Sermon for Trinity Sunday Prov 8:1-4,22-31 & John 16:12-15 “Dancing with Wisdom”

On any given day, if you go up to Union Station in Washington, DC, you’ll see a preacher with a microphone, a portable amplifier and a car battery. He stands outside the train station – I don’t know why he picked that place, but it works for him – and he preaches. He’s talking mostly about how sinful the world is, and how we need to repent, because Jesus is coming. He makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and they try to avoid him, or else stick their fingers in their ears as they walk past, because, man, this fellow is LOUD.

We don’t always want to hear the message that God sends to us through uncomfortable people, do we? Prophets, preachers, messiahs…most of us don’t want to hear that loud and discomfiting message, and I suspect that’s why God sends us the loud ones to do that kind of communication.

In contrast, imagine you are in Istanbul, standing before the great cathedral called Hagia Sophia. Enormous, beautiful, it looks as if it has been there forever, and it almost has – it was built in 360. It speaks of the power and majesty of the church of God. When you hear its name, “Holy Sofia,” you might think it is named after a Saint. Saint Sophia. But it is something entirely different. Not a saint, but an attribute of God. Sophia is the Greek word for the wisdom of God. This is not a tribute to a saint, but a recognition of Divine Wisdom. And wisdom in this case is big and imposing and something you can’t ignore as you’re standing in the street in Istanbul.

That helps us with our reading from Proverbs this morning. Hagia Sophia, the wisdom of God…it sounds like a woman. That’s no mistake. In the Old Testament, wisdom – the thing we all want, the thing we expect to get from God, a very good thing indeed – is a particular character. And Wisdom is –SURPRISE! – a woman. In the ancient world, “Lady Wisdom” is an attribute of God, one of God’s characteristics, but she is often spoken of as if she were a separate being.

And this “Lady Wisdom” in the reading, well, she’s as assertive and omnipresent as that street preacher in front of the train station. She’s as hard to miss as the gigantic cathedral in Istanbul. “On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads.” This Lady is everywhere, and she is telling her story out loud, and insistently, to anyone who can hear, and probably some people who don’t. The wisdom of God, that divine wisdom whom we call “she,” tells the story: she has been part of this story since the beginning of time, almost as long as God has been around, which is forever. She was created first, before the light and stars, before the birds and fish and animals and Adam and Eve. Lady Wisdom, God’s created wisdom, always part of the story.

And this Lady Wisdom doesn’t act much like the sort of wisdom we expect from the Scriptures. She is not staid and serious. She is, in a word, playful. Look at that line “Then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” We read that, and we think a master carpenter and his assistant, doing holy work. But when you take a closer look at the Hebrew, it’s actually a very different picture. It could just as validly be translated “Then I was beside him, like someone learning the craft, and I was daily his delight, dancing and frolicking before him always.” A very different picture, yes? Wisdom growing into herself, learning the craft of being an attribute of God, dancing with God, making God laugh.” An eight-year-old girl perhaps, a little clumsy, making a lot of noise as she plays with God, making God snort with laughter at her antics. I think of my daughter as an 8 year old with lots of opinions about how she saw the world, dancing around the kitchen as I cooked, telling me the way things ought to be. Or Wisdom might be an 80 year old woman, no longer needing to prove to anyone exactly how proper she is, jabbing us in the ribs as she tells a joke that proves what is really important and what is not. I think of my 88 year old mother in the year that she died, saying exactly what was on her mind, with no filter for politeness’ sake, not much caring if she made us us uncomfortable, because she had something to tell us that was important.

This is Lady Wisdom, ever-present, not always very well-behaved. Lady Wisdom is sometimes loud, never shy, and that’s not the way we usually think of the way that God is.

But there is a delight to seeing an aspect of God in a new way…it opens us up to the possibility of understanding God differently. That is, in fact, a good thing, because God is so much bigger and more complex than we could ever understand that if we get fresh glimmers of the light of who he is, that’s a gift. Sometimes I think of God as a jigsaw puzzle. Most of the pieces are turned over. I try to figure out the puzzle, what goes where, I have a vague sense of the outline, and some sections are assembled, and I see some of the other color groupings of pieces, but I don’t have the whole picture, nor will I ever have the whole picture in this life. Every now and again, I figure out another section as I turn over the puzzle pieces, but I still don’t have the whole picture.

And today, on this Trinity Sunday, we are faced with the challenge once again of figuring out who God is, what God is, how this thing called the Trinity works. Good luck with that.

Some have thought that the Trinity is God playing different roles, doing different jobs at different times, depending on the need. But Scripture clearly says that they coexist, so it can’t be that. Some think that this is three facets of one personality, as if God was some sort of creature with multiple personality disorder. But the Scripture says “three persons” not “three personalities,” so it can’t be that. Some think that God the Father is the chief and the other two persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are subordinate. But that’s not what the creeds of the church tell us – they are co-equal and unique, so it can’t be that.

We’re not the first to wrestle with the question of the Trinity.

St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great doctors of the early church, lived in the late 4^th and early fifth century. He thought he would write a book about the Trinity, about that relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, how God could be three persons in one God, how they were different yet the same. That book, De Trinitate, almost 800 pages long, ends up being rather like the jigsaw puzzle…he senses pieces of how it fits together, but never quite gets the whole picture. He tries to use an analogy: think of the three aspects of love: beloved, loving, love. Three different aspects of love: the object of love, the process of love, the fact of love. That sort of gets us there…but only sort of. How do the three persons of the Trinity exist simultaneously as one God and as three persons?

We cannot completely understand this – I have come to the belief that this is one of the questions I’ll ask God when I present myself in heaven – but perhaps we can get some clues. And Lady Wisdom, dancing through Proverbs, might help us get there.

We have a pretty clear understanding of God the Father – he is the creator of all the universe, all powerful, all knowing, all present. We also seem to understand that Jesus is God’s Son, although he, being God, has been here since the beginning as well. We know that Jesus was sent to earth by God the Father to save us from our sins, and that he was given a fully human nature as well as a fully divine one. Jesus himself talks about how he was sent so that we human beings might know the father in heaven. That much, we can start to comprehend.

The part that seems to stop us in our tracks, though, is the Holy Spirit. The dove coming down in little tongues of flames on the head of each of the disciples as we heard last week in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles about Pentecost? The Spirit who is sent down to remain with us forever? What is this Spirit, this third person of the Trinity?

New Age enthusiasts might think of the Holy Spirit as some sort of cosmic energy force, but that seems too unfocused.

No, Lady Wisdom is the clue. Wisdom is that ever present sense of the order of the universe that God created. That playful one who invites us to dance with God, with the wholeness of God, both the one who creates, the one who saves, the one who enlightens and sustains us. In fact, the Eastern Church talks of the “perichoresis” of the Holy Trinity, a word that means intertwining and dancing around together. Imagine a square dance with the dancers weaving in an among each other, the relationships handing off, bowing, embracing….this is the way the Eastern Church sees the Trinity, and it’s a beautiful way to recognize the individuality of the persons of God and their interrelationship.

The three persons of the Trinity complement each other and give us the fullest possible experience of God. The Trinity invites us into that dance that the three persons enjoy with each other, and Lady Wisdom, who might also be called Holy Spirit, teases us and invites us to join in the dance. We may not know all the steps, and we may not see everything that is happening as we dance, but we can feel the love of the three persons in one God as we enter into the frolic.

The dance will make us dizzy, but it will make us as joyful and frolicsome as six-year-olds doing the Electric Slide. That, in the end, may be our truest understanding of the Trinity – the emotions, the intimacy, the energy, the joy. That may be all we really need to know.

Amen.

Theological Engineering Exam, Courtesy of Tim B

THEOLOGICAL ENGINEERING EXAM 1
5 Questions, 60 Minutes.


You may use a calculator, the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and the Book of Mormon. The speed of light is c. Show all work. For all problems, assume a perfectly spherical Jesus of constant density D.

No praying during the exam....

1. (20 pts.) Bob and Joe are standing on a street corner. God loves each an equal amount L_0. Bob then accelerates to .9c. In Joe's rest frame, how much does God now love Bob?

2. Sven, a Catholic, is in a state of grace. He then has sex with sheep S.
a. (8 pts.) What is Sven's atonement coefficient following the act if the sheep was not willing?
b. (12 pts.) What if the sheep, while not technically being willing, could not be said to mind either?

3. (20 pts.) Let the eternal, all abiding love of the Holy Spirit be the xy plane. Let Sue's soul be at (0,0,5) at t = 0 sec., traveling at 5 m/s in the direction of the positive z axis.
Everything is in Cartesian coordinates bespeaking subscription to a perfectly rational enlightenment attitude towards the Universe.
At what time t will Sue be saved? (Hint: Assume a point soul.)

4. (20 pts.) Assume the Rapture occurs at time t.
Cornelia, a saved human weighing 90 kg, in a state of grace, has her head in the closing jaws of an alligator at time t.
What mass of meat will remain to the alligator at time t + 10 sec.?

5. Stan is a frictionless, massless Mormon in a rest state.
His sin level for his faith is currently 11 McBeals.
He eats .3 kg of pork, and enjoys it very much.
Assume that the Jews are right about, well, pretty much everything.
a. (10 pts.) What is Stan's sin level now?
b. (10 pts.) Stan is one of them Salt Lake City Mormons. He ain't so damn smug now, is he?

Extra Credit (10 pts): 25 grams of wafers and 20 ml of cheap wine undergo transubstantiation and become the flesh and blood of our Lord. How many Joules of heat are released by the transformation?

Hand in exam when done, and may God have mercy on your work

Sermon for Pentecost, May 23, 2010 Acts 2:1-21 “Lost and Found”

At 9 o’clock this evening, a number of people I know will sit down and finally figure out what it all means. The story is coming to an end…or is it?

The television show “Lost” is coming to an end, with a final episode appropriately enough called “The End.”

I’m not a true “Lost” fanatic, although I’ve watched it occasionally. I do have some friends who are, who get lost in the plots and subplots, the shifts in time, the various roles played by the different characters. If you’re a fan of the show, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you who are not, I’ll try to give you a brief synopsis of what this show is about.

A plane crashes on a seemingly deserted tropical island. The survivors of the crash are a mixed bunch: a doctor, a fugitive, the child of an industrialist, a construction worker, a lottery winner, a former Iraqi soldier. The 71 survivors discover that their little world is more complex than they first thought. There are others on the island, there is a mysterious malevolent force, there are constant questions of who is in charge, what they should do, who is good and who is bad, and if they will ever be saved.

Some characters bear the names of philosophers like Locke, Hume, Bentham, Bakunin and Rousseau. Others bear the names of famous scientists, like Hawking and Faraday. The storyline reflects that as it touches on a number of the “big questions” – what is our purpose in life, are human beings essentially good or evil, is there something other than us in the universe, and perhaps most importantly, how do we respond to disorienting change?

Over the six seasons of the show, the plot twists and turns have become ever more complex, the time shifts more radical, and the end point more obscure. So those who have followed it faithfully are hoping that this final episode tonight will make it all clear, that suddenly the crash and its aftermath will all make sense.

The producers of the show couldn’t have picked a more perfect Sunday for this final chapter.

It is, after all, Pentecost.

And what is the story of Pentecost? It is the story of the aftermath of disorienting change.

The disciples of Christ have survived a horrific and seismic shift in their world: Their beloved teacher and Lord, Jesus, has been killed. Just as they are struggling with their grief and confusion, Jesus reappears, risen from the dead, comforting them, praying with them, giving them final instructions before he departs from them for good, to be with his heavenly father. Those who had thought that Jesus would be a secular king and save them from Roman oppression have been sorely disappointed. The story doesn’t play out that way. His kingdom is not an earthly one. His promise is of something much different, much harder to understand…an eternal and heavenly kingdom that seems beyond our comprehension.

The shifts between the living Jesus to the dead one, and then to the risen Christ, and then the ascended Christ in heaven…it’s too hard for the disciples to wrap their heads around. So Jesus gives them a gift. He sends them the Holy Spirit, to help them to understand, to give them the skills they need to carry on the work. The disciples had felt like they were lost, but the Holy Spirit has helped them find their way, their mission, to lead more people to an understanding of the teachings of Christ.

In case they don’t get the message, the Holy Spirit gives them a visual aid: she comes down in tongues of fire, little flames of knowledge and strength above each disciples’ head. And then there is the auditory aid: they start speaking, in their own Aramaic, because that is the language of their native Galilee. But those from other places hear it as if the disciples were speaking in their own native language. They say, “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." The gift of understanding, that great transformation, comes from God, and affects not only the disciples, but also those who hear those disciples. In the midst of disorienting change, the Spirit comes to bring some measure of understanding and the strength to continue the journey.

In a sense, these survivors in their small world are given the roadmap for finding their way through the disorienting change, and they are given the tools to lead others on that journey. That is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

But the world is distrustful of those gifts. What happens when the disciples receive this gift of speaking in a way that all can hear? Some disbelievers say that they are simply drunk and babbling…they’ve had too much of the new wine. Peter, unable to contain himself, snaps at them: it’s 9 in the morning. Of course they’re not drunk. It’s something else, something from God, just as the prophet Joel said:

`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy. ‘

As an aside, for those who think that women can’t preach, look to those words from the prophet Joel!

No, these strange and wonderful gifts that God sends through the Holy Spirit have the power to bring us through times of disorienting change. No longer lost, but found.

I’ve been talking a lot about change over these past few weeks, and we have begun an adult education series on the subject. We at Epiphany have survived many changes in recent years, large and small. Some have felt seismic, big changes, such as loss of someone we loved, departure of old friends from this parish family. Some have been the little changes that sometimes feel like thorns in our sides – taking out the Doxology from the worship service, changes in the bulletin. All change can be disorienting, can’t it? But my hope is that we can use this time of change to be something other than mere disorientation.

If we look at what has happened and what is to come not as change, but as transformation, then we move it to the realm of the spiritual, and we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit. It becomes something other than a shift in situation, it becomes a chance for the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts and fill us with what we need to do things differently, to be different. It becomes the necessary evolution of our understanding of God, and our relationship with God, that informs how we live our lives. It is both wonderful and a little bit frightening.

In a recent episode of “Lost,” one of the characters, Jacob, passes on the responsibility for the survivors to another one, a reluctant one. Jack is understandably nervous about this new role and says, “How long am I supposed to do this?” Jacob replies, “As long as you can.”

That’s the thing about the gift of understanding, and of transformation in the midst of disorienting change. It is a responsibility. But a certain grace comes with it as well.
God knows our limitations.

God asks us to open ourselves to the transformation and the responsibility that goes with it.

But God also gives us help, and even relief, if that is what we need.

So on this day of Pentecost, when we wear our red clothing to remind us of the flames of the Holy Spirit descending on the heads of the disciples, we remember how they were transformed in unimaginable ways, and took on new responsibilities.

We hope that we, too, will be transformed.

Not changed, but transformed.

Not lost, but found.

Not alone, never alone, for the Spirit is with us always, and the flame always burns.

Amen.

Yes, I've been busy...

...the move and starting the new gig and everything. Bad blogger, I know.

The various and sundry tasks involved with getting settled in the house have fallen disproportionately on me since PH is still wrapping up his practice in Your Nation's Capital. no, I'm not aggravated at him - this was our deal, and I'm fine with that. It's just that it sometimes feels like being pecked to death by ducks. This morning it was the following:

• arranging for someone to retrieve a zillion empty boxes (thank you, Craigslist, for making it possible to recycle all those boxes rather than taking them to the landfill) to be used in her move.
• having the insurance inspector come to eyeball the house and see if the insurance company can charge us even more money to insure an older house.
• getting the city to pick up the brush that PH and his buddy cleared out of the back yard this weekend - what wonderful plants we found after the ugly stuff was taken out!
• trying to find a replacement part for the dishwasher so it can actually be mounted to the cabinets instead of jiggling freely (don't know whether the contractor or the former homeowner was to blame for that one, which is also related to the improperly mounted microwave, but it doesn't much matter at this point, does it?)
• searching for the gift card that PH got for his birthday, so we can use it for something useful at the Home Despot.
• unpacking more boxes and planning the hanging of the pictures in the living room and foyer. Many pictures and antique maps and such of all different sizes - wow. Like planning storming the beach in Normandy.
  
• arranging for the plumber to come and complete the installation of our new tankless water heater. Thanks be to God, the city inspector (one of the items on last week's list) approved the new gas line without blinking. Pete, thanks for the nice work.
  

Yes, I'll take some cheese with that whine. We've got a lovely house, and we can afford to do the odds and ends we need to do to bring it up to snuff. Life is good.

But in the meantime, I'm also trying to untangle some administrative odds'n'ends before my first Vestry meeting tomorrow night (not that I'm nervous or anything). The secretary is reasonably helpful, the parishioners are dear, but there aren't enough hours in the days, and it's hard to know what to tackle first.

These are all good problems to have, though, so I'll just get me a bowl of ice cream and stop complaining now.

Continue what you were doing....


Yes, I know I'm outing myself with the picture above, but I don't say anything quite so radical that the world can't know from whence it came.

First Sermon at the New Place, Rev 21:1-6

The New Jerusalem. A holy city come down from heaven.

That’s what we hear from the Book of the Revelation to John.

I will bet you a good steak dinner that when John’s friends and relations heard that passage that we just heard, somebody said, “New Jerusalem? What’s wrong with the old Jerusalem? It was perfectly fine most of the time, and my Grandmother came from the Old Jerusalem! Why do we need a new one? What’s with all the changes around here?”

And there were other folks nodding their heads, saying “We don’t need a new Jerusalem. We’d much rather have the old one.”

That’s what happens when the world around us swirls with change. We want the swirling to stop, we hate the dizzy feeling it gives us. We want the familiar, the comforting, the good old ways…even when we know that the good old ways weren’t always so good.

Change is an uncomfortable thing…

PH and I moved down to Richmond from Alexandria this past week. Moving is always hard work, even when it’s for an exciting new adventure in one’s life, and we took turns feeling stressed and disoriented by it. Going back and forth on the phone with Comcast to get the cable set up, dealing with buying a washer and dryer for the new place, figuring out how to get our two geriatric cats down here without too much stress on them and on us, all of it made for a hectic week. And yes, we did paint a bedroom or two in the midst of all this, and I wrote this sermon. Change is an uncomfortable thing.

But our worries about the move seem pale in comparison to those folks who first heard the message of the Book of Revelation.

Scholars tell us that this book, the last one in the New Testament, was written somewhere between the year 68 and the year 95. It was not a good time to be a follower of Christ…the emperor Domitian was busy imprisoning, banishing, or martyring Christians. John was using language in this book that was prophetic, to be sure, but in the eyes of the Romans, it was also political. Romans heard this idea of a new Jerusalem about the same way some people today would hear the phrase “new world order…” something that was talking about a new Jerusalem that would replace the world as it existed then. No surprise then, that John was probably exiled to Patmos, where he later died. They saw him as a political instigator.

In that world, at that time, life was not good. In point of fact, Jews and Christians had already lost the old Jerusalem…the great temple had been destroyed and the Jews, and Jewish Christ-followers along with them, had been banished from the city. The small number of Jews and Christians who remained were persecuted. And even those who went to different places, to Greece, to Syria, suffered persecution from the Roman authorities.

So perhaps the idea of a new Jerusalem wasn’t entirely an unwelcome change…perhaps there were possibilities in this new Jerusalem. After all, what was John describing? A Jerusalem so wonderful that it was heaven come to earth. God dwelling right alongside God’s people. That sounds pretty promising, doesn’t it?

Sometimes change is not so uncomfortable, when we see that the new thing may bring great joy.

Even so, while we’re in the midst of it, change takes us out of our comfort zones into something very different.

It feels for all the world like one of those merry-go-rounds in the playground. Not the great big ones with the music playing and the wooden horses we ride on, but the big disks about ten feet in diameter, with poles to hang onto…you get them started by hanging one foot off and pushing, pushing, pushing, until it is spinning at a crazy pace and you’re hanging on for dear life. If you’re looking out from the edge or the center, you see the world zipping by, and before long you’ve got that queasy feeling in your stomach.

Now here’s the trick about those merry-go-rounds: if you look in to the center as you’re spinning, rather than out at the world whirling past, you don’t get sick. Focus on the center, and what happens around you doesn’t affect you anywhere near as much.

It’s not just about merry go rounds, though. It works the same way for us in the midst of change…if we focus on what is important, then the spinning, whirring wheel of change doesn’t make us anywhere near as disoriented.

One of the great change agents of the last century, Mahatma Gandhi, said , “ I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power…is God. And since nothing else I see merely through [my] senses can or will persist, He alone is.” He is talking about that kind of focus on what is really important, the center of our existence, which makes the wheel of change tolerable. We are looking inward to the center, not outward to the world whizzing by.

What is that center?

The Book of Revelation and Mahatma Gandhi agree on this:

The center is God dwelling among us, being with us in all things.

God wiping away every tear from our eyes, even in the midst of making all things new.

God at the center, helping us in the midst of change, comforting us when it feels too strange and new.

That’s particularly good news for us here at the Church by the Lakeside, where it probably feels like there has been nothing BUT change over the past couple of years. Different priests, different ways of doing things, worries about who would eventually be called to be your permanent priest, wondering about where God has been in this time of change.

God has been right here. Dwelling among you. Wiping tears from your eyes, smiling as you smile, nodding graciously as you worship, as you remain faithful to our covenant with the One who has given us life.

God has been right here, helping you to be patient. God has been other places, too, like my former parish, where I have served in a variety of ways for the past 2 ½ years, preparing me to be here with you. God was helping me to be patient as I wondered where I was meant to be.

For this parish, the past couple of years have been a ride on the merry-go-round. Lots of changes and lots of questions and lots of wishes that things would just settle down.

In one sense, my arrival marks a time of settling down. But being Christians means we do not necessarily settle, because God is always calling us to do and be something new.

We have dreams for this place, for welcoming others into this parish family, for finding fresh ways to serve God even as we honor the things we’ve been doing faithfully for a long time. But dreams sometimes mean moving out of the comfortable ways of the old Jerusalem to the surprising and different ways of the new Jerusalem. That’s what the apostle Peter was dreaming about in our reading from Acts earlier this morning…a religion that would bring together Jews and Gentiles without barriers or preferences, a radical concept in that time and place. That was their surprising and different new Jerusalem.

We do not fully know what our new Jerusalem will look like. I can tell you that it will start with prayer and thoughtful discussion of where God is leading us in this time and this place. I can also tell you that our work to discern that new Jerusalem will be open. It will be the work of the whole parish, not just me, and not just the Vestry. We will map our path to that new Jerusalem by focusing on the center, on the God who dwells among us and guides us, and wherever it leads us, God will be with us. Consider me your tour guide, who knows some of the key information you will need….but we will all be walking on the path together, and it will be good.

So we step onto that path, and prepare for change.

Not change simply for change’s sake, but transformation. Transformation into the new Jerusalem. If we allow God to transform us, and if we keep him at the center of what is to come, we will not get dizzy and disoriented. We will know better than ever before where we are going, and it will not frighten us, it will strengthen us.

So let us walk together, toward a future with a new Jerusalem. We are not alone. God dwells among us, this day and every day.

Amen.

Home again, home again ,jiggedy jig.

Back from the fabulous RGBP BE3 Cruise. A delight in every way, with new friends, new ideas, some great rest and relaxation and a bottle each of duty-free tequila and dark rum. Sara - Dark and Stormies coming up!

I'll blog a bit more later and share some pictures...right now there's laundry to do and a husband to hang out with.

Preparation of the Soil

I'm headed out tomorrow morning to go on the RevGals Big Event, a cruise from Miami to the Bahamas, with lectures by the wonderful Rev Nanette Sawyer of Wicker Park Grace. I'm looking forward to meeting so many great RevGals whom I've gotten to know on the Web over the past five years or so. It's also a good unhitching from Alexandria just prior to our move.

A little enforced replanting for a few days reminds me that I can thrive in new soil.

That said, there are things I'll miss about this place:

• The doe that lives in the thin strip of greensward between Van Dorn Avenue and Rt 395, an urban and heavily trafficked environ. Nature overcomes human predation somehow. The doe wanders back and forth amid the trees, seemingly placid in spite of it all.
• The cluster of parents in the neighborhood seeing their children on to the bus. Two women in niqab, three in saris, one in shalwar kalmeez, two guys in loose basketball shorts and Redskins t-shirts, a woman in extraordinarily tight jeans and a Be-Dazzled t-shirt that says "I'm a sexy bitch." All smiling, all waving at their children on the bus as it pulls away.
• The Smithsonian Folk Festival each July. Nothing since has equaled the Silk Road year (Tuvan throat-singers! Yo-yo Ma!), but there is always something interesting to see (who knew that fishing for eels is a big industry in Ireland?) and the people-watching is almost as wonderful as the exhibits and music.
• Finding out that your neighbor can't tell you what he does in his job. If he told you, he'd have to kill you. But he'll never tell you. Seriously.
• Meeting people who think big, about all sorts of things. Even if I don't agree with what they think, they stretch my brain in new ways.

But there are also things that I will gladly leave behind :

• Traffic. The Beltway is the deepest circle of Hell. Rt 95 and 395 are tests of Christian forbearance...I fail miserably on a regular basis.
• Excessive focus on what you do for a living as a measure of status. I can remember one dinner party where I was pretty much ignored by the hostess (wife of a person with whom I had a business relationship) until she learned what my pay grade was (how things are measured in Your Nation's Capital), then decided I was worthy of her attention. SES (Senior Executive Service) is more prestigious, it seems, than the GS grades. Not that I really wanted much of her attention, but that really is the way of things more often than it should be.
• High, high cost of living. Not quite San Francisco, not quite NYC, but pretty damned high, particularly housing. For those who do the manual labor in this town, this means they live out a ways and endure long commutes on public transportation, which is not always as reliable as it should be. For those of us who don't make megabucks, you have to make some very strategic choices to live as you think you should.
• Hard place to raise kids. Mine are mostly grown now, but I cannot tell you the number of times that I've heard about cliques, "mean girls," overwhelming pressure for kids to get into the best colleges, a lot of pressure re sex and drugs in schools both poor and rich. On this side of the Potomac, a large number of kids get a fancy car when they get their license. Across the river, kids struggle to avoid getting drawn into gang/drug/gun trouble. Many don't succeed. Something is very wrong here.

In all, my time in the DC area (fifteen years this go-round) has been rich and wonderful. I got here a mess, in the final stages of a painful divorce and difficult custody struggle. I met PH, remarried, changed from a career to a vocation, was ordained, and began to serve God's church. Now I go to another place, very different from the last one, and begin again.

I pray I find the humus beneath my feet, grow new roots, and thrive. And I am grateful for this week of respite and rejoicing. Necessary preparation of the soil, I'd say.

Pack Your Bags Friday Five

A great Friday Five from Songbird:

"I'm preparing to pack my bags for the Big Event Three, and as I gather what I need I'm thinking about just that: what do I *need* to take with me? As a person who likes to pack light, I worry that in the end I may underpack and wish I had other things with me. I own the gigantor version of the bag to the right, but my morbid fear of having it go astray and not get to the ship means I'm more likely to try to pack it all in a carry-on bag instead, especially since I have a very tight connection on the way to the cruise. But won't I be sorry if I don't bring _______________?"

With that in mind, here are five questions about packing to go on a trip.

1) Some fold, some roll and some simply fling into the bag. What's your technique for packing clothes?

Roll and stuff. I can fit bunches of things into very tight spaces. Part of it comes from having a mom who was in the military in WWII and who learned efficient packing in a duffle bag, part of it was having been a road warrior in my prior life, and traveling a lot all over the place. I also am good at finding clothing that is space-efficient and non-wrinkling. That sure helps.

2) The tight regulations about carrying liquids on planes makes packing complicated. What might we find in your quart-size bag? Ever lose a liquid that was too big?

Never lost a liquid that was too big. In my quart-sized bag are basic toiletries including the contact lens stuff and moisturizer and such. I've also got, I'm sad to say, another quart-sized bag with meds. Such is middle age. Glad I don't have to fit that stuff into the first bag or else I'd be un-deodorized, un-moisturized, un-toothbrushed - yuck.


3) What's something you can't imagine leaving at home?

The iPod and a couple of books, and maybe some knitting.

4) Do you have a bag with wheels?

Mais certainement! Life is too short to have a sore shoulder or back.

5) What's your favorite reading material for a non-driving trip (plane, train, bus, ship)?

Mystery novel or design magazines, usually.

I'm happy to say I'm going on BigEvent3 - my first with these women - and i cannot wait!

How about you?

Farewells

Last night was another in our list of good-bye events. Folks from my sponsoring parish, the place where PH and I met and were married, gathered for a lovely party.

On Friday night, we were feted at the adios party thrown by Saint Middle School for us. One of my farewell gifts was Deacon Gabrielle, pictured at right. They decided I could use an extra pair of hands at my new call at Church by the Lakeside. Gabrielle has a whole backstory (daughter of parents who served as missionaries in Indonesia, experience at several churches in Ohio and Maryland...) too adorable! Gifted Parishioner, who makes all the vestments and altar paraments for Saint Middle School, crafted Gabrielle's vestments, inspired by the fabulously vested Rev. Barbie of St. Barbara's by the Sea in Malibu. Other lovely gifts, too, for which I am so grateful, but mostly I'm grateful for the time I've spent in both these communities. They were part of what molded me into the person I am today. There will be two more such events, one at PH's church and another party with PH's work colleagues.

Last night, a friend reminded me of an "alto lunch" - at that point I was still singing in the alto section in the choir - when I had started dating PH, where the assembled group grilled me through the entire lunch about PH. They wanted to see if he was good enough for me. Of course at the same time, PH's cousins in the area were grilling him as to whether or not I was good enough for him! A delight to remember those times and those stories.

That, I think, is one of the gifts of these farewell gatherings. They bring to the forefront of our memories the stories that we most need to cherish of time and relationship and love. Bittersweet, these parting get-togethers, but worth it for these moments and this love.

And the Midori martinis weren't too bad, either!

RevGals Friday Five: On the Road Again

A fun Friday Five from Sophia today:

"My family is heading out to my husband's parents for the weekend later today. They would have preferred that we come at Easter, but I preferred that my choir director not bring my life to an early end! (Five liturgies to sing between Thursday and Sunday, two with major solos). So Low Sunday it is.

Some Gals and Pals may have been able to travel to join family or visit a vacation spot last week; some who had to stay put then may be traveling this weekend; and, if I recall correctly, some lucky ones are heading out to the Big Event next weekend. Hence: a road trip Friday Five."

1. When was your last, or will be your next, out of town travel?

Depends on what counts as out of town. I've been running back and forth to Richmond, where I will begin a new call on May 1st, to meet with church folk and get ready to buy a house there. I was there on Wednesday. Next trip will be on the 19th, when I join the RevGals on BE3. Whoopee!

2. Long car trips: love or loathe?

I adore long car trips with my husband. PH is the best traveling companion - mellow, curious, funny, able to be quiet some of the time and conversational other times. Long car trips with my kids, even now that they are adults - not so much. Their dad and I used to drive from Little Rhody to Stowe VT every weekend during the snowboarding season when they were younger. It did not help our already faltering marriage. Just sayin'

3. Do you prefer to be driver or passenger?

Depends who is driving. If PH is driving, I am very happy to be the passenger. If one of the kids is driving, I wish I were behind the wheel. They are not bad drivers, per se, it's just that they don't pay attention in the same way a more experienced driver does.

4. If passenger, would you rather pass the time with handwork, conversing, reading, listening to music, or ???

Sleeping is always my favorite. Can't read or do much craft stuff because I get carsick. I like to converse some of the time, listen to music or books on tape some of the time, just watch the world go by the rest of the time...or not: "Oooh, look at the cute little shop. Let's stop and take a look."

5. Are you going, or have you ever gone, on a RevGals BE? Happiest memories of the former, and/or most anticipated pleasures of the latter?

Going on BE3 and I can't wait to meet so many folks I know from their blogs IRL!

6. Bonus: a favorite piece of road trip music.
Paul Simon: "Graceland". Also his "The Rhythm of the Saints." Perfect road music. Strong also-ran: anything by the sublime Eva Cassidy.

Midweek eek

The endless list of things to do continues. Not a bad thing, just, well, endless.

I had a great meeting this morning with the new interim vicar at St Middle School. They will like her and I believe she will like them. Bright, engaged Christians who are not afraid to ask hard questions, they also put their time and money where their mouth is.

Last night was the fourth premarital prep session for S&J - one more and they will be done with this part of their preparation. Sweet couple. I'm privileged to work with them. I do love doing this work!

When I came home, PH had loaded all my boxes of assorted office stuff (books, resource materials, etc, etc) into little Red (his Volvo S40 wagon). I am heading out momentarily to drive south for three purposes: to measure all the various dimensions of the new house so as to plan where furniture will go, to meet with the current interim at my new church and the senior and junior warden to discuss all sorts of stuff, and to unload said boxes. It will be easier to organize the rest of the stuff that needs to be packed and moved in the house if my church stuff is out of the way. At least that's what I'm telling myself. In any case, it's easier to move it once (from my house in Alexandria to the church in Richmond) than it is to move it from my house in Alexandria to my new house in Richmond to the church in Richmond. That's my belief, at least.

The acolyte corps in the Church by the Lakeside has invited me to tea the day before our first Eucharist together. Should be interesting. Given that the acolyte corps is something of a well-defended highly formalized institution at this place, we shall see what this means. For now, I'm presuming it's a warm gesture of welcome.

I'm hoping the drive south will be uneventful, that the unusually warm weather we are experiencing will not bring out the NASCAR attitudes of the drivers on the road, and that the sexton will be around to help move the boxes into the office. If not, I'll be on ibuprofen for the rest of the week.

BBL.

Monday Morning List

Easter Monday, and I am now officially in-between jobs.

That doesn't mean I get much rest, although I did get to sleep in until (hold on to your hats) 7 am this morning!

Yesterday was wonderful, with a great outdoor service at 7:30 am on Saint Middle School's land, followed by a big festal service at our usual venue at 10, complete with a trumpeter and all sorts of great music. The services went well and we had a great egg hunt and potluck afterwards. PH and I came back home to decompress for a little bit, then we went over to K&P's house for a delicious dinner and great conversation. To bed by ten p.m. feeling like it was a good day's work and play.

But Monday is another day. The list of things to do is quite long, mostly revolving around cleaning and organizing for the move.

I'm headed out to the cleaners to get the alb cleaned. Then it's time to tackle closets - I'm not psychologically ready to handle the basement yet. Since it's in the 70's today, I really have to put away the winter clothes and hang up the light weight things.

On to the rest of my life...

Sermon for Easter Sunday Luke 21:1-12 "Seeing What is Within"

We human beings think we know how things work. We make assumptions.

We think we know what to expect when we examine something more closely, based upon our prior experience with similar things. We think there are predictable behaviors in the natural world, and we think there are predictable behaviors in people, too. We make judgments about how people are based upon what we first see – those infamous “first impressions – and we think we know who they are in all their complexity just from those first senses we get about them.

What a surprise, then, when we discover that our beliefs, our assumptions, are wrong!

Think of it like a geode.

Geodes are geological formations. Geodes usually appear in sedimentary or volcanic rock. They look for all the world like big old rocks. Brown. Unprepossessing.

Pretty boring, actually. But when you break them open, look what you find…gorgeous quartz crystal formations, in glorious colors. Amethyst, rose, yellow. Amazing, and even more surprising given how mundane the exterior looks.

If we thought the inside of a geode was just like the outside, we’d never want to crack them open. We’d never see the glory inside.

We’d have made an assumption – a false one, it turns out – about how this rock was constructed and what it looked like on the inside. And we’d miss something amazing.

It works that way with people, too.

There was a professor I met when I first went to seminary. She had a reputation for being fiercely intelligent. Frankly, she scared me. So I avoided her, and didn’t sign up for any of her classes, because I thought she was scary and would judge me a poor student. I avoided her successfully in my first year, but much to my dismay, she was assigned to be my advisor in my middler year. We met, and my impressions of her as an intelligent and rather brusque person seemed to be confirmed. I had been doing well enough in seminary that I didn’t think she would write a bad middler evaluation of me – one of the critical things that would move me forward to ordination or block me – but she certainly wouldn’t meet anyone’s description of “warm and fuzzy and encouraging.” I was sure I knew who she was.

Then something happened.

In the midst of that middler year, the most exhausting one in the seminary curriculum, I got sick. Very sick.

I was in the ICU. I didn’t think I was going to die, although other people, including my husband, worried that I might. Who comes rolling through the door of my room one afternoon, wearing the gown and the gloves and the mask that everyone who came through the door had to don? You guessed it. My professor. She brought me communion, she talked about how she had informed the rest of my professors what was going on, so I shouldn’t worry, and sat and held my hand for a while as I talked about my fears that this illness would derail my ordination process.

No, she wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but she was supportive, and listened to my fears without dismissing them as silly, and helped me in the ways that she could. Not what I expected from her, based on my assumptions, my impressions.

In my senior year, she was my thesis advisor. She was tough. She expected a level of academic performance several notches higher than any other professor in the seminary. One week, when I brought her some writing that was, frankly, mediocre, she told me in no uncertain terms that this was not the level of work she expected, and I’d better get it together. This was all consistent with my original understanding of who she was – the tough, scary person. But she also encouraged me when I did good work, suggested ways of working with the scholar who was serving as an external evaluator of my work – he was a bit difficult, and celebrated with me when the thesis was done.

Yes, she was like my first impression, somewhat, but she was much more. Had I not had the surprise of who she could be under different circumstances, I would have dismissed her as someone with whom I didn’t want to engage.

You crack the geode open, that geode that looks like a plain and hard rock, and you find crystalline glory inside. Surprises abound, when you least expect them.

So it was for the women in today’s gospel. Mary Magdelene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, the other women. They went to Jesus’ tomb with certain expectations. They knew how things went when someone was dead. They were laid in a tomb, and the body needed to be properly prepared, with spices like myrrh, like the spikenard with which Mary bathed Jesus’ feet. It was a sad task, an end to a terrible time when they had watched Jesus brutally killed on the cross, caught in the political crossfire between the religious leadership and the Roman governor. They probably carried the small pouches and bottles of spices in baskets made of reeds. Their arms ached with the weight of the baskets even as their hearts ached with their loss of the beloved one who taught them a new way of knowing God. And their walk was probably a silent one.

Each had their own thoughts, their own anticipation of seeing the cold, white body in the tomb, with the horrific wounds from the nails, from the spear. They knew what to expect.

But the rock was cleaved. The stone that covered the tomb was rolled away. And two strangers, “two men in dazzling clothes,” were standing there, telling them that Jesus was not there, that he was alive, as he had told them would happen.

The rocky cave, broken open. Something much different than they had expected within. Something so beautiful that the only thing they could do was to run back to the others in shock and amazement, to tell them what they had seen and heard.

Unless you actually see the inside of the geode, how could you ever guess the beauty that lies within?

So when the women told the disciples, the men’s reaction was predictable. “No, you women couldn’t have seen that. You couldn’t have heard that. That’s not the way the world works. Somebody dies, they’re dead. Their body remains in a tomb. Maybe Jesus had started to decompose and your mind was affected by the odor and your own stupid, womanish emotions.”

The women insisted, though, so Peter went to see for himself. And what he saw was the rock, cleaved. The crystalline glory within. Not the body of their teacher, cold and dead. Just the winding cloths in which he had been interred, folded, on the stone. Jesus gone, risen from the dead.

Easter reminds us once again that Jesus’ death and resurrection is not what we would expect. It breaks all the natural rules. It turns our expectations of what will happen upside down.

The rock is broken open and what remains within is not a broken human body. What remains is the glorious surprise of what God can do. A resurrection. A triumph over death.

It is unexpected, but the ultimate unexpected act is the one that is also a part of this story. Jesus not only rises, no longer dead but eternally alive – he also frees us from our own death, our own sinfulness.

This is the joy of the resurrection. This is the brilliant crystal within the dull brown rock: we are saved. In one utterly incomprehensible moment, Jesus himself is no longer dead, and neither are we.
Because of what he has done, we are alive, in him. Our sins are forgiven. Our brokenness is healed.

The geode is cleaved and we see what is within. What do we see? Ourselves, beloved, saved, filled with love and gratitude for the gift of Jesus in our lives. Ourselves, full of possibilities and potential. We have the opportunity to look deeper than the expected assumptions of who we are, and what Jesus means to us.

We can break open the rock and see something that defies what we expect, what we assume. Because that’s the thing – we look at something and then make assumptions based upon past experience, because of what we have seen or read or felt. With God it is different. God looks at something and doesn’t think backwards…God thinks forward. God sees the possibilities and the surprises that are within something. That is why Jesus’ death is not an ending, but a beginning. That is why our possibilities, in God’s eyes, are infinitely more important than how we have failed in the past.

Alleluia! The Lord is risen, and we, too rise, with him and through him. Alleluia, indeed!

Amen.

Homily for Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2010: John 13:1-17, 31b-35 “Get Down on Your Knees”

It is an uncomfortable thing to get down on your knees and wash somebody’s feet.

First of all, there’s the posture. You’re down on your hands and knees. You’re lower than the person whose feet you are washing. Your knees may creak a bit, and it may be hard on your back.

Then there’s the whole “feet” thing…touching other peoples’ feet feels too intimate. My daughter won’t get a pedicure because she feels shy about someone else handling her feet. Some folks are afraid to touch someone else’s feet because they are afraid the person may have some sort of foot fungus that they will catch, or that they will face someone with particularly unattractive feet.

In the ancient world, feet WERE thought of as a particularly intimate and private part of the body. “Uncovering his feet” was a euphemism for uncovering someone’s private parts. Even today, in the Middle East, showing someone the sole of your foot is a terrible insult. When that Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at former President Bush, it was a multi-leveled insult. Feet are not something to be shared with others.

So when Jesus prepared to wash the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, it was a crazy thing for Jesus to do. Peter was shocked; the teacher does not do this…it is the work of a slave. But Jesus was teaching once again in a way that turned the world upside down. The first will be last, the little ones are the ones with proper faith, the rich should divest themselves of all and become poor. And the teacher gets down on his knees and washes the feet of those whom he teaches.

It was an unsettling message then, and it is an unsettling one today. We’re perfectly happy to write a check…well, not always perfectly happy, but generally willing, at least in principle…and we’re perfectly happy to make a sandwich or bring a box of cereal to go over to the Interfaith Food Bank, but the whole footwashing thing feels a bit too much.

And yet…

If we are gathering together as a loving community, about to celebrate a meal that reminds us of the One who celebrated the first meal of this kind, serving each other in some way seems right. If the ceremony we were about to do consisted of washing each others’ hands in a bowl of warm water, we probably wouldn’t shrink at it.

But feet. Feet feels like Jesus is asking too much of us. It’s that posture. It’s the sore back we’ll have tomorrow. It’s crouching on the ground. And yes, it’s feet. Tired, slightly smelly, beat-up looking feet.

And that’s really the point, isn’t it? Jesus doesn’t do the easy thing, directing his disciples to do this footwashing, or deciding that washing their hands is enough of a symbol. No, he wraps a towel around his middle, gets down on his knees, and he washes those dusty feet that walked with him on the road to Jerusalem, to this place and this meal. He shows a kind of extreme humility that is second only to what is to come.

Washing feet, you see, is nothing compared to the radical subservience he will demonstrate on Friday, when he gives up not just his dignity, but his human life, to save us all. Getting down on his knees to wash the disciples’ feet will be followed by getting down on his knees to pray that the cup pass away, and it will be followed by getting down on his knees as he is flogged, and it will be followed by his body being tortured and hung up to die on the cross…for no other purpose than to save us. He makes himself a servant. He gets down on his knees and washes their feet. Then he gets up on the cross and dies for their sins, and our sins, too.

So in a few minutes, when we wash each others’ feet, I hope you do feel the ache in your knees and back. I hope you feel the little bit of unease at washing the feet of another St Gabrielite. I hope when you do, you also feel a little bit of the love that Jesus felt toward his disciples, and toward us, that he would assume this position and do this thing. I hope you direct that same feeling of love toward the person whose feet you are washing. If you do, you will start to understand the magnitude of what he does, wrapping a towel around his middle or accepting the judgment that he must die. That is the love we remember this night. That is the love we share with each other in this simple act of washing each others’ feet. And that is the love that Jesus hoped we would learn from his life and death.


Amen.

One Foot in Front of the Other

Yes, it is the holiest week of the church year. It is also the busiest.

I've talked about the challenge of all the bulletins before, so I won't bore you with that. Most of you who are part of the churched world know that there are a number of services this week, so I won't bore you with how busy I am with that either.

It's all the other stuff that continues in the midst of this that makes the week feel like a sausage stuffed to the edge of bursting. A dear parishioner with metastatic breast cancer who was hospitalized two days ago with pulmonary embolisms. Trying to schedule a few last meetings with folks prior to my departure from St Middle School. Trying to get the moving logistics worked out, as well as lining up the contractors to do the necessary work when we take possession of the new house. Conversations with key people in the new church about some things that need relatively quick attention, and conversations about holding off on a few things because they (and I) are not ready to tackle them yet. Discovering that my three weeks between leaving the old job and starting the new one have become very full with all sorts of necessary stuff.

The good news is that most of these things have been are or being attended to. The better news is that Jesus loves me whether they all get done or not. It ain't about me.

And the Maundy Thursday homily is done, so now I can turn my attention to Easter Sunday's sermon(s).

(zzzzzzzzz)

We had a great Palm Sunday service at Saint Middle School today. New altar frontal and lectern parament in oxblood with palms attached. Lots of palms decorating the church. Good music, both outdoors in the chill for the Liturgy of the Palms and the processional, and indoors for the rest of the service. The dramatic reading of the Passion, with many voices participating, went quite well, and the sermon didn't smell too badly. A small but tasty potluck afterwards. Our attendance was off, since this is school vacation week (grrrr).

Then PH and I got in the car and drove across the Potomac to the fancy-schmancy new National Harbor where there was a show - Metropolitan Food, Libations and Luxury Home Show. It was an multiple-personality-disorder mishmash of artists and artisans, home remodeling people, and wine and beer distributors. Most of the crafts and art were not to our taste, although a friend of PH's had some stunning pieces in wood. The wine that they were offering tastings of was plonk. and the only useful thing amongst the home remodeling folks was the super low-flow toilets and the slightly scary bidet-style toilet seats. I found a little Chinese drawing of a rooster for my new kitchen, and PH found a chocolate covered pretzel (the same folks were offering chocolate covered Peeps - oh my!). Not much else to be excited about, but I think my sense of ennui about the thing was related to my lack of the usual Sunday afternoon clerical nap.

The week ahead will be busy, as it is for most of us in the church. Tuesday morning Litigator, my 26 y.o. son, will be coming for a few days. Tuesday night is the Tenebrae service, Thursday morning is the renewal of ordination vows, Thursday night is the Maundy Thursday service with foot-washing, Friday morning is singing at a Good Friday service at Big Old Seminary, Friday night is the Good Friday Stations of the Cross, and Sunday is a sunrise service outdoors and then a 10 am service with all the attendant big-service stuff, trumpeter included. Potluck brunch followed by Easter Egg Hunt.

It goes without saying that I will be taking a nap after that one...but wait - we're supposed to go to K&P's for Easter dinner. I'll sleep the following Monday, I think.

Reflection on the Passion: Sunday, March 28, 2010 : “How Glory Goes”

There’s a wonderful song from a rather obscure musical called “How Glory Goes.” It’s a reflection on what heaven will be like, and how little bits of our life on earth give us an insight into what might await us there. The hero, dreaming in rural Kentucky of a more hopeful future than he has in his life on earth, sings,

“Do we hear a trumpet call us an' we're by your side?
Will I want,
Will I wish for all the things I should have done,
Longing to finish what I only just begun?

Or has a shinin' truth been waitin' there
for all the questions ev'ry where?
In a word a' wond'rin' suddenly you know;
An' you will always know...

Will my mama be there waitin' for me,
Smilin' like the way she does,
an' holdin' out her arms, and she calls my name?
She will hold me just the same...

Only heaven knows how glory goes,
what each of us was meant to be.”

We wonder what heaven will be like when our lives seem so limited, so broken. And we try to wrap our minds around a world that would take someone like Jesus and put him to death. And then we try to understand why Jesus would allow this to happen.

Today’s gospel readings certainly raise these questions once again.

I mean, after all, if you knew your work was going to be dismissed and you were going to die, would you still climb on that colt and take what looks like a victory lap going into Jerusalem?

That’s the big question for me as I participate in this Palm Sunday service of Holy Eucharist…we’ve re-enacted Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem with all the people laying palms down on the road and praising him. We hear about the glory, about all the people waving those palms. But no sooner do we get back into our seats here in the auditorium than we start to hear about how short-lived this glory moment really is.

Today, as we hold our palms in our hands, we cannot sense the irony of the triumph unless we are reminded of what is to come. When we feel the stiff sharp-edged palm frond in our hand, we need to be reminded that is not simply an instrument of honor, it is also the reed that will be used to beat Jesus. And we are the ones who will use that reed as a weapon. We take the glory and crush it.

When we deny Jesus, as Peter does on Friday, as the elders do in Jesus’ kangaroo court trial, we are causing him as much pain as if we were beating him with the reed. We get that. If there was any doubt in our minds, it was banished when we cried out “Crucify him, Crucify him!” as we read the Passion just now. Our sins are the reason that Jesus dies, and his death is what redeems us from our sins. He suffers for us, because of us, and he goes through the journey to Jerusalem knowing that this is what waits for him at the end of that journey. But although we take the glory and crush it, glory will not remain crushed.

But why does Jesus go through what seems like a charade, riding on the colt as if he is a king welcomed home into the city? Is it merely a dance that he participates in, knowing that it is all artifice?

No, something different is going on.

It is an ironic moment, to be sure, but it is also a preview of a time beyond time when the glory that seems to accompany this first ride turns into a new reality. Jesus is showing us how glory goes. It is a new, uncrushable glory.

We cannot fully understand the enormity of Jesus’ gift to us. We cannot know what heaven will be like, or how the experience of that glorious second coming will transform us all, but in hearing the story once again of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and the hard work that he took on to be our salvation. We see a glimpse of the place we hope to go to eventually, after we, too, do the hard work of being worthy of our salvation. That is how glory goes. Not without pain, not without sacrifice, but ultimately triumphant. As we go through the story this week, as we remember the cost, we know that this is the necessary path to how glory goes.

Amen.

---

Because Jesus Is Big Enough to Have a Sense of Humor...

I do believe he would enjoy this.

TOH to the brilliant Eugene Cho, who created this.

All in all,

...not as crazy a day today as it has been on other ways recently.

Momentary rant: two people at St Middle School were quite insistent that I send out copies of the Passion for Palm Sunday with their reading assignments so they could properly prepare. So I sent out the script of the Passion with the reading assignments two weeks ago. Ample time to sort this all out, right? The same two folks just told me they will be away for Palm Sunday. The grumbler in me says that next year I will simply hand out the assignments on Palm Sunday morning to whoever shows up, but that doesn't work terribly well, either.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that the schools are on vacation from this Friday through Easter Monday, so many families go away. The schools swear that they don't schedule their vacation based upon the date of Easter, but it sure looks like that to me and every other clergyperson I know. Would that they just decided that the last week in March would be their vacation week every year, then we could deal with it. But the other part of the problem is the usual one with volunteers who have very busy lives and precious little down time. For all my talk with them about finding Sabbath, often finding Sabbath means not being in church, even on major feast days, and that saddens me. I hope those who are away for Palm Sunday and/or Easter Sunday go to church wherever they may be. They may take vacation, but God doesn't.

Okay, rant over.

That said, things are moving apace for all the various and sundry things that will make the next ten days' services the wonderful celebrations of the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that they should be. I am so grateful for the gifts of TS, our music director, who goes way beyond the basic scope of work every day and every week, and our Parish Administrator, who is bravely fighting the good fight to get the bulletins for all these services done, with the assistance of a parish volunteer who does the first draft of many of these bulletins.

Stuff that needs to be done yet:

• Printing out of the various bulletins for Palm Sunday, Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
• Doing the bulletins for the two Easter Services (one a sunrise service outdoors, another a festal celebration at our normal meeting place with trumpet, childrens' choir, adult choir, a zillion guests).
• Making sure we're on track for the Newcomers' brunch this Sunday and the Easter potluck brunch/Easter egg hunt.
• Finishing homily for this Sunday and starting the sermons for Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday.

And in the midst of this, I am busy doing logistical stuff for the purchase of the new house and the move. One major change from the last time we bought a house: emailing docs for signature, then signing them and scanning them and then re-emailing them back. Folks don't seem to use fax machines much anymore. That's fine by me.

One little joyful moment: we decided we would get ourselves a new bed. I think I've mentioned before that we've been using the one that PH got from a parishioner some 30 years ago. It's still a good serviceable bed, but it's time we got a new one, this time a queen size. So I went to a wonderful resale place near here on a whim, and found a beautiful Henkel Harris pencil post in dark cherry, for a fraction of what such a bed costs new. Yay!

Off now to run an errand, then get a haricut, before settling in for a long afternoon of sermonating!

BBL

Monday Morning Lists Beyond Lists

In theory, at least, this is my day off. From a practical standpoint, this is not so.

Have to drop PH off at work since his car is in the shop, have to drop off dry cleaning, have to drop off books I borrowed from Big Old Seminary's library, have to drop off some research materials on a project for which I was RA. Have to list the large glass tank that used to house the late lamented Moses the gecko on Craigslist - I don't want to move that stupid thing. Meeting with my clergy mentor at 1 pm.

The bulletin for Palm Sunday (big, big, big) is not yet done. Because we will have the whole Lukan passion in it, we'll go to a large format rather than the little booklet size. Makes for some interesting challenges with Microsoft Office Publisher.

We've got the Tenebrae and Good Friday bulletins prepared. I'd like to get Maundy Thursday done this week as well, so that we can concentrate on the Easter Sunday and Easter II bulletins.

Since Easter Sunday is my last day at St G's, and since doing seasonal transitions in our bulletins are a bit of a bear, I will get the Easter II done as a parting gift to the short-term interim.

I will miss much about my time at this church, but I will not miss this aspect of St G's.

I've got sermons to write for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Easter (2 services, very different in nature. Don't know if I will write two sermons).

In the meantime, I'm glad to say that we finalized the deal for the house in Richmond. we will close on April 26th in the morning, then spend several hours going to Home Depot or Lowes to get a washer and dryer, contracting with the roofer and plumber to fix the various things that need our attention, getting a small table and chairs for the breakfast nook. It should be an interesting time. I've pretty much decided what colors we will paint the bedrooms. TBTG, the main floor is move-in ready without any painting. I'll have some window treatments to sew, and maybe a duvet cover for the new bed, but all in all, it will be an easy move (and God said "HA!")

But before all that is the planning and the organizing for a move. I've done it a zillion times before...well, actually 18 times....so I know what's involved and how to set up for it. But I don't enjoy it.

Oh, well, suck it up, Mibi.

PS: Houseguest this weekend (delightful friend of PH's brother - she works in the same profession as PH, going to the same professional conference he will be attending in Your Nation's Capitol this weekend), followed by eldest son Litigator coming for a brief visit next week. See what I mean about it being a busy couple of weeks ahead?