Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Genesis 28.10-17
1 Peter 2.1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21.12-16

From ancient times, human beings have set apart sacred space. In the Bible, such spaces are typically associated with great events – times of thanksgiving or deliverance or intense encounters with the divine. You have all read or heard these stories. These encounters between God and humanity occur in what seem to be ordinary places and they appear to be unique events. But the places where they occur frequently begin to attract people. They take on the character of holiness as of the result of those events. Locations that are sanctified by a unique experience of divine presence become identified as places where God is experienced at all times.
Our church building did not come about in that way. The holiness of our sacred space began with a building that suspends time and invites reverence. It grew from there through the lives that were touched by this place- the joys, sorrows, failures and accomplishments are reflected within its history and its fabric.
Today we begin a six-week celebration of some of those persons whose lives were touched by this building. It is called “The Saints of St. Mary’s.” We aren’t the first to use that expression or to identify these persons as saints. Their faith and their spiritual legacy to us merit the recognition and thanksgiving of every new generation of parishioners. Today as we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of this building, we take particular note of William Halsey Wood, the architect who designed it and the Rev’d. John Sword, the Rector at the time of its construction.
William Halsey Wood was a high church Episcopalian from the day he was born. He was a choir boy as a child and served his apprenticeship in the firm of a well-known architect of the High-Church movement in England. Wood embraced the principles of the Oxford movement as an ideal and translated them into designs to be realized in bricks and mortar. His career was sadly brief. He died at the age of 41. He was fortunate to have a combination of innate skill and excellent training that allowed him to advance to the mature phase of his career in his late 20s. Wood was described by Ralph Adams Cram, one of the great church architects of the last century, as someone who understood the meaning of gothic as well as the most accomplished 13th century stone mason. But he was enough of a modernist to design a building with a space between the inner and outer brick walls that gave St. Mary’s the distinction of being the coolest church in town during hot weather. Wood lived and worked in the midst of a theoretical and stylistic transition in architecture. He died before his part in that transition was fully realized. The church that he designed for us would live on through many great transitions.
In the spring of 1886, parishioners of St. Mary’s were only a few months past the shocking death of their rector, Fr. Jardine. In March of that year, the Vestry issued a call to The Rev’d. John Sword. A month later, they hired an architect to design this church and they broke ground for it four months after that. There had been some controversy over building the church on this spot which the parish had received as a bequest from Mary Troost. Some people thought it was too far out in the country. They wanted to build at 11th & Central. The history of the Episcopal Church in Kansas City might have been very different if they had. But Fr. Sword is said to have persuaded them that the city was going to grow in this direction.
The Vestry took the bold step of selling the land where the old church building stood and demolishing the building. You can see a picture of that building with Fr. Sword and Fr. Betts standing on the front porch hanging on the wall by the entrance to the nave. The congregation moved to this building and worshipped in what we now call the parish hall while the nave was being constructed. They expected to spend $75,000 on the building and they had enough money in hand to do it without incurring any debt. And then the tower began to lean. It appears that the tower was constructed close enough to an underground spring for the water to have undermined its foundation. No one knew the spring was there until it was too late. The Vestry discussed their possible options, one of which was to take the architect or the builder to court to get some money out of the deal. In the end they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Fr. Sword had left a law practice to enter the priesthood. One wonders if his past experience informed the judgment of the Vestry. They borrowed $12,000 rebuilt the tower and finished the building.
It opened in early June, 1888. Fr. Sword proved to be right – people did move into the neighborhood. He stayed another three years and then resigned to move back east, much to the disappointment of the Vestry. When the building opened, the windows were made of small panes of colored glass alternating with clear glass. You can still see one if you look up the little stairway going up to the balcony in the corner of the nave. The rood screen wasn’t yet installed, the organ was the little instrument in the chapel, there were no stations of the cross. People began to fill this space with the stories of their lives. They began with a few things from the old building at 8th & Walnut: the wooden cross suspended in the rafters, the window in the northwest balcony that you can see if you look closely at the picture of the old building; the desk at the main entrance made from materials salvaged after the old church was demolished.
The first couple to be married here celebrated their wedding in October 1889 with Fr. Sword officiating. They were William and Georgine Huddle Stephens. The St. Stephen window in the north balcony was a gift in memory of William. The window that the congregation brought with them from the old building was a memorial to a child who died at the age of three. Her parents made the move with St. Mary’s from 8th & Walnut to 13th & Holmes. The daughter’s window is the small round one in the northwest balcony. When her father died about 10 years after this building was constructed, his wife gave a window in his memory – the far right window on the west wall. When she died, a window was created in her memory and installed next to her daughter’s window. It’s hard to see that one from the nave, but there’s a picture of it in our tour guidebook. This family is the reason why the windows on the west wall are out of order. You see gethsemane, then the resurrection then the ascension. The risen Christ should be the next one in line, but it’s all the way at the other end. It was installed there so that the windows memorializing this husband and wife and their child would be as close together as possible.
This sacred space of ours ties us to other people and other times. It also links us with other places. William Halsey Wood designed more than forty churches in a 16-year time span. One of them was St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis. One of our windows commemorates a tragic and momentous event in the life of that city that is woven into the history of the Episcopal Church – the priests and nuns who lost their lives in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 who are known as the martyr’s of Memphis. Their image is prominent in that other church that our architect designed. An unlikely pairing between Kansas city and the Yukon territory is reflected in our sled dog window in the northwest balcony. Its subject – an English archdeacon named Hudson Stuck was a missionary there. A parishioner of St. Mary’s by the name of Hannah Ragan was a great supporter of church missionary activities and particularly interested in the exotic endeavors of Archdeacon Stuck. Miss Ragan was eventually homebound by chronic illness. Her friends created a window in thanksgiving for her and gave St. Mary’s one of the most curious works of art displayed in a Kansas City church.
The stories of William Halsey Wood and John Sword are only a few stories reflected in the fabric of this building. Those stories – the lives lived in relationship to this building – impart its sacredness. It has been entrusted to us. It is a heavy responsibility which does not always translate easily into late twentieth and twenty-first century values that involve calculations of cost and efficiency and economies of scale. This is an age when decommissioned Wal-Mart stores frequently become houses of worship. Whether they become sacred space, I don’t know.
Today we give thanks and bless the new doors that have been installed at the many entrances to our church. Some of them you have seen at the main entrance, the west end of the parish hall and the tower room. One of them you may not have paid attention to. It’s visible on the northeast corner of the building as you drive west on 13th Street. It is the exterior entrance to the sacristy. Interior remodeling has made it impractical to use this entrance any more, but as the doors were being renovated, we discovered the original 1888 door in that location under a newer outer batten. We removed the outer covering, restored and protected the door and it is there now. Fr. John Sword no doubt walked through it several days a week.
In dedicating these doors, we give thanks for those who have added a new chapter to the story of St. Mary’s church: The members of the Vestry and Building Work Group who guided the decision making, Susan Richards Johnson and Julie Arntson, the architects for the project, Richard Herndon, the engineer, Bryan Parris the builder who fabricated the doors and the Kemper family whose generous gift supported the work.
Faith, commitment, determination and love built this building and filled its space with life stories. Its future is in our hands now. The community outside our parish will help, but we have to show them that we are committed to the keeping alive the story of this building and the lives it has touched in three different centuries and across time and place in this – our sacred space.

Pentecost 16

Wisdom of Solomon 1.16-2.1, 12-22
James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a
Mark 9.30-37
A recent news item reported that two teen-age Australian girls were spending some free time together and decided it would be fun to explore a storm drain in an area fairly close to where they lived. They jumped down into it, looked around for a while and then tried to climb out. They couldn’t do it. Fortunately, both had mobile phones and they were well within signal range. But instead of calling for help from family members or police, each girl updated her status on her Facebook page, indicating that she was trapped in a storm drain and noting its location. Then they settled in to wait for their rescuers. A friend of both girls noticed their identical status and thought it was a joke. Hours later, when the friend had visited Facebook several times, he noted that neither girl’s status had changed and began to wonder if there might be more to it. It had apparently not occurred to their parents that anything was wrong. The friend called for help and the two girls were rescued no worse for wear.
Another recent news item reported a public meeting organized by the office of a congressional representative to allow him to communicate with his constituents about health care reform. One of them arrived carrying a sign that read “keep the government out of my Medicare.”
The prison system in California is running at 190% of capacity. The overcrowding has led to escalating levels of violence. A recent news report described a proposed rehabilitation program. Inmates who were willing to go through it could have their sentences shortened by a few weeks or months, thus reducing the prison population. These are people who had committed serious crimes and served long sentences. The reduction of time was reportedly a small fraction of what they had already served. The program requires approval by the state legislature and attorney general, which it is reportedly unlikely to receive. The reason has little to do with the quality of the program, its anticipated effectiveness or the likelihood of a favorable outcome. It is because several persons whose approval is critical to the program’s implementation are fearful that if an inmate who obtains early release commits a violent crime, the resulting publicity will threaten their ability to get re-elected.
Our lessons today speak of wisdom, the good life, and good works. They focus on justice and the courage to seek and obtain it even when that requires sacrifice. The wisdom books in the Old Testament fall into a category of Jewish scripture known as the writings. Included among them are books that actually have the word “Wisdom” in their titles in English language Christian Bibles, along with the books of Proverbs and Job. Among the distinguishing characteristics of the writings are their tendency to come from sources that are more urban than nomadic, more associated with the political than the agrarian, and less influenced by Israel’s sense of being “set apart” from foreign cultures than we see in the books of the law and the prophets. The wisdom literature is more cosmopolitan. Its origins are not in the tribe or village, but in the king’s court, where trade and diplomacy necessitate the exchange of ideas with outsiders.
Those real-life examples of apparently willful cluelessness and deliberate inaction in the face of crisis that I mentioned earlier are 180o opposite from the kind of wisdom and courage that are spoken of in today’s lessons. And yet they are much more like the kind of behavior we typically witness in everyday life than the noble sacrifice and wise understanding that are spoken of in the texts from James and the Wisdom of Solomon.
The absence from our culture of the kind of wisdom, civility, inclination to sacrifice and sense of community that these lessons address is frequently noted, but remains largely unaddressed. We tend to note the injustices we and others like us suffer from the bad behavior of others, but we are less inclined to explore areas in which we might lack wisdom or the will to take action because the cost is too high. You might imagine that churches would lend a hand to the effort. But in practice, they have frequently been part of the problem rather than contributing to the solution. Or the effectiveness of their efforts has been limited by internal squabbling over the best course of action.
We make frequent reference to Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. But that sacrifice was not intended merely as a gift – it was a lesson about how we are to live our lives. Jesus’ example for us was of a wisdom that seeks truth even when it is complex or obscured by circumstance or deliberate misinformation. As his followers, we are called to do things like identifying injustice or the misuse of creation, call them what they are, and take action to change them. We’re called to put in the effort of being knowledgeable – of understanding what’s going on in the world aroud us. We are called to communicate our ideas respectfully and to acknowledge the heartfelt, thoughtful opinions of others, but also to challenge inaccuracies, particularly those that result from laziness in gathering information. We are called to seek resolutions to serious problems with determination and humility, working with those who share our opinions as well as those with whom we disagree. Following Jesus’ example, we do all these things with courage and the knowledge that it may cost us something.
We seek to live patiently, thoughtfully and prayerfully in a world that has grown accustomed to instant analysis and gratification, no matter how useless or unsatisfying they might be. We are called to work hard at forming relationships and solving problems in a world that seems willing to make do with sound bites and superficial connections. We are called to serve justice and peace, sometimes at the expense of our own comfort or well being.
The problems we face – economic, environmental and social will not be solved by waiting until someone – human or divine comes to rescue us. They will not be solved by ignoring desperate human need and hoping it will somehow go away. They will certainly not be solved by circulating distorted facts, provoking useless conflict or attempting to intimidate and destabilize those who offer their gifts for leadership.
In a recent Vestry meeting it was noted that in difficult times, Christians step in and take on the challenges that seem insurmountable. We do the things that others are afraid to do. It is the task of the righteous one who follows the path of wisdom, patience and peace. The cost of doing so is described in today’s lesson from the Wisdom of Solomon. It is to be threatened, ridiculed, and opposed by those who are envious or who seek to distort the truth for their own gain. The cost can be high and the reward is often fleeting and frequently realized in the long term, but it is how we draw near to God and God draws near to us.

Pentecost 8

2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

How much is enough? Living in a culture in which people have had to recalibrate their expectations rather dramatically in the last year, we hear a lot about how and where there isn’t enough: the budget wrangling in California, arguing in congress over what to do about health care and how much that’s going to cost, coping with a spouse’s layoff. We hear a lot about where and when and how there is not enough, but what really is enough?
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus asks Philip – “where are we going to buy bread for all these people.” Philip answers a completely different question. Jesus asks about method. Philip’s reply is about feasibility – he tells Jesus there’s no way because the resources aren’t available; six months wages wouldn’t buy enough food for this crowd. Andrew finds a kid with a few loaves of bread and some fish. Jesus gathers the people together, gives thanks and everyone has enough to eat.
What is the real solution to our feeling of emptiness? It’s no surprise that many religious traditions express their most profound realities with ritual consumption of and abstention from food. Being hungry is the simplest and most obvious reminder that human beings have empty spaces within that need to be filled. Our fasts and our ritual meals heighten our awareness of that inevitable sense of space that cries out to be filled. We 21st century westerners have been encouraged to fill that space with the desire for and consumption of things – cars, houses, phones, fast food. Most of us here at least had a feeling that unfettered consumption really wasn’t going to be the answer. So what would it mean to have enough – regardless of how difficult things get, regardless of the extent of our personal losses, regardless of whether the communities from which we gather our meaning and identity disintegrate, is there something that could still fill the empty places within us?
The text from Ephesians gets at that. The letter to the Ephesians speaks to a maturing, self-aware faith community than Paul’s letters of a decade or two after Jesus’ death. The church in Ephesus has seemingly moved beyond the urgent preparation for Christ’s return that consumed the earliest churches. When it didn’t happen immediately, they began to look elsewhere for meaning and purpose. Today’s epistle text invites the hearer to look within – to be strengthened in his inner being with power through the indwelling spirit of Christ which is realized through faith and rooted and grounded in love.
What would it mean to be filled with the fullness of God. How would we do that. Is there a way for us to carry God in those empty spaces inside us. Can doing that create in us a sense that whatever else we have or don’t have, that fullness of God is enough?
I admit, I struggle with achieving that sense. When I realize the needs of this parish, the uncertainty of our ability to go on given the resources available to us, the demands of this building and the work we have undertaken it feels like I am faced with a bottomless well of empty space. I am like Philip saying to Jesus – who cares where we would buy bread for all these people if we don’t have the money to do it.
But when I take a moment to consider what God has accomplished in this parish, not just in the time I’ve been here or even in the time Dick and Betty Herndon have been here, but over 150 years, I begin to understand what faith, rooted and grounded in love can accomplish. In the last two years, we, as a community have experienced substantial growth. We’ve made a start on another major effort to preserve this building as a reminder in space and time of the richness of God’s glory. St. Mary’s has never been a wealthy parish and has only on relatively rare and fleeting occasions been financially comfortable. But somehow those who were here before us found a way to carry on.
Their legacy to us is the challenge to find that sense of being filled with the fullness of God, as one of those families in heaven and on earth that bows before and takes its name from the Father whose power, working within us is able to accomplish far more than all that we could ask or imagine.

Pentecost 6

2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1.3-14
Mark 6.14-29

We have an odd collection of lessons today. The OT and gospel lessons are both about resentful women. Saul’s daughter despises David who arguably outshone her father as king. Herod’s wife resents John the Baptist for criticizing her marriage. In between them is this gentle and urgent message from Ephesians about how much God loves us. If I as preacher, were a contestant on iron chef, these lessons would be analogous to me being presented with a trout, a dozen lemons and a bag of ice as the ingredients for a meal.
May I suggest that the OT and gospel lessons could be about the inevitable consequences of claiming divine inspiration or divine mandate? No matter how many people support or agree with your claims, you are guaranteed to scare some people with them and arouse the disagreement of others, if not in your own time, at some point in the future. All of these folks will try to prove you wrong and sometimes they will be right. David in today’s Old Testament lesson gets off fairly easy. He becomes a legendary leader with some notable moral imperfections. John the Baptist does not fare so well. John is a prophet – an astute moral critic of his place and time who claims a divine mandate to take his critique out into the world and try to change it. Herod is certainly one of the targets of his criticism. Strangely enough, he likes to listen to John. Who knows what emotional or intellectual kinship could exist between the two of them – maybe the mutual understanding of two guys with unpleasant jobs they can’t get out of doing?
Herod is duped into ordering John’s execution when John’s moral critique touches on Herod’s marriage and his wife takes offense. Messengers get killed all the time. The ones whose honesty and courage suggest divine inspiration drives their work seem to get killed particularly often.
The information we have about Saul and David from the Bible makes claims on their behalf for divine inspiration or mandate. Did their actions do justice to that claim? There are probably some who would argue that David’s legacy is comparable to that of Jesus or Mohammed. And there are Christians who would be very angry that I would even say that out loud.
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting in Anaheim right now is arguing over what it means to do God’s will. The big fight right now is how we’re going to treat gay and lesbian members of the church – will they will be accorded the same access to all of the sacraments as other baptized persons or does their manner of life present sufficient challenge to some members of the church as to warrant their exclusion from marriage and ordination? Persons on both sides of that argument have made claims that their position is supported by the teachings of the gospel. And persons on both sides believe their opinions and actions are inspired by God. What are the consequences of making such a claim?
Some of you know that one of the initiatives funded by the grant we received a few months ago from the Kemper Foundation was to create a tour guidebook for St. Mary’s. That book is close to being handed over to the printer and it came to mind when I was considering this question. The book contains color photos of all of our windows along with descriptions of their content and some information about the people who gave them and in whose honor they were given. One of our most eye-catching windows is the last rectangular one in the north balcony – which most people seem to call the “sled dog” window. Everyone wants to know who that guy is – and why a midwestern church has a window with a dog musher on it. The man in the picture is an English Archdeacon named Hudson Stuck. He was a missionary in Alaska and the Yukon between about 1895 and 1920. He had no connection with St. Mary’s except that the parishioner in whose honor the window was given was a supporter of the church’s overseas missionary work and was particularly interested in his. Archdeacon Stuck traveled around what is now the state of Alaska and the Yukon territory of Canada. You can imagine him providing food and clothing and health care along with spiritual care for the small, far flung and diverse population across a large area of land. No doubt in his day and time he would have been considered divinely inspired and doing the Lord’s work. I don’t know a lot of the details of his day to day activity or the inner workings of his mind. But given where and when he undertook his mission, you would have to allow for the possibility that he was also engaged in what we now call the sin of racism against the aboriginal peoples he was called to convert to Christianity. I don’t imagine we will ever know for certain whether that is true, but even if we discovered that it was, we’re not going to smash that window. It’s part of the story of who we are as a parish and as a larger church.
Two windows to the right of the sled dog window you see a scene in which people are gathered around a sick person’s bed. The subject of the window is a group of people known as the Martyrs of Memphis. When an epidemic of yellow fever struck the city in 1878, more than half of the city’s population fled, including many medical personnel and clergy. Those who remained behind were too old, too poor or already too sick to travel. A group of nuns and priests, who had the option to leave, remained in the city to care for the sick. When the epidemic ended, only 800 of the 21,000 persons who had remained during the epidemic were still alive. The dead included all but one of the group who are memorialized in our window. In their place and time they claimed a divine mandate and made a very clear moral statement about the availability of health care to all who need it. Our General Convention is dealing with a resolution that we hope will make health insurance more affordable to parishes that provide it to their clergy. This discussion takes place against the backdrop of our national debate over health care - if and how we will assure its availability to all who need it.
The last rectangular window before the tower in the north balcony and the last one on the right in the south balcony tell us about the unintended consequences of political and governmental claims of divine mandate. The window on the north side shows Archbishop William Laud emerging from his cell in the Tower of London on the way to his execution. He was a high churchman who supported an unpopular king who was also a high churchman. When England’s pendulum swung in an evangelical direction, the adherents of that position not only gained control of the church, but of the government as well. When those whose past claims of divine mandate fall out of favor or out of power, those who come after them have to gain control of the present and they have to figure out how to change God’s mind in the past tense. Frequently, like Herod’s wife, they simply mow down whatever reminders exist of God’s supposed prior opinion. William Laud and his king were casualties of such action.
On the south side, is a window representing Samuel Seabury, first bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States. Many of you know his story. At the end of the revolutionary war, Anglicans in the United States were in trouble. There was no model for our church except that which existed in England and its colonies. There were no bishops in our new nation. Bishops in England were unwilling to ordain them and, in any case, American bishop could not swear the required oath to the British crown. Among the founding principles of the new country was one which outlawed such ties between religion and government. The church had to set aside its past beliefs and claims that religion and government ought to go hand in hand if it hoped to survive. The priest Samuel Seabury, was put on a boat to Scotland where three bishops agreed to ordain him. He made it there and back safely and the new church once again had the leadership it needed to maintain its identity. And only a few years later, Seabury was arguing with his brother bishops – whose ordinations he had brought about – over the location for the General Convention and which of them would be the presider at its meetings. Some things never change.
I don’t pretend to have any answers about the truth or wisdom of claims for divine mandate. It seems we only know whether those claims are true in hindsight – long after the claimants are dead and gone and it is left to others to deal with the consequences of their actions. Given that knowledge, it seems wise at least to be cautious about making such claims and instead focus on the blessings offered to us and the sacrifices made on our behalf that the Epistle lesson reminds us of – in particular, that Christ’s plan for us is brought about and known in the fullness of time. If that is true, then what we or anyone else does in our time and place ought to be considered with thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit and but also with the understanding that it is our best judgment based on the information we have at hand. As the text from Ephesians reminds us, we are to be a people of forgiveness, grace and generosity; we are a people of promise, rather than perfection. With those gifts in mind, we gather as community to find out way in our own place and time.

Pentecost 5

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Psalm 48
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

What does it mean for power to be made perfect in weakess? We usually understand the term ‘perfect’ to mean flawless. More likely in the text from 2 Corinthians, perfect is meant to mean completed or finished. So, how then is power made complete in weakess?
Jesus and Paul lived in a society in which the economy and social order were organized in networks of clients and patrons. Relationships between individuals involved the exchange of resources, power and influence for loyalty. The one with more to offer made a share available to the one who had less in exchange for the lesser’s loyalty and service. The feudal system of land ownership and tenancy is a similar one. Within such a system, society is one long, complicated pecking order. Public religious rituals, such as the sacrifices in pagan temples that Paul notes in his letters, were symbolic expressions of the network of relationships through which society was organized. The important thing in such a society is having some characteristic or resource that makes you valuable to someone who has what you need. If you have nothing to trade on, you can’t work your way into the network.
It’s no accident that Jesus sends the twelve out to preach and heal without extra food or clothing or a plan for where they will stay at night. It forces them to interact with the people they encounter. It also offers those people a different idea about how the world might be organized. The new model is one in which people are valued for themselves – not for their usefulness to someone more powerful. The weakness of the twelve – their lack of food, extra clothing or a plan for lodgings - challenges the assumptions of those they encounter about what people are supposed to mean to each other. The resource that the twelve offer isn’t anything material, nor is it power or influence. It is a new way of thinking about who and how people are as individual beings and in relation to each other. What they offer is the conviction that they and every other person are valuable for no other reason than being loved by God. In the prevailing culture and economy, that knowledge shouldn’t count for much, but in reality, it gives these seemingly powerless disciples the power to change the way the world works. Their power is made complete by their weakness.
Today’s gospel lesson is a reminder that ultimately the good news is transmitted by personal encounters that embody its message. We all have a part in this. Frequently it has little to do with explaining the traditions of the church or quoting the Bible. It has to do with encountering others with the attitude that all of us are valuable because we are loved by God by virtue of our humanity. When we really believe that to be true, it changes the way we know ourselves and the way we encounter others – regardless of who we are, what we have or how well we do what we do; and, regardless of whatever else we have to offer them or they us. Those encounters have the ability to change the way other people feel about themselves and their subsequent encounters change others. That’s how Jesus brought the good news to the world and it really hasn’t changed that much.
For some time now we’ve lived with an undercurrent of fear and anxiety. People are afraid they’re not going to have enough of what they need – a way to earn money, food, a place to live, the things they need to care for their families. All of those things are important and right now many of us are feeling powerless to control the circumstances that control our continued access to them. This is an opportunity to reconsider our priorities and the way we understand ourselves. Are we and others valuable because of our participation in an economy of winners and losers or are we valuable because God created us and loves us. It is a time for us to remember Paul’s words: I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, I am strong.

Pentecost 4

2 Samuel1
2 Corinthians 8.7-15
Mark 5.21-43

Our religious practices and our habits of mind direct us toward separating out things that are holy from things that aren’t. The Old Testament stories about the ark of the covenant detail the elaborate measures for safeguarding the tablets on which the law is written. Early on, when Israel is still a nomadic culture they are consigned to a container called the ark which is transported with great ceremony from one place to another. The tent in which the ark rests between its travels may only be entered by certain people. Later on when the temple is constructed, the measures for setting apart the tablets from the everyday world become even more elaborate. Fewer and fewer people are allowed to get anywhere near them.
Church architecture adopted that attitude of setting apart the holy from the everyday. The medieval Europeans gave us things like the rood screen and the chancel gate. Their churches, like ours, were used for many purposes other than worship. Sharing of the space was non-negotiable. Frequently the church was the only building in town that would accommodate a large gathering of people. But there was a sense that the religious identity of the building had somehow to be cordoned off and left untouched by all of the other more ordinary activities that happened there. So the parts of the building that were deemed holiest, the altar and its surrounding space, were separated off by barriers. We still have the gate, but we keep it open. We very intentionally offer the building for gatherings other than worship, but when we have visitors, we invite them to approach the altar, hear its story and learn its history. Almost invariably, they are hesitant even to ask, until they are invited.
There are good reasons for recognizing the distinction of that which is holy from that which is ordinary. There are other good reasons for blurring that distinction. One of the things that happens when we put a lot of energy into making that distinction, is that we come to think of holiness as something that is fragile and in need of protection. It is a next logical step from the practice of distinguishing between holy and ordinary. Works of art that are on public display have protective barriers around them, not unlike the ones that are built into churches. Centuries-old sculptures, paintings and documents are vulnerable to the effects of light, temperature and pollutants that cause their fabric to deteriorate. They won’t survive a lot of handling or exposure to the elements. We frequently represent holiness with materials that are fragile or very valuable: precious metals, fine fabrics, elaborate but fragile ornamentation. We remind ourselves that holiness is something extraordinary with these extraordinary surroundings. But we also put ourselves in the habit of assuming that holiness is as fragile as those things with which we surround and represent it.
Today’s gospel lesson is a reminder that holiness is in no way fragile. It is enduring and plentiful. It merits our respect, but does not require our efforts to defend its survival or its integrity. The text comes from Mark’s gospel in which Jesus is portrayed as an itinerant holy man, a preacher and wonder worker – a type of individual that was not at all unfamiliar to Mark’s contemporaries. In one part of the story, a woman who had been ill for years is healed by touching Jesus’ clothing. In another, a girl who appears already to have died from her illness is made well at Jesus’ command. In all three of the synoptic gospels, holiness as it is manifest in Jesus is out there in the real world – unprotected, unreserved, fearless of being used up or somehow made less holy by its exposure to real life. Jesus’ holiness does not require defense, it does not require any special handling in order to be kept pure. It survives all manner of accusation and ill treatment, even the worst death imaginable.
In Mark’s gospel Jesus’ holiness imparts wholeness and integrity to those who encounter it. They are able to live what they believe, regardless of the challenges and struggles they face. In today’s gospel lesson, the encounter with Jesus’ holiness happily ends one woman’s struggle to regain health and restores wellness of body and mind to another whose life is despaired of by her loved ones.
We as a nation are struggling now with issues pertaining to our health. The costs and sacrifices involved in getting well and staying well have reached a crisis point. It seems that it costs too much for us to be healthy. Those costs lie in the sacrifice of profits by businesses that create and sell foods and beverages and other products that contribute to various conditions of illness, as well as the effort and disappointment required for us as individually to modify our unhealthy habits in healthier directions. Those costs lie in the decision to reduce the profit generating potential of a health insurance system that costs a fortune but still excludes some from coverage and leaves others in a state of financial ruin after an illness. The cost may be a shift in our attitudes about what personal responsibility means – away from the idea that health care is a consumer-driven choice, available only to those who have the means to participate in our consumer culture to a decision that it should and will be something that all of us have when we need it. Paul speaks of a balance between want and excess in today’s lesson from 2 Corinthians. Changing our culture to reflect that attitude that health ought not be unaffordable for anyone will not be as simple as the woman being healed by touching Jesus’ clothing. But as a nation, we have chosen to do things that are equally challenging and eventually succeeded.
As a church and as a culture we are struggling also with the defense of another kind of holiness. Today we observe the 40th anniversary of an event that is understood as the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States – the encounters between police, patrons and bystanders at the Stonewall Inn in New York in June 1969. In their time, those events were hardly covered at all by the media and are certainly not as well known as many of the other watershed moments in our nation’s quest to achieve and safeguard the basic human rights of all persons. As a nation, and as a church, we have set apart marriage as a state of holiness to be defended, both legally and liturgically. It is argued that if two men or two women are permitted to marry each other, both in the eyes of the law and with the blessing of the church, somehow the goodness and integrity the marriage as an institution will be impaired. A glance at the news in any given week reveals yet another adulterous adventure by a public figure, many of whom have, at one time or another, aggressively defended the sanctity of marriage against any modification. If Elliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford haven’t impaired the sanctity of marriage, Adam and Steve aren’t going to hurt it. The lifelong covenant of two spouses in heart, body and mind for their mutual joy and their support in prosperity and adversity is one expression of God’s understanding in the creation story that human beings are not meant to live alone. Friendship and community are equally important expressions of that reality, but the holiness of any of these forms of human companionship is not lessened by their being shared generously and unreservedly to those who are called to participate in them.
Our habit as human beings is to set apart those things we consider to be valuable and determine criteria for who gets to have them and who doesn’t. We seem always to need to choose some category of persons who don’t qualify for whatever it is we hold dear. We characterize our actions as defending the importance, perhaps even the sacredness of whatever we have set apart. Today’s gospel lesson reminds us that holiness does not need to be defended or rationed. It is a boundless gift from the God who was and is and will be forever.

Pentecost 3

1 Samuel 17.1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49
Psalm 9.9-20
2 Corinthians 6.1-13
Mark 4.35-41

Today’s lessons made me think about the final episodes of a couple of television series I’ve seen in the last year or two. One was the Sopranos and the other was the new Battlestar Galactica. Most of you know something about the former. For those of you who don’t know about Battlestar Galactica, it’s a tv show that explores, among other things, the question: what if the end of the world ended up being not all that different from everyday life.
We know from all of the commentary that followed upon it that the final episode of the Sopranos had a lot of people looking at the televisions asking “is that it?” The ending pointed two a couple of possibilities, but didn’t tell you which of them actually came about. And one of those possibilities was that life went on for the Soprano family (both immediate and extended) not terribly differently than it had before – dealing with emerging crises, finding new ways to generate income and getting together for dinner on Sunday afternoon. Violence and sorrow struck the family in shocking ways, but you could argue that such things were fairly commonplace for them. There was no great moral reckoning on screen.
The same was true of the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. Crisis was once again upon the crew of the ship and its leaders had to make an agonizing life and death decision, but they had been doing that on a weekly basis, if not more frequently, for several years by the end of the series. When Nelson and I came to the end of the final episode, I turned to him and said “is that it?”
We like a hollywood ending. We’re probably accustomed by now to it being something other than “they all lived happily ever after” but we like some closure at the end of a story. But the truth is, in real life, closure is elusive and the hunt for it is frequently futile if not tragic.
The story of David and Goliath does have that Hollywood ending. God vindicates the underdog Israelites. The boy David defeats goliath in an unconventional way, against all the odds and then goes on to become the greatest of all their kings. There are stories like that in the New Testament also – Jesus is preaching outside a town, the crowd becomes hungry and nobody has any food, but they are fed from a few loaves of bread and a few fish.
But much of the time, the Bible is a lot like real life. Look at today’s epistle and gospel lessons. The Corinthians are still squabbling, despite Paul’s best efforts, so he tries again – tells them how much trouble he has and is willing to endure to persuade them to live in peaceful community. He pleads with them to open their hearts.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus’ disciples are flying off the handle again. Their boat is caught in a storm and this crew of professional fishermen wake up the building tradesman turned itinerant preacher to ask him what they should do. He calms things down, literally, and urges them to put aside their fears and live in faith.
It would be possible to say that the overarching theme of these stories is that God is on our side. The description of David’s triumph over Goliath certainly seems to have been interpreted in that way, and Paul all but says as much to the Corinthians. I am reluctant to claim God’s partisanship for a whole variety of reasons. There are plenty of Christians who disagree with that position and plenty of them are far more famous and brilliant than I am. They may turn out to be right and you may agree with them. What I do believe is that God is love and our best expression of that love is life lived in relationship to others with a commitment to share the divine love that we have experienced.
The David and Goliath story does have that final sense of moral vindication – the segment from 2nd Corinthians leaves us hanging. And, even if the storm does subside, giving Jesus’ disciples a relative sense of security, they are all still out there on the water at night headed for their next challenge, moving, inexorably toward his death and the time when they will be on their own to continue his work.
In our lives, moral vindication is incremental. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward the realization of our ideals, but it’s good reason to be cautious about believing that some kind of ultimate moral vindication is an all or nothing proposition – a war to be won at any cost. George Tiller’s death did not end the occurrence of genetic abnormalities or horrific instances of abuse that motivate women and girls to consider whether or not it is best to terminate a pregnancy. The fracture of the Anglican Communion hasn’t put an end to the circumstances that motivated it. Life will go on, people will have differing opinions, sometimes they will behave badly, terrible things will happen, some of them completely beyond our control.
The lessons of the gospel teach us how to live with each other during those times in between those fleeting but satisfying moments of moral vindication and relative security. We are encouraged to speak the truth in love, with perseverance and courage. We are taught to respond to human need, to be honest about our limitations but to be generous in the face of them. We are encouraged to open our hearts, even when doing so poses a challenge to our principles. Our options will rarely offer us a clear-cut, morally perfect solution. In this life we will always face risk and struggle, compromise and the tendency to error with all of its consequences.
But we can still create communities that are characterized by faith and courage; we can still offer open our hearts to those who would enter into our community of believers; we can still step into that boat and go out on to the water at night, braving the storm and moving toward the next challenge. Once in a while, David will defeat Goliath; once in a while a great leader will bring about a change that makes us believe that we will never again have anything to fear. In the times between those moments of great inspiration, we continue to learn how to live faithfully and well.