Live. Discover. Be Grateful. Carpe the Diem. Share. Amen.
Author: Michael Valliant
I am a father, writer, runner, hiker, reader, follower of Christ, soul adventurer, longboard skateboarder, stand-up paddleboarder, kayaker, novice birder, sunrise chaser, daily coffee drinker, occasional beer sipper. I live in Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where I am an Episcopal Deacon and the Assistant for Adult Education and Communications at Christ Church Easton by day.
Treasure is time plus experience yielding gratitude and wonder. Finding sea glass is the same as skipping shells.
If your mind and body are tuned to a task, you are the moment.
“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” I carry that Annie Dillard quote in my soul, the reminder of a feeling that has always been there.
Unplugged.
Astonished.
Around the world in a 20-minute drive and a short walk across the cosmos.
Holly reads Mary Oliver out loud:
“I have become older, and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger.”
Background: July 6-7 was a preaching weekend for me and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 6:1-16, where Jesus goes back to his hometown and is not accepted as a prophet and then sends out the 12 apostles with the bare minimum of possessions.
I’m going to throw a word out here at the beginning that is our word and theme of the day: interdependence. We need God and we need each other. That is always the case. Anytime we try to deny it or get around it, we are deluding ourselves. With that in the back of our minds, let’s dig into today’s Gospel.
There are two parts to the reading. First, Jesus comes back to his hometown, where he faced doubts and criticisms; where they weren’t willing to see him as anything special, certainly not a prophet.
I don’t and will never claim to be a prophet. But I have had a very different experience becoming a preacher and going into ministry in my hometown. People who have known me for all or most of my life have been accepting and enthusiastic of what likely on the outside looks like two different lives.
I grew up hard-headed and rebellious in a small town that has a good memory. At 42 years old, after working for the government in Washington, DC, for the previous four years, I became the director of the Oxford Community Center. This was a building where my father had gone to grade school and my sister had gone to summer camp. I had kind of shunned it, thinking I was too cool for it.
I remember on one of my first days at work there, seeing Jennifer Stanley, one of the people who had saved the building from being torn down and founded the community center. Jenny is an Oxford icon, riding her bike through town with curly red hair and a trail of kids behind her.
I said, “Hi Miss Jenny, I don’t know if you remember me…” To which she said, “Oh Michael, I remember you… everybody remembers you on your skateboard, with your hair—you were frightening!”
Those who remembered were excited that someone could grow up, change, and find some sort of a calling in the place where they are from. It’s been the same here at church where people who remember my “lost years” have each said something to the effect of, “Huh. Wow. Okay, go for it!”
If the outcome of casting a new light in your hometown is going to be positive, it takes a receptive and open-minded community. That’s something Jesus didn’t have.
They took offense that Jesus claimed to have something to teach them or show them that they didn’t know. And Jesus felt it.
He said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” He wasn’t able to do much with them or for them. Mark tells us that Jesus was “amazed at their unbelief.”
In Jesus’s hometown, they knew his family. They knew his siblings, they knew his background, they watched him grow up. They remembered Jesus as a kid and a teenager, Joseph and Mary’s son, the carpenter.
Why in the world would God use this lower-class family, this unremarkable person, to be a prophet? Surely, if there was a prophet coming out of Nazareth, it would be someone from a better family, or with a better education—someone who they could look at and feel better about God using to tell them about His will for the world.
They thought that God’s prophets should look a certain way, be formed a certain way, and come from a particular background. Or more specifically, they thought that there were some people God wouldn’t use.
The people in Jesus’s hometown let their biases get in the way of seeing and hearing God.
It’s fair to say we still have this problem today. In “Feasting on the Word,” a series of books on our lectionary readings, the authors ask a couple of great questions from this reading that we should ask ourselves:
“Whom do we take for granted? What wisdom, what deeds of power are missing because we make judgments about who and through whom God’s work can be done?”
How many people do we encounter in a day who we might dismiss while we are on our way to see someone whose views or knowledge we are seeking out. People working in restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, grocery stores, road crews.
I’ll tell you a quick story. In the summer of 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Tidewater Times Magazine asked me to write a story about the Palestinian family that runs Four Sisters Kabob, Curry and Halal Market. The mother’s name is Shahida Perveen, and her four daughters are: Andleeb, Shanza, Areej, and Bushra. Four years ago, they were taking meals to the staff at the emergency room at the hospital, giving food away to anyone who came to them hungry, and taking food home to make sure people in their neighborhood didn’t go without.
As I got talking to them, Andleeb, who is the oldest, mentioned that her sister Shanza received a full scholarship to University of Maryland, where she had graduated with honors with a degree in public health; Areej was on a full scholarship at Washington College, where she was studying political science; Bushra, the youngest was a student in Queen Anne’s County Schools; and Andleeb felt responsible for making sure that all her sisters were going to school and to help their mother run the restaurant. But in her spare time, Andleeb graduated with honors and her liberal arts degree from Chesapeake College and was enrolling in their nursing program.
If you had made any assumptions about who these women were based on their accents, skin color, or how they dressed, you were missing out on five brilliant people that certainly knew more than I did about so many things. And whose sense of charity, hospitality, and community, we could all learn from.
When we judge who God might use and who God wouldn’t use to deliver a message to the world, or to us, we make ourselves poorer.
Here is another thought from “Feasting on the Word”—
“Jesus’s powerlessness is not primarily about him but about us: about those who are unwilling to believe the great things God can do.”
God is frequently waiting on us. If I dismiss Jesus as not my thing, or I say maybe 2,000 years ago, but that kind of stuff doesn’t happen today, I’m cutting off the lifeline to love, peace, healing, and the grace I need to live every day. I love the quote often attributed to Einstein that says, “There are two ways to look at the world: that either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.”
Imagine waking up in the morning open to the possibilities of the great things that God might do today and not limiting our thoughts as to how or through whom He might do them.
The second part of today’s Gospel is Jesus preparing his disciples and sending them out as “apostles.”
He sends them out two-by-two and gives them authority over unclean spirits. He tells them they can take a staff, but no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; they can wear sandals, but they can’t take two tunics. I picture apostle action figures, staff and sandals included, but nothing else. Collect all 12.
Jesus says: whenever you enter a house, stay there (be present with them) until you leave. If anyone won’t welcome you, if they refuse to hear you, shake off the dust and move on.
Why does Jesus send them out with so little? Why are they traveling so light?
Without money or food, the apostles have to rely on the hospitality of others. They may feel like they know something and have authority that other people don’t. With the nature of the work they do, they may feel special, like a big deal.
Jesus wants to make sure they are also humble. The apostles need those they are speaking to and visiting as much as people need to hear the good news. Without the hospitality of those they are calling on, the apostles will perish. Without the good news they bring the people, the people will perish.
Establishing a relationship based on mutual need and hospitality isn’t a bad foundation.
Back to our word of the day: “interdependence.”
In order for Jesus’s words and works to be effective, those who hear or witness them need to be receptive and open to them. They have to be willing to believe.
For the apostles being sent out, they are being equipped with exactly what they need to understand the relationship they need to have with those they are sent to. The apostles don’t hold all the cards, they need the people in the community. And those in the community have to be open and receptive, or the apostles are to shake off the dust and move on.
It’s not helpful, effective, or true, that those in the know, those in the Word, have all the answers and are God’s sole gift to the rest of the world. If we are fortunate enough to be on the inside when it comes to faith, we still need everyone else. And how we carry ourselves, and what we carry with us, matters.
The other part of that interdependence, besides being dependent on the community they are serving, the apostles have to rely on and depend on God. They are not self-sufficient, and the healing and casting out demons, that power doesn’t come from the apostles. It comes from God. And Jesus sends them out in a way that will help them come to learn that. Without God, nothing the apostles are sent out to do will work.
As we go out today, let’s ask ourselves a few questions:
Do we make judgments about who we think can do God’s work? What or who are we overlooking or missing out on?
Do we believe that God can do great and powerful things in the world? Will we let Him? Will we help Him?
And are we willing and able to be sent out into the mission field with the bare minimum so that we can learn to depend on God and not just on ourselves?
When I am open and receptive, I am not alone. Sitting outside sipping coffee, I am connected to all the hands and all the lives that were involved in picking the beans, making the coffee, and getting it here.
Listening to and watching birds opens me to a symphony of sounds, colors, and graceful movements.
I see the greens of summer above and around me and I feel the slight breeze of the morning.
In the background, I can hear vehicles heading more east than west on Route 50, starting a long holiday weekend. Though I can’t know the people driving by individually, it’s not hard to picture or remember the feeling of heading to the beach for the weekend.
When I allow myself to be open and receptive, perceptive, I don’t feel isolated. I feel connected. It’s a feeling that sets the tone for the day.
In “The Book of Awakening,” Mark Nepo writes, “The dearest things in life cannot be owned, but only shared.” Last Sunday afternoon and evening, Holly and I shared a show of God’s handiwork that was awe inspiring.
Outside to watch the sunset, we listened for birds using the Cornell Ornithology Lab Merlin app’s Sound ID. We heard Indigo Buntings, Purple Martins, Cardinals, American Goldfinches, Chipping Sparrows, Carolina Wrens, Red-Eyed Vireos, and Blue Grosbeaks.
Blue Grosbeaks were new to me and they were the noisiest and most active of the birds we were hearing. As we walked down the garden, Holly pointed out a nest in a bush and as we got near, the mother flew out and into a nearby tree. As she chirped her annoyance at us being there, Sound ID showed her to be a Blue Grosbeak. Looking up more about them, their nest is exactly as described. Hope to see some little Grosbeaks soon.
Next for our evening in the yard, despite very little rain, a rainbow appeared, developed, and thickened right over the house. It was an amazing light show.
There was a stretch in my life where I loathed rainbows—they carried some baggage I didn’t feel like unpacking, and I wrote them off as illusions of light, nothing substantial, nothing of substance. And that’s all true.
But how much of the beauty we find in life and in Creation is transient and fleeting? We know that and we can still appreciate it and marvel at it when it’s there. I live for sunrises and sunsets and they are also impermanent plays of light, which need to be enjoyed in the moment.
If I want to be available to the full spectrum and experience of God’s works in Creation, I need to be open to rainbows. It’s to my benefit and God’s glory.
The next part of the show for the evening was the sunset itself, which incorporated the clouds and the whole sky.
The Sunday evening show was on the last day of June. The month of July does not include vacation or travel for us, it’s about being open to rainbows and experiencing what is around us each day and every weekend. The idea is to “carpe” the month in every way we can. I am a list maker, here are some of the things on the radar screen:
Kayaking/paddleboarding
Parks (both new and known)
Birding
Sunrises and sunsets
Be out under the stars
Live music
Fire pit nights
Beach days
Cooking/grilling
Summer reading
Skateboarding
Gardening
Walks/hikes
If we do things on that list each day and every week, we should have a shot at carpe’ing July.
A skateboarding friend Landy Cook already put some of that into play when on July 2 he organized a social skate along Rails to Trails and at the pump track and skate park in Easton. It was a good first turn out and stellar evening, to be repeated weekly.
A number of author Annie Dillard’s words dance through my head regularly. One of the main quotes is this one:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
There is no getting around that. If I daydream but never do anything, my days won’t reflect the life of my mind, and neither will my life.
Each day is an opportunity to do something. Beyond making a list of things I hope to do, what would a meaningful day, any day, look like?
What if every day included doing:
Something creative
Something prayerful/meditative
Something physical
Something practical
Something productive
Something peaceful/soothing
Something loving
Something selfless
Something outgoing
Something spontaneous
Something sensory/sensuous
If I can think about those kinds of things to do each day and look back at the end of the day to see how I did, how I spend my days might add up to a life I want to live.
In 2013 I got the strong feeling I was supposed to go to seminary. It didn’t make sense–I couldn’t put it anywhere, church wasn’t even a part of my daily life. But life was at a crossroads, and the nudge was there. In 2017, when I started working for Christ Church Easton, I was pulled in that direction, but it still didn’t feel like a real possibility; I couldn’t stop working and go off to seminary for three years.
The Iona Eastern Shore seminary program came to the Episcopal Diocese of Easton (the Eastern Shore of Maryland) in 2021. The program was created specifically for those who couldn’t attend a traditional residential seminary, but who discerned a calling to ordination. Seven of us from around the Shore signed on with the intent to become priests, and another would later join to become a vocational deacon.
On June 15, the inaugural class of Iona Eastern Shore graduated in a ceremony at Christ Church Easton. A couple quick takeaways: 1) there was no other way I could have done something like this–I am grateful beyond words; and 2) I am ruined for any potential future graduations.
Background/Context
Iona Eastern Shore is a part of an international partnership between the Iona Collaborative and the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Bishop Santosh Marray brought the program to the Diocese of Easton in 2021 and Fr. Dan Dunlap, Rector of Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, and St. John’s Cornersville, who was a seminary professor at Seminary of the Southwest became the lead instructor/professor/dean for Iona Eastern Shore.
Students in the Iona Eastern Shore program on the priesthood track went through three years of academic study with a combination of weekly Zoom classes to review and discuss the weekly reading assignments, and monthly day retreats, where in addition to academic discussion, homiletics and liturgy were practiced and discussed. Classes were focused on Bible study, history of the church, theology and ethics. We had guest lecturers in the form of clergy from throughout the Eastern Shore, including Dr. Tom Long, renowned author, preacher, and teacher of preachers. We took the General Ordination Exams this past winter and are working through our Clinical Pastoral Education requirements on our way to ordination as priests.
Graduation Day
I’m giving you my lens on the day. We had a full church of family and friends of the seven of us who were at the ceremony, clergy from all over the Shore, and a big turn out from our Christ Church Easton congregation.
Welcoming everyone at the beginning of the service, Bishop San touched on the “why” for the program:
“The church is called to be adaptive and creative in the time it lives in,” the Bishop said. “This is one of those initiatives that speaks to the adaptability and the creativity of the church so that God’s kingdom is proclaimed among God’s people.”
Rev. Greg Harbaugh, a long-time Lutheran minister, who now serves at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, was the preacher for the day.
Here are some highlights/takeaways from his sermon, writing out a few of them because they are full of such great concern and advice for us moving forward :
“Ministry, like life, is difficult. I suspect you already know this. Nevertheless, as clergy we are adept at thinking it should be otherwise. Truth be told, ministry has always been difficult: remember (what happened to) Jesus… Paul, Peter, and all the rest.”
“When you enter your call, do so with repentance and humility. Turn first to the Lord in prayer. Consult with the Bishop and colleagues. Talk and mostly listen to your lay leadership. Visit your people to get to know them. And let them know you.”
“Ministry can be difficult. Humility and patience matter, lead by example of your piety and your own faithfulness. There will be joys along the way; there will be fecundity and peace; there will be shortfalls and successes.”
“My final injunction, prayer really, is to continually experience Jesus both more broadly and more deeply. His cruciforming love and grace will continue to open you… experience his breath as spirit of life, his Word as truth, his Gospel as the Way.
“Through prayer and study of Scripture and holy writings, the deep breath of Holy Spirit will turn you inside out—to recognize yourself in Jesus as a child of the Heavenly Father.”
“In your ministry, continue the lifeway that allows you to know and experience Jesus through prayer and service; know him through study and the listening to his Word; receiving his grace; this is your deepest service and will hold you fast during the buffeting winds of ministry. Then, too, he will surprise you in your own preaching, as you will surprise your people with Jesus’s good news—in such moments you and they will know who and whose you are in beloved community.”
Adding my part to the prayers of the people during the service, Concerns for the Local Community: “Lord, you minister to the whole world and you have called us to serve here on the Eastern Shore. Help us to discern the changing needs of our communities, to go where people are hurting, feel lost, and feel far from you. Give us compassion, empathy, and wisdom as we go out into the towns, into the counties, and working together as your hands and feet on the grassroots level, help us to be your love here where we serve you and your people.”
Supported and Seen
In the weeks leading up to graduation, people asked if I was excited for the day. I’d answer, “Of course, looking forward to it,” or something along those lines. But it wasn’t registering. Until the first note of the first song, once we were seated and the service was beginning. That’s when the tears of gratitude began and didn’t stop.
Fr. Dan Dunlap, our professor and dean, gave personal remarks about each of us before he gave us our certificates and the Bishop put our tippets on us. Fr. Dan’s comments were so specific and communicated so much about who we are. This is what he said about me:
“Michael, our contemplative. No matter how hectic life gets, no matter what’s going on out there in the world, we have people like Michael. Michael, who reminds us that there is always time to stop and smell the roses, or sit on the dock and take a picture. Or write a journal entry. And that’s the one thing, the best part about his contemplativeness is that he communicates it to others so that even if we don’t think we have time to be contemplatives, he’s made the time and shares it with us. Thank you, Michael, for that.”
Going to school around the edges of working, of being a Dad, of being a partner, of being a part of a church community, is out of the sight of others. And that’s okay, ministry is about serving, not being seen. But every now and then, through comments like Fr. Dan’s, or the turn out from the congregation, I feel some nods of affirmation in a way that inspires me , motivates me, and pushes me on.
Another of those moments came after our class had each been announced, the Bishop had us turn to face the congregation. Gratitude came out of my eyes and lungs, that’s the only way I can say it.
Commencing
“What’s past is prologue; what to come, in yours and my discharge.”
William Shakespeare, from “The Tempest”
“What’s past is prologue” is the part of that quote that Fr. Bill Ortt, our long-time rector and mentor liked to use. The idea is that what’s happened before is just a lead up to the present moment. It’s a foundation for what’s to come, but it doesn’t determine what’s to come, we do (with God’s help).
Our class of seminarians went back to school and finished our course of study in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. That speaks to our natures as lifelong learners. Our prescribed program for this particular time has come to an end. But it serves as a beginning for what’s next.
Studying to prepare for sermons, developing a deeper understanding of the liturgy, being with people going through difficult times, celebrating milestones, being shaped by grief, difficulties, and empathy for what others are going through, as well as sharing joy and small and large victories with others. Learning never stops.
For a number of us, we will next learn to be deacons. Ordination for classmates Joanne Fisher, Kelsey Spiker, Jessica Stehle, and I will be on Saturday, September 14 at Trinity Cathedral in Easton. Bishop San let Kelsey and I know that with our full-time staff positions at Christ Church Easton that our diaconal placement will also be Christ Church.
Graduation marked a moment in time. It was a coming together of our class for the last time in a culmination of our studies. I don’t take graduation ceremonies lightly: the last time I graduated was from Washington College when I was 26. Now at 52, that was half my life ago. I hope to continue my education, both formally and informally. But I don’t think any graduation ceremony will touch what happened on June 15. With seven of us there (we were missing one classmate), our home traditional choir and contemporary band, a service with and by friends and colleagues, it was personal, Holy Spirit-filled, and a perfect commencement, sending us out to do the work God has given us to do.
I am grateful to a Diocese and Bishop for thinking outside the box, embracing creative approaches to education, ministry, and ordination; to our professors, instructors, and lecturers; to our classmates; and to our congregation and families. It takes a village, and a diocese, to facilitate a calling.
Background: This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton and the lectionary Gospel reading was Mark 2:23-3:6, where Jesus and his disciples eat pick and eat grain from the grainfields on the Sabbath and Jesus heals a man with a withered hand against protests from the Pharisees. It was also a commissioning weekend for our newest Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the program. Following is the text of my sermon.
“Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts”
Thirty years ago or so I remember having a discussion about integrity, and a definition that was put out there was “doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.”
I don’t remember anything else about the conversation, but I’ve thought about that definition a number of times since. And Jesus as we meet him in the Gospel stories seems to me a perfect example of what that kind of integrity looks like in action. We see it beautifully in today’s reading.
Jesus and his disciples are walking through grainfields. They are hungry, so they pluck the heads off grain and eat. The Pharisees call them out for working on the sabbath, doing something that is against their law. It’s unthinkable to the Pharisees that someone would do this.
Jesus tries to speak to them in their own language, with historical precedent. “Hey, we all agree that David is someone we revere right—you guys are on Team David. Remember when David and his friends were hungry and needed food? He went into the Temple and got the bread of the Presence and they ate it. That’s a way bigger deal than this.”
You can almost hear the Pharisees grumbling—who does this guy think he is, David?
Then Jesus makes a statement that they just aren’t ready for: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”
When I look at the world today, the idea of sabbath rest might be one of the things the world needs most to help get us back on track. We are in full production mode—work, produce, more, faster, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a society, we’ve almost totally discounted the idea of the sabbath, a day to rest, to recharge, and enjoy the day.
Jesus was all about that. And he frames it beautifully—the sabbath was instituted, for the benefit of humanity, to make sure we rest, we take a break—not to be just another law that has to be followed and adhered to at all costs.
Something that Jesus understood and tried to make clear in his teaching and his actions was to look at the SPIRIT of the law, not the LETTER of the law.
The disciples were hungry, they weren’t harvesting. They needed something to eat, not to take grain to the marketplace. The spirit of what they were doing was sustenance, not work.
Now the Pharisees have their guard up. This Jesus character is shifty. He’s given them a what-for. Keep an eye on him. Now, they go into the synagogue and there is a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees have it in their mind, no healing on the sabbath.
Jesus calls the man with the withered hand forward. He looks at the Pharisees and says, “Is it lawful to good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
Crickets. Not a word. Silence.
The power and condemnation of this line strikes me: “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…”
Mark is a Gospel writer of few details, but his words here and crushing and heartbreaking at the same time.
Jesus was “grieved at their hardness of heart.” Here is a human being at the synagogue who is suffering. How can he rest as the people of Israel were instructed to do if he has a condition that keeps him from living his life every day of the week?
The spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.
I wonder, in your lives can you think of times when what seemed to be the right thing to do was in conflict with the law or customs as they were practiced or commonly understood?
There is a great line that the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”
Scripture was written to teach us, for our learning, for our instruction, to improve us, to make us better people, to make us a community, to help us understand God’s love and how to take care of each other—to help us come into an understanding of God’s will and God’s ways. To give us hope.
If Jesus took a literal approach, a letter-of-the-law approach to Scripture, almost every story recorded in the Gospels wouldn’t be there.
If Jesus had said to the centurion, sorry, you’re not Jewish.
If he had seen the woman at the well coming and gotten up and walked away from the well, as social custom told him to do.
Demon-possessed? Well, is he active at the synagogue?
If Jesus had the same understanding of Scripture as Nicodemus that Kelsey preached about last weekend, would we be talking about Jesus today? He wouldn’t have angered the Pharisees or the religious leaders and he probably wouldn’t have been killed.
Jesus put the love of God and the love of humanity, all of humanity, first. He lived by and for God’s love, in the spirit of the law, not as a literalist following the letter of the law.
If you want to go out on a limb like Jesus did, consider this statement, replacing “the Sabbath” with “Scripture”—
“Scripture was made for humankind, not humankind for Scripture.”
Now, Jesus did NOT say that these laws are dumb, that they should get rid of them; he didn’t say it’s time to write a whole new set of laws; he didn’t say riot in the streets, do whatever you want.
He tried to redirect people, where he could see they had gone—or were going—off course. The sabbath isn’t wrong, the sabbath is a good thing, but it was made for people, not people for the sabbath.
How was Jesus to enjoy rest on the sabbath, when there was a man suffering, right in their midst, when he could do something about it?
“Sorry about your hand. Too bad we didn’t run into each other on a different day, I would love to have helped you.”
Does that sound like a Jesus we would want to follow?
Jesus understood the spirit of the laws. He knew where love was in each of them, and he could see where laws and customs had lost their salt and were being used in ways and for purposes they were never intended for. They were to be for our learning, for our instruction, for our improvement—to give us hope.
And when it came to a choice between following the letter of the law, or following a love of God and humanity, Jesus chose love.
I wonder if there are places in our lives where we might do the same.
This weekend, we are commissioning 12 new Stephen Ministers and a new leader for the Stephen Ministry program. This is a program that trains people to walk beside someone going through a difficult time in their lives. It’s a program that has been a part of the DNA of Christ Church since 2005. This class will make the number of Stephen Ministers trained here top 100 people. More than 100 people who have responded to a call in their hearts to learn to be more loving, more empathetic, more compassionate, to be better listeners, and to make themselves available for people who are hurting.
My fiancé Holly is one of those in the class. And I have had the great perspective of listening to and watching her go through the 50 hours of training and reading they complete; of hearing her talk about what they were learning. So much of it is life skills that don’t get taught from K-12 or in college, or trade school, or anywhere else.
One of the parts of training that Holly talked about and stepped right into is assertiveness. And that sounds like an odd thing to have as a part of training to be a care giver, doesn’t it?
Let’s think about assertiveness in today’s story of the man with the withered hand at the synagogue. What if Jesus sees the man, looks at the Pharisees who are telling him that healing the man is against the rules, then drops his shoulders, and says, “Well, I guess not. I can come back again tomorrow and heal him.” We have a whole different story and a whole different Jesus.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is assertive in his love, in his teaching, and with his healing. He doesn’t back down when many of us probably would. He does the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons.
Learning to be more assertive helps push us out of our comfort zones and into the mission field. And the mission field is everywhere people are hurting, need love, or want to know God in their lives. The mission field is where we work, it’s in our homes, it’s where go out to eat; it’s in doctor’s waiting rooms; and it’s in grocery stores.
Jack Anthony is a Stephen Leader and was one of the earliest Stephen Ministers at Christ Church. Many of you have heard him tell his story about why he became one and the part of his story that is so easy to relate to is where Jack said if he was in the grocery store and he saw someone at the other end of the aisle who he knew was going through a difficult time, he would avoid them because he didn’t know what to say. Jack didn’t like that about himself, so he did something about it.
It takes being assertive to walk up to that person who you know is going through something big. It takes getting out of our comfort zone to pick up the phone and call, text, or to stop by to see someone.
I come back to Jesus’s line on seeing the Pharisees standing by and doing nothing for the man with the withered hand, “He was grieved at their hardness of heart…”
Jesus lived his life with a soft heart. He wants us to do the same. In a hard-hearted world, it takes being assertive to keep a soft heart.
I give thanks this weekend for the Stephen Ministry program and for the 12 new Stephen Ministers and new Stephen Leader, who are going forth with soft hearts to love and serve the Lord.
This past weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading for the day was John 17:6-19, after Jesus has given his farewell discourse to his disciples, and he looks up to heaven and prays for them. I referenced a bit of John 17 before and after the lectionary verses.
“Protected and Connected”
This is the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season. In our Easter lectionary this year, we have been heavy into John’s Gospel. We heard about the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus there. We read about Jesus appearing to the disciples and coming back again to make sure Thomas had the experience he needed to believe.
But for the majority of Easter, the lectionary doesn’t give us Resurrection readings. It takes us back into John’s Gospel just before Jesus was arrested. If Easter is a celebration of the Resurrection, why do we have these other readings?
Here’s one way of thinking about it. The Resurrection IS the good news—it’s the revelation, the payoff, it’s what changes everything. It’s part of the proof of who Jesus is. It’s why we get charged up for Easter Sunday.
In light of this good news, the lectionary then takes us back to look at the last things Jesus says to his disciples before he is arrested and killed. Why? Jesus did most of his teaching and talking before the Resurrection. What we’ve been listening to and discussing the past few weeks is Jesus’s farewell speech, where he tries to make sure the disciples get all the biggest points of what he taught and modeled for them.
We go back to Jesus’s final words to his disciples, so that we might all take those things to heart, so that we might believe, live into, and spread the good news, as disciples of Christ.
In today’s reading, Jesus has just finished giving this last speech. And what he does here is heartfelt, crucially important, and a model for us whenever we face difficult times.
“After Jesus had spoken these things,” John writes, he looked up to heaven and prayed for his disciples. Jesus wanted them to know, even though he was going away, he is leaving them in the care of his Father.
“Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles,” Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempura on wood, Wikimedia Commons.
I want to look at a couple aspects of Jesus’s prayer here. First, he prays specifically for his disciples, his friends. He says:
“I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you gave me, because they are yours.”
We know Jesus to be the savior of the world, as we hear so often in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”… But here he’s not praying for the world, he is much more specific.
Praying this prayer for a world that is about to kill Jesus, using these words for a world that has rebelled against the way God intended things to be, wouldn’t make sense here. The disciples are the key to spreading the good news, to fixing things, to spreading God’s love. Jesus’s work in the world is being passed along—they are the ones entrusted with the right words, the knowledge of what needs to be done. Jesus is praying for his friends and the importance of what they have to do.
He knows he is leaving; he is not going to be there to protect them anymore, or to keep them in line; he knows what the world is about to do to him and he wants to keep them from scattering and giving up.
Jesus prays this prayer, out loud and in front of the disciples for their benefit, so they can see and hear him praying. In what he does, he is modeling something for them, which they are going to need, and he is showing them how close he is to the Father, which is how close they are going to need to be without Jesus there.
Jesus asks his Father to protect the disciples. And yet, look at what happened to many of them. They had difficult lives even after the Resurrection. Some were arrested, tortured, and a number of them were killed.
So I want to ask you a question: Did Jesus’s prayer work? Was it answered?
To get our minds around this, I want to talk about what it is to protect someone.
This is Mother’s Day weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing moms here. You are so important in so many lives. When we think about protecting the way a mother might protect her children, we are talking about protecting them from harm.
My earliest memory of that kind of protection is when I was three years old. My favorite show was called “Emergency !”, which was about a Los Angeles Fire Department with one fire truck and an ambulance. I had a plastic fire helmet with the Emergency! logo on the front of it that I wore everywhere. I was obsessed with that show.
My cousin and I were playing in the neighbors’ yard next to the water where they had been building up the shoreline with rip rap, and they had a big pile of rocks and dirt. I remember standing on top of that pile, with my Emergency One! fire helmet on thinking I couldn’t be much cooler. We were throwing some chunks of dirt into the river and I wound up to throw as far as I could and tumbled down the pile, over the rip-rapped wall and into the river. I sank like a rock.
But my Emergency! helmet floated. To this day, almost 50 years later, I can look up from the bottom of that river and see that helmet floating. It wasn’t terribly deep, but it was over my head, and I couldn’t swim.
The next thing I knew there was a body breaking through the water, my Mom wrapped her arms around me and pulled me up and out of the river. She wasn’t right there with us, but she was nearby, she heard me tumble down the rock pile and looked and saw my helmet floating on the water.
She said she didn’t have any thoughts in her head, she just reacted, ran to the river, jumped in and pulled me out. For my part, I was a very grateful child: as she wrapped me in a towel and took me inside, I yelled at her for not calling the ambulance, because it would have been cooler if they had saved me.
That’s a mother protecting her child from harm. That’s a very clear and necessary kind of protection.
That’s not the kind of protection Jesus was asking his Father for. He knew that kind of protection didn’t exist for him or for his disciples in a world that had different priorities. They were doing something that was going to put them in harm’s way.
When Jesus prays for the disciples’ protection, he asks for two things:
Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from the evil one.
He told them to abide in his love. He wants them to stay in that love, stay connected to God. Jesus knows that the good news, that the coming kingdom, depends on them—that the disciples are going to become His body and do the work of spreading the news to the ends of the earth, so that others might believe.
And he knows that there is pain and suffering, fear and distraction, and evil in the world—all kinds of things that could scatter the disciples.
With all these concerns on his heart, with everything on the line, knowing he is about to be arrested, hauled away, and killed, what does Jesus do?
He looks up to heaven, calls on his Father, and prays for his disciples. John gives us Jesus’s prayer in very theological way that is hard for us to make sense of. I wonder, to our ears, for our time, if it might have sounded something like this:
Dad, they know you. This crew you gave me, this rag-tag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and what all. You should see them, Dad. They might not always understand, but their hearts are in it, they are committed, they don’t give up. They are getting it. And they know it all comes from you. Everything that you’ve shown me, I’ve shown them. And they’re doing us proud.
I’m asking for them. Not for the world; the world who seem to come up with new and cruel and horrible things every day, the world that’s about to kill me… No, I’m asking for them, the ones you gave me, because they are yours.
I’m not going to be here anymore, but they are. They’ve looked to you through me, but I’m won’t to be here, I’m coming to you. I’m worried about them. I know there is a part of me that’s you, Dad, and there’s a part of me that’s like them, and that part of me is worried.
I’ve given them your word and the world hates them for it, just like it hates me, because I don’t belong to the world. The world. This place. This harsh, impossible, beautiful, incredible world. I’m not asking you to take them out of it—they aren’t ready to go where I’m going. But protect them from the evil one. We know what he can do. Keep them close to you and close to each other, that’s the only way this will work. And it has to work.
That’s what all this has been for, that’s why you sent me, that’s why I came, and now I am sending them out, just like you sent me. They can do it. I know they can. But they need your help, just like I do.
I’m setting myself apart, for them. Set them apart, Dad, in your truth. In your love. And it’s about more than them, it’s all those who will believe in me through their words—the people sitting in Christ Church Easton, 2,000 years from now—they won’t know you unless it’s starts with my disciples, my friends.
Dad, the world doesn’t know you. But I know you. And these who you gave me, they know you. And the way you have loved me, I’ve loved them. We’re all in this together. Keep them close to us.
Thanks, Dad. Love you.
Imagine the disciples watching and listening to a prayer like that. What an impact.
Sometimes the protection we need is to stay close to God. Life might take us through some rough places. A good friend who is a clergy person just shared with me his cancer diagnosis. He said, I know I’ve got to let the doctors do what they need to do and that I can’t control that. What I need to do is stay focused on God, stay close to God, through this.
We pray for healing, we pray for good outcomes, and we don’t always have control over those things. But praying, staying connected to and protected by God, gives us something to get us through life’s dangers no matter what happens.
That’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples. That’s what he wants for us.
I want to spend more time “oneing.” “Oneing” is a term the mystic Julian of Norwich used to describe the encounter between God and the soul. It’s a word and idea so meaningful to Franciscan Richard Rohr that he named the publication of his Center for Action and Contemplation “Oneing.”
It’s a feeling I get frequently when I sit quietly outside.
April 19
Skateboard, notebook, pen, binoculars, an issue of “Oneing,” reading an essay from Scott Avett of Avett Brothers fame about “Creating Faithfully.” On the shore of the river, purple flowers pull my attention until watching them and taking pictures and listening to the water, I just feel like an extension of the scene, part of it. A feeling of oneness.
Skating, gliding along pavement, has been a oneing experience for almost 30 years.
Around the Oxford Conservation Park, there are Eastern Bluebirds and I sit on a bench and watch a bluebird house where one flew out of and I read.
In addition to being a world famous singer, songwriter and musician, Scott Avett is a talented painter and a moving writer. His essay is on his faith and the creative process. He talks about contemplating Jesus’s identity and how Jesus knew exactly who he was, something most of us struggle with. Avett writes, “I think this truth alone, separates him from us. I can see how this knowing of who one is can be the most loving truth one can offer.”
He talks about going into the studio in solitude to create.
“This time alone is fertile ground where I cultivate my purpose. My contribution is my engagement in it. The studio is my cloister. To pray is to be drawn nearer to my existence. The only control I have is to show up and respond. I build from that simple idea… I long to create faithfully rather than successfully, productively, intelligently, or even truthfully. Creating faithfully is not knowing how to do it. It is believing that it is worth doing… With this, I replace the anxiety-ridden aspirations of arrival with peace in a true being. This is who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me… What a precious revelation. Simply put, to create faithfully is to be me.”
Avett arrives at this oneing through creating art. I read and sit with his words waiting on bluebirds, greeting walkers, dog walkers, and folks riding bikes as they loop the park.
April 20
It’s the last day of classes for our three-year Iona Eastern Shore seminary program, a day retreat at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, which is about a mile down the road if you don’t turn left to go to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. Seminary day retreats are the only reason I have been to Old Trinity, which is a beautiful church and campus. I smile that their parish hall is named “Valliant Hall.” I’ve now preached from the pulpit there twice in front of classmates and instructors, working on our homiletics.
On days when the weather is nice, I get there early so I can sit out on the dock or on a bench by the shoreline to pray, breathe, drink coffee. It’s another experience of oneing, of an encounter between my soul and God.
It’s the last time our class will be gathered together for the purpose of learning, when we are one in that way. We will graduate together on June 15.
April 21
Oneing is an encounter between God and the soul. But it can and does also include other people. According to Richard Rohr:
Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.”
We are connected to each other and we are connected to God and we can experience God in each other. In my experience, some people make us more aware of that connection, or more quickly and intuitively aware than other people do, and there are people who show and remind us of our own connection to God. Those are people to treasure and spend time with.
The first time I met Holly was on a retreat in late October 2017. Despite both living on the Eastern Shore for our whole lives, and having a number of mutual friends, we had never met. The first real conversation we had was a few weeks later at the Waterfowl Festival. We met for coffee a few times at Rise Up Coffee to continue our conversations.
In December we went for a five-mile hike together at Tuckahoe State Park, which we consider our anniversary. We walked in as two people and by the end of the hike, we were different, together. That was almost six-and-a-half years ago. Tuckahoe has been a holy, sacred, thin space for me since 2005, when I went trail running there. It is a place I called “church” long before I was going to church. Oxford and Tuckahoe are two places where oneing and walking are almost the same for me. Holly and I have hiked there a number of times since.
On April 21, we decided to hike our anniversary route.
Time passes differently with Holly. We can get lost in the backyard together, listening to and watching birds, lying under the stars; we lose track of time making dinner together, or sharing something we are excited about.
If you’ve taken time and put in work to get to know yourself, in the way that Scott Avett talks about, knowing who we are and being ourselves as the most loving truth we can offer, my experience with Holly is that you can be even more free and encouraged to be yourself by the presence of someone else. In oneing, in being together, you can be more than you were. And you can do and be that for someone else. That’s love and freedom together.
Tom Robbins, a favorite writer of mine in his book “Still Life with a Woodpecker” said, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
There are people who increase your yum exponentially, and you theirs. That has been our experience together. From our earliest conversations, talking about life, and dreaming about adventures, “Let’s” has always been our response to each other.
On this day, we walked into the woods together. We talked, we dreamed out loud, we watched and listened, we encountered friends along our Sunday walk who we hadn’t seen in a while.
And we said, “Let’s” to our next adventure together. Further experiences in oneing.
Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account.(artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))
“You are witnesses of these things.”
Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.
How does this change happen?
Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?
He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.
Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”
They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.
I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.
In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.
In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.
I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?
To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.
It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.
He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.
Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.
In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:
“You are witnesses of these things.”
If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?
But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.
Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”
Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).
Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”
He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.
I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:
“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”
Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:
What is YOUR witness?
What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?
We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.
Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.
And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.
What things are a part of yours?
I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.
What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:
“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”
This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?
Background: This past weekend (April 6-7) was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading was John 20:19-31, which is popularly referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” story. I also preached on this passage last year and wanted to make sure to take it in a new direction. I am grateful especially to Debie Thomas and her book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which is quoted and referred to.
“Doubt and Faith“
It’s today’s reading where our friend Thomas earns the nickname that history and culture gave him: “Doubting Thomas.” And we are told not to be a Doubting Thomas.
I want to discuss whether doubt is a bad thing and whether in Thomas’s shoes, any of us might not do the same thing.
This is not the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel. The first story he is a part of is the raising of Lazarus.
Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus that their brother Lazarus is sick, hoping that Jesus will come to heal him. Jesus famously waits a couple days before going to see them. And when he’s ready, he says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
They know there are people in Judea who already want to stone and kill Jesus. Going back to Judea is exactly what they don’t want to do. They try to hash out whether this is a good idea and Jesus says, “Lazarus is dead, let us go to him.”
This is where Thomas pipes up and says to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
If Lazarus is dead, and Jesus is walking straight into the storm and facing death head on, Thomas says, alright gang, let’s go die with him.
And off they go. Thomas has no fear and no problem going to die with and for Jesus.
Fast forward through John’s Gospel: there is the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, then his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Now the disciples are caught up in uncertainty, grief, and the lost feeling of what was going to happen now.
The story of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus there that we just heard last weekend on Easter, has just happened. It is evening on that same day, the first day of the week, and the disciples are locked in a room fearing the same fate that Jesus met might be waiting for them at the hands of the Jews.
Jesus appears to the disciples. This incredible experience. But Thomas isn’t there. He gets back after the fact. And the disciples all tell him, “We’ve seen the Lord,” he was here with us.
Thomas says, unless I see it for myself, unless I see HIM for myself, I will not believe.
Author Debie Thomas was born in India. Her father was a Christian minister there and their culture has a special relationship with the apostle Thomas. In her new book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which we’ll have a few small groups reading and discussing, she has this to say about Thomas and his doubt:
“Cautious. Skeptical. Stubborn. Daring.”
“A man who yearned for a living encounter with Jesus—an encounter of his own, unmediated by the claims and assumptions of others. A man who wouldn’t settle for hand-me-down religion but demanded a firsthand experience of God to anchor and enliven his faith. To me, this speaks not only to Thomas’s integrity but to his hunger. His desire. His investment. He wasn’t spiritually passive. He didn’t want the outer trappings of religion if he couldn’t know its fiery core. He was alive with his longing.”
I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to just accept something that people tell me without finding out for myself. This didn’t make for an easy job for my parents. They came home once when I was 9 or 10 years old, to find me stuck in the mud in the middle of the creek behind our house at low tide. I didn’t think I would get stuck, despite people warning me. My mom’s boots are still at the bottom of the creek there.
Another time, my mom had to come extract me from the clay they dredged out of Town Creek in Oxford, which I walked into–waist-deep to see how far I could get.
As a teenager spelunking in John Brown’s Cave in Harpers Ferry, in the pitch black with headlamps, a friend and I climbed up a wall about 20 feet to see what it was like. It took a minor miracle for us to make our way back down.
My Mom’s boots are still under the water in that creek.
I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was baptized and confirmed at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, I attended St. James Episcopal School in Hagerstown for a time. As I got older, I kept at the periphery of church, I appreciated the teachings, I liked what this Jesus guy was all about, but I couldn’t make the leap from interested to invested.
I think I have always been Thomas when it comes to faith. I needed my own experience.
How does that happen? How do we find that kind of experience?
Let’s look at something that happens right after Thomas says he won’t believe unless he sees for himself.
After Thomas says he’s not on board, John writes: “A week later… his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.”
A week has gone by, and Thomas is still there.
What does that tell us about Thomas? Even though he wasn’t ready to believe, even though he didn’t have the experience that the others had, he didn’t quit. He didn’t hang it up. He kept showing up. He was willing to give it time when he himself wasn’t feeling it.
What does it say about the disciples? They didn’t shun him. They didn’t ostracize him. They stood by their experience, they trusted Jesus, and they loved Thomas. They were willing to let things work themselves out.
Life goes on. The disciples stay together. Thomas keeps working through things. And a week later, Jesus comes back and gives Thomas the exact thing he asked for.
What do we learn about Jesus? He gives Thomas the experience that he needs to believe. He meets Thomas where he was and gives him his hands and shows him his side and says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, man of his word, says, “My Lord and my God.” He believes.
What does that mean for Thomas? What does it mean for us to believe?
Here’s the thing about belief when it comes to faith. It sounds nice, it sounds reassuring: if you believe, you’re all set. If you believe, you’ll have eternal life. So how do we as Christians today show our belief? We go to church, meaning worship services. We take Communion. Maybe we wear a cross around our necks. If we’re on social media and someone says, “bet you won’t post the Lord’s Prayer,” we say, oh yeah, watch this… and post it… Hhhmm… that’ll show them.
I subscribe to the idea that if you want to know what someone believes, watch their actions. I think that’s what Jesus was and is banking on as well. If you want to know what the disciples did after their encounters with the risen Christ, go take a look in the Book of Acts. They risked their lives, they met in houses and walked and sailed hundreds of miles to win new followers of Christ. If that was a part of belonging to a church today, I think we’d all be in a bit of trouble.
One person whose journey isn’t outlined specifically in Acts is Thomas’s. Scholarship points to the idea that Thomas is who took Christianity to India. They have statues of him and monasteries and they hold that their Christian roots go all the way back to one of Jesus’s first disciples. A lot further than our roots in the United States go.
Debie Thomas outlines different stories that are associated with the apostle Thomas in India: the pared down version goes like this.
Thomas sailed to Kerala in 52 CE, so about 20 years after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension–20 years after Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ. He wanted to preach to the Jewish colonies that were settled near Cochin.
He was very successful, converting both Jews and Brahmins and he followed the coastline south, winning hundreds of new followers and believers of Jesus and establishing seven churches along the waterways of Kerala. He crossed over the land to the east coast near Madras.
He was so successful as a preacher and a community builder that he made the devout Brahmins in the region jealous and angry and they speared him to death in 72 CE.
For 20 years, Thomas worked with the other disciples around Jerusalem and the Middle East spreading the good news of Jesus. And for the next 20 years after that, he went to strange lands where he didn’t speak the language, where he was an outsider, where it was Thomas and the Holy Spirit and the communities of believers he helped build. Right up until the religious authorities killed him for it.
The apostle Thomas’s actions show how deeply he believed.
Debie Thomas asks this question: “What if doubt itself can be a testimony?”
She says, “If nothing else, Thomas assures me that the business of the good news–of accepting it, of living it out, and of sharing it with the world–is tough. It’s okay to waver. It’s okay to take our time. It’s okay to probe, prod, and insist on more… I need Thomas–doubter and disciple, agnostic and apostle–to show me what faith truly is.”
His doubt is honest. It is heartfelt. It is a part of who he was and part of the process of who he was becoming. Maybe you can see yourself in Thomas. Maybe doubt and questions are a part of your faith journey. They are still a part of mine. God can use our doubt as a starting point or to lead us further down the path he has laid out for us. As long as we don’t give up.
I wonder about Thomas and what his style of evangelism would have been. I picture him having a meal with a group of people who are eagerly listening to what he has to say. Except for one person sitting at the end of the table who has a raised eyebrow, shaking his or her head. Slow to accept, skeptical to believe.
I see Thomas smile, laugh a little, and say, “You’ve got doubts, huh? Me, too. Let me tell you a story about doubts and how they can be a part of faith.”
Jim Harrison writes like he is reckoning with life, death, love, God–you name it. He writes like his life is on the line, his soul is trying to come out through language–that’s how much is at stake.
His “Essential Poems” book frequently travels with me. This morning it was:
“The stillness of this earth which we pass through with the precise speed of our dreams.”
that washed over me, from Harrison’s poem, “Returning to Earth.”
“I Believe” is a manifesto of things in the world that he puts faith in.
Steep drop-offs, empty swimming pools, raw garlic, used tires, abandoned farmhouses, leaky wooden boats, turbulent rivers, the primrose growing out of a cow skull. What a list! These are things I know I believe in as I read his list because each thing comes powerfully to mind–smells, pictures, feelings. This is a list of beliefs that come from experience and hard-nosed reflection. Everything on it has passed the test.
Reading Harrison calls me to write things that absolutely have to be said–something relevant, something that is working on me and that has to come out or risk burning my soul, not an academic or intellectual game, not something that sounds nice or clever–something that comes out of an ongoing wrestling match or dance or conversation with the Spirit.
This a Mark year for the prescribed church readings–most of the Gospel readings this year come from Mark’s account of the good news. For Palm Sunday our in-person services did a dramatic reading of Mark’s account of the Passion (Last Supper, betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, death and burial–the suffering) of Jesus, with readers playing different parts. On our Zoom service, we divided up the reading between a few of us. Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four, the writer doesn’t add fluff or niceties, there is no birth narrative, no Christmas, and the account ends with women running bewildered from an empty tomb. Reading Mark’s Passion account, he doesn’t stop to answer questions, he leaves those up to us to ask, wrestle with, and answer.
I think the writer of Mark and Jim Harrison would get along. Both of them had stories they had to tell. Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, is full of those kind of Jesus stories. It moves me more than any other week of the church calendar. This Friday evening, Good Friday, we will have a service built around the seven different last words/phrases attributed to Jesus in the different Gospel accounts of his death. Then someone will respond–something spoken, read, sung–hopefully pulling those in attendance into the story.
The Gospel writers chose to write down a story that was being told orally, for fear of losing it. They knew it was too big to risk letting it go. And each of them went about it a bit differently, each giving something of themselves and their reckoning with the good news and the Spirit.
When I read Harrison’s poetry, I know that what he is saying is vital to who he was. It conveys what he loved, what he struggled with, what he laughed at, what he cried over, and what lit up his sense of wonder; the curiosity that was in his bones. He was a rough outdoorsman who lived on a farm in Michigan near where he was born. He fished, he ate, he drank, he traveled–he lived.
I hope I can find the words, the pictures, the moments in my life where I connect to love, to wonder, to Creation, to God and to the story of God and humanity that is unfolding through all of us and transform and transmute it all through the right words.
I hope you find your own moments and experiences and transform them into your own art–whether dance, song, painting, poem, carving, or your life itself as a work of art. God is a creator and we, in God’s image, are also meant to create.
One of my favorite lines of writing comes from the beginning of a Harrison poem called “Tomorrow,” where he talks about being blindsided by a new kind of wonder, the kind we haven’t experienced before. He writes:
“I’m hoping to be astonished tomorrow by I don’t know what”
The stars or the sunrise or sunset reflecting off the river; the smell and feeling of earned sweat; how excited your dog is when you walk in the door; a book you can’t put down or stop thinking about; the first sip of coffee or tea in the morning; jumping in the river, lake, or ocean when it’s colder than you expect; the memory of someone who shaped you; a conversation with someone you love when you don’t know what either of you will say next; an answered prayer; exploring somewhere you’ve never been; sacrificing something important for someone else–someone else sacrificing something important for you; knowing in your heart, soul, and bones that you are loved.
I’m hoping to be astonished tomorrow by I don’t. know. what. And I believe.
