tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146085282024-03-07T03:02:04.851-05:00Rev Mibimibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.comBlogger1345125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-38033454182085252162019-07-21T19:00:00.000-04:002019-07-22T10:07:11.053-04:00Sermon for St Andrew’s, RVA, July 21, 2019 Luke 10:38-42 “Consider The Bees”<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For
the past few years, my husband and I have served as foster parents to a hive of
bees. It’s a strange story. When we needed to have some dead trees cut down,
the workers discovered a huge hive inside the gaping trunk of the tree. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We
weren’t entirely surprised by that. We had three neighbors who were hobbyist
beekeepers, and two had experienced swarm events in prior years, losing whole
hives full of bees. Now we knew where they had taken up residence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tree workers have a dread of bees, and ours
carried a case of insect killing spray<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-
the aptly named CRC Bee Blast -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with
them, so when it became obvious that there were bees that were threatening
them, they sprayed the heck out of that old tree before starting to saw it
down. Cans were strewn all over the yard that night. The next day, they removed
the tree sections and picked up the cans. We thought nothing further of it
until the next afternoon, when we looked out into the yard and saw what looked
to be a black t-shirt hanging down from the crape myrtle. Perhaps one of the
tree guys had taken off his shirt in the heat and had forgotten it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">On
closer inspection, though, we realized it wasn’t a t-shirt at all. It was a
swarm of bees. So much for the inundation with Bee Blast!</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We
called our beekeeper neighbors, and they brought over a smoke can – smoke
settles the bees – and a hive box, and they dropped the black, buzzing clump
into the box. The box was put on a stand in our yard, because bees like to stay
put. If they had moved the newly boxed bees back to Ed’s or Roland’s house, the
bees would just come back to us.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Our
local experts didn’t hold out much hope for the survival of the bees. It was
unclear there was a queen among them, and without a queen, the hive would die
off fairly quickly. But somehow the plan worked. There must have been a queen,
because those bees not only survived, they thrived. The beekeepers had to add
extra frames, and at the end of the season, some fourteen big jars of honey
were collected! This has gone on for a few years now, and it has been
fascinating to watch the bees in action. When the weather has been suitable, we
have seen the honeybees out and about, enjoying collecting nectar from our
flowers, taking little “bee-baths” on the edge of our pond. There’s been a
steady stream of to and fro from the hive box during daylight hours,
particularly when it’s a hot sunny day. We’ve learned to stay out of their
flight path – they’re bees on a mission! And have never been stung. And oh, the
honey! Delicious, delightful, wonderful. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">They’ve
truly been industrious. There’s a reason why that phrase “busy as a bee” is
such a common one: bees do appear to be out and about all the time. They’re
headed to the flowers to take in their nectar, and they zip back to the hive to
store it as honey. Their mission is to support the hive. The queen lays eggs,
drones are male bees whose role is to mate with the queen, and workers go get
nectar and pollen as food for the brood of bees.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">They
understand their purpose. It’s deeply wired into them. They don’t have to think
about it, they just do it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But we
humans, our wiring for purpose may be much more tangled and elusive. We wonder
why we were put on earth. Are we simply around to perpetuate the species, like
the bees, which contribute to a larger ecosystem but at least in their little
bee minds, are simply about the continuation of their family of bees?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This
notion of purpose is at the heart of what Jesus is addressing in today’s
gospel.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Now as
a Martha-type person myself, I always chafe a bit at this gospel. Having hosted
my share of dinner parties where I’m doing all the heavy lifting and others sit
back and chat on the sun-porch, I get why Martha is annoyed. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
question is, why is Jesus lauding Mary, who’s sitting on the sun-porch? Isn’t
Jesus himself always doing something – his times of relaxation are so few that
they are always mentioned in the Gospels, as if to say he’s worn himself to a
frazzle and needs a break, but by the way, he works harder than you ever will,
so don’t say a word!</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Martha
is following the social conventions of the Middle East in the first century: you
always provide hospitality. It’s expected, and as the senior woman in the
household, she does what is expected. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But
there’s a sense as we hear the story that Martha is doing something wrong, even
though it’s the sort of behavior that was important, even to Jesus. E</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">arlier in Luke 10, Jesus sent out 70 disciples and told them to
expect and accept hospitality from others. Isn’t Martha precisely the sort of host
that Jesus had promised? Later in the Gospel, when those closest to him begin
to argue about which one of them is the greatest, Jesus will define “great”
discipleship and even his own ministry in terms of serving others (Luke
22:24-26), using the same vocabulary that here describes Martha.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I hate it when the gospel seems to be inconsistent. And yet it’s
not…</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Medieval biblical scholars would refer to the way that Martha
lived her life as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita activa</i>, the
active life, in contrast with Mary, who represents the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita contemplativa, </i>or contemplative life. Action versus
contemplation, and we all have days and seasons when we live more in one than
the other. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here’s the thing: both manners of being are necessary in this
world. Jesus knows that. Even he, fully human but also fully divine, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has moments of action and moments of
contemplation.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Both the
active life and the contemplative life are needed; to choose one over the other
can create a false dichotomy. Saint Ambrose observed: “Virtue does not have a
single form. In the example of Martha and Mary, there is added the busy
devotion of the one and the pious attention of the other to the Word of God.”</span><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">5</span></sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Martha is not sinful – she is, as someone participating in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita activa</i> – living in a space of
discipleship, just as Jesus talked about elsewhere in the Gospels.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But perhaps what Jesus is pointing to in his gentle words to
Martha has to do with bees…</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">..bees?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Consider the bees. Their purpose is clear to them. Keep the world
of the hive and the perpetuation of the brood going. The queen lays the eggs
after being fertilized by a drone and the workers provide sustenance for all
the bees and they also clean the hive. Those worker bees sound rather
Martha-like, don’t they?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But what if the possibilities of what your purpose might be were
much broader and richer? What if you didn’t know your purpose and were hoping
to discover it? </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As someone who had several other careers before becoming a priest,
I can tell you that there’s a nagging feeling of “is this it?” when you are not
following your God-given purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We humans are given so many possibilities as the beloved children
of God. One person’s purpose may be wildly different from another’s. And we are
encouraged by Creator God to seek our purpose.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But that requires something more than flitting from flower to
flower to gather pollen and nectar. It requires more than busily trying a bunch
of different things to see which one feels right…</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It requires contemplation. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Vita Contemplativa</i>. It may well be that Jesus was suggesting to Martha that
while Martha had a clear picture of her purpose, Mary might not. For Mary,
spending some time in that place of sitting and learning and praying and
wondering was a necessary part of her growth. Or it could be equally possible
that Martha was so focused on the social conventions of her world that she
never even considered if this was her true purpose, and Jesus was inviting her
to stop and breathe and wonder what purpose God had created her for. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Frustratingly, Jesus doesn’t give us a clear picture of which of
those two possibilities he’s pointing Martha to. It’s like that with Jesus –
part of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita activa</i> is inviting
us to do the work of considering possibilities – but I know this: he continued
to interact with Martha and she with him after this encounter. She didn’t stomp
off in a huff and refuse to speak with him again. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I imagine her in her kitchen many years later, still busy as a
bee, yet understanding the importance of her work in a way that she hadn’t
before that conversation. Understanding her purpose. Another way of saying that
she understood her purpose is much simpler: she discovered who she was. And the
work she did flowed naturally from who she was. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita contemplativa</i> yielded
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vita activa</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">May it be so for each of us. Contemplate, then go and do what
flows naturally, as God made you to do. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Amen.</span></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-68175474074954355592018-12-16T18:28:00.002-05:002018-12-16T18:28:47.509-05:00Sermon for Sunday, December 16, 2018 Holy Comforter, Richmond “Brood of Vipers”<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">We’re getting closer and closer to
Christmas, and this Sunday, traditionally called Rose Sunday or Gaudete Sunday,
points in that direction energetically. We can tell from the reading from
Zephaniah, the wonderful canticle from Isaiah, and the reading from
Philippians. These readings are all about rejoicing, because change is coming.
God’s people are going to be saved. In each case, the Scripture is directed to
desperate people who have been in a difficult situation. And there’s all this
hope, all this rejoicing, because they think that things are about to change.
Gaudete! Gaudete!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Good theology, that, right? Because
we know the story of this Advent season. God is about to take on human form to
save us. Fabulous! Exciting! The turning of the wheel of human existence to a
better situation. ..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">…and then we get to this Gospel. What
a downer! John the Baptist, in full-on scary prophet mode, stinky and sweaty
and reeking of the locusts he’s been eating – no wonder he’s cranky – yelling
at those who showed up for baptism “You brood of vipers!” In Matthew’s Gospel,
he’s directing his wrath at Pharisees and Sadducees who are indulging in a
little intel-gathering about this strange guy who baptizes people, but in
Luke’s version, John yells at everybody. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwX93ZBmMY8Q-JfV8K9ENQzNH0aD37zaFpjNpRAE3vboZXWeKVO78eLff0GOZ4iqR0L1KCPGefD-gr6-J-owKa-G_PARVg9nlqwcDjskZLcrjZtbRmDckeksTT0yQrA4JGZ123/s1600/BroodofVipers2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwX93ZBmMY8Q-JfV8K9ENQzNH0aD37zaFpjNpRAE3vboZXWeKVO78eLff0GOZ4iqR0L1KCPGefD-gr6-J-owKa-G_PARVg9nlqwcDjskZLcrjZtbRmDckeksTT0yQrA4JGZ123/s1600/BroodofVipers2.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">“You brood of vipers! Who warned you
to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin
to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is
able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is
lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Didn’t anyone ever tell this guy that
you get more bees with honey than with vinegar? Well, maybe he’s not feeling
the whole metaphor, since honey and insects have been the majority of his diet
lately. Maybe it’s the urgency: get your act together, people. Something
world-shattering is about to happen and you need to clean up your act. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">This can’t be sugar-coated. It’s a
straight-up shot of vinegar: repent! Do it now!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">So much for the happy-clappy Gaudete
Sunday stuff. Luke’s John the Baptist is all about preparing people…because you
don’t get the sweet happy-clappy joy without being ready to receive it as more
than just presents under the tree. It’s about the opportunity to welcome the
greatest of gifts, God with us, Emmanuel. And we cannot understand that gift
without repenting of the many ways we have acted that would suggest that we are
unworthy of the gift.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">It’s the whole “coal in the stocking”
thing without the elfin charm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">And unlike in Matthew’s Gospel, the
people in Luke’s story, even the tax collectors and the soldiers, respond
not once but three times with a key question: “What should we do?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Notice that they don’t deny they’ve
done some bad things. No one is saying they are being falsely accused. No one
is saying “we don’t belong on the naughty list.” They simply say “what should
we do?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">John’s equally simple in his
response. He gives very direct guidance: share what you’ve got, because there
are people who have less than you. Don’t rip people off if you’re in a position
of power over them. Be satisfied with what you have and don’t take from others.
It’s not complicated theology. It doesn’t require a divinity degree to figure
it out. Do the right thing. Prepare yourselves for the One who is coming by
living into generous and honorable relationships with one another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">They hear that. They like what they
hear. You can imagine them thinking, “well, I think I can do that!” and then
they start to wonder if John is the Messiah, the anointed one, who is coming.
And once again, he gives a very clear and unambiguous response,” Nope, not me.
There’s someone else coming who is infinitely greater than I. He’s gathering in
those who are living rightly, and the ones who aren’t? It’s not going to be so
good for them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">And then Luke wraps up the story with
the sentence “so, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to
the people.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Well, it strikes me as a little odd,
that language of good news. To my 21<sup>st</sup> century ears, it sounds like
he’s mostly scaring people into preparing themselves. But perhaps not to the
listeners of Luke’s time. John’s words forbid them to rely on the fact that
they are part of God’s chosen people – they can’t rely on their tradition for
special dispensation. They have to work on being faithful and righteous; they
cannot take their status for granted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">And that then takes me to a place of
wondering about the times that I take MY status as a Christian for granted.
Yes, I know that as a follower of Jesus Christ I am forgiven my sins, that I am
saved, that by my baptism I was drawn into Jesus’ bosom as his child forever.
And yet…and yet…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">How many times do I fail to work at
living faithfully? How many times do I avoid the eyes of the person begging on
the street corner? How many times do I manipulate a situation to get what I
want? How many times do I say “I’m fine. It’s those other people who are
unfaithful,” all because I don’t want to have to engage them across our
differences?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">It isn’t just the Pharisees and
Sadducees in this story – Luke’s John the Baptist points to the whole crowd. It
isn’t just the people who believe differently than we do, or who do not believe
at all, who are in the wrong. We manage to do it every single day…or at least I
do, when I’m feeling a little Grinch-y, when I’m jealous of someone else’s
success, when I worry about what I want at the expense of someone who needs it
more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">But Jesus is coming. I – we ALL – are
about to get the best of all possible gifts: God in human form. Are we in a
place to be ready for him? The good news is coming, but if we aren’t ready to
hear the challenge that that good news brings, we are not going to hear the joy
of that good news. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf6uFLmp4aeYUGmTL7V_LL710-8Yg8lmcs-y6TzxRZ5uUZmE6i1wwatXkkjsQmXb5SwTMM7utek0BUhzVRLNe8oIpMyNTohwRMqgPAE0TzqlQfpIcJRW6fIx0NWwxZFL2GqMbt/s1600/BroodofVipers1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf6uFLmp4aeYUGmTL7V_LL710-8Yg8lmcs-y6TzxRZ5uUZmE6i1wwatXkkjsQmXb5SwTMM7utek0BUhzVRLNe8oIpMyNTohwRMqgPAE0TzqlQfpIcJRW6fIx0NWwxZFL2GqMbt/s1600/BroodofVipers1.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">So, my fellow vipers, you and I, we
have work to do. Joy will come, but we have to be ready. It’s time for us to be
kind and generous. It’s time for us to be happy with what we have. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s time for us to be good fruit, not unripe
persimmons, so sour on the tongue. It’s time for us to be nourishing wheat, not
inedible chaff. As God transforms Godself into human vesture, even a viper can
become a vibrant and loving and righteous bearer of sweet and nurturing fruit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">We brood of vipers, we can be a
garden of delight, but it takes some work, some repentance. It’s time to get
ready. We’ve only got a little while to go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-16129176472776094202018-10-14T06:30:00.000-04:002018-10-14T06:30:05.774-04:00Sermon for Sunday, October 14, 2018 Mark 10:17-31 “Journey”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Journeys are usually fraught with questions
at the front end. Does the itinerary work? Can I get a plane fare that won’t
require a second mortgage? Will the dog-sitter be able to manage my
recalcitrant beagle? Will the hotel be to my liking? Will I be able to find
food that doesn’t give me indigestion? Will I be stuck sitting next to someone
on the tour bus who chatters incessantly?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">I’m sure you can fill in the blanks with
other questions that have run through your mind at the onset of a journey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Jesus is once again journeying through the
countryside in his ministry in today’s Gospel, and he is dealing with
questions, but they aren’t his own internal questions, such as the ones I
mentioned a moment ago. No, instead, as a rabbi/teacher, he’s responding to a
question from a fellow-traveler: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“what
do I do to get eternal life?” We’d say it a little differently: “how do I get
to heaven?” And another way of looking at it is looking at THE NATURE of the
journey…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">I’ve got an endpoint, a goal. What’s my road
map?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Now some of us here are old enough to be able
to read actual paper maps. Some of us remember ordering a TripTik map from AAA –
a sequence map of do this, turn here, this is a toll road, now get off here,
and so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZ3Gg8lYQIyJ_hL_Xr9soJXziLwvBFhtwpKR7h3bex836HGO8IpZhm2KUyX7S-pLBe_2CXC_0dSNUnjtsFUTjd-yF4NXlIT7TmUXsr9sN7PXW9W1sf-kVqZpOPVNRaTWbpVCq/s1600/Triptik.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZ3Gg8lYQIyJ_hL_Xr9soJXziLwvBFhtwpKR7h3bex836HGO8IpZhm2KUyX7S-pLBe_2CXC_0dSNUnjtsFUTjd-yF4NXlIT7TmUXsr9sN7PXW9W1sf-kVqZpOPVNRaTWbpVCq/s1600/Triptik.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Its current day digital counterpart is a GPS
system. I relied on a GPS app, Waze, to get me here this morning. Worked
spendidly, and I needed it, given that I had only had a single cup of coffee
when I left the house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">These are great tools to get us to a goal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">But when Jesus responds to the fellow who
asks the question, this rich young man, he suggests a different kind of map.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The young man is asking for a TripTik or a
GPS system, and Jesus says, “it’s as much about the <u>nature</u> of the journey
as it is about the destination. You’re focused the endpoint. Focus instead on <u>how</u>
you do the journey.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">It’s sort of like a Michelin Guide. Anyone
here ever use those red Michelin books? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX44NlcTFtvxPBCkP4cRXRLp7wJ99blATN6K460XSUUtwQEUvK6UUyrwq9uejLmZsn3IMAS1onf-e2vKaVctTalfJpil2ELremtSWs-McB6xFfqI1B0uATHksLLn_ny4roAjlZ/s1600/Michelin_nyc_2006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX44NlcTFtvxPBCkP4cRXRLp7wJ99blATN6K460XSUUtwQEUvK6UUyrwq9uejLmZsn3IMAS1onf-e2vKaVctTalfJpil2ELremtSWs-McB6xFfqI1B0uATHksLLn_ny4roAjlZ/s320/Michelin_nyc_2006.jpg" width="185" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Yes, they’ve got maps, the
old-fashioned kind that would make me dream about going to far-off places when
I was a child. But they’ve got a whole bunch more, like special attractions.
And like listings of restaurants along the way. Because the French certainly
understand that a vital part of any journey is eating along the way. It’s truly
a shift from destination to the way of the journey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">I love their rating system for restaurants. They
give stars. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Zero stars? Like an Applebees? Meh…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 19.2pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
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</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_star" title=""" "><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75"
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category" (</span><i><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 19.2pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_star" title=""Michelin star" "><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_i1026"
type="#_x0000_t75" alt="2 Michelin stars"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_star" title=""Michelin star""
style='width:22.5pt;height:12pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'
o:button="t">
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\mthorpe\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.png"
o:title="2 Michelin stars"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><span style="mso-ignore: vglayout;"><img alt="2 Michelin stars" border="0" height="16" src="file:///C:/Users/mthorpe/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3" width="30" /></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: "Excellent cooking, worth a
detour" (</span><i><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Table excellente, mérite un détour</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 1.2pt; margin-left: 19.2pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_star" title=""Michelin star" "><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_i1025"
type="#_x0000_t75" alt="3 Michelin stars"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_star" title=""Michelin star""
style='width:33.75pt;height:12pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'
o:button="t">
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\mthorpe\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image003.png"
o:title="3 Michelin stars"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><span style="mso-ignore: vglayout;"><img alt="3 Michelin stars" border="0" height="16" src="file:///C:/Users/mthorpe/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" width="45" /></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: "Exceptional cuisine, worth a
special journey" (</span><i><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Clarendon","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The only three-star Michelin restaurant I
know near here is the Inn at Little Washington. My husband and I went there for
dinner for a major anniversary before I was a priest. It was phenomenal.
Phenomenally expensive, too, but a lifetime memory. I’m glad I have that
memory, because I surely couldn’t afford it these days. But it was without a
doubt worth a special journey, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vaut le
voyage!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">I don’t know about your GPS, but Waze NEVER
suggests a restaurant that’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vaut le
voyage</i>! I can ask it where’s a restaurant nearby, but usually the
restaurants are the fast-food kind, not anything that’s worth a detour, much
less a special journey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">But that Michelin Guide, it says the journey
is as important as the destination. Very French, but also, in a way, very
Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Because let’s look at what Jesus says in
response to the rich young man’s question: “</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You
shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false
witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him,
“Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved
him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to
the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In other words, don’t just follow the TripTik
or your GPS, go out of your way to live INTO this journey, don’t just take a
detour and think that’s enough, take a SPECIAL trip that’s probably way out of
your comfort zone to get to the most precious thing: eternal life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Love each other. Love the lovable. Love the
unlovable. Democrats, love Republicans. Republicans, love Democrats.
Facebookers, don’t unfriend the people who post things you disagree with – love
them and enter into civil and honorable dialogue with them. Give until it hurts,
even to those you think don’t deserve your gift. Remember, if we go all “Judgy
McJudgerson” on others, imagine what God could do in judging us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Now our rich young man really has a problem
with Jesus’ Michelin Guide to eternal life, because he has many things, and the
idea of giving them all away for the benefit of the poor? Not so attractive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">And that creates yet another question about
the journey, from those who have listened to this whole exchange and wonder if
anyone, particularly anyone with STUFF, can get to heaven. And here’s the one
sentence that turns the whole thing on its head: Jesus says, “</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">For mortals it is impossible, but not
for God; for God all things are possible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">For God
all things are possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">I expect
that for some of us here, during this time of transition, there were many
moments of worry. Many moments of “what will be possible?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">You
worried about what would await you after your beloved Rev. DR retired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">God provided
Rev. JP, a wise and warm temporary shepherd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">You
worried about what sorts of candidates your Search Committee would receive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">God
provided a good and healthy pool of candidates for their prayerful
consideration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">You
worried if the final recommended candidate would meet the scrutiny of the
Vestry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">God
assured that the candidate did, with flying colors, because the Search
Committee did their work listening for God’s voice, God’s will.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">And now you are ready to welcome your new
rector, the Rev. VH. I know her well. She is intelligent, deeply
spiritually grounded, energetic, loving. She is delighted by this call and
looks forward to being with you very soon. This leg of your journey is nearly concluded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">But our life journey continues. As you
welcome V, remember that we are not done with the journey. We are all on
a much bigger journey, a journey toward Heaven – and to be clear, I’m not
saying we’re all on the verge of death – but all of our lives are the journey
that Jesus describes in his Michelin Guide answer. You get to eternal life by
living this life in a very particular way. Care for others as much as you care
for yourself, seek God’s will over your own, worry more about how you live your
life now than worrying about checking off boxes, and the promise of heaven will
come to you. Try, and even if you do not succeed in every moment, remember that
all things are possible for God. You saw that in this journey of transition to
your new rector. Trust that it is equally true in the journey of heavenly
promise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">God bless this parish and all who are a part of
it and all who will become a part of it in the days and years to come. God bless you in all your possibilities!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-15470602858095306962018-09-02T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-02T06:00:07.130-04:00Sermon for Sunday, September 2, 2018 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 “Cleaning Solution”<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">I spent
a week up in Vermont with my newborn grandson recently. I will state with utter
and complete conviction that he is the most adorable baby ever… just as I said
the same thing about each of my children when they were newborn and just as I
said the same thing about each of my other four grandchildren when they were
newborn. Grandmothers, you know?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Like
most newborns, Wiley had that little umbilical cord stump, about an inch and a
half long, slowly drying up. Sort of yucky to look at, and it was getting - how shall I put this? - ripe before it finally fell off. And when it did, Wiley’s mother said,
“well, now we can give him a bath. The doctor told me no baths before that was
all healed up.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Now I
had spent a good bit of time with him doing things like changing diapers, but
when she said that, a little voice in my head said, “I’m amazed that he doesn’t
smell stinky with no bath for two weeks, particularly with those diapers he’s
been soiling.” But the only scent that he exuded was that beautiful milky soft
smell of newborn baby. Is there any smell like that in the world? It’s better
than new car smell, that’s for sure! Yes, we wiped off the dirty bits when
necessary, but despite no bath, Wiley smelled clean and sweet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Would
that we could stay that way! We people who are no longer newborn have to follow
a different pattern. We need our daily wash-ups, otherwise our aroma will not
be sweet. We sweat, we get dirt on us, we eat something that disagrees with
us…I go no further down that road – you know what I mean. We have to work a
little harder to get clean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">Clean…what
is clean? That’s the question that’s posed in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees
were offended by what they saw as unclean behavior on the part of Jesus and his
disciples, who didn’t wash up before their meal. Now this was a big no-no for
the Pharisees, because, as the evangelist Mark suggests, this was part of
Torah, the LAW. You were supposed to wash up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">A little
sidebar here: this is not about the Pharisees only being about rule-following
and being the designated enforcers of the rules. It’s more subtle
than that. The biblical scholar Elisabeth Johnson writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";">“</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[The Pharisees] understood that God’s choosing and calling of Israel was a gift. They also
understood that God gave them the law as a gift, to order their lives as God’s
people. Their observance of the law was meant to be a witness to the nations
around them, to give glory to God.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the book of Exodus,
before the giving of the law, God tells the people of Israel that they are to
be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” in the midst of the nations around
them (Exodus 19:6). The Pharisees took this calling to be a priestly kingdom
and holy nation very seriously. They interpreted the laws concerning priests
serving in the temple to apply to all God’s people and all aspects of life. As
priests serving in the temple were required to wash their hands before entering
the holy place or offering a sacrifice, the Pharisees believed that all Jews
should wash their hands before meals as a way of making mealtime sacred,
bringing every aspect of life under the canopy of God’s law.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These “traditions of the
elders” were seen as a way to “build a fence around the law,” to preserve the
Jewish faith and way of life, especially in the midst of Roman occupation. The
concern of the Pharisees and scribes when they saw Jesus’ disciples eating with
unwashed hands was about something much more serious than proper hygiene. They
suspected that the carelessness of Jesus and his disciples with regard to the
traditions of the elders threatened to undermine respect for God’s law.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So they really had a legitimate concern: were
the followers of this new rabbi Jesus flouting the law in this, and would this
mean that they would flout the law in other ways? For the people of Israel,
oppressed by Rome, always under siege, Torah was not only a sign of God’s
favor, it was a daily reminder of the fact that they were a particular and
particularly blessed nation belonging to God in the midst of this crazy world
they lived in. It was a survival tool in difficult times, because it reminded
them that they WERE different, and they shouldn’t do things like the rest of
the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And yet…was this the only way that they could
signify their identity with and following of God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is the point that Jesus raises in his
response to them. The LAW doesn’t stand alone. The LAW is one part of what it
means to follow God, to be God’s people. But if it becomes an end unto itself,
it’s just not good. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jesus points out the sad truth: the LAW doesn’t
address the state of the heart. God gave the LAW to govern the heart, not just
set random rules out there. If you follow the LAW and your heart isn’t it, what
good is the LAW? If you’re merely checking boxes, your heart can smell to high heaven even
if your hands are washed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And here’s the thing: the Pharisees have allowed
the LAW to become something that isolates them from others, to make them extra
special. “We’re clean and they’re not,” we can imagine them thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But are we really clean? And are others
really not?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We like to think, because we showed up here this
morning, that we’re the clean crew…and maybe we passed by someone walking to
brunch over at the restaurant around the corner instead of coming here and we think “we’re good and
they’re not.” We may be following the letter of the LAW but is our heart in it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And Jesus keeps saying, “it’s the state of your
heart that matters, not merely adherence to the LAW. There are all sorts of
ugly things that might be in your heart other than God, and you might be
following Torah in a thousand ways but it’s for naught, because the defiling
thing, the ugly thing, is sitting there in your heart making it all smell just
like a dirty diaper.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Well, maybe Jesus didn’t say that bit about the
diaper, but you get my point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So does this mean we don’t have to follow the
rules of basic hygiene? Does it mean that we don’t need to show up at church on
a Sunday morning? No, that’s not what Jesus says. It’s about the way we take
what God has given us – God’s wisdom conveyed through his word, the spiritual
joy that we feel in God’s presence, the food and drink for our souls that we
share at this table – and how we respond to it. It’s about knowing that, given
these gifts, we cannot desire NOT to share what we’ve learned, to offer these
gifts to others, to serve…in other words, as our reading from the Letter of
James says, to be “doers of the word.” And when we do that, it’s not about mere
obedience to a law. It’s also not about measuring whether or not those whom we
serve are clean enough to deserve it. It’s not about whether or not they’ve
followed the LAW well enough. It’s about the gift of Jesus, given to us despite
our own often unclean hearts. If we measured our own worthiness, we might not
look and smell as clean as we’d like, but the best way to address that aroma is
not a baby wipe, it’s Gospel love. Love without measure of worth, love without
judgment, love without shame. Jesus gave it to us, this law of love. Now it’s our turn. And won’t
that smell sweet indeed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amen.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCPWmR3_2do-fudywRkIrfZ1g-p5NzY6xOFKNfUeoO6Y1AWzI2b6FNeVOmSZBEx8C2PKyv-41XPOqEcvNH3di61K1o2s-6QKEnLm6kwpor8P17hI3T7gm7nUHDJkKsPPkdw3V/s1600/IMG_2580.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCPWmR3_2do-fudywRkIrfZ1g-p5NzY6xOFKNfUeoO6Y1AWzI2b6FNeVOmSZBEx8C2PKyv-41XPOqEcvNH3di61K1o2s-6QKEnLm6kwpor8P17hI3T7gm7nUHDJkKsPPkdw3V/s320/IMG_2580.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ain't he sweet?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-35372748129385728292018-06-10T08:00:00.000-04:002018-06-10T08:00:02.817-04:00Sermon for Sunday June 10, 2018 Mark 3:20-25 “Who Are Your People?”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Well, we’re
only three chapters into the Gospel of Mark and we’re already slapped upside
the head with the high-risk, no-holds-barred radical nature of Jesus’ ministry.
His relatives think he’s crazy and they’ve come to restrain him. The local
religious leaders show up and say that he’s possessed by the devil. Then he
spits on their theological pronouncements with a difficult parable about a home
invasion that says, in essence, I’m the only one strong enough to conquer the
devil. And his family once again reaches out, trying to protect him from himself,
because in their eyes, this is all crazy talk. Reads sort of like Tennessee
Williams, doesn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Meanwhile,
the crowd who came to hear him teach and preach is watching and listening and
not saying very much. They have good reason to keep their mouths shut. They’ve
come to hear Jesus because they are living in a world of pain, a world of
oppression and a world that offers no justice or mercy. They have heard he’s
got something to say about that. They are desperate people in desperate times,
and they hunger for the words of this itinerant preacher. His relatives know
that his words are likely to get him killed, and they think they need to
protect him, but he turns them away and turns toward the distraught crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A
crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your
brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my
mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said,
“Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother
and sister and mother.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Well, not so
silent after all. At least they pass along the message. And he turns it around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Now this is
one of those passages that really chafes. His beloved mother, his dear brothers,
all dismissed. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and
mother.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Sounds like
he’s angry at them, rejecting their claim on him, rejecting their attempts to
protect him from himself. His family is trying to quarantine him by saying he’s
mentally ill, the scribes are trying to quarantine him by saying that he is possessed
by the devil, but he will not be locked into a quarantine cell of silence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Instead, he
refuses the protection of those labels. He embraces those who want to be freed
from labels like “troublemakers” or “violators of Torah” or “those stupid
Hebrews whom we wring our taxes from.” He embraces those who just can’t stand
the status quo anymore, because he is there to tell them that the status quo
cannot stand, that it is of the devil, that it is of a broken world, that it is
of worldly tyranny. He loves them, and he names them as family, these wounded
hurting people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Only three
chapters into the Gospel of Mark, and he’s said “it’s time to turn the world
upside down.” No wonder the scribes are nervous. No wonder his family fears for
him. No wonder that this all will eventually lead to his death. He knows what
the cost will be for him, but it’s early enough in the story that not everyone
gets it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Now I know
there’s a temptation to hear this brief passage and imagine Jesus as a divine
Bruce Willis yelling “Yippee-Ki-Ay, you jerks.” With a semiautomatic weapon in
his hand. Smashing the bad guys. But there is no weapon except words. There are
no bullets except truth. This is not necessarily about Jesus’ divine power, but
about Jesus’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Love…that’s
not the word you were expecting to hear me say, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">And yet this
Gospel teaches us something about love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Here’s what I’d
like you to do: listen to those words about dismissing his family, who really
does love and worry about him, in a different way. Imagine this is not the
exclusion of family but the growing of family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">To set the
stage for hearing those words that way, let me share a story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">My parents
were married after their military service in World War II. They tried to have a
child but it was not to be. Through a strange and wonderful series of
circumstances, they were able to adopt me when I was four months old. They were
not perfect parents. My mother was tough as nails. My father was a distant and
troubled alcoholic. And yet they loved me and cared for me. I never had an urge
to search for my birth parents. In fact, I felt special – I had been chosen.
They had to work to get me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Years later,
when I was raising my own family, one of my sons had a medical problem that
might have been genetic in nature. It was something that was not present in his
father’s family. So I decided that it was time to try and find out something
about my genetic history through my birth mother. I knew her name and I knew
the agency through which I was adopted. So I reached out to her through that
agency. The social worker was able to be in contact with her, and told her that
I was simply looking for family medical history. She did not want contact with
me, which was fine – I didn’t need another mother, and I guessed her story was
one of pain and loss and sadness. She passed along some information that was
helpful, and that was that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">I found
myself reflecting with gratitude on what she had given me – birth – and what my
adoptive parents had given me – life. A life. A grounding, an identity, love,
an education. Values. Recipes. Traditions. Stories. A life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTbV5krGBnE64T2wS7wJJe3yKePS84l4eqmGmmwx0i60BGr4_PjRUilET2O9rZc4Om26mxH8VvqNwmizXdMDNFlUTMYgf-3SENcl2ueV-maLLOSPCZmr6YuBejZOz0Xmseiu49/s1600/Ezra_Pound_1963b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="193" data-original-width="220" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTbV5krGBnE64T2wS7wJJe3yKePS84l4eqmGmmwx0i60BGr4_PjRUilET2O9rZc4Om26mxH8VvqNwmizXdMDNFlUTMYgf-3SENcl2ueV-maLLOSPCZmr6YuBejZOz0Xmseiu49/s200/Ezra_Pound_1963b.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ezra Pound, Venice, 1963</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">And then,
many years later, I saw a quotation from the poet Ezra Pound, from one of his
Cantos, that summed up my story in a single line: “What thou lovest well is thy
true heritage.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">And I think,
in a strange way, that it sums up what Jesus is doing in this gospel reading as
well. His birth heritage – who was his biological mother and brothers –
mattered in that moment and in his ministry less than who was his prospective
family – the world he had been sent to save. His past, while somewhat relevant
to define him in the eyes of the broken world, was not as important as his
future and our future, even though his was a future that would end in his
physical death. Our future, our present, was what he loved well. Yes, he loved
his biological family. But instead of turning inward in his love to be isolated
and safe within that small group, he chose to expand his view of love and
heritage to all of us. In fact, his love was so all-encompassing that we all
have become a part of his heritage…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">…something we
affirm when we recognize that heritage in our baptisms. When we are anointed
with holy chrism, holy oil, marked as Christ’s own forever. When we all say “we
receive you into the household of God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">We choose our
heritage in baptism, because Christ has already chosen us as HIS heritage. Not
just our immediate circle of family and friends, but also our family of love in
Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">And just like
families, particularly those families that we have chosen and been chosen by,
it’s not always easy. Jesus certainly understood that. But the gift of this
heritage of love is that it is always turned outward to that larger family of
all humankind, of all of God’s creation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">That’s not to
say that heritage doesn’t matter in our day to day lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">You know our
reality: when someone asks you about family here in the South, they’ll often
phrase it “Who are your people?” They want to know who your mamma was, are you
related to those Smiths that used to go to St Paul’s, didn’t your daddy go to
St. Christopher’s? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">But we know
that the more important question, the heart of it, is “What is your <u>true</u>
heritage?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Ezra Pound,
that crazy old expat poet, would say that it is that which we love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">But you know
the answer too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">It’s who you
love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">It’s how you
love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">It’s why you
love…because Jesus did first. And it’s why you will continue to love, because
Jesus never stops loving us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-30312677623084307322018-03-31T22:00:00.000-04:002018-03-31T22:00:04.982-04:00Sermon for the Easter Vigil. Mark 16:1-8 “Broken[Open]Heart”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The social worker
moved slowly, unlike her normal crisp trot through the hospital ward. The
mother of the dead baby sat in a corner, looking like she had been scourged –
what other way is there to look, when your son has died? The baby, born with a
myriad of health problems, now lay even more still than he had in life, when he
was tethered to whirring machines that pumped and breathed and vibrated through
him. Now all was quiet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And the social
worker slowly, reverently made plaster casts of the tiny feet and hands to
remember the baby by, so the mother could recall that this was not a dream,
that it was real, that he was dead, but he had been hers, growing within her
and then drifting away from life just a few days after his birth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And then the social
worker softly lifted the tiny feet and made inked footprints, and asked the
mother if she wanted to hold her son, her tiny, still, dead son, in her arms
for a picture. Oftentimes, in the feverish clutch of loss, mothers forget what
their little ones looked like…and so, now that all the tubes and lines and
cords were gone, the mother could hold her boy and a picture could be taken,
all that mother’s love evident in her caress of his arm, in the kiss on the top
of his head, in the gentle rearranging of the smallest hospital gown you can
imagine, in the stillness of the moment, before his body would be taken away
from her forever. It was a moment of ritual and it was a comfort and a reminder of
holiness in the midst of pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the things we
learn about death, about loss, is that it is too much to bear in the moment,
and to help carry us through those first hours and days, rituals can be a gift.
When the reality is crushing, ritual can structure our space and time enough so
that we can survive. We can make some small meaning of what is happening by
following ancient patterns of behavior that distract us from the pain for a
moment, so we can catch our breath.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We need ritual in
the face of death, so that we can live.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That is one of the
reasons why ritual plays such an important role in the church, because we are
always in the midst of deaths of one kind or another. Sometimes it’s the death
of a beloved. Sometimes it’s the death of a dream, either our own dream, or the
dream of a parish, or the dream of a nation. Sometimes we dream of a return to
a past, happier time, then wake up and discover that we are in the here and
now. And so we structure ways of dealing with those deaths to comfort us, to
help us face the harsh reality, to begin to turn toward the future. We
structure rituals to remind us we are still alive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In this poignant
reading from the Gospel of Mark, a ritual is playing out. The women who were a
part of the community of disciples had been unable to attend to the rituals of
death properly immediately after Jesus was laid in the tomb and the stone was
rolled to close him in – such a finality to that! – but they decided they would
go the next day to anoint him, to prepare his beloved body as had been ritually
done for centuries, to comfort themselves even if they could not comfort him
anymore. They arrived with the water to wash him, with the oils to rub into his
skin, with the cloth to wind around him, with the spices that would be tucked
into the folds of the cloth. They could hardly believe what had happened in all
its brutality and viciousness. They could hardly believe what their eyes had
told them, that their beloved, their rabbi, their Lord, had been killed, but
they knew it was done. And yet there was one last thing they could do for him,
for themselves, so that they might touch his skin one last time, so that they
could honor him…to carry out the rituals of burial, so that they could live.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We can picture them
walking in the early morning half-light, with the materials they needed slung
in carrying-cloths over their shoulders, walking to the cave in which Jesus’
body was buried. Perhaps they walked briskly at the start of their journey, and
slowed up, hesitating as they approached the tomb, wondering if they could
manage to roll the stone away, wondering if they could bear it to see his
broken body, wondering if they were strong enough for this holy and
heart-rending work, but relying on the rhythm of it, a rhythm that what so
familiar that they could do it with their eyes closed if need be, the rhythm of
ritual that would help them face the death of one who meant so much to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And then they looked
up from the path –they had been watching where they stepped on the uneven
ground – and saw the stone had been rolled away. Did they wonder about that?
Did they think that some of the men among them had come ahead, knowing they
would need this? Did they think that perhaps someone had not rolled it into
place the night before? But the cave was gaping open, and they bent and peered
in. It should have been hard to see, but there was some source of light there,
and a young man sitting there. Who was he? They shouldn’t talk to a stranger,
and what was he doing in there? This was a tomb, Jesus’ tomb, but the body of
their Lord wasn’t there. They were caught in that strange land between death
and life and an interloper had interposed himself between them and their ritual
work…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">…and then he spoke. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">"Do not be alarmed; you are looking for
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look,
there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he
is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told
you."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Incomprehensible. He has been raised? What did
that mean? They were braced to see him in death. Now he wasn’t here and this
stranger was telling them that he would meet them in Galilee. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">There was no ritual structure to address this
situation. Jesus had been dead but now, apparently, he wasn’t dead. They had
been prepared to address his death with rituals that were prayer and comfort.
It seemed that was no longer required, and there was no substitute to face this
new understanding of what was happening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ritual had been broken open, cracked into a
thousand pieces, since death was no longer the dominating presence in the tomb,
in their lives…Jesus lived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">No, more than that: Jesus lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">So what happens when rituals are broken apart,
when presence and possibility collide and that which breaks our hearts open
shifts and bends, and presents us with a wildly beautiful new reality? What
happens when the finality of death emerges into the glorious infinitude of
eternal life? What happens when the tomb cannot contain death, because life
triumphs over it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps a new ritual is called for in these rare
moments when our hearts have been broken open and new life has flooded in…when
resurrection – incomprehensible, mysterious, transcendent – supplants death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In orthodox icons of Jesus transcending death,
he stands atop the cross. He lifts the dead from slumber. He conquers what
attempted to end him, but could not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This night, this Easter vigil, is the ritual
that takes our broken hearts – broken at the darkness of the world, at
corruption and sin and oppression and pain – and shows what has been born out
of that brokenness. This ritual is the retelling of the story of God’s love for
us all through generations upon generation, through our repeated failures to
honor the covenant that God made with us, through God finally sending someone
who walked with us and looked like us and talked like us, through humanity
killing that one who was sent to save us, to this one end: Jesus’ death is not
the end of the story. The burial ritual is not the closing of a door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is the ritual that reminds us that Jesus’
death is the START of the story. Resurrection is not just possible – it is
PROMISED. It is promised in that long and somewhat repetitive story of God’s
persistent love. We live into our understanding of the joy of the resurrection
in this ritual because we have experienced the power of ritual when we were in
pain. Our hearts are broken open so that the light can come in. And we learn
this night, above all other nights,that our ritual is not merely comfort, it is
promise. Jesus conquers death tonight and all nights. Christ is risen. He is
risen indeed! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Amen.</span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-85346757527409900962018-03-13T15:27:00.000-04:002018-03-13T15:27:01.182-04:00Sermon for Sunday, March 11, 2018 Numbers 21:4-9<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Good morning! I’m Mary Thorpe, Director of
Transition Ministry for the Diocese of Virginia, and I’m here to celebrate with
you – your time in-between is just about over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Next week you will welcome your new rector as
he begins your ministry among you. I’d like to reflect on how this time of
transition has been for you all, and where God has been in the midst of
it…because God is always in the midst of it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Let’s consider the Old Testament reading. We
are with the people of Israel as they are guided toward the Promised Land by
God. Here’s the thrust of what’s going on here. They don’t really remember how
bad things were when they were enslaved in Egypt, and how God used Moses to get
them out from under the thumb of pharaoh. They don’t really remember how hungry
they were and how God provided them with miraculous food, fresh every single
day, in the form of manna and quail. You know, you go to a high-end restaurant
downtown and you get served roasted quail, you know it’s going to cost you $30
for that entrée, but God’s delivering it for free. But the people forget, and
complain. They don’t really remember the provision for their care by God and
they respond with something that feels like “Yeah, well, what have you done for
us lately?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">And now as they continue to proceed through
the desert, they’ve got a problem – they keep getting bitten by snakes. Not a
surprise – it’s the desert, after all, and any creatures that can survive there
are going to be tough and nasty. Snakes. And God once again provides, when he
guides Moses to create of a talisman of sorts, a bronze snake that encircles
his walking stick, and whenever someone gets bitten by a snake, if they look
upon that talisman, they survive the snakebite. Great stuff! God keeps on
providing even though these people of his are whiny complainers who seem to
forget what has already been provided for their journey about fourteen seconds
after they’ve received it. Before they get to the Promised Land, there will be
a lot more of this, and they will keep complaining. But God continues to walk
with them, because that’s what God does. God so desires to be in relationship
with God’s people that God doesn’t step away, doesn’t refuse their cries for
help, doesn’t abandon them, even when they abandon God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">I raised five teenagers. Five. Now those of
you who have survived raising teens knows that when you are in relationship
with someone you have created, made in your genetic image, they don’t always
appreciate what you’re trying to do for them, and they sometimes treat you less
than lovingly, but you still love them, and you still do not turn your back on
them, even though they may have frayed your last nerve, because you love them,
and these teens are going through their own journey to maturity, and it’s hard
and there are poisonous snakes out there that threaten them at every turn. You
love them through it all, even the most difficult moments. I wonder if God
feels that sometimes, too, with us human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">This parish’s journey to get to this day has
been a complicated one, marked by pain but also marked by grace. You wondered
if you could survive the departure of a beloved rector who was, for some of you,
the only priest you ever knew. How would you be spiritually fed? Who would
comfort you? Who would inspire you to follow Christ? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">God provided. You had two wonderful associate
priests who remained. Thank you, God, for V. Thank you, God, for M. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You had <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>professional staff and lay leadership who were
asked to take a larger leadership role, more in line with the way we now know
that churches function best, in collaboration with the clergy. Thank you, God
for the professional staff and the Vestries! Remember that, because it will be
important in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In addition, you had a gifted interim who
came and did the difficult work of helping you to imagine how you might be
church in a fresh way. It is a fact of life that there is always a need to
examine the way a church functions, administratively, pastorally, spiritually,
when there is a transition. Implementing best practices as they are now
conceived, helping staff work together effectively, making the hard calls when
change needs to occur: all of these are the work of the interim. Those priests
who do this work know that they will probably step on some toes and skewer
sacred cows – they do not do this work to win your hearts, they do it to
prepare this fertile soil for the seeds of a new relationship with the next
rector. And it is true that some of you didn’t much care for some of L’s
decisions. But he did precisely what he was supposed to do – to reorient, to
open hearts, to shift the manner of conversation between ordained leadership
and lay leadership, to till the soil of this wonderful parish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">It did not always go smoothly, and here I’m
going to name some hard truths that might make you a little uncomfortable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The tension over the dismissal of an employee
was not surprising – termination of employment in faith communities is never
easy, but this was truly necessary. But I would point out one important thing
to attend to: if your former rector had done the firing, there would have been
no push-back, because he was R and you trusted his professional judgment. But
it wasn’t R who did this, it was L. And you had not had the time to build up
the trust relationship that would have allowed you to give permission to L to
do what he was ordained and called to do. So there was tension. Remember that,
because it’s important when we talk about what’s coming next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But thank you, God, for L!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">What happened in this time of change wasn’t
forty years in the wilderness, and L would be the first to say that he isn’t
Moses, but here’s the next thing I want you to remember: J isn’t Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">For those who are happy that the interim is
gone, and who think that J is the magic priest who will make all sorts of
magical things happen, remember that. J is a priest who serves Jesus and
Jesus’s people. He is not Jesus. He cannot do the work alone. If you have
discovered anything during this journey, you have discovered that you are
strong, capable, resilient people of faith who can imagine and plan and
implement the next chapter of the story in this place and this time. You don’t
get to forget that when J arrives. You don’t get to say “the priest is here
now, I can go back to just sitting in the pew and listening.” You are the
church. Each and every one of you, beloved children of God, created in God’s
image, gifted, capable, loving…you are the church and you are all workers in
the vineyard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Here’s the secret you’ve discovered as a result
of this time: priests come and priests go – we are all temporary companions on
your journey – but the church is still the church, and you are this church.
Priests have a particular role in the church, sacramentally, pastorally, as
educators, as vision casters, but the church is the people, each and every one
of you, which means you all have your roles as well. Thank God for each of you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">So what does this mean for you on the eve of
the arrival of your new rector?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">First of all, what joy and blessing to have
reached this point! Your Discernment Committee did brilliant, prayerful,
spirit-led work that matched the deep discernment work that J did, and that
evolved into continued discernment between J and your wonderful Vestry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">…and I remind you that this was and continues
to be a process of MUTUAL DISCERNMENT. If you’re still thinking of this as
hiring an executive, let that notion go. The relationship between priest and
parish is covenantal. This is someone who will walk with you on your most
joyful journeys and in your darkest hours. This is someone who will be a part
of a team who will be available in emergencies 24/7/365. This is someone who
will be the keeper of your secret pain and the guide to your joy in Jesus
Christ. You can’t write an employment contract that delineates that kind of
relationship…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">…which leads me to my second point: mutual
expectations. In some ways, the relationship between priest and parish is
closer to a marriage than employment. My husband is a therapist who does a lot
of work with couples, and he often reflects on the fact that if one partner
doesn’t tell the other what their expectations, their hopes, their dreams,
their worries are, it’s a recipe for problems. If I don’t know what you think
I’m going to deliver, I may offend you without even knowing that I’ve done so.
And if you punish me for that offense, especially if you say something like
“you should KNOW what you did wrong,” it’s not going to get better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">So what might the mutual expectations look
like? I’d like to suggest that a way of approaching expectations runs something
like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">We love God and God loves us. We look for God
in each other, and we treat each other with dignity and respect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">We share our hopes and dreams and listen for
others’ hopes and dreams. Every voice has value and should be heard, but not
every dream can be fulfilled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">It’s about God and God’s will for this place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Priests are human. They occasionally make
mistakes. Parishioners are human. They occasionally make mistakes. We show each
other grace, offer forgiveness, and try to repair breaches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">We do not assume why things happen or are
done in a particular way, and we do not ascribe motives to actions. We simply
ask each other respectfully,”can you explain that to me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">There is only one judge, and that’s Jesus
Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">When it’s about winning, it’s not about God.
We strive to fulfill God’s will, not win an argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Do think about what kind of covenant of
mutual expectations you and J might share it’s a recipe for living as God wants
us to live.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">One last thought: God has sent you J. He has
gifts, skills, experience. He is unique. If you start your time together
looking backward to compare him with your prior rector, you deny yourself the
possibility of looking forward to what God has in mind for you. You might miss
what God is planning…and I have no doubt that God has great plans for you, and
that with J as your spiritual leader, you can fulfill those plans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The time-in-between is over. Put on a fresh
pair of walking shoes, because the next part of the journey, the beginning of
your work together, awaits. God bless this parish, God bless you for what has
gone before and what will come to pass, and God bless your new rector!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-36951967860542526422018-02-18T22:51:00.000-05:002018-02-18T22:52:30.141-05:00Valentine's Letter (Slightly Belated Because of the Confluence of Ash Wednesday and said V-Day)<br />
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Valentine’s Day 2018<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dear Family and Friends,<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the 19<sup>th</sup> century the most famous piece of
advice in America was “Go West, young man.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since it is now the 21<sup>st</sup> century, and we cherish an
oppositional streak, and we are not young, and only one of us is a man, last
year we did the exact opposite and went east. Far to the east.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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In early June Mary spent
two weeks at St. George’s College in Jerusalem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was a Continuing Education trip, and Mary and several other female
clergy were studying women in the Bible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They explored a number of places, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the
Galilee, Jericho and the Jordan River, which was neither chilly nor wide (more
like 115 degrees and about four feet across.) She found it a transformative
time, learned a lot, and was grateful for the two or three words of Arabic she
remembered from visiting Chuck and Leslie in Qatar and the seven or eight words
of Hebrew she remembered from seminary. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxLJobBhnrGbcu1vEVgTjLWrobwCQn_ZIRWMwL7pzrMjYyM_czVIfcT1GIngR0nBKuErKX6gvemaWS6csIvedFvc7njmLvliV1GBZb6K1tysKozkkUKqnPj3UABgcCZ4lovH_Y/s1600/Jerusalem+Kitty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxLJobBhnrGbcu1vEVgTjLWrobwCQn_ZIRWMwL7pzrMjYyM_czVIfcT1GIngR0nBKuErKX6gvemaWS6csIvedFvc7njmLvliV1GBZb6K1tysKozkkUKqnPj3UABgcCZ4lovH_Y/s200/Jerusalem+Kitty.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
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From the photos she posted on social
media you might get the impression that Israel is inhabited primarily by cats,
but she assures you there are plenty of people there to feed and pet the cats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to cat photos, Mary returned with
a taste for the cooking styles of Israel, most of which seem to involve a lot
of chopping of fresh green things.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A few months later we traveled east together, only this time
we were headed to Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To mark our 20<sup>th</sup>
anniversary we joined a tour of Greece focused on icons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In churches, monasteries, museums, shops and
workshops we saw the stories of the Bible vividly portrayed through the rich
iconography of Greek Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
trip to the icon workshop where this Theotokos (“God Bearer”) was created led
to an animated conversation with one of the icon writers on technique,
including their method for laying down gold leaf and polishing it to the high
gloss you see in this photo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0IqP3v-uOrEX2q7IMnTY1jSMHGCNp5Lge-iGZPXia7qVgjwsYHtMXpgsqreLhaKRjvEfMxN21PZc9BTObgIjh7i3f_cjhWmtfB6GXAxIfwUh4SMKAP9cTvH_qkyjpj5FuQyqN/s1600/theotokos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="490" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0IqP3v-uOrEX2q7IMnTY1jSMHGCNp5Lge-iGZPXia7qVgjwsYHtMXpgsqreLhaKRjvEfMxN21PZc9BTObgIjh7i3f_cjhWmtfB6GXAxIfwUh4SMKAP9cTvH_qkyjpj5FuQyqN/s200/theotokos.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
Visiting
Meteora with its little monasteries perched atop sheer limestone cliffs, we
marveled at the rich concentration of icons and frescoes in the chapels.<o:p></o:p><br />
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There is more to Greece than icons, of course, from ancient
history and Biblical sites to contemporary culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were moved by a visit, on the first
anniversary of the death of Doug’s father, to the ancient therapeutic center at
Epidaurus dedicated to the healing God Asklepios, whose name was invoked by
physicians taking the Hippocratic oath for many centuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the Oracle at Delphi predicted only
one thing - that our credit cards would get a workout - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we gave her high marks for accuracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->For Doug a highlight
of the year came at the end of September with the celebration of the 50<sup>th</sup>
anniversary of the founding of the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A year of celebrating, including an open
house, a public lecture, and the publishing of a commemorative newsletter,
ended with an elegant private reception at the Virginia Historical
Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>VIPCare was honored by elected
officials at both the State and Federal level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It turns out that some organizations turn 50 with none of the gray hair
or aches and pains or bifocals or cholesterol that marked the same birthday
anniversary for at least one of the writers of this letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDde-VEZFie0A_cvsq8EFeucmQbVdHrOUgoxJaOjMqAqsV2Xle44PAtt8-Mx_UvBOqd1op0OVRKL_CZSUcKDb1WCxD7tKzERFnIZx3zWlSCTfEfjQDaBTSm5Z1Ck-GzvxtN6Ja/s1600/VIPCare50th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="498" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDde-VEZFie0A_cvsq8EFeucmQbVdHrOUgoxJaOjMqAqsV2Xle44PAtt8-Mx_UvBOqd1op0OVRKL_CZSUcKDb1WCxD7tKzERFnIZx3zWlSCTfEfjQDaBTSm5Z1Ck-GzvxtN6Ja/s200/VIPCare50th.jpg" width="153" /></a></div>
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Here VIPCare Board president Frances Broaddus Crutchfield joins Doug in receiving a citation for VIPCare from Delegate Betsy Carr.</div>
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Mary continues to serve as the Director of Transition
Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, where she helps parishes find
the right priest and helps priests find the right parish. On occasion, she gets
a little testy when parishes are hesitant to listen to her wisdom, but more
often than not, it is joyful work. She’s got plenty of other responsibilities
as well, often called in the jargon of the church “other duties as assigned,”
but if she told you what they were she’d have to kill you. Her <s>hobby</s> <s>opportunity
to spend money at art supply stores</s> spiritual discipline is writing icons,
as anyone who follows her on FaceBook has seen. Her Craft Cave in the basement
is her silent place, where she writes icons, prays while she writes, sighs a
lot, and blessedly doesn’t have cellphone reception.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end result is a work
that is dedicated to the glory of God, like this one in progress, a rendering of the 15<sup>th</sup> century Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity.<br />
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Our children and grandchildren are happy, healthy, and
living exciting lives. This spring, we were delighted to attend Bryce’s
graduation from law school. Matt and Jenny keep to a hectic schedule driving
Katie and Ben to their various activities. Once again, Katie’s dance troupe
danced at Carnegie Hall! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Practice,
practice, practice)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bryce and Bambi and
the boys are hip-deep into technology, robots, STEM learning and fiercely
competing in board games. Christopher is mixing up a storm in the San Francisco
bay area – he’s now in charge of the cocktail program at a restaurant called
Hog and Rocks, after several years at a pair of high-end Indian restaurants. He
still occasionally asks his mom for a recipe that somehow magically morphs into
a cocktail. Not quite water into wine, but fine stuff nonetheless. Sam and
Inanna are living the North Country life near Stowe, where Sam’s auto body
business, just relocated to a new and larger location, is thriving, and where
they are looking for a larger home to replace their “starter house” as they
plan for the future. Alexandra is deep in the wilds of Bushwick with her pup
JT, working in Queens, and teaching us how the world has changed (possibly even
for the better) since we were in our late twenties.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re looking forward to a busy year, as we head south for a
friend’s daughter’s wedding, north for another friend’s son’s wedding, and to
Colorado Springs for our nephew Peter’s wedding to the lovely Carol. Should be
an interesting year with lots of stories to tell – check back and see what
we’ve got to report next year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the meantime, come to see us in Richmond. Now that Doug
has completed the patio project, we can even lounge around the back yard and
enjoy a cold beverage as we grill!<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Doug got a new bike computer for Christmas (after
recording 31,000 miles on the old one) so he claims he’s going to get up off
his knees and get back on his bike, but he promises to be around whenever you
come by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">With our love and best wishes
for a happy 2018,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Mary, Doug, Spooky the cat and the
bees</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-4078457387237698432017-11-12T08:00:00.000-05:002017-11-12T08:00:14.848-05:00Sermon for Sunday, November 12, 2017 Holy Comforter RVA 1 Thess 4:13-18 Matt 25:1-13 “Ready”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The email was
circulated around Mayo House on a Monday. Its message was cryptic: “Expect a
very special guest on Thursday morning.” I read it and promptly forgot it. I
should, of course, have noted it on my calendar. My life is inscribed on my
calendar. If I cannot find my IPhone, I am lost, because everything goes onto
that calendar. But this time, I didn’t write it on the calendar. Perhaps a more
pressing problem distracted me, perhaps I had a meeting to go to, perhaps I
thought I’d remember this on my own – HAH! – but I made no note of it. Thursday
morning came. I had no meetings scheduled either in the office or outside of
the office so I dressed casually. Jeans, an open-collared blouse, sneakers.
Neat, of course, and not sloppy, but certainly not what I would have chosen to
be wearing when, later that day, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby showed
up at Mayo House with his family. Our special guest, and I looked like a soccer
mom on the way to Costco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Ah, well, I wasn’t
prepared. All my desires to stay on top of the five thousand things on my plate
were for naught. All of my obsessive desire for control failed me. It’s my
pathology, this need for control, but I suspect I am not alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">How many of us
here are willing to claim the fact that we are control freaks? How many of us
make lists? Some of us even add things to our lists simply so we can check them
off…hmmm, got up and washed my face: CHECK! We have our schedules, our
calendars…I’ve now gotten in the habit of checking my calendar on my phone
first thing every morning simply so that I can be sure I don’t inadvertently
miss something, and so I’m dressed appropriately. Thank you, Archbishop Welby!
So anyway, because I like to be in control, I now check that calendar, just in
case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">But for all our
desire to be in control, things happen that thwart our desire. Labor starts two
months early. You’re asked to participate in a meeting you hadn’t been told
about in advance. The doctor isn’t there at the time of your appointment
because she is attending to another patient’s emergency. The big contract for
your employer isn’t signed so you lose your job. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">And then there is
the truly heartbreaking stuff, like this: you go to church on Sunday looking
forward to hearing God’s Word and a man comes in and kills or wounds many of
the parishioners. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Things happen,
and it’s out of our control. What’s a follower of Jesus Christ to do?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It certainly
doesn’t help when we’ve got a Gospel reading like today’s, where the whole
message is about being prepared. The thrust of the text is that we are to be
prepared for the second coming of Christ, because in those early days of the
church, the belief was that Jesus would be making his return trip pretty darned
soon. You get the drift: Jesus is the bridegroom, the church is the
bridesmaids, and the church had better be ready.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">But here’s the
interesting thing about this parable, the thing that might provide comfort to
us control freaks who think “how can we possibly be ready for ANYTHING?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">All of the
bridesmaids fall asleep waiting. They don’t need to be awake nonstop until the
bridegroom shows up. They rest. The smart ones have prepared, but not by
putting together a list. They simply have attended to the one thing that is
necessary – to have enough lamp oil to light the way when the groom arrives.
There is one thing that they need to do – be able to shine a light for the
groom – and they’ve prepared for that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">That’s a whole
lot more possible than the list with a thousand check boxes on it to cover
every single thing that can go awry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Imagine your
list: Cipro antibiotics, a shield that a gunshot couldn’t penetrate, spare
batteries for the cellphone, reading material, a down sleeping bag, extra
socks, dried meals, first aid supplies…we could go on with the list for hours,
couldn’t we? There’s a whole industry built around the possibility of doomsday
and the need to be prepared to survive – adherents are called “preppers” and
stockpile massive quantities of things in bunkers or storehouses, just in case.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">But what is truly
necessary? What do we really need to prepare ourselves for any contingency?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">One word: Jesus.
One faith: Jesus. One hope: Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">If you don’t
believe me, take a look at the Epistle today: the message is clear. Stuff will
still happen. We cannot prevent it. But we know that when it happens, Jesus is
with us. And if the ultimate thing we fear happens – that we are going to die
(and believe me, we will all die at some point, no getting around it) – if that
happens, who is with us through it and on the other side of it? Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What does Paul
write to the Thessalonians? “</span><span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">For the Lord himself, with
a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's
trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then
we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with
them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">We cannot prepare
for every eventuality, but we are assured that the one thing we most need no
matter what happens will always be there: Jesus. He does not abandon us. He
promises those who believe in him eternal life. It’s hard to imagine what
eternal life will be like, but in my heart I believe that it will be infinitely
amazing, infinitely joyous, infinitely filled with love. And it’s my belief in Jesus
and in that promise that I try to carry me with me every day, even when I shake
my head over the insanity of the world, even when I grieve the loss of 26
people in a church in Texas, half of whom were children and babies shot at
point-blank range, even when I pray for a friend whose cancer has returned. I
cannot prepare for everything, but I can prepare for the one thing I need and
the world needs: Jesus, the savior and the promise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">But if you still
want to prepare for any contingency, for a mere $269 dollars, go online. A
company called Stealth Angel will provide you with a 72 hour emergency kit for
two persons. Pretty fancy, complete with a backpack and a bucket. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Me? I’m relying
on Jesus. He’s around for a whole lot longer than 72 hours, and all he asks is
our faith and love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Candara, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-61400312480809372522017-09-05T09:12:00.001-04:002017-09-05T09:12:15.728-04:00Sermon for Sunday, September 3, 2017 Exodus 3:1-15 Holy Ground<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqckxazXtsS2z6C4MevxXf8uxoP7DI9ksq5kuF36em0lo4E2AJV3uW20dS_B68K6S9aHbxisAWcJvwyn4ruTVvQQI1gHO0K-myOQgNnRKTTj29vN9IC7CKdGkZjBPzgZaGvLQR/s1600/moses_burning_bush_bysantine_mosaic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1428" data-original-width="1500" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqckxazXtsS2z6C4MevxXf8uxoP7DI9ksq5kuF36em0lo4E2AJV3uW20dS_B68K6S9aHbxisAWcJvwyn4ruTVvQQI1gHO0K-myOQgNnRKTTj29vN9IC7CKdGkZjBPzgZaGvLQR/s320/moses_burning_bush_bysantine_mosaic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">They came to the communion rail
barefoot. One woman, wrapped in a yellow sari with gold embroidery. A man with
gray hair wearing a white kurta – that ubiquitous tunic shirt that men of the
Indian subcontinent all wear. Two teenagers with painted toenails, giggling a
bit. A young mother juggling her baby on her hip – how do those saris stay
wrapped when your baby is trying to wriggle out of your arms? There were others
in the congregation, Americans, Canadians, Scots, Brits, a few who had lived in
so many places that it was unclear where they would claim as home. Those others
hesitated a bit if they were new, wondering if in this church in this place,
they too were expected to take off their shoes to receive the Body and Blood of
Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">But the old hands here knew the
tradition. These Christians who were a part of the Church of South India,
Christians whose tradition said that they were actually evangelized by St.
Thomas the Apostle in 52 AD, understood that this school gym where we expats
attended our weekly service was holy ground. And so they removed their shoes
before coming to the rail, an echo of the story from the Old Testament this
morning where God instructs Moses to remove his sandals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">Now when we have heard this story, we
have usually concluded that God is commanding Moses not to bring his dirty
sandals onto sacred ground. But those of you who have walked on hot dirty
ground know that while the sandals you wear may have dirt on them, your feet
aren’t exactly gardens of roses either. Sweaty, smelly, dirty, dusty. So maybe
it isn’t about the shoes, per se. But what else could it be?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">Anybody here ever participate in a
foot-washing ceremony on Maundy Thursday? Some of you, yes. Is there anything
that can make you feel more shy than showing your feet to a stranger who will
actually bathe your feet? Our feet are not really the prettiest part of our
body. As I get older, my feet look more and more wretched, and I’m shy about
them. Did you know that nail salons do record business on Maundy Thursday with
all those who want their feet to look nice for the foot-washing? We are shy
about being barefoot, where everyone can see our bunions and hammertoes and
that toe where the nail fell off after we ran the marathon, and the rough skin.
When our feet are exposed, we feel vulnerable. Part of that vulnerability is
the look of them, part of it is the fact that if we step on the wrong thing,
they’ll hurt. Any parent who has stepped barefoot on a Lego in the idle of the
night can attest to that. Vulnerable, open, showing a part of ourselves that we
may not necessarily be comfortable showing. Taking away the pretense that we
are in control…because in our hearts we know we are not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">I wonder if what God was doing when he
had that conversation with Moses and told him to take his sandals off was to
deliberately put him into a place of vulnerability. After all, taking off foot
protection in a part of the world where the sand can be 120 degrees and where
there are scorpions…that’s a risk, right? Is he willing to engage in a
conversation with God while his feet are so vulnerable? Is he willing to engage
in a conversation with God while his heart is so vulnerable? Perhaps God wants
him to stop wearing a mask of a simple shepherd married to a Midianite woman
and live in to who he truly is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">After all, Moses is something of an
outlaw. He’s got more than bunions to hide. He had once had a great
relationship with Pharaoh – he was a foster child in Pharaoh’s family, remember
from last week? – but now he is a runaway and suspect by the Hebrews because
he’d grown up in Pharaoh’s household and suspect by the Egyptians because he
killed a slave master who had been beating a Hebrew slave. He is someone who is
looking over his shoulder, even in Midian, wondering when his complicated past
is going to catch up with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">But it is not his past that catches up
with him, it is his future. A future that he hears in the voice from the
burning bush, giving him orders that he cannot imagine carrying out. And the
only way he can live into the command he is given, to help the Israelites be
free from the yoke of Pharaoh, to lead them to a new land, is to shed all the
things that he believes protect him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">It’s no surprise that Moses’ response
to this command is one we might identify with: “Who, me? The Israelites have no
reason to believe me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">And God gives instructions to this
complicated and frightened man. He tells him what the future’s promise is, and
it is being Moses’ imagining. He tells him to be vulnerable and brave. And so
begins a chapter in the story of God’s people that requires all who are freed
from the yoke of Pharaoh to be both vulnerable and brave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">They are to take off the familiar
feeling of painful oppression – we sometimes cling to the present existence
even if it is painful because at least we know what it is and that which is
unknown is scary – and they are to go on a journey. They have no idea it’s
going to take 40 years, but they must be vulnerable and brave if they are to be
the people of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">I think of that when I remember those
sari-clad women in an Anglican church in the Middle East, where Christianity is
not the dominant religion, taking off their shoes to come to the rail. And
those feet, some old and cracked, some young with chipped nail polish…so very
human, so very vulnerable…and so very brave. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">They, like the rest of us in that
church, were strangers in another land. None of us knew whether we would be
viewed as friends or as aliens there. But in that church on the Persian Gulf,
we all were vulnerable. We all were aliens. But we all were on a journey.
Perhaps we were working there. Perhaps we were studying there. Perhaps we were
teaching there. Members of that church ranged from ambassadors to taxi drivers,
from nannies to deans of universities. None of us knew what the future would
bring. And yet, we were together in that holy place on holy ground, stripping
ourselves of all that we were using to mask our true selves, making our selves
vulnerable and brave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">This church is on a journey. It has
been wonderful and painful and eye-opening and difficult. Here’s the good news:
we’re almost there. We’ve made ourselves vulnerable and brave. Sometimes we’ve
shown our best selves. Sometimes, not so much. That’s part of being human,
isn’t it? Even Moses messed up every now and again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">So stand on this holy ground. Know that
the great I AM stands here with us. Know that Canaan awaits. Keep your shoes
off so you remember what vulnerability feels like. Keep your hearts open so you
can hear God’s voice, because our hearts are holy ground. Stand on this holy
ground, and thank God for it, for all that has gone before and all that is to
come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">Take off all pretense that you are in
control. God is in control. Thanks be to God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">Amen.<b style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-43939852566454631972017-08-13T06:34:00.000-04:002017-08-13T20:46:50.212-04:00Sermon for Sunday, August 13, 2017 Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 “Siblings and Selling Away”<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I was an
only child. I didn’t understand the tensions between siblings because I had no
model for it. It was only when I had a family of my own – 5 kids - that I saw the continual battle between love
and frustration, between giving attention and fostering independence, between
not enough time and endless needs, that is sometimes called sibling rivalry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Because
there were five of them, they tended to pair off into battle units. We would
call it the pick and poke show. M and B would pick and poke at each other over
who would play with the electronic game. C and S would pick and poke at each
other over who was the better snowboarder. A would pick and poke at S, and he
back, when she wanted him to play with her and he preferred playing with his
own friends. They would get attention (negative, but attention is attention)
from their father or me in this time-honored way. Sometimes an elder brother
would protect or play with his younger sister or brother, but more often it was
like “Game of Thrones” with Lite-Brite sneakers on and Nerf weapons instead of
capes and armor and war swords.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sibling
rivalry. It’s a bear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We see
sibling rivalry in all its glory in our Old Testament reading today. It’s the
story of Joseph, popularized by the musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat” a couple of decades ago. In the musical, we see Joseph as the
annoying favored brother who seems to get all the goodies from Dad, who
interprets dreams in a way that suggests that this is an attention-getting
trick, who doesn’t do work, just spouts off all the time. All of this is set to lively pop music, which tends to minimize the harder parts of the text. The brothers’
convenient opportunity to get rid of him by selling him to Midianite traders
who took him to Egypt as a slave for example? It’s often played for laughs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">But it
wasn’t a laughing matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The good
news, if there was good news, was that the brothers didn’t kill him. But they
sold him away – SOLD HIM – into slavery for 20 silver pieces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What do we
sell, and why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In
Charlottesville yesterday, thousands of people gathered in support of and
against the alt-right. Our Bishops were there. Many of our clergy were there,
to stand in witness to God’s love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Those who
support a return to white power, to white dominance, to honoring those who
fought to keep slaves and who thought those slaves less than human, were there
in force. They don’t like people with brown or black skin. They don’t like
Jews. They don’t like Muslims. They align with some groups who are arguing for
secession of the South –if you don’t believe me, read yesterday’s
Times-Dispatch Section A Page 4 – as a whites-only nation. And their beliefs
are horrible. We call them neo-Nazis, or worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Those who
protested against them believe God created us all regardless of color,
religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or country of origin as God’s beloved
children. They believe that our diversity gives us strength. They believe that all
should be valued, all should be loved, all should have an equal shot in this
nation, and equal protections. This church aligns with this view, rather than
that of the white supremacists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">So is there
anything wrong with that? We’re preaching the Gospel, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Of course
we are, but here’s where it gets difficult, friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Turn to
this story of Joseph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We know Joseph is a
show-off jerk. He gets preferential treatment from his father. He has the
privilege of prophetic dreams. He regularly makes his brothers furious, because
it is just not fair, and he is probably the most annoying sibling on the
planet. They want him to disappear, because his very presence rubs their skin
and their psyche raw. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Just like
tweets from a certain person do to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Just like
guys who look strikingly like Adolph Hitler in Charlottesville do to us all.
And I’ve got to admit that when I read the article about the South seceding to
create an all-white or alt-right nation, I said, “let ‘em do it so we don’t
have to put up with this nonsense anymore.” I would have been happy to sell
them into a separate place where I didn’t have to deal with them anymore, just
to get them out of my face. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">But
siblings are persistent, even annoying ones. God finds a way to thread them
back through our stories, the thistles in the flax. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We know
Joseph goes through trials and tribulations in Egypt but eventually becomes a
powerful person who brings aid to his family and his people. God works through
him in a story that ends up heartwarming in the musical. I doubt it was as
uncomplicated in reality, but good does come of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">So am I
saying that we should go all “Kumbaya” and hug our local racist as if the
belief in racism is just fine, just an alternate truth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Am I saying
that God will sort it out, so we should keep silent about the evil of white supremacist words and actions, which left three people dead yesterday?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No. But
neither can we sell our brothers, abhorrent as their beliefs are, into
isolation. We work and we speak and we name evil for what it is. And starting today, we pray. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When we
pray today, pray not only for those who live the gospel. Pray not only for
those who are persecuted, called “nigger, rag-head, wetback, greaser, Jew-boy,
faggot, dyke” but also for those who said those names. Pray not only for those
who preach the Gospel of peace but also for those who want to foment war
against those who are “other.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Why?
Because who needs God to soften their stiff hearts more than the name-callers,
the racists, the bigots, the homophobes? And if we simply sell them off into a
silo of tainted wheat, we lose the opportunity to work the yeast of God’s love
into them for transformation. The moment that we demonize them, we make them
“other” too. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We try to
love as God loves. It’ a bear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There’s a
famous picture of a teenaged white girl taunting a black girl, Elizabeth
Eckford, one of the Little Rock 9, who was part of the group trying to
integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. The white girl, Hazel
Bryan, was caught by the camera spewing an epithet at Elizabeth. Over time,
Hazel realized what she had done, and in the early 1960’s she called Elizabeth
and apologized. She disaffiliated from the church she belonged to that espoused
racism. She read about black history and the civil rights movement. She
changed. They became friends. Their picture in which they embraced was taken by the same photographer that took
that original iconic and painful shot. They were on Oprah together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A beautiful
story, right? Well, that isn’t the end of the story. The friendship unraveled.
Hazel continued to be shunned and demonized from those in the white community
who saw her as a race traitor and from those in the African-American community
who were still haunted by the 1957 picture. She was made “other” and no one
acknowledged how much it cost her. That racism cost Elizabeth, there is no doubt, and we all
own that, to our shame. That it cost Hazel, not so much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The
“othering” thing, it’s a bear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The author
of a recent book about Elizabeth and Hazel wrote “</span><span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">So the famous photograph of 1957 takes on additional meaning:
the continuing chasm between the races and the great difficulty, even among
people of good will, to pull off real racial reconciliation. But shuttling back
and forth between them, I could see that for all their harsh words—over the
past decade, they’ve only dug in their heels—they still missed one another.
Each, I noticed, teared up at references to the other. Perhaps, when no one is
looking—or taking any pictures—they’ll yet come together again. And if they
can, maybe, so too, can we.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But how can
we, if we simply make those who walk the wrong path into monsters? If we simply
define them as stupid and wrong rather than children of God whose BELIEFS are
wrong? If we refuse to engage in the patient and difficult work of
reconciliation, if we simply want the warm and fuzzy clickbait of a television
advertisement with multiracial children to con us into believing we are now a
postracial society? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Transformation
is not easy. It’s a bear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">So back to
Joseph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Sibling
rivalry was at play in the story of Joseph. He was sold, and somehow even after
that he was redeemed and made an agent of God. So too were those who sold him
into slavery. In the musical, it was all about the embrace. But I suspect that family dinners at the Jacob house weren’t
exactly easy times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And yet we
can imagine there were dinners. And yet we can imagine there was conversation,
as strained as it might have been. If we sell away those with whom we disagree,
what do we lose? The chance for conversation. The chance for love to convert even the
hardest of hearts. The chance for transformation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">So again I
say to you, pray for the ones whose beliefs you find most abhorrent, whether
that’s an alt-right person in Charlottesville who drove his car into a crowd of peaceful counterdemonstrators or someone who sends out
disturbing tweets that seem to absolve an act of domestic terrorism. Pray for Kim Jong-Un, even if he scares the stuffing out of
you. Pray for ISIS fighters, who seem irredeemable. Pray for God to transform
them, because it seems only God can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As we heard a
couple of weeks ago, it’s easy to pray for the people we like. Time to pray, and
pray hard, for those whom we’d prefer to sell away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Prayer.
Sometimes it’s a bear. But it’s a bear we need to wrestle with. It's a starting point for the work that is ahead of us. Selling away is
not the answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #281b21; font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Amen.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-45618466910076985052016-11-20T06:00:00.002-05:002016-11-21T11:19:44.618-05:00Sermon for Sunday, November 20, 2016 St Peter’s Arlington Luke 22:23-43 “Whom Do You See?”<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s good to be back at
St Peter’s. For those of you who don’t know me, this parish finally was able to
get some relief from my presence by sending me off to seminary in 2006.
Actually, I’m kidding - this parish was
a blessing to me in so many ways, not the least of which was supporting my
candidacy for ordination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">One of the things I did
while I was a parishioner here was to be a part of the icon-writing group
taught by Irena Beliakova. We met every Saturday down in the old basement for a
couple of hours of prayer, icon writing, and a whole lot of sighing. Sighing
mostly because we couldn’t get our brushes to do as we wanted, or we couldn’t
figure out the right color, or just because it was a hard spiritual discipline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But eventually, with
the help of our teacher and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we would complete
an icon, and it always was greater than the sum of its parts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Icons are wondrous
things. I know to some of you they look like artwork, but they are so much
more. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">First, a point of clarification: they are not meant to be a teaching tool
like stained glass windows. No, they are an aid to prayer, a window into
heaven. When you look at one, at first glance it looks strange – elongated
limbs, no attention to Western rules of proportion, serious faces, odd symbols.
You might recognize the person portrayed in the icon – Jesus, Mary, Elijah, St.
Peter – but it’s hard to connect with the image at first. But when you spend
some time with them, you find yourself looking through them rather than at
them. You see beyond the image on the board, into a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Let me say that again.
You see BEYOND the image into another space, a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I spent the past week
on retreat down in North Carolina, writing an icon. Most of the icon-writing
time was spent in blessed silence. Since most of my workweek is spent talking
to people, silence is precious, and this week was doubly precious, because I
had no phone access, no interruptions, no unnecessary conversations…just writing
an icon, the one that portrays that moment when Mary Magdalene encounters the
newly risen Jesus outside the tomb. Once she recognizes him, she reaches out to
embrace him. He says, “don’t touch me. It isn’t the time for us to touch.” It’s
a blow to her, but as she looks at him, she realizes that the man she sees is
not the same person she knew. He is transformed. Not just marks in his hands
and feet, but he is different. She sees beyond the image she has had of Jesus,
her rabbi and friend, to what he has become, the risen Lord, and she has to
accept the impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s a powerful icon.
Jesus looks at her with tenderness, recognizing her confusion. She looks at
Jesus longingly, wanting nothing more than the comfort of touch after the week
that preceded it…she reaches to him and he holds his hand up as if to say
“don’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But she sees beyond
what she thought she saw when he said “Mary.” She sees a transformed person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Mary Magdalene is not
the first person to see something different in Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">As we hear in today’s gospel, most everybody
at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion sees – what? A loser. A failed rabbi and
political provocateur who is going to pay for his transgressions with his life.
His friends and followers have deserted him. Only a few women stand off in the
distance – his mother and a few others. They see a beloved one whose mission
seems to have failed, but they stay, watching the horrible scene, because they
love him and they must bear witness. He
is still their Jesus: their understanding of Jesus, their image of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But as he hangs from
the cross, in this most ignominious of poses, there is one who sees something
different. And it is an unlikely person – another person being crucified. Perhaps
it is desperation, perhaps it is a revelation, but this criminal sees the man
next to him as something other than another victim of Roman justice. He sees
one who is truly a King – Christ the King. He sees beyond the pain and the lash
marks and the blood dripping from hands and feet and sees majesty and power. He
sees Christ the King. No followers, not even Peter, the Rock who would be the
foundation of the church, see Christ the King in this moment. Only a criminal,
a thief, the least trustworthy of persons, sees this crucified rabbi as Christ
the King.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I wonder if we had been
there, if we had the stomach for the spectacle, what we would have seen. My
guess is that we would not have seen a king, we would have seen a failure. Now it’s
easy for <u>us</u> to say who it is – we went to Sunday school after all – but
without that, how would we have seen beyond the visual image to what existed
behind it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">That happens a lot
these days – we make a judgment on what we see based upon visual evidence
without looking deeper, without looking at the person behind the person. It’s
the sort of thing that leads to demonization – the awful language we heard in
recent weeks in the political sphere. We reduce the person whom we don’t like
to a catchphrase or a judgmental witticism, despite the fact that we know that
we human beings are infinitely more complicated than a snarky catchphrase can
convey. It gives us a feel of control, doesn’t it, this reduction of a person
to a judgment?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But it denies something
very important about each and every one of us, and here’s where I turn back to
the notion of icons and iconography. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">What is one of the
first things we learn as we study our Christian faith? That human beings are
made in the image of God. We humans are the closest thing we can get to what
God is. We can’t imagine what God looks like, but if we look at ourselves,
that’s a start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">In other words, we are
icons of God. It is through us that we see God. Each and every one of us. Each
and every one of us is an icon of Creator God, of Christ the King, of the Holy
Spirit that sustains us. If we look at each other and look beyond our human
failings, what do we see? We see our Trinitarian God. We are the icons of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">So now that we know
that, does it seem right to disrespect other human beings by calling them
names, by dismissing whole groups of people as bad in gross generalizations, by
classifying them in ways that meet political expediency rather than recognizing
that they are icons of God, of Christ the King?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Think of it this way:
if you looked at that thief being crucified, it would be easy to simply say
“that’s a bad person who robbed others of their honestly earned goods.” But if
you looked beyond the visual, into someone who, despite his brokenness, was an
icon of God, you would see why he was capable of recognizing Christ the King. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Exteriors are
deceiving. Look to the heart rather than the exterior. Look through the icon to
the God who created him. Visualize every human being, even the one you disdain,
as a sneak peek into who the King is who reigns among us, and then…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">…treat them
accordingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Amen.<b style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-1414830981030221642016-11-20T06:00:00.001-05:002016-11-21T11:19:29.607-05:00Sermon for Sunday, November 20, 2016 St Peter’s Arlington Luke 22:23-43 “Whom Do You See?”<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s good to be back at
St Peter’s. For those of you who don’t know me, this parish finally was able to
get some relief from my presence by sending me off to seminary in 2006.
Actually, I’m kidding - this parish was
a blessing to me in so many ways, not the least of which was supporting my
candidacy for ordination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">One of the things I did
while I was a parishioner here was to be a part of the icon-writing group
taught by Irena Beliakova. We met every Saturday down in the old basement for a
couple of hours of prayer, icon writing, and a whole lot of sighing. Sighing
mostly because we couldn’t get our brushes to do as we wanted, or we couldn’t
figure out the right color, or just because it was a hard spiritual discipline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But eventually, with
the help of our teacher and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we would complete
an icon, and it always was greater than the sum of its parts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Icons are wondrous
things. I know to some of you they look like artwork, but they are so much
more. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">First, a point of clarification: they are not meant to be a teaching tool
like stained glass windows. No, they are an aid to prayer, a window into
heaven. When you look at one, at first glance it looks strange – elongated
limbs, no attention to Western rules of proportion, serious faces, odd symbols.
You might recognize the person portrayed in the icon – Jesus, Mary, Elijah, St.
Peter – but it’s hard to connect with the image at first. But when you spend
some time with them, you find yourself looking through them rather than at
them. You see beyond the image on the board, into a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Let me say that again.
You see BEYOND the image into another space, a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I spent the past week
on retreat down in North Carolina, writing an icon. Most of the icon-writing
time was spent in blessed silence. Since most of my workweek is spent talking
to people, silence is precious, and this week was doubly precious, because I
had no phone access, no interruptions, no unnecessary conversations…just writing
an icon, the one that portrays that moment when Mary Magdalene encounters the
newly risen Jesus outside the tomb. Once she recognizes him, she reaches out to
embrace him. He says, “don’t touch me. It isn’t the time for us to touch.” It’s
a blow to her, but as she looks at him, she realizes that the man she sees is
not the same person she knew. He is transformed. Not just marks in his hands
and feet, but he is different. She sees beyond the image she has had of Jesus,
her rabbi and friend, to what he has become, the risen Lord, and she has to
accept the impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s a powerful icon.
Jesus looks at her with tenderness, recognizing her confusion. She looks at
Jesus longingly, wanting nothing more than the comfort of touch after the week
that preceded it…she reaches to him and he holds his hand up as if to say
“don’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But she sees beyond
what she thought she saw when he said “Mary.” She sees a transformed person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Mary Magdalene is not
the first person to see something different in Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">As we hear in today’s gospel, most everybody
at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion sees – what? A loser. A failed rabbi and
political provocateur who is going to pay for his transgressions with his life.
His friends and followers have deserted him. Only a few women stand off in the
distance – his mother and a few others. They see a beloved one whose mission
seems to have failed, but they stay, watching the horrible scene, because they
love him and they must bear witness. He
is still their Jesus: their understanding of Jesus, their image of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But as he hangs from
the cross, in this most ignominious of poses, there is one who sees something
different. And it is an unlikely person – another person being crucified. Perhaps
it is desperation, perhaps it is a revelation, but this criminal sees the man
next to him as something other than another victim of Roman justice. He sees
one who is truly a King – Christ the King. He sees beyond the pain and the lash
marks and the blood dripping from hands and feet and sees majesty and power. He
sees Christ the King. No followers, not even Peter, the Rock who would be the
foundation of the church, see Christ the King in this moment. Only a criminal,
a thief, the least trustworthy of persons, sees this crucified rabbi as Christ
the King.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I wonder if we had been
there, if we had the stomach for the spectacle, what we would have seen. My
guess is that we would not have seen a king, we would have seen a failure. Now it’s
easy for <u>us</u> to say who it is – we went to Sunday school after all – but
without that, how would we have seen beyond the visual image to what existed
behind it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">That happens a lot
these days – we make a judgment on what we see based upon visual evidence
without looking deeper, without looking at the person behind the person. It’s
the sort of thing that leads to demonization – the awful language we heard in
recent weeks in the political sphere. We reduce the person whom we don’t like
to a catchphrase or a judgmental witticism, despite the fact that we know that
we human beings are infinitely more complicated than a snarky catchphrase can
convey. It gives us a feel of control, doesn’t it, this reduction of a person
to a judgment?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But it denies something
very important about each and every one of us, and here’s where I turn back to
the notion of icons and iconography. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">What is one of the
first things we learn as we study our Christian faith? That human beings are
made in the image of God. We humans are the closest thing we can get to what
God is. We can’t imagine what God looks like, but if we look at ourselves,
that’s a start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">In other words, we are
icons of God. It is through us that we see God. Each and every one of us. Each
and every one of us is an icon of Creator God, of Christ the King, of the Holy
Spirit that sustains us. If we look at each other and look beyond our human
failings, what do we see? We see our Trinitarian God. We are the icons of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">So now that we know
that, does it seem right to disrespect other human beings by calling them
names, by dismissing whole groups of people as bad in gross generalizations, by
classifying them in ways that meet political expediency rather than recognizing
that they are icons of God, of Christ the King?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Think of it this way:
if you looked at that thief being crucified, it would be easy to simply say
“that’s a bad person who robbed others of their honestly earned goods.” But if
you looked beyond the visual, into someone who, despite his brokenness, was an
icon of God, you would see why he was capable of recognizing Christ the King. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Exteriors are
deceiving. Look to the heart rather than the exterior. Look through the icon to
the God who created him. Visualize every human being, even the one you disdain,
as a sneak peek into who the King is who reigns among us, and then…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">…treat them
accordingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Amen.<b style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-64497154883786407992016-11-20T06:00:00.000-05:002016-11-21T11:19:11.945-05:00Sermon for Sunday, November 20, 2016 St Peter’s Arlington Luke 22:23-43 “Whom Do You See?”<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s good to be back at
St Peter’s. For those of you who don’t know me, this parish finally was able to
get some relief from my presence by sending me off to seminary in 2006.
Actually, I’m kidding - this parish was
a blessing to me in so many ways, not the least of which was supporting my
candidacy for ordination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">One of the things I did
while I was a parishioner here was to be a part of the icon-writing group
taught by Irena Beliakova. We met every Saturday down in the old basement for a
couple of hours of prayer, icon writing, and a whole lot of sighing. Sighing
mostly because we couldn’t get our brushes to do as we wanted, or we couldn’t
figure out the right color, or just because it was a hard spiritual discipline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But eventually, with
the help of our teacher and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we would complete
an icon, and it always was greater than the sum of its parts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Icons are wondrous
things. I know to some of you they look like artwork, but they are so much
more. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">First, a point of clarification: they are not meant to be a teaching tool
like stained glass windows. No, they are an aid to prayer, a window into
heaven. When you look at one, at first glance it looks strange – elongated
limbs, no attention to Western rules of proportion, serious faces, odd symbols.
You might recognize the person portrayed in the icon – Jesus, Mary, Elijah, St.
Peter – but it’s hard to connect with the image at first. But when you spend
some time with them, you find yourself looking through them rather than at
them. You see beyond the image on the board, into a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Let me say that again.
You see BEYOND the image into another space, a divine space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I spent the past week
on retreat down in North Carolina, writing an icon. Most of the icon-writing
time was spent in blessed silence. Since most of my workweek is spent talking
to people, silence is precious, and this week was doubly precious, because I
had no phone access, no interruptions, no unnecessary conversations…just writing
an icon, the one that portrays that moment when Mary Magdalene encounters the
newly risen Jesus outside the tomb. Once she recognizes him, she reaches out to
embrace him. He says, “don’t touch me. It isn’t the time for us to touch.” It’s
a blow to her, but as she looks at him, she realizes that the man she sees is
not the same person she knew. He is transformed. Not just marks in his hands
and feet, but he is different. She sees beyond the image she has had of Jesus,
her rabbi and friend, to what he has become, the risen Lord, and she has to
accept the impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">It’s a powerful icon.
Jesus looks at her with tenderness, recognizing her confusion. She looks at
Jesus longingly, wanting nothing more than the comfort of touch after the week
that preceded it…she reaches to him and he holds his hand up as if to say
“don’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But she sees beyond
what she thought she saw when he said “Mary.” She sees a transformed person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Mary Magdalene is not
the first person to see something different in Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">As we hear in today’s gospel, most everybody
at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion sees – what? A loser. A failed rabbi and
political provocateur who is going to pay for his transgressions with his life.
His friends and followers have deserted him. Only a few women stand off in the
distance – his mother and a few others. They see a beloved one whose mission
seems to have failed, but they stay, watching the horrible scene, because they
love him and they must bear witness. He
is still their Jesus: their understanding of Jesus, their image of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But as he hangs from
the cross, in this most ignominious of poses, there is one who sees something
different. And it is an unlikely person – another person being crucified. Perhaps
it is desperation, perhaps it is a revelation, but this criminal sees the man
next to him as something other than another victim of Roman justice. He sees
one who is truly a King – Christ the King. He sees beyond the pain and the lash
marks and the blood dripping from hands and feet and sees majesty and power. He
sees Christ the King. No followers, not even Peter, the Rock who would be the
foundation of the church, see Christ the King in this moment. Only a criminal,
a thief, the least trustworthy of persons, sees this crucified rabbi as Christ
the King.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">I wonder if we had been
there, if we had the stomach for the spectacle, what we would have seen. My
guess is that we would not have seen a king, we would have seen a failure. Now it’s
easy for <u>us</u> to say who it is – we went to Sunday school after all – but
without that, how would we have seen beyond the visual image to what existed
behind it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">That happens a lot
these days – we make a judgment on what we see based upon visual evidence
without looking deeper, without looking at the person behind the person. It’s
the sort of thing that leads to demonization – the awful language we heard in
recent weeks in the political sphere. We reduce the person whom we don’t like
to a catchphrase or a judgmental witticism, despite the fact that we know that
we human beings are infinitely more complicated than a snarky catchphrase can
convey. It gives us a feel of control, doesn’t it, this reduction of a person
to a judgment?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">But it denies something
very important about each and every one of us, and here’s where I turn back to
the notion of icons and iconography. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">What is one of the
first things we learn as we study our Christian faith? That human beings are
made in the image of God. We humans are the closest thing we can get to what
God is. We can’t imagine what God looks like, but if we look at ourselves,
that’s a start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">In other words, we are
icons of God. It is through us that we see God. Each and every one of us. Each
and every one of us is an icon of Creator God, of Christ the King, of the Holy
Spirit that sustains us. If we look at each other and look beyond our human
failings, what do we see? We see our Trinitarian God. We are the icons of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">So now that we know
that, does it seem right to disrespect other human beings by calling them
names, by dismissing whole groups of people as bad in gross generalizations, by
classifying them in ways that meet political expediency rather than recognizing
that they are icons of God, of Christ the King?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Think of it this way:
if you looked at that thief being crucified, it would be easy to simply say
“that’s a bad person who robbed others of their honestly earned goods.” But if
you looked beyond the visual, into someone who, despite his brokenness, was an
icon of God, you would see why he was capable of recognizing Christ the King. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Exteriors are
deceiving. Look to the heart rather than the exterior. Look through the icon to
the God who created him. Visualize every human being, even the one you disdain,
as a sneak peek into who the King is who reigns among us, and then…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">…treat them
accordingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Amen.<b style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-88089996845988808572016-10-11T19:30:00.000-04:002016-10-11T19:30:12.404-04:00Sermon for Roger Thorpe’s Memorial Service, Tuesday, October 11, 2016<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Good evening. I am Mary Thorpe, Roger’s daughter-in-law.
It is my privilege to say a few words this evening. Please know that the whole
family deeply appreciates your prayers, your love, and your presence here as we
reflect on Roger and on our faith. This has been a difficult few days, and your
care has helped the family weather this hard journey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eileen and the family asked for two
wonderful texts to be read for this service, ones that resonate as we think of
this particular Christian life, now come to its peaceful end. The first is a
portion of Psalm 139, the second, one of the most powerful passages from the
Gospel of Matthew. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At first glance, it might seem that these
passages are not what one would expect at a funeral. Where’s the “In my Father’s
House there are many rooms?” Where’s the invocation of the Good Shepherd
leading the weary lamb to a place of rest? Where’s the moment when our tears
are dried?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">No, none of the old favorites that have been
preached on for centuries as we laid our beloveds to rest. Instead, something
different. Something more appropriate to this man and this moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Think of Psalm 139. It is absolutely clear about the
relationship between the speaker and the Lord. God knows this person inside
out. The Psalmist cannot escape from God’s
intimate knowledge of him – that beautiful language of being formed in his
mother’s womb, of not being separated even in the darkness, because darkness is
as light to God. He lists possible ways that the speaker could be far from God,
and in each case, he cannot escape God. God is always present. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In some secular story lines, this might seem a
frightening proposition: I cannot escape from this all-powerful being! As the
Old Testament scholar Robert Alter notes, we hear the same sort of language in the
Book of Job, Chapter 10. There, Job is angry and frustrated and confused and
would prefer that God not be so close. But in this psalm, immediately,
IMMEDIATELY, there is no fear. This speaker is absolutely delighted that God
knows him: it is a marvel to him. The speaker implies, as well, that this deep
and close relationship gives him a peek into the mind of God. Not all of it, of
course, but glimpses : “</span><sup><span style="color: #777777; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">17</span></sup><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!</span><sup><span style="color: #777777; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">18</span></sup><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I try to count
them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.” The
passage closes with a request: search me and know me, and if you find anything vexing,
lead me to the right path. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ah, vexing things! My family will attest
that there are more than a few vexing things about me. There are times when I mess
up. I sin. And when I sin, I am ashamed. In my shame, I don’t want to be known
by God, I want to hide. But the Psalmist does exactly the opposite: because he
wants to be the person God created him to be, he not only accepts that God will
know his flaws, but he invites God’s examination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Why? Because he knows his heavenly Father
loves him. He knows that God’s greatest desire is his striving for perfection. He
also knows that it is probably impossible to be perfect, but that it is God’s good
pleasure that he should want to be perfected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Imagine a life that is based on trust that
God’s knowledge of you is not something to fear, but to invite. Imagine a life
that accepts that one can never completely know God, but only every now and
again see glimpses of the divine, and fully believe that is enough. Imagine a
life that is an ongoing intimate conversation between loving Creator and
beloved Creation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Imagine a life like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That was the angle of view between Roger and
his God. That was Roger’s life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So hold on to that thought. We’ll talk more
on that in a minute…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Matthew’s Gospel. Chapter 25, a final
teaching before Jesus’ arrest and death. It’s an apocalyptic vision, the final
judgment, the sorting. What are the things that the favored ones have done that
get them put into the “sheep” column rather than tossed onto the “goat” pile?
The short answer is that they paid attention, way back in Chapter 5 when Jesus
taught the crowds the Beatitudes. They not only paid attention, they did
something about it. They recognized that it was not enough to simply hear the
Word, the Word needed – demanded - to be
acted upon. And in this apocalyptic vision, those actions were best
accomplished not because followers of Jesus thought God was watching, or the
world was watching. They were best
accomplished not because they were currying favor with their Creator. They were
best accomplished in quiet and invisible ways, when you didn’t think you were
doing it directly for Christ, but because every person in the world was beloved
of Christ. Lepers, Samaritans, fallen women, tax collectors, Roman centurions, mothers-in-law,
anyone…all were worthy of loving care and support, because all were loved by
their Creator. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Imagine now a life where medical care was
given without the eyes of the world seeing what was happening. Imagine ill people
being carried for days to be cared for by the one doctor who served an area
equivalent in size to Illinois and Indiana put together. Patients may have been
too far gone for the doctor to do more than provide comfort, but he did that.
They may not have looked like the Warner Sallman portrait of Jesus so
prominently displayed in just about every Covenant Church I’ve visited, but
they were cared for as if it was the Lord himself. Imagine a doctor who learned
how to grind eyeglass lenses so that patients could see, and who else was going
to do it? Imagine a surgeon who brought food from his own home on the mission
station to patients who had no one to bring them sustenance. Imagine a life
devoted to those whose need was invisible to most of the world, a life of
welcoming new babies into the world and ushering dying souls to God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Imagine such a life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That was Roger’s life, a life that now has come to a close.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When we come to the end of our life, there
is an awareness that there will at some point be a sorting. There is a question
that lingers in our hearts: will I be counted as a sheep or a goat? If God
looks into my heart and at my life, will I be judged a faithful servant? We
know our own weaknesses and failures, and we worry. But we need not do so. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Because even if we Christians cannot fully
know the mind of God, we do know two things. Our God loves us, and our Lord has
saved us. We believe in Jesus’ resurrection; we believe, too, that we will be
with him at the end. We need not worry about that sorting, because we have been
saved. We don’t believe in works righteousness, where God ticks off all the
awesome things we’ve done and weighs it against our failures, and we only get
eternal reward if the good side outweighs the other, because we have been
saved.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So what does this mean when we look at the
life of this good and faithful Christian servant who humbly sought to use his
gifts to do God’s will? We see what it looks like when we know God as God knows
us. We see what it looks like when we’ve paid attention to the Beatitudes, and
we realize that it’s not just the listening to them, but acting upon them. We
see the joy of ever being known and ever being perfected by the one who has
always known us and has always loved us. This is what it looks like to live a
life of belief. Roger did what he did in his life because he could not NOT do
it, because of what the Lord did for him. He is saved. So are we all. May he
rest in peace; we fully trust he will rise in glory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-86258017337675858632016-10-09T08:00:00.000-04:002016-10-09T08:00:30.719-04:00Sermon for Sunday, October 9, 2016 Luke 17:11-19 “Identity”<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Good morning! I am Mary Thorpe, Director of Transition Ministry for the
Diocese of Virginia, and it is my privilege to be here with you as you adjust
to a new reality without Rev. D at the helm of this wonderful parish. It is
the work of my department to support you in this time of transition. Your
bishops and your diocesan staff are your resource, the folks you can lean on,
as you look toward the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">The readings we have today seem to have very little to do with your
situation…and yet they do. That’s the blessing of the lectionary – it seems
that every time something happens in our lives that shakes us, there is a
thread in the lectionary that speaks to our souls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">So in today’s readings, we hear two stories about people afflicted with
leprosy, and how they are affected by it as well as how they deal with their
affliction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Well, what does leprosy have to do with St P's? On the
face of it, not much. But let’s explore a little bit and see what we can find.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Leprosy was a feared disease in the ancient world. It was viewed as a
sign of being unclean. Lepers had to survive by begging, living outside the
gates of the city. There was fear, too, that this was a transmittable disease –
we know now that Hansen’s disease, as leprosy is now called, is not infectious
in that way. But in those days, people who suffered from this affliction were
ostracized, kept out of the community, were known not as brothers or mothers or
children but as outcasts who must announce themselves by ringing a bell and
calling out “unclean, unclean!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">In other words, they lost their identity. They became known only as
their affliction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">This is not only a phenomenon of the past. When I was in chaplaincy
training at a hospital in Washington, there was a tendency to refer to patients
by their ailment. “The gallbladder in 4West.” “The terminal pancreatic cancer
in that room.” “The teen with end-stage AIDS.” Not Mrs. Jones. Not Fred Smith.
Not Angela. Their identity was subsumed by their disease.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Nowadays, they train doctors not to refer to patients in this way, but
the practice still lingers. And it’s not surprising. When we are focused on our
own illness, we tend to be consumed with talk about it. When a loved one is
ill, everything is about the symptoms or the treatment or the prognosis. Even
in referring to ourselves, our illnesses become a primary identity, and we
forget how we are so much more than that. There is a loss of identity, or at
the very least a shift in identity, when there is illness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">So now we turn back to the Gospel. A group of lepers encounter Jesus on
the road. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">They ask him for mercy. He heals them. No big surprise there – he usually
heals those who ask for his help. He doesn’t ask questions, he simply cares for
them. He doesn’t sort them into good people or bad people, or Jews or Gentiles,
or men or women. He sees each of them as beloved of their Creator, and heals
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Now what happens next is interesting: only one turns back to say thank
you. And in the telling of the story, suddenly there is note paid to the fact
that this grateful man is…a Samaritan. Not a Jew, but a member of a sect that
most Jews would view as unclean simply by virtue of his religious identity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">This is a guy who was viewed as doubly broken, doubly unacceptable,
because he was first, a Samaritan, and second, a leper. His healing solves the
second problem but he is still a Samaritan. Yet he crosses the boundaries, not
denying his identity, not turning from someone he shouldn’t have trusted,
because he sees that Jesus’ love is bigger than that. Jesus doesn’t allow the
peculiarities of one person’s identity to get in the way of loving the man and
healing him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Jesus puts identity in its proper place: a facet of a person, not the
whole of the person’s story. Something that is infinitely more nuanced than we
usually think. By doing that, it becomes perfectly sensible that Jesus should
heal a Samaritan leper. He sees identity differently, not ignoring it but
putting it into its proper context.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Identity matters. When our identity is taken away from us, when we stop
being Mrs. Smith and become the gallbladder in room 4West, we feel we are no
longer visible. Have you ever had the experience of being the patient lying in
the bed, and having doctors talk over your prone form to your spouse or another
doctor? Then you know what I mean! You feel somehow lessened. Your identity is
shrunk into a small box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">But identity is not a one-dimensional thing. It is complex. It evolves,
just as the transition from leper to healed person is an evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">What does this have to do with St P's? I know of the
history of this parish, that there have been times of great conflict and
tension, that you have welcomed parishioners from other conflicted parishes,
that there are still a range of theological points of view in this place. That
is a part of your identity, one that we can celebrate because despite the
struggles you are united in your love for this place and you are looking
forward in hope. But the other part of an evolving identity is to say “that is
a part of our story but it is not the whole of our story.” You are writing your
story as a parish family with love, with spirituality, and with service. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">If you simply choose to identify yourselves as your past story, you
inhibit your ability to write the next chapter, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
If you say “we are fragile because of the struggles of the past,” you deny the
hard work you have done…and the toughness of scar tissue exceeds that of
untested flesh. You are stronger than you may think.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">As you reflect on your identity in this time of change, Jesus suggests
that you see yourselves as you truly are: strong, vibrant, with gifts and ministries
that benefit each other and the larger community. See yourselves as more than
past disputes. See yourselves as Jesus sees you: healed, strengthened, beloved.
And see how that shapes your vision of God’s plan for St. P's.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Your identity is even now growing, because God’s grace keeps you moving
and changing, and that’s a good thing. May God bless St P's,
all of you who are here and those who could not be here, and all those who have
not yet found you but who belong here, and God bless the next chapter of living
into that evolving identity with God’s help.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-4467528059804184242016-10-08T13:52:00.000-04:002016-10-08T13:52:29.390-04:00Sermon for Sunday, September 25, 2016 Holy Comforter, Richmond “A World Turned Upside Down” <div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the past
few weeks we’ve been hearing a series of teachings and parables. We’ve heard
about healing on the Sabbath. We’ve heard about invited poor people to our
table rather than worrying about how close to the host we get to sit. We’ve
heard about how we need to turn our back on familial relationships. We’ve heard
about lost coins and sheep. We’ve heard about the shrewd but dishonest manager.
We’ve heard about a poor beggar at the rich man’s gate getting rewarded and the
rich man having an unpleasant surprise at the other side of eternity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A whole
laundry list of teachings…what’s the common thread?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a world
turned upside down. That’s the thing about Jesus’ teachings. He seemingly never
goes to the expected place in his teachings. He takes the conventional wisdom –
even the conventional religious wisdom of the day – and upends it. Not
surprisingly, that makes people uncomfortable, because we like to think we know
how things work and what being a good and righteous person looks like.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve had a
week of uncomfortable-ness. My world was turned upside down. I was called to
jury duty. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now I know
that it’s our civic duty to do it. I know that I’m not special and don’t get a
bye on doing it. I know all that. But my schedule is horrific. There’s an
endless stream of work in my in-box and voice mail, and I can barely keep up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I wore my
collar to the courthouse in hopes that it would give me a pass. After all, wouldn’t
the attorneys believe that I would be too bound by religious beliefs to be a
good juror? Wouldn’t one side think that I would be an angel of mercy and the
other think I would be an avenging
angel, so either of them might say I couldn’t serve?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know the
saying. You make a plan and God laughs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The one trial
that was starting on Monday was a civil trial. They needed nine jurors. There
were almost 50 of us. “Piece of cake,” I thought. “I’m outta here.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They called
17 people for initial screening. Not me. “Sweet,” I thought. “I’m off the
hook.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lawyers
quizzed folks. Several were relieved of duty. “Hmm,” I thought. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They called a
couple of other people to be asked questions. Not me. “Thank goodness,” I
thought. “That was close.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We broke for
lunch, with orders to come back at 1:30. When we reconvened, there was a
problem. One of the jurors had not returned from lunch. After a lot of to-ing
and fro-ing, they went to their list to call one more name.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mine. Dang
it!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Short story:
I’m on the jury. I’ve been on the jury all week. I can’t talk about the case,
but I can talk, I think, about worlds turned upside down. My world, where my
schedule was blown to smithereens. The world of the defendant, who, it goes
without saying, had to defend himself. The world of the plaintiff, who filed
this case because the plaintiff’s world had been turned upside down and thought
the defendant was responsible. The world of battalions of lawyers who have to
do this for a living, and despite all their carefully constructed strategies,
could not predict some of what was said from the stand. The world of my fellow
jurors, some of whom were missing work, one of whom was 7 months pregnant, all
of whom had other places to be. Even, perhaps, the world of the judge, whose docket
of cases was interfered with by this long case – after a full week of
testimony, we will finally begin deliberations on Monday – and the times when
his administration of this case was interfered with by emergent needs on other
cases on his docket.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But even in
worlds turned upside down, there is grace. I’ve met some wonderful people,
particularly my fellow jurors, who are a motley crew, but we laugh and share
our stories freely in the stuffy little jury room. I’ve heard moments of
tragedy but also moments of deep caring and love in that room and from the
witness stand. I’ve seen experts turned to mush and ordinary folks be voices of
wisdom. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You turn a
rock upside down, you might not like what you see. But if you turn the world
upside down, you may see things that surprise you more positively.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is what
Jesus has been talking about these past few weeks. If you are stuck in one view
of the way things are supposed to be, whether it’s that the poor get a lousy
deal because their parents sinned, or that the conniving manager gets a bye for
his cleverness (remember that one line in last week’s gospel that says “the
children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than
are the children of light” – we’re supposed to be less shrewd, not more)…if
you’re stuck in one view of the way things are supposed to be, you aren’t
looking at the whole picture, you’re missing something.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jesus turns
the world upside down so that we can see the whole of God’s love for us, the
whole of the dark and the light of the world. We are intended to look for the
places where we can be bringers of light by seeing things differently. We are
not intended to simply move through the right-side-up world like zombies
following rules without thinking. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s the
thing: it’s easier to keep the world right-side-up where we think we know what
we’re supposed to do. It’s easier to follow a recipe. But if the only recipe we
receive that truly matters is “Add love,” it requires that we look in all
aspects of the world to see where we’re supposed to add it. If we turn the
world upside down, we may see all sorts of places where behaving differently
from what our right side up world means that we are the love-bringers. And
those who bring us love may be the ones we least expect. It is, after all,
upside down world!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know
what our jury will decide on this case we’ve been hearing all week. I don’t
know what the impact of our decision will be on all who are involved. But I do
know this: it turned my world upside down and I saw things I didn’t expect to
see. I felt God’s love in our work and in my personal reflections. There was a
moment here or there when I may have been a symbol of God’s love – I hope I did
that as God would want. As disorienting and disturbing as being in upside down world
this week has been, I’ve learned something of what Jesus asks of us: look and
really see. Don’t simply follow rules blindly. Questions are not bad things, they are
critical. Look for the love. Look for the light. And trust that you will know,
through God’s Holy Spirit, what you are to do. Both sides of the world need it.
Both sides of the world need you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Amen.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-55903463151864359762016-09-25T06:00:00.000-04:002016-09-25T06:00:06.012-04:00Sermon for Sunday, September 25, 2016 Holy Comforter, Richmond “A World Turned Upside Down” <div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the past
few weeks we’ve been hearing a series of teachings and parables. We’ve heard
about healing on the Sabbath. We’ve heard about invited poor people to our
table rather than worrying about how close to the host we get to sit. We’ve
heard about how we need to turn our back on familial relationships. We’ve heard
about lost coins and sheep. We’ve heard about the shrewd but dishonest manager.
We’ve heard about a poor beggar at the rich man’s gate getting rewarded and the
rich man having an unpleasant surprise at the other side of eternity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A whole
laundry list of teachings…what’s the common thread?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a world
turned upside down. That’s the thing about Jesus’ teachings. He seemingly never
goes to the expected place in his teachings. He takes the conventional wisdom –
even the conventional religious wisdom of the day – and upends it. Not
surprisingly, that makes people uncomfortable, because we like to think we know
how things work and what being a good and righteous person looks like.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve had a
week of uncomfortable-ness. My world was turned upside down. I was called to
jury duty. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now I know
that it’s our civic duty to do it. I know that I’m not special and don’t get a
bye on doing it. I know all that. But my schedule is horrific. There’s an
endless stream of work in my in-box and voice mail, and I can barely keep up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I wore my
collar to the courthouse in hopes that it would give me a pass. After all, wouldn’t
the attorneys believe that I would be too bound by religious beliefs to be a
good juror? Wouldn’t one side think that I would be an angel of mercy and the
other think I would be an avenging
angel, so either of them might say I couldn’t serve?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know the
saying. You make a plan and God laughs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The one trial
that was starting on Monday was a civil trial. They needed nine jurors. There
were almost 50 of us. “Piece of cake,” I thought. “I’m outta here.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They called
17 people for initial screening. Not me. “Sweet,” I thought. “I’m off the
hook.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lawyers
quizzed folks. Several were relieved of duty. “Hmm,” I thought. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They called a
couple of other people to be asked questions. Not me. “Thank goodness,” I
thought. “That was close.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We broke for
lunch, with orders to come back at 1:30. When we reconvened, there was a
problem. One of the jurors had not returned from lunch. After a lot of to-ing
and fro-ing, they went to their list to call one more name.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mine. Dang
it!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Short story:
I’m on the jury. I’ve been on the jury all week. I can’t talk about the case,
but I can talk, I think, about worlds turned upside down. My world, where my
schedule was blown to smithereens. The world of the defendant, who, it goes
without saying, had to defend himself. The world of the plaintiff, who filed
this case because the plaintiff’s world had been turned upside down and thought
the defendant was responsible. The world of battalions of lawyers who have to
do this for a living, and despite all their carefully constructed strategies,
could not predict some of what was said from the stand. The world of my fellow
jurors, some of whom were missing work, one of whom was 7 months pregnant, all
of whom had other places to be. Even, perhaps, the world of the judge, whose docket
of cases was interfered with by this long case – after a full week of
testimony, we will finally begin deliberations on Monday – and the times when
his administration of this case was interfered with by emergent needs on other
cases on his docket.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But even in
worlds turned upside down, there is grace. I’ve met some wonderful people,
particularly my fellow jurors, who are a motley crew, but we laugh and share
our stories freely in the stuffy little jury room. I’ve heard moments of
tragedy but also moments of deep caring and love in that room and from the
witness stand. I’ve seen experts turned to mush and ordinary folks be voices of
wisdom. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You turn a
rock upside down, you might not like what you see. But if you turn the world
upside down, you may see things that surprise you more positively.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is what
Jesus has been talking about these past few weeks. If you are stuck in one view
of the way things are supposed to be, whether it’s that the poor get a lousy
deal because their parents sinned, or that the conniving manager gets a bye for
his cleverness (remember that one line in last week’s gospel that says “the
children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than
are the children of light” – we’re supposed to be less shrewd, not more)…if
you’re stuck in one view of the way things are supposed to be, you aren’t
looking at the whole picture, you’re missing something.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jesus turns
the world upside down so that we can see the whole of God’s love for us, the
whole of the dark and the light of the world. We are intended to look for the
places where we can be bringers of light by seeing things differently. We are
not intended to simply move through the right-side-up world like zombies
following rules without thinking. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s the
thing: it’s easier to keep the world right-side-up where we think we know what
we’re supposed to do. It’s easier to follow a recipe. But if the only recipe we
receive that truly matters is “Add love,” it requires that we look in all
aspects of the world to see where we’re supposed to add it. If we turn the
world upside down, we may see all sorts of places where behaving differently
from what our right side up world means that we are the love-bringers. And
those who bring us love may be the ones we least expect. It is, after all,
upside down world!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know
what our jury will decide on this case we’ve been hearing all week. I don’t
know what the impact of our decision will be on all who are involved. But I do
know this: it turned my world upside down and I saw things I didn’t expect to
see. I felt God’s love in our work and in my personal reflections. There was a
moment here or there when I may have been a symbol of God’s love – I hope I did
that as God would want. As disorienting and disturbing as being in upside down world
this week has been, I’ve learned something of what Jesus asks of us: look and
really see. Don’t simply follow rules blindly. Questions are not bad things, they are
critical. Look for the love. Look for the light. And trust that you will know,
through God’s Holy Spirit, what you are to do. Both sides of the world need it.
Both sides of the world need you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Amen.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-67371737381842181592016-08-08T11:24:00.003-04:002016-08-08T11:24:20.777-04:00Sermon for Sunday, August 7, 2016 Trinity, Little Washington, Luke 12:32-40 “The Call”<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Good
morning! It is good to be back with you all on this wonderful day when you
welcome your new rector, Miller Hunter. You all should be feeling very good:
your leadership has completed its work in seeking your new rector with prayer,
integrity, and alacrity. You had time to reflect properly on all that had gone
before, most particularly the long and faithful tenure of Jenks Hobson, and to begin
to imagine what the future might hold with your interim, the Rev. Bill Queen.
And now you are here, and the wait is over…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">…and
we could not have asked for a more appropriate gospel reading for today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">We
begin where we ended up last week, with the reminder of the proper role of that
which we have – our money, our goods, our skills – in God’s economy. “Where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Hold on to that thought,
because I’ll be coming back to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">We
move from the guidance about disposing of what holds us back to guidance about
how we should be ready at all times. This is not necessarily about being ready
for the end times, as some evangelical commentators have suggested. It is, at
its heart, about vocation, about the way we should look at our place in the
world. Be ready, just as the staff in the ER at the hospital in Fauquier or
Winchester is prepared for not just the broken bones or cut thumbs, but also
for mass traumas. Be ready, just as a
teacher is ready to explain a new concept in more than one way so that the
student who is having difficulty understanding will be able to grasp the idea
of it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Be
ready, because you never know what’s coming your way and you had better be
prepared to step up and do what is required in that moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I
focus on this notion of “be ready” because, as you know, it is at the heart of
the priestly vocation. We never know when we will get a call in the middle of
the night telling us a parishioner is taken ill and is near death. We never
know when someone walks through the door and says “I’ve discovered my spouse is
having an affair. What do I do?” We never know when we will be faced with two
weddings and three funerals in the same week, and the copier gives out. And yet
our vocation requires not that we handle it all perfectly and with great
aplomb, but with as much grace as we can muster even when we are feeling
overwhelmed, as much attention to detail even when we feel we’ve run out of
energy, as much care for those involved as we can offer, even or perhaps
especially when they are not the nicest of people. That’s what vocation means
for us folks with the collar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">But
you folks without the collar have a vocation in this faith community as well.
You are called to be ready just as your priest is called to be ready. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What
does being ready look like? It means saying “yes” when your priest asks you to
help out with something. Church is not the Inn across the street, where the
professionals hand you up a delicious product on a silver platter. You are not
only a diner at the table. Church is more like the Thanksgiving dinner where
one person cooks the turkey, others bring vegetables and other side dishes, and
still others bring the pies. You dine, but you serve others at the same time. And
if there is an unexpected guest, you welcome them as if they were another
member of the family, with joy and generosity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I
know it’s a little odd to be talking about Thanksgiving dinner in mid-August,
but I think it is worth staying with for another minute or two. Here’s the one
thing I know about the 63 Thanksgiving dinners I’ve participated in: there is
always enough for everyone. IN fact, there is usually more than enough – who
hasn’t had that turkey sandwich the Monday after the big day, or had containers
of soup made from the turkey carcass in the freezer. Who hasn’t had pie for
breakfast, one of the greatest of guilty pleasures?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">If
you remember only a few of my words this morning remember this: God gives us
what we need to do what needs to be done. God is abundant, and expects us to
use that abundance to bring a little heaven to earth, especially to those who
don’t have as much as we do. And when we have abundance, whether it is in pies
or money or talent, our response must be to always be on the lookout for ways
that we can use that which we have – God’s abundant gifts to us – to make the
church, the community and the world a better place. That is OUR vocation. It is
not the job of the priest, although gifted priests are the best of coaches in
this work. It is not the work of the government, although there are times when
the government has resources we do not have, especially in times of crisis. It
is our work, our vocation, our calling to always be awake and aware that we may
be called upon by God at any time to help change the world – each and every one
of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
Miller’s vocation? To help us discover within ourselves the resources that God
has already given us to do this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So
don’t be surprised if your priest pushes you a little into uncomfortable
places, into doing things you didn’t expect. Don’t be surprised if you discover
you can do more than you ever did before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">That’s
when you know what is truly a treasure, and where your heart truly lies: in
your vocation, in his vocation, and in God’s abundance. You can change the
world, if you’re paying attention when God calls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Answer
the call, challenged by God and your new rector, and you will be a blessing and
you will be blessed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-57945161673107858232016-07-31T06:00:00.000-04:002016-07-31T06:00:32.521-04:00Sermon for Sunday July 31, 2016 St James, Richmond, Luke 12:13-21 “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good morning! I am Mary Thorpe, Director of Transition
Ministry for the Diocese of Virginia. It is my privilege and pleasure to work
with your leadership as you begin the journey toward your next rector. I have
met with your vestry and your staff, and once the search committee is
commissioned, I will work with them in this holy and joyful work. Consider me
your tour guide on this pilgrimage to the future! It is our hope that this will
not be a time of anxiety but rather a time of spiritual exploration and
transformation. The process of
transition is done a little differently these days from when you called Randy
Hollerith, and that is because the world is a little different than it was
sixteen years ago. In fact, you know that the world is very different. The ubiquity of internet, the loss of the
assumption that everyone goes to church on Sunday mornings, the culture that
seems to devalue our Christian beliefs – all of these are shifts that were not
present when you called your last rector. Time, too – we are so much more
impatient than we were before! Remember faxing things? Now that isn’t fast
enough – they must be transmitted in nanoseconds. And so with a changing world,
our work together in parish transitions has changed as well, more oriented to
the unique qualities of each parish, more flexible, with more parish input in
the design of the process. Our new approach has been used successfully in many
parishes in this diocese, from Christ Church Alexandria to Christ Church Glen
Allen, from St Paul’s Hanover Courthouse to St Paul’s King George, from St
James the Less Ashland …now…to St James in Richmond. We look forward to sharing
the work with you all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But in the meantime, we are still the church in this
community and in this beautiful building. We are still the church in the
spiritual formation programs, in the music, in the worship, in the incredible
outreach to help others. And the Gospel still speaks to us as it has across the
centuries. So let’s turn toward that Gospel we just heard and spend a few
minutes with it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ll begin, though, with something that is not in the
Gospel. It has been a surprising phenomenon over the past two years: a thin
little book, written in whispery little girl prose by a Japanese woman named
Marie Kondo, has been sitting on the New York Times best seller list for a
year. Its name? The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In it, Kondo lays out her organizing plan, decluttering your
home by the removal of all things that do not spark joy. You’re supposed to
gather all your clothes in one gigantic pile, and go through them one by one.
Touch each one. If it doesn’t spark joy, toss it, either by donating it if it
is still usable or by consigning it to the dump if it is too ratty. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The underlying thesis is one that we probably could all
admit: we have way too much stuff. And every day, we are encouraged to acquire
even more stuff. I will own that I like retail therapy as much as the next
person, and if I’ve had a hard week, I’m tempted to go shopping, especially if
there are sales in the stores I most enjoy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I’d like to think that I keep my clothing, at least, at bay
by sorting through them with each change of seasons. We live in an old house
with small closets, so come spring, I put the winter clothes in storage and
hang the spring and summer ones, and in the fall, I put away the lightweight
garments in favor of the woolens. Anything I haven’t worn gets donated or
tossed…mostly. I have a hard time disposing of shoes and scarves, and
unfortunately my closet looks like it. So maybe I’m a little like the acolytes
of Marie Kondo, imperfect at tossing my excess stuff, but working on it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You’re also supposed to do that with books, which to me is
like getting rid of children, and kitchen gear, which to me is like lopping off
a limb, and so on, decluttering your house until it achieves an Orientally
spare and spacious aesthetic. Good luck with that. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We do have a rule in our house that nothing comes in the
door unless something else goes out, be it a new small appliance or a pair of
boots, but the rule seems to be ignored on a regular basis, which is why my
stash of yarn continues to grow and my husband’s collection of tools seems to be
procreating in the basement.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stuff. We do love our stuff. It’s comforting, having that
stuff. For my mother and other children of the Depression, it could rise to
near hoarding levels, because they suffered through the time when they had next
to no stuff. They would no more throw out a rubber band as spend money on a
book they could borrow from the library, because that would be wasteful! We of
younger generations, though, want what we want when we want it, and my goodness, we do accumulate it and want even
more. We’re blessed with the abundance of being able to get even more stuff.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that is not only a 21<sup>st</sup> century phenomenon: look
at the Gospel. A man asks Jesus to tell his sibling to share the family
inheritance with him. In that culture, the eldest inherits it all, so younger
siblings must fend for themselves or rely on the generosity of the eldest son
to help them. And apparently this man’s big brother is not inclined to share.
We don’t know the backstory here: was the younger sibling a wastrel or a jerk? Was
the elder brother always the greedy one?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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We’d like to know the whole of the family story, but we
don’t get that. We get a parable from Jesus instead: a rich landowner has an
abundant crop, and rather than giving his abundance away, he builds bigger
silos so he can hold onto his surpluses. He’s feeling very pleased with
himself, isn’t he. But God comes to him in a dream and says “you think you’ve
got it all figured out, but you die tonight and you can’t take that surplus of
crops and goods with you. How did that whole plan work out for you?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In other words, the follower of Christ can’t hang on to
stuff, particularly the excess stuff. Whether it’s clothing, money, or
privilege, God demands that we share, that we declutter our souls of that which
distracts us from the one true thing: Almighty God. Stuff isn’t true comfort.
Only God is what salves our souls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I imagine that this makes many of us a little
uncomfortable, we people who live comfortable lives and who have retirement
plans and a few too many pairs of shoes. What are we supposed to do? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, if
I’m more worried about the year over year growth of my 401K or whether I can
afford a trip to Europe next year than I am worried about young people in
Gilpin Court who think the only option for success for them is through illegal
activities, I’ve got some soul decluttering to do. I’ve got excess baggage to
get rid of. And that is never easy to do, just like jettisoning my extra
scarves and shoes. I’ve got to force myself to let go of the things that
distract me and focus on that which God requires of me. I’m still working on
that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s another kind of excess baggage that is even more
difficult to release: the past. In many parishes in transition, the past is the
golden memory of simpler times or the rector we all loved best. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We rarely remember
some of the challenges of the past. And I expect even here, in the marvelous
parish where so much has been working so very well, the one or two memories of
a time when you were unhappy with something Randy Hollerith did is rapidly
fading into the most distant corner and he is rapidly achieving saintly status.
Not the he’s not deserving of praise: St James, under his leadership, has
become an iconic faith community which lives deeply and richly into its name, a
place of Doers of the Word.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Jesus calls us to live forward to bring God’s reign to
earth, and the doing of the Word is not a one-time thing. So as St James
prepares for the next chapter in its existence, part of our work is to name
what of our possessions and traditions we carry forward, what we build upon
into something fresh, what we honor and lay to rest as part of the past. There’s
no room in the closet for that new pair of shoes if we’re not willing to give
away or throw away the ones that have no more life left in them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the challenge is the same one that Our Lord made to the
complaining sibling: your stuff is only stuff, after all. Your baggage weighs
you down. What are you willing to discard? What are you willing to repurpose in
fresh ways? What are you going to build upon, so that you can continue to be
what Randy helped you become, and who will the person be who will bring
different gifts so that you might do that? That’s not just hiring any person
with a collar and a warm smile, it is the hard work of discernment and prayer.
Your Search Committee will do that work, but they will not do it alone. Each
and every one of you who loves St James will be called upon to share ideas,
hopes, dreams, and worries. Each and every one of you who loves St James must
soak this process in prayer. If it is simply an exercise in hiring it will
fail. But if it is a spiritual journey to seek God’s will – and make no
mistake, God already knows whom your next rector will be – you will discover
what God has in mind, and all will be well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Know that your Bishops pray with you and for you in this
time of change, and your diocesan staff stands at the ready to assist you. We
bring our expertise and experience of supporting more searches than you can
imagine – forty, currently. You bring open minds, keen ideas, and discerning
and prayerful hearts. God is waiting to show his rich love for you if you listen, tidy up, and keep at being doers of the Word.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Amen.<o:p></o:p></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-38143064809596896382016-07-10T06:00:00.000-04:002016-07-10T06:00:21.787-04:00Sermon for Sunday, July 10, 2016 Holy Comforter, Vienna, Luke 10:25-37 “Justice and Mercy in a World Turned Upside Down”<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">How
many lawyers do I have here today? Raise your hands! No, I know who you are –
you’re the ones who are cringing because the Gospel starts with what could seem
like yet another lawyer joke…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Now,
why might I say that? This lawyer is doing the very thing that lawyers are trained
to do: to clarify the law by asking questions. But this lawyer is violating a
cardinal rule for trial lawyers: Never ask a question unless you know what the
response is going to be. In a trial, of course, you want to shape the jury’s perception
of what has happened. So you pose questions that are narrowly drawn and
designed to elicit precisely the response you desire. Thus, we have the
infamous loaded question “have you stopped beating your wife?” There is no real
desire to figure out a time line of when the beatings stopped – the intent is
to make sure the guilt of the man as a wife-beater is established. And there’s
no good way for the person to protest and say “but I didn’t!” That loaded
question makes the image stick.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So
maybe this lawyer thinks he already knows the answer: follow all the laws in
Torah! Perhaps he’s looking for an “attaboy” from Jesus, since this lawyer is a
good guy and he knows he’s already doing that. He knows his responsibility as a
faithful Jew: to love and obey God, and to care for his neighbor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">But
now the story turns a little, this familiar story, because the lawyer asks a
follow-up question that is a doozy: “who is my neighbor?” At this point, my
inclination is to think maybe his question is genuine, that he really wants to
know. Maybe he’s tired of participating in petty arguments over land
transactions and marriage contracts. Maybe those who are his neighbors expect
him to side with him and use the weight of his learning to win the day, even if
another neighbor has the same expectation in the same dispute. How far do we
carry this whole “neighbor” business anyway? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
here’s where Jesus smacks us upside the head, by telling a parable, an illustration
of who our neighbor is. It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan, the stranger
who cares for someone wounded by the side of the road, when the wounded man’s
everyday neighbors passed him by. Yes, we know about it, or think we do. But
here’s the deal: The Samaritan is not just a nice guy passing by who isn’t a
Jew, it’s as if a Sunni gave a Shiite a great big kiss. The Samaritans and the
Jews are two groups of people who don’t get along at all. In fact each thinks
the other is heretical, hateful, worthless. I’m telling you this just so you have a feel of how
shocking this parable would have been to a lawyer, a man committed to following
the proper order of things, which says that Samaritans are the enemy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It’s
sort of like a Trump adherent who’s also a Tea Party member running up to
Hillary Clinton after she fell off a stage, giving her first aid and putting
her in his own car to rush her to the ER.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Or
like police officers under attack protecting those who were protesting excesses
of other police officers in other places where African-American men were shot
during routine traffic stops. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Or
like a “Black Lives Matter” protester trying desperately to stem the bleeding
of a downed Dallas police officer. We don’t see too much of that kind of
crossing of socio-political boundaries in today’s culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So,
too, in the ancient Near East, where there was a long tradition of “we keep to
ourselves, away from those others, who aren’t like us.” Some of that was
self-protective – Jews were regularly oppressed by other nations – Babylonians,
Assyrians, Romans – and keeping together was a way to be safe. But it also morphed
into something more, a pride in one’s identity that made others less than us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
that’s where the story sets the stage for the even more important message: our
identity is grounded not only in our blood, but in our religious identity, and
the laws that are part and parcel of maintaining that identity. But if we get
it backwards, where it’s all about the law and not about the reason for
identity, we fail as people of faith. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So
take a look at the last exchange between Jesus and the lawyer. Jesus, in good
rabbinic fashion, asked the question “which of these three passers by was the
true neighbor?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The
lawyer’s a smart guy. He gets it in one: “It was the one who showed the wounded
man mercy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Mercy.
We tend to slide past that word in this passage, but let’s sit with it a little
bit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Mercy.
There can be no true dialogue between people of different backgrounds,
different traditions, different laws, unless there is mercy. Unless we are
willing to grant someone who is different the same mercy we would like given to
us. Mercy: a disposition to show kindness or forbearance. Mercy: if one is in a
position of power, to show clemency. Mercy: a virtue that is a spiritual
practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I
focus on mercy for a very particular reason, and it’s not the horrible stories
in the news this week. Mercy is not something that is reserved for crisis: it
is a manner of being, a way of looking at the world and at those round us. Even
in how you look at a Trump supporter if
you like Hillary, even I how you look at a Hillary fan if you believe Trump can make America great again. If
you’re a Bernie fan…sorry, I got nothin’…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">No,
I’m talking about mercy because it’s a spiritual discipline that I pray you
will all commit to in the days and months to come, as you move into life
without Father Rick at the helm here at Holy Comforter. I know some of you are
still hurting. I also know that some of you did your grieving over the months
that you knew he would be leaving. But now the reality has set in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Here’s
what sometimes happens after a priest retires at the end of a long and fruitful
season of ministry: someone who doesn’t like something that the priest did says
“Finally we can change that one thing I didn’t like!” And then the person
lobbies or pesters to IMMEDIATELY change it. The former priest’s chair is still
warm, but it’s got to be changed now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
then someone else, who really liked that one thing, decides that the person who
wants change is THE ENEMY, and a whole bunch of pain and bad words and stress
explodes. And your senior warden goes out to buy the industrial sized bottle of
Advil…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">But
imagine how different it would be in times of stress and change if the guiding
practice were one of mercy? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What
if the person who didn’t like that one thing said “I really didn’t like that
thing, and I hope that it will change. I know there’s a process where I can
speak my mind and that we can, as a community, discern the direction in which God
is moving Holy Comforter. And I will speak up when those opportunities occur. I
can be patient and trust that the Holy Spirit will guide us all in this
process, and I can also respect that mine may be one of many different points
of view.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
when the opportunity comes for that person to share his or her feelings, others
who disagree will similarly practice mercy and say or think “well, that’s an
opinion I didn’t realize was out there. I’d like to hear more before I
immediately dismiss it, even though I feel differently.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Nobody’s
insisting they must have their way. Nobody’s calling people who feel
differently colorful names. No parking lot conversations or FaceBook private
messages, or rump caucuses. Mercy. Mercy, because God shows us mercy at all
times, and we want to try to be a little bit more like the God who created us every
day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Mercy.
Speaking up when appropriate and listening hard when appropriate: those are the
two keys to the spiritual discipline of mercy. If someone is hurting because
they haven’t been heard in the past, don’t ignore them – reach out. Bind their
wounds of feeling ignored. Pour the healing oil of friendship and respect on
their hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 23.75pt; margin-top: 2.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I
say this because you are embarked on the amazing pilgrimage to seek your next
rector. There will be moments when showing mercy comes very naturally and times
when it is a struggle. That’s why we call it a spiritual discipline, because we
have to discipline ourselves to do it not only in the easy times, but in the
hard times, too. This pilgrimage you’re on will take some patience and a whole lot of
discernment. Right now you are still adjusting to life without Father Rick. In
a little while you will welcome an interim rector who will help you get in the
best possible shape for this process and for welcoming the next priest who has the
privilege to serve you. I will be helping your vestry and the search committee –
sort of a Rick Steves for the trip – so it is more like the spiritually
transformative Emmaus Road walk rather than a 40 year wandering in the desert.
I’m glad there will be some time after the 10 a.m.service for me to chat with
you all, answer any questions you might have about how different this process
will be from other transitions you may have experienced in the past, and to
assure you that you are not on this journey alone. Your bishops and your
diocesan staff are praying for you and with you at this time, and we will help
you every step of the way. So whenever you get tired, or overwhelmed, or
anxious, think mercy. Mercy for others on the journey with you, mercy for
yourself as you recognize that none of us is perfectly merciful (except God!)
You may be surprised how you will feel God’s love as you share God’s mercy with
each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">So
my prayer for you in the time to come is this: May you feel the blessing of
mercy shown to you and that you show to others. May you practice mercy in the
hardest of times and may you receive it when you most need it. May God bless the Church of the Holy Comforter
as the pilgrimage goes forward!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-16066927074942052402016-05-29T08:30:00.000-04:002016-05-29T08:30:00.173-04:00Sermon for Sunday, May 29, 2016 Grace, Goochland, Luke 7:1-10 “Amazed”<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Welcome to this season of change! I imagine it is strange
not having Rhonda here up front – it will take some getting used to. I’m Mary
Thorpe, Director of Transition Ministry here in the Diocese of Virginia, and it
is my privilege to be with you today. I bring you the greetings of your bishops
and diocesan staff as you prepare for the future.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">In this season of change all around us, it is easy to go
to a place of “hunkering down.” In the larger world, there are continuing acts
of terrorism and struggles for power. In our own nation, there is one of the
most surprising political seasons in our history, with people on both sides of
the political spectrum shaking their heads in shock. In our state, we’ve got
felons running for office, accusations of misconduct on both sides of the
aisle, children being killed in the crossfire of drug wars and dying as a
result of human misery. And here, at Grace, we might worry what the future
holds in the wake of the retirement of the rector.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">We may think it is a new phenomenon, this gothic litany
of a world of pain, distrust, loss and worry, but in fact it mirrors much of
what was going on in the world when today’s Gospel story came to pass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">As we enter into the season called Ordinary Time, in this
year we will be walking with the Gospel of Luke. Luke was a historian – he begins
his Gospel with a preface that tells someone named Theophilus , a pseudonym meaning
“friend of God,” that he is writing this down to make sure everyone gets the
true history of Jesus – but rather than thinking of him as a writer of dry and
boring facts of history, he is really more like a political reporter, the Jeff
Schapiro or Dana Milbank or Cokie Roberts of his age. Yes, there is reporting
of facts, but there is also the richness of those adjectives and adverbs that
move the story from simple statements of events to something deeper, more
textured, something that gives us an insight into the feelings and motivations
of the participants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFlBhtNRw1SnUBINPSd40ua2HgiIzNj2sTSAGIjkRVcB_rgrORotjB8AupelDK7wR48c5pQMJL70SSveUmdtuP0_8SFeJFkiyT3JSh9kniMii0qSZ2CmaniubfwzEIAuJCCT8/s1600/politicalreporter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFlBhtNRw1SnUBINPSd40ua2HgiIzNj2sTSAGIjkRVcB_rgrORotjB8AupelDK7wR48c5pQMJL70SSveUmdtuP0_8SFeJFkiyT3JSh9kniMii0qSZ2CmaniubfwzEIAuJCCT8/s1600/politicalreporter.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">When we get to this point in the story – today’s Gospel
reading – Jesus has just finished teaching the people the Beatitudes. Blessed
are the poor, blessed are the grieving, blessed are those who hunger for
justice…this is akin to a political platform, a statement of principles for his
ministry, lifting up those who are hurting, oppressed, the least and the lost,
and saying that eventually these souls will be given the richest reward and the
mighty will be brought down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Given the political climate of Rome-dominated Israel in
this period, this message is both highly risky for Jesus to say and incredibly
comforting and exciting to the Jewish people. Rescue is coming, although Jesus’
idea of what that looks like may be different than that of his listeners.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">So now we come to this story, and with whom are we
confronted? Not one of the listeners to that sermon, those oppressed,
overtaxed, underserved people…instead who is the center of the story?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">A Roman soldier, a
centurion. A middle-manager in the Roman army. The enemy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">We know little of this man except for his role and his
employer. He might not be ethnically Roman – there were some soldiers in the
army who came from previously conquered states, but he represents the kinds of
Romans with whom the Jewish people interacted most – they were the local muscle,
the occupation force, making sure that everyone complied with the laws. They
would commandeer a Jewish home to house some of the soldiers. To say they were
hated would be an understatement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Now it is odd enough for a Roman centurion to be the
protagonist in this story of Jesus, but it is even stranger for the Roman
centurion to show weakness. And yet this is exactly what he does. He comes to
Jesus, a Jew with a reputation for healing gifts, and admits that he is afraid
that his servant, his slave, is ill and may die, and he seeks Jesus’ aid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Now here’s the interesting thing in Luke’s reporting: he
shows first how different THIS centurion is from everyone’s perception of Roman
soldiers – others say “this one is a good one – he even built a synagogue for
us” – and the centurion doesn’t even approach Jesus directly asking for help.
He sends others to ask for the healing, and his message is an interesting one:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">“I know you can do this, and we both know you don’t need
to come here to do this. Just attend to this from afar.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">This centurion does something that is both strategic and
surprising. I don’t think we notice because we are dazzled by the healing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">He says “I know you can do this from afar, because you
are someone of authority. I get that. I am a man of authority as well, who can
order others from a great distance and they will do what I tell them. You don’t
need to come to my home.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Yes, he is attesting to Jesus’ power. But he is also
naming the political reality: Jesus cannot come and interact with a Gentile
because of Jewish purity laws. A Gentile military leader cannot interact with a
Jewish leader because it will appear to undermine his authority, particularly to
his fellow Romans. This is a delicate diplomatic mission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">But diplomacy cannot hide the facts: this military leader
is submitting his authority – secular authority – to Jesus’ divine authority,
for the good of someone who is not respected by society, a slave who serves a
Roman soldier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">And Jesus gets that. He knows the risk for this
centurion. He also knows it is an opportunity to demonstrate the power of Almighty
God. The centurion, that representative of Roman empire, is bending his knee to
the authority of a teacher and miracle worker who is a Jew, and not even a
Jerusalem Jewish leader, a power player, but an upstart rebel from a backwater
town out in the Galilee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">And so the healing occurs. From a distance. No touching.
No prayers directly over the hot, prone form of the slave. No, a healing from a
distance that doesn’t compromise the Jewish laws of ritual purity. A healing
form a distance that doesn’t politically compromise the position of the
centurion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">And then there is amazement, but the funny part is that
Luke reports that the amazement is not in the people who were with Jesus. It is
not even with the people who were with the slave who suddenly was cured. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">It is Jesus who was amazed. Amazed at the trust the
centurion placed in him. Amazed that a centurion would recognize his authority and
power when the centurion had been trained for years to view the Roman empire as
the ultimate power. Amazed that Jesus’ word could reach across the boundaries
of convention, of law, of military might, so that this centurion would place
the life of his slave above the rules of empire and society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">I would imagine that political reporters of today would
have a field day with this story – “Rebel rabbi crosses political boundaries to
save his enemy!” – but the reality is that what Jesus did in that healing act
was the logical extension of what he had just taught in the Beatitudes.
Relationship…caring for each other, even those others who we view as less than
us or as our enemy, is our primary value, because God, who is so much greater
than us, values us beyond reason. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Perhaps Jesus was amazed that his message took root, and
that it even took root among the least likely of people, that centurion. In
Luke’s gospel, Jesus says “I haven’t found faith like this ANYWHERE, not even
among my own people.” He has reason to be amazed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">But perhaps the message of this story is that we too need
to be open to amazement, to the possibilities that whisper even in this most
difficult of times. We too need to hear that Jesus has a word for us, a word
that says “You may feel like things are just impossible, that the world is
crashing around us, that terrorists lurk at the airport, that
lowest-common-denominator politics will lead to the collapse of all we hold
dear, that all is being turned upside down and it is frightening. But it will
turn, and it will turn toward justice, respect and peace.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">And even here at Grace, where there are questions about
what the future may hold, there will be surprises that Jesus will offer,
comfort and support from afar. He doesn’t have to physically stand here to make
it happen. We know he is a man with authority, that he can tend to our needs
even from the furthest reach of the heavens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">But perhaps we can surprise Jesus by NOT being amazed
when something wonderful happens. Perhaps he can say “nowhere in the land of
Israel have I seen such faith as that which the people of Grace Church had in
me and my authority.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Let’s amaze Jesus…and thank him, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-54101972631443018802016-05-22T09:00:00.000-04:002016-05-22T09:00:25.079-04:00Sermon for Trinity Sunday May 22, 2016 "Inhabited"<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Friends, it is Trinity
Sunday, and you know what that means – your preacher has sweated bullets over
what can be one of the most worrisome sermons of the year. Now, there are other
texts that cause us to fear and tremble. Preaching on divorce,as we do when
Mark’s Gospel is central to our summer readings in Year B. The problem of Jesus
asking the disciples to bring him a donkey and a colt to ride into Jerusalem
for Palm Sunday in Year A- does he ride on both of them? Does he ride into town
with one foot on each like a circus performer? All those problem passages are
nothing compared with the challenge of preaching on Trinity Sunday. That’s why
it is often assigned to seminarians, who love to share what they learned in
systematic theology class, or to deacons – you dodged the bullet today, Joe! –
or to priest associates like me when the rector is away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"> Thanks, Hilary. Have a nice retreat, pal!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Here’s why: no one knows
how to explain the Trinity. Even St Augustine, a great Father of the Church and
brilliant theologian, couldn’t get it done in his 800 page long book on the Trinity.
The only tools we seem to have at our disposal are metaphor and simile. The Trinity
is like words that can be verbs, adverbs, nouns and adjectives. The Trinity is
like a three-leaf clover – thanks, St Patrick! The Trinity is like a dance – my
boss says he’s got a sermon that says the Trinity is like the Hokey Pokey.
Haven’t heard it yet, and the concept scares me a little. What IF the Hokey
Pokey is what it’s all about?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">And yet this is one of
those essential doctrines of Christianity that we are expected to believe. That’s
why the words of the Nicene Creed which we will recite in a few minutes,
references the persons of the Trinity. Now, I will stipulate that the words do
describe a little bit of the relationship of the persons of the trinity – that key
phrase about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son is actually
such a description, and it’s one that the participants at the Council of Nicaea
argued about for about 50 years – but the creed really doesn’t explain it all
to you in a way you can understand…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">….or at least in a way
that I can understand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">It’s true confessions time.
I do not understand how the Trinity works. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Who else is willing to
say they don’t understand it either?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Good. I’m not alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">But here’s the thing: I
have no problem at all standing up and reaffirming my faith by saying the
Nicene Creed, because I don’t have to understand how it works to sense in my
heart and soul that the Holy Trinity's presence is real and alive. I don’t have to understand
it to know that God reaches out to me through creation, through the salvation I
received through Christ and through the relentless nudge of the Holy Spirit to
keep me doing what God wants me to do rather than what I’d prefer to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Does that sound
contradictory?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Maybe a little bit, but
work with me here…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Some of you may know that
I write icons, those pictures of Christ, his mother, and the saints from the
Orthodox tradition. We call it writing rather than painting, because painting
sounds like a creative endeavor. This is
anything but creative. When we write icons, we generally copy other icons,
following the rules of color, shape, facial and physical structure, and symbols
of the ancient iconographers. It is, in a way, paint by numbers for the
spiritual. We copy these images much as the monks of the Middle Ages in the
Western world copied the Word of God in <i>scriptoria</i>, carefully doing precisely
what their predecessor did, not changing words, just copying so that some others
might be able to have access to a copy of those words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Each time I go to my work-desk
to write an icon, I begin with a prayer to St. Luke, the patron saint of
iconographers. And then I begin. I start with a blank white board covered with
layers of gesso to give a smooth receptive surface for the paints, be they egg
tempera or acrylics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehKZI_fI91SilS1Z7L412wkEWv2pGKZGSk6fs73Spaz-lIJzsuLnYG7ZTSrC9LFFgmKxr-WMEO9_RYexSX2pOJG2bUurf2JdiT25KINulod0DHIBY2c7WdTvoz0onlhH9c4aI/s1600/2016-04-26+08.32.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehKZI_fI91SilS1Z7L412wkEWv2pGKZGSk6fs73Spaz-lIJzsuLnYG7ZTSrC9LFFgmKxr-WMEO9_RYexSX2pOJG2bUurf2JdiT25KINulod0DHIBY2c7WdTvoz0onlhH9c4aI/s320/2016-04-26+08.32.32.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cartoon copied onto gessoed board</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">I copy the drawing of the key lines of the icon I am writing
from a black and white image called a cartoon. I start coloring the image by
laying down a dark and dense base coat, the deepest colors in our palette. I
build the image by adding additional layers of color, each a little lighter, a
little smaller, a little more translucent than the one before. I attend to the
direction of where the light seems to be coming from in terms of the brighter features…more
layers of lighter color there, until I have constructed an image from the
darkest most incomprehensible shape to something with dimension, with light,
with movement. And at each step of the way, I think to myself, “This looks
awful. This looks nothing like what I am trying to copy. This is ugly.” And it’s
the truth. But I keep praying, and I keep working.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFj9b2W7xocUeS8VGNfNlZY8QyJrwnEm6xo-1iniVMR-RxBY3jnuptMeNWD7Exutf5VlRF4vMC2zyFGzDrItJ8kLV1VellxyKJh1LmIAj-jONgcerw9d8FWNckXlkJHWa0X6jh/s1600/2016-04-27+20.16.00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFj9b2W7xocUeS8VGNfNlZY8QyJrwnEm6xo-1iniVMR-RxBY3jnuptMeNWD7Exutf5VlRF4vMC2zyFGzDrItJ8kLV1VellxyKJh1LmIAj-jONgcerw9d8FWNckXlkJHWa0X6jh/s320/2016-04-27+20.16.00.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lines colored black, base layer of skin (senkir) added.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_60OMarV-Lz4BL1UvsHpVW6mvJb1HphyphenhyphenJ7uubXFAgNW0ohC113iOPo-AqTS-v_KGaozguQWnAduP4BJDxlYjWt15YSfqTo0xKVmORBxUz0bfpcAdh5EzVHbdXSRpZr9DONwun/s1600/2016-04-27+21.25.50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_60OMarV-Lz4BL1UvsHpVW6mvJb1HphyphenhyphenJ7uubXFAgNW0ohC113iOPo-AqTS-v_KGaozguQWnAduP4BJDxlYjWt15YSfqTo0xKVmORBxUz0bfpcAdh5EzVHbdXSRpZr9DONwun/s320/2016-04-27+21.25.50.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Other base colors added</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbULgZR3yxTeeUraQGIRZ6fw5eCnZIczjmSNT5Z1kpTVf_nCFM0q7EE1pqgAC1LN8u-AnMoF1Yl6OtkoJQ1lv4P_-iopsNY64mkWDX4ZuT4C57PZH-4uVEE7wXB8C_34pSnbD_/s1600/2016-04-29+18.33.43.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbULgZR3yxTeeUraQGIRZ6fw5eCnZIczjmSNT5Z1kpTVf_nCFM0q7EE1pqgAC1LN8u-AnMoF1Yl6OtkoJQ1lv4P_-iopsNY64mkWDX4ZuT4C57PZH-4uVEE7wXB8C_34pSnbD_/s320/2016-04-29+18.33.43.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adding layers of color to face and hands</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FqfXkl0BvWBGa4BF2R7H2SzEPj6WcbIiyBtMQMVDjK08nBwW5JAdFD85smDBmsjdDp0EU6bpvfgd8TyNWqKam5VEYkkV0qnXPaKdvli3R35BrbIXqdp8XpzRo3uylfZ6VTHc/s1600/2016-04-30+15.16.11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FqfXkl0BvWBGa4BF2R7H2SzEPj6WcbIiyBtMQMVDjK08nBwW5JAdFD85smDBmsjdDp0EU6bpvfgd8TyNWqKam5VEYkkV0qnXPaKdvli3R35BrbIXqdp8XpzRo3uylfZ6VTHc/s320/2016-04-30+15.16.11.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gold leaf for halo applied, many more layers of color on the chiton (undertunic), skin and hair.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbTeiBXkYHJZImxCXB329wI3cMzmzqRQczRWzB4qPHtDDcSgGTJ3OWWJ99ssdwoK7XTdXnRMT8tuIM7M8tnaeGDNrX5-rVFny713cQc6a-KmMG-768HCqxQExXhPJ-bvifcci/s1600/2016-05-01+18.15.16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbTeiBXkYHJZImxCXB329wI3cMzmzqRQczRWzB4qPHtDDcSgGTJ3OWWJ99ssdwoK7XTdXnRMT8tuIM7M8tnaeGDNrX5-rVFny713cQc6a-KmMG-768HCqxQExXhPJ-bvifcci/s320/2016-05-01+18.15.16.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scripture started, layers on outer garment, more layers everywhere else. Identifying name (Hagios Pavel in Cyrillic) in red.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">At various steps along
the way, it DOES look amateurish and ratty and full of mistakes, some of which
cannot be corrected. I may do a piece of it and think, “well, I really like
those hands,” and then I turn to the folds in a garment and think “well, that’s
not right.” But I keep praying and I keep writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Eventually, after layer
upon layer of color – sometimes the face will have as many as 20 layers – I hit
the point where there is nothing more I can do. It is done. All I can see at
that point are the thousands of small mistakes, a line that wiggled, a color
that is not quite right, lettering that looks clumsy, an expression on an angel’s
face that looks like she has indigestion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">I can’t fix my past
mistakes, so I pray for forgiveness for the imperfection of my work, and for
grace to do it better the next time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">And then I coat it to
protect the image. Polyurethane if it was rendered in acrylics, olibas – aged linseed
oil – if it was rendered in egg tempera. I can no longer go back and try to
tweak things I don’t like, it just has to be what it is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsLCcG-O0HD98Up1zh96cHW1NJ36ph3-VRM4yRB6g9wjkKXnacGArKnV8EFxxKqEpb2aAoPMNph8eZfCz-hVPHqUXF4ZY5Bj2nfajSYKDaBytgP13p38vaYI2EWYV5Qi1T6K4/s1600/2016-05-05+21.27.22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsLCcG-O0HD98Up1zh96cHW1NJ36ph3-VRM4yRB6g9wjkKXnacGArKnV8EFxxKqEpb2aAoPMNph8eZfCz-hVPHqUXF4ZY5Bj2nfajSYKDaBytgP13p38vaYI2EWYV5Qi1T6K4/s320/2016-05-05+21.27.22.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As finished as it was going to be, and coated in poly.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">And invariably, once it
is dried, it looks different. The whole, the finished icon, is greater than the
sum of its parts, even with all those mistakes, with all those imperfections. God – the Holy Trinity - has
inhabited the work, and made it more than my human hands and eyes can do. And
if anyone asked me what happened to cause that icon to be something more than I
could have done, I would have no words for it beyond that thought: God has
inhabited it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">And I thank God for God’s
patience with my humble work, not understanding the “how” or “why” of it all, but
being grateful for that inhabiting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">And that’s the way, I
guess, that I feel about the Trinity. I will readily admit that I do not
understand the how and why of the Trinity, but I sense that I – that WE – are inhabited
by the Trinity, and it makes us more than we are capable of being without it.
And I am immensely grateful when I realize that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">So if this gave you any
ideas that you now understand the theology of the Holy Trinity, my apologies: none
of what I have said should be construed as a systematic theology of the
Trinity. It is just the reminder that sometimes we feel God inhabiting us in strange and wondrous ways – in hearing a beautiful piece of music, in the look in a person’s eyes as
they lift their hands to receive Communion, in the wrinkled and delicate skin on the back of the hands of a dying great-grandmother, in the cry of a newborn, in the whisper of the
wind, in the fact that my peonies cannot open unless little ants chew away the nectar
that keeps the buds locked up tight. We cannot put words to it. We don’t
understand it. But it is there, and that is enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The explanation awaits us
on a further shore, and there is time enough for that. For now, know that God
loves us enough to make Godself known to us in a thousand thousand ways, and be
grateful. The Trinity doesn't need us to understand, the Trinity just wants us to rejoice in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-32407145135811248562016-05-17T19:30:00.000-04:002016-05-17T19:30:30.621-04:00Sermon for Tuesday, May 17th Evening Vespers/ Lutheran-Episcopal Conference ShrineMont/ Ezekiel 11:14-25<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Ah Ezekiel! My favorite Old Testament
heretic!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Heretic, you say? A chosen speaker of
God’s word? A part of the canon of the Hebrew Bible? How can this be? Am I the
heretic here?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Maybe, maybe not. Let’s explore this a
bit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What do we know of Adonai, of YHWH, the
God of the Hebrew Bible?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, if we agree on nothing else, we
know that this is a God of following the rules. The Deuteronomist spills much
ink on rules, rules, and more rules.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And rules are, indeed, a needful thing:
how else to keep a fractious and frightened people together in the midst of
continual cultural and political assaults, across the desert, in captivity, in
battle? There must be rules to keep the community distinct from those who are
not the Chosen People, and to keep them from behaving as badly as they seem
inclined to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And in this passage from the book of
Ezekiel, set in the midst of the Babylonian captivity, we see how when God’s
people do not follow the rules, there are consequences. There is conquest,
diaspora, separation from the spiritual heart of Israel, the Temple in
Jerusalem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Okay, so far we are following the
normative role of covenantal relationship with the Lord – you mess up, you end
up in a bad place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But then something happens in the midst
of the misery of people who cannot even sing their own songs anymore because
they are so depressed. Ezekiel dreams and prophesies: redemption is coming. Actually, redemption has come, perhaps not in
a way that was always recognizable to them, but it has been there: God has been
with them. If the people could not go to the Temple, the Temple came to them.
God was abiding with them. It may have seemed just a pale shadow of the glory
of the Temple, but no matter. God was with them. Even if the people failed in
abiding by the covenant, God – and God’s covenant - abided with them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But wait! There’s more! These sad souls
will be back in Jerusalem soon…but the rules may have shifted a bit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">God proclaims that the people who have
been scattered abroad will be gathered together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A sidebar here: Ezekiel reminds us that
the folks who DIDN’t get dispersed, who remained in Jerusalem, have something
of the attitude of those modern people who say “I’ve got the good stuff because
I’ve been faithful and God loves me for it, and if you don’t have the good
stuff, it’s clear you offended God.” Those who got to stay in Jerusalem thought
the Temple belonged to them – possession is 9/10s of the law, right? – and the
others, well, tough luck for them. They deserved their fate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And here’s where the strange and
wonderful and slightly heretical glance of Ezekiel comes into play: God says “never
mind.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">God says, “yes, we will clean up the
messes you folks left, but it isn’t about the Temple. I’m going to set up shop
near it, but no longer in it – take that, you pompous self-righteous prigs in
Jerusalem – and we’re going to repair not the Temple, but our hearts.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For what seems like the first time in a
long time, this Creator God starts with the heart rather than the rules.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the
countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of
Israel. When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable
things and all its abominations. I will give them one heart, and put a new
spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give
them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my
ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their
God.” </span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The work of the Heart precedes the work
of the rules. Both are needed, but the sequence matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">If the sole focus of our common lives
together is following rules, we become diminished, parsing out every jot and
tittle. If the sole focus of our common lives together is warm and fuzzy
feelings, we become undisciplined and unclear. We need both, but the sequence
matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When relationships are broken, the
various sides in the story are judging each other and themselves. It’s the
human condition, isn’t it, trying to prove we are in the right and others are
not? Trying to prove we have God’s favor while others are lower in the pecking
order?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When we work at the hard and beautiful
work of reimagining relationships, one of the first things we have to do is to
put aside the rules that divide us and fall in love with our brothers and
sisters again. How we live into that
love requires that we figure out some operating principles, some rules of the
road, but unless we enter into a rule of life starting with a rule of love,
because God loves us first and fiercely, the rules will continue to divide us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This is why a slightly heretical
apocalyptic prophet is the perfect voice for what we are trying to do here,
years after the signing of “Called to Common Mission” document. It has to do with
the very nature of apocalyptic literature: odd and strange words from a fever
dream, challenging and prodding and awakening people to some new understanding
of what God is doing. What is god doing here?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Ezekiel, speaking for God, strips down
the legalities to what is most important…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Three things: God is with you. God will
return you to a place of conjoined spiritual nourishment. There will be a new
relationship between God and God’s people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And how does this happen? God removes
hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh, drawing them into a
sweet embrace. Beating sometimes in unison, sometimes in complementary rhythms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A relationship. The disparate parts of
God’s people drawn back together. Later, then, some guidance as to how the
relationship will work – rules to be together as righteous children of God –
but that guidance doesn’t come until the relationship is rebuilt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Love. Relationship before rules.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">If we do nothing else in our time
together, we must – MUST – fall in love with each other through the shared love
of our sovereign and loving Creator. The other stuff? Rules and such? I won’t call them “<i>adiafora</i>” – that’s above my
pay grade – but it seems to this occasionally heretical preacher that unless
the rules serve the love and the relationship rather than the other way around,
we’ll be stuck in Babylon, and that’s nowhere for God’s people to be. No more
hearts of stone. No more rules that divide. Love. God’s love. Our love. Nothing
more. Nothing less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 150%;">Amen.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14608528.post-60298350984082289892016-05-08T06:00:00.000-04:002016-05-08T06:00:22.321-04:00Sermon for Sunday, May 8, 2016 St John the Baptist, Ivy, John 17: 20 -26 “Mothering God”<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Good morning! I am Mary Thorpe, Director
of Transition Ministry for the Diocese of Virginia, and I am delighted to be
here with you on this Mother’s Day as, together, we begin our journey of
transition to your next vicar. I bring you the greetings and love of your
bishops and diocesan staff, who pray for you and with you in this new chapter
of your lives together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I suspect that for many of you, this
feels strange, not having Kathleen at the front. But here we are on this last
Sunday before Pentecost, continuing being God’s people in this place, and that’s
a good thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are in the midst of some readings
that are a little confusing. Just 7 weeks ago, we had Easter. Christ had died,
was buried, rose again, came back to talk the the apostles – a final pep talk – and now we are here in this reading, which
contains Jesus’ final instructions to the disciples BEFORE he dies! He is at
the Last Supper, and the last thing he does in John’s version of the story is
to pray: first for himself, and them for those whom he leaves behind to carry
on his work. And now, at the end of this prayer, he says this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“…you, Father, are in me and I am in
you… may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent
me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be
one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely
one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even
as you have loved me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is a prayer. It is a benediction.
It is a reminder to the disciples that God is with them as they continue to do
the work of revealing God’s abiding love. God continues to nurture them, to
guide them, to “have their backs,” as the saying goes. God continues to give
them strength through God’s love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The disciples may not fully realize
everything that is about to happen, but they know as they have known nothing
else before, that they are loved and supported at that moment and until the day
when Jesus finally brings them together with the Father.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…not just like a father, but like a
mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It IS Mother’s Day, after all. We do
know that this secular holiday that honors the love our mothers have shown us
aligns with God’s love. Our mothers aren’t God – although when I was seven, I
thought my mother had the all-seeing eyes of God and the power to smite if I
misbehaved – but at their best, our mothers give us a glimpse of the enduring
power of God’s loving presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqJM3EYibVL9Qmdp8-XKGm3j_xdjykrRE83tDzWuXK_KgcM9Oz-15QxVnmysCrlWO45jaGGqMyTJFKeAXwx-ZVKgaKiSntfyotl6FR-b6Kv1Wit2oaoSEeUkA5W48sVAonnbC/s1600/JulianOfNorwich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqJM3EYibVL9Qmdp8-XKGm3j_xdjykrRE83tDzWuXK_KgcM9Oz-15QxVnmysCrlWO45jaGGqMyTJFKeAXwx-ZVKgaKiSntfyotl6FR-b6Kv1Wit2oaoSEeUkA5W48sVAonnbC/s1600/JulianOfNorwich.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dame Julian of Norwich- Statue at Norwich Cathedral</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is the vision the 14<sup>th</sup>
century mystic Dame Julian of Norwich wrote about: </span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Mothering
God, you gave me birth. Mothering Christ, you took my form. Mothering Spirit,
nurturing One.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Her imagery is not new: Jesus
himself lamented in Matthew’s Gospel “Jerusalem, Jerusalem...how often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even in the Old Testament, God speaks to Israel in the Book of Isaiah
in a maternal voice: </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you
shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”</span> And when, in the Old Testament, the
wisdom of God is spoken of, God’s wisdom is a “she:” “does not wisdom call, and
does not understanding raise her voice?” <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So we’ve got this notion threaded
throughout Holy Scripture, that God has a feminine nature as well as a
masculine one, and that feminine nature is lifted up as virtuous, prophetic,
wise, enduringly loving, emotional, strong….rather like some of the mothers in
this room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now you all know about women who
meet that description – certainly I would count Kathleen S as one of
those women, and I know that you grieve the loss of her as your vicar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But here’s the good news: God’s feminine
nature, that nurturing, loving, strong nature, continues to be present with
you, even in a time of change, in a time when you wonder what is coming next. God remains with you. That is what Jesus is
talking about in poetic language in the Gospel today. Hear what he says: “As
you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the
world may believe that you have sent me.” Jesus is not only with you, he is
saying that he is IN you and you are IN him…like a baby nestled in his mother’s
womb, you are that close together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And that will be the greatest of
comforts, this loving connection, womb-close. As you begin this journey of
search for your next vicar, Jesus will never be apart from you. He will send
his Holy Spirit to comfort, guide, and strengthen you. He will not leave you,
just as mothers never leave you, even when their physical presence is no more
and you have only memories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And as the Lord is with you, in our
own smaller way, my colleagues and I will also be with you, guiding you along
the way in a process that will help you discern what gifts you most need in
this next chapter of St. John the Baptist’s story. We will work with your leadership in many
different ways so that you can seek and find that vicar whom God already knows
will serve you…we will pray and listen for God’s voice even as we seek input
from you all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My prayer for you in this time of
transition is that you do not feel lost or abandoned. Your vicar may have
received another call – God does have plans for us clergy that sometimes
require that we leave one beloved group of souls and go to serve another – but your
call, to be the people of God in this time and place, remains. You are strong,
you are creative, and you are blessed by this place and by each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Know that the mothering God is with
you always, that there is a plan to follow in the days ahead, and that in God’s
good time, you will pass from the state of being pregnant with possibilities to
being delivered of a new priest who will serve you with love and faithfulness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A last word or two? These words may be the most fitting, once again from Julian
of Norwich: "May God’s love wrap and enfold you , embrace you and guide you, and
bring you comfort"….just as a loving mother does.<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02129758906278501568noreply@blogger.com0