Begin anywhere.

Esme was born in England and raised in Chepstow, a Norman town on the Welsh/English border. She has B.S. in business administration/marketing from Portland State University and a master of divinity from Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Prior to becoming a priest, she was CEO of an executive recruiting firm. She served as associate rector at Grace Memorial in Portland, rector at St. Aidan's in Portland and as supply priest at Calvary Episcopal Church in Seaside.

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

Timeless Advent

All of us who call ourselves “Christians” read and inwardly digest the scriptures, live into our Anglican traditions and apply reason wherever we can. That being said, with the arrival of Advent we all live in a state of unknowing about what God has in store for us at the end of life, as we know it….as individuals who live, breathe and depend on the life of the world.  It is in Advent that our thoughts run the gamut of questioning….ourselves, how we live or have lived our lives so far, how we will have to pay for all our sins, and just how long it will take us to finally get to heaven. Phew! For non-Christians, Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas, and, as I understand it, a time of growing interest in collecting Advent calendars. This year the most sought-after Advent calendar is the European Bonne Mamon jam company, offering a new taste sensation every day for one’s morning toast every day of Advent through December 24th. It’s a far cry from the opening of paper calendar days to discover drawings of everything from rabbits to castles…all meant to thrill young hearts.

For Christians or non-Christians alike, Advents calendars have always been part of the Advent scene, if less commercial for those who understand Advent’s message of waiting and taking account. And yet, within any age or at any age, there exists a spectrum of unknowing which tends bring all humanity into a universal mindset planted somewhere between total disinterest or apathy about our mortality to more than a little anxiety about how the end time for each of us, or for the world, might look and feel. 

Faithful Christians, regardless of their denominational roots, live out their lives somewhere between two extremes; some cautiously dismissing the whole idea of end times with convenient and reasonable rationale or conveniently not even thinking about it at all; or some, living with a low level of guilt around misdemeanors gathered in life and their inevitable accounting which will not stand up too well on judgment day! For the faithful, Advent is a time and a not-yet time of awareness and reckoning as preparations for Christmas inevitably proceed. 

No matter where we are on the spectrum of fear and trepidation, Jesus words ring through the ages to us today. "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” To put it another way, Jesus is warning us to not waste time worrying but to be prepared. To stop making things worse by pretending they don’t exist. Don’t try to (and I love that this is actually in the Bible,) “carouse” your trouble’s away!  Do something. Do anything. And, for the love of God, stop warring with each other hoping for payoffs in the future and pay attention to things that work for life in the here and now. If you persist in indulging in the status quo, you will find yourselves trapped by all you would like to escape. If you want to see God at the end of it all, then do God’s will now. 

While easy enough for Jesus to say, and yet as always, challenging for mere humans to hear, in a way, Jesus’ words make more sense to us today, than they did to his audience back in the day. The people listening to Jesus then had no capacity to understand the end of the world in the way we do today. We live with the capability of a modern-day apocalypse, and deep down in our souls, so far down in fact, that we scarcely recognize it’s existence, lies a humanly real fear that the bottom of all we love and hold dear is going to give way any time soon.

Our understandable human response to that possibility is to carry on in all our extremes, from inward asceticism to out and out violent knee-jerking anger. Underlying the entire spectrum of those very normal human reactions is one common denominator: trepidation in the face of the unknown. 

The people of Jesus’ time contemplated signs in the winds and the sea, but life would go on as before with no unusual disturbances save the falling and rising of cities and nations, manipulation of kingdoms, cruelty, beauty, war and peace. 

It is much the same for us, yet on a wider stage. We look back at history and can visualize past mountains now made low and valleys now made level. Yet today, news of each disturbance to peace, or the quality of a tranquil life, occurs with increasing speed and awareness at a local, national or international level, each passing by at breathtaking speed, only to be replaced by another. We are less horrified by the horrific than we have ever been in the past and so we are called now, with more profundity than ever before, to stop creating the horror. At the very least, we can stop wringing our hands, shaking our heads and begin preparing for a new way, each in our own individual lives, or a way that impacts those around us in positive ways. It is not too late for you and for me to prepare the way for the child born this morning, or for all the little ones preparing to look around at the world they are about to inherit.

So, what is it, in God’s name, we are to do? 

Perhaps, we begin by looking at what we have been doing since the time of Cain and Abel and see what has worked and what has not. Next, we can look a little closer at what Jesus is proposing and at what he is saying to us, communally and personally, on this first day of Advent. 

At first reading of the scripture, we think about apocalypse…the end of the world. We imagine the cosmos suddenly in turmoil, climate change reeling out of control, the oceans rising up into continual tsunamis, the earth scorched and burned, leaving nothing but the wind to sweep it all away. We think of it as something far beyond our time, something to be dealt with later, by somebody else, while we continue on within our personal cocoons of comfort, sticking our heads in the sand in in an effort to ignore the hour-glass of speeding time.

Reading closer, we begin to realize that Jesus isn’t telling us to build a better bomb shelter. He isn’t advising us to simply wring our hands and hope for a better tomorrow. Jesus is telling us to rise up to all that we have the capability to be, to face what must be done now rather than later. 

In his own day and in our own, Jesus is calling us to deeper and more profound awareness of just how delicate our world is and just how fragile life in all its forms becomes because of that delicacy. Jesus is calling us to take it in hand now and not pretend that doing nothing will somehow make all our problems slide out of sight and mind. 

It takes fortitude and steadfast determination to realize that no matter how seemingly insignificant, or how broadly impactful it may be, each of us has a call to attend to some aspect of that earthly fragility in order to bring renewal and hope into its future existence. 

To continue to refuse to acknowledge our own finitude and that of this planet, is to adopt a mode of living that directs us away from the call to all that God provides for us in the present moment. We don’t want to think about the end of anything…ourselves or the world. We want to keep on living forever. But we must take care not to think that salvation has more to do with escape from our fears of tomorrow than it does the embrace of what is here for us to protect and defend today.

Jesus doesn’t want us to live this way. It is burdensome to think about having to continually guard against a kind of reckoning which could preclude our opportunities to enter into the Kingdom of God. We were not created to live with the notion that ‘one day Jesus will come and sort it all out with a that’ll show ‘em mentality.’ To think of living with the subconscious notion that justice will be done only when Jesus returns, is to live with an almost passive, leave-it-to-Jesus frame of mind, which isn’t helpful to the possibility of living life as God would have us live it.

Whatever issues the earth and its humanity, its flora and its fauna face now, we are no longer able to simply stand and wait for someone, somewhere to fix it without our participation, nor are we able to simply expect that things will run their course and somehow fix themselves. We are certainly not to depend on God to simply show up and wave a divine wand so that all our issues would disappear, no matter how much part of our hearts long for something like that to happen. God never was, is not and will never be the doctor for all of our ills. God is not the cause of the issues, whether the issues be climate change, world hunger or a pandemic. God is within all our issues, large and small, and will work with us as we pursue change and the betterment of all involved. 

If ever there was an explanation for what Advent means, then this is it. As we think of Hope on this First Sunday of Advent, we can think of each moment of our lives as both fragile and eternal, and thus to be used in positive, uplifting, life-giving, life-renewing ways. 

American Baptist, Benjamin Mays, credited as a founder of the civil rights movement, had a favorite poem which he liked to quote. You may know it, it is called: “I have only just a minute.”

“I have only just a minute,

Only sixty seconds in it.

Forced upon me, can’t refuse it.

Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me

to use it.

I must suffer if I lose it.

Give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute,

but eternity is in it."

He must have liked its message that within each moment lies the possibility and potential of the eternal present which is not to be wasted by dithering around with worry, rather than taking definitive action. 

He must have understood Jesus’ message to the people in his own time. Jesus came among them and is among us as an example of what it means to be, what theologian Paul Tillich calls “the New Being” in times gone by and in our time today. A New Being, called to think differently than the prevailing trends of the time. A New Being, called to face our fears and to recognize ways in which we can counterbalance them with heartfelt dedication in some one way, in the work for justice and peaceful existence. 

To walk in the way of Jesus, then, is to consider the role each of us has to play by modeling Jesus’ example of living as a “New Being.” To be renewed into a different way of being in the world. 

To walk in the way of Jesus, is to hear his message and to enter into living as if each moment was the last. 

What was the last thing you said in that moment just gone forever? To whom did you speak? What was your thought? How did you respond to another in that moment? For what reason? What will you do in the cause of liberation from the oppressors of earth and all that lives upon it? 

On this day of entry into Advent, 2024-25, even as we can understand and, in a sense, be at ease with, the uncertainty of what God’s plan is for the future, we can be forgiven by asking how to interpret the meaning of waiting, how we are to wait, and what it is we are waiting or…a beginning or an end. They are good questions and very human. 

While God has no expectation of us regarding our capacity to know what is to happen next, we are still not expected to just sit there. Waiting is not an exercise in inertia. We are called to be alert, to be awake and aware, to embrace a spirit of anticipation. To be wakeful today implies present activity and active preparation in our waiting for what is to come. To be faithful to God’s call, does not mean that we simply succumb to whatever will be, but rather we are to actively anticipate that the hand of God will absolutely be at work and will be worth waiting for when it is at last revealed. 

To be sure, Advent carries with it a time for remembering that God has come to us in Jesus Christ, the Light of the World,  and that Christ will come again. It is through remembering this that we find our Hope for what is to come and a particular kind of self-assessment. The kind that brings us into a place of preparedness, reminding us to consider God’s coming re-creation of the world, and our part in that re-creation.

Never before has the message been so plainly made by the world as it is now at this Advent time. It is an Advent of yesterday, today and tomorrow, in a world of timeless longing for us to act. With the coming of Advent, the coming of the Light, comes the time of renewed Hope that each small step we take from moment to moment from this time forward is needed in order to help save it.

Amen

Written to the Glory of God

E.J. R. Culver+

December 1, 2024

Advent 1: Hope: Reflect on the hope of Christ's coming and God's promises of redemption

Christ Episcopal Church

Last Sunday after Pentecost

Christ the King

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Psalm 132: 1-13

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

Thy Kingdom Come

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…..

What is a “kingdom.” The kingdom I was born into on this earthly journey of life, and ever since I can remember, was ruled over by Queen Elizabeth. Yet, we never called it a “queendom.” It’s not as if Queen Elizabeth II was the first woman to be called “Your Majesty.” There was the first Elizabeth, who showed a lot of kings about good leadership. Then there was Mary…but, well, no need to bring up difficulties. Look her up and you’ll know what I mean! No, the Elizabeth’s are enough to make the point. Now King Charles III rules over the United Kingdom, and Prince William waits in the wings. 

The notion of “kingdom” makes sense for people who are born into democratic societies which are governed by the people, and yet recognize the existence of kings and queens as part of evolving history. For these people, there is a symbolic attachment to the reigning monarchy and, for most, royalty is welcomed and revered. 

However, for many people in the world, the word “kingdom” evokes less than pleasant associations with oppression and an over-use of power. This is even true for many, may we say, good Christians in this politically correct world, who are made to feel uncomfortable with the idea of kingdom. And yet, those same Christians don’t think twice about praying, “Thy kingdom come,” when they choose to say their prayers.

Pontius Pilate was confused, too. In his world there were kings and there were kings. Most kings, or emperors, were absolute rulers, not to be crossed or disobeyed. Now, as John’s Gospel tells us, here before him stands someone who looks more like dusty peasant than resplendent royalty.

He asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” We can imagine Pilate asking the question in several ways which would reveal some of his own incredulity. “Are you the King of the Jews?” meaning, you don’t look like any king I’m used to seeing. Or, “Are you the King of the Jews?” meaning, are you responsible for the Jewish nation, all of Judah, because if you are, you’re going to have to let me know your demands, if you dare. 

Jesus comes right back with his own interesting inquiry: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” meaning, what do you know, what is the depth of your knowledge about me, and who have you been talking to? The repartee is interesting in that, up until this point, Pilate and Jesus are having a conversation that Pilate can understand. Pilate responds that he is not Jewish and that his own people and their chief priests, over whom Jesus is somehow “king,” have turned Jesus into the Roman authorities and Pilate, still confused, asks what Jesus could have done that would have caused this turn of events.

Then the conversation moves into an argument that would raise the hackles of any good Roman officer. “My kingdom is not of this world,” says Jesus. He’s not just some earthly king, Jesus explains, a worldly king come to stage a coup. If that were true, this scene would be very different. The people who follow me would never have turned me over to you. They would have been fighting you at this moment. But that is not who I am, and not what you think I am. My kingdom”, explains Jesus, with frank truthfulness, is not bound by the rules of this world. “My kingdom is not from this world.” 

Pilate is still confused, although he thinks he’s getting to the bottom of this strange encounter with Jesus. “So you are a king?” Pilate presses, in search of answers that make sense.

And Jesus answers, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. And everyone who belongs to the truth, listens to my voice,” meaning, that it is “truth” which is king in my kingdom. Not a person, not a political success, not a great warrior, but that which reveals the truth in its absolute. Not a partial truth, but the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about oneself and about God. 

And there we have it. As 21st Century Christians, with 2,000 years of hindsight and scholarship, we sort of get what Jesus means. But don’t expect for a minute that Pilate, or any of his fellow Romans officers, would. We are familiar with all the Gospel accounts, each in their own way playing out this scene, so we are not surprised by this conversation. But our truth be told, we talk more about Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior, the Redeemer, even Lord, meaning he owns us, our hearts, bodies and souls. But, in casual conversation with each other, we don’t refer to “the King” as a general practice. We refer to Jesus. The One whom we revere and call “Emmanuel”, God with us. God. Not king. Jesus, not king. And yet, we sing “Jesus remember me, when you come into your kingdom”[1]Now who's confused!

In a way, we’re just as confused regarding usage of the term as was Pilate in his time, but make no mistake, Jesus refers to the kingdom all through the scriptures. He is at home with the word “kingdom” and understands well the meaning of the word. We can hear him in Mark[2], coming into Galilee, teaching and preaching about the Good News of the kingdom of God, and , also in Mark’s Gospel, the response we recently heard Jesus give to the curious scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”[3] We sing about it in Hymn #711: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness….” Lifted right out of the Gospel of Matthew.[4]Also from Matthew, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you.” Matthew 13:11. And in Luke[5], we hear it again, “the kingdom of God is within you.” 

Jesus talks about the kingdom of God in excess of 80 times in the New Testament. The kingdom of God is clearly his focus in his preaching and teaching. 

So, perhaps its high time that we got over our sensitivity to using the word kingdom, and took some time to learn how to understand just what the kingdom of God means, and how we are supposed to pass that understanding along to a confused world which only understands national kings and leaders who are usually trying to outdo each other at the cost of soldier and civilian lives alike. 

We can start by simply saying what Jesus said. The kingdom of God is about the reign of God. Not over just one nation or territory, but over all worlds and universes throughout the cosmos since the beginning of time. You just can’t get bigger than God, whether you are called Emperor, King, Queen, President, head of the school board, or your local neighborhood association. 

You do not rule. God rules. 

If you believe in Jesus, you believe in the reign of God, who reigns over all faithful decisions about how you lead, how you treat other people, how you respond to the needs of the world, the degree of your kindness, and the depth of your love.

The kingdom of God, ruled by God, in the realm of God is all about goodness and truth. It is not a place to visit and then revert to one’s old ways of being which are acceptable under Caesar. It is within the realm of God that the faithful is led to work for what is good and true, and to work against what is unjust and untrue and at odds with all God asks of God’s people. 

The realm of God knows no national boundaries, or differences in race or culture. It has no interest in one’s denomination whether one is right or left, evangelical or atheist. It has no time or interest in good or bad politics. Nor does one get extra points for sending out sentimental notes and cards in God’s name, then turning to judge or vilify God’s people just for one’s own satisfaction or misplaced desire to be king of the hill. 

No. It is time for us to understand how to embrace the entity Jesus refers to as “kingdom” as a community of all living beings, who are called individually, or called as community into radical acceptance of the possibilities God’s version of kingdom offers: peace, joy, love, and truth.

As faithful Christians, God’s kingdom is ours to offer in the actions of our way of life. We won’t always get it back when we offer it, no matter how much we try to live within the boundaries of God’s requirements to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and as Jesus added, with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Unrequited love is never fun in this world, but unrequited love in the realm of God, will never be acceptable within the kingdom of God.

Even knowing this, we find it challenging to give up trying to answer love with real love in the spiritual sense. But there is always hope in the realm of God. The love of God, and the loving truth of God’s kingdom has never not existed, and yet is still to come. While it is not always easy to find, the kingdom of God is always open to those who choose to enter into its mystery. We will never truly understand it, and yet the reality of the reign of God is solid and so profound, that we cannot deny it.

We think of place of worship, like this sanctuary, as being a place where the realm of God can be found. And yet, as was pointed out to me, when we were meeting on Zoom during the pandemic, to worship, pray or study the scriptures, we were still being invited to enter into the realm of God. We were then, and still are, part of that which makes the kingdom of God visible and alive in the same way Jesus made the kingdom visible and alive when he walked among us.

So, we are faced with a kind of paradox. We can think of the kingdom as a loving and peaceful place, beautiful and inspiring, while at the same time, it demands more of us than we seem capable of giving. The commandment to love God unconditionally and to love others as one loves oneself seems simple and yet proves almost too complex for us to respond. We talk and pray about the sovereignty of God, a concept outside of ourselves and yet the reign of God exists in each human heart which responds to its sovereignty according to the choices and decisions of each human mind.

The opportunities to enter the kingdom of God are countless, even though we may not recognize them when they are made apparent to us. It is ours to remember that when God enters into our hearts, we become made holy by God’s presence alone. The words “Thy kingdom come…” points directly to God’s authority that rules heart and mind. It is at this point, at the time that God enters a human heart, that the kingdom of God, has come among us on earth again.

It is then that peace reigns, and not anger and hatred. It is then that joyous acceptance is experienced, not resentful competition to be right, best or first. It is then that we are finally able to say, what is mine is yours, and the reason for war finally comes to an end.

So, the choice is ours. Will we be able to answer the question when it is put to us: “Where is this kingdom you speak of, and who is your king?” 

Will we say, well, we follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, but we can’t explain just where the kingdom of God that Jesus speaks about, actually is.

Or will we answer truthfully, and say, “Whoever would pour love into their heart for God, for themselves and for their neighbors, is very close to the kingdom of God.”

Such were Jesus’ words to the curious scribe, and such are His words to us. All we have to do, is understand that through our truth and our love, we will become closer still to the kingdom of God.

It is the place where we have always belonged and still belong, just as God’s people always will. And any time we think we cannot find the kingdom or lose sight of the king, we simply pray, “Thy kingdom come,” and then, with fresh resolve, renewed faith and deepened love, we journey on, following the Light of the One who always leads us home to God’s Kingdom. 

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E.J. R. Culver+

November 24, 2024

Christ the King

[1] Text and music copyright 1981, Ateliers et Presses de Taize (France).

[2]Mark 1:14

[3]Mark 12;34

[4]Matthew 6:33

[5]Luke: 17:20-21

Looking for Love

“Why”, you might ask, in one’s wildest imagination, “Would someone put four gigantic letters up at the foot of the St. John’s Bridge?” 

The letters spell out a word that is one of the most famous in the world in any language, most used, most abused, most bandied around for reasons far beyond its real meaning, and as thus is the least understood word in the world. If you ever get up into my neighborhood in St. Johns, you might have seen the letters and seen the sign. It first showed up in March of 2019, just about a year before the great pandemic had the entire world in its grip. 

The letters spell out one word: “Love,” and the massive sign that holds the letters sits at the foot of the iconic landmark, the beautiful St. John’s Bridge. I’ve come to love the bridge, with its gothic arches, its aged patina blending with the colors of the river and the trees from which it springs and into which it disappears. You can see the sign, which only adds to the sacramental ethos of the structure, as you begin to cross over the bridge from the St. John’s side. You just can’t miss the word, “Love.” 

The man who created the sign, Romen Sorensen has his workshop near the sign, so he sees his work every day, and is able to remember the reason he designed and erected it in the first place. He says, 

“I didn’t do it to get a bunch of money or get notoriety. I just felt it needed to exist, very deeply. That was my calling.” He felt called to create something that he sensed was needed in Portland. He felt the city calling to him for a little more love in at a time when love was harder to find, harder to believe in, harder to trust.

That was then, and now is now, and given the iconic gospel reading we received this morning, it seems very appropriate that we revisit that need to spread a little more love than usual out into the uncertain atmosphere of our current earthly condition.

“It’s the opposite of all the negative energy we’ve had” Sorensen said. .”It’s promoting the idea of love, compassion and empathy. I just quietly set it there and now people have grown to love it and I’ve had this immense feedback of positivity,” 

After a storm blew away the “e” in his word, Romen wired the letters together so that all the letters would stay intact and they have, throughout all the harshness of last winter and the searing heat and humidity of this years summer. The sign has become iconic, and you can find his artwork “Love” on stickers throughout Portland and beyond, via social media.

Sorensen made a very astute observation. He noted that if we were to count up all the times you hear the word “hate” in the news, it would far outnumber the times you hear the word, “love.” And interestingly, my water aerobics coach wore a t-shirt today that read, “Resist the temptation to hate.” 

And when you get too much of one thing, especially something negative, like the word hate, everything gets out of balance. Yes, balance. Hate, or the ability to hate has and will always exist, and sometimes for the right reason. Jesus would say he hated injustice, oppression, cruelty and neglect, even though he never spoke of it, regardless of his feelings. Yet, in the name of love, he forgave those who did. We can think of Paul. We can think of us and all God’s wayward children, forgiven from the Cross for the sin of hate.

In his his way, Sorensen, was and is using his art to respond to the call for more balance in the face of anger and hate that we heard during the pandemic and face so much today, as did that which Jesus heard and faced 2,000 years ago.

Yet in the face of real hatred, political issues, in his own day, Jesus preached love. Sorenson is doing the same in a different way, but with renewed determination to build a permanent sign, which will continue to be embraced as a light balancing the darkness of earthly troubles that continue to swirl around us.

What about each of us? We may not be called to build a giant Love sign at the foot of a bridge, but we are called to preach love in a particular way, each of us in our own way, with the gifts we have been given in order to display that love to the world. 

In his answer to the scribe who approached Jesus and asked him “Which commandment is the first of all?”, Jesus responded by quoting the Sh’ma, part of the Hebrew daily prayer which is written in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, as we Christians call it.[1] 

Sh’ma means to listen, understand, and respond with action. In Hebrew, hearing and doing are the same thing. The prayer is about listening to and loving God. It is a declaration of faith in the One God and is considered countercultural because it calls for serving one God above all else. Long ago and up until today, just repeating the words of the Sh’ma helps to deepen the Jews’ faith and commitment to one God, one Lord. 

Jesus teaches that it can do the same for all people.

Jesus answered the scribe; “The first commandment is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

There is no other commandment greater than these. It became a prayerful mantra for our ancient ancestors, and it remains for all Jews and all Christians today, even with its slight modifications. For instance, Jesus uses the word mind, rather than might, and adds the word “strength.” Interesting and subtle shifts for us to ponder.

Regardless of the shifts, Jesus is clear. We are called to love. To love God with all our heart, meaning to love for all the right reasons. For instance, one can become known through one’s humble response to God’s call, one’s humble but effective use of one’s gifts, such as Romen Sorensen. That is to become known due to one’s works. It is not to use one’s good or creative works in order to become known or even famous. It is to become known becauseof one’s works. 

Love of God is expressed in this way and God becomes more loved because of your expression of love. One could say, love of God is shown and expressed through kind, humble and honest interaction with all those God has created in God’s own image. You and me and everyone else. 

If you are longing to become known or famous because of self-serving motivations, and accomplish this through doing good works, or doing great good, in a way you have “used” God by saying one’s good works are really for the service of God, even though one makes sure one’s name is on the new building, or at the top of the donor list, or is the recipient of the grand prize at the annual charitable dinner. Don’t be confused. This often happens, and prizes, recognition and fame often come to great charitable acts or works or grand financial donations. But, love of God, is revealed when one wishes to remain anonymous, or is truly humbled by the recognition and questions oneself regarding one’s motivations. We can think of Mother Theresa and her work in India.

Mother Teresa, also known as St. Teresa of Calcutta, was Albanian, born in the Skopje (pr. Skow-pee-a) in the Kosovo Vilayet (pr. Veeha –yet) area of North Macedonia in 1910. She was a Catholic nun and missionary and her real name was Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu: (Pr: An-yes Gohjeh Boyageeu) She died in Calcutta, India in 1997. In her lifetime of charitable service she was awarded numerous special awards and recognitions for her work including the the Noble Peace Prize. If you read her biography, which many of you may already know, you will see what it means to love God with all your heart. She sought no fame, although she received it; she sought no awards, even though she received them, she changed nothing after receiving recognition from world leaders, both secular and religious, but just kept on responding to her call. And even in those times when, tired and feeling hopeless, she began to doubt herself and her faith, she was honest enough to let the world know of it, and through her faithful honesty was able to find her way back to her purpose in the name of love.  In short, she loved God with all her heart.

When we say we love God with all our heart, we must ask ourselves: what is it we are seeking? 

To love God with all one’s soul is to be ready to sacrifice, even unto death, for one’s faith and trust in God. Throughout history, we have examples of Jewish and Christian martyrs who died rather than to betray God. We have historical accounts of Jewish martyrs reciting the Sh’ma as they endured torture and were led to death for their faith. We are very familiar with Christian martyrs who faced savage animals in Roman arenas, or were burned at the stake, or put through all manner of torture and death, simply due to their absolute and unmovable love of God with all their soul, praying and singing hymns of praise as they died. 

What are we prepared to sacrifice by loving God with all our soul?

To love God with all one’s might, is in one sense from an ancient Hebrew perspective, to love God with all one’s wealth. In other words, to love God by generous giving to charitable and helpful causes for all God’s people. To cling to one’s money was, and still is, by the faithful of all the Abrahamic faith traditions, perceived as idolatry that is, to make one’s possessions or money as something to be protected and idolized above all else, even God. We can remember George Eliot’s classic story of the miser, Silas Marner.

Does loving God with all our might live at the foundation of our decisions to give our resources to the church or to any other charitable organization?

So how do we begin to love “with all” these approaches and meanings? One can say look here, I go to church or synagogue regularly.  I read the scriptures, I serve in the church or synagogue, and I don’t expect that God thinks I’m doing that to show that I love God. I do all that just because I love God.

The problem is that, for all this, most of us have just come part way in the loving God department. Much of the time, we do these things with love “in” our hearts. But God’s commandment is to love God with “all” of your heart. Not only that, but with all your soul, and with allyour mind, and as Jesus adds, with all your strength.

The commandment is simple and straightforward, but like the world ”love,” itself, it is misleadingly complex and hard to really deeply and profoundly understand and embrace. We are all carrying a rather large sack on our backs, filled with thoughts, emotions, feelings, reactions, deeds and projections upon others. We picked the sack up in early life and find, if we are not careful, it can become far to heavy for us to keep on enjoying life as we should. Other people may see some of the contents of our sacks as good things, good deeds, but maybe, if we were honest, we would know we were fooling some of the people most of the time, or most of the people some of the time, or in some other ways of working the equation.

Better to keep the truth of a lot of what we display in the world, tucked safely back there in the backpack, out of sight, lest our true selves be exposed. What we like to call our lesser strengths are safer back there, out of sight. The problem is, that very likely by the end of the day, we lose sight completely of what is back there, and don’t’ like to remember that there is a backpack filled with truths about ourselves, existing there at all! 

Sometimes, when we sit with someone, a friend or relative who has suffered a great loss, or disappointment, or failure, or something that has shattered dreams and expectations, we realize how much they must have had to face the contents of everything they knew about themselves, which they thought were packed away and forgotten, and now, in the face of tragedy or grief, sorrow or regret, come face to face with the contents of the sack, spilled out across one’s awareness causing one’s truth to become clear and evident.

It is in those moments that we each have a choice, for every one of us has come to that moment in one way or another. And, at that moment, we either accept the burdensome aspects of ourselves, or we reject them in fear of losing our place in society, losing face, or worse, being seen as less than we are. 

It is in those moments, when one looks into the eyes of another, looks in to the heart, soul and mind of another, that the decision to accept or reject the opportunity to dump the contents of one’s backpack in the name of love, is made clear to us.

The question remains. How shall we do we love “with all.” Not just part. Not just for self-gain. But “with all” for God. “With all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind. In what ways do we, could we exhibit God’s love and our love for God, by consciously, unconsciously, or subconsciously loving with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. We may never reach perfection in our quest to love “with all,” but we can aspire with each step we take forward from this moment on.

Thinking of blind Bartimaeus, whom we thought about two weeks ago in Mark’s earlier gospel reading,[2] how might you respond to your call to preach love by bringing all that you have at your disposal to act as your lamplight so that you may “see” at last, the meaning of the first commandment for the good of your neighbor, and all God’s people. 

What is your priority? What is most important to you? What is your “first commandment?” Go deep, ponder, take time, and think, this is not a surface question. Walk the labyrinth and pray to God for guidance in your answer until you can truthfully say to yourself, “This is most important in my life and I would die for it.”

Think of the words we are called to know, the words of Jesus reciting his interpretation of the Sh’ma and put the commandment in this way as helpful guide.

I will love the Lord my God, with the whole of my heart

I will love the Lord my God, with the whole of my life.

I will love the Lord my God, with the whole of my mind.

I will love the Lord my God, with the whole of my strength.

And, as you think about these, ponder also, “What does the word “wholeness” mean to you?” 

What will you bring into the world that reveals the truth of your call to love God and neighbor in a new and more complete way? Will it be a big sign that spells out LOVE? Or something else that is just as evident of your intent to love “with all.” 

A quiet action requiring no recognition in exchange? 

A kind word that triumphs over harmful words? 

Where do you keep the bright parts of your heart, mind and soul: your courage, your honesty, your humility, your dedication and your capacity for love, which can help to banish the dark places found in the self-serving, the controlling, the need-to-know, the need to be recognized, the pessimistic places being harbored in that backpack into which we dare not look.

Look we must. But perhaps not always for the dark places, but for the bright lights of our heart, soul and mind which do exist. We are looking for love, and even as we root around searching the places it is most likely to be found, sometimes we miss noticing or offering the most obvious signs of where it exists and how we can reveal it. 

Like the giant word, fashioned out of wood and steel, whose existence we might never realize existed, brazenly erected for the world to see and does,  for all those who cross the St. John’s Bridge.

Amen

Written to the Glory of God

E.J. R. Culver+

November 10, 2024

[1]Deuteronomy 11:13-21, Numbers 15:37-41

[2]Mark 10: 46-52

For All the Saints

If you’ve been around any mainstream church, no matter its denomination, you will be well aware of what we call, the Easter Triduum. The Paschal Triduum (Holy Triduum) of Easter, moves as one single liturgy from sundown on Maundy Thursday to sundown on Easter Sunday. As all the faithful come to understand, you can’t get to Easter without Good Friday, and you can’t get to Good Friday without Maundy Thursday. Even the most unchurched have a sense of the movement in the church during this time. 

There is another Triduum, of which, I would venture to say, far less people are aware. We have just lived through what the Church calls,  Allhallowstide. It’s hard for us to grasp it as easily as we do at Easter, yet here we are, like the rest of the Church on November the 3rdth, celebrating one part of a deeply profound time, which began 2 days ago today.  Truth be told, the first day of Allhallowstide is completely eclipsed and engulfed by a secular festival, even though grown out of ancient faith-filled origins, which we now call Halloween.

This first part of this Allhallowstide begins with All Hallows Eve. The Celts called it the night of Samhain (Sau-ihn), which means “hallowed” or “holy” as in, “Our Father, “hallowed” be thy name.” It was placed at the edge of the coming of winter, a time of darkness. 

Over time, and through various iterations and contractions, we are the happy recipients of the name we know as Hallowe’en, (Halloween) via the ancient customs brought to the United States from Scottish and Irish Celts. 

People look forward to Halloween. What’s not to like about the opportunity to dress up in costume and to receive treats. From child to adult, there seems an opportunity to play with ideas we would normally steer far away from, such as skeletons, ghosts, scary creatures, or whatever it is that goes bump in the night, and it provides an opportunity to string up some lights to brighten the encroaching darkness of winter. 

In truth, one is supposed to offer treats to keep the evil away, the trickster who could turn life upside down. The ancient Irish Celts celebrated All Hallow’s Eve by carving turnips and placing little lit candles in them. Then they would walk from house to house asking for food in exchange of prayer offered in honor of those loved ones passed from their earthly life. The celebrants moved through the night, carrying the light of hope with them, into the dawn of a new day. A recollection, perhaps, of Easter morning.

Unlike the moveable feast of Easter, however, All Hallows' Eve falls on the 3st of October each year; the day before All Hallows' Day, also known as All Saints' Day, which is followed on the 3rd day by All Souls Day on November 3rd.  The theme of light overcoming darkness continues… banishing the shadows of our fears……brought to this day through hallowed tradition. 

The three days of Allhallowstide have become conflated into a single opportunity for people, through their own decorations and carvings, in pumpkins or gourds, to emphasize their own particular fantasies and fears. 

While the underlying meaning of the three days seems lost, we can think a bit about it and try to bring some understanding of why it is, with variations on the theme of light overcoming darkness and assorted candy, fun and irreverent celebration, that the world continues to enter into this universal theme of All Hallow’s Eve.

Whether personified through a theme of trick or treat, or stories and dreams which wake one up with a jolt in the middle of the night, all of these images are dispelled with lights as the night of All Hallow’s Eve melts into the morning dawn of All Saints’ Day.

Perhaps, it is at this time, this Allhallowstide, that we think most  about time, the passing of time, and the time when time ends for each of us as it must. We don’t much like to think about the aspect of time running out, and yet the reality of time is always held deeply within our psyches. In all humanity lies a fear of death, and we do all we can to deny its existence, even to confronting it with costume, revelry, humor and carved pumpkins designed to scare away the evil spirits, the messengers of danger and doom. 

With their lighted turnip “Jack 0’ Lanterns”, the ancient celebrants were celebrants of the Holy, with the continuing emphasis of the theme of light over darkness.  Yet no matter ancient time, or today, All Hallow’s Eve gently gives way, having prepared us for All Saints’ Day, a time of celebration for all the Saints gone before, all those to whom we turn for inspiration in the living of our own lives. 

We give thanks for the gifts they left behind; their legacies and spiritual batons for us to pick up and carry forward. We think of them as the Communion of Saints, or as a great “cloud of witnesses,” Those whose time has come and gone, and yet are spiritually constant in the light of our God who is always present in the here and now. 

We can trace images of the saints throughout the scriptures. We can read of the saints in glory, where time is no more. We can find them in the company of angels before the throne of God. Or, we can be reminded, as the Epistle to the Hebrews urges us “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,……. let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2.) 

We can look back to the beginning of time until the present time, to find all those who have given their lives, sometimes under torture and death for their faith. And, as we view them, we can recall the Beatitudes and the “hallow-ness” of the Saints.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The Beatitudes personify the qualities of all the saints, past and present, who lived and live into each new day, as we, too, receive the gift of each new day.  As people of God, we can think of the Holy, the “hallowed” possessing all of these qualities, just as Jesus, and just as God desired for all creation.  Perhaps we can find elements of each of these qualities within in every one of ourselves.  

After all, we are counted among the saints as those who have and who are serving and responding to the Good News in their own time. We acknowledge their presence in both of our Creeds, “I/We believe in the communion of saints.” In other words, we believe in fellowship across the world with whatever people have strived for, or are striving for, or have given or are giving their lives for in the name of faithful service, past, present and future.  

While we hold in our mind single individuals, we also envision also the entire company of people, communion of saints. To think of the “communion of Saints” opens up a mixture of visions of what that communion must look like along with memories of we recognize, understand and know. 

Regardless of how we envision the Saints, we can feel reassured that we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses even when we feel alone. When we feel overwhelmed, we are surrounded by the community of the Church and to a vast community beyond, reaching as far as to those whose faith is known to God alone. That’s what that means to belong to the community of saints. 

Major Saints become known to us through the scriptures, but in the church calendar of “Holy Women, Holy Men” we discover ordinary people rooted in faith. We think of people in our own time, alive or now living in glory, who know nothing else other than to bring their huge visions into reality, led forward always by unfailing faith. The opportunity is open to us all.

If All Saints’ Day is the central anchor in this Autumn Triduum, then it leads us to the commemoration of All Souls’ Day, today; a day when we remember those who formed us, who molded us. We remember them for the many experiences we had with them, perhaps learned from them. We give thanks to our nearness to the faithful departed, and also to “those who faith is known to God alone.” 

We are led to remember all those who are part of what we now think of as the “communion of Saints” and our particular association with them, in time past. within the life of our God who is always in the present tense. 

Jesus said, “do this in remembrance of me.” “Remember.” When Jesus said these words, he was not talking about us merely remembering him, he was talking to and about his disciples, and all of us, as the ones who would carry on the work of delivering the Good News to the world. Jesus handed on this baton of faith, fashioned in memory, but destined to continue moving into the future.  

Much as does All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day allow us to live in the context of time, past, present and future in all of our creative memories.

To quote T. S. Eliot in the opening lines of the first of his Four Quartets” 

"Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past.  If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable."[1]

We tend to think of time like a river flowing ever forward. It’s a subjective perspective and, thus if time is flowing forward, then the whole span of time, along with all actual events, has already transpired and nothing we will ever do or say can alter the past, or the future. 

All Soul’s Day is a day of reflection, as we think and look back, but it is also day of looking to the future with intention. It is a day that speaks to us about our personal intention looking forward. What is your cause? What is your passion? How does that passion, that gift which each of us has, contribute to and for the life of one another and for the life of this planet?  What gifts will you leave behind or carry with you into sainthood?

Reflecting on these questions, we celebrate the Tridduum of Allhallowstide, by learning about ourselves and the gifts we each carry.

And we resolve not to hold back, this year or the next year on Octobert 31st – November 2nd.

We don’t hold back on confronting our own needs to gloss over Allhallowstide. 

Don’t hold back on confronting your own fears of death, or your own hope of everlasting glory and eternal life. 

Don’t hold back on believing in that powerful reward for faith. 

Don’t hold back on believing that life is eternal, no matter how many times we falter in our faith. 

Above all, don’t hold back on understanding the real and absolute underlined meaning of Allhallowstide. 

Don’t allow this season of ghosts, and saints and souls, to sink into a sea of carved up pumpkins with no understanding of what they stand for: our very human fear of death and our need for faithful hope in eternal light of life in the presence of God.  

As Christians we dare to look and hope beyond life as we know it. No matter the season or the feast or festival, no matter where or how interpreted, be it Allhallowstide, Christmas or Easter, or whatever else. In a world that seeks only to satisfy itself as if there were no tomorrow, let us dare to live in expectation that tomorrow, so that filled with gratitude, we will find ourselves, like the Saints before us, walking into the light of God’s heavenly plane, among that great cloud of witnesses: the peaceful presence of the Communion of Saints. 

Amen

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

November 3, 2024

"For All the Saints" was drafted as a processional hymn by the Anglican Bishop of Wakefield, William Walsham How.The hymn was first published in 1864. 

1 For all the saints who from their labors rest,
who Thee by faith before the world confessed;
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

2 Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

3 O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

4 And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

6 From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
in praise of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Alleluia, Alleluia

T. S. Eliot: from Four Quartets

And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?”
<...>
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always presen
   

[1] T. S. Eliot Four Quartets (Mariner Books, Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, New York), 1943, 13. 

The Conversation

At the end of the note Rebecca Freidenburg sent to our parishioner, she included a quote, which she did not cite, but is a good reminder to us in light of today’s scripture readings, of one way through which we can best view God. Here is the quote:

“O Lord, You have been our refuge in every generation. Before the mountains that came into being, before You brought forth the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity You are God.”

It is a quote from Psalm 90, the very first verse, I believe. What is important for us to note is that the quote sounds out the voice of the faithful, in every generation. From the beginning of time until today, here in this church, at a time when we not only need to find comfort and refuge in God, we feel the need to talk to God in the best way we know how. 

There are hundreds of approaches or viewpoints about who or what God is, what God does, how God reacts, if God punishes, how God guides, forgives and saves. All these have been. and are thought about, by academics, theologians and people like us. There are thousands of ways to talk to God: through whispered prayer, through words written down, or by changing thoughts resting in the minds of the simply faithful, perhaps much like the author of the Psalm I just quoted

In the vast scope of eternity, it really doesn’t matter how you define God, describe God, or how God fits into your normal way of thinking about God. What we think about God reveals a level of faith in God and God’s goodness to all God has created. No matter where we are on the path of faith, we are known by God as part of God’s creation, and because of that we are beloved by God. 

Our species is too young in the vast space of time to try to understand very much about God, but we do know that at the beginning of time, continuing into today, something far beyond our comprehension happened, continues to happen, continues to evolve. Our faith journey continues to lead us to what generation to generation has continued to call from the very beginning: God. God loves it all because God created all. All that moves, lives, has its being and that includes us in life and in death. 

Job was a deeply faithful man who trusted in God’s compassionate mercy and grace, and yet he came to a place where, like us, he had questions about why he was so beset by life’s challenges which caused him so much suffering. The Book of Job has been described as one continual conversation between Job and God, set into five pieces of dialogue that focuses on one theological issue: the issue of suffering. The Job scripture holds no single position or any particular viewpoint in answer to the question of suffering. Like Job, the question we ask and the answer we all seek is, “Why must there be suffering?” 

Why are we made to suffer? Why must hearts be bruised or broken?  It is the question that naturally arises for all of us here today, and especially for those nearest to him: Why did Nate have to die?

Job entered into his conversation with God because he was perplexed and vexed about his own tribulations and suffering. And, perhaps because of his deep faith, Job was able to wrestle with God. We all have friends and families with whom we wrestle for answers to our dilemmas and their advice may or may not be helpful. They are human and have their own human experience of life and thus their viewpoints often differ distinctly from our own. 

Much like Job’s friends, who appeared earlier in the Book before today’s scripture. There was Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamithite, all supposedly dropping in to lend support to Job in the midst of his trouble but who end up trying to make sure Job understands that he has brought all his afflictions upon himself, and that it is God’s punishment for Job due to his continual sin and wickedness.

Lovely! As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies! They are the ones who sigh, wring their hands and say something like, “It must be God’s will!” Yet it is to them that God is making his points and not to Job. It is against misguided human solutions that increase suffering that God rails, not against the ones who are suffering.

It is not God’s will that God’s people should suffer due to any intervention by God. God has no one viewpoint, and as Job learned, God does not refuse our anger, our hurt, our confusion or our need to wrestle with God about reasons for any or all of suffering have to exist, especially our own. God’s answers may come in different forms, but we can be sure that God is listening and we will find some guidance in the moment, and in the time to come.

God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind of Jobs confusion to remind Job that it was God who created the cosmos and God leaves no doubt about God’s creative power. In Verse 41 of this piece of scripture God asks, “Who provided for the raven its prey when its young ones cry to God and wander about for lack of food?” Creation is interdependent, balanced and is patterned for sustenance and survival and that includes humankind. In other words. God has given us our life to live as part of the creative whole. The rest is simply up to us, along with the good or sad circumstances we either invite, create for ourselves or have no reason to expect.

Job’s conversation with God reveals no hard and fast answers to our questions about why we suffer: Why do the innocent suffer, the faithful suffer? How can we avoid suffering? “Why,” we ask, “why?”

It is a relief to know we do not ask these questions into a void. We do not pray into nothing. God is listening, God knows and even though we receive no answers in the way we like to receive them given all our earthly expectations, we take comfort in knowing that God is very present in our times of trouble, as God was for Job, and will reveal the guidance to comfort and peace when we are ready to receive it. 

Our questions have to do with our earthly experience of living as humankind. While God reminds Job, and reminds us, of all that God created, God gave us very few rules of how to live life within our human reality. So, life happens. Things happen, happily or tragically, as part of living with the free will that God bestowed upon humankind since the time of Adam and Eve. 

Whatever it may be that besets us, be it a pandemic, natural disaster, human error, quick fix solutions without consideration of long-term consequences, forgetfulness, neglect or tragic accident, and all of these are part of our human reality. God created all and all of it lives or dies according to whatever circumstances arise for each and every part of it: floods, hurricanes drought, famine, war, disease or an unexpected instant tragedy due to earthly timing that no-one could predict. 

We do not blame God for Nate’s death. Nor do we believe his death was God’s will. God’s will has to do with compassionate love and comfort in the face of God’s creature’s suffering. It is the same God who loves us, regardless of what we choose to do, how far we rise or fall and regardless of how harshly life comes up to meet us or how we choose to meet life.

It is the same God who is with us, in this very moment, feeling our pain, and who will stay with each of us, in any way we choose to receive God, enveloping our hearts with ever-present love and mercy. 

Reading between the lines of today’s scripture, we hear God’s reassurance in God’s unfathomable ways. We must become more aware that it is not within humankind’s capacity to ever understand those ways or understand the why’s and how’s of the world in which we have been placed. We can recall Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

We would all like things to be cut and dried, black and white, with no frayed or grey edges in life, thinking that if we try our hardest to do good and not sin, then we will be saved. Yet the story of Job, and indeed, our own particular stories and the entire global story, tell us that things don’t work this way. Life is not that cut and dried, or that reliable.

Yet, we take heart. The good and holy values of kindness and humility, gifted to us by God, will always prevail over cruelty, pride and injustice. Acceptance will always triumph over intolerance and rejection, even if not in the way or timeliness that we humans would prefer. 

Nature will always work to find its balance and will always work to bring us out of our suffering into the light of new possibilities. It is the way of creation, the way of nature, the way of God. God wants only the good; wants only the sustenance and preservation of God’s people. God’s compassion for all that is the only will that will be done. 

Let us this day, hold on to these God-given gifts of love, mercy, grace, each of us building on that Holy presence which carries magnificent power into our earthly existence, assisting us to rise above all our suffering into the light of comfort and peace. 

From the beginning of time, God’s created world had, and has, a plan of which we are a vital and important part. We can take great hope from that understanding. While God’s created world is beyond our capacity to understand it, it is given to us to trust and to faithfully accept and receive. 

Perhaps it was the hand of God that brought God’s conversation with Job before us today. It is difficult for us to grasp the length, breadth, or depth of God’s creative power, and that is a comfort to know. There is a tension between this cosmic, structured order and our experience of suffering for many who didn’t and don’t deserve it. 

From generation to generation, the guidance echoes through the voices from all the saints and apostles gone before: 

“Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” 

(Matthew 11:28)

This is the answer God is giving us today and we will receive it, each of us in our own way. 

Nate has taken his place at God’s table. His earthly life over, he has entered into the realm of eternal rest and peace, where no suffering exists. The Holy Spirit has led him there, and as he enters into his new life in Christ, he hears God’s words to him, “Welcome home, Nate, good and faithful servant, welcome home.” And as Nate takes his seat at the table with Christ, the heavenly host sings, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia." Amen.

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

October 20, 2024

  The Least of These

Once in a while, I will find a cartoon in a paper or magazine that I think is worth keeping and for many years I have held on to one in particular which sits in my St. Francis Day file folder. The scene goes like this: St. Peter is standing in the clouds at his podium just outside the gates of heaven. He has an assistant angel, standing with him, who is looking rather worriedly at the rear end of a dog, tail up, as the dog digs deeper and deeper into the clouds with the clear goal of tunneling under the heavenly fence to find his way into heaven. St. Peter, too, is watching the dog, and with a look of normal acceptancy says, “Doesn’t’ matter how she enters – all dogs are automatically in.”

Of course, I’m a dog person, so the line resonated with me right away. You may be a cat person, so you can adjust the picture. Maybe the cat is sitting on top of the fence as if to say, I can go to heaven when I please, but for now, I’ll just sit here and observe how many humans get in or don’t.

Or maybe you’re a bird or a fish person, or a goat person or a horse person, and you could use the argument that God created all of them before the dog or the cat and that it was only because God saw that it was so good on the fourth day, that God kept going on the fifth day, and it was so much fun that on the sixth day God ended up producing all the other creatures of the earth including humankind. 

Will Rogers said that if he got to heaven and there were no dogs there, he would want to go wherever it was they were. You might want to say the same and, again, you can fill in the blank: if I went to heaven and there were no cats there, no alpacas or llamas, or rodents, birds, fish, goats or horses, I would want to go wherever it was they were. You choose what fits best for you.

These are just bits of humor, but underlying them all lies an affinity each of us might have with a particular piece of creation without which even heaven would be incomplete, and that’s a good thing. For heaven to be heaven, and earth to be earth, God’s creation is completed and renewed at each moment and not one part is to be left out. Not the dinosaur, who did his part, or any others, who when their turn came, continued through creation toward all that and those which have not yet been discovered as part of it. The changes and shifts with the passage of time, create varying necessities and circumstances for each part of that creation, including us.

Within every moment, like pieces of some infinite jigsaw puzzle, whose picture is so vast, we cannot view the whole of it, a continually emerging and evolving Creation has each of us fitting into a particular relationship with each other, within this unfathomable work of God.

As Paul tells the Colossians, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”[1]

A few years ago, I was in Kenya on a mission to youth there. Before leaving, I stayed with friends in Nairobi, where I visited the enormous Nairobi National Park, a reserve for lions, rhinos, buffalo, giraffes and more. I also visited the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. A special reserve for rescued elephants. I looked into the eyes of a young elephant and what I saw there was lingering innocence colored by a growing awareness of how life, as the elephant knew it, at this moment in time, was to be understood and accepted. 

Finding her here, rescued after poachers killed her mother for ivory when she was barely three months old, made me sharply aware of our human actions and their powerful effect on the entirety of creation. I realized that as we make decisions that affect the least of these, we are stepping on to holy ground. It is our decision that either glorifies it or defiles it. 

To claim ourselves as followers of Christ, we have to understand our particular role in the preservation and protection of all that is God’s, whether it be the earth itself or with all the life that inhabits it….be it animal or vegetable. 

The problem lies with the only caveat hinted at by God when he created humankind, and that was that humankind would have dominion over the rest of the creatures. 

One wonders how many times, since the beginning of time, has the question come up regarding that vastly misunderstood directive!

How much we wish God could have been more explicit. After only God knows how many million years, humankind is still either trying to figure out the difference between dominion and domination, the difference between stewardship and power, or simply continuing to think there is no difference between them at all.  

There is no doubt that dominion is power in the hands of those who have it, but it is not meant as authority, the power to enforce or give orders, exploit or crush. Rather, while it grants sovereignty over those without dominion, it carries within its meaning an obligation to stewardship. In other words, while the God-given dominion granted to humankind might offer the opportunity to rule over nature, it by no means grants permission to control and have power over all living things for humankind’s own selfish purposes. This was never God’s intent. God gave humankind dominion over all of nature to ensure it’s continuance and sustainability on behalf of God! 

To have interpret dominion over nature and all living beings, all creatures of the earth that belong to communities other than human in order to serve humankind alone, is an abomination to God. An abomination that is domination and not dominion.

Stewardship, in the biblical sense of the word, can be defined as taking care of, or guarding and protecting, and yes, managing, all the recourses God has provided for the glory of God and the continuation and embellishment of God’s original Creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”[2] 

It is a good mantra for us to remember on this St. Francis Day and in all the days to come. It reminds us to equate dominion with stewardship and It reminds us to remember that our call to stewardship of God’s creation is a call for good and honorable stewardship, that is, good and honorable dominion, management and care. Perhaps the most powerful reminder we could have at all, is to remember that God has entrusted God’s creation to our care. God did not entrust God’s amazing creation to our domination, not to our cruelty or neglect, nor to our misunderstanding or mismanagement, or our ignorance, whether it be over the environment and its delicate ecological balance, or over all that lives and breathes. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” can only mean including humankind’s dependence on that very same balance for its own survival. 

Perhaps that’s why we need St. Francis and a day to honor him. For Francis did not merely like nature, he held an intrinsic understanding, connection and sense of relationship to all God’s creation that was understood and taught by Christ. He counted himself as a part of the whole leaving nothing out. And, while we can well imagine that he gave thanks and praise for all the beauty he encountered, we do know that Francis deeply resonated with the fragility that exists alongside that beauty. He recognized God’s call to care for all those in need of loving attention: the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless, the exploited and the abused, no matter who or what they were.

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.”[3] Francis, in his desire to serve Christ, was not satisfied in merely serving those in need, Francis wanted to go deeper. He wanted to become a part of the least of these in the serving. 

The core of Jesus ministry and his expectations of us is that we show special concern for the vulnerable, man, beast and environment, and we look to Francis for an extreme example of that ministry. We are not expected to leave here today, give away everything we own and take to the dusty streets of Portland wearing only gunnysacks in our bare feet, but we are expected to show concern for the most vulnerable in all aspects of God’s creation. 

They will call out to us from many directions, in many different ways and we must resonate with them all as part of the whole of creation. Our compassion cannot be compartmentalized. 

We cannot work to save the oceans and the whales who swim in it, while shrugging our shoulders at poachers in the African jungle. We cannot moan the loss of the wild far away, while we turn a blind eye to continual loss of habitat for cougars and deer mere miles from our own city, or the mowing down of field and forest habitat for small creatures who call it home, in order to build bigger houses for ourselves. 

This does not mean to imply that we are to suddenly send our donations or spend every moment of our time devoted to thousands of causes, but we are to be aware of them and of the fragility of each at the expense of another. And we realize that the poor and hungry during Francis’ lifetime were far easier, safer to recognize and move toward. Even though it is true that it is harder to identify who does or does not need our help or assistance,  we are each called to work for the benefit on at least one who cannot speak for themselves, be it flora or fauna. And, by the way, when I first arrived at Christ Church, I was thrilled to see the bowl of water outside for whomever came thirsty to our doors. 

We are each drawn to a different call….to help to feed or clothe our fellow humans, here in Portland or far away across the world, and to protect fin, feather and fur, whether in our own back yard or anywhere else in the world that calls us

What is the difference between a small elephant who loses her mother due to lust for money or a family who has lost a wage earner, or a small child who loses her family due to the lust for war.

What is the difference? In God’s heart there is none. 

A few years ago, Bethany Sollereder[4] wrote an article for The Christian Century, stating that “the relationship that God has with each individual creature gives the creature’s life meaning….” Adding, “In the creative space of possibility instituted by God in creation, each creature and each species brings glory to God in whatever form it takes.”[5] 

This is a perspective that includes all of us and every living part of creation. We are all, each one of us, human or non-human, companioned by God and are loved and valued within our own circumstances. We are here for the good of each other and for the good of God because within each of us all lies a divine promise that the legacy of our lives is for the good. And what we do for the least of these lifts up all that God desires for them and for us. Thomas Merton said, “…. the grace of Christ is constantly working miracles to turn useless suffering into something fruitful after all.”

And in the fifteenth Century Thomas a Kempis, who wrote The Imitation of Christ: “And if thy heart be straight with God, then every creature shall be to thee a mirror of life and a book of doctrine, for there is no creature so little or so vile, but that sheweth and representeth the goodness of God.”  I’m guessing Kempis would agree that this means slugs are God’s beloved, too.

Six hundred years before modern day monk, Thomas Merton, and 200 years before Thomas a Kempis, St Francis understood all this with a depth of compassion that caused him to enter into it fully and completely. He did so with deep seated joy because all he encountered gave him a sense of connection through the divine grace of God. That is what it’s all about. To be connected to creation is to be connected to God. Francis got that. And we need to get that, too, 

The young elephant looked at me and our eyes met for just a fleeting moment that I will never forget. For in that moment, I felt shame for the circumstances into which humankind had placed her. I felt humility in the face of the challenges she has already faced and will face, and I felt love for her as part of God’s whole to which we both belong. 

Because she is walking through the same moment in time as I, taking her place in God’s creative plan of natural balance and beauty in a march of renewal that has no end, she is, and will always be, my sister in creation.

And because her eyes told me she knew she had become one of the least of these, and because someone saw fit to save her for the benefit of the world, how I wish she knows that I am thinking of her today. She’s much bigger I’m sure, and maybe preparing to return to the wild, or already there, and I think of what God has made, and of the people of Kenya who rescued her, and of the example set for them and for us by St. Francis, and I am deeply and humbly grateful for his lessons learned.

As for where all the dogs are, I think they must be in heaven along with all the other creatures who know only unconditional love and trust. I’m so glad to know they’ll all be there when I show up.

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E.J.R. Culver

October 6, 2024

[1]Colossians 1: 16-17

[2]Psalm 24:1

[3]Matt. 25:31-46

[4]Dr. Bethany Sollereder. Research coordinator at the University of Oxford, specializing in theology concerning evolution and the problem of suffering. 

[5]Bethany Sollerder, “The Purpose of Dinosaurs: Extinction and the Goodness of God.” The Christian Century, October 2, 2013, Vol. 130. No.20. pp. 22-26 

  Words of Wisdom

The verses from Wisdom scriptures, which we just read together today, are important reminders of the work of Wisdom. She is described as “a spotless mirror of the working of God….renews all things…..passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God” and, ”against Wisdom, evil does not prevail…she orders all things well.”

In other words, Wisdom is not idle and had no problems figuring out what her work is about. She is called to work with and for God. She acts. With no guile, no pretense, just acts on behalf of God. Doing God’s work in the world which was, is and is to be, equally without guile, against which no evil can prevail.

So, looking at this equation, we are left with the good news that we need to trust Wisdom just as we trust God

No matter how we find ourselves, how deeply immersed we are in our personal depths, or difficulties, or dilemmas, wondering where to turn, who to turn to, who it is we can trust, there is always one source of direction of which we can be sure. That is, God’s. When we pray to God for God’s guidance and directions, we can be sure that what we hear and receive is true. And to receive God’s word, to hear God’s call to follow, we find increasing understanding of our own much-needed insight into dependence on Divine Wisdom. 

In our own evolving wisdom, we begin to let go of our own manipulation of our own existence; manipulation of our own directions and our manipulations of the directions of others. The more aware we become of God’s direction in our individual lives, the more we are allowed to get out of our own way, finding freedom and peace in the letting go and starting to act on God’s behalf, without guile or pretense ourselves. 

To learn to act on behalf of God, that is to become more God-like, takes time, patience, intention, and practice. Wisdom comes from understanding God’s desire for God’s people and all God’s creation and that includes each one of us.  Our insights come from our mistakes, our roads not taken and our ability to let go of our regrets. Wisdom comes from our experience in living, along with our ability to voice our evolving vision and to bring it to reality 

Here at Christ Church, we have living proof of a kind of vision, inspired by God, that will set us on the path to deeper personal and communal wisdom, a path that will reveal new directions and new possibilities. When Mother Jaime saw the tree-covered grounds at this church when she came to serve, she contemplated deeply what might be a next step. She felt the call to create a labyrinth, and now we have a place to which we can go in order to assist in our own quest to find wisdom. A place to contemplate our own next steps and the next steps for our church. 

It is a place waiting for our time, patience, our intention and our practice. It is always there, waiting. Listening to whatever your thoughts may be. Listening and acting for God.

Today, much of the world is in a state of confusion and we feel too small and too overwhelmed to fix it. Yet, while we might feel helpless amidst the enormity of it all, we are not called to despair of it or to stick our heads in the sand pretending none of it’s reality exists. 

We must ask ourselves to contemplate how much and what kind of wisdom and how much of what we have learned over the years of our lives might be useful to God. 

We have survived through years of challenge, confusion, war and divisiveness, and in the grand scheme of things, we are but tiny specks of creative opportunity. Yet we have been given the gift of choice, discernment and decision, just as much as any creature created by God, or every cell of Creation that seeks to survive and to ensure the survival of its species. 

How incredible is the gift of life we have been given. By acting on God’s behalf, to become more God-like in any seemingly insignificant way in order to create something better than it has been before, physically or spiritually is to celebrate God’s gift of life to each one of us and to each other.

As we live through years of tumult between countries, between people, within relationships outside and inside our homes, the time has surely come for us to contemplate different approaches to living which build up loving relationships rather than tear them down.   

In doing so, how much more might humankind be thought of as a “spotless mirror of the working God?” It’s a difficult question to answer quickly and will need much thought. And before we can even begin to think about how spotless our reflection of God might be, we must think about the expression “working God.” God is never still, never resting on God’s laurels, except to step back and see that all is good. If we are to become agents of God, acting in God’s behalf, we will be taking on work that never ceases.

In God’s eyes, all is potentially good, all that is broken can be mended, all that is mistaken can be made wise enough to not make the same mistakes again. I say “can” not “will.” Each one of us can decide whether we are courageous enough or wise enough to be able to step away from our past mistakes, our regrets, our smudged images in our mirror of God, in order to see through the glass clearly into a renewed future. Before we can fix the world we must address our own reflection as God sees it today, be it ever so small. To put it bluntly, Wisdom is calling each of us, as self-proclaimed God’s people, to clean up our act.

It is ours to discern the relationship between dark and light in our lives….the relationship between wisdom and evil. Eternal Light, God’s Light, is the light that transcends any other light, or lightness of being. God passes that Eternal Light “into holy souls and makes them friends of God.” That is our work order. To pass the Light of God into all places of darkness.

We just have to be open to receive the light so that we can be conduits acting on God’s behalf for this superior light. As it says in our prayer book in the Song of Simeon at Evening Prayer:

The Song of Simeon    Nunc Dimittis Luke 2:29-32
 

A Light to enlighten the nations, *
    and the glory of your people Israel.

A light to enlighten the nations. 

Next time you look at yourself in a mirror, What do you see reflected there? What did you expect to see? What would it be like to see yourself reflected in the Light of Wisdom’s reflection? If you could see yourself through the eyes of Wisdom, how would your reflection be altered, your image shift or your understanding of yourself change?

Wisdom holds all the transcendent powers of God, the one Creator. She makes all things new and within each new era, each new emerging generation, she enters into holy souls and creates friends of God. She holds the key to transformation for each one of us and for the universe, and we ponder the last words from the piece of scripture from the Wisdom of Soloman. We are called to ask ourselves how we might work with Wisdom as “she orders all things well.”

In the light of God’s divine Wisdom, we are left to sift through all our human thoughts. The trouble with us humans is that, like Peter, we always move toward human thoughts and never think in terms of reflecting the light of God, because, well, we’re not divine in the way that we understand God as Divine. Yet, we are made in the image of God and yes, we are walking miracles, so we have all the necessary ingredients to become far more divine than our images reflect. 

God had to take on our humanity, had to come among us to try to help us understand how to transcend into a more divine plain. But God the omnipotent, God the Creator also recognized the definitive gap between our humanity and our divinity. Jesus died on the cross, suffering all the pain and agony that any human would through death on a cross. It was not for nothing. It closed the gap between the Divine and the human. It made God accessible for all God’s people. 

Perhaps what is missing is, what we could call, the appreciation gap, the gap of courage, the gap of ennui, complacence, of action and renewal.

Peter, in all innocence, when asked by Jesus who Peter thought Jesus was, said, “You are the Messiah.” In one way the right answer, in another an answer based on Peter’s own interpretation of just what a Messiah could be. Oh Peter, that you could be wiser and more discreet. When Jesus begins speaking about the nature of his coming suffering and death, Peter rebukes him “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 

Poor Peter, he probably didn’t hear the story’s ending, the part about Jesus rising to life again in three days.  Yet, it is Peter, who keeps on keeping on, who leads us to how to glimpse truths about who we are, arriving full circle from the mistakes of our own human making, to finding ourselves reflected in the “spotless mirror of the working God.”

Like Peter, we each have to formulate in our minds just how spotless our mirror of the working God actually is and just how we are to be true disciples of God. 

Jesus had no qualms about describing what it means to act on behalf of God. He said it’s time to deny ourselves, to stop thinking only in human terms, but to take up our cross and think in God’s terms. Only there will we find the real meaning of what it means to be more Godly; to be less bound by human reason, and more joyously free, without shame, to think and discern in a more God-like way.

Perhaps it would be wise for us to find a special time each week to walk a few times around the labyrinth and, as you walk, ask yourself and ask God, how best you can act on God’s behalf. What are some thoughts and questions God might urge you to ask?

As we think back over our lives, what reflections emerge and what wisdom do they offer us as we view the events of today?  What has Wisdom taught you about using the God-given gifts you possess in acting of God’s behalf in this troubled world? What is it that you can give to world peace in your own special way? 

What is it that you can contribute to assisting in acting to mend or build relationships? Wisdom, when asked, would lead each of us to the answer; to the core of everything we have learned from the life and Wisdom of Jesus, and that is to Love. Then act upon what it means to love on behalf of God.

As we walk, wherever we walk, wherever we sit to contemplate all this, let us heed some words which we would do well to hear again from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. We probably know the words of Chapter 13 so well that we could recite them, as they have echoed for humankind down through the centuries and will continue to sound out in the centuries to come. 

Perhaps the time has come to act upon these familiar words on behalf of God and God’s Creation. Perhaps each week we take a verse to the labyrinth, or when we are walking the dog, or simply sitting still, and contemplate how our acquired and lived wisdom, and our desire to become more God-like, the Divine Wisdom will reveal a true reflection of who we are, and how we can truly lose our life in order to save it. 

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 

3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 

5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 

6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 

9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 

11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 

12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Amen

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

September 15, 2024

Christ Episcopal Church

Season of Creation: Proper 17B

A Reading from Prayers of the Social Awakening, Walter Rauschenbusch

Psalm 19

A reading of “Nothing is Lost” from Ladder to the Light, Steven Charleston

Mark 7:24-37

Border Lessons

We’ve come to a bit of a glitch in Mark’s Gospel but Mark is just the reporter. It is in Jesus’ ministry of teaching that we sense a little glitch and I feel compelled to tell you a secret. Mark’s seventh chapter often strikes fear in the heart of many a good preacher because it’s problematic and upsetting and they avoid it like the plague. Better to stick to Old Testament reading for the day, or the assigned Epistle. Far safer because, after all, who is calling who a “dog?’ Perhaps Pastor Gary would disagree. Maybe Lutheran preachers are more courageous than Episcopalians and latch on to Mark 7 like dog latching on to a juicy bone. 

Nevertheless, this second week during the Season of Creation, we are to remind ourselves of our need for reconciliation, our need to learn, accept and offer welcome all those who differ from us wherever or however we encounter them. Thus, the very least we can do in order to rise to the occasion is to look closely at what is happening in the area where Mark’s record takes place. 

Jesus is out of his own country, visiting a place we now know as Lebanon. A country with different rules, different cultural expectations than those Jesus knew. Jesus was in a place he would consider foreign. A region known then as the Ten Cities, semi-autonomous states under the influence of Roman and Greek cultures, 

Jesus is abroad. This would have been a new experience for Jesus and his disciples. At the time he was young man, anywhere from his late twenties to early thirties, travelling now away from the Jewish world in which he grew up and understood. He had travelled into the world of the Gentiles.

Under normal circumstances, non-Jews, Gentiles, were considered as untouchables, meaning that they were to be avoided as unclean. If you were a Jew you were deemed to be clean and acceptable. Any other than Jewish, you were considered to be strange, foreign and, therefore, not acceptable. 

It's no surprise hear that racism was just as alive and well in the first century as it is today. In the first century, the Jews simply viewed all non-Jews as Gentiles, or foreigners. 

As it was, even though Jesus was out of his own country, his reputation for teaching and performing amazing miracles had reached beyond the borders of his own country. He was surrounded by what he would call the Gentiles. 

This propensity toward racism lends itself to the reason so many preachers tend to avoid this particular piece of scripture. It seems so very out of place with the way we view our present world and our faith in Jesus’ message of love, especially love of neighbor. Yet, we don’t have to go back too far in our own history to find evidence of the same. Nor do we have to look far to see remnants and elements of irreconcilable differences between people who should have learned long ago how to recognize human similarities rather than to point to our differences.

Another major difference between attitudes in the first century and today has to do with animals. In just a few weeks we will be celebrating our life with animals, wild and domestic, barnyard and those in our homes, such as dogs and cats, and, oh, okay, hamsters and pet mice. Regardless of whether they are purebred or a blended variety, once invited into our homes, they become beloved members of our families. We love them as we love our children and will give all we can to ensure their comfort and safety. Not so in Jesus’ day.  All people thought about dogs in the same way we do rats, except for those who have pet rats. On the whole, they were thought of as vermin. 

Knowing all this, and knowing now the atmosphere surrounding Jesus and his disciples, and their reactions to where they find themselves, we begin to notice some similarities and some differences in the two stories Mark is writing about. One is alone and one is surrounded by friends. One comes to seek healing from one who is becoming known for performing miracles. One comes merely in faith. Both are poor. Both may have experienced challenges due to their impediments, physical or racial. 

Even though she must have known she could have been cast aside by all manner of people surrounding Jesus, a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile, summoned up all her courage and decided to approach Jesus. He was inside a house, enjoying a meal with his disciples and friends, attempting to find some rest and quiet away from the crowds in the streets outside. A mother, a poor woman without means, whose child was suffering from what would be called an unclean spirit at the time, was probably at her wits end regarding how to save her daughter. We don’t need to know the nature of the illness, but even if it were a stubborn case of flu, there were no remedies and a high chance of death. She was desperate enough to beg and she brazenly came right inside the house to drop at the feet of Jesus and to beg for his healing help.

She was begging at the edge of his table, begging like a dog begging for scraps.

And here’s where the story gets a bit too dicey for some among us.

Jesus observes her subservient behavior and tests her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 

Jesus! What?

But do not fear. When Jesus says, “Let the children be fed first,” He is implying that the time is not right. He is not here to work on behalf of Gentiles, He has come on behalf of Jews in the area. It is not the right time, He reasons for Gentiles to receive such blessings Maybe in time. He is not saying “Never,” but rather, “Not yet…one day.”

The woman is persistent, and he begins to understand that, whether Gentile or Jew, He is not responding to her trust in God’s compassionate response to faithful prayer. Why would she risk everything, perhaps even her life, so desperate was she to find help for her child? Why would she come before a Jew who would regard her as one would regard an unclean dog? 

Her persistence brings a quick and sure answer to Jesus. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Recognizing her answer as one coming from a human being, with the same fears, hurts, joys as any other come to seek Him, he overcame traditional law and immediately learned a valuable lesson of the power of faith coming from other than that which he knew and he responded with compassion and love. Casting aside secular tradition and norms, he responded by healing the woman’s daughter from a distance.   He used his learning to teach his disciples and friends of how the reality of that Good News is to be spread by them out into the world, far beyond their own borders.  Human-made laws, rules, hierarchies have no place in God’s Kingdom unless they are coming from a place of love and compassion. 

Making his way onward, his second encounter takes place in yet another place toward the Sea of Galilee in the Decapolis region. This time another peasant was brought to him, with the help of friends and family. The man was deaf and he was affected with an impediment in his speech. The faithful groups pleaded with Jesus to lay his healing hands on the man, trusting that the man would be healed if only Jesus would touch him. Recognizing the faithfulness of the group, Jesus took the man to a private place, healed him, and sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha”, “Be opened.” The man’s hearing was immediately restored and his speech became clearly understood,

Even though Jesus asked the man and his friends not to tell anyone of this encounter, they were all so overjoyed they spread the word, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Faith that is difficult to see at first but exists in some way and deserves love. Faith that is easy to see and identify trusts in God’s love to heal.

What is the manner and shape of our faith? How do we express it? Do we summon up our courage and speak it out loud and clear, or do we prefer to keep it to ourselves lest people judge us and consider us as foreign to the norms of secular society?

How difficult is it to come to church on Sundays? We see our friends, we are greeted by our own kind, we can say the name, Jesus, without fear of reprisal. We find it hard to add to our numbers despite our welcome signs and welcoming ushers, all the while being pretty certain no one would want to join us. Why? Who do we pass by if they are faithful, but show it in a different way than do we?

It was a lesson learned by Jesus from a poor, desperate woman of another culture, another religion, another way of thinking.

How will the Syrophoenician woman have the courage and trust to show up at our door, longing for some healing of the heart, some shoulders to lean on if she has not noticed we are here? 

In order for the deaf man to find a way to a place that can assist him in his need for healing assistance, he must know we are here. 

We Episcopalians are beginning to understand our common faith with our Lutheran brothers and sisters, and we must ask ourselves how we are to connect with all other of our faith with whom we have more similarities than differences: Catholics, Methodists, Praise Churches of all kinds, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox, Reform and yes, those who believe in God, but cannot find their way to God, cannot find faith beyond day to day reason. Could we begin by praying for peace and contentment in their lives, whoever they are? People who at this very moment are wondering where the next bomb will drop and if they will be killed or left to ponder another day why people kill people in the name of power and lack of compassion and understanding. Jesus weeps. 

How many borders, physical, mental, emotional, uninformed must we begin to cross in order to reconcile us to our fellow creatures. How many borders will our degree of faith allow us to courageously reach to take the hand of the one not known?  When have we moved closer to the uncomfortable, only to discover joy in the new?  What borders have seemed to high for us to climb over when we might have invited someone to join us in prayer for God’s healing grace in their lives? 

I smile in solidarity when I pass by the Samoan Assembly of God in North Portland hearing their songs of praise, loudly, courageously, proudly reaching the Grocery Outlet parking lot on Lombard Street. Sing it, friends, I think. Somebody is listening.

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

Coming Clean

As a young child, I can well remember my mother’s voice admonishing me for blithely popping up into my mouth something from the floor where, it, whatever it was, had dropped. This, I still firmly believe, took place long before the 10-second rule came into being! “That’s a dirty thing, now,” she would exclaim, taking it out of my mouth and discarding it. This, too, I firmly believe, took place long before my mother understood that since the deed was done, there were a million or more germs now in my mouth and I was destined to live on, despite the immense peril to which I had exposed myself. I am living proof, however, that she probably really did save me just in the nick of time!

I remember all that spitting out, just as surely as I recall during moments of my life, spitting out epithets which were somehow intended to make my point stronger and more effective. They were not my proudest moments, not the kindest, not the most understanding or tolerant, not the most compassionate or accepting. It is with shame I remember those moments, and shame has a way of sticking in our memories, the recollections rising up unexpectedly, when we least want to remember them. 

Hopefully, we have learned from the memories of all we’d rather forget. It’s how we learn and thus survive; how we transition from some sort of self-imposed emotional imprisonment transitioning into a kind of emotional, physical and spiritual freedom which expands as we mature and learn. Somewhere, at sometime in our lives, we found God and God’s statutes, ordinances and commandments, all lending themselves toward our new way of being. As Christians, all of us always still in the learning process, we are called to love our neighbor in the best way we can.

And just who is our neighbor? The guy next door? The people down the street, across the country, whatever their political leanings or religion might be, or the people around the world in countries we will never see, whose culture and language we cannot understand? 

As people of God, what we are called to understand is this: whether or not any of these understand God or acknowledge God in a different way than do we, God has and will be always God to all, knowing that everyone near or far continues to seek God in some way and in whatever way they choose. God is as near and faithful to each of them as God is near and faithful to each of us.

If you read one of today’s Old Testament readings from our normal Lectionary, you would read about Wisdom, written in the Book of Proverbs.  Wisdom, known in those writings as Lady Wisdom is available to every creature alive. Her message is clear. If we do not follow Wisdom’s teachings, we will suffer. She imparts her Wisdom as if Mother to all living creatures on earth, rich or poor, to anyone who is wise enough to listen.

Her message calls us to listen to the words of the wise, openly and without pride, because the bottom line is that all words of wisdom might well be speaking to us through various people and situations for God. In other words, God is speaking to us through our experiences and learning moments here on earth throughout our lives. 

Can we not stop and wonder at that? To think of all those people throughout our lives who have offered us wisdom to assist us in our work of living satisfying and appreciative lives. I love Pope Gregory’s reading today that speaks to skepticism of the Risen Christ, and yet we barely give birth more than a moment’s thought. We celebrate the birth of a new being, but do we wonder about the miracle of new being coming from what was once non-existent. 

And then, the beautiful wonderings of Howard Thurman, we enjoyed today. “amidst the arrogances of empire; the whisper of those who had forgotten Jerusalem, the great voiced utterance of the prophets who remembered­—to Jesus, God breathed through all that is.”

God breathed through all that is. 

So, given all of this. Given that God breathed through all that is. Why is it we do not stop every now and then, and simply wonder at it all? Why is it that we still lose our tempers, flare up at each other, shed blame, point fingers, go to war at any level?

Just as the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus long ago, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

That last statement hits home. How often do we teach human precepts as doctrines rather than God’s? How often do we go our own way, rather than in the way of God? How well have we learned to love our neighbors as ourselves in the way God has called us to love? What lessons have we really learned in living with God’s commandments, no matter our religious preferences?

In this Season of Creation, the world in its universe and countless other universes, we are to become acutely aware of our source of life and life abundant, which is given to us and to all by God.

And yet, truth be told, our hands are as defiled as the hands of those who gathered around Jesus, eating in an unacceptable way and misunderstanding his teaching. Our hands are as defiled as the hands and mouth of a child eating something picked up from the ground, innocent as only a child can be but coming away from our experiences without change or understanding of a better way. If our lack of awareness was ours and ours alone maybe that wouldn’t matter. But, what the Season of Creation wants us to learn, urges us to take to heart and remember is that if we are working with defiled hands, everything we touch becomes just as defiled.

The land, the air, the sea and sky are speaking out to us, loudly. Climate change is our problem. We created it, we have to fix it. It is up to each one of us to consider before we throw whatever we don’t fancy into the landfill. It is up to each one of us to find a way to give those things we no longer need to those who would be grateful to receive them.

It is up to each one of us to acknowledge the differences between our neighbors and ourselves, and rather than judging, it is up to us to allow our acknowledgment and curiosity to lead us into new friendships. 

It is up to us to put a stop to animal cruelty when we see it or hear about it. 

I met Hildie the Dog after German Shepherd Rescue called me. She was just over 2 years old, and screamed if you touched her. She could get vicious if you touched her rear flanks or tail. After three and a half years, Hildie and I have become loving friends. I am allowed to touch her all over, although once in a while, she will softly growl to warn me to move my hands up a bit. She still is wary of strangers, especially if they don’t have people or dogs with them.  It is clear that she was severely abused by a human who didn’t understand her kind as a young pup and she will always carry some wariness due to that abuse. But Hildie came into my life at a time when I was praying hard for someone new to come into my life. She was loved by God, and my prayer was answered by God via her first rescuers at Shepherd Rescue. 

Whether it be dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, snakes, snails, rhinos or tigers and the thousands of animal species and insects we cannot ever hope to meet or understand, it is ours to remember that we are to be responsible for their welfare and their future. Because, just like us, they are creatures created by God. They have been placed on this world and when God said we have dominion over them, God didn’t mean we could abuse them, neglect them, ignore them, or pretend they don’t exist. We have been given dominion over our earth, and all it offers up as gifts of God, created and freely given to our care. Trees, plants, the grasses of the world, and yes, even weeds, are ours to tend, control, and use for the beauty of the earth, for the feeding of the world, and for our comfort and contentment. 

We are called to mercy. We are called to be merciful to all Creation. And we offer ourselves into God’s hands asking for God’s forgiveness on behalf of all that we have denied, desecrated or destroyed with our defiled hands. Listen to these words from St. Agustine:[1] 

“’And what is this God?’ I asked the earth and it answered: “I am not he.” And all the things that are on the earth confessed the same answer. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things with living souls and they replied, “we are not your God. Look above us.” I asked the blowing breezes, and the universal air with all its inhabitants answered, “I am not God.”

I asked the heaven, the sun, the moon, the starts, and “no,” they said, “We are not the God for whom you are looking.” And I said to all those things which stand about the gates of my senses: “Tell me something about my God, you who are not He. Tell me something about Him.” And they cried out in a loud voice, “He made us.” 

My friends, it is time for us to come clean. To wash our hands of our assumptive neglect and abuse. If we pray for nothing else during this, the Church’s Season of Creation, let us pray for clean hands and clean hearts in the caring of all that is God’s. In God’s name we pray,

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

September 1, 2024

[1] Saint Augustine. The Confessions. X.9

Christ Episcopal Church

Proper 15

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Eternal Life100

If you really want to know the average life-expectancy rate in your part of the world, or your part of the country, or your city, or by your ethnicity, your economic circumstances, the illnesses you’ve had, the number of surgeries, how the changes and chances of living in the 21st century have affected your psyche, you can go online and find out. Before you do, don’t freak out too quickly if you feel your age is edging to closely to the outside expectation for living in this mortal world. Remember, the numbers are averages. We should all intend to surpass the numbers with Olympic proportions and look forward to living out many a year from now. 

Yet, as we well know, we cannot, nor will we, simply go on and on in this human world without end. And we should be glad of that. First of all, who wants to keep on dealing with world war, technical difficulties,  passwords, billing and insurance options for another bazillion years. And then there’s those self-driving cars. Enough already. 

Jesus says we have an opportunity for eternal life if we eat the bread and drink the wine that reminds us of him. Does he mean we just keep on living in this world with our human ways? On and on and on, without fear of life ever ending on earth? I’m positive Jesus did not mean anything of the kind and, as always, he leaves us to interpret the meaning of his words in our effort to understand. 

Eternal life is as much of a tall order for us mere mortals to understand, just as it was for the good people in his own time. We can well understand the words that his disciples said just after the scripture we heard today, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”[1] 

The discourse we heard this morning was taking place in Nazareth, when Jesus was home among his own people, having returned as an adult rabbi and teacher. Miracles had already taken place, like the feeding of the five thousand, turning water into wine and more, and his fame was spreading. But, as we know, that fame was lost on most of the people in his hometown. They, like many of us, truth be known, were at one level confused, and at another level, a bit skeptical of what they were hearing, given that most of them had known Jesus as a child, growing up among them. And to be frank, Jesus didn’t make it easy for them or for us to understand. His words didn’t seem to make sense to the people listening to him any more than they seem to for us. 

Humanity wants validation. Signs. Proof. Something tangible. Like the manna that came from heaven in the wilderness. Whereupon, not wanting the people to misunderstand, Jesus said something like, “Look. Be clear. The manna that came down was real bread. Like the bread you made in your oven this morning. It was provided by Moses thanks be to God. But the bread I’m talking about is very different from any kind of other bread you can think of. It is me.”

The locals were clearly not buying it.  Especially from the one they knew well as Joseph, the carpenter’s son. What’s he talking about? Giving us his flesh to eat? His parents are lovely people, but he’s crazy and he needs to get out of town.

Let’s leave them all to it for the moment and consider Jesus’ words ourselves. If you’re like me, you enjoy eating good bread. The problem with good bread is, however, that you can’t eat just one slice. At some point, as with all food after it is consumed, you get hungry and need to eat more. And the food and drink equation is pretty simple and straightforward. If you stop eating food completely, you will die of starvation. 

However, Jesus is not speaking in mortal terms. His invitation to us to eat this kind of bread emerges from a divine perspective and understanding. But the equation works in the divine just as it does in the here and now. 

Putting it metaphorically, if we give our lives to Christ, relying, trusting, having faith in the divine guidance of Christ, believing in his direction and in who and what he was and is, and understanding that  all of this constitutes the bread of life, then our souls and spirits are nourished. God, Jesus God, provides the strength, insight and divinely fed power we need to keep on, keeping on. Jesus says we only need to eat it once. We don’t need to eat it over and over again. The reason we do, the reason we come to church on Sundays to participate in taking in the Sacrament during the service of Holy Eucharist, is to remind ourselves of just where it is we can derive that strength of spirit and food for the soul. Through the spiritual meal of bread and wine our bodies and souls, exhausted by human life and trial, is replenished, renourished, revitalized, giving us the power to live a life built on Christ. Without it, our soul, our spirit and our faithful sense of well being simply dies. 

We can recall the Samaritan woman at the well. She had no need to return to Jesus for more water, once she drank in the living water that was Jesus. The very life blood of Jesus. The blood that sustains the divine in us…the Christ in us…the essence of Jesus Christ Himself. 

In the same way, we can trust in a divine way when we think of Christ’s bread and wine…the bread and wine that is Christ. Participating in the Eucharist is a reminder to remember his death, to remember his resurrection and to believe he will be with us again, and again and again. That his presence in our lives never ends. In other words, to eat the bread of life, to take in the very essence of Jesus as the very giver of life, is to believe in the One who saves us from all that wants to kill our hopes, our joys and our spirits. Rather, we are called again and again to savor all of God’s blessings in our lives. 

Jesus gave himself to the world for the life of the world and it is probably the most important point Jesus wants us to understand, which is why he goes over and over it again. He is making a point about sacrifice. The sacrifice of body and blood that Jesus made for us and for the world. But the teaching doesn’t stop there. Jesus is also speaking of the sacrifice you and I can make for someone else. To give of oneself is the greatest gift one can give. 

A little lamb would be known the people in Jesus’ time as a common yet special sacrifice, to God. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is giving himself to you and to me and to whoever in the world wants to accept him, now and forever, once and for all. His is the greatest gift of all time. He gave it for our sakes, as an offering in payment to God for our ignorant sinfulness. He offered it to God as a single intercession on our behalf.

We do not hear these words with literal meaning. We hear them as part metaphor, part divinely inspired interpretation and as an invitation to walk with faith in God and the one God sent to teach us….the one known to God as God’s Son, Jesus Christ. 

Even though, as we know, Jesus became human in the same way as do we. He was born, grew through a normal childhood with all the childish ways, he grew into manhood, gathering all the same human experiences as do we, loving, grieving, crying and laughing, suffering, dying and rising again to appear as human, eating fish on the beach, just to prove it. So, his flesh was as real as yours or mine, and yet given life through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is this last that we too often forget, and that Jesus never forgot.

So, while we incorporate a divinely spiritual meaning behind Jesus’ words, we do not lose touch with the human, mortal, flesh and blood part of him. Jesus acknowledges his humanity with his references to body and blood, but he is referring to these basic elements of life itself as from Godself. Without these, “you have no life in you.”[2] And again, he refers to himself as he says, “I live because of the Father.”[3] So we begin to understand his equation. When Jesus refers to himself as the eternal Son of the Father, whose life we share, then suddenly we realize that if we abide in Him as He abides in us, then we, too, have the same eternal life. 

In a few moments we will share Holy Eucharist, and consecrate the bread and wine, and we will call upon the Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify the elements so that we may take in the divinity of Jesus, God’s flesh and blood, quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what gives us life. This is the breath of life….the same breath that formed Adam out of the dust….the same breath that was breathed into us at our conception, raising us as one with the Risen Lord, the second Adam, and we, as mere mortals of our time, are animated by the Spirit and made new, again and again and again, into eternity.

Nobody said this would be easy for us to understand. Yet, it is through this understanding and this willing acceptance of the body and blood of Christ that we enter into an eternal transformation. 

There is a beautiful alternative scripture that precedes today’s Gospel. We’ll hear it next year but let me share a little of it with you now, since it is so relevant to our reflection today.

It is from Proverbs Wisdom Scripture. 

Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”

You that are simple. You that are merely mortal. You that seek. You who are mature enough to taste this bread and drink this wine. Turn in here! Throw off your immaturity, come in and live, come in and walk in the way of wisdom and insight. 

We have been given the teachings and heard Wisdom’s encouraging welcome to begin to understand what it is Jesus wants of God’s mortal creatures. 

What we are to learn is the ability to recognize the slow changes that occur in us as our faith deepens and as we dare to enter the divine thinking of Christ. No longer simply existing in a way of life that has no life….living from issue to issue, circumstance to circumstance, deadening the impact of the world’s expectations with short-lived entertainment and escape. 

In the spirit of the Olympic Games we have just witnessed, we are called to enter an event we could call the Divine Olympics. We can call the event the Eternal Life 100 Run. It is an event that has no finish line, and there are no winners or losers.  When we walk with Christ in The Way of Christ, live for Christ more than we live for ourselves, we find it easier to give of ourselves completely, as a living sacrifice and thanksgiving and praise and there is no end to this. 

As we hear the words of the Eucharistic Prayer, so familiar to us, today, really listen to the words, really hear what they are saying. They are our response to Jesus’ request of us to take in God’s Divine gift of life through Christ’s own sacrifice.  The words echo the amazing mystery that has captured human hearts for over 2,000 years!

Sacrifice your skepticism. Sacrifice your need to made human sense of the divine. Sacrifice your need for human proof. Simply allow yourself to give yourself completely to God as you take the bread and drink from the cup. Why?

Because it is by him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit that we live and have our being. Therefore, all honor and glory must surely belong to God, now and forever into the eternity of which we are a part. 

Amen.

Written to the Glory of God

E. J. R. Culver+

August 18, 2024

[1]John 6:60

[2]John 6:53

[3]John 6:56