Thank you for breakfast with Anna this morning at Rise Up.
Thank you for laughter and conversation taking Ava to work.
Thank you for the slow driver on Oxford Road who reminded me to slow down.
Thank you for the Oxford Conservation Park.
Thank you for the body and energy to skateboard and for the joy I get from it.
Thank you for the Eastern Bluebirds who cut across my path.
Thank you for the tree I sit under to think and pray and listen.
Thank you for the Great Blue Heron who squawked and landed on the dock across the cove.
Thank you for the hammock on the point across the way, which has been there for years and always reminds me to rest.
Thank you for the Bishop’s words on Wednesday that “Every day is a conversion experience.”
Thank you for giving me new eyes to see familiar places afresh.
Thank you for giving me words when I frequently don’t know where they come from.
Thank you for making my path clearer and clearer for me each day, even though I don’t fully know where it leads.
Thank you for companions on the way.
Thank you for the everyone I have crossed paths with, people walking their own paths, walking together for a time; thank you for those who have encouraged me and for those who I have struggled with.
Thank you for forgiveness for the countless times I have screwed up and the countless times I will screw up in the future.
Thank you for your Creation and for making me feel at home and at peace in it.
Thank you for the wisdom and inspiration that comes from your Word and from the words you’ve given to poets, mystics, artists, musicians, and prophets, known and unknown.
Thank you for the conversation this morning, under the tree, through Mary Oliver:
(Note: I was compelled to pick up Mary Oliver’s book “Devotions” when I left home this morning. I always start reading at the bookmark, where I stopped reading last time. I opened to “When I Am Among the Trees” and it picked up steam from there.)
“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the fields and the freshness of the oceans which you have made, and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness those exacting and wonderful words of our Lord Jesus Christ saying: Follow me.”
Thank you for your Son and for his invitation to “Follow me.”
Thank you for your love, which always comes from you, and your love that comes through others.
Lord, help me use my life and myself to serve you, to glorify you, to be your love and to shine your light in the world.
I want to take us back a couple months ago, to one of our readings at the beginning of summer, just after Pentecost. It’s from 1 Samuel.
The people of Israel tell Samuel they want a king. Samuel passes the message along to God, who says, “You shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
Samuel relays God’s warnings of all the nefarious things a king will do. And then we hear:
“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
Now, God wasn’t warning them that they were going to get a bad egg as a king. He was warning them against placing trust in worldly power; he was warning them against what being king does to people, how they can get caught up in all that goes with the position.
In the case of this particular king, God loved David. He wasn’t against him. And when all this went down with Bathsheba and Uriah, God didn’t give up on him. But David sure messed things up.
Not every story in the Bible has a fairytale, happy ending. We get the good, the bad, and the ugly—and some of the stories leave us in a bad spot. They are supposed to. The story of David and Bathsheba leaves us in a lurch.
I have to say, I like Nathan and the approach God came up with for him. The story about the one little ewe lamb and watching David get fired up about it—revealing that he still has some sense of justice and compassion in him, outwardly looking anyway.
God blasts David for what he’s done; He speaks to David in David’s own language, based on his actions and the things that are important to him. God didn’t say to Israel—“See? Didn’t I tell you bad things would happen if you went with a king?” Instead God still loves David, tries to work through what has happened, avoid anything like that happening again, and come to a better understanding and a better relationship on the other side.
And though God doesn’t say I told you so, the king issue is still a problem. In this case, a problem that may have a proposed solution, right in our readings over the last two weeks.
In last week’s reading, after Jesus had fed the 5,000 people with just a few loaves and some fish, they had a notion that Jesus was the prophet to come into the world.
“When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
Jesus wants no part of the worldly power that the crowds want to give to him. God warned Israel that they didn’t want a king. Israel said, “oh yes we do, we want to be like everyone else in the world, the king can fight our battles, and we’ll be on the news just like the cool countries.”
The people witness the signs Jesus is doing and they think, well finally, here’s the guy, this is the king we’ve been waiting for. Jesus says thanks, but no thanks.
Jesus’s mission is much bigger, more profound, more earth-shattering, more kingdom-bringing than becoming the next king on a throne.
Remember, these aren’t bad people who want to make Jesus king. These are people who witnessed him healing and curing the sick. They followed him and Jesus loved them and had compassion enough that he performed another miracle and fed them.
In writing his Gospel account, John doesn’t call these things that Jesus is doing miracles: he calls them signs. Because they point to something bigger than the sign itself. And in this week’s reading, Jesus explains something about this sign. He says:
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
People eating their fill of loaves is what they do in the world of kings. Food that endures for eternal life is what they do in the kingdom of God. Jesus uses this feeding sign to point to the thing behind it: to point to God.
This is tough stuff for the people to get their head around. They’re not getting it. They ask:
“What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?”
Maybe now we can understand why Jesus walks away from the crowds sometimes. “What work are you performing?” Hey guys, Jesus is going to do another magic trick! Let’s set up a tent and some seats and take in the show!
The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is full of stories of the relationship between God and His people, where the people get confused, lose sight of God’s love and their covenant; they get tempted and give into temptation, and God keeps giving them course corrections. Reminders. “Remember, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… I’ve done all these things for you.”
What we see in Jesus and what we see in the Gospels is what it looks like to make the right decisions, to repent from the wanting of kings and the low-hanging fruit of worldly desires, power grabs, and putting ourselves first. Where Israel wanders lost in the dessert for 40 years, Jesus doesn’t give into temptation during his 40 days in the wilderness. Jesus is the course correction, he shows us how to live in this life, what to focus on, who to care about, who to take care of, how to love, so that we move beyond our small, selfish selves, by giving up our lives and our want for kings and focusing on heavenly things and eternal life.
Every day we make choices. In some cases, those choices can move us away from God and towards the world who wants to be ruled by kings. Some of our choices can move us closer to God, closer to Jesus, who is trying to show us how to make the right decisions.
In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor is invited to go speak at a church in Alabama. She asks what they want her to talk about. The priest says, “Come tell us what is saving your life now.”
Brown Taylor says:
“All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out the same things for themselves.”
“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
How do we come to Jesus? How do we believe? What are things we can do to draw closer to God, to make the right decisions?
Tell us about what is saving you now. Here are some of things that have helped me lately:
Rest – I am less likely to rush into a bad decision when I rest, when I pause. We’ve spent the last couple Sunday evenings on the screened in porch and in the yard to watch the sunset and the sky. Taking an afternoon walk down the tree-lined, gravel lane to Claiborne Beach. Hit the reset button. If people’s energy is intense and they are spun up about something, as we see so often right now, if I have caught my breath and come to a situation rested, my chances of making good decisions are better.
Prayer – when I am in conversation with God, when I am listening, I am more likely to be looking at life from a bigger perspective than just my own. We stay close to people we spend time with. Prayer is a great way to spend time with God. At our healing service this week, someone talked about, when she feels distant from God, she starts her prayers with, “Lord, have mercy on me.” That puts us in a place of humility. Being humble can be its own category.
Gratitude – if I find something to be grateful for each day, my heart and my mind are aligned. If David had looked around and said, “Wow, look at the kingdom I have, the life I am living, and been grateful to God for it all, maybe he doesn’t put himself in the situation that gets him in so much trouble.
Heartbreak – this is about perspective. Over the past few weeks, I gave a homily at a friend’s funeral and watched his 16-year-old daughter give a eulogy for her father; another friend lost his wife about this time last year and now his brother is in home hospice. Another friend last week was in the church praying on her late husband’s birthday and we got to catch up, and what a gift to see that their love continues even now. So many people around us, our friends, our family, members of our congregation, are going through so much. If we allow our hearts to break with theirs; to know we can’t fully understand what someone else is going through, but we can try to be there with them; that’s what Jesus asked us to do. Heartbreak reminds us what things are most important and what decisions to make.
Study – I have so much more to learn about the Bible. God’s inspired Word; a library of readings for our learning, sometimes as night and day different as someone sleeping with a neighbor’s wife and then plotting to have that same neighbor killed; to feeding 5,000 hungry people who are looking for something more than food. When I spend time reading and reflecting, learning from Scripture, I am being fed with more than food.
Jesus is talking about feeding people spiritually, going beyond just our human hungers and thirsts. Not discounting them but using them to point to something bigger. To point to the one who was sent to give us these signs; the one who was sent to show us how to love and how to live; and when the crowds asked what they had to do, Jesus said believe in me. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Believing, when it comes to Jesus, isn’t about just agreeing with him, it’s not some mental exercise. It’s about how we live our lives, how we love, and what we do with our time. I still make a lot of bad decisions. But prayer, gratitude, rest, heartbreak, and study are some of the things that help me make the decisions God hopes I’ll make. As you go about your week, think about what things are helping you. What is saving you, bring you closer to Jesus, helping you believe, right now?
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.”
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.
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.”
Background: This is a homily given in response to a reading from Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 1:14-20, where John the Baptist is arrested, Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming the word, and calls his first disciples to follow him.
How many people have a favorite character—movies, books, TV? Anyone want to name them? And how many of you can tell me his/her first lines, the first thing they say in the story?
My favorite character of all time in any media is Chris Stevens, the radio DJ from the 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” His first words, he is on air, and he relates a coming-of-age story of breaking into a house and while he is stealing a gold-leaf pen and a silver humidor, he finds a copy of the Complete Works of Walt Whitman and it changes his life. If you watched the show, that’s a solid indication of his whole character.
In Mark’s Gospel, these are the first words Jesus says in the story, “The time has come (or the time is fulfilled), and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Hard to have first words that are more indicative of who someone is. There is the key, there is the game plan, spelled out in front of us.
It sounds very similar to what John the Baptist was saying, right? Jesus is continuing where John left off, after John was arrested. Jesus’s ministry begins as John’s ends. But there is a nuanced difference in their messages. John was saying, “repent, and wait for the one who is to come.” Jesus says, “the time has come, repent,” and then “follow me.”
We’ve got just six verses here, but there is a lot going on. Let’s dig in a bit. First, let’s look at TIME.
The word Mark uses for “time” as Jesus talks is the Greek word, “kairos,” which means something special is going on, not the word “chronos,” which describes sequential time, the way we tend to think about it.
This is how rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author Amy-Jill Levine puts it in her book “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News”—
“Kairos time is on God’s watch; it’s not a minute-by-minute concern but a recognition something special is happening. When I look at my watch, I can do more than determine how much time I have to finish a project. I can think about God’s time: what should I have done that I failed to do? What can I do to make every moment more meaningful?”
Fr. Bill Ortt (our recently retired rector and mentor) talks about chronos as minutes and kairos as moments. I’ve always appreciated that as a kind of short-hand way to remember the difference. And I love that kairos is among Jesus’s first words here. JESUS is moving us from MINUTES into MOMENTS. He’s clueing us in that something special is taking place, that this is something we want to pay attention to. And as he begins to call his first disciples, it’s something that they want to sign on for.
Let’s remember that we are in Epiphany, a season all about the manifestation of Christ to the people of the world. If you look up definitions of the word epiphany with a lower case “e,” Merriam Webster gives you: 1) “a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something,” or 2) “an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple or striking.”
Epiphany.
I’ve come across a book that has me thinking more about how this whole opening chapter of Mark works. We know that Mark is:
the shortest of the Gospels,
the earliest of the four Gospels,
that Mark doesn’t add superfluous details, he tells the story straight,
and that if he had a copy editor in today’s world, they’d have the red pen all over the word “immediately” or “straightway” for how many times he uses it.
For the record, Mark uses “immediately” more than 40 times, more often than the rest of the New Testament combined. He is stressing the the urgency of what is happening.
Mark’s Gospel is also referred to by many scholars as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” Mark goes through Jesus’s teaching and healing, his ministry, and gets us to the point: his arrest, crucifixion, suffering, death, and empty tomb. We’re told that’s the meat of the story for Mark.
Saying that, in a book called “Mark As Story,” by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, they turn that idea around. They look at the opening of Mark’s Gospel and say what is happening here is the arrival of God’s rule.
“The arrival of God’s rule—the heavens opening, the defeat of Satan in the desert, and the announcement by Jesus—is the key watershed event in the narrative (storytelling) world. Mark, then, may be described as “the arrival of the rule of God with an extended denouement (fancy literary word meaning the final outcome, when everything comes together and is made clear)—that is, all events in the story are manifestations and consequences of God’s activity in establishing God’s reign.”
Mark’s whole Gospel is a series of epiphanies, or an ephipany working itself out, clarifying itself over the story. Jesus’s incarnation is the Epiphany. And Mark is rushing us headlong into this realization.
The world Jesus has come into, has come to change, has come to save, is moving in the wrong direction. The priorities are wrong, morality is wrong, the actions of those in power are wrong, even the sense of time needs help, and he’s got to set things in proper order. There is work to be done… immediately.
So right away, Jesus spells out what has to happen: “The time has come and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news.”
For our way of thinking today, one of the most problematic, confusing words and phrases in the Gospels is “the kingdom of God.” When you hear the word “kingdom,” what do you picture? A place. Somewhere to go. Kingdom of God? Sweet, let’s go! How do we get there? Who’s driving?
The way it was meant is better said as the reign of God. The king-ship of God. My other favorite Fr. Bill-ism is, “the kingdom of God is RELATIONAL, not locational.” It’s a way of being, a way of relating, not a place to go.
Let’s think about Jesus’s words that way, “The reign of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” What that reign looks like, Jesus is going to show them. How compelling is it? Compelling enough to get fishermen to walk away from their livelihood, their families, and everything they know when Jesus walks by and says, “Follow me.”
“Follow me” is the a-ha moment, the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of who Jesus is for his first followers. Jesus’s presence and his invitation or command are all the epiphany they need. And the rest of the story will break it wide open.
If we move our attention to the beginning of the narrative instead of racing our way to the passion, what does that do for the story? Here’s what our friends in “Mark As Story” say:
“This shift in focus to the beginning of the narrative does not diminish the power and climactic force of the execution of Jesus—an event that reveals more fully the nature of God’s reign and seals a covenant with all who would embrace God’s rule… the shift does place the entire narrative firmly in the broader framework of God’s activity in establishing God’s rule over all of life.”
Here’s Jesus at the beginning: It’s time. God’s reign, not the world’s, not Caesar’s. It’s here. Stop what you are doing, you are going the wrong way. Turn around. Believe in this good news. Want to see for yourself? Want to be a part of it? Follow me.
“Stars and Sea at Night,” by Bill Jacklin RA (monoprint), Royal Academy of Arts exhibition
Everything that happens in the story from there shows us manifestations and consequences of what it looks like, of what happens, in establishing God’s reign.
Mark’s story itself is an epiphany for those who first heard it and for us. He means for it, in itself, the telling of it and the hearing of it, to be a transformational experience, showing us, calling us to be a part of establishing God’s reign, in our own lives, and those of others.
Jesus’s call to “follow me” wasn’t just for the first disciples. It’s for us.
Will we?
Sounds like a good way to spend our time. Kairos time. God’s time.
Context: This was a homily shared with the weekly Wednesday morning Healing Service at Christ Church Easton, tying together the two first Gospel readings of the season of Epiphany.
Let’s talk about Epiphany. The word comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which means “appearance” or “manifestation.” This is an event and a season dedicated to the manifestation of Christ to the peoples of the world.
January 6, this past Saturday, was “The Epiphany,” and that’s where the magi, or wise men, come on the scene. It was revealed to them, a group of Gentiles from Persia, who had nothing to do with Judaism, that Jesus was a sign: they observed his star at its rising and came to pay him homage. When they got there, they were overwhelmed with joy. When they saw him, they knelt down and paid him homage. They knew this child to be a manifestation of Christ and they had to act on it.
All definitions of the word “Epiphany” start with that very specific occurrence, the revelation of Jesus to the magi, celebrated on January 6. But just like any word over time, meanings change, they expand. If you look up epiphany in Webster’s dictionary, you find, in the second and third meanings:
1 capitalized :January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ
2: an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being
3a(1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking
You’ll sometimes hear people relate having an epiphany to having an “a-ha moment,” where all of a sudden, something makes sense in a way that it hadn’t before. But not in an, “Oooo… I finally remembered where I left my keys!” kind of way. There has to be more at stake. Something bigger has to click into place… you know, “a manifestation or perecption of the essential nature or meaning of something.”
I wonder, as we move through the season of Epiphany, which goes until Ash Wednesday (February 14 this year) when Lent begins, if we keep our hearts and minds open, if we are mindful of the season, what we might find?
It’s a Jesuit practice to keep a “Daily Examen” that looks back at each day for where the presence or touch of God met them that day. What a great idea–I wonder if in doing something similar, we can prime the pump for epiphanies with some awareness and reflection as we go.
If we are open to epiphanies, are they more likely to happen? The Magi looked to the stars for their sign–what if they’d been staring at the ground?
The fact that you are standing in a church at a healing service says that you might already have an awareness of who Jesus was and is. What if during this season, we tune in for moments, for instances, of his presence in our world today?
This is four lines into Mark’s Gospel and we meet John the Baptist, a strange, but charismatic and influential leader who says, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
John has already had his epiphany, his realization of Christ manifesting his presence to the people of the world. Mark communicates John’s epiphany to his readers.
Now listen to Jesus’s actual baptism:
“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
God is making sure Jesus doesn’t miss out on who he is and the writer of Mark is making sure his readers, including us, don’t miss what is going on, or who Jesus is, and what God thinks about him.
“It seems to me historically plausible that as Jesus rose from the water, he saw a dove and interpreted it as a divine message. This approach means being open to the natural world. It means heavenly signs can be as ordinary as a pigeon strutting on the sidewalk. It means that all signs require interpretation.”
Coming up from the water, Jesus looked up and saw a dove. It was a clear sign to him, but he had to connect it. God can send us signs, epiphanies all day long, but some of them may require us to pay attention.
I can remember as kids, especially around Christmas time, we would see TV ads for some of the toys that we really wanted. And the ads would show other kids playing with these cool toys, and one of the last things the narrator said in the commercial—perhaps predicting the reality of some of today’s pharmaceutical fine print—was: “SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.” You put it together. And sure enough, come Christmas morning, whatever we were lucky enough to get, there was some… assembly… required. To get it to look like the commercials, we had to put it together.
“Some assembly required” was a 1980s phrase. In the 1970s, they just said straight up, “Assembly required,” no punches pulled.
Epiphanies are not quite that far afield. If they require a decoder ring, printed instructions, and an Allen wrench, that’s not in the realm of an epiphany—a sudden realization or perception. For an epiphany, God puts it together, it’s all ready to go, he’s done the assembly and he’s handing it to us. But we still have to look, we still have to see it, and take it. We have to pay attention.
What about the voice? This is what Amy-Jill Levine says:
“For Mark, the voice speaks directly to Jesus: it is personal, even intimate: You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well-pleased. The voice confirms Jesus’s mission. Mark here also unites Jesus with the audience of the Gospel: WE, like Jesus, hear the voice from heaven. WE know what the other people coming to John that day do not.”
God’s voice was a sign for Jesus. Mark’s Gospel and his telling the story, is a sign for us. God’s done the work, he’s put it together, Mark makes sure we don’t miss it.
This season, we are going to read about and talk about epiphanies, manifestations of Christ to the people of the world. Will we also experience epiphanies ourselves?
If we do, they might be “some attention required.”
Colored woodcut by Dr. P. Solomon Raj, a famed artist, author, professor and theologian from India.
Featured art at the top: “The Journey of the Magi” by Ralph Hulett.
Sometimes I’m drawn forward and sometimes I am turned to circle back, usually so I can pick something up I need to go forward. That’s an eyebrow-raising, quizzical-look statement, I know. Let’s try this:
This past weekend, I went for a run–my first run since early April. It was slow, but it didn’t matter–the smile on my face running through John Ford Park, saying good morning to folks I encountered, feeling air in my lungs and my feet in motion, even if stumbling slowly, was something I have been missing.
Running, skateboarding, and writing are three life-giving activities I discovered in my early teens that sustain and stoke me in my early 50s. There is a thread that connects them.
“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.“
Nepo writes, “To discover the thread that goes through everything is the main reason to listen, express, and write… I began to realize that listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” Then he invites us to think about, write about, and try to discern what that thread is for us, individually. What is the constant that is with you, through joy, pain, sadness, lows, highs, that makes you, you?
As I sat there, coffee, sunlight, and summer-breeze-fueled, scratching out a few notes, the thing that hit me was: a sense of wonder. That’s the thread. From marveling at honeysuckle and marsh grasses in the neighborhood as a kid, to Morning Glories and Great Blue Herons as an adult, a childlike sense of wonder has underpinned it all.
Nepo is a writer I’ve just found. He circled me back to Stafford and a poem I’ve been reading for years–something I needed to pick back up to move forward with new eyes.
Running, skateboarding, and writing have been wonder-stokers for me all along. Somehow they have distilled over time to where the wonder is there now as soon as I step on a board, pick up a pen, or put running shoe to pavement.
Yesterday morning, Landy Cook and I met at the Oxford Conservation Park to start the week off with a sunrise longboarding adventure. The sun was smiling with us and lent its rays to every moment and every photo. It was a morning to catch up, to laugh, to skate, to enjoy the moments, to breathe in the day. It’s a place we skate frequently, it’s not new scenery, but every morning is its own, there is always something new or different to catch, to appreciate, to be grateful for.
For me, part of those experiences, those moments, of being given a gift, is wanting to communicate it, to share it, maybe if I am lucky to wake something up for someone else, to connect in some way.
Nepo says it: “listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” That’s what writing brings to my aesthetic and Spirit-filled table. Even rolling on a skateboard, I make sure to have a pocket notebook and pen to try to catch something of the wonder of the experience.
A couple weeks ago I was sent back to another favorite writer, John O’Donohue. Last summer we led a small group discussing his book, “Anam Cara.” A friend from church continues to read and reflect on it regularly and he wanted to pass along a copy to someone who is going through profound loss, hoping it might give them something to latch onto–perspective, compassion, care, connection, hope.
The class last summer was right around this time of year and a memory, a quote from “Anam Cara” circled its way back in front of me. It’s a thought that struck me as something Holly has been working through after coming back from a 12-day mission trip to Amazon river villages in Peru, where the life of the villagers was deliberate, present, and connected to the days and nights, the land, and each other. O’Donohue wrote:
“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.”
The miracle, the wonder, of being here. That’s our connection to each other, other living souls, to God, to the living Universe; whether we are in Peru, the backyard, or skateboarding with the sunrise.
“Unabashed” is a word we might get to know better. It’s defined different places as “not embarrassed, disconcerted, or ashamed,” and “undisguised, unapologetic.” It’s a word that is tough to live into for thoughtful, humble people who are concerned how people might take what they think or feel. Unfortunately, the flipside is that there are plenty of thoughtless people for whom being unabashed comes easily.
I am grateful when I get reminders to pick up favorite books of my shelf and re-read them. Dorchester County Public Library gave me my most recent reminder when they promoted a program for Ross Gay’s book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” (really such a great title, without even reading the book).
“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.”
A community orchard in Bloomington, Indiana, informs Gay’s take on gratitude, together with his experience gardening.
“…In this neck of the woods you have to prune a peach tree if you don’t want the fruit to rot, if you don’t want all that fragrant grandstanding to be for naught.”
He mourns the life cycle and necessary work to a tree in his poem “the opening” and continues:
“…This is how, every spring, I promise the fruit will swell with sugar: by bringing in the air and light– until, like the old-timers say, the tree is open enough for a bird to fly through.”
And he talks about two cardinals and a blue jay flying through and a little grayish bird that sings a song “half dirge, half disco.” There is maybe one of the best and most memorable descriptions for a life fully felt and fully lived, “half dirge, half disco.”
I’m a fan of sunrises and sunsets. I will stop what I am doing, turn away from a conversation (though generally I am still listening) to take in those fleeting moments. The fact that they are only there for a few minutes is what makes them beautiful. You have to catch them as they happen–you can’t tell a sunset you’ll get back to it, or ask it to hold on. You’ve got to give it your full attention. Appreciate the whole scene and everything going on around it. Drink it in.
Life is that way. It is full of moments and if we want to live it to the fullest, we have to pay attention to all the moments we can.
In the title poem, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” Gay says:
“Thank you to the woman barefoot in a gaudy dress for stopping her car in the middle of the road and the tractor trailer behind her, and the van behind it, whisking a turtle off the road.”
And I think of so many of my friends who do that and fill the social media feed with turtle rescue photos and every single one of them gives me a little hope for humanity. Even though after we stopped to move a turtle on the way to Hoopers Island a couple weeks ago, the truck going by didn’t much appreciate the effort. It’s all part of it.
I have so many lines and parts and images from Gay’s catalog underlined and tucked into my heart, I hardly know what to share. But I like this notion of community:
“we dreamt an orchard that way, furrowing our brows, and hauling our wheelbarrows, and sweating through our shirts, and less than a year later there was a party at which trees were sunk into the well-fed earth”
Dreaming together, thinking together, cultivating together, working together, celebrating together. I just finished re-reading Gay’s catalog. If you want to get a different, deeper, more inclusive picture of what we can be grateful for, give it a read. DCPL can help you to that end. And maybe come out for the program at the Dorchester Center for the Arts–I have found that my appreciation and perspective for every book I have read and been moved by has deepened from discussing and sharing and listening to what others have taken from the same book.
In the meantime, I am going to pick back up Gay’s “Book of Delights,” his record of small joys that are so easy for us to overlook. And I’m going to continue to try to bring gratitude to each day, unabashedly, sharing as much as I can, one sunset, one moment, at a time.
“I want to love like Jesus”—that’s a goal that’s thrown around by both fans of Jesus and maybe even doubters. Most people agree that Jesus knew something about love. And that that was and is a good thing.
How many people can tell us more about what that kind of love looks like? Is it just a hopeful thing to say without any real substance behind it? Or are we willing to look closer as to what it might mean to love like Jesus.
Throughout each of the Gospels, Jesus makes a point of reaching across cultural, social, and religious boundaries and barriers to include people who were cast out or left out.
True to that form, the woman at the well, per culture and circumstance, is someone Jesus should not have been talking to.
Going through Samaria, Jesus was in a region and among a people the Jewish people didn’t look kindly on.
It’s the middle of the day, incredibly hot, a time when no one would have been at the well. And here comes a woman to get water.
Bible scholar N.T. Wright spells it out:
“In that culture, many devout Jewish men would not have allowed themselves to be alone with a woman. If it was unavoidable that they should be, they certainly would not have entered into conversation with her. The risk, they would have thought, was too high to risk impurity, risk of gossip, risk ultimately of being drawn into immorality. And yet Jesus is talking to this woman.”
If her being a woman wasn’t bad enough, on top of that she is a Samaritan. The Jewish people and the Samaritans didn’t mix. The Jews wanted nothing to do with the Samaritans. And no way in the world would they have considered sharing food or drink with them, much less sharing a drinking vessel.
Jesus reaches out to the woman by asking for a drink. He puts himself out there. Asks for hospitality. He makes himself vulnerable.
And who does he do this to? A woman who is coming to the well in the middle of the day to avoid having to deal with people, someone who has a stigma on her, a shame.
Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories” makes the point perfectly:
“The Samaritan woman is the Other, the alien, the outsider, the heretic, the stranger. Jesus breaks all the boundaries he is not supposed to break to reach out to her.
What Jesus does when he enters into conversation with a Samaritan woman is radical and risky; it stuns his own disciples because it asks them to dream of a different kind of social and religious order. A different kind of kingdom.”
Maybe that’s a clue for us. Loving like Jesus asks us to envision a different kind of social order, a different kind of kingdom.
I picture this woman and the gossip about her, the things said to her, the looks, the scorn, the judgment. And here is Jesus, a Jewish teacher, and how does he talk to her? Without judgment, without shaming, without looking down on her, and at the same time fully engaging with her and fully seeing her for who she is.
John, as the writer, packs a lot into this story:
This conversation is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the Gospels.
In John’s Gospel, this woman at the well is the first person to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah.
She is the first believer in any of the Gospels to become an evangelist and bring her entire city to a saving experience of Jesus.
All this for a Samaritan woman. This encounter was a big deal to John for him to give it so much space and meaning, and it was a big deal to Jesus.
So how does Jesus go about revealing his identity to the woman? Does he prove himself by healing the sick? Does he feed 5,000 people? Does he raise anyone from the dead or turn water into wine? No. He has a conversation with her.
He offers her “living water,” which she doesn’t understand. But he sits with her, listens to her, speaks to her, and reveals who he is.
Cynthia Kittredge in her book, “Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John points out:
“That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice… Jesus does no sign here. There is no miracle.” He makes a claim which then takes a dialogue, a back and forth to make sense of.
“This is a type of dialogue in John’s Gospel which reflects a way individuals and people come to faith—through a process of effort and discussion.”
Jesus reveals himself with no miracles or signs, simply with conversation, insight, and presence. He hears her, he sees her, he doesn’t dismiss her—he shares with her.
How did the woman respond? She goes running off to her town and tells absolutely everyone there. And Jesus stuck around and confirmed her testimony for people. She went from scorned outsider to credible witness.
Jesus restores her and transforms her.
Is this what it looks like to love like Jesus? Is this something Jesus still offers us today?
Here’s where Debie Thomas asks questions that we need to ask:
“Just as he does for the Samaritan woman, Jesus invites us to see ourselves and each other through the eyes of love, not judgment. Can we, like Jesus, become soft landing places for people who are alone, carrying stories of humiliation too heavy to bear? Can we see and name the world’s brokenness without shaming? Can we tell the truth and honor each other’s dignity at the same time?”
In the six-plus years I have been at Christ Church Easton, being a part of small groups has been a revelation for me in witnessing what becoming this kind of soft landing place can do.
For several years we ran the Alpha Course after our Saturday evening service, and we had between 90 and 100 people who would meet in the Parish Hall for dinner. Our youth group and leaders were a part of that number as well. Our Parish Hall was packed with food, laughter, and new relationships forming. Everyone sat and ate together before breaking into small groups, and over the course of 11 weeks we also went on a weekend retreat together.
That program became a landing place for people in recovery. In many cases these were people who were getting clean through Narcotics Anonymous. And it was a huge leap of faith for them to walk through the door of a church. Repeatedly we heard, “I didn’t think a church would want someone like me here.” People named and worked through shame they carried. They shared stories of why they started using; of their low points, in some cases being in prison; and they shared hopes and dreams—things like being able to be present, to be a parent in the lives of their children.
They went deep when they shared. And that gave permission for everyone else to go deep with their own struggles and failures. We had a congregation of people come to know by name someone who they might have dismissed, labeled, and judged. Which would have been the congregation’s loss.
Middle schoolers in our youth group would find and sit with—both in church and at dinner—the friends they made, in some cases big dudes covered with tattoos, who came to absolutely love these kids. There were no labels, just love. There were no more outsiders or outcasts, just a community of people, a group of friends. It has a holy thing and a holy time.
It looked a lot like Jesus with the woman at the well.
Fr. Gregory Boyle in his book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” tells a story about a former gang member who lived near their church and who liked to hang out his window to talk to people on their way by. One day Boyle was walking by and the guy yelled out, “Hey G, I love you,” and waved him by like he was blessing him. Boyle thanked him, and the guy’s reply was, “Of course, you’re in my jurisdiction.”
Boyle uses the idea of “jurisdiction” to talk about the area of our love, and he talks about God’s jurisdiction, the area of His love, which is all-inclusive.
When thinking about how to love like Jesus, we need to expand our jurisdiction to be as inclusive, as expansive, as Jesus’s. In the story of the woman at the well, he gives us the example of what it looks like to expand our love and compassion to include someone who had been left out.
We don’t need miracles or signs to accomplish this—it is something any of us can do. And we do it with presence, vulnerability, empathy, dialogue, listening, and seeing.
I want to leave you with some of Fr. Gregory Boyle’s words about expanding the jurisdiction of our love:
“Close both eyes; see with (eyes of your heart). Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves quite unexpectantly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.
We’ve wandered into God’s own jurisdiction.”
That’s how we love like Jesus.
Amen.
* On Saturday, March 11, I preached at our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class (at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, MD) on John 4:5-42, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The text above is the sermon that I gave.
