Third Sunday of Easter
John 21.1-19
This week a couple of parishioners have circulated online articles that I was on the list to receive. One of them had to do with what Christianity could mean or could offer with regard to the economy. Another had to do with what Christian identity could mean to a person trying to live life day to day in the world as it is now. Although they were very different articles, they had something in common and the content of both is reflected in today’s gospel lesson.
The story is told as a post-resurrection appearance in John’s gospel, but it has a remarkable similarity to a story in chapter 5 of Luke which takes place during Jesus’ ministry. It is odd in the context of John’s gospel because in Chapter 20 – one chapter before today’s lesson, Jesus has just revealed himself to the skeptical Thomas and the other disciples as the risen Lord. We heard that story last Sunday. In it, Thomas is awe-struck and falls to his knees proclaiming Jesus as his Lord and God. Then in the story we hear this week from Chapter 21, the disciples, including Thomas, once again initially fail to recognize Jesus. As with much of biblical literature, the coherence of the narrative and the inner life of the characters are not the first priority of the author – the story is about something else. At the end of it, Jesus casts Peter in the role of leadership. He is to be the one who feeds and walks alongside them providing sustenance, community and guidance. As with last week’s gospel lesson, this is a story about what and how the church is to be.
We are what the church has become. We look back a century or even a half century ago and see the church functioning as an institution, interacting with other institutions. The church was a presence in civic life. It was a norm in personal and family life. Throughout my school years the number of my peers whose families did not at least claim affiliation with a particular church was very small. The number whose families did not attend regularly was not much greater. Now it’s very much the opposite. And the church is more frequently ignored or actively excluded from civic life out of fear of appearing to favor one variety of religious belief over another or concern that religious partisans will attempt to impose their particular beliefs on others in the form of law. The dark side of the church’s institutional weight has been exposed more recently – the effort to hide the abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church or the willingness of some in the Anglican Communion to exclude its gay and lesbian members from full participation in the sacraments in order to placate those who would fragment it out of anger over their full inclusion in the community of the baptized.
As the church we do not have the civic and institutional heft we once did. Plenty of people claim to “be spiritual,” but the mention of Christianity frequently produces a roll of the eyes or a response made in a resigned tone of voice, as if we have little or nothing to offer to someone seeking life in the spirit and in community.
But the articles I mentioned earlier both suggest that that assumption is inaccurate. The church does have something very important to contribute to the common life of the community outside these walls. What we have to offer is particularly important in a time in which the expectations of future generations for a standard of living that exceeds that of their parents may never be satisfied. It is particularly important in a world where work is no longer about creating something useful or valuable but has become something more like putting your hand in the next person’s pocket and taking what you find. It is particularly important in a world in which ideas, behavior, politics and economy are increasingly driven by the furtherance of individual interest and satisfaction of individual desire rather than what builds and preserves the rhythm and fabric of a community’s common life and connects humanity with the natural world.
I think you can find all of these ideas in today’s gospel lesson. The disciples encounter Jesus in the early morning on the beach. They’ve worked all night at fishing and have nothing to show for it. He suggests that they try one more time, and their labor is productive. They have a connection with what they do. The interaction of their labor with the natural world is obvious. They sell their fish to the people who will consume it. And they eat what they catch. They’re not selling financial instruments that reward the seller with mind-bending amounts of money in the short term, arouse in the buyer the same hope of mind-bending profits when he flips them and then cause entire national economies to collapse when those two have their money safely deposited offshore. As the church, we live life by what has been characterized as a noble rhythm: the change of seasons and in the church year that is built around the story of Jesus’ life and the traditions that his followers have gathered over time. Those traditions challenge us to find our place in a story that is not entirely of our own making. It links us across space and time to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. We also fit ourselves into the ethical constraints that story asks of us and apply them to our daily living.
In today’s gospel story Jesus invites the disciples to come together to cook and share a meal. It is one of the most basic forms of human community. We enact it in ritual form every Sunday and in real life after we conclude our worship. Calling coffee hour the 8th sacrament is more than just a joke. It points to our human inclination to eat in the enjoyable and enlightening company of others. But in families and households in our culture, the preparation and sharing of meals has become enough of a rarity that experts like family therapists and nutritionists have to tell us how important it is. As a culture our consumption and acquisition of food and of everything else, for that matter, has lost its rhythm and purpose. Consumption has come to be about satisfying our momentary desires and our demand to have more for the purpose of having more. The ideals and aspirations of our culture have come to be about gathering the resources to support this satisfaction of endless desire. That transforms the meaning of work from effort that produces something useful and valuable into whatever produces the most gain for the worker. By this standard, if you’re not earning a fortune by any means necessary, you have some explaining to do. When the system that had evolved for doing that took a hit in the fall of 2008, and the realization dawned that it was all a game that we had been drawn into, the prevailing emotion was fear – fear of not having enough. What the church can do is help people recalibrate what enough means. Every Sunday we gather together for the Eucharist – the giving of thanks and the sharing of a meal. We express ritually the belief that in Christ there can be enough for all. We offer that expression in a community that acknowledges shared limits on the way we live out our own desires and our responsibility to provide for the needs of others. By changing our own attitudes about what is enough – for others and for ourselves, we offer the world the means to exchange the resentment over a declining standard of living to a thoughtful and appreciative consideration of what we really need to live life well: to care for the earth and its creatures, to do our work with honor, commitment and a sense of productivity, and to create a world in which justice and peace guide our decisions and actions.

Last Sunday After Epiphany

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
Luke’s account of the Transfiguration has its roots in Mark’s version of that story. Jesus’ encounter with God in the company of the great Israelite prophets has an even earlier example which is included in the Gospel of Peter. That book is one of the non-canonical gospels, of which there are several. These books represent diverse records of Christian tradition for about the first three centuries after Jesus’ life and ministry, but they were not ultimately selected to be included in the Bible. In that older version, the resurrected Jesus is accompanied by two men who seem to be Moses and Elijah as he exits his opened tomb.
When you try to classify the Transfiguration story, it is difficult to do. It has some things in common with the stories of Jesus’ baptism – like the heavenly voice proclaiming Jesus’ authority. But like that older strand of tradition from the Gospel of Peter, the story of the Transfiguration could also originally have been the story of a post-resurrection appearance that was modified and put in a different place. And, it could have been an authentic religious experience of Jesus which happened to be witnessed by two of his closest followers, who eventually told others about it.
We hear this story on the actual Feast of the Transfiguration – August 6 or the Sunday closest to it. But we also hear it on the last Sunday after Epiphany. You could think of this day as having similarities to the Feast of Christ the King – the last Sunday before Advent begins. Both of them look back toward the season that is ending and forward toward the season that is to come. The Transfiguration is a particularly dramatic story of God’s manifestation in the world in the person of Jesus, which is what Epiphany is about. For the early church with roots in Jewish tradition, it is an ultimate expression of his authority, placing him in the presence of Moses and Elijah as their peer and even their successor. Jesus remains as the two of them depart and the divine voice proclaims his divinity and authority.
But on Wednesday, we enter Lent. Next Sunday’s gospel begins a narrative leading up to Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday in which Jesus is tested and his authority and sense of mission are formed and expressed through trial and crisis. The Transfiguration story is a reminder, before we enter that time of testing and trial, of its ultimate meaning.
We live out our faith through the traditions of the church year in a manner that is is dynamic; it is cyclical and seasonal. That expression and experience of the season is meant to be at the heart of worship. Considering that made me think about my husband who is a southerner by birth. He has a passion for a food called grits. Many of you are familiar with grits and some of you love it as Nelson does. Nelson’s love for grits is sufficiently profound as to motivate oratory. He frequently proclaims that grits are what you bring to them. They are the blank canvas upon which your culinary genius and you gustatory curiosity and courage may be played out.
You could think of the liturgical year in the same way. [hang in here with me for a moment] The year is as it always is – beginning with Advent, progressing to Christmas, and Epiphany, through Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost and the season after. There are individual celebrations that stand out in the midst of this cyclical calendar – a parish’s patronal feast, All Saints and All Souls Days, and Christ the King are a few of them. But the experience is different every year because the world is different every year and we are different every year as individuals and community. The lens through which you experience Lent is different in a time when you or those around you are experiencing testing and hardship. Easter and All Saints Day take on different meaning if they are the occasion of the baptism of a child or they follow upon the recent death of a loved one.
In the Transfiguration story, the first impulse of Jesus’ disciples who are with him on the mountain is to freeze that moment in space and time. As Moses and Elijah are departing, the disciples suggest building dwellings for the two of them and Jesus so that their time together in that place might never end. Human beings seem to like to do that. We like to encompass the divine with boundaries that are represented as and frequently intended as efforts to show respect and reverence. But such efforts frequently end up being the means by which God is made comfortable and convenient and by which access to the divine is place under human control and offered only to those who are judged to be worthy. In the Transfiguration story God interrupts the disciples efforts to domesticate the proclamation of God’s kingdom.
Our journey through any given church year is an ever changing experience viewed through the lens of our life events. That dynamic, ever changing experience has points of reference in tradition around which it moves. The story of the Transfiguration could be seen as one of those reference points. Just as we prepare to enter Lent – the time of testing, doubt, challenge and crisis, we have a glimpse of what is at the end of that journey – Jesus, showing us who and how God is.

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.