coming to our senses

John Bee and John Leech sharing communion in Edmonds City Park
(photo: Christine Sine)

Re: "Smells and bells", Letters, May 16th 2020, The Economist, p 14. Re: "Our Father, who art in cyberspace", April 11th 2020.


The Episcopal Church basically went online Tuesday March 17th ... and it looks like that is the order of the day for many dioceses (regional judicatories) at least through late May or the end of May ... So the people of the church have been telephoning, emailing, video conferencing, to pray together, worship together, and visit with each other. After an extended period of Eucharistic-centered devotions (which in some senses will never end) we have rediscovered and deepened our appreciation of daily devotions at home or with others via zoom, web chat, facebook, facetime, youtube, email, phone... and felt gratitude when we can get outdoors and enjoy Spring.


Just this past week, pastors of dioceses in Western states, such as Bishop Rickel in Seattle and Bishop Reddall in Phoenix, have begun to discuss with their clergy and people when and how "re-opening" will occur. We are in Phase I of 4 phases: that is a long way from the sensual church - the engagement of all five senses in worship - that Nawshir Mirza of Mumbai recalls so fondly in his letter.

For the now, those who can take Eucharist must take it not only for themselves, but for all those, present, past, and future, who may not.

And in the meantime, we turn necessity toward invention. What we have gained, as we have lost some contact through our five senses, are ways not common to many - but to some - before this time, of making connection without touch, sight, smell, taste, or feel being easy communication.

Occasionally in Seattle the Rev. Phil Jackson invited me to lead TV Eucharist - two or more of us would gather, on a local television stage, and share communion; five thousand would watch. To see another take communion is not the same, but it is not nothing.

Indeed we do something even more insubstantial regularly without a qualm. We pray for each other.

There is no greater communion than that.




the big parade

 

Okay, I admit it – I am not waiting for Christmas Eve. I am already listening to Christmas music, and specifically to “Messiah”, the oratorio by George Frideric Handel. Because after the overture the singing starts with some of the very scriptures we are hearing today.

Over the weekend, Eric Hanson was meditating on the meaning of Handel’s “Messiah”, and, being a music professor, on its style of composition. He recognized something: that Handel, who had the habit of opening his operas and oratorios with an overture in the Italian style, here began his oratorio with a French overture. Why French instead?

Because a French overture is meant to accompany the appearance of royalty, the entrance of a king. At the opera house in Paris, the music would be heralding the entrance, in all his pomp and glory, of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

For the London premiere of Messiah, the story goes, a king would be present: the king of England. But of course that is not all – a greater king than George II would be introduced by this music. Indeed, at one point in the performance the king in the theatre stood up – and the audience stood with him – acknowledging the superordinate majesty of the one being proclaimed: Jesus of Nazareth, son of the most high God.

Our gospel reading today begins with a grand-sounding procession, a parade of powerful names: the emperor of Rome, Tiberius, takes first place, followed by his servant on the spot, the man he sent to take over a rough place and straighten it out: procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. And other kings are there, two brothers among them, sons of Herod the Great who rebuilt the Temple. The high priests are there too – ones we will meet again.

It is a procession of grandeur. More than oriental splendor - the power of Rome, the piety of Jerusalem – line up in powerful array. But the whole thing is shown up as a Doctor Seuss procession when an incongruous figure is introduced.

John. There he is. No regal model he. Not by the standards of those or any days. He looks about as pompous as the bag lady that used to sleep in front of the White House gates. Yet somehow he makes all that pomp seem foolish. Absurd. Small.

This is the desert rat. John is the man out of the wilderness who calls – shouts – to the whole world – clean it up and clear the way. Get ready – open the path. Be baptized – repent! Be cleansed of your sin – get rid of it! Straighten the way.

All the high places will be thrown down and the lowly exalted. What is out of true will be made straight and level. The road will be clear – for the one is coming who was promised. The savior! God is sending his salvation. So get ready. Prepare.

And how prepare? Prepare your hearts – make room in there. Clear away the obstacles that would block his progress. Banish curves and abolish detours. He is coming – and he is coming straight in. The roundabout runaround routes, the sophisticated excuses, the diversions and distractions, the out-and-out obstacles to his coming: clear them away!

And rejoice! For God will lead us, his people, with joy.

Our sorrow, our affliction that we wear like weedy garments, our mourning, our sadness and poverty of soul – set that all aside.

Put off the garments of bereavement and mourning. You need not sing a sad song one more time. It is time to rejoice – and put on Christ, the glory from God and his mercy and righteousness.

It is as if you have dressed for a funeral and find yourself at a wedding. It is not time to mourn – it is time to celebrate.

We are being redeemed, set free to live now the joyous lives of God’s own people.

If.

If we clear the way.

What do you need to do to make straight the road to your heart?

I invite you to join me in asking the question.

What blocks, distracts, discourages, obstructs, or prevents you, from opening the way?

Have you got something that you are holding back, holding dear, grasping onto and not letting go, that keeps you from living a life of rejoicing, and keeps you from the King?

Are you letting something take you off course, down a side road, something pleasant perhaps, but enticing you away from paying attention to what really matters in your life?

Is there something you just need to get out of the way – you know it’s wrong and it has to go – if you are to be ready to receive Jesus with joy instead of sorrow?

It is time to get ready.

What do you need to do to clear the road?

For he is coming: he is already on the way.

Let every heart prepare Him room, Let earth receive her King. Amen.

JRL+

CAdvent2, Second Sunday of Advent, Baruch 5:1-9, Canticle 16, Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6, Benedictus Dominus Deus, Luke 1:68-79, The Song of Zechariah, tveucharist, John the Baptist, Eric Hanson, Handel, Messiah, Handel's Messiah, 

Getting Ready for the Baby

This is the season of Advent – a season of joyful preparation and solemn anticipation. We know that the Child will come – but the season begins with portents of the end of time.

We know that at the end of all things, when the constructions of the last empire are down for good and all creation groans for redemption, our savior comes. He comes to judge and he comes to redeem.

He comes, not on our timetable, not when or where we want him to come, nor how. He does not come riding to our rescue in the last reel of the movie. Much as we want him to.

He comes to us, first, not in power and might, but in mystery and quiet.

He comes to us, he is already here.

Here, in our hearts – if we follow the one true God, adoring and worshipping him who created all things.

Here, in our hearts – if we ask him to come.

If we are ready.

On my mother’s kitchen bulletin board is a snapshot of a mother with three children, one standing and looking toward the camera, one squirming out of her lap, and another holding in his hand a cowboy hat on top of a stick. Why?

Because this is to be a photograph of my mother with all her children – and the one with the hat knows a fourth child is coming. So he represents the fourth child with a cowboy hat. He does not know much else about the coming child – he just knows that the child is coming and that the family is getting ready for the baby.

The family with the snapshot (you can see Dad’s shadow from behind the camera) knows they want their new member to be safe, and they want to get the stuff together they will need to welcome the baby. They are getting excited.

Maybe they will paint the baby’s room – not sure whether to paint it pink or blue they might paint it yellow or green. They are going to be getting gifts – things they will need to take care of the baby, things that will be fun or silly, toys for the baby to play with, or objects that it will admire.

They will want to nurture the baby. And they will be thinking about names.

Mary and Joseph had a slightly different situation. They knew some things about the baby that was on the way. In fact, a lot, if they had been reading the Hebrew Scriptures.

They had already received a suggestion of what to name the baby – Emmanuel, “God with us.” They probably counted on a boy. They certainly wondered if the baby would be safe. And if they had any ambitions about painting the baby’s room first they would need to know where that room would be.

They were soon to be amazed with an array of gifts. Gifts were coming that would tell them a lot about their baby – or confirm for them what they already suspected.

Strangers would deliver the gifts they were going to receive: first came shepherds and angels, and then Magi, wise people from the East who had “seen his star.” (Other visitors would come but they would come too late – and miss the baby.)

This baby was bound to cause excitement. All babies do. And each baby is special. This one had some extra excitement to generate.

The wise people came to adore him. They greeted him as King of the Jews.

Nobody else would call him that for a long time. And when anybody did again, it would be – a sign that he was not safe, and confirmation that his name really mattered and that he really was King.

But for now – there is a baby on the way.

A baby – not very royal looking at all. A baby – defenseless, quiet or crying, in need of nurture and safety and warmth, and in need of love.

A baby – in whom the hopes of all humanity are raised.

A baby…

The One who will come in power, the one who will bring with him the consummation of time – the Alpha and the Omega – first comes to us like this.

He comes to us, quiet, mysterious, in longing for us just as we are longing for him.

How shall we get ready for the baby?



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tveucharist.org for broadcast the first Sunday in Advent 2011

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'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'

There are places you can get to in life, positions you can fill, status you can gain, prizes you can win, by following the rules, checking the boxes off the list, getting the signatures in the right spaces on the forms, and satisfying the tribunal.

There are places you can't.

There are rewards you cannot earn, standards you cannot meet, and tribunals you cannot satisfy - not on your own.


"For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

As St. James says,

God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.

(James 4:6)

When I joined the Boy Scouts I tried to follow the rules - spoken and unspoken. I was very taken with the Boy Scout Handbook, and tried to instill its precepts in my self like holy writ. I learned to recite the Scout Law, the Scout Oath, and the Scout Motto.

And I followed the rules. You can see in my copy of the Boy Scout Handbook checkmarks against each of the steps to become a Tenderfoot Scout, then a Second-Class Scout. And on it goes...

There were all sorts of very useful rules and instructions. They were helpful - if you kept the purpose in mind.

The purpose was, to my fourteen-year-old mind, to learn the skills to have fun - safely - in woods or on water.

We learned how to canoe, to hike, to camp, to cook outdoors over an open fire, to make the fire, to chop the wood. We learned first aid, surveying techniques, and woodcraft.

We learned a lot of things - to have fun, safely and skillfully, and to be changed. We became better boys - on the way to becoming better men. We learned how to work together. We learned how to lead. We learned how to follow, even when somebody confused leading with bossing other boys around. We learned how to make our way on our own, when that was necessary.

Of course you are never really alone.

(Even Eagle Scouts need help from the other boys.)

God is always walking with you.

And of course you will never make it, on your own. Not to the place that really matters. Not to becoming the person that you were really made to be. You can't - and you don't have to. You weren't made to. You were made to walk with God.

For He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

(Micah 6:8)

If you are wondering how to find God's will for your life - there it is. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Or, to put it another way - one of Jesus' favorites - you can sum up the whole Law for living in two phrases:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

(The Book of Common Prayer, The Holy Eucharist, Rite One)


Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God? Oh! Is that all?

It'll only take a lifetime to learn.

And a good lifetime it will be.

For we are not made to make it on our own - despite all the strivings of the earnest but overconfident Pharisee, neither he - nor any one of us - is able to exalt ourselves.

He did all the 'right' things - checked all the right boxes. He tithed, he fasted. He gained position, and won status for himself. He had forgotten the purpose. He just wanted to make it to the top. But - nobody makes it on their own.

You cannot get into heaven by pulling up on your own bootstraps.

The repentant tax collector knew this. He may not have lived a good life - in fact, he was sure he hadn't, and repented for it - but he did know this:

All he was able to offer, all he had, was humility, a prayer of humble access before the Lord.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen.

Alleluia.


For the Lord is good, and a merciful maker of righteousness:

Our sins are stronger than we are, *
but you will blot them out.


Happy are they whom you choose
and draw to your courts to dwell there! *
they will be satisfied by the beauty of your house,
by the holiness of your temple.


Awesome things will you show us in your righteousness,
O God of our salvation, *
O Hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the seas that are far away.

(Psalm 65:3-5)

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bread from heaven, bread for the world

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal word and holy spirit. Amen.

How are we to live?

The people in the wilderness cried out and God said to them, I will give you bread from heaven. They were in a time of turmoil and change, of fear and doubt. All that they knew in the security of their captivity was gone!

Something new was coming. But what was it?

How are we to live now? Between the old place and the promise?

To begin to accept ourselves as sustained by the grace of God.

To begin to trust Jesus – that the source of our being is the source of all being.

To trust God’s provision and providence – and move forward through life alive to that promise – and its fulfillment here and now.

In the desert the people yearned for their past, the security of their captivity, and they complained. Paul in the epistle says, put away rancor and wrangling and bitterness and anger – as a Lutheran theologian, Paul Lee, said to me last summer, Badmouthing is negative prayer – put all that away and be imitators of God. God is loving, God is kind, God is forgiving and tenderhearted. In your speech and in your actions be imitators of God.

God’s word builds you up, sustains you.

May God make us a gracious people, a generous people.

SO how are we to live? We are to live as imitators of God, as members of his kingdom.

Be kind to one another, be tender-hearted to one another, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.

How are we to live? Through Jesus: he is the bread of life, bread from heaven, bread for the world.

Live free from fear, free from want. Rejoice in God’s abundant grace and sustaining love.

Hope in the promise of the presence of God with us, giving us life through his son, sustaining us.

Act secure in the knowledge of the love of God, as his hands in the world, heralds of his kingdom arriving in our midst.

God is with us. Christ is with us. Let’s live that way. God give us the bread we need today – the sustenance of your saving love.

Jesus live in our hearts forever. Amen.

August 9, 2009

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tveucharist

May I speak in the Name of the Son, in the Power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father. AMEN.

Many sermons end with a pastoral prayer; this sermon follows one.

Like many preachers Jesus addresses God on behalf of his congregation; at the same time, he lets us know what he has been talking about all along. And that is good news for us.

Jesus both intercedes for us and instructs us, in this one prayer.

Jesus is the good shepherd, the pastor of us all: he has made his prayer to the Father for us in the gospel of John, in the 17th chapter. And this is what he says:

He asks that God glorify his Son, that his Son may bring glory to him, and he proclaims the power of God through Christ to give eternal life to all people.

He explains that to have eternal life is to know the one true God, and his Son.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Following Jesus, we come to the Father. Believing in Jesus, we come to know God. Through Christ we receive eternal life.

Jesus continues his prayer: he has completed the work he was sent on earth to do, and now he asks God the Father to make known to the world the glory that God the Son had before the beginning of the world. It was through him that all things were made. Every thing that comes into being comes into being through him.

Everything that receives life, receives it through him. That is how it has been since the beginning of the world – since before the world began. And now we are invited to receive, refreshed and new, life in the one in whom life is made: God the Son. Christ. Jesus.

Jesus has revealed God to the ones whom he taught, his disciples and apostles. They have been faithful, and followed him, and believed in him, and known him, and through him they have come to life in the presence of God.

And they have come to know that through Jesus we receive eternal life – and that is the news that they have to share with us. For what Jesus taught, they have passed on to us, and the truth that they found in him, they have given us.

Jesus is now with the Father. His message remains. He gave it to his disciples, and they passed it on – and so it has come to us.

He prays on their behalf: to God he commends his followers as really belonging to God. These are God’s people, and in God’s care. You are God’s people, and in God’s care. And it is through them and through you that God is glorified.

Through the miracle of the church, through the joy of faith, through the presence of Christ among us in the breaking of the bread, in the prayers, in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, God is glorified – and we receive eternal life.

This is the mystery of all the ages – and it is open to us to know and to share in, freely, as God’s gift to humanity through his son Jesus Christ. Eternal life comes from the same source that is the origin of all life – from God in Christ.

This is amazing news, and blessed assurance. We belong to God, we are his; and he is the source of all life and all being, from the beginning to the end.

There is an unbroken chain of witness, of glory, from God the Father to his Son, to his disciples, to us – we are the people of God on the face of the earth today.

We are his witnesses; and to him we give glory. This we do and can do because we live in the presence and the power of God in the Spirit – and we celebrate our new life, together, every time we come together around the Lord’s Table.

As we remember Christ’s sacrifice, his offering of himself – his whole life, his witness to God the Father, his willingness to give his life to the glory of God, his resurrection to the new life and his ascension to be with God the Father – we remember and make present in our own lives the power and glory of God.

This simple act, of sharing bread and wine and the good gifts of the earth, makes present to us in our world and in our lives the practical presence of God.

It shows that God’s gifts of creation are good, and that what he has made lasts.

He has made the world, and he has made us to rejoice and be glad in it.

Let us celebrate together the life we have in Christ, received in his Name and to his glory.

Let us live together in that new life, in Christ, rejoicing in the presence of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


The 7th Sunday of Easter – May 4, 2008
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

tveucharist.org