It has been my joy to serve as pastor, priest, and teacher for Saint
Alban’s Church since the first of Advent 2007. During that time together
I have presided at worship and vestry meetings, preached and taught,
visited people at home and in hospitals, and conducted baptisms,
weddings, and funerals.
We have shared together times of sorrow and times of joy. After next
Sunday someone else will take up these duties, and I will return this
fall to full-time academic work, to finish up my doctoral studies.
My wife Sarah and I have been blessed by our time with this
congregation and will always remember our ministry among you with
affection and gratitude.
Blessings to all in Christ Jesus and may you continue to journey into a future with hope.
Father John
http://stalbansedmonds.org/2013/07/a-note-from-the-rector/
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Saturday, July 20, 2013
baked beans
I checked with my mother about this story.
One time early in their marriage my mother wanted to prepare a fancy meal for my father, but the pot roast got burned in the oven.
He told her, “Honey, I’d just as soon have baked beans.”
He only needed one thing – which was, I think, her company.
One time early in their marriage my mother wanted to prepare a fancy meal for my father, but the pot roast got burned in the oven.
He told her, “Honey, I’d just as soon have baked beans.”
He only needed one thing – which was, I think, her company.
But, she said, he really did like baked beans.
Jesus says to Martha you only need one thing. Sounds like
one dish, maybe. No need for a fancy meal. Let’s just be together.
But he goes on to say: Mary has chosen the good portion, and for that reason it will not be taken away from her.
But he goes on to say: Mary has chosen the good portion, and for that reason it will not be taken away from her.
Attending to the guest is the heart of hospitality. It is
the best part of being a host.
And that is the part that Mary has chosen. She will listen
to what the Lord is saying.
What is going on here? She is feasting on the Word – the
host for that feast is Jesus.
We become what we are called to become as we attend to what
the Lord is saying, and allow our actions to come out of that centering place,
that Word.
“Organizations journey toward their image of the future”
(David Cooperrider). For the church our image of the future must first and last
be an image of Christ, of the fulfillment of his word in the world.
That fulfillment is his prophetic kingdom come to be.
That fulfillment is his prophetic kingdom come to be.
JRL+
2013 July 21
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Saturday, July 6, 2013
“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Looking up from the New Town
in Edinburgh toward the Castle atop the Royal Mile, I could hear a bagpiper in
the gloaming. When I took the tour of the Castle the next day, I saw Saint
Margaret’s Chapel, commemorating her returning Scotland to the strong roots of
its faith in the 11th century.
I saw something more recent
too: a large building, one of the most prominent on the top of the hill – a
sort of mausoleum or temple, a sacred space of some sort.
It was a war memorial, a
remembrance place, dedicated to honoring those sons of Scotland who had given
their lives in the First World War.
All around me, when I went
inside, were books, large books, inscribed with the names of the fallen. There
were men attending who explained the index.
In those books somewhere in large letters you could find the
name of one person in particular. If you stepped back you could see them all –
names written in the books of honor.
We don’t know about each
particular person, how they lived or how they died. They died not knowing if
their cause would succeed. We do know that they served. And their names were
written in the books of honor.
What we encounter repeatedly
in the Bible is the image of a book in which names are written: the book of the
covenant, the book of life.
In this Gospel’s telling
today, it is the book of those who went forth to love and serve the Lord, by
proclaiming and living the Word, so that they could say, to those they passed,
receptive or inhospitable, that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.
That is what matters – to
serve. Faithfulness, yes, even in unfaithfulness to repent and return to serve.
Now how did Jesus send them
out? What tasks did he set before them? He sent them to prepare the way – by
bringing healing and good news to places he himself purposed to go. They were
in that sense sent on in advance.
Go — go urgently — without
staff or spare sandals or knapsack for provisions. Go – even into a foreign
land, Samaria. Go – depending on the people who receive you.
Go – depending even more
profoundly on the Word of God, on the message I send with you.
That becomes your family, that becomes your identity, and that becomes your home: the message of the Kingdom of God
that you carry with you.
This utter trust in the Word
of God can be demonstrated in small and simple ways – remember now Naaman the
Aramean, the great general of Syria, sent by his king for healing.
This adventure began when
someone listened to a small voice – the voice of a slave girl, a captive from
Israel, serving Naaman’s wife. “If only he could see the prophet in Samaria,”
she said, “he could be healed.”
Her mistress listened to this
voice of a little one – one easily dismissed as of no power or influence, a
slave after all and merely a child – but she listened and the great and mighty
were changed.
For the king sent the
general, and the general, with mighty expectations, went forth, ventured out of
his own land, for healing from a stranger. He was outside his territory, and
even his family, and soon without even the dignity of his position.
Go tell him to jump in the
river Jordan, said the prophet from inside his house.
Eventually the man did – he
was persuaded to take this small step that really was a great leap for a man of
his kind.
It was an adventure into
obscurity, a humbling – and with that journey completed he became as a little
child – and came to know and worship the living God.
The story continues: “Then he
returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before
him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in
Israel.’” (v. 15a)
Remember now those 70 others
that Jesus sent out – these are not the disciples whose names we know. Their
names are written in the heavens and that is their glory.
We do not know who they were.
They need not have been the mighty of the Earth. Some of them could have been
as obscure as slave girls and children.
But we know they went forth
and we know the message they proclaimed: “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near
you.”
If we can hear it,
If we can welcome it,
If we can make it at home
with us,
If we can show it, and
If we can carry it forward
into our world, then we can say it too:
“The Kingdom of Heaven has
come near you – today.”
May it be so. Amen.
JRL+
CProper9 2013
July 7
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9: 2 Kings 5:1-14. Psalm 30. Galatians 6:1-16. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9: 2 Kings 5:1-14. Psalm 30. Galatians 6:1-16. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Father John
Father John is a Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate. A graduate of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, he has completed the Certificate of Graduate Studies in Pastoral Leadership through Seattle University and is a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
For freedom Christ has set us free
Centuries ago and thousands of miles from here a group of
men met in a small room on a humid summer afternoon and made a momentous decision: to
declare independence from the legitimate government of their country. It was the 4th of July.
They said out loud what other people fought for, worked for, lived for, and died for: independence and freedom. They won their victory. The struggle continues. It continues today, under different names and in different places.
They said out loud what other people fought for, worked for, lived for, and died for: independence and freedom. They won their victory. The struggle continues. It continues today, under different names and in different places.
Sometimes it seems something small. Small to our eyes.
Sometimes it seems far away.
Even this past week freedom has been gained and lost. Here
in the States it now so often seems to be about individual freedom.
We often ‘declare our independence’ for self-centered
reasons.
Or we forget how precious a gift it is, to be free.
Years ago I had a neighbor who read the local paper every
day. Once as Election Day came near, I casually asked him, who would you vote
for? And he reminded me of a reality, when he said in reply, I have not voted
in my entire life.
Why was that? I knew why. He was South African and he was
not White.
Today his sons are grown and they vote.
We have freedoms others can only imagine: freedom from want,
freedom from fear, freedom of worship, freedom of speech.
The list goes on.
But the most precious freedom we have is freedom in the
spirit.
For freedom we are made free. We have that freedom in Christ.
Through his work. His sacrifice. His life.
We are free – free not only from something, but also for
something.
We are free – for the gospel, to build the kingdom of God, to live the
message that Jesus lived.
We are made free for a purpose.
To proclaim the kingdom of God and to build it in our lives,
our families, our homes, our communities, our world.
We build it – by how we act, with one another.
We show it – in the fruits of the Spirit. We show it in our
actions, in our work.
In faith working through love.
Acting with patience, forbearance, gentleness, generosity,
and hospitality.
Putting aside the shackles of slavery – the binding of our
souls by intolerance, prejudice, gossip, slander, envy, jealousy, bad faith and
worse dealing – we live into freedom.
And in freedom we begin to live into the kingdom of God.
It shows the ways we treat each other – especially behind
each other’s backs. It shows in how we treat strangers – even when they do not
know we are there.
It shows – in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – all the fruits of the spirit.
That is the good news we bear – the good news that for
freedom Christ has set us free.
The good news that bears fruit – what we say and what we do that brings forward the kingdom of God.
Let us then lay aside lingering attachments to the life we
have left behind – enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions,
factions, envy, – all the obvious works of
the flesh – and those that are less obvious as well.
We know that badmouthing is negative prayer – we do not need to experience it again.
What we need to experience is the gift of grace – giving it,
and receiving it again, in a cycle of love that we neither initiate nor
conclude.
What we need to experience we also have the joy of sharing
with others – that they too may know the gifts of the spirit, the fruit of the
spirit, in working for the freedom Christ has given us.
For freedom Christ has set us free – not for our own freedom
only but for the freedom of all.
That is what we celebrate today. That is what we are called
to live into, tomorrow.
That is the work we are called to do. The work of faith –
faith working through love.
Let it be so. Amen.
JRL+
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14. Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20. Galatians 5:1,
13-25. Luke 9:51-62.
"Badmouthing is negative prayer"--Paul Lee.
"Badmouthing is negative prayer"--Paul Lee.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
the people we are called to become
A centurion, commander of a hundred soldiers, is a man
familiar with authority. This centurion sends a group of Jewish elders to Jesus, to
vouch for him and make a request. He does not come himself, he says, out of
respect. His request is socially correct – even since it comes through people
who have lower social status than he in the Roman order, but in Jewish eyes are
worthy to approach the Rabbi.
Master come and heal my boy, my servant.
Notice that they, like he, are making a request, not for
themselves, but for some one else. Every one in this community is looking out
for someone else’s welfare, not their own.
But then the second group of messengers arrives: friends of
the centurion, his social equals, who bear the message for him.
I am not – I the Roman official, the benefactor of the
Jewish people – I am not worthy to receive you under my roof. But only say the
word: let my servant be healed.
The centurion knows authority: he has it. And he had
thought, at first, he knew whom he was addressing. But then it began to dawn on
him just who he was dealing with.
He recognizes an authority like no other. And he is not
trying to make a deal; he has nothing to offer. All he can do is trust – and
let go, leave the matter in Jesus’ hands.
It is not about giving up his own authority, but about
humility, charity, obedience, servanthood, gratitude, and awe.
At first he acted within his authority, in the context of
the community, for a purpose greater than himself. So far he is laudable, a
good man. But then he goes farther. He puts his trust, his faith, in Jesus,
without condition.
This will not be transactional – Jesus does not, cannot owe
him anything, and he can give Jesus nothing worthy in return. He is asking for
grace; it is an act of faith.
The faith of the centurion is built on the faithfulness of
God toward humankind, faithfulness represented in Jesus. That faith is not
conditional, and it is not misplaced.
Awe, reverence, obedience, humility, joy, and peace – these
are the fruits of this faith.
The centurion recognized in Jesus authority like no other.
It is not something you can hold onto for yourself. Jesus himself did not hold
onto anything. It is not that kind of universe. He himself shows us the way: putting
faith in the Father, trust absolutely, that all shall be well, in the Father’s
hands.
...
The church cannot become again what it used to be, but it
can become the church it is called to become. We cannot, not any one of us, be
again what we once were but we can become the people we are called to become.
A church is a community in which we can experience that transformation, the becoming what we are called to be, in the company of friends, and to participate in the work of the Holy Spirit, for eventually that transformation will embrace the whole world.
Glory
to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or
imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in
Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians
3:20, 21)
Thursday, May 30, 2013
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