April 14th 2024: Reflections on Luke 24:36b-48 by Reverend Lyn Crow

1.    It’s interesting isn’t it – that today’s gospel is in many ways a repetition of last week’s gospel.

2.     Remember?  Last week we heard from John’s gospel

a.   disciples after crucifixion frightened, hiding behind locked doors

b.   Jesus appears – peace be with you

c.   one missing – Thomas

d.   he doubts

e.   week later Jesus appears again and shows Thomas his wounds

3.     This week – we hear about the same event from Luke

a.   there’s got to be a reason why we’re hearing the same story again

b.   and I’m going to find it

c.   I combed through both versions of the story

d.   and I found it

e.   In John’s version last week the primary focus was on doubt – Thomas’ doubt and the doubt of anyone who read the story

f.     But in this week’s version from Luke the primary focus is fear-

g.   the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost when Jesus appeared and they were afraid

h.   Jesus dealt with doubt by showing Thomas his wounds

i.     He dealt with fear by asking for food and eating it

j.     See – a ghost doesn’t eat food

4.    Then Jesus does Bible study with them

5.     He shows them how his death and resurrection was prophesied in the Old Testament, the Prophets, and the Psalms

 6.   Then he gives them instructions

a.    here they are huddled in fear

b.   their numbers had shrunk

c.   Can anyone relate?

d.   and Jesus after dealing with their doubts and fears gives them their marching orders

7.    Their ministry, which they thought was over is going to expand again

8.     And here’s what your ministry needs to be about, he says

9.     You’re going to proclaim repentance, turning around, changing directions, forgiveness and mercy

10.                And you are going to do this all over the place

11.                You realize, don’t you, that these marching orders are for us also?

12.                What if Jesus is here among us saying you need to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in my name everywhere.

13.                Well, how the heck are we supposed to do that?

14.                I used to be terrified that Jesus would ask me, the introvert, to stand on the corner in front of Vons and hand out tracts

15.                In my life – the only way I have ever seen people change their lives, turn around and experience God – the only way is through hearing other people tell their Jesus stories.

16.                Like on Cursillo – Thursday to Sunday filled with people, both lay people and priests telling their stories

17.                And lives are changed

18.                Jose Garcia

-       he & wife drug addicted

-      wife died – his turning around

-      he tells it on Cursillo

-      the whole room in tears

-      believe me, when Jose tells his story lives change

19.                 I’m Irish – my Dad was born in Belfast

20.                The Irish love to tell stories and we love to hear stories

21.                We know the power of stories

22.                The Ancient Irish people had folks set aside who were the official story tellers

23.                They were called shanachie

24.                The shanachie documented events – they were the historians, the ones who remembered and shared what they remembered

25.                In the early days, the Celts insisted that only poets could be the story tellers

26.                Why?  Because they believed that knowledge that is not passed through the heart is dangerous

27.                It may lack wisdom if it does not come from the heart

28.                So in order to have power it had to come from the heart.  Interesting, huh?

29.                Robert McKee is a world famous creative writing professor at USC

30.                His students have won

a.    36 Academy awards

b.   164 Emmys

c.   19 Writer’s Guild of America awards

d.   16 Director’s Guild of America awards

31.                 He says storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today

32.                Stories allow us to step out of our own shoes

33.                They tap into our right brain, the place of imagination and creativity, which is the foundation of innovation, self-discovery, and change

34.                If you want people to grow in self-knowledge, and to be transformed, he says, tell them a story

35.                Storytelling is at the heart of our faith.  (Holding Bible up)  What is this but a collection of stories?

36.                You are witnesses – Jesus says in today’s gospel

37.                What are you a witness of?

38.                What are your stories?

39.                Spend some time pondering that.  How do you live your life differently because you are part of the Jesus movement?  Who in your life needs to hear that there is a different way to live?

40.                Maya Angelou said “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”

41.                Each of you has stories of the kingdom inside of you

42.                Today I commission you as St. Matthias’ shanachie

43.                You are our storytellers

44.                So go tell your stories and change the world

April 7th 2024: Reflections on John 20:19-31 by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

So, what can we say about Thomas, whom we commemorate each year on the Sunday after Easter?  Who was this Thomas?  What’s his deal?

          We first encounter Thomas when Jesus and his friends hear the news that Lazarus is near death.  Jesus feels compelled to go to Lazarus’ sisters but there had been a threat.  If Jesus showed up near Jerusalem again, he would be stoned to death.  The disciples are hesitant and afraid.  But Thomas boldly challenges them, saying: “Let us also go, that we may die with him!”  Thomas is deeply loyal here but also somewhat impetuous.

          The second time we see him is at the Last Supper.  Jesus delivers what will become known, over time, as his “Farewell Discourse,” where he says: “I go to prepare a place for you.”  Thomas responds:  “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we find the way?”  Thomas is not given to metaphors…

          And so we now come to this third encounter.  The disciples are in hiding.  In fear of the enemies of Jesus, they are secure behind a locked door.  They were no doubt also filled with despair and disillusionment.  They had failed Jesus but at the same time, Jesus had failed them.  The dream that they had given their lives and their hearts to for three years was now dead.  I see Peter as a broken man.  His three denials of Jesus “I tell you, I don’t know the man!”, echoed in his heart.  But Thomas has his own echoes: “Let us all go and die with him.”  Thomas, on Easter night, is missing.  Shut away.  Humiliated?  No doubt.

          On Easter night, Jesus comes through the locked door and the disciples are terrified.  He says, “Peace be with you” and shows them his wounds.  This one you are seeing is not a ghost but is that self same Jesus.  And Jesus breathes the Spirit on them.

          In John’s gospel, this is the Pentecost event.  The imagery echoes the Genesis story.  As God breathed life into the nostrils of the first man Adam, so here Jesus breathes new life into spiritually dead disciples.  The dream is not dead but alive.  As I was sent, so I send you.  The disciples – students – now become apostles -  “ones who are sent.”  The language here about forgiving or not forgiving sins is baptismal language.  For John, sin is rejecting Jesus.  The commission here – as in Matthew’s gospel – is to be evangelists, to extend the community.

          Of course, Thomas, in his shame, missed all of this and when he’s told the story by those who were there, he rejects it all out of hand.  His friends are clearly overwrought.  Perhaps, as occasionally happened with Jesus’ disciples, they had entered into, as it were, an alternate state of consciousness, seeing and hearing things which are preposterous.  Belligerently he cries:  “Unless I can touch it…”  Right?

          And the next Sunday night, Jesus comes for Thomas.  Without anger or judgment comes a word of invitation:  “Come and touch.”  At that instant, at the sight of that wounded body, Thomas’ heart breaks open and he sees with the eyes of his heart what his physical eyes can not confirm and he declares:  “My Lord and my God!”

          Peter, the Rock, had proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, the anointed of God.  Thomas goes so much further:  my Lord and my God.

          Jesus responds to Thomas, with what we might call the last beatitude:  “Blessed are those who have not seen and believe.”

          The gospel of John ends as it began.  We have come full circle.  The gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was - [what?] – God.”    The gospel ends with Thomas’ bold acclamation:  Jesus is Lord and God.

          Thomas’s story does not end there.  Legend has it that after this, the disciples drew lots and it fell to Thomas to go to India, arriving about the year 52 CE.  It is said that along the way, he met the Magi, those wise men of the East present at Jesus’ birth.  He founded seven and a half churches - ? – and became the Patron Saint of India.  The Anglican church to this day is known as the Mar Toma Church.  And Tomas is a favorite name given to Indian Christian boys.

          My favorite legend about Thomas is that at the Assumption of Mary, the Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary was taken up to heaven bodily at the end of her life;  an optional doctrine in our Anglican tradition – that Thomas had been summoned from India to witness this event and that Mary gives him her girdle as proof for him to show the other apostles, since Thomas prefers physical proof.

          Thomas returns to India afterwards and was martyred in the year 72.  His relics are said to have wrought several miracles.  Clearly, once Thomas had surrendered his cynicism, he surrendered all.

          The moral John would have us take from this story is that like his community in Ephesus around the year 100 CE, bereft of the original witnesses, we – you and I – are called to be people of faith based on their witness.  As St. Paul wrote in Romans 10:17:  “Faith comes from hearing!”  We are to be, like Thomas, an apostle – ones sent with a message.  Well and good.

          But let’s flip the narrative today.  Let’s change the tune.  Instead of “doubting Thomas,” I’d like to call him “Tardy Thomas.”  The issue here is that the dude was just plain late – well, yeah, seven days late.  He withdrew from the fellowship and sought isolation instead of community.

          How often have we known folks – friends, relatives, and maybe sometimes even ourselves – who in sorrow or sadness or pain, cut ourselves off from the fellowship of the Church?  And that estrangement can last for a time or for a season – or a lifetime.

 “Doubt is not the opposite of faith;  fear is.
Fear will not risk.
That even if I am wrong, I will trust that if I move today
by the light that is given me, knowing it is only finite and partial,
I will know more and different things tomorrow than I know today,
and I can be open to the new possibility I can not even imagine.”
-      Verna Dozier

 The phrase “do not fear” or “fear not” appears 365 times in scripture.

One for each day of the year.

          Thomas, unlike Peter, chose in his fear and despair to absent himself from the company of the faithful and missed the initial blessing.  When we choose to isolate ourselves, the whole community is diminished by our absence.  New Life is indeed on offer but we need to be present to grasp it.  So, suit up, show up, and never give up, friends, never give up.  Amen.

March 31st 2024: Reflections on Mark 16:1-8 / John 20:1-18 (Easter Sunday) by Reverend Hartshorn Murphy

After the death of Jesus on a Roman cross, Joseph of Arimathea – a member of the Jewish Council, The Sanhedrin – asks Pilate for the body.  John’s gospel tells us that he was assisted by another Judean disciple of Jesus, Nicodemus.  These men carefully wash the blood and dirt from Jesus’ body and wrap him in a linen shroud.  His body would remain on the stone shelf for a year and a day after which time, the tomb would be opened.  Jesus’ bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary – a stone bone box – to be carried north to his family in Nazareth to be entombed in their family grave.  As the sun sinks marking the start of the Sabbath, the men quickly seal the tomb with its heavy stone disc and hurrying away, they do not see Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of Joses who had discreetly followed them.

          The next night, after sunset, Mary and two other women go to the marketplace to buy burial ointment:  olive oil scented with myrrh and aloes.  In the morning, as the sun is rising, these women make their way to Joseph’s tomb to do the last best thing for their friend – to anoint his tortured body.  As they make their way, they worry about finding someone to roll away the tomb’s seal, for Jesus’ male disciples are all in hiding.  They were hoping later in this day or the next, to quietly slip into one of the caravans heading north and escape the fate which had befallen their Rabbi.  As the three women approach the grave, they discover the stone rolled away.  The women are furious.  They presume that Jesus’ enemies had committed some great indignity on the corpse.  They rush inside.

          There they see a man dressed all in white.  Later gospels will say it plain:  it’s an angel, who tells them to not be alarmed.  Jesus is not here.  You are looking for Jesus who was executed by the Romans;  you won’t find him in a tomb, even a tomb sealed with a huge stone.  Luke’s language is more poetic – why do you look for the living amongst the dead?

          The messenger then gives the women a promise and a commission.  The commission:  tell Jesus’ male disciples to go back to the Galilee.  The promise:  he has gone ahead of you, there you will see him.

          The women flee the tomb, filled with amazement and awe but they tell no one because they were afraid.  And so, in just eight short verses, Mark’s Easter story ends.  The ending is so abrupt and so disturbing that a 2nd Century scribe will create a more satisfying ending.  But Mark’s tale ends with those words:  “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

          There are no resurrection appearances in Mark.  We find those in the other three gospels.  Those stories reveal that Jesus is profoundly changed.  He is no longer a figure of flesh and blood as we know it.  He is no longer confined to time or space.  He enters locked rooms.  He walks the road with his friends but is to them a stranger.  At supper time, Jesus breaks the bread and as he does so, they recognize that this stranger is in fact Jesus – and he vanished from their sight.  He is seen in Jerusalem and yet also in the Galilee apparently at the same time.  And he is seen by Paul, who self describes himself as someone “untimely born” for he never knew Jesus in the flesh but will experience Jesus alive – after which he will declare that Jesus is Lord.

          In other words, the presence his disciples had known before the cross continued to be experienced afterwards.  The message to us on this Easter Sunday morning is just this:  The Jesus who lived – who walked and talked and healed, who broke bread and wept and suffered – and who died a violent death on Calvary’s hill, is not to be sought in the Palestinian Province circa 33 C.E.  He has been raised and is a present reality.  And he is experienced by his followers to this day.

Mark’s gospel ends abruptly with the women running away in fear and telling no one.  Obviously, they eventually find their voices but their initial fear feels very human.  Perhaps they feared the scorn of the male disciples.  We get it.  We are all reluctant to share such precious experiences lest those we tell, treat such tender stories with ridicule in this most cynical age.

Scholars wonder aloud if the original ending of Mark’s gospel was somehow lost.  But I would argue that just maybe it was intentional.  Mark’s gospel is “unfinished” because the story of Jesus is always unfinished.  It is a continuing story.  It ends with an unwritten page, left blank to be filled in by you.

Rumi, the 13th Century Sufi mystic said it this way:

“I called through your door

The mystics are gathering in the streets

Come out!  But you said:

Leave me alone, I’m sick!

I don’t care if you’re dead.  Jesus is here

And he wants to resurrect somebody!

That somebody is you.

March 29th, 2024: Reflections on Good Friday by Reverand Valerie Hart

What is it that makes it so hard to hear the Passion read out loud.  Is it the suffering of Jesus? Is it seeing the incredible cruelty of which humanity is capable? Is it being reminded of our own suffering reflected in the story.

When we read the Passion, like we did tonight, we hear of betrayal, cowardice, self-centeredness, fear, power, and manipulation. It’s hard to imagine how people could be so cruel. 

Yet, when we hear this story, we hear echoes of ourselves.  We have had times in our lives when we have been afraid and acted out of that fear.  We have had times when we have denied someone else, kept quiet when we could have spoken up. We see our own shortcomings, our weaknesses, our sins played out in this story.

This is hard enough. But we also see our personal suffering on display. We see the mourning mother experience the horror of her son’s death. Who have you lost? Who do you still grieve? We see Jesus’ agony at being betrayed by Judas’ kiss. Not just Jesus was betrayed that night, but so were all his friends and followers. Have you ever been betrayed by someone you loved and trusted?

I once heard about an ancient tradition of theological reflection where people wondered what it was Jesus did in that part of the Apostles Creed where it says, “He descended into hell.”  What was he doing during that time in hell?  One of the theories is that he was looking for Judas.  He was looking for the one who betrayed him to get an opportunity to forgive him. 

I can easily imagine Jesus looking for his friend Judas to tell him he was forgiven.  Just like Jesus comes looking for us who have all let him down in one way or another in our lives.  He comes looking for each one of us, each one of his friends, so he can tell us that we’re forgiven, that we’re loved, that it’s all going to be okay. 

Jesus offered forgiveness to the soldiers who nail him to the cross and to the one who betrayed him. But what about the suffering of the ones who were betrayed? Christ offers forgiveness to the perpetrators of sin, what about the victims?

One year I attended a Lenten retreat while I was actively working in my therapy on an unresolved memory of having been abused as a child. I had been reliving the shame and self doubt and struggling with how to let go and heal the very deep wounds I still carried. I was reflecting upon the common statements that Christ died for our sins. Or that He died for sinners. Or that He died to take away our sins. As I prayed in front of a crucifix I agonized over the question, “What about the victim?”

I knew the perpetrator had been forgiven, but where does that leave the victim? Where did I, as a survivor of abuse, fit in this salvation story?

Then I was drawn to the center of Christ’s chest, to the wide open area between the outstretched arms. To his heart, broken open by torture. And I saw, I knew, that Christ died to take upon himself our pain, our suffering, whether we are in pain due to the guilt we carry or we are in pain because of what has be done to us. He holds it all in that wide open heart. He holds the shame and the grief and the sorrow of the victim. He holds the guilt of the abuser. He holds it all.

And he comes looking for us to say that it is all going to be okay.

In fact, it’s going to be more than okay.  Out of the sadness of our lives, out of the tragedy of our lives, out of the things we do wrong, and out of the things that have been done to us, Jesus can bring hope. He can take each part of us that is dead or dying and he can transform it, heal it, forgive it, love it, and resurrect it.

He can transform that which is most painful and turn it into a source healing and strength that can empower us to help others and begin to heal the world.

March 28th, 2024: Reflections on Maundy Thursday by Reverand Valerie Hart

Do you remember the last conversation that you had with someone before they died? Do you remember where you were, what you did, what that person said? Almost fifty years later, I still remember my father’s last words to me. It doesn’t matter whether at the time we know the person is going to die, we still remember the interaction. And if the person knows that they are about to die it gives even more power to those last words. A dying parent will want to share some last bits of guidance for their child, spouses share a last loving good-bye and a teacher longs to impart one more bit of knowledge.

All four Gospels contain a description of the meal Jesus had before his death. There are differences between the Gospels, but they all make it clear that it was an extremely important event. Jesus knew that it was going to be his last time to eat with his disciples. As a teacher, he also realized that this was going to be his last opportunity to teach. The last class. The last chance to get through the thick skulls of those disciples exactly what it was he had been trying to teach them

At this last meal he could have talked intellectually. He could have sat with his disciples and said, “Okay, I want you to get the theology right. Here is the exact nature of God, and my relationship with God, and it is important that you believe this correctly.” But he didn’t do that.

And he could have talked about spiritual things. He could have talked about the things that are kind of hard to understand, like heaven and eternity. But he didn’t.

Instead that last supper was very incarnational. It was about action. It was about the world, being here, being now. It was about bread and wine and water and a basin and a towel. Concrete things. Simple things. Nothing expensive. Nothing fancy. Things that were in every Jewish household. Bread and wine, water, a basin and a towel.

Jesus came from the prophetic tradition. If you read the prophets in the Old Testament, you’ll find they often illustrated their teachings by doing outrageous things. Jeremiah at one point took a brand new pair of pants, wore them once and them folded them up and stuck them in a crevice in a rock. Six months later he took them out and they were full of holes. Then he explained that God said this is the Judean people, full of holes in their relationship with God. Another prophet had the king fire an arrow through a window and then said this is how you are going to conquer Syria. Another one went up to the future king and took his cloak and ripped it into twelve pieces and threw the pieces in all different directions to show that the tribes of Abraham were going to be scattered. The prophets did this because they knew that people remembered dramatic actions. Jesus wanted people to remember his last meal and what he was teaching. So he took some dramatic action.

First, he took the bread. Now the bread that he picked up had great meaning, if it was indeed a Passover feast. The unleavened bread represented the flight from Egypt, the hurry to get out of slavery into freedom. The bread represented that freedom. It also represented the manna that God gave people when they were in the wilderness. Bread represents survival, sustenance, the basic foundation of living. It nurtures and it feeds.

Jesus picked up the bread, and he blessed it. Then he broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you.” He gave bread a whole new meaning.

Then he picked up the chalice of wine. The one cup that would be passed around and they all would drink from. The disciples were used to blessing the Passover cup.

Wine also is rich in meaning. We call alcohol spirits for a reason. Wine was considered to have spirit in it. And at the time of Jesus there were worshipers of the God Dionysus or as the romans called him Bacchus - the God of wine. Wine was one of the things that was offered at the temple in Jerusalem and poured onto the altar. Wine was rich in significance and meaning.

Jesus picked up the wine and he blessed it. Then he said, “This is my blood which is shed for you.” This is my blood? This is my blood! Imagine, imagine the reactions of the disciples who were all good Jews. Jews never, ever, ever drink blood. When an animal is killed for Kosher food all the blood is drained out of it. Blood was considered to carry the life force of the animal. That blood, that life force, was only to be offered to God. The idea that the disciples would drink blood? That got their attention!

Then he said, “Do this to remember me.” Well you can be pretty sure that the disciples weren’t going to forget that.

And if that wasn’t enough, the next thing he did was he took off his outer cloak and got down to his basic underwear, a simple garment much like the albs the clergy and acolytes wear. He was now dressed like a servant might be dressed. Then he took a towel, and a basin, and a pitcher of water and began to wash the disciples’ feet.

Remember, it was not like today where people wear shoes and walk on relatively clean sidewalks. Back then the disciples were wearing sandals, and they had been walking on the dirt streets that the chariots, donkeys and camels traveled. There was mud, and grim and all that stuff that you would not want to have between your toes. That’s what they were walking through on the way to dinner. So, when you came to a person’s house, if you had been traveling, to have your feet cleaned was a great gift. But it was never done by the host. If the host was rich, one of the slaves would do it, but it had to be one of the slaves that wasn’t Jewish because according to the Torah, you couldn’t make a Jewish slave wash someone’s feet. It was beneath them. So it would have to be a non-Jewish slave that would wash your feet. The bottom of the bottom. If you didn’t have slaves, then if you were a good host, you provided a pitcher of water, a nice clean towel and a basin where a person could wash their own feet. But never, ever would the host wash someone’s feet.

Yet here was Jesus, their Lord and their teacher, down on his knees washing their feet. No wonder Peter said, “don’t do this.”

After Jesus was finished and had done all these dramatic actions, much like in the prophetic tradition, he began to preach. Now came the teaching that all of those actions were leading up to.

He said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Love one another as I have loved you.  

How did Jesus love them? Jesus loved them incarnationally, in the material world. Jesus fed them. He offered his body and his blood for them. Jesus got down on his knees and washed their feet - like a servant. That is how Jesus’ followers are to love one another.

When Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you,” he was not saying have a nice warm feeling about everybody, because that is not how Jesus loved people. And he wasn’t saying love in a sort of abstract sense of “well I love everybody in the world”, because that was not the way Jesus loved. The way Jesus loved was material, and real, and right here and in depth. It involved bread and wine, water, a basin and a towel. It meant being the servant. It meant touching with love. It meant offering his life. It meant being broken for them. It meant dying for them.

Those were his final words. That is what he wanted the disciples to remember. That was the summation of all his teaching and all his ministry. ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

Now we will have an opportunity to wash each other's hands as a symbol, a representation, of Jesus washing the disciples feet. As you have your hands washed, I invite you to imagine Jesus lovingly washing your hands. It is humbling to receive such a gift from the Lord of all. And as you wash another's hands, I invite you to let yourself be an instrument of Christ's love. 

March 24th, 2024: Reflections on Palm Sunday by The Reverand Valerie Hart

He stood at the top of the Mt of Olives looking down at the city of Jerusalem. Behind him was the town of Bethany where his friends Lazarus and Mary lived. Ahead of him he looked at the stunning view of the city over which he had wept. Directly below he could see the grandeur of the Temple and the large platform on which it was built. The road lead past a graveyard. It was considered by Jews then, and now, a blessing to be buried on that hillside, for the Messiah was predicted to arrive from that direction.

Jesus knew how the Messiah was to enter Jerusalem. He knew all the prophecies, and he was about to follow them to the smallest detail. He called for a donkey to ride on. His closest followers put their coats on the donkey, and the crowds began to cheer. Everyone understood the implications of this ride into Jerusalem. Jesus was proclaiming that he was the one promised for centuries. By this ride he announced to everyone that he was taking on the role of the Messiah.

As he rode down the hill the procession passed by a garden where many people spent the night, for with Passover coming there was nowhere to stay in the city. Jesus and his disciples were used to sleeping out under the trees, and there was a peacefulness to that garden called Gethsemane. It was a good base for Jesus and his friends. But when he looked over that way, did he understand the agonizing night he would soon spend there? Such a mix of emotions must have passed through his human heart. How could he not get caught up in the joy and excitement of the crowd shouting Hosanna? Perhaps he thought that this would be the way and that it would be enough for the people to proclaim him king. But he also knew that there would have to be more. He knew that this story did not end with the joyful, triumphant entry. He knew there were dark, difficult chapters ahead as he passed that peaceful garden.

Less than a week later he was back in the garden, alone, on his knees on a hard rocky outcropping. The cheering crowds had evaporated, his friends were too sleepy to stay awake with him, and one of his closest followers, whom he so deeply loved, was betraying him to the authorities. Jesus knew all the prophecies, he knew what they meant, he knew the script he needed to follow, but he didn't want to. He knew the cup he was to drink, and he didn't want it. He knew what his loving father wanted from him, but he didn't want to give it. He knew what was necessary to save humanity, but he begged God to find another way.

In the book and movie 'The Last Temptation of Christ' the last temptation is described as the desire to lead a normal life. The temptation to run away from the cross, get married, have kids, and live a simple normal life. He could have done that. He could have slipped into the darkness and become lost in the crowds. If he had kept quiet, if he had stopped preaching, if he had lost himself in everyday life, the authorities would have left him alone. There in that garden he had a choice, and he said 'Yes' to God, just as his mother had said yes to God so many years before.

He whispered the words, "Not what I want, but what you want." Those words rang out across the hillside, "Not what I want, but what you want." They rang all the way up to heaven, and opened the door of salvation. "Not what I want, but what you want." It was at that moment that humanity was saved, for once he uttered those words, once he prayed that prayer, it all happened as it was supposed to. Those words, "Not what I want, but what you want," continue to ring across the centuries and touch our souls, for how can we not be touched by that ultimate prayer of faith and love and surrender.

We each have our own gardens of Gethsemane, our own times when we desperately want to not live out what we know God is calling us to. It may be at a time of crisis, when we are confronted with a medical problem; it might be when someone we love is dying. You might find yourself called to confront someone you care about, or someone you work with, who is living in a way that they shouldn't. Do your turn in you colleague for illegal manipulation of the finances of your company? Do you call the police on your child who is killing him or herself with drugs? Do you leave a spouse that is abusive? Do you stay with and forgive a spouse that has betrayed you and is repentant? Do you change your job if you feel you cannot serve God and your employer? Do you not want to give up your 'normal life' in order to follow Christ?

Being a follower to that Jewish carpenter never was and never will be an easy thing. To choose to walk with Christ means not just to cheer him as king and wave your palms. It does not mean occasionally coming to church on Sunday and engaging in the joy of praising God. It also means sitting with him in Gethsemane. It means tearfully giving up the struggle to do things our own way and to humbly say to our loving Father "not what I want, but what you want." It means being willing to sacrifice having a "normal life" in order to live a loving life. It means dying to all the selfishness in our hearts and learning to serve. It means saying yes to our own cross, yes to our own suffering, and yes to a loving God.

Let us spend a few minutes together in silence, joining with Christ as he knelt on the hard stone of Gethsemane and see if we are ready to say, "not what I want, but what you want."

March 17th, 2024: Reflections on John 12: 20-33 by The Reverand Valerie Hart

Remember show and tell as a child? I love having an opportunity to do “show and tell,” so I have something to hand out to everyone.

The story in the Gospel today is about seeds. I am going to give each one of you a seed.

(Hand out seeds, mention to those online to get a seed)

You may recognize these. They are corn seeds. In fact they are popcorn.

You will notice as you hold onto this how incredibly hard it is. It is like a rock. It has this hard outer shell. If you think about the life of a seed, it starts out with a plant that is growing and makes a flower. Then the flower gets fertilized, and a seed begins. All the energy of that plant, all the nutrients that it gets from the soil, all the energy that it synthesizes from the sun, all of that work of the plant - goes into building up the seed, of providing it everything it needs to become strong and healthy. Then once the seed is completed, once it has developed and is whole it makes this casing around itself, this hard shell, to protect itself. This keeps it from being easily hurt, and it keeps it from growing any bigger. It has that dual nature.

This popcorn with this hard shell around it will stay like that forever. After all, this popcorn could have been in my cabinet for years. I have no idea. Don’t check the expiration date. It is said that in some of the graves in Egypt they found grain that was still okay and viable. The seed survives because it is strong and contained with a hard shell.

It is kind of like when we are growing up. We start out as a major investment of our family. They feed us, clothe us, and care for all our physical needs. They teach us, educate us, and help us, hopefully, to grow spiritually and to develop a sense of who we are, a sense of what’s important, and a sense of what the meaning of the world is. If we have had a really good and healthy childhood, we develop into an adult that is strong and self sufficient, and we develop what is called a healthy ego. The ego, the sense of self, is designed to protect us. That ego keeps us from being hurt by the outside world. It protects that understanding of who we are we have developed. It serves like that hard outer shell on the seed. And it is important, and it is necessary. The like the shell of the seed.

But, that shell, that ego, that keeps us safe also limits us. It is hard and rigid and keeps us from continuing to grow. And as it keeps us safe from things that are hurtful outside, it also can keep us from experiencing love and letting good things come inside. And our egos can get in the way of our union with God.

So just as the seed is perfect in what it is, it is not done. Just as when we become healthy whole adults we are not done. You see, if you take this seed, this popcorn seed, and you put it in a pan that is really really hot it is going to feel like it is about to die, because that heat could kill it, destroy it. But if it isn’t too old, the little bit of moisture inside will expand in that heat and all of a sudden it goes “POP” and it turns from this hard thing that you couldn’t possibly eat into one of my favorite foods.

It bursts forth and that shell becomes just a little bit around the bottom because the essence of it has expanded in a way that one never would have imagined if you didn’t know the secret of popcorn. This wonderful white fluffy thing is much more than the seed could have imagined. It took heat; it took dying as a seed in order to become that which it was intended to be.

And so it is with human beings. We become healthy adult human beings with a good established self-concept and a nice strong ego and that’s not the end. God wants more than that. God offers more than that. But in order to transcend this ego, this ridged sense of self, it has to die. It has to be ripped apart. And that is uncomfortable, to say the least.

Most of us have known times in our lives where we felt like we were dying. Times when perhaps we were confronted with illness, or the death of a friend or family member, or the loss of a relationship, or a divorce or losing a job where suddenly our self-identity as a spouse or an  employee is gone. Or perhaps that happened to you at retirement. When what you had been doing all your life to feel good about yourself is suddenly no longer there. There are lots of different ways in which we have what one writer calls “necessary suffering.” Times when we are confronted with pain and lose. It hurts, and we feel like we are dying, because a part of us is.

During those times, those times of struggle, which the psalmist calls “going through the valley of the shadow of death,” we are promised that God walks with us, Christ is with us, that we are not alone in those dark times. But sometimes, when we are about to experience that death of our egos, we feel like Christ felt on the cross. We may feel abandoned by God, alone. And yet it is those moments of deepest despair and lose that can be the times that burst us open so that we are able to love in a way that we never loved before. And we are able to receive love in a way we haven’t before. And our relationship with God takes one step closer to union.

Christ says that we must die to be reborn. And here you are at a church, a Christian church that follows a leader who was crucified and died. Who calls all of us to take up our cross and follow him. Christianity is not easy. Christianity is about a willingness to die to who we think we are in order that we can discover who we really are - beloved children of God.

But as long as we hold on to that hard rigid ego self-identification we can’t realize just how much we are loved, unconditionally love. So like the seed it is only through dying that we come to fullness of life.

March 3rd, 2024: Reflections on John 2:13-22 by The Reverand Hartshorn Murphy

The Cleansing of the Temple

The story of the cleansing of the Temple is such a singular event that over the centuries, there has not been a consensus about what it means. I have heard preachers say that Jesus, seeing the money changers in the Temple, lost control. That he was not in his right mind and was consumed by righteous anger because he was shocked to see commerce taking place in God’s house. I have heard preachers speculate that in this action, Jesus indicates that sometimes violence is justified if the ends are just. Others think that Jesus’ anger was that poor people were being ripped off. And still others proclaim that Jesus was offended that commerce was being conducted in the Court of the Gentiles, the place where Gentile seekers could gather and perhaps be converted to worship the true God but would be turned off by the bleating sheep and goats, bellowing cattle and squawking birds – not to mention what they leave behind.

The problem with these interpretations is this: as a righteous Jew, Jesus would have been in Jerusalem for the mandatory festivals many times before. The presence of commerce would not have been a surprise on this occasion. Secondly, the exchange rate which enabled the pilgrims to exchange unclean foreign coins for acceptable shekels, was rigorously enforced. And finally, the availability of livestock was a great convenience.

Imagine yourself a Jewish pilgrim coming from Damascus or Alexandria and just as you enter the Holy City, your sacrificial lamb stumbles and breaks her leg. Only unblemished offerings are acceptable. The availability of certified animals for offering was, if anything, considered a modern innovation that was much appreciated by most people. And while Jesus no doubt had a regard for Gentiles – those in the process of converting were called “God Fearers” – Jesus’ focus and mission was to the House of Israel. So, what’s this all about?

I would suggest that this action, like his provocative entry into the city with his followers shouting “Hosanna!” and waving palm branches, the cleansing of the Temple was not a spontaneous act or something done out of rage but rather was a pre-planned, deliberate prophetic act. If “prophetic act” is not clear, think of this as a “visual aid.” But what does it mean?

The meaning is clear in Jesus’ declaration of what it meant. Although John’s language is slightly different, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have it this way: “My house shall be called a House of Prayer for all nations but you have made it a Den of Robbers. That phrase “Den of Robbers” takes us back to the Temple sermon of the prophet Jeremiah.

First though, some context. But buckle up! We’re gonna do a “deep dive.”

The Hebrew slaves, led out of Egypt by Moses, receive the ten commandments at Mt. Sinai. They house the tablets of the Law in a container known as the Ark of the Covenant (how many of you remember the first Indiana Jones movie?)

Entering the promised land, they build a shrine for the Ark at Shiloh. There it will be held safe for 369 years, until the time of Eli. Eli was the high priest who had two corrupt sons who also served as priests. Try as he might, Eli failed to reign in his sons’ sacrilegious behavior and in 1050 BCE, The Philistines attack the city, raze it to the ground, and kill the sons who had taken the ark to the front lines of the battle seeking divine intervention. The Philistines steal the Ark away, but it causes them so much misery that, in time, they return it.

Later, Solomon builds his Temple in Jerusalem. Once completed, Solomon the King tries to enslave the men of the northern tribes to be a permanent army to defend the Temple and his reign. The result is a civil war, splitting the Hebrew nation into 2 kingdoms – the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. This is in 922 BCE. (Are you with me so far?)

Two hundred years later, in 722, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, Samaria, falls to the Assyrians. The ten northern tribes are dispersed and forced to intermarry with the diverse peoples of the Assyrian Empire. They will be known as the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Those in the Southern Kingdom of Judah believe that this disaster befell those in the north because they failed to recognize the primacy of the Jerusalem Temple. The people of the south will develop a certain arrogance as being people of pure blood and pure worship over against the Samaritans of the north and their rival Temple at Mt. Gerizim. (Still with me?)

In 609, God’s prophet Jeremiah stands in the doorway to the Temple and calls the nation to repent. Why? Because the new King of Judea has allowed the people to build shrines to Baal at which children were being sacrificed. In Judea, foreigners were being oppressed, orphans and widows neglected, and adultery, stealing, and murder were being tolerated. But the people claimed that they were safe from God’s judgment because of the protection of the Temple.

Jeremiah cries: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: This is The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord.” In other words, the Temple had become little more than a superstitious talisman and the words – The Temple of the Lord said three times – a magical incantation.

Jeremiah goes on, “has this House, which is called by my Name, become – (wait for it!) – a Den of Robbers in your sight? Therefore, I will do to the House that is called by my Name just what I did to Shiloh. And I will cast out all your kinfolk, all of the offspring of Ephraim.” The offspring of Ephraim refers to the Tribes of the North devastated by the Assyrians.

A lot of history. A little confusing, no? Bottom line: Jeremiah is saying what happened to Shiloh 300 years ago, whose ruins you can still see only 18 miles away. And what happened to the Northern Tribes a hundred years ago, God will do to you if you don’t shape up. Jeremiah was arrested, but escaped death. He will live to see Jerusalem fall to the Babylonians, the Elders exiled and The Temple destroyed in 587 – and the Ark lost to history.

In this historical context, Jesus’ overturning of the stone tables of the money changers and scattering of the livestock, was a public demonstration aimed at the High Priest Caiaphas who served at the pleasure and the bidding of Rome. Jesus’ words and his actions publicly condemn The Temple elites for their oppression of the poor and vulnerable, their callous disregard for the widows and orphans and especially for their collaboration with the Roman occupation.

Jesus boldly shouts: “you are destroying this Temple but I will raise it up by purifying it!” John, writing 70 years later to his community in Ephesus, will make this story an allegory about Jesus’ death and resurrection. But like Jeremiah, Jesus answers the question: what gives us safety and protection? For the priests and elders, it was The Temple and its sacrifices. For Jeremiah and for Jesus, it was living a moral life. And like Jeremiah, Jesus will be arrested. But unlike Jeremiah, Jesus will be executed. But Jesus’ prophetic act will come to fruition: Jerusalem and its Temple will fall to the emperor Titus in 70 CE.

I grew up in what was known as a high Anglo-Catholic parish. I was an acolyte and loved getting dressed in my red cassock and white surplice. I loved being in the procession with all the incense and booming organ and chanting choirs. "Low church for my church was using only one thurible for the incense instead of two!" There were 32 candles at The Altar which had to be lit and extinguished with a certain precision. As a teenager, I thought God cared deeply about all of it. For me, and for all the membership, church was an ends and not a means.

The words of the prophet Amos were echoed in Jesus’ actions that day: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)

Unless our worship strengthens us for lives of compassion and charity, these stones – this beautiful sanctuary – should crumble back into the earth for they are of no worth.

What matters here is how we live out there.

 Amen.

February 25th, 2024: Reflections on John 15:1, 6-16 by The Reverand Valerie Hart

Jesus grew up and lived in a primarily agrarian society, so he often used farming imagery as metaphor to make a point. In today's Gospel he uses the metaphor of a grape vine. His listeners would all have been familiar with the process of growing grapes, harvesting them and producing wine. Even though California is famous for its wine, most of us in southern California, however, have not grown up surrounded by grape vines. If you've never visited a vineyard to see for yourself the way that grapes are grown, I encourage you to do so. And you might have a chance to taste the final product.

Grapes are different from most of the fruit we are familiar with, such as oranges and apples. These come from trees that are planted, and after a year or two begin giving fruit. As they grow larger, they give more and more fruit. A sturdy trunk holds up branches which grow and multiply each year. On the branches are leaves that gather energy from the sun and blossoms producing fruit. A farmer may do some pruning, but basically the tree grows bigger each year.

With grapes the farmer plants a central shoot. During the first year the shoot sends out lots of roots while the farmer chose one of the stems and guides it to grow straight up as a single stick which is tied to a trellis. The vine is not strong enough to stand upright on its own. The second year several cross branches are encouraged grow in a T shape down the trellis. Other branches are pruned away. By the third year the branches that come off this foundational vine begin to provide fruit. The branches are carefully pruned to be sure that the ones that remain get sufficient light to produce grapes. At the end of the season, most of the branches are pruned back.

Each year the root system and the central vine grow bigger and stronger. At the end of each growing season most of the branches are pruned back. A grape vine can live for thirty or forty years. One vine was found to be over 400 years old. Often branches of different kinds of grape are grafted onto vine. This can be done for many reasons. Sometimes there are desirable grapes who tend to have fragile root systems. By taking a branch of the fragile grape and grafting it onto a strong, mature vine, the desired grape can be produced in abundance. When a pruned branch is grafted onto a vine, a slot is made in the skin of the vine and the branch is put in the slot and bound into place. The new branch becomes one with the vine.

(As I said this can be done for many reasons. In my family there is the story of a great uncle of mine who had a vineyard in Healdsburg California. When prohibition was passed and alcohol became illegal he found himself with acres of wine grapes, so he pruned off the branches of the wine grapes and grafted in table grapes.)

There is a strong relationship between the branches and the vine. The vine's extensive root system pulls water and nutrients from the ground. A process called the cohesion - tension mechanism, (you can look that up on Google) pulls the water from the roots out to the branches, leaves and ultimately fruit. Water molecules tend to stick together, so when you have a thin column of water, when you remove some from the top, it will pull water in at the bottom and stay full. You may have tried that as an experiment as a child. Think of sucking on a straw. So the roots of the vine are full of water and nutrients. As the water evaporates from the leaves, more water arises and feeds the growing plant.

Trust me, I'll refer back to this later.

So when Jesus says in the Gospel today, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower," his listeners had a very clear image in their minds. When he said "Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers," they could see themselves and branches that were grafted onto Jesus. And when he said "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples," they could understand the expectation that the branch bears fruit - that there is a responsibility in being grafted onto Christ.

How reassuring it must have felt to hear "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love." All these words and images of intimacy, mutuality, love.

He tells them he said this "so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete." What an incredibly welcoming image of Christ's relationship with his followers.

To have this relationship we are asked to keep his commandments. What are his commandments? Which ones are important? What do I have to do? Keep the sabbath? Go to church? Give money to the church? Not dance? Be baptized? Believe the correct theology? There are so many things that we have heard over the years as being what we have to do or believe to be in right relationship with Christ.

This is the passage where he states a definitive answer to these questions. He says clearly and succinctly, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Period. The answer is that we are to love one another as we have been loved, totally, completely, unconditional, sacrificially. That is what the relationship with Christ is all about - Love.

So let's go back to the image of the vine and the branches. The branches are totally dependent upon the vine, that generously, unconditionally provides moisture and nutrients - love. In order to receive the life-giving moisture the branches have to give what they have away through evaporation. By loving, by sacrificial giving of our own love, we make room for God's love to flow into and through us. When we love one another, God's love fills us. When we give ourselves away in service of others, God's love fills us up again. When we die to ourselves, when we sacrifice ourselves, the reward is the welling up of God's love within us. And that is what makes our joy complete.

The end of this passage from the Gospel of John says, "You did not choose me but I chose you."

Today we are celebrating St. Mathias. He had been a follower of Jesus from the time of Jesus' baptism. He was liked and respected by colleagues. He was picked to be considered for an important and potentially dangerous position, to be one of the twelve, one of the Apostles, one of the ones to go out and testify to the resurrection of Christ. He agreed to being considered. He said yes, but ultimately the choice was Christ's.

We don't know anything else for sure about Mathias. We are not sure whether or not he was martyred. We don't know whether or not he was a bishop. We have differing descriptions of his ministry.

But we do know that he was chosen and that he said yes.

Each one of us has been chosen by Christ. We may think that we chose to start coming to church. We may think that we chose to be faithful to the faith we were brought up in. But each one of us, in some way, at some time was chosen by Christ, invited by Christ to relationship, and we said yes to being grafted onto the great vine of love. We are chosen. We are part of the great vine.

If we choose to do our best to love one another. If we give our love to others, even in the smallest ways, we are part of that vine, and we can thrive. When we say a kind word to the grocery clerk, when we take a casserole to a grieving family, when we come by and lovingly spend a Saturday morning cleaning and repairing the church, when we let a car into our lane, when we love our children or grandchildren, when we help a stranger, when we pray for someone in trouble, when we speak up for someone in need, when we do the small acts of love, we are living out Christ's commandment, we are giving ourselves in love and Christ's love fills us with life and love.

Most of the time no one knows of our loving acts. It doesn't matter, just like it doesn't matter how St. Matthias lived out the rest of his life. When we love, every time we love, whether anyone knows or not, we bear fruit. Fruit that will last.

And our joy will be complete. 

February 18th, 2024: Reflections on Mark 1:9-15 by The Reverand Hartshorn Murphy

The times into which Jesus was born were ones of great despair.  For the people of Palestine, God had been absent, his voice had been stilled.  The great prophets were distant memory.  On a cosmic level, think of it this way.

          In Jewish Cosmology, the earth was a great flat disc floating on the underworld – the place of shadows, shoal.  The disc was covered with a dome.  The sky was a hardened metal shell covering the earth and forming a barrier – a firmament.  That firmament was filled with tiny holes – we call them stars – those tiny holes permitted the light surrounding God’s throne room, heaven, to leak through to the earth.  Each hole was guarded by an angel to prevent humankind entering heaven by stealth or heavenly beings coming onto the earth without authorization.

          Jewish hope was that someday the heavens would open, and God’s voice would be heard again in the land.  That God would remember his people Israel and deliver them from their oppressors, the Romans, by the hand of his Messiah.

          From the Book of Judah, written about 108 BCE, we read:  “And the heavens shall be open to him.  To pour out the Spirit, the blessing of the Holy Father.”

          Into this vacuum of time and fervent hope, stepped John the Immerser.  He was clothed in garments identical to those worn by the prophet Elijah – who had ascended bodily into heaven on a flaming chariot and who, since he never died, lives forever, and who was expected to return to the Earth as the harbinger of the Messiah.  After John’s martyrdom, Jesus will say that John was indeed Elijah, and even greater than Elijah still.

          John’s message was provocative.  This age is passing away and the New Age is dawning.  Repent.  Realign with the Divine, be estranged no more.  As sign of that repentance, John immersed his followers in the Jordan River.

          There were two kinds of ritual washings in Israel.  One was a ritual cleansing mandated by Jewish law and repeated as needed.  The other immersion was for converts to Judaism.  Done only once, it initiated a New Life.  John’s baptism was like the second kind, but rather than indicating a pagan becoming a Jew, it signaled a Jew becoming a New Jew, fit for the New Israel and ready for judgment.

          It’s quite likely that Jesus left home at an early age, perhaps tired of the relentless gossip about his birth.  It’s probable that Jesus often felt isolated, alienated, and lonely in the small village of Nazareth.  We have but one story of Jesus as a young man, at age 12 questioning the Temple elders in Jerusalem and being accidentally left behind.  (These things happen.)  The years that follow are known as the “missing years” – and no, it’s not likely that he traveled to Asia and studied eastern mysticism…  But it is possible he left Nazareth and in Judea, encountered John, and responding powerfully to John’s vision, became John’s disciple.

          In John’s movement, Jesus was able to release the hurt inflicted on him as a child.  An outcast no more, his resentment and anger at the Nazarenes was washed away.  Rising from the waters of baptism, Jesus belonged to a new family – a family he will recreate after John’s execution and which we seek to live into today in the fellowship of St. Matthias.

          Something unexpected happened on that day.  Entering an ecstatic state of consciousness, Jesus has a vision.  The hard shell barrier was rent asunder and Jewish hope fulfilled as he saw God’s Spirit descend from heaven.  Jesus heard a voice from God’s throne – as Isaiah and Ezekiel had before him.

          “You are my son and you please me.”

          That language is a paraphrase from Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1, verses associated with coronation and leadership.

Psalm 2:7 – I will tell of the decree of the Lord.  He said to me you are my son, today I have begotten you.

Isaiah 42:1 – Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.  I have put my spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.

          Whatever else Jesus might have felt about this experience, Jesus saw this to be a call to vocation.  Over the next three years, Jesus will try to live his life in faithfulness to this day.

          Many of you here today were baptized.  Most of you had this done for you as an infant.  For far too many, it was something done because that’s what you did in those days.  It was a social occasion;  a public celebration that you were here in this world.  For far too many, it was insurance policy.  St. Augustine of Hippo proclaimed a misguided doctrine of original sin, which meant that unbaptized babies who died would be unwelcome in God’s presence.  Today, we affirm that fear-based baptism distorts God’s love.

          For those of you who are generations younger than myself, perhaps your parents and sponsors reclaimed a more ancient truth – that baptism is not an end but a beginning.  That in the waters of baptism we arise – as Jesus did – as members of a new family.  We arise – as Jesus did – with a calling to vocation of resisting the seduction of evil and living into the Kingdom’s values in our lives.  We arise – as Jesus did – anointed with Holy Spirit power, enabled to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for Christ who lives in us.

·        Renewal of baptismal vows (Program and BCP p.292)

For those of you who are not baptized, let those words wash over you and consider if there might not be a word of invitation in there to you.  For those who were baptized – whatever the motivations of those who sponsored you – know that you are filled with the creative power of God’s Holy Spirit and that that same Spirit which hovered over creation’s waters, hovers over you and abides with and in you, forever.

February 11th, 2024: Reflections on Mark 9:2-9 by The Reverand Hartshorn Murphy

The story which precedes the Transfiguration story is the story of Peter’s declaration. Jesus interrogates his disciples who have returned from a missionary journey: “Who do the people say that I am?” They reply: “Some think you’re John the Immerser, some think you’re Elijah or some other prophet returned to us.” “But you, what say you?” And Peter declares: “You are the Messiah,” meaning the anointed one from God.

Jesus then tells them that he must go to Jerusalem and confront the Temple authorities with a call to repent – to change their hearts, minds, and will – and that this will be a journey filled with risk, a risk he knew well from the martyrdom of his mentor John. But a peasant movement is not enough; the leaders need to change. In Mark’s gospel, Peter tries to talk Jesus out of it and in that advice, Jesus hears the counsel of Satan. [You’ll hear more about that at the end of the month.]

Eight days later, Jesus takes his top lieutenants, Peter, James, and John up to Mount Hermon. The trip is an echo of Moses taking his top leaders Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu up Mount Sinai where they were granted a vision of God’s glory.

Jesus, now at this critical turning point in his life, goes up to pray with his friends. And there, Peter, James, and John enter into an alternate state of consciousness and receive first a vision: they see Jesus filled with light, and Moses and Elijah, traditional forerunners of the coming of the Messiah, standing with Jesus.

In effect, by their presence, they signify that the same spirit which had animated them, is now present in Jesus. Now, if that was so, then that same spirit is able to be passed on to them, and if to them, then to you and me.

The vision is followed by an audition – a voice proclaims, “This is my son, listen to him!” Well, listen to what? To his testimony that the shift in focus from the Galilee to Jerusalem in Judea, is not optional. Follow him…

As the mystical experience begins to fade, Peter – ever impulsive – says, “Let’s build 3 dwellings!” Let’s shelter this experience – contain it – and stay here. Understandable.

Because when they come down the mountain, a crowd of needy people await them. His other disciples – the ones who didn’t get to go on the field trip – had tried to exorcize a young boy and failed. Jesus is frustrated and angry. “How long do I have to put up with you! This work can only be accomplished through prayer”– a line which Luke omitted in his telling of this story.

In Mark’s story here, we see the balance.  The journey inward in prayer; the journey outward in service. A couple of stories …

On a weeknight in 2003, about 60 parishioners were gathered in the parish hall at St. Augustine’s for a Lenten program. Our speaker was a Muslim woman who was giving a talk on Islam. Toward the end of her presentation, unexpectedly, her family came into the hall and took her aside for a moment.

She then announced that our government had begun bombing in Iraq – you remember shock and awe. All of us gathered in a circle and held hands. After a bit, she prayed in Arabic and then I in English. One of our Vestry members would later remark that there was no place she would have rather been other than in the parish hall when the war began.

The following Sunday, several people asked me if “we” were going to organize a march against the war. Hmmm – at the same time, several other folk spontaneously gathered around the peace pole in the garden, held hands and prayed. An action which would continue, every Sunday for months.

Now, a year earlier, the National Church had done a study called The Zaccheus Project, in which interviewers traveled around to get a sense of the health of the Episcopal Church. Diana Butler Bass asked our group about our church’s history. That small group of 8 people, long time members all, described a proud history of social and political action in the 1960’s, 70’s, and beyond.

They were then asked: “Well, who are you now?” – and the group was speechless. Finally, to break the silence, someone boldly confessed: “We don’t know anymore, we need to figure that out!”

Hence my hesitation a year later about marching against the war. How would that action be grounded in who we were becoming – whatever that was.

Another story. The parish was extensively involved in an ecumenical charity project called “Corazon.” It involved taking a team to the outskirts of Tijuana and building a simple home for a peasant family. On one of these mission trips were a woman and her two boys, both quite young. While the adults hammered and painted, her sons played with the son of the family for whom we were building. It’s amazing how little kids aren’t stymied by a language barrier.

Our leaders cautioned us to be gracious. If the family offered to share their food with you, although it would be meager at best, don’t turn them down and wound their dignity. When it was time to leave, the Mexican boy offered his American visitor a gift of his Matchbox car – missing 2 wheels and all its paint – but it was his one toy. This Brentwood kid was reluctant, but his mother made him take it nevertheless.

A week later, I asked the mom to interview her son on tape, to be transcribed for the church newsletter, answering the question: “Where was God in this experience for you?” It was an amazing conversation!

The journey inward; the journey outward. Charity without prayer is just social work. Prayer without charity is spiritual masturbation.

Far too often in the life of the church we disconnect the two. We romanticize the lives of monastics as being more noble, more worthy, more pleasing to God. We get impatient with discernment and cry out “Why don’t we do something! What difference are we making?” Far too often, our identity is grounded in doing to the devaluing of being.

Our worship is grounded in this essential truth. Each week, Monday to Saturday, we build our offering in the world beyond these walls. As followers of Jesus, it is your life’s work to bear witness against evil and to be Christ’s compassion and justice in the community. And if you are faithful, if you’re taking those risks, you will get beat up for it.

Lucille Ball was being interviewed and was asked by a gushing television personality: “Lucy, you are just so great! How did you get to be so funny?!” Without missing a beat, she replied: “What I am is not funny, it’s being brave…”

Were you brave this week? If so, perhaps you come here today beaten but not defeated. To confess your faithlessness to our values – times when you could have spoken up but did not out of fear. But also, you come to celebrate your successes, though they were usually fleeting. You are here to offer it all up, symbolically, in the bread and wine; which will be blessed and returned to you as food for the journey, strength to go forth again – and by your light, to push back the darkness just a bit.

The journey inward – in prayer and sacrament and this gathered community of St. Matthias – and the journey outward – with compassion and love in a broken, fractured land.

And if you’re lucky, really lucky, someone may give you a Matchbox car someday.

Amen.

January 28th, 2024: Reflections on Mark 1:21-28 by The Reverand Mother Lyn Crow

Ancient words of our faith
Handed down to this age
Come to us through sacrifice
Oh heed the ancient words of Christ
Ancient words ever true
Changing me and changing you
We have come with open hearts
Oh let the ancient words impart

           Sometimes stories in scripture can be a little difficult for us moderns to relate to.

          I mean, if you really listen to them, there can be this sense, with some of them, that they are no longer relevant because of their world view.

          Take today’s gospel for instance, with its story about a demon-possessed man.

          In the ancient world, demons were considered to be the curse of all maladies:  physical illnesses, as well as psychological, emotional, and spiritual problems.

          The people of the ancient world believed that spirits were always intervening in human life, sometimes for good, sometimes to cause mischief, and sometimes for evil.

          Spirits had the power to control human behavior and the only one more powerful than these spirits was God.

          Archeologists have discovered a book that was read in the synagogues called The Testament of Solomon.  It lists the names of all the spirits, what they do, and how to counteract them.

          For us, citizens of the present century, stories about demons may seem a bit primitive. 

Today we look to medical science to cure our physical ailments.

We speak of mental illness and chemical imbalance and we are blessed to have modern ways of treating the physical and mental ailments that the ancients called possession by demons.

But as Kathleen Norrin says in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith:

“I suspect exorcism still has a place in our lives.  Who has not felt the sudden lifting of what seemed an unbearable burden, the removal of what for too long had been an unsurmountable obstacle?  Who does not have something deep within that they would wish to exorcise so that it no longer casts a shadow on their capacity to receive and give love?”

          If we can relate to what Kathleen Norris has to say, then today’s gospel has relevance for us.

          For in today’s gospel, Jesus lifts what is an unbearable burden for the demoniac. 

He brings him back to wholeness so that once again he has the capacity to receive and give love.

          This gospel story is the first miracle in Mark’s gospel.  Isn’t it interesting that it is the story of an exorcism? 

          And why would Mark choose to tell this particular miracle first?

          Because he had a point to make.  By placing this story first in his gospel, he is making an announcement about who Jesus is.

          Jesus has power and authority over spirits.  And who is the only one who has power over spirits?  God!!

          So by telling this story right off the bat, Mark is revealing that Jeus is the Messiah.

          The unclean spirit in the story recognizes who Jesus is – he calls him the Holy One of God.

          And he recognizes Jesus’ power and authority:  “Have you come to destroy us?” he asks.

          And Jesus replies, “Be silent and come out of him.”

          Jesus not only has power over the spirits, but he can silence them.

          Not only can he lift unbearable burdens and remove unsurmountable obstacles, but he can silence the destructive screams and murmurings deep within us that threaten to destroy us and that keep us from being able to receive and give love.

          That’s the message for us in today’s gospel.

          And we all have those demons at one time or another in life.  We’ve all had or still have burdens and obstacles and destructive voices in our heads that threaten to take away our peace.

          In her book, Kathleen Norris talks about her own demons:

“When I think of the demons I need to exorcise, I have to look inward, to my heart and soul.  Anger is my best demon, useful whenever I have to go into Woman Warrior mode, harmful when I use it to gratify myself either in self-justification or to deny my fears.  What are your best demons?” she asks.  “To name them for what they are and how they bring suffering, is half the battle.”

          The other half of the battle is to stop fighting the demon on our own, admit we are powerless over it, and ask for help from the Only One who has the power and authority over it.

          Our demons could be fear, addiction, depression, compulsion, prejudice, pride, greed, jealousy, lying, anger, laziness, being critical or judgmental, selfishness, lack of forgiveness, lack of acceptance or lack of self-esteem.

          I think my best demon ever was the one I tried to do battle with when I was 29 years old.  Its name was depression.

          My parents and sisters chose to shun me because I decided to go to work two days a week and put my two children in day care.

          It felt as though everyone I loved had abandoned me.

          I fell into a deep depression.  Up in the middle of the night, riding my bike all around town – very agitated.  No peace.

          Very fearful – lots of thoughts about death.

          So afraid, I couldn’t close the door of the BR because of claustrophobia.

          At work my boss called me in, “I don’t know what’s going on in your life but if you don’t get it together I’ll have to let you go.”

          On the freeway – I remember the exact spot I cried out:  “O God help me”

          I’d attended church my whole life but something happened that had never happened before – I became aware of the Presence of God in the car with me.

          Over the next 9 months I experienced that Presence – I journaled it all.

          Jesus healed me – the demon left me and I began to experience joy again.

          There is a story about a monastery in Europe, perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air.  The only way to reach the monastery was to be suspended in a bsket which was pulled to the top by several monks, who pulled and tugged with all their strength.  Obviously, the ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying.  One tourist got exceedingly nervous about half-way up when he noticed that the rope by which he was suspended was old and frayed.  With a trembling voice he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope.  The monk thought for a moment and answered, “Whenever it breaks.”

          There are times when inside ourselves we feel as though we are the one suspended in that basket hanging by a half-frayed rope.

          The good news is that we are not at the mercy of the spirit that got us there and we do not have to wait until the rope breaks.

          We have Jesus on our side.  Jesus – just waiting for us to ask for help.  Just waiting for us to cry out “Oh God help me because I can’t help myself.”  Just waiting for us to admit that we can’t do it alone.

          So today’s gospel asks us a simple question.

          What is your demon?  What burden needs to be lifted and what obstacle needs to be removed?  What is it deep within you that is casting a shadow over your capacity to receive and give love?

          Give it to Jesus today – ask for his help.  Listen to what he says to you and you too will be amazed at his power.  You too will say to yourself “What is this?  He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him!”

January 21st, 2024: Reflections on Mark 1:14-20 by The Reverand Hartshorn Murphy

Critics of Christianity are fond of pointing out that the gospel writers are inconsistent in telling their stories.  They don’t agree with one another, therefore Christianity is a fraud.  But the four evangelists were not filling out witness statements at the local police station.  They were less reporter than they were editors – collecting and shaping the stories their communities had handed down and treasured about Jesus.  These stories do not so much compete with one another as they complement one another and so we hold them in tension with one another.

          As you may have heard last week, in the reading from John, it’s hinted that Jesus had been a disciple of the Baptist.  We can’t know how long this apprenticeship lasted, but it may have been quite a while.  A Rabbi’s disciple was expected to learn his master’s “Mishnah”, his teaching, through memorization;  the word literally means “study by repetition.”  The student learned the Rabbi’s favorite scriptures, and his interpretation of Jewish history and tradition.  But not only what was said but how – the emphasis, the inflection, the tone of voice – so that to encounter the disciple even years after the Rabbi’s death, was to encounter the Rabbi himself still alive.  It’s not surprising that when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?”  They respond, “You are John the Baptist.”

          In the gospel of John, at some point, Jesus drifts away from his mentor John and begins his own work.  In the other three gospels, Jesus’ work only begins after John’s arrest and martyrdom.

          Matthew tells us that Jesus “withdrew” to the Galilee.  The Greek is actually stronger;  it’s closer to “retreated.”  After John’s arrest, Jesus and two other of John’s disciples retreated north to the relative safety of the Galilee.  These disciples were Philip from Bethsaida and Nathaneal from Cana, where Jesus will in time attend a wedding and turn water into wine.

          Jesus preaches John’s message in the local synagogues.  In those days, synagogues were more like community centers where men would gather to study and argue scripture and to conduct community business.  They were not places of worship.  The Sabbath was simply a day of rest.  Worship in synagogues will emerge later in reaction to the Christian practice of Sunday worship.  In the synagogues, any Jewish male of age could speak…

          As Mark tells us today, Jesus’ message was John’s message:  God’s reign on Earth is coming soon.  Repent – change your ways – so that you may enter in.

          Perhaps it was at the synagogue in Capernaum that Simon and his brother Andrew and James and his brother John actually first met Jesus.  In time, Jesus will move into Simon and Andrew’s family home and will receive financial support from these men’s family fishing business.  These six then:  Nathaniel, Philip, James, John, Andrew and Simon – soon to be nicknamed “Rock” – will make up half of Jesus’ “Talmidim” – literally “the instructed.”

          Jesus and his disciples will continue to teach John’s “Mishnah” and to call people to the Baptist’s practice of water immersion as a sign of a commitment to change.  But quite early, Jesus will discover the gift of healing and will discontinue the baptisms.  The message about the Kingdom of God will shift as well.  No longer is the Kingdom nationalistic and racial but more and more it is moral and even universal.  Not a few were scandalized when Jesus seemed to suggest that even Pagan Gentiles might be welcomed into God’s Kingdom.

          Jesus’ healings and exorcisms will draw large crowds while the disciples were tasked with being fishers of people – to build the Jesus movement, the “Ecclesia” – literally the “gathering of those summoned.”  We just call it “church.”

          So what’s the learning here?  Perhaps it’s that the peasants of Palestine needed and responded to Jesus’ healing work and in it, found hope for the future during dark times.

          For the most part today, people do not seek a cure from their diseases and infirmities in churches.  Admittedly, when traditional Western medicine and then alternative treatments fail, people may seek a miracle in places of worship.  Most churches do not claim, in all humility, to possess Jesus’ gifts of curing illness even while some tele-evangelists do.

          But with all this being said, nevertheless there is a pervasive spiritual illness in our land.  Evil spirits that possess the soul of America and its name is despair borne of cynicism and its progeny is fear.

          But the Christian message is that of hope.  We need to ask ourselves:  “If a stranger wanders inside these doors, would they leave more hope-filled and less consumed by fear?”

          I’m not talking about the caricature hope and false denial of what one of my colleagues calls the “dry tooth Christians.”  But rather a genuine hope grounded in faith – the word means “loyalty to Christ” – which enables us to live more courageous lives.  Dr. King, whom we celebrated last week, said this:  “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope… If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps you moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”

          Or as Paul wrote to the Hebrews living under persecution in Jerusalem.  “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”  (Hebrews 11:1)

          Now the second learning is this:  John came out of the Qumran community near the Dead Sea.  A semi-monastic group, they were folks who had abandoned the decadence of Jerusalem and lived together, sharing all things in common.  They practiced water immersion for forgiveness of sin and longed for the coming of a Son of righteousness.  John was called by the Spirit to come out of the desert and gather a following committed to living differently.

          After John’s execution, Jesus gathered followers – “Come, and follow me” – and expanded John’s work.  After Jesus’ martyrdom, Paul and the Apostles were faithful to Jesus’ great commission – to gather people into communities of hope and love.

          In this atomized age – an age of counterfeit intimacy on a 3X5 inch screen and ever deepening division, isolation, and anxiety, you St. Matthians are challenged to invest more deeply in meaningful community here.

          That strange Greek word I used earlier – “Ecclesia,” the gathering – is insufficient in these times.  Perhaps we should reclaim the language of the Free Church of Berkeley in the 1960’s – the church as “The Liberated Zone.”

          Why did the brothers leave their nets to follow Jesus?  Why did the people hang around even after the healings and after the bread and fish were consumed?

          It was because in Jesus, they found a living icon of hope, that the dream of God for all of us – no exemptions – was living still.  Amen.

January 14th, 2024: Reflections on John 1:43-51 by The Rev 'Mother' Lyn Crow

Here we are, Loving One, Mystery, Light
Beginning to quiet ourselves
Beginning to be still

Remembering you created us
To flourish in your Love
Remembering an old desire to grow in you

We long to be more than we are living now
We long to live all we can become
But, fearful, wonder how we can

We try to choose the best and truest path
But stumble in our living and in our choosing
We want to handle things ourselves

We’d rather make it on our own
And besides, trusting you, God,

Can be very hard
But we need more Light, your Light,
To see the ways ahead

We need more wisdom, yours, to choose the way that’s well for us
Here we are beginning willingness
Beginning to trust, to open ourselves, our lives, and our decisions
To your illuminating Light

Here we are, Loving One, ready to begin.

Amen.

I love that prayer by Nancy Bieber

Today, one line stands out to me:  “We try to choose the best and truest path but stumble in our living and in our choosing.”

I can imagine Philip and Nathaneal praying those words

And, in response, Jesus said to Philip, “Follow me”

And Philip said to Nathaneal, “Come and see”

And each of them chose the best and truest path

Each of us at one time or another has chosen the best and truest path

We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t on that path

So the challenge in our faith isn’t how do I choose the best and truest path

It’s how do I stay on the best and truest path?

In the beginning of the journey, Jesus says to a potential disciple:  “Follow Me.”

And Jesus continues to say to us:  “Follow Me”

How do we do that?  How do we stay on the best and truest path?

I would propose that Jesus says “Follow Me” through what I call “holy nudges.”

 Holy nudges are those big and small ways that Jesus says,

 “Come, follow me.”

 It’s those moments when you feel suddenly compelled to: make a phone call, send a card, knock on a door, pay for someone else’s meal, say a prayer.  Holy nudges.

My daughter had a holy nudge one day on her way to work.

As she was driving down a busy four lane street, two lanes in each direction, suddenly she had an urge to pull over.  She didn’t know why.  As she slowly came to a stop at the side of the road, she saw a two year old toddler walking along in a deep ditch running alongside the road.  She scooped her up in her arms and there weren’t any houses nearby, but there was a store. So she carried her to the nearby store where she found her parents, who hadn’t yet noticed she had wandered away.

A holy nudge is also one of those moments when a topic or theme keeps coming up in your mind.

It may come as a sudden insight (I had so many, I filled a red three ring binder with them)

 Or it may come in the form of renewed energy – when we suddenly feel a passion and energy about something, and feel a pull to follow through

 A holy nudge may come during a time of prayer, worship, or reading scripture, or it may come at a very ordinary time, like when you are making your bed or doing the dishes.

 Sooner or later, if we are on the path that Jesus calls us to, we will get a nudge.

 In fact, on the journey, we will experience many nudges in our lifetime.

 It has to be.  This is the way we are trained by the Spirit to follow Jesus.

 In some way, Jesus is like a mother eagle as she teaches her young to fly.

 In the Sinai, eagle nests are high on the top of the cliffs.  At the right time, the mother bird nudges her chicks out of the nest.  This causes the chick to free-fall off the cliff.  If the eaglet doesn’t discover how to fly, the mother eagle swoops down and catches the young on her wing.  She flies around with the chick on her wing to give it the sensation of flying.  This is repeated until the young one learns to fly.

 The author of Exodus 19:4 has obviously watched this and it inspired the verse in which God reminds the Israelites:  “You have seen how I bore you on eagle’s wings.”

 Jesus does the same to us, nudges us out of the nest and into ministry, carefully watching over us and bearing us up as we learn

 And so if we are seriously on the path, we begin to get, and to listen, and to respond to the holy nudges of Jesus

 It takes three distinct attitudes to hear and respond to the nudges:

 a.    Willingness – the want to-s

b.    Attentiveness – paying attention to our thoughts, emotions, our bodies, the people around us, the circumstances in our lives

c.   Responsiveness – the decision to respond to the nudge, to act

 Every day, every moment, Jesus says to those of us already on the path – Follow Me

 That call requires us to be courageous:

 a.   To allow ourselves to be pushed out of the nest

b.   To quiet ourselves enough to hear Jesus

c.   To trust that God will be there with us through our failures and our successes

d.   To open ourselves to God’s wisdom and illuminating Light

e.   To be willing to hear and follow the holy nudges of God

f.     To continue to hear Jesus saying Follow Me

 Lord, grant us the courage to say, I will follow you wherever you go.

January 7th, 2024: Reflections on Mark 1: 9-15 by The Rev Hartshorn Murphy

Today’s story tells of a pivotal moment in Jesus’ journey: his baptism by John the Baptist. Coming out of the river Jordan, Jesus has a vision. He sees the hard dome of the heavens rent open and God’s Spirit descend on him, like a dove. And he has an audition – a voice he alone hears – “You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

The gospel writers do not speculate on what this singular spiritual experience meant to Jesus. And Jesus is not given the leisure to think on it overly long. That same descending spirit – like a dove transformed into a hawk – drives Jesus into the wilderness. The wild place which Jews avoided for it was the place where spirits roamed free.

Mark does not tell us the details of those forty days. For that we turn to Matthew and Luke, who had collected a story about Jesus’ desert retreat. In Matthew & Luke’s telling, perhaps a better word would be to call it a “vision quest.”

In Native American tradition, a young man goes on a vision quest to seek wisdom about his path in life. Similarly for Jesus, these forty days were an opportunity to sort it out. What does it mean to be a son of God? What is the faithful way? What is the Father asking of me – to continue my mentor John’s work or something else?

And the power of evil, Satan, seizes this opportunity and comes to him.

Now Satan, in Jewish mythology, is a trickster. He seduces humankind to make wrong choices and then acts as a prosecutor with God. For example, in the Eden story, Satan seduces Adam and Eve with cunning: “Did God really say you cannot eat this fruit? Not sure why. I mean, God made it and God is good so the fruits gotta be good too, right? Maybe you misheard…”

What Satan does, as told by Matthew and Luke, is to present Jesus with seductive options for accomplishing God’s mission.

But let’s be clear. The temptations are metaphors.

The first involves food. Jesus, fasting, is very hungry. The round desert rocks resemble fresh loaves. Satan says, “Turn these stones into bread.” The temptation here is to reach the people through works of charity. In a time of deep need – fully 90- 95% of the people were living at a subsistence level – feeding hungry people would enable Jesus to reach them with the good news of the Kingdom. But humankind cannot live by bread alone.

The second path is worldly power. Satan says, interestingly enough, that all the kingdoms of the world are my possession. “I can give them to you.” The temptation here is political power. “As the King of Israel – I can make that happen, Jesus – you could command the people to follow God’s will. Coercion is more efficient than persuasion.” But power corrupts and ultimately warps the one who wields it, and the message delivered by brute force is more bad news than good.

And lastly, in a vision, Satan takes Jesus up to the very top of the temple – 151 feet high – and tells him to jump. “When God saves you, the people will believe and follow you.” The temptation here is to prey on people’s superstition. Spectacle.

Magic. But superstition and fear is not the same as faith.

Now, Luke tells us that Satan then withdrew until a more “opportune time.” These temptations will reappear, again and again. Jesus feeds a crowd on a hillside with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. In response, the crowd sought to force him to be their King and Jesus makes a hasty retreat.

Generosity, too easily, becomes dependence.

On the Sunday before Passover, Jesus provocatively entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. The peasants scatter palms, shout Hosanna, and proclaim him Son of David – that is, the rightful King. The placard on the Roman cross proclaimed his guilt: King of the Jews.

When Jesus exorcized demons and cured the sick, his critics will say that he did those things by the power of Satan, not God.

And finally, hanging on the cross as death draws near, bystanders call out “come down from the cross, save yourself and we’ll believe.” Bring the magic, Jesus.

My point here is simply that the temptations Jesus endured in the wilderness were ever present archetypes of power. A compassionate leader would exercise power in compassionate ways, right? Theoretically. Possibly? Ideally?

But that was not God’s way. God does not coerce or manipulate or trick. The God revealed in the life of Jesus is a God of love who exercises power through weakness, as a babe in a manger, and vulnerability on Calvary’s hill.

What lessons are we to take from all of this? In movies and television and books, the power of evil is presented as overwhelming and pervasive and terrifying. Recall the Exorcist? But that’s fiction. The power of evil lives in seduction – to choose the wrong path. But the choice is never between good and evil: Shall I help save starving puppies by donating to SPCA or shall I knock the little old lady over the head and steal her disability check? No. The choices we struggle with are either one of saying Yes or No; or if it involves a choice, it’s between seemingly good things. To say it better, in the real world, it’s so often between good and good enough.

How do we make the faithful choice? Teresa of Avila suggests this: when we have a tough choice to make, pray about it and then lay the tentative decision at the foot of the cross; leave it there and walk away. Some time later, come back and explore your feelings around that tentative choice. God communicates with us in our guts, not in our heads. Discernment is this: if you feel a sense of consolation, of peace, it’s the right

choice. If you feel a sense of desolation, of unease, it’s the wrong choice. In your baptism, you received – as Jesus did – the gift of the Holy Spirit. You, too, are God’s beloved son or daughter, and the Spirit will lead us in the right pathways.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Paul, from his letter to the Christian community in Rome: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’, it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ…” Romans 8:14-17a.

And Jesus himself said: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” John 16:13.

The Feast of Christmas, December 25th, 2023: Reflections on Mark 1:21-28 by JD Neal

Christmas, the Apocalypse

Christmas Day 2023

Isaiah 52:7-10 / Hebrews 1:1-4 / John 1:1-14

Today is Christmas: the day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus some 2,000 years ago.

The day that Christ was born as a squalling, squirming baby boy to a poor, young Galilean woman named Mary; the day that God came among us, entering into the world in a new and unexpected way — the day of revelation.

During Advent and at Christmas, it has long been the Church’s practice to anticipate and celebrate not only Christ’s first coming as a baby to that manger in Bethlehem, but also Christ’s second coming at the end of all things to make all things new. In otherwords, Advent and Christmas are times when we not only look back to Christ’s birth 2000 years ago but also look forward to anticipate and celebrate the Apocalypse.

Now, I know that this word, ‘apocalypse’, conjures up all sorts of images of the end of the world: of end-times disasters, and raptures, and nuclear destruction, and all sorts of post-apocalyptic stories that have been cranked out in books and tv shows and movies these past several decades — but the word itself, ‘apocalypse’, is a greek word that simply means, ‘to reveal.’ That’s how our book of ‘Revelation’ at the end of the Bible gets its name. An ‘apocalypse’, in biblical terms, is not a time when the world blows up in some catastrophic event, but a time when the true nature of things is revealed. When Christ returns, John’s book of Revelation tells us, the world will be laid bare and all things will come to light.

The Church has traditionally tied Christ’s first and second comings together in this way because it knows that whenever God shows up, things change: lies and pretense and distractions all fall away, and, for those willing to receive it, the truth is laid bare, reality comes to light, often in ways that we do not expect — and the Christmas story is no exception to this rule. In other words, the Church’s tradition tells us that Christmas is the Apocalypse — or at least an apocalypse. So that’s our question this morning: if Christmas is an apocalypse, how does it ‘reveal’ something to us, what does it tell us about the way of things?

A poor baby boy is born in an animal’s stall in a cave in the Judean desert, his mother is a social outcast due to her seemingly illegitimate pregnancy, and the father who would raise him is a humble builder — hardly the most respectable of origin stories for a Messiah — but John looks at this scene and writes that the Word of God has come into the world, that light and life and God’s own glory have burst onto the scene. What does John see?

The Jews of Jesus’ time expected the Messiah to be a powerful figure, a politician, a warrior, one who would be born and raised in the houses of kings — that’s why the Magi go looking for him at Herod’s palace when they arrive from the east — but here he is: the Messiah wrapped in rags in an animal’s feeding trough. When God comes to his people,

God shows up far from the halls of the rich and powerful, nor is he tucked, safe and secure, in a suburban nursery. Christ is born into a place that no one expects him to be, looking nothing like he ‘should’ have, and yet in him all the fullness of God has come into the world.

You see, Christmas reveals the truth about God. It tells us that God is not some white-bearded judge floating up in the sky waiting with a frown to punish us for everything we do wrong, nor is God some distant creator who put the world together and has since left the building, leaving us to our own devices. Christmas reveals that God is Immanuel, God with us, the God who knows us from the inside, who enters into our world in all its mess and pain and beauty and meets us in the midst of it all, coming to us in order to offer us hope, healing, new life. Christ is no stranger to our griefs and our joys, and so Christ can be our companion in the darkest and brightest moments of our lives.

Christmas also reveals that God does not value the things that we often value. Wealth, power, security — all the things that the Jews expected their Messiah to bring them, and that our whole culture teaches us to prioritize — are not a part of the Christmas story. God scorns these things and those who prioritize them, appearing instead in an unexpected place, born to unexpected people, identifying himself with and making himself known to the least of these — revealing that if we are to become the people of God, we must have our value system turned upside-down. If we look for God, for the life/meaning/joy/purpose that God brings, then we must learn to look in places we do not expect. We must be willing to lay aside our own status, our own quests for power and security and comfort, and be willing to look for God instead in places of great discomfort, insecurity, and need — our own and those of our neighbors — we must be willing to follow God in the path of self-giving love, so that we become the sort of people who recognize God when he comes to us.

When Jesus is born, he is born to a people who have suffered exiles and wars, who have lived long under occupation and oppression — he is born, in short, into a world like ours, one that feels often full of pain and injustice. When Jesus comes, he is born not just in the middle of the night physically, but into the midst of centuries-long darkness of God’s people waiting and longing for freedom and restoration. He comes in a way that his people did not expect, but he comes, bringing light and hope to a people living in darkness and the shadow of death — whether or not his people understand or receive him.

This too is the revelation of Christmas, that however dark things may seem, whatever pain or despair threatens to overtake us, God comes — often in ways we could not have anticipated or would not have chosen — but he comes and enters into our darkness to bring new and unexpected life. Like Easter, Christmas reminds us that the darkness of the world is never at the heart of things, never the deepest reality. This is the ‘apocalypse’ that we celebrate today: no matter how bleak our world may seem at times, death and darkness do not have the last word, for Christ comes to us again and again — the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.

So, my friends, as we celebrate and enjoy the Christmas season, may Christ be born anew in us this day. May we have eyes to see the unexpected movements of God all around and the courage to follow where he leads, and may we, with Christ, become those who proclaim joy and hope in the face of despair, and light in the face of darkness.

Amen.

December 17th, 2023 Reflections on John 1: 6-8, 19-28 by The Rev Hartshorn Murphy

John’s ministry begins about the year 27 C.E. (Common Era).  Out of the desert wilderness, John is called by God as the last of a long line of Hebrew prophets.  He is compelled to speak for God to God’s people – not as opinion or as commentary but with authority.  In his preaching, the intensity of the desert sun burns;  his soul is on fire.  In John’s ministry the valleys of ignorance are filled with truth.  Mountains of pride are brought low.  The crooked paths of corruption are found wanting and the rough road of despair is paved with hope.

            John’s message was clear.  The old world is passing away, the New Age is near.  The Kingdom of God on earth is at hand.  Repent!  Now this is not our Christian understanding of the word “repent” – to feel sorry.  Repent, in those days, meant to “return.”  The image was as if one was walking the wrong way, realized it, and then turned 180 degrees around and came back to God’s ways.  I’m reminded of our original Garman GPS, which always gave me directions to turn seconds after missing the turn and then angrily declaring “recalculating!” and having me backtrack.

            The message was to seek forgiveness for wrongdoing.  For the Jews, the word “khata”, sin, meant things done which missed the mark.  The image was one from archery, right?  It was to go astray from how God would have us live our lives.  We need to change.

            As the penitents gather, he warns them to come with sincerity, not just out of fear of a coming judgment at the close of this age.  Nor should you presume on the righteousness of your ancestors;  their sanctity will not save you and your racial arrogance is no security.

            Don’t tell me about your roots;  tell me of your fruits!

God will still be God if all the Hebrews perish from the earth.  Indeed, God can raise up a New Israel from the stones on the road.  But if you come with sincere hearts – come and wash!

            Now there were two kinds of ritual baths in Jewish practice.  One was for proselytes.  Gentile converts to Judaism were required to wash away their Gentile-ness.  The second kind were those required by The Law of Moses to wash away impurity so that one could be restored to the community of God’s chosen people.  For example, a ritual bath after sex, after a nocturnal emission, after menstruation, after childbirth, after any contact with human blood or a person with skin lesions, a corpse, a foreign idol and so on.  But John’s immersion seemed to emphasize sanctification – the forgiveness of a debt owed to God for our wrongdoing.

            But it was not magic, right?  It was rather symbolic of a desire to be realigned to God.  Those who heard John’s message asked, “What shall we do?”  John told them to confirm their repentance, their turning, by behaving in observable ways.

            To the peasants he said, “If you have two tunics,” – tunics were the undergarment, cloaks were the outer garments.  “If you have two pairs of underwear, give one to the person with none.  The same with food. If you have enough to eat, give some to your neighbor who doesn’t. Stop being so greedy.”

            Tax collectors also came.  The word “tax” is misleading.  A better word is “toll.”  Rome wisely bid out the privilege of being chief toll collector for a region.  Zacchaeus was one of these.  You remember the story, he was a short, little man. Wanting to see Jesus, Zacchaeus climbed a tree – a safer place to see Jesus than in the midst of a crowd.  These chief tax collectors recruited, typically, homeless men who could get no other work, to collect the tolls.  Tolls for crossing boundaries – goods entering or leaving a district, the use of a main road, crossing bridges, boat landings – it was a system ripe with corruption.  To them, John said, “Be content with your commissions.”

            And finally, soldiers.  These were not Roman troops, but Jews employed by the Puppet King Herod Antipas, who ruled the Galilee.  These men were despised for supporting the oppression of the Jewish people.  To them, John says, “Stop extorting folks and blackmailing them by threatening to turn them into the Roman authorities.  Be content with your pay and your rations” – an ideal the Roman Emperor advocated as well.

            This is not radical stuff.  John does not condemn an unjust tax system or challenge men to be conscientious objectors.  Asking folks to be a little less obsessed with their own survival and to share with others also suffering was not a new thing.

            But the people were intrigued by John.  In his fearlessness in condemning the hypocrisy of the powerful, John became a hero and the people wondered if he might be The One Who Was to Come.  But John says, “No, I am not worthy to be a slave to Him in tying His shoes.  I baptize you with water.  He will baptize you with fire.”

            The gospel writers added the words “and the Holy Spirit” to reflect the experience of Pentecost, but for John, who was so strident, only one more severe than himself would make sense.  No, for John, The One Who Comes will burn the world with an unquenchable fire.

            Jesus became a disciple of John and shared with him a passion for the Kingdom of God – but over time, their paths would diverge, even if John had not been executed.  In Jesus’ ministry, water immersion for purity was replaced with meals shared together celebrating that, by grace, we are already pure.

            John frightened the people to repent.  Jesus loved them and invited them into a new imagination.  John spoke to the individual while Jesus called people into deeper community.  John anticipated a great cataclysmic event which would change the world.  Jesus sensed that the Kingdom would be built by persuasion – soul by soul – of those willing to live, give, love, suffer, and even die for it.  For his disciples, it meant celebrating partial victories and suffering temporary defeats – but always persevering in hope.

            So, John’s role as a forerunner was limited but certainly not irrelevant.  The gospels are not biographies of Jesus but are rather the drama of God’s call to transformation of ourselves and the world – and in that play, someone must set the stage so that when the star enters stage right, all is ready.  That someone was John The Baptizer.

            And this is the question which remains throughout the ages:  What do we need to be converted from and converted to.  What is the amendment of life needed in us as we prepare the stables of our hearts to receive the Christ child again.  Amen.

December 10th, 2023: Reflections on The Second Sunday of Advent by The Rev Lyn Crow

As we continue on our Advent journey and we prepare ourselves so that God can be born again in us, I have a question for you:

Do you feel safe with God?

If you are like most of us, the answer is yes and no.

You might say we have an on again off again relationship with God.

When we experience grace, we feel safe.

But then we remember our humanity, our flaws, and we falter. We hear John the Baptist’s cry to repent and we think maybe God won’t forgive us.

Maybe we’re fooling ourselves about mercy.

It’s no wonder that happens. Some of the stories in the Old Testament have planted in us a wariness about God.

In these stories, if you displease God, you get swallowed up by the earth, you are struck by lightning, you suffer famine, pestilence or God kills your first born or requires you to kill your first born.

(This part is a paraphrase) [I remember when my daughter Carrie was about 5 years old and I went into her room and I found her, sitting on her bed, pulling her eyelashes out, one by one and placing them in a little pile. I realized that she was exhibiting some sort of awful stress so I sat down next to her, put my arm around her and gently asked her, “Honey what’s wrong?”  She asked me “Mommy, if God asked you to kill me, would you do it?”  She had heard the story of Isaac and Abraham that day in Sunday school and was trying to understand it. Obviously there are some stories in the Bible that should not be told to 5 year olds!  Carrie and her eyelashes represents the child in all of us.]

So when we hear the Good News of God’s love we want to believe it, we long to feel safe.

But what do we do with all those disturbing Old Testament stories?

What if we see the Bible as a book about humanity’s growing understanding of the nature of God?

In early civilizations including the Ancient Middle East, the understanding of God was-if you are good, God will be pleased and will make good things happen to you.

If you are bad, God will make bad things happen to you.

There are lots of places in the Old Testament where we read of this kind of thinking.

But then we get to Job. Job was a good and righteous man, yet bad things happened to him.

Throughout the Old Testament we see humanity struggling  to understand God and to answer the questions-

What is the nature of God?

Can I feel safe with God?

Finally God decides to enter our reality- to reveal God’s nature to us.

And what is revealed is a God of love and compassion- a God who forgives, forgives his friends who betray and desert him and deny him.

A God who forgives even as he is dying-forgives the ones who kill him.

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Even after this revelation, on occasion we see writings in the New Testament in which the author slips back into an Old Testament way of thinking about God.

Paul is the most notorious. He slips back into legalism now and then. But then he remembers again- “Oh, yeah, that’s right, it’s about grace.”

The Bible is a collection of books that reveal humanity’s growing understanding of the nature of God. And it is the story of individuals who grow in understanding of God. 

Haven’t we all at some point in our journey had something bad happen and asked “Why did God do this to me?”

And haven’t we somewhere in our minds at times, thought that we could earn God’s favor by being good? And haven’t we all at times had an “aHa” moment when we experience God’s grace and said, “ Oh I get it, it’s a gift, God loves us all.”

And haven’t we all, like Paul, had moments when we forgot the good news and have to learn about grace all over again.

So this Advent, I want us all to feel safe with God.

Safe enough to say, “Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.”

I want us to remember this Advent that God does not love us because we are good, but God loves us because God is good.

And when we let the reality of those words sink in-we feel safe.

We think God will love us if and when we change. But the truth is God loves us and then we are empowered to change. What makes us want to change and able to change is God’s love.

If we really believe that, then we will feel safe with God.

Today’s scriptures are full of Good News images of God.

Listen to Isaiah- Comfort, comfort my people.

Let me take care of your brokenness, just receive my love and grace, surrender to it.  Then the change you long to see in yourself will be possible.

I was recently at the airport and I saw a mother and a toddler waiting for their plane. He was running around, had lots of energy, running between the seats, around the people.  He tripped over a briefcase and hit his head on the seat. His mom didn’t scold him for running around, she scooped him up and cradled him in her arms, clutching him to herself. She kissed his bruised forehead and repeatedly was saying, “There, there, Mommy’s right here.” The more he cried the more she spoke the comforting words.

God is like that young mother who scoops up and kisses her injured child and speaks words of comfort, “There, there, Mommy is here.”

Comfort, comfort my people.

We can feel safe with God--we are loved unconditionally.

In that case-- Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, God be born in us again-we are safe with you.

October 22nd, 2023: Reflections on Matthew 22: 15-22 by The Rev Valerie Hart

It’s interesting to see that issues and debate about paying taxes are not a new concept. Two thousand years ago religious leaders asked Jesus whether it was lawful to pay a specific tax.

Of course it was a little different back then. In fact, it was a lot different back then, because the Romans to whom the taxes were being paid were an occupying force. The Romans, unlike some of the earlier empires, were pretty smart in terms of economics. Other empires used to conquer a land and take their people into exile. Then they would burn and destroy everything. The Romans, however, would conquer a land, put in a puppet king or leader of some sort, and then build up the infrastructure. They would put in roads and build aqueducts to bring in water (there are still the remains of aqueducts and roads from Roman times in Israel today). They would do this so that the people could make money, the economy would thrive and the wealth could be heavily taxed and sent back to Rome.

This tax was not being paid to a government that was there to care for the people of Judea; the tax was going to Rome to pay for soldiers, to pay for the people who would arrest them without any reason - the ones who had complete and total power over them. So it is understandable that the people did not like the idea of being taxed by Rome.

But there was an additional problem with the particular tax that was being considered in this Gospel reading. There were lots of taxes sent to Rome, but for this particular one there was a question of whether it was religiously lawful or not. It was a tax that was called the temple tax. And the temple tax was that every male, every year, had to give a certain amount to the temple in Jerusalem. It wasn’t optional. It wasn't based on income. Some of it was used to keep the temple going, but most of it was given to Rome because Rome taxed the temple.

That made the priests and the Herodians who were part of the puppet government responsible for sending this money off to Rome. A very complicated situation. The question was, the problem was, that Caesar had made himself a god. He declared himself a god and declared that people had to worship him. You may have heard about this in early Christian history when the Christians refused to worship the emperor and therefore had to die. That is why the Christians were so persecuted. They wouldn’t burn incense to the emperor.

We get kind of a sense of this in some of the personality cults like in North Korea where whoever happens to be in charge becomes like a god and is worshipped. But Caesar went so far as to say he was a god. So, if you were paying money to the temple and some of that money was going to pay a “god” were you blaspheming? Were you going against the ten commandments that said you were not to support any other god?

The Pharisees, along with the Herodians, asked Jesus, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Of course, this was a trick question because if Jesus said pay the tax then the people who don’t want to have to pay the tax would be upset and his critics could say Jesus is saying we should break the law of Moses. If he said don’t pay the tax they could go to the Romans and have him arrested for inciting people to not follow the Roman law. It was a no win situation.

The reason that this is such a memorable response from Jesus is that in the face of this impossible question he took it to another level.

He said, “Give me one of the coins that you use to pay this tax.”

Take note that Jesus did not pull one of these coins out of his pocket, he asked these religious leaders to supply one. You've probably seen pictures of romans coins and there is one on the cover of the bulletin today. These coins were a piece of metal that has been stamped with the picture of the emperor on it.

 So Jesus took the coin and said, “Whose picture is this?”

They responded, “The emperor's.”

Well there is a problem here, because these Pharisees who handed him the coin are carrying around a picture of an idol. You are not supposed to make any kind of idol. No graven images. So he caught them in their hypocrisy.

Then he said, “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s.”

This is just money. This is just a piece of metal with a picture of somebody on it. You can give that to Rome. It’s not of real value. It has no deep and true value.

Jesus took it to another level by asking what is our duty? He is saying that we need to think about what is truly important. Caesar, Rome, and the emperor represent all those things that are contrary to God. All those idols in our lives - all those things to which we give our love and attention.

Or should we be giving our attention to God who we heard so beautifully described in the Psalm today:

Declare God's glory among the nations and God's wonders among all peoples.

For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; God is more to be feared than all gods.

As for the all the gods of the nations, they are but idols;

but it is the Lord who made the heavens.

---

Ascribe to the Lord, you families of the peoples;

ascribe to the Lord honor and power.

---

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,

let the whole earth tremble before God.

Our God is the God of the whole universe, the creator of everything – everywhere. It is a living God as Paul said in his letter, “You turned from idols, to serve a living and true God.”

Now what are we to give this living God? God doesn’t need anything. God doesn’t need our money, and even though it is pledge season, God doesn’t really need our pledges. The church might, but God doesn’t. God doesn’t need animal sacrifices. God doesn’t need anything. God is God.

But there is one thing that God can’t create just by willing it. You see God is also described as love. And love needs to love and be in relationship. The only thing that we can give God that God can’t give God's self is love, faithfulness, commitment, relationship, because we give that out of our free will. Out of our free will we chose whether to follow God, to do what we can for this God that loves us, or we put our energies and our faithfulness and our love into something that is dead. Caesar claimed to be a god, but he is dead. So the choice is, do we put our energies into that which is dead or into that which is the living God?

Certainly we can give to the emperor what is the emperor’s. Jesus is saying yes we need to take care of the things of the world. Yes, you need to go to work. You need to make sure you have enough to live. There are certain responsibilities, things you need to do. No problem with that. Of course we live in this world. We need to brush our teeth, we need to feed our bodies, we need to care for our children - and there is nothing wrong with that.

 The problem is when things become an idol. I took a course in seminary called Bringing Biblical Humor to Life. It was a great course and helped me see the Bible in a whole new way. One of the things that the professor said was that an idol is something you can’t laugh about. Something that you take so seriously that there is no room for humor.

What is it in your life that has become an idol? That has become more important than love, than healthy relationships, than service. Is it your work? Is it respect? Is it power? Is it a 401K? Is it your retirement plans? Is it your fishing boat? Is it the football team? Or your cell phone? A particular news source? MSNBC? Fox News? A web site? A political leader? Alcohol? Drugs? Gambling? Facebook? What in your life takes away from your commitment to God? What sucks you in and pulls you away from life and from love?

When Jesus said render unto the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God was is God’s he meant that at every point of our lives, at every moment of our lives, we make a choice. We make a choice to give our energies and our faithfulness and our commitment to God, to life, to love, or we chose to give our energy and our commitment, our time, to idols, to death. To that which is not life enhancing.

There is an ancient spiritual practice of every night before going to bed to reflect upon your day. What did you do during the day that was life affirming, that was of God, and what did you do that was life denying, that was not of God? Not to judge them. Not to judge yourself. Just to notice and become aware and gradually become better at choosing love, at choosing life instead of death.

Choosing God instead of idols.

October 8th, 2023: Reflections on Matthew 21:33-46 (The Vineyard belongs to God) by The Rev. Judith ("Jude") Lyons

Dear God, help me find the Good News to preach to your faithful people at St. Matthias Episcopal Church. Please God, Give me the words. Amen.

I don’t know about you, but I need to hear the Good News about who God is and that God’s kingdom is here and near. I need to hear it a lot.

I try to stand back and gain some perspective.

I try to use my life-long study of, and love of history to give me a way to understand what is happening

in our country today, but my efforts don’t seem to lift this gloom that surrounds me every time I turn on the television,

or the radio, or glance at a newspaper,

or scroll through my phone, or talk with my children, grandchildren, siblings, friends, or even strangers waiting to play pickleball!

I don’t think I’m unique in this. Am I?

So I prayed to God to help me find the Good News To share with you this morning.

I asked God to give me the words…. And God did.

It’s right here in our opening collect. You might want to turn to it in your bulletin.

The collect says:

Almighty and everlas1ng God.

Well, that’s good news –

God is mightier than we could ever be …

solo, in a group, in a country, on the earth, in our fragile home; and…God is eternal, always, forever, everlasting.

You are always more ready to hear… than we to pray. This is my second favorite line, such good news, and so true. God is “always”, not sometimes, but “always ready,” “always willing”, and “always able” to hear, to listen

to my worries, whining, fears, doubts, anger and all the rest. “Always”.

And, then, God shakes God’s head at me and smiles when I finally remember to pray.

The collect goes on to say:

You give more than we either desire or deserve.

Well, This is fabulous news.

God knows our hearts, knows our desires better than we do and gives us more than we deserve.

This is good news because “Deserve” is not in God’s vocabulary! “Deserve” is not one of God’s measuring sticks.

God gives unconditionally and without ceasing –

Because God love us without considering what we deserve.

Then the writer of the collect goes on to pray:

Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy.

Oh, We need your mercy, Jesus, more than ever – as a people, as a church, as a society.

Forgiving us those things

of which our conscience is afraid.

This is my first favorite line.

Forgive us those things of which our CONSCIENCE is afraid – not some generalized fear of physical pain or discomfort But… forgive us for our cowardice,

our fear to act or say what we know is true and right.

That takes my breath away as I reflect on all the ways I have been afraid to live my conscience, to speak up, to take a stand.

Ringing in my ears is:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

The collect collects our thoughts into a bundle at the beginning of our worship together

to help us become present to the presence of God,

right here, right now, in this place.

The collect works to open our hearts and minds To prepare us to listen to God’s word,

And to share the Good News of the Gospel in a troubled world.

It is Matthew’s Gospel that we have been working our way through this Fall.

It invites us to place ourselves in the scene with Jesus, where we find ourselves in the middle

of a chaotic, dangerous, and violent world, much like or own.

Jesus is no longer teaching from a hillside in Galilee;

He is in Jerusalem – over-crowded with merchants, refugees, radical insurrectionists, armed Roman soldiers everywhere, religious pilgrims, beggars, students, teachers, and the imposing religious leaders.

Are any of you watching The Chosen on television?

Season IV of The Chosen will air in January. I love it. I’ve seen the first three seasons, more than once.

It offers us a vital and vivid portrayal of the world

in which Jesus and the disciples lived. It is as real as our own.

We are allowed in, on the ground, in the crowd, surrounded. Jesus, completely aware and unafraid, continues to teach and heal,

meeting head on the religious leaders, as they try to find a way to arrest him. Decked out in their distinctive garb, they shout:

‘By whose authority do you do this?’

I sort of want Jesus to shout back “by whose authority do YOU do this…certainly not God’s” But Jesus has his own, calmer way. He tells a story.

Every commentary I read this week said

that our Gospel today isn’t really a parable; it’s an allegory. Jesus is not at all vague about who is who in the story.

Each character or set of characters represents something very specific.

--The landowner is God.

--The vineyard is God’s creation, lovingly and carefully made

with the best of all that is needed to flourish and grow and feed and prosper.

--The tenants are the religious leaders, and by extension… us. As tenants, we are to tend the land, care for the crops, Love and protect one another

and share what God has given us. Giving back to God or first fruits.

--The servants are the prophets. The landowner sends them to collect the harvest, To remind us who God is, what God has given us,

and to demonstrate that we give thanks

by giving God the first fruits of the harvest.

So far, so good. What happens next? The tenants beat and kill the servants.

They/we take matters into our own hands. We are the masters of our own destiny.

We decide we are the owners.

We did all the work, we tilled the land, we deserve to keep the harvest.

That landowner has other vineyards, he doesn’t need this one;

this one is ours; we’ve earned it.

Then, even more servants arrive, posing an even bigger threat to us

and have the nerve to tell us what we owe God. So we kill them too.

And the landowner, who has patiently

given us chance a[er chance, now sends his son. And here the story takes a weird turn.

Astonishingly, the landowner says, Surely, they will respect my son.

Really?.... How can this landowner be so clueless?

The son arrives,

we see him coming and someone among us says

If we want to inherit this vineyard, we need to kill the heir.

Well, that’s just crazy.

In what world do you inherit a vineyard when you’ve killed his son?                Hmmmm?

What begins as a simple allegory turns into something absurd.

And, yet….. How absurd is it?

I’m haunted by the parallels to our current absurdity.

The attempt to take ‘back’ the country by any means necessary, by death threats to judges, witnesses, opponents, vice presidents and on and on, in the absurd belief that this restores the country to its righful owners. Owners??

Or the absurd idea that the kingdom of God has entrance requirements based on race or gender or preference,

There are no entrance requirements!

All that is needed is the key

of willingness, love and humility before God.

This story has made me think a lot about ownership

--- particularly its false promises of security and stability.

I’ve thought about whole towns, indeed, whole civilizations wiped out by natural disasters or war.                     Gone.

We’ve seen it on our televisions.

The devastation of floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes The bombed out buildings erasing a city

None of what was owned survived. Not much is even remembered.

And yet we fight so desperately for what we think is OURS, what we think we DESERVE,

what we are sure we’re ENTITLED TO.

I am grateful for what being a Christian has taught me About the good news of God’s love

and the promises of the kingdom.

The understanding that all is a gi[ from God

For our time here on earth,

That we are stewards of the gi[s given. We may sign a deed or buy some property,

or become a citizen, but all is ultimately temporary.

Those of us who are old know this in a special way

as we watch loved ones and their things, once so precious, fade from view.

The good news, however, is that even now, even here, in this chaotic, confused, and dangerous world

We are still stewards, still caretakers, still bearers of light and hope

still loved unconditionally

Still voices for justice and truth.

And it is with a growing humility that we have come to understand And to say to others when we can-- The vineyard belongs to God.

Almighty and everlasting God

Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy,

Forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid,

And giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask. In the name of Jesus and The Good News, we pray.                  AMEN