Category: Sermons

The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Almighty and ever living God, we humbly pray that, as your only begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 2: 22 – 40

Almighty and ever living God, we humbly pray that, as your only begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to this Holy Eucharist in observance of Presentation Sunday, the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. The story of the Presentation is in many ways a result of showing up and being present for mundane, ordinary rituals. I find myself intrigued by this, and especially today, as we have been about the business of being and doing church. The characters in Luke’s Gospel account are going about the business of what is required of them by Torah, the Law of Moses. They are presenting their firstborn to be dedicated to God. It seems to me important that the words “presentation” and “present” come from the same Latin root, praesens, meaning literally “to be before.” In my pastoral care classes each semester, we talked about “being there” and “being available” or “being present” as key elements of what it means to engage in effective pastoral care giving. In our spiritual lives, being present always has a double meaning. There’s present, as in here and available, paying attention and in attendance. And there’s present, as in now—this moment—or Kairos, in Greek, a sacred moment of time. Almost all of the world’s religions recommend both of these: living in the moment, with full awareness. And, we are learning from neuroscience that practicing mindfulness can literally change our neural pathways and neurochemistry for the better.

I believe this is so very important, especially in a culture that makes being present–here and now–so very difficult. We live in a time of anxiety which potentially robs of us our ability to stay present. We create forms of idolatry out of preoccupation both with the past and the future—neither of which, ultimately, we can control. I see this often in my clinical practice, and in myself.

Regardless, we then live as if the mystery of the Holy Spirit is not blowing through our lives. Thus, we sometimes are at risk for setting ourselves up for disappointment, create idols of our plans without consulting God, and cannot enjoy the present. One of the lessons I have learned from athletics—many years of football and now, many more years of running, is that we can prepare as well as possible, and then we have to show, play the game or run the race, and recognize that in order to do our best we must be present to the moment, to the task at hand. The mantra of my trail running group is “Conditions may vary.” We do the training and then we recognize that once the starter pistol is fired, most anything can—and often does happen. So the wisdom of our religious traditions seeks to address this. Now that both of our sons have become parents themselves, I remind them that the greatest gift we can offer our loved ones is “true presence.” Many faith traditions urge us to make the most of every day as a gift from God, and an opportunity that will not come to us again. Thomas Keating’s Centering Prayer practice has as its goal, in part, practicing the presence of God. This means recognizing that God is here and now moving through our everyday activities, including our smallest ritual acts, no matter how trivial they seem. This knowledge can, and should, offer us a vision of resilience, and hope.

Old Simeon and Anna knew this, too. Simeon is guided to a meeting with Joseph and Mary out of his knowledge that God’s creativity in this world has not been exhausted in the past—and both of them feel in their tired bones that God is capable of doing something in the present that is wholly new, world-shaking, and life-giving. Old Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and is moved to say…”now you are dismissing your servant in peace…my eyes have seen your salvation.” So now we know what salvation looks like. It takes on the face and embodiment of a human being.

For us, this means an affirmation that God has come among us in human form to live as we live, experience life with us in all its wonder and sorrow, and live with us into a new appreciation of what it means to be fully, truly alive as human beings. In other words, what it means to be present…to be there. Theologically this is in keeping with the events of the 40 days of Christmas, which comes to an end with the Presentation—or Candlemas—which we celebrate today. Really, the Incarnation is our central theological doctrine that God has been revealed in human form. Living into the truth of this doctrine means that we follow God’s lead in terms of self-involvement in the world of human suffering: with compassion and ethical commitment at every level of individual, social, and political involvement. It means a willingness to be present. When we say, with Simeon and Anna, “yes” to who Jesus really is, we say “no” to the myriad distractions that keep us in bondage to the past, or to the future. It means looking for opportunities to give our best efforts in our affirmation of who Jesus is, being there in ways we feel called to be there. Each of us is given a life for a reason outside ourselves. Each Sunday, indeed each day, we present ourselves—we bring forth ourselves in Epiphany—and re-dedicate our lives to God.

Through our Baptisms we are given the gift of discernment about what God wishes us to do with our lives. And we are given particular communities of faith like this one, in which to engage that discernment. Each of us has moments when someone, like Simeon, steps up to us and says, “Here is what I see for you…consider this as your ministry.” In whose face do you see Simeon in your life? Such encounters may happen in the most insignificant, mundane moments. In the simple, ordinary rituals of our lives we may encounter those who say to us, in effect, “will you be there…are you present?”    

Well, for many years, I listened to Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, whose Peabody Award winning show ‘Car Talk” could be heard on NPR every Saturday morning. One of my favorite parts of this show was the weekly Puzzler, typically a question to which I did not know the answer, but which was always entertaining and educational. One week the weekly puzzler question was this: Last summer I was driving east to west across the country, and found myself in Kansas around noon. I was surrounded on all sides by farms raising a single crop—beautiful to look at, but difficult to understand. When I looked to my right, I saw fields of yellow, and when I looked to my left, I saw fields of green, and yet a single crop was being grown. Please explain. And here’s the answer, which I suspect most in this crowd already knows: In the northern hemisphere, the summer sun is in the southern sky. What I was observing was heliotropism—the tendency for flowers to turn and face the sun. The plants on the left side of me were turned away from me and facing the sun, while the plants on the right side were facing me, and the sun. The plants were sunflowers. When I looked to the right, I saw the yellow faces of the flowers, and when I looked to the left, I saw the green backs of the flowers.

This is wonderful, I found myself thinking, and it perfectly describes how the work of the Holy Spirit, our comforter and advocate, gently guides us in the direction of God’s sustaining, nourishing, and healing presence. Organizations, including Holy Family, are heliotropic. Churches lean toward the source of energy—whether that energy is healthy or not. As memories and imaginations are engaged to nourish participants with the best and most life-giving resources, the church will lean in the direction of those narratives and practices.  And it is just like Simeon, stepping up and speaking the truth by virtue of having shown up and paid attention…Imagine a kind of “heliotropism of the soul” in relation to God, and one begins to understand how we are transformed when we turn toward God, whom I understand to be love incarnate, with the help of the Spirit, no matter what the context may be. And now, we can see the human forms of this through advances in relational neurobiology. Diane Ackerman, writing in a New York Times editorial, suggests that what we are learning is that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life, just as the sunflowers in Kansas are constantly turning toward the sun. For example, did you know that if you are in a committed relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to subdue blood pressure, ease stress, improve mental health, and even lessen pain? “In the end,”

Ackerman writes, “what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.” A baby’s first attachments imprint its brain, but this is not the end of it by any means. This neural alchemy continues throughout our lives. Supportive relationships, neuroscience is teaching us, across the life-cycle, are the most robust predictors of medical and mental health, happiness, and even forms of wisdom. In short, loving relationships can alter our brains. This includes our loving relationship with God. We now know that spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation and centering prayer can change our neural pathways and neurochemistry, and that acts of compassion inform who, and whose, we become. Practicing gratitude leads to neuroplasticity and, literally, changes our neural pathways in life giving transformation.

Ackerman tells the story of her own marriage. After her 74 year-old husband suffered a left-hemisphere stroke that wiped out a lifetime of language all he could utter was “Mem.” “Mourning the loss of our duet of decades,” she writes, “I began exploring new ways to communicate, through caring gestures, pantomime, facial expressions, humor, play, empathy, and tons of affection—the brains epitome of a safe attachment.” This helped rewire her husband’s brain to a startling degree, she reported, and in time they were able to talk again, he returned to writing books, and even his vision improved. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives, and it’s in the context of loving relationships of all kinds—partners, spouses, children, grandchildren, parents, close friends, parishioners, and yes, dear one’s the Holy Spirit leading us, turning us, to God—that brain and body really thrive.

So, there it is. We can respond to our Baptism by turning to one another in love. If you’re in a committed, loving relationship to another—including a relationship with God as love incarnate—this can change your life. What we bear witness to in Baptism, and in the Eucharist, is a commitment to this community and to that love, God’s love, which binds us together. As Richard Powers says in his remarkable book “Overstory,” What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer. . . .” We become what we pay attention to and love. We can turn, like sunflowers in a Kansas field, and face the source of love, and compassion, and be our best selves. “Practice Resurrection,” the poet Wendell Berry wrote, and that may begin with reaching out in hospitality and love, to others. Amen.

Third Sunday after Ephiphany – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 4:14-21

Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday after the Epiphany. We are so glad you are here! Well, this is where it all begins: and while the baptism of Jesus is really the occasion—the true beginning—of his calling, today we continue to see the implications of that moment…the “so what” in response to Baptism. And in today’s Gospel and Epistle, it is here that the adult Jesus shows up on the stage of history. In this story and our own stories, baptism means more than repentance and cleansing. Here, theologically understood, baptism issues in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the giving of an incarnational, redemptive identity. We recall that God said to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved…with you I am pleased.” Although this epiphany is a public revelation in our telling of it, the words come intimately to the praying Jesus, and by extension we all bear witness to it as well. Much lies ahead for Jesus from this point, and we hear in today’s Gospel passage that the people were filled with expectation, especially in his own hometown. He must live out this identity and meet those expectations laid on him, and we do well to pay attention to how the people have been speaking about the anointed one already; remember how the crowds will project their hopes and desires onto him. This too, informed Paul’s vocation—his calling—a calling fully realized in this text for today as he reminds the Corinthians, and by extension each of us, that “we are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Jesus’ baptism, and his response to it, thus leads us to consider the meaning of our baptism too. It’s “vocation,” a word that has lost much of its resonance through repeated use, both secular and churchly.

The psychiatrist Carl Jung had a sign inscribed over the front door of his home which read, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” It is an English translation of the Latin quotation which Jung found as a student when studying Erasmus, the Renaissance scholar and humanist. “Vocatio” is the Latin root of “vocation” andmeans to have a calling, but “calling” in our culture often simply denotes one’s job or career, one’s chosen profession. The notion that it is God who calls us, seems a commonplace piety when we are talking about “church vocations,” calls to “ministry” or “the religious life,” but it sounds more like an afterthought or theological overlay about ordinary life. We tend to think of our vocations as the way we make our living, and avocations — the things we don’t have to do — provide our recreation.

Many years ago, as I first began to consider ordained ministry, Bishop Frank Allan said this to me: “I think we get it backwards in our tradition. We have ordination certificates framed and hung on the wall, and our Baptismal certificate, if we have one, and if we know where it is, is only wallet-sized. It should be the other way around. The priesthood of all believers means just that.”

I agree with this. So, what does Baptism mean, theologically understood, in the sometimes-mundane everydayness of our lives? It means what we witnessed last week at our Ministry Fair. It means the abiding and steadfast work of all the committees who, week in and week out, keep this parish running. It means each one of us, asking where in the Body of Christ we belong, striving, as Paul says, for the greater gifts—that is, being our authentic, true selves as a member of this parish.

In one of my favorite movies, Tender Mercies, which many of us watched on movie night together last year, Robert Duvall plays the role of Mac Sledge, a washed up, alcoholic country singer, who awakens at a run-down Texas roadside motel and gas station after a night of heavy drinking. He meets the motel owner, a young widow named Rosa Lee, played by Tess Harper, and offers to work in exchange for a room. Rosa Lee, whose husband was killed in Vietnam, is raising her young son, Sonny, on her own. She agrees to let Mac stay under the condition that he not drink while working and living there. The two begin to develop feelings for one another, mostly during quiet evenings sitting alone and sharing bits of their life stories. Mac resolves to give up alcohol and start his life anew. After some time passes, he and Rosa Lee wed. They start attending a Baptist church on a regular basis. Mac’s redemption and self-improvement run parallel with his conversion to Christianity. Mac is baptized for the first time, along with Sonny. Afterwards, Sonny asks Mac whether he feels any different, to which Mac responds, “Not yet,” indicating Mac’s belief that his reconciliation with God will eventually lead to transformation, over time—in Kairos, or sacred time.Mac’s response to a fan who asks if he was really “The Mac Sledge,” the country music star— “Yes, ma’am, I guess I was” — suggests that his former self has been washed away through baptism and he is open to the mystery of who he is becoming.During one scene, Rosa Lee tells Mac, “I say my prayers for you and when I thank the Lord for his tender mercies, you’re at the head of the list.” Mac did nothing to guarantee or deserve such a miracle. Despite his at times selfish and abusive past, Rosa Lee takes him in and eventually falls in love with him: It is an undeserved grace, a gift of providence from a simple woman who continued to pray for him and to be grateful for him. Mac experiences his ongoing spiritual resurrection even as he wrestles with addiction, and death, in both the past—Sonny’s father in the Vietnam War—and present—his own daughter in a car accident. He also had to die to his old ways of being in the world. In the church, we call this “metanoia”-a kind of turning around, and healing in the process. One might say that Mac found a new “vocatio”—a new calling—beyond that of being a country music star. He rose from the waters of his baptism with a grace-full gift. He was transformed by love. And so are we.

Our language of vocation is problematic not just in its churchly usage (where the distinctions and congruities of “inner” and “outer” calls can trip us up) but in the more common reality of a multiplicity of calls with competing claims upon the stewardship of our lives. We do not have just one vocation, of course, and we sometimes struggle to balance different responsibilities and relationships. Anointing any one of our vocations as somehow holier than another may be a dangerous thing. Was my role as a professor more of a vocation than my marriage, or as a counselor more important than teaching, or serving for a time among you all most important, or is my responsibility as a citizen less than my relationship to my children, and now, to my grandchildren? The claims of others call out to us, often by name, and often out of genuine need. When Thee Smith, my twin brother in ordination, and I were ordained at the Cathedral, Bishop Alexander said that we should remember that we are not professors who happened to be ordained, but priests, after the order of Melchizedek, who happen to teach. I have found this to be a deeply important and significant ontological understanding of vocation. It is a vocational tapestry that begins right here, at this altar, on Sunday and flows out from there into the world. It is a tapestry of many colors, many threads, the most significant of which is, I believe, our Baptismal thread—guiding, sustaining, enriching the whole. And what if our vocations seem to change during our lives? If what one once felt called to do or be no longer seems right, what then? Sometimes, of course, the covenants of the past must hold us in faithfulness. But sometimes new callings arise, and lives are remade in response. What of those who are adrift, unsure of any calling? Our lovely imagery of vocation then seems naïve, better suited for the supposed stability and limited choices of an earlier age. As Wendell Berry reminds us;

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work

and when we no longer know which way to go,

we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

In the Episcopal Church we are comfortable with the mystery of asking questions, being curious and open to how God might be calling us into a flourishing and generative future. But consider this: the calling of Jesus in today’s Gospel—scripture having been fulfilled in that moment—is not about a job or a career. It is not a word of mission, sending him into the future; at least, not at the outset. The word of baptism is first about the delight of God in this beloved, this chosen, this child called by name. Not a call to do, but a calling that names us. I love to imagine God delighting in Jesus, and in each of us, as any parent delights in her or his child. As for Jesus, my sisters and brothers, so it is for us. Our first calling, the baptismal calling, is the one that simply loves and names: You are my child. I delight in you. The words embrace us and promise to hold us. This is where it begins, and this is also, we dare claim, the last word, the one that holds our future. Yet between that beginning and that end, this baptismal call will often become a call to action. It will mean mission and ministry and all kinds of tasks. It means what our parish—our entire wonderful parish, from flowers and altars to tractors and caring for these acres, to Eucharistic visitors and to extending hospitality in countless ways, and on and on—what this space looked like last Sunday, and what it looks like every week, as we become the Body of Christ in the world. Anointing is a sign of blessing, but it is also a commissioning. As it was for Jesus, so it is for us, the Body of Christ in the world. Our parents and teachers and scores of others called us and sent us to the vocations of our lives. These vocations have come through human voices and relationships, institutions, and communities; they call to us in all the ways our lives find form and function. The tasks and duties do matter, but what abides — our identity, our belonging, our hope –begins when we hear “You are my child, beloved,” and we are raised to the new life of grace; sustained by the Holy Spirit; given an inquiring and discerning heart; the courage to will and to persevere; a spirit to know and to love God; and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.” We promise to go forth into the world, respecting te dignity of every human being. And so it is with each of us. I pray that our vocations, whatever they may be and however they are unfolding, are warmed by the Holy Fire that lives in each of us. And so, dear ones, my annual report is this…a love letter to this parish, and a deep bow of gratitude for each of you. In this season of the Episcopal church, changing as it is in so many ways, the “lay led, clergy supported” vision is becoming a reality in this parish. And I pray we remember that the Holy Spirit who anointed us on the day of our Baptism is there to assist, encourage, inspire, and sustain us. I give thanks for each of you, and for the ministries we share in this sacred space, and beyond. Amen.

Second Sunday after Epiphany – year C – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: John – 21-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good Morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this second Sunday after the Epiphany. After the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus and the descent of the Dove at the baptism of Jesus, the Epiphany season celebrates the beginning of miracles or “signs” in John’s story of the wedding at Cana. We read this story at Epiphany because the theme of this season of our liturgical year is the “showing forth” or manifestation of Jesus—who he is and what he is about. The changing of water into wine was the first time Jesus gave a real sign to his disciples and others in this way—this Epiphany. I want to visit with you this morning considering this first sign and the implications of this for our lives together at Holy Family. Put in theological terms, this reading from John’s Gospel builds upon the deep and rich history of traditional Jewish feasts with the immediacy, and perhaps urgency of Jesus’ life among his people. In this case, the water in the jars—representing a sacred ritual from institutional Judaism, is set aside for purification. The new revelation of who Jesus is builds upon the “old dispensation” as TS Eliot put it in his poem about the journey of the Magi. There is also the theological connection to the words of Isaiah, who likens the life of Jesus as Messiah to a wedding, and the joy of God’s people to the joy of a bride and bridegroom.

Theological musings aside, however, this is a really good story. Mary tells her son to do something for these folks whose wedding feast—and they were major social events often lasting for days—was in serious peril. Jesus tells Mary that all of this is none of his business and that he has other plans—another agenda—about how and when he will reveal himself. His time has not yet come.

Mary essentially ignores his response and assumes that Jesus is going to be a good Jewish boy and listen to his mother—and he does. Now, what we know about social customs in those days is that to have run out of wine was akin to committing a big social faux pas—a potentially disgraceful disaster that the families might never live down. Wine was the plumb line—if you will—that kept the celebration moving. So, Jesus must decide what to do. He must decide whether to wait before he makes himself known, before he reveals what he learned when God said, “you are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Or rather to act now, responding to the human need presenting itself in this moment, here and now. Jesus acts, the wedding is saved, and the bride and groom are given a new chance—the celebration is given new life. Now, if we take a step back and look at the big picture, we see that this story is not really about the bride and groom. In one sense, it isn’t even about Jesus. The first time Jesus makes himself known—the first time he “shows forth”—if you will, he does so not according to his plans or his timetable, but in response to human need. Jesus’ first manifestation of his true nature was not for or about Jesus. He didn’t call the media together for the cultural equivalent of a “breaking news” event—with which we are all so familiar these days—and then demonstrate a miracle. Rather, the true signs of his calling and identity were drawn out of him in the context of a real-life event, in relationship to people in his day-to-day existence, and out of their needs, not his.

So, dear ones, I want to suggest that what it means and what it looks like for Jesus to be the Messiah is given expression in this moment, amid a relatively mundane moment of human life and need. Who he was and what he had to give, then, were not done for him or his own self-aggrandizement. These qualities, the essence of his being, existed always and only for others—from the very beginning.  

Now, let’s turn for just a moment to the Epistle. We recall that in many of his letters, some written from prison, Paul is about the state of the church in the first century. There were many conflicts due to infighting and miscommunication. Folks in Corinth, for example, were keeping secrets from one another and, as is so often the case when religion goes bad, they were more concerned about being right than being in relationship. They were saying things like “this gift of the spirit is mine, this way of doing things is mine, this way of being in the world is mine; this form of spirituality—this religion…is mine.” And you see, what Paul says to them is what Jesus discovered when the wine gave out. Paul says “What you have been given—your spiritual gifts—are not for you. Rather, Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.” What you have is not for you. What you have is ultimately not even about you. The folks in Corinth could never get their religion right, or their lives right, until they realized that being right was much less important than being in relationship. When Paul references the Spirit as he does in the text for this morning, he is reminding us to tend this gift carefully—the gift of what theologian Ronald Rolheiser called our “Divine spark” or the Holy flame we have each been given. What we have been given is not for us. It is given so we might give it away, in love. So it is with most of our gifts.

Once when I was in graduate school, a gift to be sure, I used a big word in the presence of my grandmother, whom I dearly loved and hated to disappoint. She was quiet for a moment and said “Sweetheart, we are so proud of you for going on with your schooling. But remember that what you are learning—all this new knowledge—can be used to build walls that separate you from others, or bridges that reach out to them. When you use a big word and you don’t really need to, you are building a wall. And it’s like putting a ten-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head.”

What Jesus had, who he was, by the gift of God, was not for him or even about him. It was given so that he might choose to give his life away. What we have, individually and in this wonderful congregation, this Holy Family, is not for us. It is for the common good. And yet this is the great good news—this is Gospel—that when we give, we become part of something much greater than we can possibly be on our own. There is, as the theologian Paul Tillich put it, “a center, a direction, a meaning to our lives. Jesus offers new wine, a new being, new creation.” We are not created to live lives that are closed-in upon ourselves, protective, possessive, and defensively preoccupied with being right. Another of my wise grandmother’s sayings, usually from the pulpit of her garden, was “Sweetheart, remember that a person all wrapped up in themselves is a very small package.” Rather, we are creatures born to be in relationship. And this means being as fully present, at this moment, as we can be.

Jesus chose to abandon his plans; his schedule; his timetable, for relationship with something much larger. At the wedding in Cana of Galilee, he chose to act—to manifest this new creation. In doing so, he shows us what human life can be like. As the poet Goethe once said, “Anything you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Act, boldly, and Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.” Today is our wonderful ministry fair, envisioned by Parish Life, and hosted by so many who give themselves away week in and week out. Let the Spirit you have been given allow your imagination to see new possibilities for your life at Holy Family. We need your Divine Spark, and let’s remember that there are many, many ways to give something having nothing to do with money. Remember that we come to resemble what we love and hold dear or, as Augustine said of the Eucharist, “Behold who you are, become what you receive.” Or as our fellow Episcopalian and poet Mary Oliver wrote:

Why worry about the loaves and fishes?

If you say the right words, the wine expands.

If you say them with love

and the felt ferocity of that love

and the felt necessity of that love,

the fish explode into many.

Imagine him, speaking,

and don’t worry about what is reality,

or what is plain, or what is mysterious.

If you were there, it was all those things.

If you can imagine it, it is all those things.

Eat, drink, be happy.

Accept the miracle.

Accept, too, each spoken word

spoken with love.

My friends, sometimes we can get so caught up in how something is possible that we forget simply to enjoy it. This poem by Mary Oliver invites us to accept the miracle, spoken with love, not just of the loaves and fishes, or the wine in Cana, but of our very existence, which is perhaps the greatest miracle of all. I believe this is especially true when we live beyond ourselves, into the new being of God’s new creation, where there is plenty of wine at the wedding. Amen

First Sunday after Epiphany – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this 2^nd Sunday after the Epiphany. During this season we gather in community to explore the mystery of the Incarnation, and to pay attention to those ways Jesus is calling each of us to explore how we might bear the Light of Christ into the darkness. Today’s lectionary passages provide us with the occasion to reflect on how we are formed and shaped by our participation in worship in this sacred space. As the lovely Psalm appointed for today says,

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you…”

And in the Gospel text we hear the wonderful invitation implicit in each of our Baptism’s to respond to God’ call in our lives. This reminds me of a quote from St. Augustine which, translated, goes something like this: “Behold what you are…become what you receive.” In some way, each of the passages we heard read this morning have to do with the deeply compelling narratives of knowing and being known by God, and by one another, and with the process of coming to know ourselves, and our Christian vocation, in deeper ways. At our Baptism—and those of others—we hear the same message: remember who, and whose, you are. In Baptism and in the Eucharist we discover the deepest truth about ourselves: that we are beloved of and by God. This is our deepest identity, and yet it takes a lifetime to live into the full truth of this. This narrative is at the heart of our journey, with Christ, into the fullness of our participation in the Body of Christ. So, this quote from St. Augustine, “Behold what you are…become what you receive,” originated in a homily in which he reflected on this deepest of truths in our faith—that through our participation in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist we are transformed into the Body of Christ, to be taken, blessed, broken, and given for the world.

This morning I want to invite us to think theologically about what this might mean, especially during this season of Epiphany. What might it mean to behold what and who we are, and to become what we receive in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist? The priest and writer Henri Nouwen has suggested that the words “taken,” “blessed,” “broken,” and “given” summarize our lives, because as Christians we are in fact called to be bread for the world, taken, blessed, broken, and given. In this season, as we look for the manifestations of God’s Incarnation in our lives, each of these things is likely happening somehow, somewhere in our lives, right now. If only we are willing to pay attention. If we are willing, that is, to listen to and heed the call, the invitation offered to us. On the wall in my study at the seminary for many years was a quote from the psychologist Carl Jung which reads “Bidden, or not bidden, God is present.” Indeed, and knowing that we have been chosen by God, that we are beloved of God and precious to God, is the first step in our response to God’s call.

I believe that every time we recognize Jesus’ presence in our lives and in others, even in the most mundane moments, it is because he has already approached us—has already seen God in us. And then we have the choice to live as if we believe that this is true, that we are taken—we are chosen, blessed, broken, and given. This is in part what it means to behold who we are…and become what we see and receive. The Gospels affirm this again and again, don’t they, in the images of the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep and his sheep hear his voice; in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well; and the examples of the man by the pool at Bethsaida, and Mary in the garden—each represents a moment in which Jesus is present, coming to meet another, but in some way unrecognized…. Behold what you are, become what you see and receive… Jesus always recognizes us, but we do not always recognize him. What difference might it make if we live into the belief that Jesus is present in every moment, every person, every situation, asking us to come, and see?

And, here’s where two threads of my vocational tapestry find common ground. One of the places where psychologists and theologians have fertile room for conversation is in the importance of knowing and being known, the need for mutual recognition. Just as God understands the need for us to seek out those moments when we know ourselves in clearer ways, and recognize the Light of Christ in ourselves and others, psychologists understand in ever more compelling ways how deeply important to development it is to be recognized. Psychologist Jessica Benjamin has written “As she cradles her newborn child and looks into its eyes, the mother says, “I believe she knows me. You do know me, don’t you? Yes, you do.” Never will she feel more strongly, than in those first days of her baby’s life, the intense mixture of its being part of herself, utterly familiar, and yet utterly new, unknown, and other.” Yes, and therein lies a tale, because this narrative of relational development toward the path of recognition, which occurs over the course of a lifetime, is at the very heart of what it means to be human, and to become who we are called by God to be. We are and we become our attachments over the course of our lives. One of the areas where philosophy, religion, and psychotherapy overlap is the idea of “agency.” Research has consistently shown that when people see themselves as engaged in change, and capable of progress, they are happier. One study of psychotherapy patients showed that when patients considered themselves to be engaged in a narrative of development and growth, they had a sense of agency and their mental health improved.” Yes, and I believe this is true both psychologically and spiritually—among other ways—and it is the message at the heart of today’s Gospel. Our word for this agency is “Metanoia”; we become the light we receive, and then we share it with others…we give it away.

When I was an inquirer on the journey of discernment regarding ordination, I was assigned for a 9-month stint at the Alzheimer’s unit at Wesley Woods. Among my duties was to make sure that residents on the Alzheimer’s unit who at some point had indicated a desire to attend worship, were taken downstairs for church. Nancy Baxter, our supervisor, assigned each of us one or two patients for whom we were responsible. One of my assigned patients was a lovely woman whom I’ll call Mildred. I knew that she had been a school teacher in a rural county south of Atlanta. She spent her whole life teaching, faithfully, in one school, and never married, and attended the little Methodist church in which she had been baptized as a child. She attended that church right up until she left for Wesley Woods. Photos of her former students—and these were her children—filled her room. In the time I knew her Mildred did not say a single word to me. In fact, I never observed her in conversation at all. I knew that she had distant relatives who visited her—nieces and nephews I think—but I never met them. All that I knew about her I gleaned from her chart, and from her caregivers. Over the course of several months, I would make my way to her room to retrieve her in her wheelchair—she was always ready for church, dressed immaculately and with a ribbon in her hair—and then I would settle her into her place in the congregation and I would leave to assist with worship. After the service was over, I would wheel her back to her room and bid her goodbye.

One day a strong thunderstorm interrupted our routine. As I headed to the elevator to bring her to worship, the storm was increasing in fury, with lighting and thunder and strong winds. The power flickered off, and on, and the elevators weren’t working, so I decided to take the stairs. The lights went out completely as I made my way to the fourth floor. I slowly climbed the stairs to Mildred’s floor. The lights came on, but dimly, as the generator kicked in, and the storm became more intense. I got to her room, and it was empty. Where was she? She was always ready and waiting for me to pick her up. I realized that my dislocation amid the storm, and the break in our routine—well, my routine anyway–had made visible what until now had gone unnoticed by me. I had over the previous months become attached to Mildred—perhaps she reminded me of my maternal grandmother, who had recently died—but in any case, I cared about her and was fond of her, and suddenly, I needed to find her. I felt strangely alone. I made my way into the common room, where residents were gathered in a safe, centrally located space, and I searched for her, among the others.  I looked around the room for her, and finally there she was, dressed and ready for church, seated amid the huddled patients in the day-room. And for a moment it was as if I was a small child again, afraid of the storm outside, scared and alone, and I thought “Do you know me? Tell me that you know me…say that you recognize me.” And then she smiled at me, for the first and only time. And I came to myself again. And here’s the amazing thing. Once the storm was over, and we headed down to church, I decided to sit right next to Mildred. Once the service was underway, we prepared to sing a hymn, so I took one of the lovely Methodist hymnals we used for our Episcopal services at Wesley Woods, turned to the appointed page, and held it up for me and for Mildred, not expecting much from either of us, truth told. And the song began, and wonder of wonders, Mildred began to sing like a trained chorister. She had a beautiful voice, and she knew every word of that hymn, and all the others we sang that afternoon, by heart. This from a woman I’d never heard utter a single word. She had no need of the hymnal, so I put down and listened to her. Over the years, through the music of her tradition, and through her participation in the worship of the Body of Christ, She had become what she had received. And, finally, I got it. I could see the face of Christ in her face, and in her faith. And Alzheimer’s could not take that away. Not then, not ever. And as we celebrated the Eucharist I understood in a new way that we are indeed taken, blessed, broken, and given to the world. And I realized, dear one’s, that this is at the heart of our Episcopal faith—how we pray, and our participation in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, gradually shape who we become. If only we will say yes. And in those sacraments, Jesus tells us that he is always there, waiting, and that he knows us and is calling to us—that he’s always known us and has always been there, no matter what storms there may be. Taken, blessed, broken, and yes, given to the world. And so I pray that we may behold who we are, and become what we have received, and live into this beholding and becoming for a lifetime, and beyond. God has called each of us by name. Let’s covenant to remember who, and whose we are together in this Epiphany season. Amen.  

Second Sunday after Christmas – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:`

And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

For from you shall come a ruler

who is to shepherd my people Israel.'”

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this 2^nd Sunday of Christmas. I wish each of you a warm Holy Family welcome on this chilly winter day, and I am so glad you are here with us this morning! The wise men have been journeying home by another road, about which more in a minute, and in his own way, the theologian Martin Luther was among our wise men and women. On October 1512 Luther received his doctorate in theology, and shortly afterward he was installed as a professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. His lectures on the Bible were popular, and within a few years he made the university a center for biblical humanism. As a result of his theological and biblical studies he called into question the practice of selling indulgences. On the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31, 1517, he posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg the notice of an academic debate on indulgences, listing 95 theses for discussion. As the effects of the theses became evident, the Pope called upon the Augustinian order to discipline their member. After a series of meetings, political maneuvers, and attempts at reconciliation, Luther, at a meeting with the papal legate in 1518, refused to recant. Martin Luther was excommunicated on January 3, 1521. The Emperor Charles V summoned him to the meeting of the Imperial Diet at Worms. There Luther resisted all efforts to make him recant, insisting that he had to be proved in error based on Scripture. The Diet passed an edict calling for the arrest of Luther. Luther’s own prince, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, however, had him spirited away and placed for safekeeping in his castle, the Wartburg. Here Luther translated the New Testament into German and began the translation of the Old Testament. He then turned his attention to the organization of worship and education. He introduced congregational singing of hymns, composing many himself, and many of those are in our own hymnal. He also issued model orders of services and published his large and small catechisms for instruction in the faith. During the years from 1522 to his death, Luther wrote a prodigious quantity of books, letters, sermons and tracts. Luther died on February 18, 1546.

The story of the Wise Men, whose visit to Jesus we hear about this morning in Matthew’s Gospel, and will be at the center of a wonderful performance here tomorrow night, has fired the imaginations of countless persons, including Martin Luther, down through the centuries. Often the results have been filled more with enthusiasm than with historical accuracy. Writers and artists have taken these few verses from Matthew and expanded them beyond recognition. This may have had to do with the exotic title, “Wise Men from the east,” that caused people’s minds to work overtime. I confess that I, too, find these words bring a flood of images and questions to mind. Were they astronomers, astrologers, kings, or scholars? And where in the vast, inscrutable, mysterious east did their journey originate? The great artist Botticelli created one of his most well-known works, called “The Adoration of the Magi,” based on this theme. It is indeed a lovely work of art. Commissioned for the chapel in Santa Maria Novella, it was painted in 1475, and according to some art historians it honors the Medici family, generous patrons of Botticelli, by interpreting the three wise men as portraits of Cosimo, Giovanni, and Guiliano Medici. There is some dispute about this.     

Of course, the Epiphany was a common subject in Florentine art, and Botticelli had already produced two versions of this mysterious sojourn. Somewhat more accurate, perhaps, was T.S. Eliots’ poem “The Journey of the Magi” quoted by the Anglican Bishop Richard Hooker many years ago… “Just the worst time of the year for a journey and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And Eliot indeed takes us on that journey with the Magi, pushing them to the edge so that we too, take that journey, “And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters, and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly and the village’s dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches, with the voices ringing in our ears, saying that this was all folly.” Matthew’s Gospel does not clear up all our questions for us. And we do not begrudge Eliot his questions either, do we? Was it all for nothing, this rough and long journey—and remember, the Holy Child was by now likely one year old—or was there something to all this talk of light, and a King?

Well, Martin Luther’s sermon on the coming of the Magi may have captured the true feeling that surrounded this event. The great reformer described how perplexed these “wise men” were upon arriving in Jerusalem. Not only were they road weary and saddle sore after having come from Persia; not only were they tired and weathered after week upon week of relentless travel, but they were ready for a celebration. They were all set for torches and feasting, merrymaking and dancing in the streets—yet when they arrived Jerusalem was as quiet as a library. Not a creature was stirring. Luther in his sermon went on to say, “The birth of a puppy would have caused more excitement” than the birth of Jesus in Jerusalem. The wise men must have been…as T.S. Eliot suggests—haunted by the uncertainty: had their stargazing been wrong? And, had this light from the heavens pointed to another reality…something entirely different from the birth of the “king of the Jews”? Had they journeyed all this way in vain? The only “king of the Jews” they encounter in Jerusalem is Herod. And he is no surprise whatsoever. Like many other “kings” he wields great power, with many under his command. He extravagantly renovated and enlarged the temple. And he is very concerned about someone out there still in diapers who is purported to be more powerful than him. Herod was no more than a vassal of the Roman Emperor, but he was a skilled politician who had secured control over half a dozen provinces. To his court the wise men came. Herod instructed them to report back when they had found their king. Of the gifts presented to Jesus the gold represented kingship, incense for priesthood, and myrrh, a spice used in burials, for availing sacrifice. Prompted by God, the Wise Men found a different way back to their homes. Herod never saw them again. 

Perhaps the most searching question in this rich, wonderful, mysterious story is: who would have figured that pagans from Persia would come to the Holy Land to show the people of the Covenant what God is doing in their midst? Or that these witnesses would not only gaze up at a star, but actually step out in faith and follow it to a foreign land to discover what it meant? These characters could not be more removed from the Jewish Citizenry in Jerusalem—in heritage and outlook. And yet God uses them—neither Jew nor Christian—to show that the Light has come. And what do we know of this Light? The poet Isaiah wrote: The Light has come to dispel the darkness that had covered the earth and all its people. Indeed, the Epiphany we observe tomorrow reminds us that the life of faith is a life of seeking, accepting, and acknowledging the gift of light that God has freely bestowed upon us. And one of the focal points of Epiphany is our Baptism, through which each of us is given gifts by God. Like the wise men who came before us, we are those people who searched for signs of hope and reconciliation and find that search to have led us here, to this place and time.

The theologian Gabriel Marcel told the story of sitting in a village café in the German Alps, just at dusk. On a hillside road in the distance, in the growing darkness, the village lamplighter moved slowly up the hill, lighting each lamp as he walked. Marcel could not actually see the lamplighter, only the light he left as he walked up the hill above the village. In just this way, he later wrote, God’s gifts to us illumine the darkness and make a path for others to follow. Because a stranger he would never see lit the way, Marcel was moved to consider the light in a new way. Because strangers in a far off country once searched the heavens for a sign, we are here now and know something of the light that can drive away all darkness. Because of the stewardship of a man named Paul, once an avowed enemy of the Light, we have been made one body with the Light. Because Martin Luther had the courage to spread the light of the Gospel, we are transformed, and we discover a spark of transcendence beyond our former selves, or, as T.S. Eliot put it so well in The Journey of the Magi, “No longer at ease here, in the old dispensations, with an alien people clutching their gods.” We are called to be in discernment about who and what we worship, the idols we are tempted to create in the service of power, and control, and which risk further marginalizing those already on the margins. Indeed, we clutch our false gods when we are afraid, and when we forget to respect the dignity of every human being. The gift of the incarnation of Christ has been given to us, through this wondrous Light, by Grace, as Martin Luther reminded us, and as our passage from Romans says so clearly, so that we might give them to others, that all might be reconciled one to another. We are called to share the divine life of the one who humbled himself to share our humanity, so that the Light might dispel the darkness, and shine throughout all the earth. Amen.

First Sunday after Christmas – Bill Harkins

Isaiah 61:10; John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen.

I bid each of you good morning, Happy New Year come Wednesday, and a heartfelt welcome to Holy Family on this first Sunday after Christmas!  Just a week ago we heard the lovely narrative from the Gospel of Luke, telling us of the earthly origins of Jesus in the form of the birth and infancy narratives of which we are all so fond. The Gospel of John, in contrast, does not include an account of the birth of Christ as do Luke and Matthew, who are ever the storytellers. They charm us with angels and shepherds, a virgin birth in a stable, a villain named Herod, and heroes in the form of peripatetic kings. In John, who is more of a theologian, we are given in these first 18 verses pure poetry in the form of a lovely Christological hymn and a dazzling, paradoxical conundrum: the light by which everyone sees came into the world, yet the world did not see it. Our culture sometimes bears this out. Last year a friend of mine made his way to a local store on Christmas Eve to get a couple of strings of new lights for an unexpectedly tall tree, and an extra stocking-stuffer or two. The employees were already pulling down the Christmas displays and decorations. My colleague asked one harried, soon-to-be former elf about it, and he said “When this place closes in an hour or two, Christmas is over.” My Methodist erstwhile next door neighbor, who delighted in what I called my Epiphany burning bush, teased me every year when I celebrate the 12 days of Christmas—beginning with Christmas Day—with additional lights lovingly placed on the humble boxwood in my front yard. I suspect even the Chickadees at my feeder thought I was bit nutty.

Is John right in saying that the light came into the world, and the world did not see it? Does that include us? John tells us that the Word became flesh in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word that is the source of light and life for the world—and the innate goodness of creation is made manifest in this light…this life…this Word made flesh. So, John is not concerned with the birth narrative of Jesus so much as with the cosmic dimension of the always already there Word of God, made manifest in the birth of Christ. Indeed, in verse 14 we find the consummate expression of Johns Christology: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Logos—the Word—became part of human history and dwells—the literal translations is “pitches a tent”—among us, even now. From this fullness—this abundance—we have all received grace upon grace. It is important to remember that law, instruction, and guidance for living were given through Moses, but grace and truth have now become flesh in the form of Jesus. Through the Incarnation, Jesus became one of us so we could see, hear, and touch the living Word of God, and participate in that Divine fullness. Yet, John cautions us that this light came into the world unperceived. What are we to do with this paradox?

The theologian Ronald Goetz has suggested that trying to find a systematic consistency in the Gospel of John is ultimately not the point. Rather, he suggests, John is holding up a mirror which reflects the true nature of faith—and the gratitude for the fruitful tension that comes with it. Poets know this better than most of us, I suspect. Robert Frost once observed that “heaven gives its glimpses only to those not in position to look too close,” like seeing a flower from the window of a speeding train. One may not know the variety of the flower, but one understands the essence of its beauty. Like such fleeting glimpses, Goetz suggests, God’s revelation cannot be in-errantly recorded, processed, or made serviceable.” Yet, in faith, we “see” that it may be the most real and abiding thing we possess.

Each year, on the night after the winter solstice, my running buddies and I ventured into the darkness of the trail, with our headlamps lighting the way until we reached a place we affectionately called “Beech Cove.” Deep in the woods, alongside a lovely brook, we turned off our headlamps and let the darkness settle in around us. The water could be heard in a new way, and Orion became visible above us. Wendell Berry, our American treasure, wrote this about the dark: “To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet, and dark wings.” Anyone who has spent time in the woods at night will know the truth of this poem, and its paradoxical lesson that we know the light, in part, because we are willing to become familiar with the dark. And, sometimes we know the dark by virtue of the fact that we are human, and vulnerable, and in spite of this, amid our darkest moments, we see glimpses of light.

And this is where the Gospels of John and Luke speak to one another, in dialectic fashion perhaps. The incarnation we observe and celebrate in this season means nothing less than that God is no longer a God of the sky, relegated to Orion’s realm, but rather walks in the rhythm of humanity. Now, in Christ, we can gaze upon God, both human and divine, just as light—the Word—is both particle and wave, and in seeing Him we see who we were meant to be.

So there is more to the cry of the infant in that cold, dark stable than meets the eye, and sometimes, even if through a glass darkly, we glimpse that something more. John, in his paradoxical insistence that the world cannot see the light which supposedly enlightens it, would not deny that even our unknowing, at times uncaring world sees glimpses of the light, if only in our plastic, neon crèches. Despite the sometimes self-indulgent crassness of the season, are there not times when we can see glimpses of our own best selves reflected in the glimpses of light that we can barely make out? We are reminded of W.H. Auden’s similarly paradoxical Christmas Oratorio in which he wrote: “To those who have seen the child, however dimly, however incredulously, The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all…we look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit our self-reflection.” This being human can be so very hard, until we remember that we are held in the hands of a God who chose not to leave us alone. Grace. That’s the word. Sometimes, in the darkness, despite ourselves, we catch a glimpse of it…and of the light from which it comes.

Well, the Gospel of John presents us with quite a different view of Christmas than we find in Luke—different, yes, yet deeply, literally eloquent and equally full of promise, if only we are able to get it. John’s narrative is not so specific; no little town of Bethlehem, no humble manger, no cattle lowing, no shepherds or wise men. Yet we have this incredible, miraculous, life-giving statement that the Word became flesh. God became like us, so that we know God, and God might fully and completely know us…our experience, including our hesitant, uncertain efforts to bear that light into darkness. Jesus risked the vulnerability of becoming human, like us, and in so doing now takes on all the frailties and finitude of flesh-and-blood humanity. Each human soul, my sisters and brothers, is sacred and unique, and Christ dwells there, too. Christ has pitched a tent in each of us, in the particularity of our being, the sacred landscape of our souls. As our collect for today puts it, God has poured upon us the new light of God’s Incarnate Word. Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives. Amen

Christmas Eve – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see– I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

In the name of the God of light and creation, whose loving care surrounds us on this night…Amen. Grace and Peace to you, and welcome, one and all, to Holy Family on this Holy Night! I especially want to extend greetings to those here tonight visiting family and friends. We are blessed by your presence among us, and we welcome you on this Christmas Eve.

“But Mary treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart.” The beauty of this passage from the last part of Luke’s narrative has remained with me for several days. Perhaps this is because our Advent preparations have asked us to be more intentional about cultivating a sense of wonder at the mystery of the season. We, too, have pondered in our hearts the coming Incarnation and its meaning for our lives here, and now. Indeed, the beauty of Luke’s narrative never fails to draw me in with its rich images and moving and mysterious story. We recall the timeless images of this infant in a humble stable, the shepherds’ arrival, and the images of Joseph and Mary huddling together, being present with their son. As is so often true with Gospel narratives; however, Luke’s story of the birth of Christ is not limited to what we first hear or see.

In this season of wonder we need only use our imaginations to fill in some of the gaps in the narrative. Luke doesn’t mention the pain of childbirth, for example, or the radically life-changing event that has occurred in the lives of this young couple: the cries of the infant, the exhaustion and anxiety, the fears that both parents must have felt. And then there are the shepherds. In our mind’s eye we tend to romanticize about them, don’t we—and perhaps the author of Luke does too. We do well to remember that shepherds were not at the pinnacle of society in the day of Jesus’ birth. It’s not as if these guys dropped in from a party at the local Country Club to see the infant who in just a few years would certainly be joining the membership roles there. No, they were marginal, nomadic folk, eking out a subsistence living on the land. They showed up at the stable of Jesus’ birth at the suggestion of angels, no less, and I wonder what Mary’s response might have been. Was she concerned about their earthy appearance? Did she feel moved to shelter the child from these strangers? But the angels did choose them to be the first witnesses of God being born into the world. And we might wonder about this, too. We might ponder in our hearts, as Mary did in hers, that the least in society would be chosen to proclaim a mystery that would transform millions of lives and change the course of history. And I found myself thinking about Joseph, and identifying with him, perhaps most of all. I imagine Joseph worried over many concerns as these events unfolded: his fears about what others were thinking and saying about this child born out of wedlock, what this might mean for the honor of his family as he returned to his ancestral birthplace; and, moreover, the disturbing questions of finding a safe place away from home for the birth to occur—and ending up after all in a stable.    

And then there is this whole business of being “registered,” because the Emperor Quirinius decreed that it be so. Several years ago, I found myself at the local county tag office, standing in a long line that stretched outside into the cold, waiting to “register” my car. I found myself irritated at having to wait, angry that because of a glitch in the system our attempt to do this by mail had failed and feeling that I was somehow above this use of my time. I looked around at my fellow sojourners in line and I began to watch and listen. Most of them were speaking Spanish, and so I could only make out some of what they were saying. Partly because of the language barrier I felt a little isolated and lonely, even in this crowd of people, and I found myself wondering about this. Here, only 4 or 5 miles from my home, I felt like I was in a different world. I thought about the dislocation Mary and Joseph must have felt—the fear and anxiety. I wondered if Joseph was angry about the emperor’s census decree: the seeming arbitrariness of it and the great imposition it had on his young family. I recalled how frightened I was when our first son was born. Vicky and I were both graduate students, living in a new city, poor and scared. Our plans had been radically altered by this new life. And we took our son back to the small house we rented off-campus, and we knew that our world had changed forever. I thought about all of this as I waited there in line, waiting to be registered, and I tried to imagine the exponentially greater sense of fear and dislocation Mary and Joseph must have felt. And Mary treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart…As Mary watched the world, one already radically altered, become stranger by the moment and filled with mystery—there seemed no end to the ways that God was turning their lives upside down. So even in “reading between the lines” we find that this story, one that we hear year after year, brings good news into our midst, wherever we may be, regardless of what’s going on in our lives. For some among us the light and warmth of this space on this evening may seem a sanctuary amid stressful and storm-tossed lives. At times Christmas may occur in our reflection on the long memories of youth, and relationships gone by. For many, this is a time of gathering with friends and family, sometimes in joy, sometimes with anxiety and trepidation: often with a mixture of both.

And what of Joseph… a different kind of father in that culture, to be sure. A friend of mine reminds us that Joseph is the father who braved the ridicule of his society for this child and the boy’s mother. Instead of simply being ‘a righteous man’ by refusing to ‘expose her to public shame,’ Joseph was a just man who refused to ‘dismiss her (and her child) quietly.’ Rather than the standard formulas about female virtue, he trusted a dream that overwhelmed the categories he had been taught about women and men, virtue and righteousness. Having your categories upended, like who’s a sinner and who isn’t, my friend says, is always a good hint that the force we often call the Holy Spirit might be present. The Bible calls scrambled categories metanoia, having your mind changed, often translated ‘repentance.’ I like to think that Jospeh played a big role in teaching Jesus the glory of connection with others and the joy of intimacy.

As I see so often in my clinical work this season can, at times, be one of depression, loneliness, and fear. Regardless of where we are, we can hold on to the wonder of this new birth among us, and in us. This is the mystery and miracle of the Incarnation: God being born into humanity—into each of us: no matter where we find ourselves. And we are reminded in the Gospel of Luke, if we use our imaginations and think of similar instances in our own lives, that this birth doesn’t happen only when the house is in order. It doesn’t happen when the mess has been cleaned up in anticipation of guests, and our world is a tidy place. Rather, Jesus is born into a world as messy and difficult and broken as ours may be at times. He is born into a community and a family that experiences fear and anxiety, torn by conflicts, transitions, and uncertainty, waiting to be “registered” for reasons that are not always clear indeed, reasons that may have to do with the arbitrary indifference of the powers and principalities. The Christ who is Incarnate among us demands that we resist giving in to despair. He is born into a place where those who first bear witness to who he is and what he represents are not those with political power, nor are they scholarly professors or the debutante crowd. Rather, they are those living on the margins of society. And like Mary, we are called to treasure all these words, and with a sense of wonder, to ponder them in our hearts.

Well, recently a group from Holy Family visited a local long-term care and rehabilitation center, where we sang seasonal songs, shared Christmas cookies, and distributed gifts to the residents. There was some confusion about the time and date of our arrival due to some administrative changes at the facility, but despite this initial anxiety all went well. During our visit, I recognized an elderly resident whom I met last year; let’s call her “Susan” to preserve confidentiality. She says very little, and she walks a lot, but when she does talk her refrain is “I need help.” At first, I would sit next to her and ask, “Susan, how can I help you.” Inevitably, she did not answer. But this year, I finally realized that what she most needed was for someone to “see” her, to pay attention to her…to sit alongside her. And so, finally, this year, I got it. The real help Susan needed was for someone to simply show up, and be present, and acknowledge that she existed. This year I simply sat down next to her on the sofa in te atrium, and I was quiet. Silently, she reached out and took my hand, and she was quiet too. This is the antithesis of simply being “registered.” When we allow ourselves to imaginatively enter into this story of the Incarnation we find that it shines light into all the dark and scary places of our lives: lives lived in relation to a God to whom all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid. The coming of Christ breaks open the darkness, rearranges our perceptions of the world, and invites us to live our lives in response to a deeper truth. Here’s the truth of the message of the Incarnation: Let the Word of Christ dwell in you. Most of us, most of the time perhaps, think of the Word as being in a book, rather than the Word of Christ being in each of us. A newborn life radically changes the lives of any family—as it did for Mary and Joseph. An encounter with a stranger in need can change our lives and invoke life-giving compassion for all. Tonight, we celebrate the Word made flesh, dwelling among us. Like Mary and Joseph, we are called to be co-participants in the transformation of our lives, and the lives of those whom we encounter. We have indeed seen a great light. As we treasure all these words and ponder them in our hearts, let that light shine forth in each of us. I pray that it may be so for us all. Amen

Fourth Sunday of Advent – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Lesson:  Micah 5:2-5a

You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in labor has brought forth;

then the rest of his kindred shall return

to the people of Israel.

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth;and he shall be the one of peace.

Canticle 15:

The Song of Mary

Luke 1:46-55

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * 

for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed: *

the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him *

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, *

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *

for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

The promise he made to our fathers, *

to Abraham and his children for ever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: *as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 10:5-10

When Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,

but a body you have prepared for me;

in burnt offerings and sin offerings

you have taken no pleasure.

Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’

(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The Gospel: Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. I bid Grace and peace to each of you. And a warm and heartfelt welcome to Holy Family on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. There is a wonderful image in the texts during Advent that is evocative of so much, for me, as we journey to the manger. It has to do with the willingness of Joseph to remain steadfast, to be present in the fullness of the moment at hand, and to abide in relationship with Mary, and soon with Jesus, and ultimately, with all of us. He does so in the face of much ambiguity and several contested narratives, and as such, he provides a role model both for fatherhood, and for leadership.

We recall that in the version of this story from Luke appointed for today, Mary is visiting her cousin Elizabeth, who had her own challenges around the birth of their son John—she and Zechariah—and Elizabeth says that upon hearing Mary’s greeting the child in her womb leaped for joy. This is such a lovely image indeed, and it appeals to both the neuroscience nerd in me and the pastoral theologian side of me. John Gottman, a researcher and Marriage and Family therapist in Seattle, has created a program called “Bringing Baby Home,” in which he gets expectant mothers in their third trimester and their spouses or partners together with other couples for parenting groups. This is especially geared for young fathers who may feel disconnected from both mother and baby after the baby’s arrival. Among the research results were these findings:

• Both fathers and mothers who took the program (compared to those that did not) showed greater sensitivity and responsiveness to their infant’s signals. This was particularly true for fathers. In some cases grandparents, aunts, uncles, and others also took part.
• Several indicators of father-infant attachment security were rated more positively in families who had taken the program.
• 1-year-old babies in the workshop group were rated as responding more positively to their fathers’ soothing (this is likely to reflect something about father-baby interaction quality as well as infant temperament).
• Fathers who took the program reported being more involved in parenting and feeling more satisfied and appreciated for their parental contributions.

Well, you get the idea, and what this tells us, among other things, is that something is happening at the level of neurochemistry and neuroplasticity—changes in the infants’ brain in utero—which is life-giving for all. We are hard-wired it seems, for connection and community, in ways that are incarnational, embodied, and deeply human. And connection, relationships of deep meaning that are supportive and nurturing, are at the heart of our readings for today. Relationships give birth to empathy, and compassion, and this gives meaning to our lives.

The astounding legacy of our combined evolutionary status as mammals is the power to impact the lives of people we love and whose lives touch ours, as our relationships activate certain neural pathways, and the brain’s inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them. Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom and what we love. Elizabeth loved her cousin Mary, and she loved what her intuition told her about the fulfillment this new life would bring to fruition. In Matthew’s Gospel we see demonstrated so well that Joseph loved Mary, and chose to remain steadfast. This is a model for us all, whether we are parents, grandparents, cousins or kin of some other kind, or not, as we seek to remain faithful in times of uncertainty, transition, ambiguity, and difficulty.

When we get to this wonderful drama in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, dear ones, the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, and Joseph’s role in the narrative are fundamentally about this “leap of joy,” and about staying in relationship rather than needing to be right. And these are narratives of abundance of which we can partake, and pay forward. Both Mary and Elizabeth had remarkable experiences surrounding their pregnancies, and they share the awareness of Divine involvement. Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat, rings down through the centuries, a fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy, and the validation of a God who cares for all creation and loves it into redemption with justice and grace.

The early Christian church used the story of the visitation in Luke as a foundation for the Incarnation. Luke includes it as part of the birth narrative because the church was seeking to explain and affirm that the birth of Jesus was not just another one of those “virgin births.” Many rulers had claimed similar origins to justify their deification. The forming church wanted to clarify the God incarnate, human and divine, as an affirmation of humanity, and that is what begins to attract people to this remarkable gospel and to Jesus. And Joseph is a reminder to me that my role as a father is a calling—a vocation in the deepest sense of that term—which is a sacred gift. My sons are grown now, and Vicky and I now have four grandchildren, so the circle of life goes on, and my role as father has grown to include being a grandfather. I am so very grateful for all that my sons have taught me. The times when I have been most at risk as a father have been those times when I was tempted to privilege being right over staying connected…staying in relationship. Because you see, it is possible to do both. Joseph taught us this, and in order to do this he had to suspend disbelief long enough to see the miracle of the Incarnation unfold. I pray that we might do the same, especially when we are scared, and feeling vulnerable, and alone.

This last Sunday of Advent gives us a brief time to reflect upon and kindle within ourselves the light of the incarnate Lord. The foundation is laid for what we will find at the manger. Now let us prepare to join the shepherds and the angels in great joy over what God has done for us. Who knows how this may shape us, and at what levels, in the year to come? The Incarnation is finally about being present here, and now, and as fully as we can to what the world offers us. In one way or another, every wisdom tradition I know says that we can cultivate a mindfulness of being present to this moment. It’s just a matter of opening our eyes and appreciating what I call “secrets hidden in plain sight.” But we can’t do that when we’re obsessing about the past or the future, or about what we don’t have, or allowing a thousand distractions to prevent us from noticing the gift of “here and now.” Imagine where we might be had Elizabeth, or Joseph, or Mary…or Jesus, had not been present to the moments at hand.

Here’s a poem from William Stafford that reminds us to pay attention to such simple gifts as what the present might offer, respecting and receiving them for the gifts they are. Look around, he says, “starting here, right in this room,” and see what we’ve been given. He’s not advocating passivity. He’s advocating receptivity and gratitude, without which life becomes hollow, and without which the Incarnation is only a possibility we have not lived out in our own lives.

You Reading This, Be Ready

by William Stafford

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. The interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life—

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

I am so grateful that Elizabeth, Mary, and yes, Joseph too, found ways to be present with the gift of the Incarnation. It is indeed a gift that keeps on giving, then, now, and always, all wrapped up into this moment of mystery, grace, and transformation. Amen.

Third Sunday of Advent – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this third Sunday of Advent. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians appointed for today, we witness as a lovely thank you note from jail morphs into a teachable moment to a congregation in conflict. Paul was never one to let an opportunity to instruct his fledgling congregations pass by. So he tells them “stand firm, rejoice, pray and do not be afraid to ask for what you need; be grateful, and show gentleness. “Do not be anxious,” he reminds them, “the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” As hopeful as they are, these can be difficult words to hear, especially in light of recent world events and the fear, anxiety, and suspicion they engender. I’m sure some in Philippi were shaking their heads, too. And yet, his letter is not unmindful of the realities of suffering and conflict. Indeed, we know that Paul was in jail when he wrote it, and a visitor brought him news of conflict amidst the congregation back in Philippi, which must have seemed to Paul so very far away. Political and religious polarities were everywhere then, too. The readers of the letter were experiencing persecution and had begun to disagree and argue among themselves.

Out of context, the exhortations of Paul connote an unrealistic attitude toward life, a Pollyanna religion that ignores the harsh realities of being human and perhaps a more realistic call for a stoic like serenity. But as my erstwhile New Testament colleague and friend Charlie Cousar has said, “Paul’s call for gratitude and peace emerge from and are directed to what some would call the dark side of human experience.” And yet, they end in hope. To that end we might ask of the text some tough theological questions: How, exactly, is the Lord near as Paul assures us? Is God coming soon, or is God already present – or both? How can we possibly not worry? Is prayer the antidote to worry? And what, exactly, does it mean to have the peace which passes all understanding? How do we know it when we see it, or more to the point, how can we find it? Can we cultivate this, and is it the same as happiness? William Alexander Percy, in his hauntingly lovely Episcopal hymn, says “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod; yet let us pray for but one thing — the marvelous peace of God.” And John the Baptist, who cannot be cleaned up and sanitized for any family Christmas card, gives us a dose of prophetic tough love in today’s Gospel that is anything but peaceful yet ends in hope. What might these paradoxical messages mean, especially during this season of hopeful anticipation?

Well, I may have dug a theological hole out of which I cannot extricate myself, but let’s find out. I actually find Paul’s message to the Philippians to be, in part, a meditation on the relationship between gratitude and the kind of peace to which he refers, and with which our dismissal blessing sends us out each week. We pray that we might embody that peace which passes understanding, to serve others as the Body of Christ in the world, respecting the dignity of every human being. The mystic Meister Eckhart once said that if the only prayer we pray is one of gratitude that would be enough. I believe there is a clear, compelling correlation between gratitude and the kind of peace for which Paul asks us to pray. I believe that what theologians might call transcendence—or a kind of otherworldly peace which we can experience here, and now—is deeply connected to gratitude—or to what Paul in this passage is calling “thanksgiving.”

Recently, one of my favorite authors, the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, died of cancer. He was 80 years old. In a remarkable series of brief essays published in the New York Times, he shared coming to terms with the end of life, and his deepening sense of gratitude. Sacks has been described as a Copernicus of the mind and a Dante of medicine who turned the case study into a poetic form, and this was demonstrated through his writing over the course of his long and fully lived life. He managed to embody Donald Winnicott’s autobiographical prayer: “O God, my prayer is that I will be fully alive when I die.” The essays have now been published in a lovely volume entitled, simply and appropriately, “Gratitude.” In the first essay he writes:

At nearly 80…I feel glad to be alive… I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write… to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.” I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done.

And here, he writes in a way that echoes the tone of Paul’s wonderful and mysteriously complex letter to the Philippians:

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

Such intensity of aliveness, Dr. Sacks observes, requires a deliberate distancing from the existentially inessential things with which we fill our daily lives — petty arguments, the stark polarities of politics, the news, which so often seems to repeat itself. With his characteristic mastery of nuance, he points to a crucial distinction:

This is not indifference but a kind of Holy detachment — I still care deeply…I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the young doctor who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.

In these lovely essays Sacks, like the Apostle Paul, demonstrates deep self- awareness, an appreciation for his own shadow—that is, for the parts of himself he would rather remain unconscious and hidden—which now he has integrated into a healthy and whole self. Writing as he does from the prison of his own suffering and impending death, he reaches beyond the walls of that imprisonment to a peace—a kind of transcendence—and evinces hope borne of gratitude. He also demonstrates, as does Paul’s letter to the Philippians, what Ignatian spirituality refers to as “Holy Indifference,” or a kind of clarity about what is most important without trying to manage the outcome. Theologian Richard Rohr calls this capacity for gratitude, amidst ambiguity and suffering, a significant developmental achievement. And so it is. Ultimately it is the birthplace of Paul’s peace that passes all understanding. Rohr writes: The study of neuroscience and brain development indicates that we are wired for transcendence, for the ever bigger picture, but it is all highly dependent on being exposed to living models and personal nurturance as we move from one stage to the next. Rohr says that we all need living models and we can cultivate gratitude. And this cultivation can literally rewire our brains. I suspect this is what sustained Paul in his prison cell. He discovered, in gratitude amidst suffering, an aliveness that no prison cell could contain. I find two of these living models in Paul, and Oliver Sacks!  Richard Rohr reminds us that this is a good argument for some form of church community—for what we are celebrating and cultivating right here, in this season of Koinonia.

We all need living role models of gratitude. How important we are for one another! To gather enlightened, transformed, loving people together, Rohr says, is essential, so they influence and transform one another. Beyond models, we also need nurturing: mothering and fathering, loving, and partnering at the critical transitional stages of our lives. ”Hopefully,” Rohr writes, “life and God bring new opportunities–through experiences of great suffering and great love–to “rewire” our brains.” Paul knew, and demonstrated in his letters from prison, that we need one another in community, and we need opportunities for gratitude. Some of you have heard me talk of my maternal grandmother, whose farm was a sanctuary for me in so many ways, and who taught me to cook. My football buddies teased me about knowing my way around the kitchen. But I said to them, “You don’t get it. When I imagine God feeding us, I see my grandmother.” I’m not sure this helped my cause with them. But the last time I ever saw her she insisted we bake her pound cakes together. Two weeks later she was gone. And I still love to cook. Forgive me the Eucharistic overtones, but her recipe for pound cake was a gift of hope, and gratitude, and a heavenly slice of transcendence. The gifts that emerged from her kitchen were an extended love letter to God. They came from her own suffering and were an Incarnational embodiment of the outward and visible signs of gratitude. Mary Oliver says in one of her lovely poems, “Someone once gave me a boxful of darkness. It took me years to realize that this, too, was a gift.” Paul is saying the same thing, as is Oliver Sacks, as was my grandmother, who did not have an easy life. Each is telling us that out of human suffering, and the prisons we so often create for ourselves and one another, hope abides, and transcendence—the peace that passes all understanding—is born. It does not come from us, but we can experience it, and we can cultivate it, and give it away. William Alexander Percy was right. The peace of God is no peace like we understand in earthly terms, because it is not of this earth. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it, as we are reminded in John’s lovely prelude to his Gospel. In what remains of this Advent season, I invite each of us to write our own letter, perhaps out of our own awareness of struggle or suffering or our own human limitations—perhaps in spite of something that would imprison us—and find in it—out of it, rather some hope, and thankfulness, and send it out into the world, perhaps to someone in particular, perhaps simply a letter to God that no one else ever sees. In so doing we will cultivate the light of gratitude, and hope, and nothing can overcome that light. Not if, as Paul suggests, we stand firm, rejoice, pray, and are not afraid to ask for what we need; if we are grateful, and show gentleness. “Do not be anxious,” he reminds us, “the peace that passes all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” I am in gratitude for this community and for each of you, Amen.

Second Sunday of Advent – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day: Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Luke 3:1-6    ¹In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ²during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. ⁵Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; ⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this Second Sunday of Advent. Advent’s familiar themes of waiting and hopeful expectation have a different ring this week. Is it possible that sometimes we in church make of Advent an aesthetic: a carefully rendered “experience” that is beautiful, tasteful, and moving while missing or at least masking its intimate, immediate connections to our sometimes messy, broken, world?  Traditionally, Advent contained elements of penitence and reflection much like that of Lent. In fact, a perusal the 1928 Prayer Book will reflect this in ways that I find compelling.

The penitential aspect of Advent helps, I believe, to balance a season co-opted by those who desire only sweetness and light, often for marketing purposes. In fact, as a clinician I find this to be the single most salient cause of the holiday blues: the season demands too much of all of us, and depression, as Carl Jung taught us so well, can sometimes be a sane response to untenable demands. Advent captures the grand sweep of history, and I love the juxtaposition of the passages from Isaiah with those from Matthew. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And thankfully, John does show up.    

Indeed, Advent is a tone poem in two parts. Early on, the season directs us toward the future: the second coming of Jesus—the ascension in reverse. We watch and pray for the consummation of the whole cosmos in Christ: history redeemed and fulfilled. No more tragedy, numbness, grief and loss. No more terrorism. No more injustice. No more seasonal depression. As Isaiah put it, “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Creation, finally and fully, will be healed. Yet, as the season progresses the second movement of the tone poem emerges. We are directed by the Church to turn our gaze to the past—to the first coming of Jesus. We exalt Emmanuel—God among us and with us—as the saving event of human history. And it happens right where we live, in the messiness of our daily lives and, indeed, the unfolding of history.

Then we hear the Gospel for this morning and the image shifts, doesn’t it? We find ourselves on the banks of the River Jordan face to face with John the Baptist, this earthy free-range prophet who crashes our joyful Advent gathering like an unwanted guest at our proper Advent party. And, what’s worse, John doesn’t tell us to rejoice. He doesn’t mix and mingle in tasteful Episcopal fashion, drinking hot cider and eating Christmas cookies. No, he tells us to repent. He stands in the middle of fellowship hall, during coffee hour, tracking mud, flotsam, jetsam, and leaves onto our carpet, and smelling of sweat, honey, and the river water dripping from his animal hides and sandals. Paul told the Philippians, and by extension tells us, not to be anxious about anything. John tells us to flee from the wrath to come. And, quite understandably everyone in the Gospel is asking, “What shall we do? What has to change if we are to survive the events that lie ahead? We are told that the axe is already laid to the root of the trees, and fire is prepared for the burning of the chaff. Where are Johnny Mathis and Mel Torme when we need them? What about the Yuletide carols being sung by the fire and folks wrapped up like Eskimos? John’s message to “repent!” is very different from “rejoice!”

So, I began to think about times when I have received wonderful gifts—word of acceptance to college, say, or a “yes” to proposal of marriage…the births of my sons; the word that I would soon begin a new job as a professor, and the moment that Bishop Alexander and my colleagues from the Diocese and Emory and Columbia all laid hands on me and my brother Thee at our ordination. These were moments of both rejoicing and repentance, because with these gifts came new life and new, responsibilities.

So you see, dear ones, part of what the new life of Advent means is that the old life just won’t work anymore. Becoming a parent or a grandparent, accepting a new job, receiving the gift of baptism or the gift of the Christ child—each of these means both rejoicing and change—repentance, if you will—from our old ways of being in the world. Rejoice! Repent! These are the words that come with the new territory of all great gifts. In one of Mark Twain’s short stories the Mississippi River shifted one night, during an earthquake at the New Madrid fault, cutting through a narrow neck of land. Those of you who have been to West Tennessee know that Reelfoot Lake, a birdwatchers’ paradise, was formed by this very event. It is said that for a time the Mississippi ran backwards, so great was the upheaval of the earth’s crust. In the story, an African-American man who went to bed a slave in Missouri woke up to find himself east of the river, in Illinois, a free man. He had been granted a new life. I imagine we each have stories of being granted a gift of some kind that changed things forever, and if we think about it, we will recognize that with that gift came a new set of responsibilities. John the Baptist offers some suggestions in terms of what to do with the remarkable gift of baptism—and with the anticipation of the new life in the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit—the One whose birth we anticipate, and of whom Isaiah spoke: “Look at who you are, and where you are,” John says; “begin there.”

As Wendell Berry says in this lovely poem:

“The Wild Geese”

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end. In time’s maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

—Wendell Berry

Rejoice, and Repent. They do go hand in glove this time of year, my friends. Don’t wait to be somewhere else, or to be someone else, or to be doing something else. What we need is here. Let’s begin with the Advent road we are on, and walk that road, and so allow God to transform the real lives we are living right now. John did not tell even the despised tax collectors or the hated and feared Roman soldiers that they had to go somewhere else to begin. Those occupations were no barriers to change, to repentance. Because you see, repentance and rejoicing are—in light of the gift of the Child for whom we wait—one and the same. Both have to do with transforming the life we are already living. Rejoice and Repent, and be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. As it is so often with so much, this is our response to the ambiguity of the world around us. Rejoice, for what is happening is wonderful. Repent, because from now on, everything will be different. Amen.