Proper 11A

St. Alban's is a beautiful little brick church in Bovina, MS, home also to a grocery store, a gas station with a Subway, a handful of churches and an exercise studio-turned-bar. It is also home to people whose warmth is as golden as the light that streams through the stained glass at the back of the church. They are in their sesquicentennial year, and so are preparing a written history of the parish, which has served as a church, a Civil War army headquarters, and if I understood correctly, a saloon. This theme continued through lunch at the Walnut House in Vicksburg, where nearly all the Episcopalians at the round table had Tipsy Pudding for dessert.

Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Where is home for you? the Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori asked in her first sermon as our presiding bishop. Where is home for you? she asked in a church full of people from all over the world. Where is home? And what makes it home?

Home is, perhaps, the house in which we live now, where our responsibilities and obligations are. Home might be a different house, distant in miles and years, perhaps where we grew up. Or perhaps home is something without walls or windows – it may be a town, or a memory, or a gathering of people, or the smell of meatloaf, or the lines of a song someone used to sing.

Where is home for you? We come from many different homes, of course, but as people of faith, Bishop Katherine suggested, as people of faith, our true home is in God. Salvation history is filled with the stories of women and men who left their homes in order to go to the place where God was leading. Where is home? Home is where God is, which is to say, everywhere – at our houses, on the road, in the field, in our hearts, in our dreams, among the weeds…

Jacob, scripture’s slickest trickster, left his home in a hurry with nothing on his back but the birthright and blessing he had stolen from his brother, Esau. Now Esau hated Jacob, says the storyteller in Genesis, and Esau vowed to take revenge by taking Jacob’s life. Jacob weaseled one final blessing out of his father and then took off through the desert, covering his deceptions with his dust. Years later he would return home, this time fleeing his father-in-law, duped out of his daughters, but that’s another story and another dream…

He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night. Did Jacob know as he dug out a hollow in the dirt and situated a stone for his pillow that he was lying in the same place his father, Isaac, had lain so long ago, brought there by his father, Abraham, to be sacrificed? Legend holds it was the same very same place. Did Jacob even know the story? Had Isaac ever spoken of that terrible and wonderful day when the knife was raised to deliver the blow? An angel of God had stopped Abraham’s hand, and spoken God’s word: I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore…and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing…because you have obeyed my voice. Did Jacob, who had only ever obeyed his own voice, recall that story as he drifted into sleep on that pallet of sand beneath those stars of heaven?

He should have lain awake, wracked with guilt, or if he slept at all, he should have tossed and turned riding his nightmares of conscience. Instead, Jacob dreamed the sweetest of dreams, filled with angels and promises. I am with you…I will keep you…I will give you…I will not leave you. In the morning, Jacob named the place Bethel, which means House of God. How awesome is this place! he said. Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it!

It is difficult to say, when we read the rest of Jacob’s story, whether he really heard and understood what God had said to him in his dream. I am with you…and I will not leave you. Despite Jacob’s questionable character, God would dwell not only in the place where Jacob had slept that night, but in every place where Jacob would ever go. God would make a house in him and of him, and his home would be with God. He could flee all he wanted, but God would be right there with him.

The psalmist understood this when he or she wrote the words we read together a moment ago, God, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up;…you trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.

Do we really hear and understand what God is saying to us, who number among the stars of Abraham’s heaven and the sands of his seashore? Do we really hear and understand what God is saying to us, who number, as Paul writes, among the children of God and the heirs not only of God’s covenant but also of God’s kingdom? How awesome is this place, not just this world or this community of faith or this ground on which we stand, but how awesome is this place, this life and this heart that are in me, that are in you, that are in all of us, where God dwells. Surely God is even in this place, and I did not know it!

Just as our story from Genesis is about Bethel, the house of God, so is our gospel reading about the kingdom of God. It is about our home. The kingdom of God may be compared to, Jesus begins. Now, volumes have been written about the nature and purpose of parables. It turns out that most things we think parables are – metaphors, illustrations, allegories, explanations, riddles – they’re really not. The Greek word for parable means something like to lay beside. In his parables, Jesus laid ordinary images and actions that his listeners would understand beside images and actions of God at work in and through creation in extraordinary ways they couldn’t even begin to imagine. Theologian Walter Wink writes, “Parables are tiny lumps of coal squeezed into diamonds…that catch the rays of something ultimate and glint it at our lives.” The light that shines through parables challenges us to see in new ways, to move in new directions, to leave what is comfortable and familiar, to discover home where we did not expect it to be.

And so this morning’s parable is not really about farming. It’s not about seeds. It’s not about fields. Truth is, everyone listening to Jesus in his day would have known that the farmer in his story was a fool. A real farmer would pull the weeds as soon as he saw them, so as not to rob the wheat of the soil’s nutrients or risk the weeds going to seed and so threatening next year’s crop as well. Granted, the Greek word for weeds that Jesus chooses specifically identifies them as a type that closely resembles wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart until they have both born their fruit. An attempt to pull the weeds might pull up wheat as well. And so the farmer says to his servants, Let both of them grow together until the harvest.

Turning a parable’s words, like turning a diamond, allows light to dance through its many facets, and so with the help of the Reverend Robert Farrar Capon, we turn again to the Greek text of the story. He notes that the word in Greek for let that we hear in Let them grow together is also translated in scripture as permit, allow, or suffer, all of which are similar enough in meaning. Permit them to grow, allow them, suffer both of them, the wheat and the weeds, to grow together until the harvest. But when used in conjunction with the presence of evil, or sin – or perhaps with the word enemy, such as the enemy who has sown the weeds – the same word we hear today as let is often translated in scripture as forgive. Here indeed, then, is a ray of something ultimate. Listen: Let both of them grow together. Permit them, allow them, suffer them to grow side by side until the harvest. Forgive them…

I think it is what God would have said to anyone who challenged the choice of Jacob as a covenant-bearer. Others could not see in Jacob what God saw. They took him for a weed, but God wanted to see him grow. Let him carry my promise. Permit him, allow him, suffer him to grow. Forgive him…

On this side of the cross, with Resurrection light not just glinting at our lives but illuminating all of who we are, we know that forgiveness is not just restorative but transformative, making it possible for that which was in darkness to shine, for that which was dead to live, for that which was uninvited to be welcomed home, for that which was barren to bear fruit. Let both of them grow together...

In the fields that are our world, our communities, our families, our church, our lives, in our own hearts, there is good seed and there are weeds. There is joy and there is pain, there is wonder and there is cruelty, there is generosity and there is pettiness. Sometimes it is easy to identify those things that steal our nutrients, that sap our strength, that compete with our striving to grow. Sometimes it is easy (or so we amateur farmers think) to tell the weeds from the wheat. Sometimes the weeds look better, bigger, more colorful, more hearty. Sometimes the weeds and wheat look so much the same that we do not know whether we are choosing something that will bear fruit. The thing is, when we try to judge who or what is worthy and who or what is not, we risk uprooting that which is good along with that which is evil. Indeed, when we try to judge how anything is growing, we risk uprooting ourselves, for our fields, too, are mixed.

Remember, though, that this parable is not about farming, it is not about wheat, and it is least of all about us. It is about the kingdom of God, our home, and here is another glint of something we might not have imagined. God’s kingdom, sown throughout the entire world, is not a climate-controlled greenhouse growing prize-winning orchids. Instead it is a field filled with wheat and with weeds, sown side by side. Of the farmer in the parable, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “It seems [that he] is more interested in things that grow than he is in a pure or clean or uniformly tidy field.” So it is with God. It is not our task (though the church has throughout its history tried to make it so) to discern the wheat from the weeds. Our task is simply to grow. To bear fruit, which is to say, to practice unshielded, unconditional love, to be reconcilers of all things, to live as faithfully and obediently as possible, patiently accepting those who are growing with us and all around us, without regard for their "wheatiness" or their "weediness", to hope for what we cannot see.

For we cannot see what God sees, how abundant the harvest will be when that time comes around. The one who turned water into wine, the one who turned Jacob into a dreamer, may very well be able to love a weed into bearing fruit. Thank goodness – thank Goodness – that isn’t up to us. Among God’s promises in this parable is the promise that in the end, that which is good will be gathered to God, and that which is evil will be burned by fire. Whether the fire is designed to punish or purify, though…thank Goodness that isn’t up to us.

But we do not stand idly by. We grow. We love. We hope. We dream. And like Jacob before us, in whom mingled a weed and flower, a sinner and a saint, we find ourselves at home in the world because God is there and because God is in us, is with us, and keeps us wherever we go. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the kingdom of God, the field that God is willing to wait patiently for, watching to see what grows. Amen.

Artwork: "Jacob's Dream", by Alan Falk; "Wheatfield", by Vincent Van Gogh

Proper 7A

These characters are so complicated and real, just like us. I preached this sermon at Holy Trinity, Crystal Springs, in the morning and at St. Matthew's, Forest, in the evening. Both churches served a juicy blueberry dessert following the service - Blueberry Crumble (we shall not speak of how much butter is involved here) and Blueberry Poundcake with Blueberry Sauce.

Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

I’m just waiting for the day archaeologists discover that the scriptural story of salvation began not in the ancient near east but, rather, in the American deep south, where one’s faith and one’s family are deep and personal matters. Where you go to church and who your people are can tell a fellow southerner a lot about you – sometimes even more than you know about yourself!

The same was true in bible times. Faith and family mattered more than fingerprints in figuring a person’s identity, and in fact were so intertwined that to belong to one was inherently to belong to the other; to reject one was to reject the other. This was the rub experienced by many in Matthew’s day, as more and more took up the cross and followed the way of Christ. Members of a household, from the eldest son to the youngest servant, were expected to embrace the faith of the household’s head; to abandon that faith for the fledgling church was to abandon the family. Becoming a Christian carried serious social, economic and political consequences that could rip a household apart. After all, Jesus’ followers included outcasts and sinners, not the sort of people usually welcome at the table; believers were apt to give away all their possessions; and the Christian movement, like its leader, aroused the suspicion of the occupying Roman government. Do not be afraid, Jesus said in Matthew’s gospel, and those whose families had already rejected them took comfort. I have come to set a man against his father…and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Jesus was not advocating alienation; he was, however, acknowledging that in choosing him many had become alienated. Jesus knew that his way – the way of forgiveness and grace – would be difficult for the world to accept, that his word – the word of love – would divide communities, friends, even families. I know. Jesus said. Do not be afraid.

It was a refrain repeated time and again throughout scripture. We heard it this morning in the reading from Genesis, when God said to Hagar, rejected by her family, I know. Do not be afraid. It had all started some fifteen years earlier, when her mistress, Sarah, had given up on the laughable notion that she might have a child in her old age. Sarah urged her husband, Abraham, to take Hagar as a wife and have a child with her, so that there might be an heir. When Hagar did become pregnant and, thus, the center of everyone’s attention, Sarah grew jealous of her Egyptian maidservant, and Hagar fled from her into the wilderness.

It was there in the wilderness, beside a spring of water, that an angel first spoke God’s words to Hagar. I know. Do not be afraid. Return to your family. I will so greatly number your children that they cannot be counted. It was the same promise God had made to Abraham and Sarah, the promise that had once made Sarah laugh and that now haunted her. The angel told Hagar that the son she bore to Abraham would be named Ishmael, which means God hears, because God heard Hagar’s cries. And then Hagar named God right back, El-roi, which means God sees, because she marveled that God had seen her and that she had seen God.

Ishmael was nearly fifteen when Sarah, beaming, finally did give birth to her own son, named Isaac, which means Child of laughter. But Sarah’s jealousy returned when she saw the two boys together, and she demanded that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away, this time for good. I know. Do not be afraid, God said to Abraham, who loved his first-born son, the first star in his sky. I know. And so Abraham, before daybreak so that his tears might not show, he gave Hagar a waterskin and some food and sent her, with Ishmael, into the wilderness.

When the water was gone and Ishmael, weak from hunger and thirst, was in a fitful sleep, Hagar sat nearby and wept for her son as only a mother can. And, the story goes, playing lightly with its words, God heard the voice of the one named God hears. And God who sees opened the eyes of Hagar, and she saw a well of water. I know. Do not be afraid. Life and hope and a promise and a future were restored as she took Ishmael by the hand and helped him drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up…

The American family is not the first, then, to be as fragile and fractured as it some fear it has become. Indeed, much of Hebrew scripture reads like a southern gothic novel filled with patriarchs and matriarchs and servants and siblings-at-odds over inheritances or land or the family business. The lines that are their families, like the lines that are so many of ours, twist and turn and intertwine and become a tangled mess, strained sometimes to the point of breaking.

Indeed, we know, and perhaps some of us have experienced, that no one can hurt someone else like a member of their family can. Families share such intimate knowledge of one another, such history, such deep memories. And just as the question, “Who are your people?”, can define us, so can we find ourselves defined by – even find our identities consumed by – any rifts or rejections that have occurred between us and our people. Still, despite our own experiences of how complicated families can be, still we find Jesus’ words about family unsettling. One’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

I know, Jesus said to his disciples, whom he called sometimes his children. I know, Jesus says to us. I know. I hear. I see. Do not be afraid. Most of us have not faced rejection by our families for choosing to follow Christ. But, like our sisters and brothers in the earliest churches, we do face rejection by others who see no need for forgiveness in their lives, by others who believe grace is for the weak, by others who insist salvation is earned, by others who would not welcome a sinner at their table. Like our sisters and brothers so long ago, we face rejection by others within the household of God, the church, by those who believe they walk the way, understand the truth, and live the life more faithfully than we do. The gospel continues to divide families, not because it embraces only some, but because it embraces all. I know. I hear. I see. Do not be afraid.

We have an identity deeper than our deepest shared memories, deeper than our DNA, more defining than our people or our hometowns or even where we go to church, deeper than any rift that might ever divide us. Our true identity lies not in any of those things but rather in God’s love for us, a love so deep that it finds us in the wilderness, that it knows the number of hairs on our heads. We are, all of us, first and foremost, members of God’s household. In God’s family, all of our lines converge and God is the thread that binds us, weaves us, pulls us together.

The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this family, and urges us to acknowledge something like this: I am a daughter, a wife, a sister, an aunt, a mother. These define and shape my life, but not one of them contains me. I am Jennifer. I am a Christian. I am a child of God, a member of God’s household. This is my true identity, and all the others grow out of it, are informed by it, and strengthened by it. Being a child of God is not a role we play. It is who we most truly are. I know you, God says to each one of us, mother or father, daughter or son, rich or poor, old or young, Egyptian maidservant or star-gazing patriarch. I know you. I hear you. I see you. I will not abandon you in the wilderness. Do not be afraid.

Who are our people? Our people are right here in this place, where we are reminded of our long history as the household of God, where we are given food for our journey into the wilderness out there. Out there, with Jesus’ disciples in all times and places, we are called to hear and see know those whom the world has rejected, but whom God calls children. Do not be afraid, we will be able to tell them as we reach across the rift and welcome them home. Amen.

Artwork: "Hagar and Ishmael", by Jakob Steinhardt.

Proper 5A

There was going to be a parish picnic today at Episcopal Church of the Advent in Sumner, but instead the food was delivered to Betty's family. Betty died in her sleep a few days ago. She would have delivered a fresh Apple Cake if it had been someone else who had died. Everyone went home from church for lunch, then came back later in the day for her funeral.

Hosea 5:15-6:6; Psalm 50:7-15; Romans 4:13-18; Matthew 9:9-13

Of all the many words we read in Hebrew scriptures, none, I think, are as rich and multivalent as chesed. We heard it read this morning from Hosea, when God says through the prophet, I desire chesed, steadfast love, and not sacrifice. Elsewhere in scripture the same word is translated and read as lovingkindness, mercy, righteousness, faithfulness, and loyalty. Chesed means all these things, and more, for it also describes the very nature of God, who is Steadfast Love, or as Hosea writes, God’s appearing is as sure as the dawn. If we could read the scriptures in Hebrew, we would find the word chesed sprinkled generously as stars across summer’s night sky…

Long before Hosea wrote to a people who had lost their faith in God, Abraham found his faith as he gazed up at the stars sparkling with the light of a hope and a future. God had called him away from his home, from all he had ever known, and promised him more than he had ever imagined. Go to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The very next line in the story, remarkably, is this: So Abram went, as God had told him…with Sarai, he set forth to go. Never mind that he did not know where he was going. Never mind that he and Sarai were too old to give birth to child, let alone a nation. Abram went, as God had told him. Hoping against hope, Paul writes, Abraham believed what God had promised, and a journey of faith, of which we are heirs, began.

Long before we became stars in Abraham’s sky, Matthew’s star appeared where many in his day would have supposed only darkness could be. Jesus had called Matthew away from his seat near the city gate where, on behalf of the occupying Roman government, he took up taxes and pocketed penalties and fees. The life Jesus offered, though, was worth more than any sum Matthew had ever collected. Follow me, Jesus said. Then the very next line in the story, remarkably, is this: And he got up and followed him. Never mind that Matthew had most likely been removed from the synagogue because of his dishonest profession. Never mind that the only other people he knew were sinners like himself. He got up and followed Jesus. Matthew believed – out of despair or hope, we don’t know – he believed that Jesus would change everything, and a journey of faith, of which we are heirs, began.

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? asks the text of a song from the Iona Community in Scotland. Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don’t know, and never be the same? Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known? Will you let my life be grown in you, and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name? Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same? Will you risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare? Will you let me answer prayer in you, and you in me?

No sooner had Matthew gotten up and followed Jesus than they both attracted the hostile stare of the Pharisees, who, one preacher has said, were appalled to see a rabbi eating dinner with people “who fell scandalously short of the exacting standards of religious respectability set by the professionally pious.” For the Pharisees, faith was a matter of maintaining one’s purity through strict observance of Torah, following all the right rules, offering all the right sacrifices, and avoiding those (like tax collectors and sinners) who didn’t measure up.

But there was Jesus at the table surrounded by Matthew and his friends, and indeed, for them the meal was an answered prayer. They lived on the margins of the community of faith, but now found themselves at the center of the kingdom of God. Their uncleanness did not contaminate Jesus; rather, his “gospel medicine,” says another preacher, would set before them a cure. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. God and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, chesed, not sacrifice.’” I desire lovingkindess, not law. I desire righteousness, not right and wrong. I desire all of you, not just some.

It is important to understand that neither Hosea nor Jesus are condemning the offering of sacrifices before God, a practice by which the faithful in every age have both praised and petitioned God. They are, however, putting the practice in its place. Such sacrifices perhaps help the worshipper mark a vow or seal a commitment or repent of wrongdoing, but God doesn’t need the offerings that are constantly made in the temple courts, for all the beasts of the forest are mine, God says. I know every bird in the sky…the whole world is mine and all that is in it. Instead, urges the psalmist, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Faithful Jews knew that a sacrifice of thanksgiving made in the temple was eaten and shared all around by those making the sacrifice, rather than by the “professionally pious” who literally thrived off the sinfulness of the people. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High. God desires of us chesed, mercy, kindness, faithfulness, love that is active, not like our passive sacrifice. God desires of us chesed, love that engages life, that is shared all around.

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name? Will you set the prisoner free and never be the same? Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen? Will you admit to what I mean in you, and you in me?

Both Abraham and Matthew answered the call of God and set out to do what for each seemed impossible – Abraham to become a father of many nations despite his age and settle in a land far away despite the distance, Matthew to become a disciple of Jesus Christ despite his unworthiness and invite others to eat at Christ’s table despite their sins. Both Abraham and Matthew left behind all that they have known, sacrificed all that was familiar and comfortable and easy, and engaged the world for God, for love. Each was offered a new start, a new life, a new purpose, a new hope. And they responded to God’s call not by word but, remarkably, by enacting in their lives and in the lives of those around them the same love and acceptance and hope they had received from God.

A prayer from the Taize Community in France reads, “Jesus our joy, when we realize that you love us, something in us is soothed and even transformed. We ask you: what do you want from me? And by the Holy Spirit you reply: Let nothing trouble you. I am praying in you. Dare to give your life.” Abraham and Matthew dared to give their lives, though it seemed to each impossible God would want them. God, who is chesed, who is “pre-emptive, unilateral, and initiatory love,” who is mercy, who is faithfulness as certain as the dawn, called them, calls everyone who needs a physician, which is to say all of us. Or do we, like the Pharisees, not know that we are sick?

The world is full of sin-sick and soul-sick and heart-sick people, including ourselves. Daily we encounter, in our own lives, in the lives of friends or family, or in the lives of strangers, hunger, thirst, fear, grief, loneliness, pain, doubt, despair, pride, selfishness, hypocrisy, greed, and countless other sorrows or sins that infect our spirits and weaken our faith. And yet, at this table, Jesus gathers us together to share a meal, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving shared all around that prepares us to go out into the world and enact the same love and acceptance and hope that we have received here.

For we are indeed called and have made our vows to the Most High, promising that we would proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, that we would seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and that we would strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being. I will, with God’s help, we replied. Do we really dare to give our lives? Or are the vows we have made just words that fall over time like faded stars?

Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around through my sight and touch and sound in you, and you in me?

Even Abraham and Matthew faltered along the way, questioning how they could fulfill the missions to which they were called, wishing things were as easy as sacrificing this pigeon to atone for that sin. But God does not call and then abandon. I will establish a covenant between me and you, God said to Abraham. An everlasting covenant, to be God to you, and to your offspring after you. Remember, Jesus said to Matthew and the rest of the disciples, remember, Jesus says to us, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

God is calling. What will the very next line in our stories be? Let us dare to give our lives. Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name. Let me turn and follow you and never be the same. In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show, then I’ll move and live and grow in you, and you in me. Amen.

Artwork: "Night Sky", by Roger Hutchison; "Energy of Unity", by Kristy K. Smith.

Proper 3A

I had been home from my pilgrimage to Iona for barely a week when I supplied at Holy Trinity, Crystal Springs, in the morning and then at St. Matthew's, Forest, in the afternoon. How did the compilers of the lectionary know?

Isaiah 49:8-16a; Psalm 131; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34

I do not occupy myself with great matters, we said together as we read aloud from Psalm 131. I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me.

Truth is, though, I do occupy myself with many things that I consider great, in the sense of enormous. And I do occupy myself with many things that I didn’t think would be too hard for me, but that turn out to be much harder than I at first realized. Truth is, I simply occupy myself with many things, great and small, so that my calendar is filled with meetings and reminders and to-do lists.

I tell myself that the lists help, that they keep me organized, and they really do. I write everything down, to the point sometimes of writing down things I did but that weren’t on the list, just so I can check them off! But sometimes, there aren’t so many things checked off, and there aren’t so many hours left in the day, and then even the small things begin to look great – enormous – and I take one look at it all and think it’s just too hard for me.

I’ve wished I could be like the psalmist, who goes on to say, I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me. But there’s usually no room for stillness on my list, no space for stillness in my soul, crowded as it is with things great and small, with concerns real and imagined, with the weight of too much worry.

I tell you, do not worry about your life, Jesus said to the people who gathered around him on a hillside one afternoon. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? Truth is, some worry or anxiety is normal, even healthy, as the natural response of our body to a perceived threat or danger, the natural longing of our souls for wholeness. It can motivate us to make difficult and heroic decisions as we move through our lives. Too much worry, though, can paralyze us, making our feet as heavy as our hearts.

Be still, beckons not only our psalmist this evening, but also a wooden bench in the cloister of the abbey on the island of Iona, in Scotland. My companions and I had just arrived as pilgrims on the island, and though weary from our long journey, we were eager to explore. Looking back now, I am struck by how much of what scripture tells us this morning about God’s providence was waiting for us and whispering to us (or chirping and baa-ing, as it were!) even on that very first walk across the island. Be still, beckoned the cloister bench, and I marveled at its invitation, as though it were God’s very lap where one might sit like a child at its mother’s breast.

Iona is quite small, just three miles long from north to south, and only one mile across at its widest point. Within a few minutes’ walk, you can cross a sandy beach, enter a wide green pasture, and begin a steep ascent up a rocky hillside. The island has very few residents, and only a handful of pilgrims who venture beyond the walls of the abbey, so that on the beaches or in the pastures or up the hills, it is not unusual to have the experience of solitude. One of my companions described a feeling of having her worries fall away along our walks, unburdening her, so that there was nothing between herself and God. Iona is indeed a thin place.

There are, even on such a small island, countless flowers and birds to consider, as Jesus encourages us to do in our gospel reading. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed as one of these. There are beautiful gardens on Iona, carefully and lovingly tended; even more lovely, however, are the wildflowers growing in every place imaginable, and in some places entirely unimaginable. The grassy pastures are generously sprinkled with tiny white daisies, and though they were not yet blooming while we were there, the hillsides are painted with purple heather and the roadsides with yellow irises. Most remarkable, however, were the determined flowers that grew in the barest amount of soil in the crevices of rocks, buffeted by wind, sprayed by salt water, and yet blooming for all they were worth in pinks and yellows and lavenders and soft whites. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? The ravens on Iona might take issue with these words, as they seem to consider themselves of highest value! But they are just one among countless species of birds that call Iona and her neighboring islands home, including sparrows and wrens and puffins and eagles and herons and many, many sea gulls. Their songs are sometimes a quiet chirp or two, and sometimes a symphony across the island, where they ride the wind or hop among the wild daisies, delighted, it seems, to live in such a holy place.

I considered many flowers and birds on Iona, but it was the island’s most numerous residents – the sheep – who came immediately to mind when I first read this morning’s lessons. There are sheep of every size and color and description on the island, and while we were there it was still the season for lambs. Iona sheep are known for their tendency to produce twins, and if once then a thousand times our walks were slowed by our pausing to watch a mother sheep with two little lambs at her side. Simple wooden fences mark the boundaries of various pastures, but often the sheep are given the freedom to wander where they will. They might graze in their pastures or along the edge of a beach or in the yard of our hotel. Many sheep also grazed along narrow tracks of green grass that wound their way among heather and rocks up impossibly steep hillsides. Somehow they were sure on their footing, somehow they were sure that there would be grass to nibble all the way up and over the hill. Somehow they knew that farmers had placed troughs throughout the hills to collect rainwater for them to drink.

As pilgrims on Iona, guests on her sacred ground, it was often the sheep who shepherded us, guiding us across pastures or up hillsides. We followed the trails they had made, threading our own way through the heather and rocks to reach places where we could graze upon the grace of God. I realized atop one hill at the edge of the sea, sitting on a rock surrounded by wildflowers, listening to the waves and the gulls, looking out across pastures and sheep, feeling the cool wind and warm sun on my face, that being still, that quieting the soul, does not always mean being motionless or soundless. Even on the bench in the abbey cloister, one is aware of the shuffle of pilgrim feet and the whispered prayers of all who have ever visited its holy grounds. Even on the bench in the abbey cloister, you can hear the birds and sheep. Being still, then, quieting the soul, is perhaps simply being open to the raw, wild, present grace of God in our lives and on our journeys.

Listen again to our reading from the prophet Isaiah, offering God’s words to a people who were worried to the bone. They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture: they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down…I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. Our daily lives, with all their lists and obligations and concerns and worries about things we can and cannot control, are a journey, a pilgrimage. The ground we cover is sometimes as gentle as a pasture, and sometimes as difficult as an impossibly steep and rocky hillside. But look – flowers grow there, birds nest there, and lambs find sure footing. Life flourishes in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances.

So it is for us, Jesus says. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Not for one moment is Jesus suggesting that trusting in God’s providence will make life’s difficulties disappear. There are troubles and dangers and threats along our way, each and every day. Of all people who have journeyed through life, Jesus knew that. He urges us to consider, though, how God provides what we need to flourish in the most difficult of circumstances. Clothed in grace, fed with love, watered by the Spirit, we are strengthened for the journey and we radiate God’s present presence in the world. As a mother nourishes her child – how many times did we watch a mother sheep call to her lambs, who came running to drink her milk? – as a mother nourishes her child so that he may go out into the world to grow and learn and journey, so does God nourish us. So fed, even on rocky hillsides our footing is more sure, and we become shepherds for others who find the journey difficult, who are paralyzed by worries great and small.

Let us, then, be still. Not motionless, but still, open to the raw and wild and present grace of God. Perhaps then we, too, might learn, in the words of the poet William Blake, “To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour…Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine runs a joy with silken twine.” Amen.

All photos taken by me. There are a billion more where those came from, and I would be more than happy to share them with you!

Easter 6A

AP Calculus was the last math class I ever took, except I guess for Statistics and some class on how to write standardized tests in grad school. I talk about how I don't like math, but truth is, I secretly love working through to an absolute answer. Outside of math, there are so few of those...

Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

The air in that room is absolutely still, heavy, almost humid, with the weight of the teacher’s words…Do not let your hearts be troubled…Have I not been with you all this time and you still do not know…I have set you an example...If you know these things…In a little while you will not see me…I have said these things to you so that when the hour comes you may remember that I told you about them…

To the students, though, struggling to hear through the haze of their anxiety, it seems suddenly as if the teacher is presenting all new material rather than reviewing what they have so laboriously learned. We do not know…How can we know…Why can I not follow you now…Show us…

There is not much time left before the test will begin, a test that will demand every ounce of their strength, every fiber of their being. They will have to rely on what little they can remember, much less understand, of things right and wrong, truths eternal and temporary, actions that multiply and actions that divide. When the test begins, the teacher cannot be there to demonstrate any answers.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you, too, took the AP Calculus exam once upon a time! You, too, sat staring at a page swimming with equations you were supposed to know. You, too, listened to a teacher review concepts that suddenly made no sense. You, too, felt entirely unprepared to face the test alone, armed only with a number two pencil and your knowledge of…pi?...cosines?...tangents?...

There is not much time left before the test will begin, a test that will demand every ounce of their strength, every fiber of their being. They will have to rely on what little they can remember, much less understand, of things right and wrong, truths eternal and temporary, actions that multiply and actions that divide. When the test begins, the teacher cannot be there to demonstrate any answers.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you, too, took your imagination back to the once upon a time of the Last Supper when you heard our gospel reading this morning. The disciples were intent upon their evening meal after a long, dusty day with Jesus on the city streets below, where there had been lessons in making miracles and endless exercises in mercy. Jesus, their teacher, stood up from the table so that they expected him to speak. Instead, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet… In that moment, and throughout the rest of the evening, Jesus rehearsed for his disciples, his students, everything they would need to know for the test that awaited them all – the test of his leaving them.

And so the review began. Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. But the disciples were distracted because Judas had just left the Upper Room in a hurry, as fast as his clean feet could carry him.

Believe in God, believe also in me. I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going. But hollow echoes of Jesus saying that Peter would deny him stifled the sound so that all they heard, as though he were already far away, was that Jesus was no longer going to be with them.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. The test, Jesus wanted them to know, would measure not only what the disciples could remember about the things he had taught them, but also how well they could apply those things in their own lives. If you love me, you will keep my commandments: You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and you will love your neighbors as yourselves. By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another. Love one another as I have loved you.

To the disciples, it must have seemed like an impossible task, to pick up where Jesus was leaving them, to carry on his teachings, to reveal to others the profound nature of God’s love in the absence of the one who had revealed it to them. How could they love others as Jesus had loved them when they felt now so unloved? How could they embrace those the world had cast out and orphaned when they themselves were being orphaned? How could they care for broken hearts when their own hearts were being broken?

Perhaps the disciples were too absorbed in their anxiety to hear at first that they would not face this terrible test alone, like so many AP Calculus students surrounded by one another and yet alone at their desks with answer booklets no one else can see. From the start, Jesus had been instructing them not as individual believers (although each would live out of his or her belief according to the gifts and abilities each individual possessed), but rather as a community of believers of which they would be the first of countless members, of which we are also members.

Jesus knew, however, that his first disciples would feel deeply the loss of his physical presence, and that those of us following now so long after would never have known that level of companionship with him. He knew that his disciples’ track record – as a group, let alone as individuals – was shaky at best, even for their sincere efforts. Jesus could no longer be there to hold their hands or wash their feet. And so he promised his students, his friends, his followers, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth… You know him, because he abides with you and he will be with you.

The word in Greek is parakletos, or paraclete as we have come to know it, and it means “one who stands alongside”. It originates, in fact, in the Greek word for “call,” so that even more closely it means “one who stands alongside the one who is called.” Knowing how we would long for his presence like bewildered students longing for a teacher, like outcasts longing for an advocate, like orphaned children longing for a parent, like lost sheep longing for a shepherd, Jesus graciously asks that God send the Spirit to be our teacher, our advocate, our parent, our shepherd, our guide as we face the tests and trials and tribulations of this life of faith in a world that no longer sees Jesus Christ walking the city streets on his own two feet.

In just a few weeks, we will hear much more about the gift of the Spirit, and how it did indeed transform the lives of the disciples, allowing them to speak with confident hearts about things right and wrong, truths eternal and temporary, and actions that multiply and divide. As the Spirit settled like a fire in their hearts and blew through their breath like wind, they experienced the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, who in Jesus had come as near as flesh and bone, and who was now nearer to them than their own skin.

Today, though, we are with the disciples at the supper table, looking for the last time into the eyes of our beloved teacher and friend. He speaks with us there not as individuals but as the church, called to love the world as he has loved it, called to care for it as he has cared for it, called to reveal him in it. Although we will not see Jesus in his own flesh and bone as the first disciples once did, we have learned from them and from the generations who followed them to see Jesus in the faces and flesh and bones of others, in kind and merciful acts, in passionate cries for justice, in love. It is the Spirit who helps us, guides us, strengthens us to see how Jesus continues to be at work in the world through his church, through us who are now his body as St. Theresa has said, who are now his arms and legs and hands and heart. We do our best to remember what we have learned from him, and to pattern our lives after the love that he taught us. With the Spirit alongside and all around and abiding inside us, advocating for us, mediating to us an ongoing and intimate relationship with our teacher, we take on the roles of being advocates ourselves, helpers of and caretakers for those whom the world has outcast and orphaned.

All shall be well, I tried to remember as I struggled though that AP Calculus exam. Those words from Julian of Norwich had taught me an eternal truth about facing difficult tests in life. Indeed, in the midst of a severe illness that both her life and her faith, Julian longed for a vision of Jesus, her teacher. Her account of that experience has comforted many. She wrote, “I saw that God was everything that is good and encouraging…God showed me in my palm a little thing round as a ball about the size of a hazelnut. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and asked myself, ‘What is this thing?’ And I was answered, ‘It is everything that is created.’ I wondered how it could survive since it seemed so little it could suddenly disintegrate into nothing. The answer came, ‘It endures and ever will endure, because God loves it.’ And so everything has being because of God’s love.”

The air in the Upper Room was still that night, heavy, almost humid with the weight of the teacher’s words. Today, in this place, on this side of Easter, it is resurrection air that we breathe. We will return after a while to the world that tests our faith, but the Spirit will go alongside whispering all that Jesus needs us to know: Love one another as I have loved you. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Amen.

Artwork: "The Washing of the Feet", by Corinne Vonaesch; "At That Moment", by Delda Skinner

Easter 5A

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

Where is home for you? wondered our Presiding Bishop in the sermon she delivered at her investiture. Where is home for you? And how do you get there? People had traveled from all over the world to be at the National Cathedral for the investiture, many of them now miles and even oceans away from where they had started. Where is home for you? And how do you get there?

Perhaps home is a house just a little ways down the road from here. Perhaps it is a house in a more distant town, where family still live even though you have moved on. Perhaps it isn’t a house at all but instead a feeling of rootedness when you see mountains or hear a pounding surf or look out across a rich and fertile land. The journey home may take you down dirt roads past cotton fields, or it may take you halfway across the country. Wherever home is, however we get there, home is what we long for when we are weary or wandering, what we head for when we need security and succor. In the very least, as Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place, where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

As a preacher’s kid and a preacher’s wife and a preacher myself, I have had many homes, but of course right now my home is in Jackson. With a seven-year old son and a rockstar-hopeful husband, it’s not always a peaceful house, but it is without a doubt home. For all three of us, home is filled with what is most familiar to us, the people and the things that we love most. Some of those things have come from other homes in which Charlie and I have lived, so that our roots are intertwined, strengthening our household and widening the walls of what we call home.

One of those things is a dollhouse that my grandmother, Mamama, made for me when I was little. It recently traveled from South Carolina to Jackson, and something in me became that little girl again as I opened its doors and saw the walls she had painted, the wallpaper she had hung, the furniture she had glued, and the pillow covers she had stitched. Mamama had set the table with little glass dishes, muffins that could really come out of their miniature tin, and a baked chicken so golden you could almost smell the melted butter and paprika as if it had come out of her own oven. Mamama had prepared all those rooms for me.

As I unwrapped the delicate furniture and placed it back in the dollhouse, my heart wandered back to Mamama’s house where so much of who I am today was shaped and formed and nurtured. I loved that house, from the musty pool table in the basement to the boxes of my mother’s old dolls in the attic and every room in between. And yet, when I think about that house, what I think about most is Mamama – her lap, her smile, her embrace, her voice, her smell. Mamama was who made that house home for me. When my heart was restless, I found rest in her rooms, I was at home in her presence.

Where is home for you? And how do you get there? Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Our gospel reading this morning is one that has comforted countless aching hearts, including my own when Mamama died, offering us assurance that there is a home waiting for us, a home in God’s presence. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

When Jesus first spoke these words in a room far from his home in Galilee, his disciples were deeply troubled. All that had become familiar to them in the short time they had followed Jesus was crumbling like the unleavened bread of their Passover meal. After dinner that night, Jesus knelt on the dusty floor and washed their feet in the manner of a servant, not, surely, a messiah. Jesus himself was troubled in spirit, John writes, as he next turned to Judas and said, do quickly what you are going to do. Then he told the disciples that he would not be with them much longer, and that before it was all over, even Peter would deny he had ever met Jesus.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. I wonder if Jesus said these words as much to comfort his own aching heart as to comfort the hearts of his disciples. In my Father’s house there are many rooms… Perhaps Jesus wanted to assure them all that they would be reunited one day in a place they could all call home for eternity.

I humbly submit to you, though, that the Father’s house of which Jesus spoke that night was closer than any of the disciples could have imagined, that the place prepared for them in the presence of God was as near to them as the one who was preparing it. I am the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus said. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

Since the very beginning of John’s gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, we have been told that the relationship between God and Christ is one of mutual indwelling, that they are at home in and home for one another. And that is not all. Just a few verses after our reading this morning ends, Jesus assures his disciples that their relationship with him will take on a new life when he has gone. They will continue to experience his presence through the gift of the Holy Spirit, and on that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.

I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. Through Jesus Christ, sisters and brothers, who showed us the way and the truth and the life of God’s household with room enough for all people… through Jesus Christ, our relationship with God right here, right now is one of mutual indwelling. Right here, right now, we are both at home in and home for God. And so like Dorothy waking up from her dream, we begin to see that the home we believed we could only hope for has been sheltering us all along. We may leave home, but home never leaves us, for at all times we are carried in the vast roominess of the heart of God, our true home

“O God, you have made us for yourself,” wrote St. Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” And so it is that we can find ourselves at home even when we are on the road, when we are in the midst of the changes and chances of our daily lives, even when we are oceans away from the places where we started. We are at all times surrounded by the household of God, with whom we are called to be in a relationship of mutual care. We are at all times at home in God’s heart. And if we will prepare the room, God will be at home in our hearts as well. If we will prepare the room, God will be at home in all the world. Indeed, our Presiding Bishop concludes that our final homecoming is wrapped up in our willingness to prepare a room for others, to feed them at our table, to cover them with our garments, to comfort their restless hearts. “For none of us can truly find our rest in God,” she writes, “until all of our brothers and sisters have been welcomed home.”

Let us pray in the words of a service of house blessing: Almighty and everlasting God, grant to this home, to all of our homes, and to ourselves as homes for the life that is in us, grant to these homes the grace of your presence, that you may be known to the inhabitants of these dwellings, and the defender of these households. We ask this through your Son, in whose name there is room prepared for us and for all your people. Amen.

Palm Sunday A

Here we are once again on that Lenten morning when everything goes wrong, when the road turns sharply from miracles to mayhem and madness, when hopes are raised and then dashed. It would hardly seem like the time for children’s games, but then again, perhaps it would help us all breathe a little easier after holding our breath through the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ…

Do you remember the game when everyone slaps their hands against their thighs in a walking rhythm, and then the leader starts out saying, Goin’ on a bear hunt…and everyone repeats the line? Going’ on a bear hunt…I’m not afraid…’cause I got my gun. But it’s not a simple hike through the woods, right? Oh no, the leader says. Oh no…there’s a field…can’t go over it…can’t go under it…can’t go around it…gotta go through it.

And then comes the verse written, I think, just for Mississippi after it rains…Oh no…there’s some mud…can’t go over it…can’t go under it…can’t go around it…gotta go through it. You know how the rest of the game goes, all the way up trees and across rivers and over mountains until you get to the cave where there is indeed a very large bear, and you drop your gun and go running all the way back the way you came.

For five weeks now we’ve been on a journey through the wilderness season of Lent. It’s hardly a children’s game, this journey whose purpose has been to help us see more clearly our need for God’s help in our lives. Oh no…there’s intolerance…oh no…there’s self-righteousness…oh no…there’s sinfulness…

But now the wilderness gives way as our journey joins up with a procession through the streets of a city. By the time the little donkey and her colt have carried Jesus to the outskirts of Jerusalem, a crowd has gathered all around him and they walk with him right through the gates of the city where he will be arrested and tried and executed for disturbing the peace. Jesus rides right in. Goin’ to Jerusalem…I’m not afraid…

We’d love to let the parading and the palm-waving and the cheering and the celebrating and the shouting, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord… we’d love to let this victorious day carry us to the next victorious day, when we’ll arrive at a cave of a tomb and find not a bear, not even a body, but a gloriously empty space where a body had lain. And there will be more cheering and celebrating and shouting, He is risen! He is risen! Allelu…

But we’d be getting ahead of ourselves. Because between here and there, between today and Easter Day, is the longest, hardest, darkest stretch of the journey. Oh no…there’s Judas…oh no…there’s Pilate…oh no…there’s a crown of thorns…oh no…there’s a cross. Can’t go over it…can’t go under it…can’t go around…gotta go through it. Gotta go through it.

Holy Week, this journey between Palm Sunday and Easter, is a miniature and at the same time a greatly magnified rendering of what Jesus’ entire life was all about. Always going through it, through the fields, through the mud, through the longest, hardest, darkest stretches of streets where he encountered people the rest of the world wouldn’t touch and told them that God loved them. Where he encountered people with broken hearts and offered them hope. Where he encountered people who hurt to the bone and gave them healing strength. Gotta go through it.

God so loved this world and all the muddy, broken, sinful, hurting lives in it that God couldn’t bear to be simply over or under or around it. God ached to go through it, to be in it. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, and so it was that Jesus took his first ride on the back of a donkey while in the belly of his very pregnant mother as she and Joseph joined the procession of those traveling to their hometowns to be registered. The donkey probably wondered late on Christmas night why its feeding trough contained not hay but a baby boy, the One through whom all things were made wiggling his tiny new fingers and toes. You will name him Jesus, an angel had whispered to Joseph in a dream. And he will be Emmanuel, which means God-with-us. Gotta go through it.

There would be lots of bear hunts in Jesus’ life and ministry, lots of difficult days, lots of obstacles, lots of times it would have been easier to crawl into a cave, kick the bear out, and hide from the world. And it’s like that for us, sometimes, too. In our lives we have lots of difficult days, we get lost in the field, stuck in the mud, chased by bears, frightened by failure.

The journey through Holy Week reminds us that God has gone through it all. In Jesus, God experienced difficult days and obstacles, getting lost, getting stuck, getting angry, feeling sad, feeling lonely, being betrayed, being afraid. Jesus went through it all, right through to the end of it all, and at the end of the journey there was indeed a dark cave. But God did not leave him there, and so God does not leave us. I am with you always, Jesus told his followers – Jesus tells us – at the end of Matthew’s gospel. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Through the fields, through the mud, up the trees, across the rivers, over the mountains, in the caves, I am with you always. Even here. Even now.

So, in this Holy Week…on every day of our lives…we’re going on a journey. We might be afraid, but that’s okay. We have our God-with-us with us. We can get through it all. Amen.