings immense relief. We do not have any reason to fear.

 Have you ever thought about the shepherds who came to see the infant Jesus in connection with Easter? After all, they are the first shepherds we encounter in the gospels, and what nativity scene would be complete without shepherds and a lamb or two? Just after we are told, in the Gospel of Luke, about Mary giving birth to her first-born son and laying him in a manger in Bethlehem, angels appear to some shepherds nearby. “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Why did the angels appear to shepherds? Shepherds, after all, were very low on the social scale in those days, very near the bottom rung. The sheep were likely not even their own. Couldn’t the angels have appeared to some townspeople—maybe the innkeeper who hadn’t found room for Joseph and Mary? Better yet, think of the problems that might have been averted if the angels had appeared to King Herod. But no, Herod is told about the infant Jesus by some visiting wise men, and that’s a completely different story. In Luke, we have some shepherds being blessed by a vision of angels, who tell the shepherds to look for a sign—“You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Then we are told the shepherds “went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in a manger.”

This is a story that is most beloved by Christians for its miraculous sweetness, for the vulnerability of the tender infant, but I also think because it is our first introduction to Christ when we ourselves are small children. The baby Jesus is one of us. Many of us as children have participated in church Christmas pageants, wearing bathrobes if we were supposed to be shepherds, or glittery wings if angels. In those pageants, as in the text of Luke, as soon as the angels give the shepherds their instructions, the shepherds obey and immediately head to the stable to worship the infant.

 Let’s think for a moment about what may really have happened. Bethlehem was by no means a small village, and the number of people in Bethlehem at the time had greatly expanded because so many, like Mary and Joseph, had come to be enrolled in the mandatory census. There had to have been at least several stables with mangers, if not many. The shepherds must have spent a great deal of time looking from stable to stable until they found the holy family and the baby Jesus in a manger. But they did persist in their efforts until they found the savior and Messiah the angels had promised them. In their humility and in their faithful persistence, the shepherds served as a good model, a template, for the infant who would grow up to call himself the Good Shepherd.

 Like these Christmas shepherds, Jesus will seek us out until he finds us, will faithfully watch over us, care for us and protect us. In today’s lesson from John, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” Psalm 23, that most favorite of psalms, begins with the comforting words, “The Lord is my shepherd.” How do we acknowledge our debt to the shepherd, who died for us and continues to watch over us? In his letter, today’s epistle, John writes, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” We pay back our debt to the shepherd in the way we love one another, seeking to serve him in each other.

So, the shepherd calls us, and like good sheep, we follow him. The shepherd looks for us when we are lost or in trouble or danger, and we can count on him to find us and save us. The collect for today expresses all of this beautifully: O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads.

 As David and I come home every month to Graves Mill, we enter the valley and check off all the familiar places on our mental list as we pass them. At this time of year, it is a happy thing to see young lambs at play in the fields at Graves Mill farm. All year round, we enjoy catching a glimpse of Ramsey, Dan and Judy Berry’s large pet sheep, as we pass their place. Far from being the “valley of the shadow of death,” Graves Mill is a beautiful valley where the Good Shepherd keeps watch over his beloved sheep. May it ever be so… In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

A Meditation on the Heart

Homily for Sunday, March 25, 2012 Buck Mountain and Graves Chapel


Lessons:
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 51: 1-13
Hebrews 5: 5-10
John 12:20-33

In March of 2011, just a year ago, the Oxford English dictionary added the first non-word—a graphical symbol that stands for a word—to its hallowed tome. Do you know what that symbol was? The one that has come to represent LOVE on bumper stickers and t-shirts and even in the title of a funny movie from 2004: I Heart Huckabees. That simple and symmetrical symbol, often colored pink or red and always a very important part of Valentine’s greetings, carries powerful weight in our culture.

Have you ever wondered why the Tin Man was so sure he needed a heart? After all, as he travels the yellow brick roads of Oz with his trusty companions, he demonstrates great courage and kindness numerous times, and courage and kindness are both attributes we associate with the heart. In his song, the Tin Man croons, "When a man's an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle, and yet I'm torn apart. Just because I'm presumin' that I could be kind-a-human if I only had a heart. I'd be tender--I'd be gentle and awful sentimental regarding Love and Art. I'd be friends with the sparrows and the boy who shoots the arrows, if I only had a heart." The Tin Man understands that in order to be human, he needs one thing we associate with a heart--no, not the blood that gets pumped through our bodies to keep us alive. He needs love, and the human heart is where love is found. That goes double for the Christian heart. If it's not about love, then it's not Christianity. Our God is a god of love and mercy and kindness. That doesn't always play itself out with roses and valentines; sometimes love has to be strong, brave, or demanding.

The prophet Jeremiah, who is also credited as the author of the Book of Lamentations, usually speaks words of love most of us would rather not hear. As we used to say, Jeremiah can be a real downer. He has been called the "weeping prophet," and he had good reason to weep. Tasked by God to decry the sins of the people and prepare them for the destruction of Judah and their captivity by the Babylonian army, Jeremiah was not a popular guy. In fact, Jeremiah is so much associated with foretelling doom that any long speech in which the state of society is lamented and destruction predicted is called a Jeremiad.

Our reading from Jeremiah for today, however, seems completely out of character for the prophet. These are the sweet words of a lover, not a lamenter. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more." Through Jeremiah, the Lord says he had considered himself to be the husband of the people, and even though they have repeatedly broken his heart, he forgives them and says he is willing to make a new covenant with them. And how will the people know the Lord loves them and is with them? They will know it because God himself will write it on their hearts. In this way, God promises a deeply personal, loving commitment to each of us.

As I read through today's lessons preparing to write this homily, I was struck by how the collect, the lesson from Jeremiah, and the psalm all make reference to the human heart. The psalm includes a plea familiar to anyone who reads the daily morning office: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." If God is going to write his covenant of love on our hearts, then he himself will prepare it by wiping clean the slate.

The beautiful words of the collect suggest what we associate with our hearts: the emotions. "Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found." From ancient times, the heart has not only been associated with the emotions--especially love and courage--but also with the soul. It often seems that the heart and its companion the soul are given more weight than the brain, which is usually related to powers of reasoning. Since the word heart is mentioned 867 times in the Bible, the connection between the heart and the soul is very much a part of our traditional understanding of the way we relate to God. Listen to a few examples:
"Trust in God at all times and pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us." (Psalm 62)
"When you said, 'Seek my face,' my heart said to you, 'Your face Lord will I seek." (Psalm 27)
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
(Matthew 6)
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 6)
"The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart." (Psalm 34)
"Let us draw near with a true heart, in all assurance of faith." (Hebrews 10)
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:34)
"For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him." (2nd Chronicles 16:9)

In many other passages we are told how God searches our hearts: in 1st Samuel 16, "For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." In Genesis 6, God has examined the hearts of humans, and he now contemplates destroying them all by flood for the evil he finds there. "The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually...and it grieved Him to his heart." Isn't it reassuring to think of God's sharing this characteristic with humans--having a heart that can be broken just like ours? The fragility of the heart is connected to the emotion we associate with it most closely--LOVE.

The fragility of the heart, and especially God's heart, reminds us of the sterner side of love, the requirements of love that are not the easiest to bear. In today's Gospel lesson from John, Jesus is preparing the disciples for his final hours. As usual, He speaks in a parable, saying, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Christ speaks here of the kind of love that produces the ultimate self-sacrifice for the sake of others. He would be the grain of wheat that would fall into the earth and die so that many others might live and flourish. At the time of his crucifixion, it would probably have been possible to count on the fingers of one hand those standing near the cross who would admit to being his followers. Today is it even possible for us to number how many proclaiming Christians have lived down through the centuries and still live as a result of Christ's death? Would anyone standing beneath the cross have been able to predict the fruit Christ's death would bear? Most of them thought all their dreams had ended. They thought the bold teacher they had loved and the experiment they had witnessed were failures. Christ knew better. He understood the ultimate gift of love when he said, "Those who love their life lose it, but those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Forgetting himself in his love for others, Christ truly served the cause of love in a way that has drawn countless people to him. As He said, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." His was a very great and a very wise heart.

Remember what the Wizard of OZ said to the Tin Man when he awarded him his heart? "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." In this paradoxical way, the Tin Man is like Jesus. Emptied of his heart from the very beginning, the Tin Man risked all he had, to the point of being broken in pieces, to protect his new friends. Believing he did not have the capacity to love, he became love. And he was rewarded a hundredfold by the love of his friends. The Tin Man’s love bore fruit, even when he didn’t have a heart. What kind of fruit is our heart bearing?

I HEART you! Amen.

Holy Waters

Homily for Sunday, February 26, 2012

1st Sunday in Lent

Lessons:
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25
1st Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the season of the church year specifically set aside for self-examination and penitence. Lent asks us consciously to join Christ on his journey to Jerusalem and to his crucifixion, to reflect on our own Christian path as we consider his last forty days. Lent is a season that calls for quietness, seriousness, confession, and sacrifice.

And yet the very name Lent is derived from an old English word (Lenten) that described the lengthening of days at this time of year. Spring approaches and it is hard to keep one’s heart from lifting with joy as the light increases and the days grow longer.

I think today’s scriptures beautifully reflect that paradox. In the lesson from Genesis, we get the end of the story of Noah, when God promises Noah and his family that God will never again destroy the earth and all its inhabitants with water. The rainbow God places in the sky is a symbol of his covenant, a binding promise. The rainbow reminds us of God’s mercy and opens the door for penitence and forgiveness, a new idea for humankind.

Since the time of Noah, these verses tell us, we humans have been given a choice. We can choose to follow our own will, to live our lives in selfishness and sin, never considering how our choice affects others or disappoints God. Or, we can choose to be fully aware of our words and actions, considering how our behavior may be detrimental or even harmful to others or ourselves. We can take the time, as this Lenten season calls us to do, to acknowledge our mistakes to God and to others and to ask for forgiveness. This second choice is the path of repentance.

Yet the rainbow reminds us of something else. Even if we choose the first path of willfulness and selfishness, as all of us do from time to time, God’s mercy is still with us. We are granted an entire lifetime to repent and turn toward God. God will continue to seek us out and call to us, even as we look the other way, for as long as we live. Remember those one-hundred sheep Jesus tells us about? Ninety-nine of them were behaving appropriately, safely enclosed in their fold. But the good Shepherd did not forget the lost one and did not give up until she was found and brought home. Although we always have the choice to join the ninety-nine or wander off on our own path, we can count on the shepherd’s love to find us.

The psalmist, King David as we are told, himself once a reliable shepherd, has a good understanding of the fullness of God’s mercy. In verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 25, he says, “Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.” These words are written in complete assurance that God will forgive and forget our trespasses. True repentance offers us a completely new beginning with God. So does baptism.

In his first letter, St. Peter makes a connection between the waters of the great flood and the water of baptism. He tells us that during the time Noah built the ark, God was waiting with hope that others would repent and be saved. Although that didn’t happen, God remembered the righteousness of Noah and saved him and seven members of his family from the destruction of the flood. Peter says that Noah and his family were saved through water as we are saved through baptism. Peter tells us that our baptism is not a removal of dirt from the body but an “appeal to God for a good conscience.” Our baptism is the sign that we belong to God, that we are at least willing to do our part to meet God halfway. Our willingness is all the Lord needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ meets us more than halfway, as Peter tells us: “Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”

These words from Peter and Genesis and Psalm 25 remind me of the young woman from Piedmont Episcopal Church who wanted to be baptized a second time. As a young child, she had been baptized into one denomination. At the age of eighteen, and now an Episcopalian, she asked Rev. Brad Jackson to baptize her again. She felt a new consciousness of her life as a Christian, a new, fuller awareness of how she had been called by Jesus. Of course Brad explained to her that the church believes one baptism is all that is necessary—or required. But something in her heartfelt need caused Brad to consider a different approach. He allowed her to hear the words of the baptismal sacrament, spoken by her family and friends who surrounded her, as her own father poured handfuls of water over her head. This lovely ceremony took place on a beautiful late summer afternoon, two and a half years ago, in September of 2009, right down from this chapel in the Kinsey Run. I bet if you were there you will never forget it. Just as the waters washed over her, a strong wind came up and hurled itself through the valley, as if the Holy Spirit spoke approval.

The Spirit descended like a dove on Jesus as he stepped from the waters of the Jordan after his baptism by John. His father’s voice spoke from heaven to say, “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Those words of hope and love and gracious mercy are spoken to us as well. As jonquils bloom and maple trees are adorned with red buds, as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer, let us think of Christ and of all he sacrificed in dying for us. Let us remember also that the sole purpose of his death was for us to have life and have it abundantly. Amen.