Scripture | Michael Valliant

Luke’s Witness

Background: October 18 is set aside on the lectionary calendar as the Feast of St. Luke, the Evangelist. At Christ Church Easton‘s weekly Wednesday Healing Service, I gave an appreciation homily for Luke. This is the text of the homily.

Luke’s Witness

Matthew’s Gospel begins with “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah…”

Mark gives us, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

John goes deep: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Brace yourselves. In each case, we’re diving right in.

Here is how Luke starts his Gospel:

“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed.”

The author of Luke is also credited with being the author of the Book of Acts, which begins: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up to heaven.”

The name Theophilus can be translated to mean, lover of God, friend of God, or loved by God. “God lover” may be a more fun way to say it, and our sister-in-Christ, Rev. Barbara Coleman used to like to call all her church friends “Theophilus.” “How’s it going, Theophilus?”

As an aside, if you ever find yourself wondering who was the most prolific New Testament writer… you might jump to John, hey he wrote the Gospel and possibly the letters, so probably him, right? Wait, we have all those letters, the epistles, attributed to Paul, it’s gotta be Paul. Good guess. If you take Luke as the author of both the gospel and Acts, he’s got more words and pages than anyone else in the New Testament. The scales tilt to Luke.

Luke is our only transparent Gospel writer: he’s intentional, he tells us what he’s trying to do. Lots of folks have tried to put this story together. I think I have a good grasp on these things, so I want to give you a well-ordered account so that you can understand what happened here. Not that there is anything wrong with the others, but check this out…

What do we get from Luke’s witness? What’s different from the other Gospels?

15th century depiction of St. Luke, the Evangelist

It’s Luke who gives us Mary’s perspective, her encounter with the angel and news of her pregnancy, along with Elizabeth and the cousin connection to John the Baptist.

It’s Luke who gives us the shepherds coming to see Jesus at his birth and thereby Linus’s speech from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

It’s Luke who gives us the only glimpse of Jesus’s childhood with the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple

Whereas Matthew gives us Jesus’s family tree back to Abraham, Luke goes all the way back to Adam (interestingly, the family trees don’t perfectly match, but that’s another story).

It’s Luke that gives us the parables of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor asking for bread for an unexpected visitor, Lazarus and the rich man, and the prodigal son. They aren’t in the other Gospels.

And the Resurrection story of Jesus and the men on the Road to Emmaus is a story only in Luke.

In Luke we see the elevation of women in ministries, a huge push on lifting up the poor and on social justice. When Jesus gives us his Beatitudes, he is not giving the Sermon on the Mount that we see in Matthew, he comes down to a level place to talk with people.

In talking about how Luke put together his Gospel, Franciscan author Richard Rohr says:

“Luke is creating his gospel using Scripture and tradition, and he’s doing it within a believing community. In putting together his gospel, he’s not only drawing on past Scriptures, such as the Hebrew Bible and Mark’s Gospel, but he’s also weaving in contemporary spirituality, knowledge of the theological schools of Judaism, experience of the times, insights of the believing community (the living body of Christ), and putting it all together.”

Luke looked around, talked to everyone he could, incorporated his own perspective and knowledge, and synthesized this kind of composite account that gives us a deeper understanding of who Jesus was than if Luke had just figured the other accounts were enough.

And there is nothing else in the New Testament like Acts, the days of the early church—Peter finally putting it altogether and becoming “the Rock” of the movement that Jesus predicted he would be; the opening of the ranks to include Gentiles; earthquakes and road trips and shipwrecks, and the conversion of Saul the persecutor of Jesus followers to Paul, the Apostle.

In about a month and a half, when the new church year begins with Advent, we’ll be in a Luke lectionary year, and we’ll see more closely what Luke’s witness is.

Here is a question I have for you. We can see what Luke felt it was important to include in the Gospel that no one else had. We can see what questions Luke asked and wanted answers for. Now take out your reporter’s notebook and pen or pencil: if you were to write your own account of the Gospel, what are the things that aren’t there, the questions that aren’t answered in the other accounts, that you would ask and want to find answers to? What details or eyewitness accounts would you put in your Gospel account?

I want to bring us back to today’s Gospel reading. Luke shows Jesus coming to Nazareth, going to the synagogue, taking and reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus reads:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And with everyone staring at him, Jesus then says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus just read his mission statement: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke’s witness to who Jesus is and what his messiahship looks like is Scripture-based, radical, relevant, and social justice-minded.

Talking about Luke’s witness, preacher and author Frederick Buechner says:

“To put it in a nutshell, by playing all these things up Luke shows he was a man who believed that you shouldn’t let the fact that a person is jailbait keep you from treating that person like a human being, and that if you pray hard enough, there’s no telling what may happen, and that if you think you’ve got heaven made but don’t let it worry you that there are children across the tracks who are half starving to death, then you’re kidding yourself.”

The people in Nazareth who heard Jesus read the scroll and go on to call them out got angry, drove Jesus out of town, and up to the top of a hill hoping to throw him off of it.

How do we react to the Jesus Luke shows us?

Let’s shoot for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for whom Jesus blessed and broke bread and gave it to them, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him… and they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” And they go to Jerusalem and tell everyone, “The Lord has risen indeed.”

Putting Love First; Keeping Soft Hearts

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 Heals a Man with a Withered Hand,” Scribe: Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, ink and pigments on laid paper, 1684, collection Walters Art Museum.

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.

Protected and Connected

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 think his prayer worked.

Amen.

A Salty Reminder

Life is a pendulum swinging between remembering and forgetting. Often I find myself on the forgetting end of the swing.

The poet Rita Dove described something that goes on in my mind in her poem “Lucille, Post-Operative Years”–

Most often she couldn’t
think–which is to say she thought of
everything, and at once–
…

Then, sudden as a wince,
she couldn’t remember a thing.
…

What bothered her: the gaps
between.

(Those are connected excerpts from three different stanzas)

I can have what feels like so much spinning around in my head that I can’t think of the name of the person standing in front of me, who I’ve known for years and I can tell you everything about them, but their name is missing. Or I can be talking along towards a point and have it fly out of my head and leave me looking for a direction to catch up to it.

Meanwhile I have memories from the first 20 years of my life that are crystal clear and in context like they just happened. Oh, but the gaps in between. The mind is a marvelous thing, particularly when it cooperates or shows us things we had forgotten we knew.

Sometimes I wonder if our collective memory works like that as well. There are things we forget that are critical to who we are or who we are called to be.

That’s where my mind has wandered with this weekend’s lectionary Gospel reading, Matthew 5:13-20 (quoting 13-16, “Salt and Light”)

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

What if we forgot what it is to be salt and light? What if we lost what that means? Maybe being light in the darkness makes sense, but what is it to be salt?

I am going to stick with Debie Thomas, who I have quoted a good bit lately from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says when Jesus calls his listeners ‘salt of the earth’ he is saying something profound that is easy for our to miss in our time:

“First of all, he is telling us who we are. We are salt. We are not ‘supposed to be’ salt, or ‘encouraged to become’ salt, or promised that ‘if we become’ salt, God will love us more. The language Jesus uses is 100 percent descriptive. It’s a statement of our identity. We are the salt of the earth. We are that which enhances or embitters, soothes or irritates, melts or stings, preserves or ruins. For better or worse, we are the salt of the earth, and what we do with our saltiness matters.“

Salt by itself doesn’t do much. And too much of it can ruin things. But the right amount of salt (which was in Jesus’s time a precious commodity) can enhance and make things better. Salt’s value is in its being spread around, added to other things–but not in a way that dominates or takes over.

If we forget that we are salt of the earth and keep ourselves separate and distant or try to take things over, we are not being true to who we are called to be.

Thomas’s essay, “Salty” looks deeply at what is to be salt–something that was precious, something that “does its best work when it’s poured around”, something that doesn’t exist to preserve itself; a calling that is not meant “to make us proud; it’s meant to to humble and awe us.”

What an honor to be asked to help, to be of service. Thomas continues:

“Our vocation in these times and places is not to lose our saltiness. That’s the temptation–to retreat. To choose blandness over boldness and keep our love for Jesus an embarrassed secret… But that kind of salt, Jesus tells his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its essence… Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out with discretion so that God’s kingdom might be known on the earth–a kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth, flavor, and complexity.“

I’m really looking forward to discussing Thomas’s reflections on the life of Christ. We’ll see how salty and balanced we can become during our Lent small groups .

These are some of the books that are pouring ideas and prayers and sentences and questions and wonder and inspiration into my heart and mind at the moment.

Next weekend (February 11-12), I preach at Christ Church Easton. What that looks like walking around and how to process it is a different kind of thing. Barbara Brown Taylor in her book, “The Preaching Life,” points towards it:

“I do not want to pass on knowledge from the pulpit; I want to take part in an experience of God’s living word, and that calls for a different kind of research. It is time to tuck the text into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me. It is time to turn its words and images loose on the events of my everyday life and see how they mix. It is time to daydream, whittle, whistle, pray.”

The more often I tuck God’s Word into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me, the more it helps shape who I am and how I see the world. If I hope to take part in an experience of God’s living word, I need to remind myself that I am salt and light–my role is to enhance, sooth, melt, preserve, to add some flavor that might bring it into our world in a fresh way.

Back to Thomas:

“We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for the better. May your pouring out–and mine–be for the life of the world.”

Faith, Life, and Messiness

Faith, like life, is messy. This has been on my mind a lot, after thinking about Matthew’s Gospel (1:18-25) where he talks about Joseph and the birth of Jesus. Fr. Bill Ortt’s sermon stirred me up and Debie Thomas‘s essay on the same passage in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories” sent me into overdrive.

In the Gospel, Joseph finds out his fiancé Mary is pregnant, not with his child, and plans to send her away quietly. What the law required is that he should publicly shame her and that she might be stoned to death. But Joseph’s heart demanded something different of him. Send her away quietly.

And then, in a dream, an angel tells Joseph not to worry, to stay with Mary, whose child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and to help raise her son, who they are to name Jesus. He learned this in a dream.

Fr. Bill, describing what Joseph decided to do said, “Instead of following the letter of the law, displayed the heart of God.”

And there is the thing–look at the “law” over centuries–the law changes with the times. The loving heart of God is unchanging, constant, eternal. But that doesn’t make it easy to follow or live into.

Debie Thomas in her essay, “Into the Mess,” says:

“It is the humble carpenter’s willingness to abandon his notions of holiness and embrace the scandalous that allows the miracle of Christ’s arrival to unfold.”

This is not to dismiss Mary’s role and the need for her willingness to be the mother of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel looks at the birth story from Mary’s perspective, and has an angel speaking to Mary. Matthew looks at Joseph.

Saying yes was the first step, the same as it is with us today. But this is going to lead for an entirely different life for Joseph than he could have possibly pictured for himself. He has to let go of everything. Thomas writes:

“In choosing Joseph to be Jesus’s earthly father, God leads a righteous man with an impeccable reputation straight into doubt, shame, scandal, and controversy. God’s call requires Joseph to reorder everything he thinks he knows about fairness, justice, goodness, and purity.”

Think about that. Based on a dream, would you say yes to God’s calling in that situation? Joseph had to let go of his notion of all these things, to live a completely different life than he dreamed for himself–saying yes to God had a cost for him. It also had a reward, but in order to see it, he had to let go of what he thought he knew.

Fr. Bill, in thinking about the character of Joseph, said he must have been a young man. Why?

“The young dream, the old remember.”

As we get older, we are less likely to listen to our dreams. We are more inclined to look back and discern things by comparison, by whatever logic we can discern from our lives; we are less open to the new and the strange.

What if we could stay open? What if we could continue to dream as we get older? What if we could find a way to keep or develop soft hearts?

Fr. Bill picked up another thread in his sermon that I want to weave in here. In talking about Christ’s birth, he said, “God himself became vulnerably present in the world.”

God as vulnerable. Both in the person of Jesus, but also in the way he deals with us. He asks, we can say yes or no. And this comes back to the idea of God as Love.

I recently picked up C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” from my bookshelf and started reading it, based on coming across this quote online:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

To love is to be vulnerable. What normally happens to us as we get older, in response to the pain, suffering, and heartbreak that happens by living, we seal ourselves off. We harden. We build walls in self-defense. And this is what the world has largely come to look and feel like.

But we can choose a different way to be. It takes courage, it takes heart, it takes being vulnerable.

In his book “Consolations,” David Whyte writes about “Touch.” He says:

“Touch is what we desire in one form or another, even if we find it through being alone, through the agency of silence or through the felt need to walk at a distance: the meeting with something or someone other than ourselves, the light brush of grass on the skin, the ruffling breeze, the actual touch of another’s hand; even the gentle first touch of an understanding, which, until now, we were formerly afraid to hold.”

Even the most introverted want to feel deeply. We want to experience connection. We want to touch and be touched. To touch, to feel, we have to be open. And being open isn’t just to the good stuff, the stuff we want, but also to that which can wreck us. Whyte continues:

“Being alive in the world means being found by [the] world and sometimes touched to the core in ways we would rather not experience.”

Maybe that is along the lines of what Joseph experienced before his dream. This isn’t what he had signed up for. This isn’t the life he had mapped out. But he was open. And through and after his dream, he said yes to a life, a calling, that none of us can fathom.

Because he was open. Because he was willing to let go of what he thought he wanted. Because he said yes.

Whyte finishes his thoughts on touch looking at being untouchable:

“To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness; a sign of fear rather than of strength, and betrays a strange misunderstanding of an abiding, foundational, and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.”

To wall up and go numb is a cop out. It deprives us of really living.

Life, like faith, is messy. In order to experience those things we all want–love, joy, happiness–we have to open and vulnerable to those things we want with everything to avoid, heartbreak, pain, suffering. That’s the mess of it.

Joseph and Mary became the earth parents of Jesus. Their saying yes changed everything for all of us. We don’t hear much more about Joseph in the story–it wasn’t about him, ultimately. And Mary watched Jesus being killed. Again with the mess.

Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us, God tells us, it’s worth it. Love is worth it. Life is worth it. The mess is part of it. And not just part of it, but an important part of it.

I love how Debie Thomas thinks about the mess. And invites us to do the same:

“Do not be afraid of the mess. Embrace it. The mess is where God enters the world.”

To live, to love, to be open. To have the heart of God and to become vulnerably present in the world.

Amen.

Faith and Gratitude

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.

“Faith and Gratitude”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.

He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?

They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.

When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”

They were the fringe of the fringe.

The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.

He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.

And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.

One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.

It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.

Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.

We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.

The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:

Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?

Why the Foreigner?

This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.

But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?

I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:

“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock

I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?

Reading Scripture: WWJD?

Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.

We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.

And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?

Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.

But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.

And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?

So in this story, what does Jesus do?

Seeing and Doing

First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:

When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”

In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.

And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.

If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?

We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.

We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?

Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.

Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.

What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?

Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.

Gratitude

Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.

Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.

We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.

I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.

My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.

A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.

Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.

And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.

When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.

I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.

Salvation

Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”

Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.

Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.

That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.

Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”

Living with a Grateful Heart

What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?

I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.

Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.

It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.

So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.

As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.

We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.

Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.

And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80^th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.

Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.

Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.

I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.

Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:

“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”

Amen.

A Wonder Kickstarter

We need our sense of awe, of wonder, kickstarted. When I look at any given week ahead, at the to-do list, at the bills, at the schedule, it’s easy to get lost in the details.

Everyone has a soapbox they frequently stand on. Wonder is one of my few soapboxes. Carl Sagan gets it. Let Carl get you going. When he says dot, he means the Earth:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

That’s the kind of perspective I need from time to time. The history of humankind–our dreams, accomplishments, stories, are all a speck in the cosmos. Get your head into the stars.

What are your go-to activities, places, or ways to amp up your sense of wonder and awe? For me, getting outside is as big as it gets. Watching the sun come up or set on a river, bay, ocean; hiking, trail running, skateboarding; gardening where I take the time to look at the details of what is growing or blooming. And obviously, books.

Some wonder-sparking books that were nearby while I was typing.

Here’s a thought from Pablo Neruda:

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

Again with our brief time here, the span of time before and after us, and yet, there are times when we can feel connected to, a part of everything around us.

Let’s play that out. We are here. We were created. You and I have consciousness and questions and feelings. So the same Creator that made all of the wonder-filled, awe-stoking Universe, made you and made me.

Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest, a writer, and founder of Thistle Farms. She has a small, green book called “The Path of Love: Walking Bible Study.” The idea behind it is to put us out into creation to get in touch with the Creator.

“The story of our faith beings with the Creation narratives, in which the act of Creation itself becomes the unfolding of God’s love for the whole world.

God’s love is written all over creation. It begins when God takes the deep and the darkness and, instead of destroying these things, makes them a part of creation. God calls it very good, and we are all created together by a loving God who destroys nothing in creating–deep and darkness, earth and light, knit together in a creation that is both unified and diverse…

Nature is sacred; it was made by the same creator who made us. If we want to love, worship, and be with God, then it makes sense for us to stand in the midst of creation. The closer we are to nature, the nearer we most be to the heart and desire of the Creator.”

Let that wash over you for a minute. That sense of awe and wonder in us, that connection to the larger Universe, to creation, can be a means for us to get to know God and draw closer to Him. Even if we are a blip on the screen, we are still a part of it and we can do something with our time.

We were made to wonder. We were made to dream. We were made to enjoy and take part of the beauty of the Creation of which we are a part. And by doing so, we find ourselves a gateway to God.

What’s Next?

I have two kinds of reading: work/church reading and other/personal reading, though they almost always overlap.

Work/church reading is reading that goes toward discussion groups and Bible studies. Over the past few years, we have done chapter by chapter group studies of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians; shorter survey’s of Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, book studies of two Bob Goff books, one Brene Brown book, Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and a deep-dive into The Lord’s Prayer. We have groups that have become like family, who have been meeting for multiple years now and when one study is done, they ask, “what’s next?” And it’s awesome.

When we could no longer gather together as groups this spring, Zoom meetings became our way of getting together. And for the past several weeks, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we have had folks on screen together, live from their homes in Wittman, Sherwood, outside Cambridge, all around Easton, and it has helped–both with the stir crazy, cooped up feelings, but also staying connected to each other and connected to God.

As we finished our long studies of John’s Gospel and our Lent survey of Matthew’s Gospel, we kicked around some options of what to explore next. The thought of Paul’s prison letters resonated, as we quarantine in place. A reliable, accessible commentary can be hugely illuminating for Bible study, and we have loved N.T. Wright’s New Testament for Everyone books. His “Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters” is what we used for our Philippians study a couple years ago and we are heading back there to start with Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

From Wright’s introduction:

“This book includes the four short letters Paul wrote from prison: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. His own personal circumstances make these especially poignant, and give us a portrait of a man facing huge difficulties and hardships and coming through with his faith and hope unscathed. But what he has to say to young churches–and in the case of Philemon, to one man facing a hugely difficult moral dilemna–is even more impressive. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul has worked out a wonderful, many-colored picture of what Jesus achieved, of God’s worldwide plan, and how it all works out in the lives of ordinary people.”

Paul’s letters from prison give us plenty to think, pray, and reflect on, and something to work towards. I always recall the line from Ephesians about putting on the “full armor of God.”

Something has happened in the shift from being able to come together at church, or anywhere, to now being distanced. Maybe we realize how much we need each other, how much we miss each other. And creating content to engage, inspire, and give hope, as well as creating interactive opportunities and experiences is more important than ever. So as we start with Ephesians and go through the prison letters, I want to throw out there for anyone who wants to, to do the same. I’ll be blogging and trying to find some creative writing opportunities with it; I will look to have some video conversations with Fr. Bill Ortt, Fr. Charlie Barton, and others to get their thoughts on issues and chapters that come up; possible podcasts with staff members and others; I will see if I can find some special guest stars to weigh in; and we can open up some Zoom meetings during the week where people can drop in and share and discuss their thoughts. The more the merrier–and has always been the case for our small groups, you don’t have to be a member of the church or any church to be a part of what’s going on. If it sounds interesting, give it a shot. With Zoom, Facebook, Instagram and the like, you can be in Florida, California, Maine, or in a different country.

In January 2017, I had started working at Christ Church Easton part-time in addition to my job as director of the Oxford Community Center. Our rector/pastor, Fr. Bill Ortt, asked me to put together a short (5-6 week) Bible study, whatever I picked to study, find 10 or so people to be a part of it, and he and I would co-lead the group. I had led small groups before, but this would be my first Bible study. I picked Ephesians. Many of the guinea pigs…er… willing participants, have become close friends, and are still both involved in and leading small groups at the church, with one woman finishing up her work to become a deacon. It’s been a wonderful journey together.

I was reminded recently (by Wright, in our John study) of lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which is one of my absolute favorite poems/books ever written. Eliot says:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot

I feel like that is the case for me with Ephesians. It’s maybe the case with small groups. It’s maybe the case with church and communities, who are having to re-examine what’s important and how to do things.

Fair warning though: it seems the longer you study with and work with someone, the more likely you are to dress alike.

Don’t bury your talents

We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.

This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.

The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.

Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:

“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”
N.T. Wright

We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.

None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.

Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.

There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:

“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”
Wright

In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.

It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.

What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.

Contributing a Verse

Sometimes it’s there, just below the surface. My mind is distracted, looking for the familiar, but knowing it won’t come from there. It’s something new.

A beautiful morning, or evening, outside, smelling cut grass, swooning in the start of spring. It seems like normal. But go to grab groceries and it hits: it’s eerie. Off. Something is not right. You can feel it.

We are all called to respond in our own ways. To stay home, yes, but also called to look differently, think differently, maybe to live and be differently. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.

Before COVID-19 arrived, Fr. Bill Ortt put out a Lenten challenge at Christ Church Easton: 1) Find a word that speaks to you; 2) choose a Bible verse that uses your word; 3) Memorize your verse and pray, meditate, reflect on your word/verse as a Lenten mantra of sorts; 4) Write your word on one of the small, wooden crosses the church gives out. And if you are inspired to, take a picture and share your cross-verse.

There have been some wholly wonderful responses. “Heal,” “light,” “love,” “pray,” “faith”–it’s been inspiring to see and read how people came to their word (or their word came to them) and what they are doing with the experience.

My word wasn’t there at first. Or it was, but I wasn’t listening.

As a church, when it was clear that we weren’t going to be gathering together for a time, we had to figure out what that meant; what it looked like; how to stay relevant, be there for people; how to continue to shine a light; how to connect; how to help people be hopeful. We had to do things differently.

We had to create something new. Or at least new to us. We moved our meetings, small groups, and prayer gatherings to ZOOM. Worship services (what would worship look like now?) to Facebook Live. And our music ministries became video artists–I stop every time I hear/watch “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” or “Be Still My Soul.” These are videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times now on Facebook and shared widely. They strike a chord, they speak to hope and faith and love and connection. They weren’t a priority before social distancing, until they became one of the key ways to communicate. This is a time that is teaching us how to create, how to be differently, how to look at what’s important. And it’s not about adapting to a temporary predicament–it’s about moving toward, embracing something new.

I am fascinated by stories. As a writer, I read them, listen to them, think about them, and hope to share and tell them in new and interesting ways. But with between work, two teenage daughters, life, it’s not always easy to make time to write.

As I sat, prayed, reflected, my word, both professionally and personally was there all along: CREATE. And when I started looking through Bible verses, Isaiah practically smacked me upside the head:

“For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.”
Isaiah, 65:17

In this time, our time, maybe we are called to look at our lives with an eye towards creating better lives.

Maybe we are called to look at our personal and collective stories, and tell new ones.

If our world is necessarily knocked off its axis, perhaps we can look at how to get it spinning around love, kindness, community, sustainability, and creativity.

If I stay home, simply waiting, doing things as I’ve always done them, and at the other end of this pandemic, just shrug, and go back to business as usual, what have I learned or gained from the experience?

This isn’t meant to be some Pollyanna motivational speech. I know my shortcomings. I know I will be lazy, I will fall short, I will miss opportunities. I try to own my humanity, my flaws, and my mistakes. But the idea behind a word, a mantra, a verse to think, pray, reflect on, is what I set my eyes to–what I aim towards, what I strive for. And in the face of a global virus the world is responding to in ways that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it is a legitimate time to look at our lives and think about where and how we are and where we want to be.

Each spring, I go back to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s become a way to enter the season of rebirth, of resurrection. And this year I am hit especially by his “O ME! O LIFE!” in the same space and way that Robin Williams quoted it in Dead Poets Society.

We are here. We exist. It didn’t have to be, but it is. And in life’s powerful play, we may contribute a verse. That is what we create. But it’s up to us.

I want to wake up open to what it is God is creating in the world and creating in me.

“Create in my a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
(Psalm 51:10-12)