Encountering the Essence of God's Glory

Well, I know the Christian calendar says today is the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, but in truth it feels like a national day of mourning – the First Sunday after Football. Did you watch the Super Bowl last week? I turned on the TV about half an hour before kickoff; in time to see Ray Lewis interviewed by Shannon Sharpe, a former teammate. Sharpe asked Lewis about two people who were killed after Lewis won the Super Bowl several years ago in Atlanta. The Baltimore linebacker was implicated in the murders and eventually pled guilty to Obstruction of Justice. No one has ever been convicted of the deaths and many questions still linger regarding Lewis’ involvement. “What would you say to those families,” Sharpe asked. “It’s simple,” Lewis said. “God has never made a mistake. That’s just who He is, you see.... To the family, if you knew, if you really knew the way God works, He don’t use people who commits anything like that for His glory. No way. It’s the total opposite.” The implication is chilling: Lewis’ on-field success is proof of his innocence. Moments after winning this year’s Super Bowl, Lewis, overcome with emotion, shouted into a microphone, “If God is for you, can’t no one be against you.” Ray Lewis is a vicious tackler, a sure fire Hall of Famer, and a brutal theologian!


We bristle when we meet someone who is a little too chummy with God; who has God’s ways all figured out – and figured out in such a way that always seems to coincide with his or her own desires and self interest.

In many ways, what I know with the greatest certainty of God is that I know little if anything at all about God. I believe in the power of prayer and know personally how it affects my life. It is something like turning on a radio and tuning into a particular frequency. That signal is always there, always around us, but we only hear it when we turn on the radio and listen. When I tune in to God through prayer, I find strength, hope, courage, direction, joy, forgiveness… many things, things of God that are always there. It is not like God is completely absent. But I when I pray I do not get the sense that I am encountering the full essence of God’s glory. Moments like that, if they happen at all in one’s life, are very rare.

Our lessons this morning describe two such experiences. From the Old Testament we read of Moses encountering the true essence of God’s glory. It is an event so profound that it changes Moses’ very appearance. His face literally radiates God’s glory. It shines to such a degree that people are afraid to approach him. Moses must wrap his face with a veil whenever he is in the presence of other people.

The other encounter takes place on a mountaintop when Jesus is transfigured in the presence of Moses and Elijah. Peter, James, and John witness the event. At first words fail each of them until Peter suggests they build shrines for each of the three figures in order to remain in this luminous moment forever. And why not, once you are completely in the presence of God, where else is there to go? Certainly not down the mountain to the messy world of healing the troubled and rebuking evil.

We have a record of Peter’s preaching in the Book of Acts and we have in writing two of his letters. It is significant that when preaching or writing about Jesus, Peter refers primarily to three episodes that form the core of his own faith. He does not mention how Jesus calmed the storm or walked on water or cured the sick or raised the dead. Instead Peter describes Jesus’ suffering, his resurrection, and the transfiguring on the mountain. This from 2 Peter 1:16-18:

“We had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.”

This was for Peter a life changing experience, eclipsed only by encountering the Resurrected Lord.

I spent some time this week rehearsing the events of my life and pondering if I have ever come close to encountering the full essence of God’s glory. Yes, there are many times I felt I have been in God’s presence. I have experienced a healing that I consider miraculous. I have been transported through prayer and praise to a holy dimension. But I don’t know that I have ever encountered the full essence of God’s glory in a way close to what Moses or Peter experienced.

I found myself thinking back to my first year as a priest when I ministered to Richard who was battling cancer. He and his wife were good people; the kind of folk you know you like and can trust from the moment you meet them. Richard put up a courageous fight, but cancer got the better of him. His family and I gathered around his hospital bed on a Friday evening. Richard was to have both feet amputated in the morning. Blood clots had become more of a threat than the cancer. The doctor walked in and talked with Richard, saying there was very little to be gained by the surgery. All agreed and it was called off. There, in that room, we took communion and to this day when I say the words, “It is a right and good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty,” I am taken back to that hospital room Eucharist where, in spite of all the challenges, for a brief moment, Richard, his wife, his children, and I were in a place and in a space where time was irrelevant and nothing else seemed to matter.

When I returned the next morning everything about Richard’s countenance had changed. He radiated something that words fail to describe. At best I would call it a deep, abiding peace, but that simply does not capture all of it. He was calm, he was confident, he was secure. He didn’t need to veil his face, but everything about him indicated that sometime in the night hours he encountered the essence of God’s glory. We talked for about two hours before I made my leave. Richard slipped away quietly about sixty minutes later. That morning visit, seeing and sensing something different in Richard, is the single most powerful experience in my ministry, and perhaps even in my entire life.

Unlike Ray Lewis, whose faith makes him cocky and self-assured about God and God’s ways, my experiences have left me speechless and humble. Like I said, the closer we come to knowing God the more we realize we know nothing at all about God.

I resonate with this poem by R.S. Thomas titled Via Negativia:

Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

“His are the echoes we follow, the footprints [we step in that] he has just left.” That God exists I am confident. What little I know of God is overshadowed by what I do not and may never know. Still, what I know and have experienced of God fuels my need to worship, to follow, to obey, and to serve.

How tempting it is to fill the interstices of our knowledge and experience of God with what we want or need God to be. How human it seems to be to have the quick answer, the easy understanding, the domesticated theology that in effect leashes God to our own particular projection of God. It saddens and sickens me to hear a famous person say, “If you understood God the way I do you would not question ‘His’ way.” Better if Lewis had said, “If your thought process worked the way mine does you wouldn’t have a problem with my involvement in two murders.” Me, I am going to be content describing God’s footprint and what it feels like to miss God’s reflection that surly my friend Richard saw. For me, these glimpses of the holy are more than enough. They humble me. They leave me speechless. They shape and charge my life this and every day.

Last Sunday we heard the Gospel story of Jesus preaching in his hometown synagogue. This Sunday we read about the outcome. His friends and neighbors carry him out of the worship space and try to throw him off a cliff. It’s fair to say he was not well received. So what went wrong? The people were offended when Jesus declared himself to be the fulfillment of the Scripture and they were outraged when he refused to perform a sign or miracle for them.

We all live with the tension of having a sense of self that is developed internally verses that which is validated externally by those around us. This Gospel story describes a point early in Jesus’ ministry where these two forms of validation conflict in irreconcilable ways. Its one thing to have parents, family, friends, and authority figures greet with skepticism a childhood announcement stating when we grow up we are going to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a princess or a Super Bowl winning quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. It is something entirely different when we make a mature, well thought through decision based on intuition, prayer, and a reasonable assessment of our passions and gifts, only to have it pooh-poohed by those we hope will support and encourage us.

Ponder with me how you got to be who and where you are today. How did you discern your life’s calling? Who validated it for you? How was it challenged or tested? Lily Tomlin once said, “I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.” Figuring out who you are specifically, and thus what you are to do, is one of the significant undertakings we face in life. It is easy to get it wrong, at least for a while.

I read recently a story about a naturalist who came across a baby eagle that had fallen out of its nest. He scooped it up, took it home, and let it loose in his barnyard. There, surrounded by chickens, the eagle learned to be a chicken. For a short time this is exactly what the little eagle needed, but over time it stunted its potential. Born as one of the most majestic creatures, the great bird did not know how to get off the ground, let alone fly. The naturalist tried everything he could think to awaken dormant instincts. He tossed the bird into the air, but back to the ground it fell, scratching for food in the dirt. He got out a ladder, put it against a tree, and placed the eagle on the highest branch within reach. Even this did not work. Finally he drove the eagle to a mountaintop. Standing at the edge of a high, steep face, he put the eagle on his arm and held out his arm to the sun. Slowly it happened that the great bird began to tremble. It stretched out its wings, let out a wild, screeching cry, and soared away toward the heavens.

How did you come to be the specific person you are today? Your story contains elements of internal awareness as well as external influence. Like the eagle, there was someone in your life – perhaps many people – who pointed you down a particular path. And like the eagle, there was a time when deep down inside, you embraced a sense of who you are and wanted to be. Each of us comes to be someone specific through some combination of these two polar influences.

Growing up, I greatly admired my youth minister and as early as 9th grade began to see myself doing the work he did. Others encouraged me on this path and my father even gave up on his dream that I would follow his footsteps as a chemical engineer. I entered college as a religion and economics major. Along the way, while doing actual ministry as a volunteer, I learned that this can be difficult work. Not everyone wanted to hear what I had to say about Jesus. In fact, some people really didn’t want to hear about it all. I was very discouraged by these failures and after graduation was completely unsure what I wanted to do.

I connected with an Episcopal Church and was hired to do youth ministry. After two years the rector told me in no uncertain terms that I was called to the ordained ministry and that I was going to seminary, so off I went. What began in me internally and was validated by others had gotten away from me. It came back to me because another person put it there. A few years later a seminary professor said to me, “Keith, it is easy for God to get people like me and you into the ministry because there is nothing else we want to do.” He was right and that was the moment I embraced internally who I was going to be specifically.

In today’s first reading we learn of Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet. It is not his idea. God issues it to him by telling him, “Before you were born up until this very day I formed you for this purpose.” Jeremiah, who was about the age I was when I started to think about the ordained ministry, protests: “I am just a boy. I don’t have a clue what to say.” His struggles are rooted not in self-doubt, but rather in self-awareness. He was right to perceive that he has no business being God’s prophet to an adult world. In response, God promises to speak through him and at some point the boy relents and accepts his calling. It is a slight variation on the internal/external drama.

Let’s think again about Jesus. How would you react if, brimming with confidence, you announced your specific plan for life to your family, your friends, your teachers, your coaches, your associates, and your priest, and they roundly tell you that you have got it wrong? I know that for some of you this is not a theoretical question. The human drive for esteem and recognition is, at its heart, a way of testing publically what privately we think and believe about ourselves. Sitting on the Commission on Ministry of our diocese I see first hand what happens when a person comes before us seeking entry into the ordination process and we determine that the person is not fit to proceed. It is devastating to that person. I imagine that being rejected by those close to him came as quite a blow to Jesus.

Here are some things we might take away from this:

First, rejection should motivate us to undertake a sober self-assessment. We are leery of people who believe God has called them to do something when not a single person affirms or supports their belief. Sometimes other people see something we are missing. Their wisdom, although painful, can be a saving grace. A good question to ask yourself is what are they seeing about me that I am missing?

Second, there are times when the best move is to move on and try again. This, in fact, is what Jesus did. He relocated to Capernaum. There, a new audience responded to his message with wild enthusiasm and sacrificial commitment. Jesus knew first-hand what he taught his disciples, “If a town does not receive you, shake the dust off your sandals as you leave and move on to the next place.” In truth, today’s Gospel reading says a lot more about the people of Nazareth than it does about Jesus’ calling.

Third, there is a difference between outright rejection and receiving a difficult truth about yourself. The person who rejects us cares nothing about us and is concerned only about him/herself. The person who will tell us the difficult truth loves us enough to do something risky. It falls on us then to hear what we are told and to do something with it. There is a difference between ‘no,’ ‘never,’ and ‘not yet.’ Being rejected is like a dagger to the heart. Being told a difficult truth can be like having a seed planted in your soul. Something good will come of it if your nurture it carefully.

Next, there are times when we need a voice from beyond to point us in the right direction. We may listen for the voice of God to tell us what to do, but, in my experience, it has always been another person who says to me what sometime later I come to realize as God’s words to me.

Finally, most of us here this morning pretty much have figured out who we are specifically. Of course we are always changing and feedback from others is always necessary, but for the most part we have discerned our call. The role we play most often now is that of the external voice for those younger who are in discernment. Ours is a powerful role. We can do great harm or great good in the life of a person. Ours is an important role. Validating another’s intuition, awakening gifts, inspiring dreams, supporting direction… take a step back, change the frame slightly and you will recognize that this is the work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. But it is our work too. It is how God works in and through us in the life of another person.

The Gap between Who We Are and Who God Wants Us to be

Have you ever noticed how the reference to most of the biblical readings in the bulletin looks something like this: Philippians 4:1-8, or Mark 12:24-30? They are straight from the bible… with no omissions. But every now and then, the framers of the lectionary try to slip something by us. Like today: a reading from Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, and 8-10. What happened to verses 4 and 7? What do they say and who decided you and I won’t get to hear it?

Well, let me set the record straight and reveal what is being kept from you. Verse 4:

The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand; and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand.

And now for verse 7:

Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah [wasn’t he on the other side in verse 4?], Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places.

You know, this is the first year these two verses have been omitted. I used to so look forward to the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C, because some poor lay reader had to make his or her way through – and I think we can all agree on this description – these unpronouncable names. There are not a lot of perks in the clergy business, and they just took away another one. I remember one time years ago when a seasoned reader stood at the lectern and said,

Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose; and beside him stood some guys on his right hand and some other guys on his left hand.

Well, it is sad that these moments of improvisation and torture are no more.

Removing the reading of all those names does not diminish the fact that this passage is an important Old Testament lesson. It speaks about a spiritual struggle we still engage today and while it takes place nearly five centuries before Jesus’ ministry, there is something about it that feels like a New Testament moment.

Let me give you some background. The temple and the walls around Jerusalem were in ruins when exiles returned from Babylon in the closing years of the 6th century BC. Leaders like Nehemiah and Ezra the priest soon rallied the people to engage in a huge public restoration project. During the course of this work someone uncovered ancient scrolls of scripture.

These were and are the words of God and, because the exiles were not allowed to take the scrolls to Babylon, no one had read them or heard them read for nearly two generations. While in exile the Jewish people carried on with their faith traditions as best they could based on their memories. But memories can be faulty. Huge gaps in the faith tradition can go undetected while what are minor points can be overemphasized almost to a fault.

So once the city’s wall was repaired, it was time to do some repair work on the human soul. All the people gather around. Ezra reads and he chooses a couple dozen leaders to lead what are essentially small group discussions so that the people understand fully what they hear.

And here is what they heard: there was a huge gap between who they were and who God wanted them to be. Theirs is a timeless struggle we still engage today. There will always, always, always be a gap between who we are and who God wants us to be.

I had a friend in high school who went out for the track team in the high jump. He worked very hard at it day in and day out. We were at a huge meet and he represented our school. Before his event began, I found him, and wished him luck. He looked very dejected. Because this meet attracted the best athletes for miles around, the bar for the starting jump was set at 5’8”. My friend’s best jump ever was 5’4”. There was no way he was going to make it out of the opening round. Those four inches might as well have been four miles. It was a gap he simply could not overcome.

If you can imagine how he felt at that moment then you can understand how the people in Jerusalem felt the day when they heard God’s word read aloud. They were good and faithful people trying their best to do what they imagined God wanted them to do. But then, in an instance, in a holy, sacred moment, they learned just how far away they were from living lives that actually pleased God according the standard set by Scripture. And, in their minds, the gap between what they were doing and what they learned God expected was overwhelming.

Into this moment steps Ezra the priest. When the people became aware of the gap they wept, they mourned, and they fell into despair. They forgot about the how God had brought them back from exile. They forgot about the rebuilding they were doing. They focused only, solely, entirely on the gap.

Now I don’t want to minimize the sins and shortcoming of those folks gathered back in the day. I don’t want to say that it was unimportant. I don’t want to say that the people should just ignore it. Somehow, someway, they had to come to grips with their behavior and move forward. Ezra knew this, for sure, but notice what he does. He calls for a party! He calls for a celebration… a celebration of all that is good and godly in who the people are. It is to be a celebration rooted first and foremost in God’s love. Look at what Ezra says, “This day that we have seen the gap is a holy day. Do not be grieved. The joy of the Lord is our strength.” That is New Testament theology.

I once heard a pastor pronounce the absolution of sin after confession with these words:

“By the grace of God we are not what we once were.”
By the love of God we are who we are.
And we are not yet what we one day will be.”
That is “joy of the Lord” thinking and no person of honest faith can make his or her way in life without it.

Those of us who live in the joy of the Lord know that God meets us where we are, as we are – gaps and all. We know that God loves us where we are, as we are – gaps and all. And we know how God’s love shapes and molds us into a more faithful way of being. In a few moments we will receive communion. The name of the service is not “The Great Groveling before God because We are Unworthy Sinners.” The title of the service in the prayer book is “The Great Thanksgiving.” And we don’t perform the service in penitence, we “celebrate” it for it is the best food and finest wine of the week.

I think back to my high school friend. That meet came early in the season. He did not give up on the high jump or on himself. He kept at it day in and day out, meet after meet, working to get better. And do you know what, by the end of the season he was clearing 5’8” with ease. There is a parable in that story for us today. It calls us to know the gap in our lives by understanding scripture, to acknowledge that the gap exists, to celebrate what we can do, and to allow God’s grace to work on what we can’t. I don’t know what Maaseiah and the others told the small groups they led, but if I had been in charge of one, this is what I would have told them.

Love without Depletion Overflows

We live in a culture that appreciates the symbolism of an act or event.  Take tomorrow’s Presidential inauguration as an example.  Much of what will occur is intended to convey meaning.  At his first inauguration, Barak Obama was sworn in using the Lincoln Bible; the bible on which Abraham Lincoln placed his hand when he took the Oath of Office in 1860.  Clearly it was an intentional choice made by Mr. Obama and an act rich in symbolism.

At tomorrow’s inauguration, the President has elected to have a bible used by Martin Luther King placed on top of the Lincoln Bible.  This will be one of many symbolic acts incorporated into tomorrow’s festivities that people are talking about.  Internet discussion around the bibles centers on Obama’s original shift from the one used by George Washington at his inauguration, the addition of the MLK bible, and questions as to why any bible should be used during the oath.

Symbolic acts do this.  They create conversation about mystery, meaning, identity, wisdom, and deeper truths.  And, as I said, our culture is very much in tune with the symbolism behind much of what happens.

More than the other three, John’s Gospel teems with symbolism.  As a writer, John cares little for chronological accuracy.  Instead, he is deeply invested in the layers of meaning undergirding each episode he describes.  In John’s Gospel, the initial act Jesus chooses to launch his public ministry is to attend a wedding.  What does that tell you?

Think of the possibilities here.  As his first act, Jesus could have healed a sick person.  He could have exorcized a demon, clamed a storm, confronted an injustice or forgiven a sinner.  He could have gone to a synagogue and prayed.  Rather than do these or anything else we might imagine, John reports that Jesus attended a community celebration.  What do you suppose the symbolic meaning behind this is?

Richard Wilbur is a celebrated poet and an Episcopalian.  Meditating on the event at Cana, he wrote a toast for a family wedding that captures a significant aspect of the complex meaning behind Jesus’ actions:

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world’s fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana’s wine.

 (The Wedding at Cana by Richard Wilbur)

“Whatever love elects to bless brims to a sweet excess.”  “This world’s fullness is not made but found.”  I think Wilbur has captured something deeply true in the symbolic act behind Jesus’ attendance and actions at Cana.  Work your fingers to the bone all your life and still you cannot make that wine for which you thirst.  It is all ready here in abundance.  You just have to let it find you.

I was first drawn to the Episcopal Church because its message, its liturgy, and in its spirituality affirmed the goodness of life in a way that I did not perceive during my more conservative, Evangelical upbringing.  Yes, there is brokenness in this world, there is sinfulness, there is evil.  But, as I said last Sunday, in addition to challenge, we live in a world infused with grace and there is more than enough grace to carry us through life’s difficulties.  Wilbur captures this truth when he says “love continues to overflow without depletion.”

I want you to think back over the past week… just the past week.  I am confident it has been filled with blessings and challenges.  Think for a moment and ponder Wilbur’s claim that “love without depletion overflows.”  If you found this to be true in your life over the last week, how about doing something unEpiscopalian and give me an ‘Amen’.

Have you ever shopped at a Restore?  It is to leftover building supplies and discarded home fixtures what the Salvation Army Store is to used clothing.  About a year ago I bought a rod iron bed frame at a Restore in Newport News for $20.  The cashier asked me if I was redoing a bedroom.  “No”, I said, “I am going to use the rod iron in my garden somehow.”  She got all excited at this and said, “I love it when people find a way to ‘repurpose’ our items.”

At the wedding in Cana, Jesus ‘repurposes’ six huge stone water jars.  They held water not meant for consumption, but for ritual purification.  The Book of Leviticus sets out in exacting detail who is spiritually clean and who is not based on any number of criteria: what you eat, bodily functions, if you touched something you shouldn’t, etc.  Way back in the day there must have been a good reason for all these various rules, but by Jesus’ day that moment had long since passed.  In his day the purity laws served a much more simple function... they enabled religious leaders to determine who was in God’s favor and who was not.  They determined who could be admitted into God’s community – in this case, the wedding feast – and who should be excluded.  In this sense the jars had a powerful symbolic value, didn’t they.

By turning the water for purification into the best wine of the feast Jesus does something much more significant than keeping the party going.  He transforms the face of religion itself.  The very jars that conveyed inclusion and exclusion, worthiness and unworthiness, became the containers that fostered an ongoing celebration of life itself.  The old rules kept people out.  The new rule of Jesus is an invitation extended to everyone.  He is all about a message that draws in.  As Wilbur put it, God’s life abounds and hungers to pour out its plenty on such as us.

The very actions of Jesus we read this day invite us to understand life as an invitation to enter into the blessing and joy that permeates life lived in God.  It tells us that this invitation is open to everyone.  It tells us that this message is first and foremost on Jesus’ mind at his inaugural moment.  And it tells us that we do not make this life, but rather find it as we discover what is always there… the incredible life offered by the Lord of life.

Baptisms in Grace and in Challenge

   

This first Sunday after the Epiphany is always a celebration of our Lord’s baptism in the Jordon River; a moment that launches his public ministry.  After an event-filled birth some thirty years earlier Jesus has grown up in relative obscurity.  In the three years that follow his immersion Jesus will change the course of human history and even more than this, we Christians proclaim that Jesus has transformed cosmic reality.

Here is what the fourth century bishop Gregory of Nazianzus wrote about this moment:

John is baptizing when Jesus draws near… He comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters… He who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through Spirit and water.

The Baptist protests; Jesus insists.  Then John says: “I ought to be baptized by you.”  He is the lamp in the presence of the sun, the voice in the wilderness in the presence of the Word, the friend in the presence of the Bridegroom, the greatest born of woman in the presence of the firstborn of all creation, the one who leapt in his mother’s womb in the presence of him who is adored in the womb, the forerunner and future forerunner in the presence of him who has already come and is to come again. 

Jesus rises from the waters; and a drowned world rises with him.

And the world Jesus lifts out of the water is a world infused with God’s love and God’s grace.
 
We are blessed on this day through baptism to welcome Payton Rowe into the Christian faith and life.  It is her official introduction into the world of grace; a world she already senses through the love and affection of her family and friends and a world she will come to know more deeply as the years go by.

There is a wonderful poem by Denise Levertov titled The Avowal that describes the life of faith using two common images, a swimmer floating in water and a bird gliding in air:

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace

God’s love and grace is not something we work for, it is something we acknowledge.  We rest in it.  We allow it to hold as we live and to lift us as we soar.  Like all of us, Payton’s life continually will reflect the reality and presence of all-surrounding grace.

I am keenly aware that for Payton, as again for all of us, there will be a second baptism.  She will provide the water for this one with her own tears.  It will happen many times, but one of these moments will mark the end of her innocence by the rude and unwelcome awareness that this life holds challenge as well as grace.  She will learn that pain, hurt, rejection, fear, anxiety, loss, and death are never far from us.

In time Payton will come to understand that the first baptism is more than enough to bear her through the second; that hope is greater than despair, healing more powerful than hurt, love overcomes all hate, faith conquers fear, and a light always shines in the darkness.  This is the world that rises from the Jordon’s baptismal water with Jesus.  It is the world we live in by faith: a world of grace and challenge.

These two realities were present in the life of our congregation over the past twelve months.  At last year’s annual meeting, the wardens and Vestry highlighted our challenge: the 2012 operating budget was underfunded by nearly $40,000.  We faced a financial crisis.  Still, signs of grace were all around us.  Nowhere was it more evident than in our growing membership, increased Sunday attendance, and lengthy prayer list for couples preparing for the birth of a child.

It is amazing how things can change.  Through your generosity and a confluence of circumstances that probably won’t happen again, St. Paul’s ended the year with a $10,000 surplus.  Grace, grace, grace!  However, the year’s most significant challenge emerged where we least expected… in our membership.  Good and faithful people have left St. Paul’s because of decisions made at the national and diocesan level.  Membership is down.  Attendance is down.  There is a striking rise in the number of people who, by virtue of the criteria we have been using for several years, are now considered inactive.

My sense is that each person who is committed to St. Paul’s became even more committed in 2012.  You did more, gave more, and attended more than ever before.  We have a strong base and a good nucleus on which to build.  We are down, but we are far from out.

I am grateful for the staff that serves us.  Al, Amy, Miko, Juel, and now Holly are remarkably talented people who use their gifts in service to God to further the mission of this place.  I am grateful to our Vestry, especially to Debbie Askew, Jim Gordon, and Marty Wilson whose service ends with today’s election.  All three have done much for the parish: Altar Guild, education, property & finance, the Food Pantry, pony rides and float-towing – these are skills that will be hard to replace.

I particularly want to thank Jim Gordon for his quiet, effective leadership as Junior Warden a year ago and Senior Warden this past year.  His commitment, dedication, and unfailing presence (along with Elizabeth) has been a sure sign of God’s grace in our midst.  I speak for the entire Vestry when I express my gratitude to Terry Mottley for accepting the position of Treasurer in mid-year.  He has put in an enormous amount of time and effort to get us caught up.  I am grateful for the accuracy and attention he brings to this ministry.

Now in my sixth year, I continue to enjoy serving as your rector.  My most rewarding moments over the past twelve months have come by being with you in times of grace and challenge.  I think of the Waller’s 60th wedding anniversary in August and watching Madison Mottley ring the church bell the afternoon she learned that her mother had died.  I rejoice in every one of the year’s seven baptisms.  I was moved to be a part of the service where fourteen people were confirmed or received.  At the candlelight, Christmas Eve Cantata I felt like I was in Levertov’s poem, floating and soaring in the midst of grace.

I know that I don’t know what 2013 has in store for the parish, only that there will be more than enough grace to meet our challenges.  None of us knows specifically what life holds for Payton Rowe, but we do know two things about it.  First, she will learn to float and soar in all-surrounding grace, even in the midst of life’s inevitable challenges.  And second, each one of us will do all in our power to support her in this wonderful life of faith, which (if you recall from last week) is a journey without maps.

A Journey without Maps

The 20th Century theologian Paul Tillich said that the life of faith is a journey without maps. This certainly squares with my experience. If you are signing on to follow Jesus so that your life will be predictable, you are going to be disappointed. In fact, little about life is predictable except its unpredictability. Sure, day in and day out we may face a steady diet of fastball pitches right over the plate; pitches that we can handle with ease. But experience tells us that a day will come when we get a curve ball or a slider or an off-speed pitch or a knuckleball or one that is hard, high, and tight aimed at the chin. We don’t know when it is coming, but we know that it will. All we can do is react in the moment to what is. This, I think, is what Tillich meant when he said that the life of faith is a journey without maps.


Perhaps he had the magi in mind when he made his observation. These stargazers certainly lived faith without a map. They were spiritual, open, scholarly, generous, adventurous, trusting. Following the path of a single, bright star in the western sky is a pretty vivid image of a mapless journey. In the course of making their way they encounter their mirror opposite in Herod. He is practical, exacting, controlling, fearful, ruthless, duplicitous, and totally invested in maintaining the status quo, which benefits him at the expense of others. For Herod, life is a not a journey without maps, but rather a self-serving plan that he controls.

How exotic that caravan must have appeared as the camel-carried-foreigners made their way into Jerusalem proper! The city must have been buzzing with news of its arrival and speculation regarding its mission. Stargazers have a way of unnerving rule-makers just as people who live life without maps have a way of unsettling those who think they can dictate every pitch’s speed and location over the plate. The mapless journey of the magi led them to a house. There they encounter a mother and child. They pay homage to the child and present him with gifts. Herod follows a map of his own making, the one that marks the way to the destiny he desires. His map directs him to destroy the child, and just to make sure he gets the job done, he orders the slaughter of every boy under the age of two in the region.

The faith-filled journey takes many different shapes and patterns, as you might expect. The star to light the way appears at different times and in a myriad of circumstances. For the last week or so I have been meditating on a poem by the Australian writer Judith Wright titled “Grace”. In it she describes how the star most often appears for her and I think to all of us:

Living is a dailiness, a simple bread
That’s worth eating. But I have known a wine,
A drunkenness that can’t be spoken or sung
Without betraying it. Far past Yours or Mine
Even past Ours, it has nothing at all to say;
It slants a sudden laser through a common day.

It seems to have nothing to do with things at all,
Requires another element or dimension.
Not contemplation brings it; it merely happens,
Past expectation and beyond intention;
Takes over the depth of flesh, the inward eye,
Is there, then vanishes. Does not live or die,
Because it occurs beyond the here and now,
Positives, negatives, what we hope and are.
Not even being in love, or making love,
Brings it. It plunges a sword from a dark star.

Maybe there was once a word for it. Call it grace.
I have seen it, once or twice, through a human face.

There are times when a faith-filled journey without maps presents a very ordinary opportunity in the midst what Wright calls “dailiness.” But this moment is anything from ordinary for it “slants a sudden laser through a common day.” We don’t conjure it through contemplation. In fact there is nothing about it we control. She says that this grace comes to us through a human face.

I think I know what she is describing. It is what happens when we lay aside our plans, our work, our chores, our tasks, our duties, even if only for a few moments, and give our attention to the unexpected encounter with another person. Grace is found not by crossing off everything on our to-do list, but by putting aside our daily map at the unexpected appearance of a star in the sky. It might be a co-worker who is carrying a burden, or child who wants to share a newly discovered wonder or friend who wants to relax for a minute or two. When that sudden laser comes slanting through a common day, roll up you map, tuck it away for a while, and let the moment take you where it will.

That is perhaps the best description of what happened here yesterday morning as we gathered to celebrate the life of Madison Mottley’s mother, Michele. The moment took us where it will, slanting a sudden laser through a common day. If you wonder what it means to live a life of faith as a journey without maps, you need look no further than ten-year-old Madison. Her courage, her joy, and her desire to draw us all in to a celebration of life are something those of us at the service will never forget. Think about it: we didn’t sing,

This little map of mine,
I’m going to let it lead the way.

No, we sang:

This little light of mine,
I’m going to let it shine.

And yesterday, no one’s light was shining brighter than Madison’s.

Judith Wright holds that moments like yesterday happen behind our expectation and beyond our control, and I think she is right about that. And yet, there is something important about beginning each day ready for the possibility that a star just might appear in the western sky. A few weeks back I shared with you a piece by Kenneth Phifer from his work A Book of Uncommon Prayers. Here is another, titled “Morning Again,” that highlights a need we all have to be open to the day:

How great you are, O God.
You can draw beauty out of barrenness,
courage out of fear,
and love out of loneliness.
You can make darkness as light
and silence as singing.
You can help me handle my troubles
or learn to live with them
when they cannot be handled.
You can make each day a miracle of grace
and fill each night with music.
You understand even my failures to respond to life
as our Lord Jesus did.
You keep pressing in upon me with your forgiveness
and offering new chances.
Give me the courage
to accept the chances that are mine this day.
Stir in me an eagerness for life
and a new openness to love.
Deepen my ability to appreciate ordinary gifts
and extraordinary evidences of grace.
Sweep me clean of the petty harassments
that so often set the tone for my daily living.

I have been using this prayer each morning for a while now. Each petition is so real, offered from what feels like a place of deep honesty. Nowhere in it is the suggestion, “And God, this is how I envision you addressing my request.” It is a prayer that says, “Take me where I am, as I am, and get me to a place of light and life using the path of your own choosing.” If this is your prayer than you are opening yourself to a journey without maps.

Sometimes this journey helps us to find faith-filled moments in the midst of ordinary dailiness. Other times it leads us on a dangerous yet dazzling quest for wholeness and new life. No matter where we are on this journey there is light and there is grace. We are always being led to that place where we can give homage to One in whom we live and move and have our being.

We People of the Incarnation

In his book, The Hour of the Unexpected, John Shea relates the story of Jesus’ birth as told by five-year-old Sharon; a little girl sure of her facts and moved by their meaning:

They were so poor they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat and they went a long way from home without getting lost. The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady.

They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass (hee-hee) but the Three Rich Men found them because a star lited the roof. Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them.

Then the baby was borned. And do you know who he was? The baby was God!

Shea writes that after Sharon said this, she jumped in the air, whirled round, dove into the sofa and buried her head under a cushion. That, he says, may be the most appropriate response to the Good News of the Incarnation.

On the first Sunday after Christmas we always read from the prologue of John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

“The Word became flesh.”

The spirituality of most traditions in the Christian faith tends to gravitate toward one of the major events in the bible. Lutherans, for example, have a spirituality rooted much more deeply in Good Friday and the Cross than we Episcopalians do, at least in my experience. Charismatics are people of the Spirit – Pentecost Day. There are traditions rooted in the giving of the law, the Ten Commandments, and there are those rooted in Paul’s conversion. Perhaps more than any other tradition, we Anglicans are rooted in the Incarnation. We are a people whose spiritually is forged by God’s decision to take on our human nature and to live in our world.

God becoming flesh is a sign of God’s love for all that God has made. It is an indication that our fragile, foible, human form is a capable container of all that is good and right and holy. It says that creation is precious to God. The Incarnation demonstrates that God is not aloof or unhappy, but desires to reside in this world and to reside with us.

Being rooted in the Incarnation has deeply affected Anglican thinking. We long ago rejected the Calvinist doctrine that humanity is totally depraved; so fallen and wicked that we do not even possess the ability to respond to God’s message of grace and love. We embrace the idea that human activity and human initiative is infused with goodness and potential because we are created in the image of God. Music, art, literature, dance, poetry, film, design, craftsmanship, gardening can be and often are human expressions of divine holiness. Human projects such as science, medicine, accounting, engineering, and agriculture pick up on the way God has ordered creation and, in so doing, advance the quality of human life. We believe that the Word became flesh not so much to give us one last warning, and not so much to extend to the fallen one final opportunity to grab an eternal life preserver, but to show us God’s true self and to show us how to live into the fullness of our humanity.

We proclaim that the Word became flesh. We do not proclaim that the Word became a holy book. We Anglicans have a high regard for Scripture and a distinctive way of approaching it. First and foremost, we emphasize reading it in the context of public worship. Doing so shifts our focus from discerning what doctrines it might teach to how it speaks to human needs and hopes. We don’t see the bible so much as being a detailed, divine blueprint for how the world should function, but rather (in the words of William Countryman) “as a promise, a gospel, even perhaps a letter from a dear friend.” It works on us more through kindness than through fear. And while we revere the bible, we are aware that it has a human element to it. (Again Countryman says) “It is the Word of God, but that does not necessarily mean that it is God’s words. Always the bible is second to the incarnate Word.” Why do we hold this? Well, to quote little Sharon, God became a baby. God did not become a book.

“The Word became flesh.” In a recent editorial, the award-winning, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd explored a question that must surely be on the mind of many: Why does God not prevent debilitating illness and horrific acts of violence? She looked to author and priest Father Kevin O’Neil for insight and understanding. In Dowd’s column, O’Neil recounts stories of being with others during a time of loss and he relates how others where with him when he was at a similar place of need. Listen to how he reflects on these experiences:

For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.

I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.

Father O’Neil may be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, but his incarnational thinking is one we Anglicans can celebrate. The Word became flesh in its purest, fullest form in the person of Jesus. We find that the Word still comes into this world, not so much, for us at least, by quoting the bible to people and attempting to explain to others how it contains all the answers to their questions, but when we allow God’s goodness and love and beauty and peace to abide in us and then are willing to let it fill the space we occupy with others. Surely you have sensed God being present through the efforts of another person. Perhaps you have recognized God being present to another through your own efforts. These are powerful experiences and as a priest I can only do what I do by being confident God will be incarnate through my work, poor though it may be.

We are people deeply rooted in the Incarnation. It shapes how we understand life, the world, humanity, the bible, and care for one another. These twelve days of Christmas are at the heart of who we are as a people of God. This hopeful, positive approach to the faith is something we Anglicans embody in a distinctive way through our spirituality. It is one way God uses us to bless to the world.