One Hit Wonder?

“The Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.” Isaiah 60:2

In my hometown, the Fireman’s Carnival is undoubtedly the biggest event of the year.  It’s been held on the first week in August as long as anyone can remember.  Thousands flock to the muddy grounds outside town for the ferris wheel and the country ham sandwiches, some low stakes games of chance  and the goldfish booth that finances the junior-senior prom.

 Everyone knows that the biggest attractions are conversations with old friends and the hand-cut french fries.  But there’s always entertainment as well--a show on the stage at 7 and 10.  It’s usually country music, and in the old days, when you had to become a star the hard way, many of the greats trod our hometown boards: Patsy Cline, Conway Twitty, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, even once, Grandpap said, the great Hank Williams himself.  

The Eighth Day of their Lives

“And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  St. Luke 9:30-31

Over the last few months, I’ve had several conversations with people who are staring down retirement.  Some friends are leaving their work with a deep sense of satisfaction, ready to take on some long-postponed projects.  Others are worried about how they will fill the time and are looking for a way to hang in for a few more years.  One friend was doing the most fruitful and fulfilling work of his career, but the funding ran out, and he’s facing part-time work, something quite different.  It might be marvelous, but I don’t think he’s completely sold on it yet. 

In the back of most of those conversations lay a series of questions I suspect we’ve all asked ourselves, even if retirement lies half a lifetime away: “Does my life add up? Does it have meaning, this work into which I have poured so much of my time and energy?  Do I have a legacy?”  It’s worth reminding ourselves that our privilege allows us to ask these questions of our work.  Most people in history and most people in the world today simply must toil on until their bodies give way.  But for all people, life is unpredictable, full of unexpected shifts, confusing blessings and overwhelming sorrows.  We long to understand where our lives are headed, how their true meaning will be revealed.  But so often, in the end, there is only confusion.  We see ourselves only through clouds of smoke, beset by doubt and fear. 

Sharing His Glory

All mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.  St. John 17:10

For a few days back in 2012, everyone in Cooperstown, New York had Olympic fever.  Team USA banners hung in all the shop windows, people wore Olympic buttons on their lapels.  The Chamber of Commerce sponsored a watch party and there were drink specials in the local bar. 

We were all so excited because Sarah True, one of our own, was going for the gold.  Sarah was then America’s leading triathlete, and she had grown up in our village of 2000 souls.  Her parents still live in town, working at the local hospital.  Sarah had swum across the Lake on the edge of the village when she was 14, and competed on the high school track team.  Her old coaches and babysitters could remember how it was when she was just so tall.  

In the end Sarah finished fourth, ten seconds short of a medal.  But when she finally made it home, we paraded her down Main Street as a hero, with firetrucks and the high school band, proud as could be that one of our own had achieved something so incredible. 

Behind our excitement was a sense that Sarah was carrying a little of all of us into her great moment before the eyes of the world.  Some people felt they had helped to form her for this moment, for others her triumph was showing us just what could be possible for a kid from a little town in upstate New York.  We had a little share in her glory, and for one unique moment, that was a thrilling thing.

Praying the Passion with St. Bridget: Devastating and Glorious

God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.  II Cor. 5:19

If you’ve ever read through one of the Gospels from beginning to end in a single setting, maybe what surprised you most was how long the passion story, the account of Jesus’ suffering and death is.  In what is probably the earliest Gospel, St. Mark, 45% of the text is of the last week of Jesus’ life.  Regular worshippers know to prepare themselves for Palm Sunday, because when we read the passion, it will take quite a long time.

The Gospels are unlike any other kind of literature that predates them in the way they focus in on this final (or properly almost final) part of the life of their subject.  We have some deathbed scenes for other important figures in the Bible, and the classical biographies usually include an account of the death. There is generally in ancient literature a sense that the death reveals the character, but the passions of the Gospel stories are really unprecedented.

The Gift of Limits

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty…That no flesh should glory in his presence.”  I Corinthians 1:25, 27

A few days after I accepted the call to serve as your rector, I met up with Kathleen Alexander for some orientation to our new home.  Just before I left, she told me that she had some reading material for me—and I’ll say she did.  She presented me with a stuffed jumbo-sized three-ring binder entitled, “The New Century Project,” circa 1998.  This was followed by a tall ream of printed sheets.  These were the collected comments from your rector search survey and a transcription of all that had been written on newsprint sheets posted around Saint Francis Hall at a big parish meeting held just about a year ago.

I went home and dutifully set to work, and I read it all.  And as you would expect, there was a great deal of continuity.  At the beginning and end of nearly two decades marked by great change, the people of Saint Francis placed their central focus on faithful Anglican worship, beautiful traditional music and inspired preaching.  Then and now, you wanted to learn together, to grow in your relationships with each other, to form the young, and to serve the poor.  Of course, many of the people who were leading the projects and making the comments were the same, a remarkable thing in a part of the world where everything often seems to be in flux.

But there were also great differences. 

Ponder: "the true way of all your loves upon earth"

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. .... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.”

J. R. R. Tokein, “A Letter to Michael Tolkein, 6-8 March, 1941”

For Meditation: "let the doors of glory be unlocked"

"Let the gate of light be opened and the doors of glory unlocked and the curtain before the face of the Father be withdrawn, and let the Lamb of God descend and sit on this holy table prepared before me, thy servant.  Let 'Melos' the fearful sword of fire [the Holy Spirit] be sent and appear over this bread and cup to fulfil this offering."

Epiklesis, (Ethiopian) Anaphora of St. Jacob of Serug, qtd. in Brian Spinks, "Do This in Remembrance of Me," (2013) 180.

We See Jesus-A Sermon for Pentecost XIX

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.  But we see Jesus.”

Hebrews 2:8-9

It’s been a heavy week, hasn’t it?  The Russians have launched extensive bombing raids in Syria, massively escalating the civil war, with numerous civilian casualties expected.  News continues to surface about the extent of Volkswagen’s emissions switch scandal, with maybe more than 11 million cars effected worldwide.  Several drug companies have admitted to massive price gouging, with one pill used to treat cancer and AIDS patients rising from $13 to $750 per dose. 

And of course, there was another mass shooting, this time at a community college in Oregon, the 294^th shooting this year.   It was a shooting in the kind of place where things like that don’t happen, except there aren’t any places like that any more.  We don’t know all the details yet, but eyewitnesses reported that events unfolded in a distinctive way.  The shooter stormed into the classroom with an agenda.  He wanted to know who was a Christian.  And our brothers and sisters who stood firm and confessed our faith, those who claimed to be one of us, he shot them point blank. 

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.”  We believe of course, that the Bible is God’s Word to us, but if we’re honest, it sometimes seems like a word from long ago and far away.  But not this week.  Not this word. 

"A Wider Perspective"--A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD sitting upon a throne,

high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.”  Isaiah 6:1

            Erik Mebust and I had coffee together last weekend, and we talked about all his exciting plans for the next several months.  Erik will be studying literature for a term at Kings’ College in London, and I was able to give him some advice about museums, historical sites and churches.  He also has two or three weeks after his term finishes to do some travelling around the rest of Europe, and a big list of places he’s dying to see.  There’s Paris, of course, and the Rhine Valley in Germany, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the Alps, and he has a friend spending a term in Montpelier, down on the Mediterranean Coast.  And I was trying to slow him down a bit.  You don’t want to spend half of your time on trains, after all, and you might well be able to go back again later in life and try some of what you will need to miss this time. 

But of course, by American standards, all these places are really quite close.  This is part of the wonder of Europe to an American.  In a few hours you can travel between places whose languages, histories, foods, music, and architecture are completely different.  New York State really isn’t all that different from Minnesota.  But Spain and Poland are a world apart, and the distance is really about the same. 

"In His Glory"--Sermon for Easter 7

“All mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.”  St. John 17:10

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“She was in her glory today.”  That’s what my father would say when he was describing my grandmother at a family reunion, carrying out the groaning platters, a baby cradled in one arm, beaming for all the world to see.  It’s how he described my brother that time the bases were loaded and he sent the ball over the left field wall.  I remember him teasing my mother, returning home from a day shopping with her friends.  There were a few more bags in the back seat than he had been expecting, and that’s what he said—“well, I can see you were in your glory today.”   I think it’s a rather old-fashioned expression these days, but we still know what it means.

To be one’s glory means to feel deep happiness, a sense of fulfillment.  We are in our glory when we are doing that thing we are truly made to do, when our distinctive talents are put to use, and others respond to us with respect and admiration.  We smile when we are in our glory.  A kind of light seems to shine from our faces. 

While He Was Blessing Them--A Sermon for Ascension Day

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”St. Luke 24:51
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
            We remember last looks.  The last time we see an old friend in the hospital before his death, smiling faintly, ready to face what comes next.  Our mother’s tears as we waved away that car from the college dormitory parking lot on the first day of freshman orientation.  The triumph of a retiring athlete or musician, scanning the crowd one final time with joy and gratitude.  The last look tells us so much.  It reveals the heart, brings to life what is most important in the relationship we share.  Often it points to what lies ahead.
It is so too in the mystery we celebrate today: our Lord’s glorious ascension.  “While he was blessing them,” Saint Luke tells us, “he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.”  The last look for Jesus’ disciples, that parting vision that would be fixed forever in their mind was of their Master, his arms lifted confidently, pouring out on them his blessing, the assurance of His love.  It’s just this that the great painting over our Altar depicts: Christ in strength and glory, lifting up His precious hands to bestow once and for all His blessing on all who love Him.

For meditation: "Every glory in germ"

Clipped from my current morning reading, Shirley Hughson's With Christ in God (1948):

"The mystics look upon our life as a holy pilgrimage, a journey whose end is the inner unity of God.  The more a soul keeps itself open to God, abandons itself to the mysterious action of God, and lets itself be caught in His current, the deeper God draws it into the secret abyss where all springs rise.  In grace, therefore, which contains every glory in germ, lie possibilities yet untold.  God perfects the soul of him who gives himself up to God."  Julius Tyciak.