Category: Sermons

8th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 10, year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 6:14-29 King Herod heard of Jesus and his disciples, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised…”  

Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this Eighth Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting with us today, please introduce yourself to us and thank you so much for joining us this morning. Visitor or regular attendee, we hope you will find Holy Family to be a place of hospitality, compassion, and grace. And, in light of the difficult Gospel text for this morning, we hope we are a place of practicing humility as well, about which, more in a moment.  

First, let me confess that I spent several days trying to find an alternative to preaching on the Gospel text appointed for today. Truth told, it’s an awful story about the misuse of power and about the need for those in power to be aware of the temptation and remain in power at any and all costs. Once I greeted at the door of consciousness my own anxiety and opposition to this story of Herod and John, I became curious as to why I had such a strong reaction to the narrative, other than, of course, the horrific and graphic nature of the story. I realized that what lurked in my own shadow side was a deep fear of the misuse of power, and a profound distaste for narcissism in any form—an emotional reaction of anger, fear, and sadness in relation to narcissists that goes back many years. And to be sure, Herod was a narcissist, and this passage is an example of gas-lighting if ever there was one. I also recalled a time many years ago when I was tempted to let power and status cloud my own judgment…a sure sign of my own capacity for narcissism and control…I had to acknowledge the Herod that lurked in my own soul; but more about that in a moment.  

Let’s remember that Herod was actually drawn to John, had heard him speak and found him compelling, and yet as we heard today, when Herodias’ daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the young woman, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” and she replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.  

Had Herod been able to find a place of humility and grace in his heart, and some healthy self-differentiation—that is to say, making his own decision in response to this horrible request rather than caving in…and cave he did, essentially saying “I’ll do what my girlfriend’s daughter and guests are requesting”—the outcome might have been different. As Hannah Arendt said so well, “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is one among many reasons that theocracies are so very dangerous. As Marcus Borg and Jon Dominic Crossan said so well, the kingdom—or “Kin-dom” of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were ultimately in charge, and the rulers of this world were not. This is the challenge in relation to Empires of any kind. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless — peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclusion. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being. Entrance into this kingdom requires a counter-cultural choice. John the Baptist, Jesus, and his first followers invite each one of us today: repent, confess, and believe that in Jesus God’s kingdom has arrived. That’s the narrow way to the good news. John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds of compassion rather than by claims of religious or political affiliation. Some among the crowds took John at his word, but neither the political powers in Rome nor the religious establishment in the temple did. To their credit, they understood that his message was not only deceptively simple; it was deeply subversive.  

As Borg and Crossan remind us, about six months after John emerged from the desert like some locust-eating version of Jerry Garcia and baptized Jesus, he was beheaded at the whim of Herod the tetrarch. At the dinner party that night, Herod capitulated to the sadistic demand of his girlfriend’s daughter. “John was a forerunner of Jesus, but he was also a truth-teller to Herod, having rebuked Herod for sleeping with his brother’s wife (Mark 6:14–29). But as with many perverse politicians, Herod reacted with violence to one who had spoken truth to power, so John was murdered. The prophetic word of God from John the Baptist, then, did not originate with the state powers or the religious establishment, nor did it find a receptive audience with them. The claim of God’s kingdom upon my life, John preached, is ultimate. That means that the claims of the state and religious establishments, of race, gender, culture, and money are, at best, penultimate. The earliest and most radical Christian confession was simple: “Jesus is Lord.” By direct implication, Caesar is not lord or god, and neither are all the other many false gods of religion, money, sex, power, politicians who would be theocrats, and so on.  

With his pronouncement and then martyrdom, John counsels us to turn away from anything and everything that might hinder ultimate allegiance to Jesus. As we hear during Advent, he invites us to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten all hilly terrain, and to prepare space for the birth of the Messiah into our own lives. When we do that, we’ll find ourselves in the truly Good News that subverts and transcends all politics and religion. Dear One’s let’s covenant to remember this week’s Gospel text as we consider the text for next week. This is a terrible story. It’s hard to say “Thanks be to God!” after a story like this one. As I thought about our time together this morning I thought that perhaps we should skip this story and read the next one instead…a much happier story about Jesus feeding 5,000 hungry people. In stark contrast, Herod’s horrible banquet runs right into the story where Jesus makes sure that everyone is fed and he empowers the disciples to do so…he invites compassion. Mark is a very careful writer. He wants us to hear these two stories together. Even though we didn’t hear that other story today, I hope we remember at least something about Jesus feeding the 5,000. It’s a story found in all four gospels. But the greatest contrast of all is between Jesus’ banquet of life and Herod’s banquet of death. Mark has placed these two stories side by side. He wants us to see the stark contrasts between two very different banquets. Hard as it is to listen, let’s go back to Herod’s story. This feast was not in a deserted place, but in a lavish palace. There wasn’t a large crowd, but a select guest list of important officials. Herod’s wife, Herodias, was there, even though she shouldn’t have been. Herod had stolen her from his brother. John the Baptist had condemned this unlawful liaison, and for that John landed in prison.  Though Herod was a Jew, Borg and Crossan remind us that the empire had replaced Torah for him. He tried not to think about it, especially at his own birthday dinner. Why, then, did he give in to this terrible request? Wasn’t it enough that John was in prison? One wonders, was there something inside Herod that remembered God’s word, some spark of God that drew him to John’s teaching? But he had promised Herodias’ daughter that he would give her anything she wanted. And this is precisely where Herod’s narcissism and need for power had tragic consequences.  

And here’s where my own troubling narrative reveals itself… I took AP English with Florence Crooke in the fall of my senior year in high school. Ms. Crooke was a formidable presence and did not suffer fools gladly. She was known to be a difficult grader with high expectations. I walked into the class wearing my football letter jacket. She invited me into the hall and suggested I keep it in my locker. “It won’t help you in here,” she said… “You decide.” Then she left me in the hall and closed the door. And truth told, my first response was to walk to the office and register for another class. Besides, I had not been a particularly good student. I was in over my head in an AP English class before the class even began. I suspect Ms. Crooke knew this. She also knew I loved to write. She saw something in me I did not see in myself. And, being a football player in that school in the early 70’s was a source of power I did not want to compromise. It was a terribly stratified culture where role expectations were codified in myriad ways Its really not too much of a stretch to say that football players in that time and place were demigods for whom the rules that applied to others did not apply. This is, of course, a recipe for narcissism—“I can do whatever I want, and the core values and principles that apply to others do not apply to me…and I will not be held accountable when I break those rules.” Ms. Crooke knew this well. She was presenting me with a choice. She was being John the Baptist to my own personal Herod. To this day I cannot explain why I went down the hall to my locker, turned the combination, and put the letter jacket in my locker. I walked back into that classroom and into what was in some ways the beginning of my own, authentic life.  

After my first paper (on Walt Whitman if memory serves) she suggested that I write for the Sentinel (our school newspaper), and I did so (though this was unusual for football players in the social stratification of those days) including serving as the sports reporter for the SSHS Panther basketball games and, in the spring, I covered the track meets though I was on the team. We set school records that year in the spring medley relay and mile relay. Ms. Crooke asked me where I wanted to go to college, and I told her the family script was for me to attend UGA. She asked me what my heart told me, and I said I would prefer a small, liberal arts college where I could continue to play ball in an academically rigorous context. She gave me the courage to do just that. I applied to a host of small D-III schools. My father was not pleased (to say the least) and told me that if I did not go to UGA I could pay for college myself. He wasn’t joking, and he thought I would back down, but we were both two stubborn Irishmen, and I got up the next morning and went to Atlantic Steel Company to ask for a job, where I worked at Atlantic Steel Company for 4 summers to pay for Rhodes College, a place that changed my life. Every time I taught a class, for many years, I thought of Ms. Crooke with gratitude. Oh, and one more thing; my high school hero was Roberto Clemente—who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates until his untimely death on New Year’s Eve of 1992, while delivering supplies to Nicaragua, a country ravaged by earthquakes and starvation. My football number—the number on that letter jacket hanging in my locker—was #21 in honor of Clemente. He could have rested on his many laurels as a baseball player and he chose instead a life of service—and died accordingly—extending compassion to those whom he did not know. My football teammates, in an area still much informed by Jim Crow, gave me grief about my affection for Clemente, a Black man, still relatively rare in baseball. But, you see, he had humility—a sure antidote to narcissism—and as a result he broke down the barriers Herod could not. He gave his power away to serve others. Theologian Miraslov Wolf has written that the Exclusion of the other, the stranger, happens wherever barriers are set up that prevent an authentic encounter with the other. We are called to respect the dignity of every human being, and sometimes our need for power, and control, can blind us to this truth. It is all too easy to assume that difference is to be avoided at all costs including, heaven help me, those who don’t walk the halls of their high school halls wearing their letter jackets. Humility leads to grace, which can save us, sometimes, from ourselves. Amen.  

7th Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 9 Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 6:1-13

Lord, Have Mercy on the Frozen Man

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting with us today please let us know.

In the Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus on what has been a long journey. It is about to get longer. We recall that during his exile of 40 days in the wilderness, and our own Lenten journey, Jesus was tempted by Satan, forced to face his own demons, by virtue of the very power he, and Satan, knew he possessed. When we encounter him in today’s reading he has journeyed to Nazareth, where he is teaching in the synagogue. 

And not just teaching, but teaching with authority, to the astonishment of the people there, who are suspicious of this hometown boy whom they knew as a carpenter, son, and sibling. They question the authority of one whom they knew before he became the prophet standing before them. So, today we continue our journey in Mark’s Gospel, in the long, green season of Pentecost and Jesus, has returned to his hometown of Nazareth, where his reception is less than enthusiastic. In a social system where status was understood as fixed (i.e., your status at birth defined who you would always be) and honor/shame considerations were important, did they simply regard it as impossible for Jesus to amount to anything? The people of Nazareth indicate this negative perception when they identify Jesus as a “carpenter” (i.e., a low-status manual laborer) and as the “son of Mary” (i.e., hinting at a questionable fatherhood). Because people think they know who Jesus is, they end up asking disdainfully, “Who does he think he is? The identity of Jesus is a consistent issue in Mark. In the gospel, we hear the opinions of rulers, religious authorities, crowds, disciples, and family members. For the author of Mark, the important question keeps coming around to “who do you — the reader — say that Jesus is?” And if you do honor Jesus as a prophet (or more than a prophet), who does that make you? Does it mean new allegiances that supersede traditional country and family values? As we answer those questions, Mark is leading us into a confession of faith.

As a former seminary professor, I can tell you that authority and astonishment are not easily achieved in the classroom. The root of the word authority comes from the same Latin root as our word “author,” and this is instructive, because an authority is, in the best sense of the word, someone who creates; one, that is, in relation to whom one finds a life-giving flourishing…a kind of increase in relation to which one feels enlivened. Or, as Irenaeus put it, “God fully glorified is a human being fully alive.” Jesus has that kind of authority—to help us become fully alive—in contrast to an authority which comes by virtue of an office or some kind of rank, such as a political post, or judgeship, or, Lord help me, that of a priest or rabbi. Indeed, the people were amazed by Jesus in part because he was not a member of the Sanhedrin—he held no formal authority of any kind. His authority came from within, and it was a gift from God—and so is our authority…which shares the etymology with the word “authentic” as well. In a real sense in this passage Jesus comes into his own –he comes home—in terms of his vocation as a teacher and healer. Howard Thurman has said “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs most is people who have come alive.”Perhaps as much as anything this passage is about Jesus coming alive that day, in new ways, and inviting us to do likewise.

I find myself curious, though, about the relationship between his authority—this excellence as a teacher as exhibited by Jesus—and the journey he had been on. I find myself wondering if there might be some connection between his exile in the wilderness, for example, and the suffering he encountered there, and his ability to teach with authority. Moreover, he is not just a teacher in this Gospel reading, he is one who casts out demons—a theme in much of Mark’s Gospel. He is in this sense a wounded healer who struggled with his own demons. Now, I don’t know about you, but discussions of demons don’t occur much in my line of work as a professor who often taught clinical courses, and as a psychotherapist. And I have no idea what Paul is referring to in the Epistle today about the “7^th heaven.” In the circles I run in, we are so thoroughly imbued with Western scientific rationalism that talk of demon possession and mystical references to heaven simply don’t occur in polite company. We talk instead of mental illness, and “diagnostic” categories, and neurological substrates contributing to neuro-plasticity, and so on. Is this a more appropriate way of looking at the encounters Jesus had in the synagogue—rejected as a prophet in his hometown—and in numerous encounters with unclean spirits? Were these souls suffering from what we would call a mental illness? I do not know. But I find myself curious about these encounters nonetheless. And what kind of journey had these possessed souls been on? We don’t hear from them at all. In none of the passages about demon possession do any of them speak in these passages, just as many of our homeless mentally ill persons are marginalized, and have no voice. Were we to talk with any one of these individuals, I imagine they were sojourners too…and clearly suffering. Today’s text describes the disciples, now empowered by Jesus, “casting out many demons and healing many who were sick. How did these souls find themselves there on this day? Were they there in the temple, ignored, day after day? Did they once have a family, a job, and a home? Or, were they rather life-long homeless persons whose life had taken a turn for the worse—like a veteran with PTSD, or those dual diagnosis souls compromised by mental illness and addicted in some way? Did these souls even want the kind of transformation Jesus offered? I see people in my clinical office who are ambivalent about the very changes in relation to which they are seeking help. And I get it. Change is hard, and sometimes scary.

Whatever we might say about these references to demon possession, I think we are safe to say they were a form of evil… that is to say, the spirits in those who are suffering are called “unclean” because, whatever the affliction, and however we understand it, it caused a separation from God, and others, and from the worship that was going on around them. It was a form of deprivation, of loss, of being cut off from the ability to be his true self and from full relationship with others, in community. I don’t mean to suggest that they are themselves evil, but that, for whatever reasons, their spirits had become frozen and hard…and perhaps those who questioned Jesus that day in Nazareth had become hardened too. And aren’t we seeing more of this in our time as well? Are we not somewhat jaded, and suspicious of authority? Perhaps those who are “possessed” have in some sense shut down; something alive in them has “gone away.” And this certainly happens in mental illness, including more serious, chronic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia—for which, by the way, there was no “diagnosis” back then—but also in cases of depression, and anxiety, and alcohol and drug addiction.  Gerald May, a colleague whose work, like mine, lived in the interdisciplinary spaces where listening to stories is essential, has said that “God’s grace through community involves something far greater than other people’s support and perspective. The power of grace is nowhere as mystical or brilliant as in communities of faith. Its power includes not just love that comes from people and through people, but love that pours forth among people, as if through the very spaces between one person and the next. Just to be in such an atmosphere is to be bathed in healing power.” How might the power of stories, and of communities of grace where those stories can be told, teach us about healing, and wholeness in our little corner of God’s creation? And it is precisely Irenaeus’ experience of being fully alive, manifest in each of us, which is threatened by evil. And this evil, however it was described back then, was a particular form of bondage; a binding, choking, life-suffocating bondage. I suspect that– whatever form evil takes– it has its own peculiar manifestation for each of us. The end result, however, is always the same: it threatens to separate us from the Creator, and from relationships with others whom God created to share this journey with us. And so our experience of life, though potentially one full of vitality and wonder, is, instead one of being in bondage. And isn’t this what Satan used to threaten Jesus in the Wilderness? “Use the power you know you have,” Satan told Jesus, “in order to have authority and control over all others, and to have everything you need”? Had Jesus consented to this, I suspect the end result have been the end of his true and fully- alive authority, based on authentic relationship with God, and come to that, with us.

It is Jesus’ own experience of suffering that allows him to act with compassion in the reading for today… compassion, from the Latin com-passio, to “suffer with,” means that one takes action in response to the encounter with suffering. Jesus encountered his own demons, faced them down, and by virtue of that suffering reached out to others, and healed their broken spirit. Most often what threatens to cut us off from God, and self, and other is the experience of our own finitude and vulnerability…those real human limitations our awareness of which put us most at risk for idolatry and bondage, to use these old-fashioned words, when we seek to secure our souls in ways destined to fail. Alternatively, we can experience the possibility of a summons, an invocation, a claim or call to commitment and relationship. It’s as if Jesus is saying to us “Remember me? Something has occurred between us… I know who you are…you are one who comes to take me to church… you are the one who worked at the food pantry… who helped build the Habitat House….you participated in Serve Pickens…you called me when I had not been around and you missed me… you cared for me when I was sick… you saw my face in the face of the stranger…you had compassion.”

Some time back the singer /songwriter James Taylor wrote a clever tune in response to the discovery of the very well-preserved, 5,000-year-old body of a hunter in found it the Tyrolean Alps. I’ve followed this story with interest since this man emerged from a glacier in 1991. The most recent article I saw was in National Geographic, and based on additional research we now have a rollicking good murder mystery to add to this narrative. But I digress… The refrain of Taylor’s song is “Lord, have mercy on the frozen man.” Yes, “Lord have mercy indeed,” because when faced with our demons, each of us—men and women alike—can become frozen in spirit. We face one of the vulnerabilities of being human—namely, that in reality authority and idolatry are intimately related. We must choose carefully, dear ones, when seeking to claim power and authority before gaining humility, and before wresting with the shadow side of who we are.

This is the gift Jesus offers. The Gospels imply that anyone who casts out demons cannot be a stranger to them. In today’s Gospel vignette, C.S. Lewis suggests, we see Jesus clearing out the emptiness and offering instead, a relationship with God. Jesus hears our suffering, and suffers with us, and offers the compassion of relationship and redemptive healing. And this takes place in community. Anything that would rob us of being fully alive, in life-giving ways, limits our ability to fully glorify God. “Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” And so we recall the Collect for today… Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. As Wendell Berry has written; The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but how to be alive, as these worn hills still tell, and some paintings of Paul Cezanne, and this mere singing wren, who thinks he’s alive forever, this instant, and may be. How to be alive, forever, this instant, in Christ…now that’s a casting out of demons I can understand, and for which I pray. Amen. 

6th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 8 – Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day 

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 5:21-43 

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” He went with him. 

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” 

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. 

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning…and welcome to Holy Family on this 6th Sunday after Pentecost, the long green season of Ordinary Time. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting us this morning, please do let us know so we can get to know you, and give you a proper Holy Family welcome!

Today we hear two stories about healing, the story of Jairus, and the story of the woman who touched Jesus’ robe. They suggest, among other things, that Jesus’ authority was something beyond the established authority of the state or some other institution. Rather, it was an authority that came from God and as such, it was an “aura of love” and an “emanation of the spirit” that drew people to Jesus. In all the stories of healing in scripture, Jesus never sought out people to heal. The initiative lay with those seeking healing and reconciliation. And here is where this story connects with ours. How often do we ask for what we need in the way of healing? How often are we even aware that we need it?  

Jesus’ life grants life-changing healing. It is a healing authority that crosses boundaries, both ethnic and gender. Jesus chooses not to leave people in the conditions in which he finds them. How about us? Can our small community alter the conditions of people’s lives? Can we, too, bring healing into troubled circumstances? Must our efforts not also cross boundaries — whether they are related to ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, politics or any other boundaries that divide our society — and advocate life-giving meaning and change? Ask anyone from Parish Life, Outreach, the DOK, the intrepid Grounds Crew, and on and on, and the answer is yes! May God grant us the courage to continue to do so! 

We wonder what might have happened if Jairus had listened to his self-doubt instead of taking action? What if the influence of the status quo—and we recall here that he was an elder in the local temple—had triumphed in his heart, and he had backed off from asking this unconventional holy man named Jesus into his home? These questions are not, my brothers and sisters, philosophical or rhetorical. One of my seminary professors once told us: “Always remember that many—if not on some days most—of the people you face on Sunday morning almost decided not to come.” We have to show up—we have to “be there,” to get what Jesus has to give. Sometimes it means learning things about ourselves we’d rather not know. The story of Jairus’ daughter is not about some sort of cosmic quid pro quo in which if we have enough faith, then our child will not die, or we will not die, or bad things will not happen to us, or we will acquire riches beyond imagination…and I have heard all of these preached. This story, and others like it, has been used as a way of saying that life is a theological contest, where everything depends on you, on whether you have enough faith, or the right sort of faith, to win the prize of Jesus doing something good for you and yours. The seductive attraction of this is that it appeals to our desire to have all the answers… for the absence of ambiguity… for everything to fit together. Sometimes things happen for no reason whatsoever, and that’s when our faith comes alive. This thinking also appeals to our childlike desire for omnipotence: that everything that happens somehow happens because of me…if I’d only had enough faith this bad thing would not have happened, or because I had so much faith I am blessed with riches…and so on. The question is what kind of a story do we find in today’s Gospel? Is it a miracle? Or a story primarily about the healing power of relationship? Or, is it perhaps both?

I do enjoy these stories because they, too, invite us into relationship with Jesus. I confess that the science-loving part of me does not know what, exactly, happened here. But the most significant part for me is where Jesus takes the girl’s hand and says, “Talitha cum”—”Little girl, get up”—and suddenly we ourselves are the little girl. Little girl; old girl; old boy; old boys and girls with high blood pressure and arthritis, and lower back pain, who are themselves at times caring for aging parents…who have recently lost someone they loved… who are having challenges at work, or with their children…and on and on; all the ways we human beings are vulnerable to those places life may take us. Those who believe; and those who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything; and those who would give almost anything to believe if only they could; you happy ones, and you who can hardly remember what it was like once to be happy; You who know where you’re going and how to get there and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere. “Get up,” he says, all of you—all of you!—and the power that is in this invitation is the power to give life not just to those who may or may not be dead, like the child in today’s text, but to those who are only partly alive, which is to say to people like you and me who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things, including the miracle of what Mary Oliver called “your one wild and precious life.” Can we ask Jesus to act in the name of love by healing and reconciling all that is ostensibly un-loveable in each one of us? Jesus made wholeness his priority and as such, sought to bring together those who were divided, separated, or left out of the whole. He gathered together what was divided and confronted systems that diminished, marginalized, or excluded human persons. He challenged others not by argument, but out of a deep center of love. It is a life-giving power at the heart of this story about Jairus and the daughter he loved, and the woman who reached out to him, that I believe is at the heart of all our stories—the power of new life, new hope, new being; that whether we know it or not keeps us coming to places like this sacred space, year after year in search of it. It’s about how faith itself has the capacity to make the woman whole; faith itself is healing. And this is certainly not about what here in America we know by the name of the Prosperity Gospel. That’s a heresy that makes God into a used-car salesman, selling health and wealth and a ticket into heaven in return for the payment of our belief. What I mean is something more mysterious, harder to quantify. The theologian James Alison—who spoke at the Cathedral some years ago–says that we often misunderstand faith. That we make faith about frantically following rules, about creating borders, about calling out people who are doing the wrong things, who are believing the wrong things, about feeling guilty. But faith, Allison says, is actually about relaxing. Faith is about being with God, being with someone whom we trust, with someone who knows us absolutely and, as Mr. Rogers used to say, likes us just the way that we are. That sounds like healing to me. Your faith has made you well. In this Gospel text we see a man of power and wealth who is made to wait for an impoverished woman. A woman, what’s more, whose medical condition makes her ritually unclean by virtue of the cultural standards of her time. What is being interrupted here – by Jesus, by the woman to whom he gives his full attention – is not just Jesus’ journey to Jairus’ house. What is being interrupted is patriarchy; it is economic privilege; it is a societal system that values some human beings more than others. In this moment, Jesus and the woman embody what Jesus will say elsewhere: The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. And, Jesus says to Jairus, Be not afraid. Believe. So, this is a short story interrupted no fewer than six times. Each interruption takes us further into possibility, into faith, into compassion, into love. Each interruption takes us into resurrection, and this is where science may help us…it happens every day.

Some of you may have seen the Disney film “Encanto,” a favorite of our grandchildren. When Disney decided to nominate a song from the movie for the Oscars, it submitted “Dos Oruguitas.” It is the first Oscar-nominated song written entirely in Spanish. Dos Oruguitas translates into “Two (Little) Caterpillars.” The song is performed beautifully by the Colombian singer Sebastian Yatra. The song describes two caterpillars in love. They rejoice in their togetherness, holding each other, staying together constantly through good and bad weather. But somehow they know that, very soon, they will need to let go. It will be time to turn into larvae and re-emerge some time later, each as a butterfly. There is nothing the caterpillars can do to stop the inevitable. The song is gorgeous, and the images it evokes are emotional beyond words. Scientists have long been astonished by the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies. Milton Packer, MD, is currently distinguished scholar in cardiovascular science at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and visiting professor at Imperial College in London. Packer is an internationally recognized clinical investigator who has made seminal contributions to the field of heart failure. After the loss of his wife, he wrote a lovely essay about Encanto, and the science behind the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly—a resurrection narrative. The caterpillar eats voraciously during its entire lifespan, presumably to accumulate sufficient nutrients for the coming transition. When the time is right, the caterpillar spins itself into a silk coverlet (a cocoon) and digests itself. During the larval phase, the release of enzymes kills the caterpillar and destroys all its organs, turning it into a mushy soup, with nothing left of its former self. If one opens a larva, there is no sign of the original caterpillar; it is gone — except for a few cells (known poetically as “imaginal cells”) that survive.

Then, by some miraculous sequence of events, a new set of instructions takes hold, and the amino acids in the larval soup are rearranged, carefully and meticulously, into an entirely new organism. The imaginal cells emerge, armed with the genetic instructions for the transformation. Initially, the caterpillar’s immune system rejects the imaginal cells, but they continue to multiply with abundance. Finally, the cells begin to clump together, forming the organs of an entirely new organism with completely different anatomical features, with long legs and wings. The fact that the caterpillar’s immune system attacks the new cells of the butterfly demonstrates that — biologically — the two insect forms are entirely distinct life forms. So essentially, the caterpillar dies and is resurrected. Dr. Packer writes that when he cares for patients who have died, “Perhaps grounded by religion or some personal philosophical perspective, some relatives or friends would say, “We will see her/him again soon.” They proposed there would be some future meeting between those who loved each other deeply during this lifetime, perhaps in a spiritual sense or even in some alternate physical world. When these predictions were made, I always agreed with them. But I did not believe them. I was trained to believe that death had absolute finality. There was no scientific basis for resurrection. There was no way a living form could die, dissolve away, and be reassembled into another creature… Yet, it happens every day. Caterpillars die and are resurrected as butterflies, using the same juices as the original life form.”

Well, make of this what you will, but consider this truth from today’s Gospel: Jesus is ready, willing and able to heal the body, mind, and spirit of anybody – regardless of their station in life, their religious affiliation, their economic status, their popularity, their perceived flaws – doesn’t matter. The common ingredient in both these stories is faith! Jesus says “Don’t be afraid; just believe…your faith has healed you.” As a priest and pastoral counselor I can say this…some of the “whole-iest” people I have known have been terminally ill, or facing what seemed insurmountable challenges. So let us follow in the footsteps of Jairus. Let us go forth with courage—with vitality and wonder—into the unknown new creation made possible by our saying “no” to a narrative of scarcity and anxiety, and “yes’ to the world to which this Gospel text points. It is a Resurrection world, in which there is meaning and hope in each of our lives and, yes, in each of our deaths, both small and large. God promises that God’s word of love will be the last, best, and strongest word. God promises that God will make all of creation new, and that we will be a part of that new creation. Amen. 

5th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 7 Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving ­kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 4:35-41

When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family as wecontinue our journey into the season after Pentecost. It is a journey of trust, and of the challenges of being faithful. I was reminded this week by an old, dear friend of the words of TS Eliot, from Little Gidding: We shall not cease from exploration…And the end of all our exploring…Will be to arrive where we started …And know the place for the first time. These are such lovely, even hauntingly beautiful lines, and they remind us, dear one’s, that some journeys are less Odyssean than Abrahamic. Odysseus wanted nothing more than to return home to Ithaca, and Penelope, and all that he knew. Sarah and Abraham, on a journey of faith ending we know not where, arrived at a place they called home, and knew that place for the first time.

Today’s Gospel story might be seen as primarily about authority, or faith, or grace, or healing. It is, of course, about all of these. And as I thought about this story over the course of this past week, I began to place it in the context of our observance of Juneteenth, and I found myself wondering whether, in this age of polarization, systemic racism, and conflict, we have made much progress. On my more difficult days I identify with the disciples in the boat who are frightened, and feeling that things are out of control. I wonder if this is not the nature of many of our journeys. And I wonder when to trust God’s provenance, and let go of my need to control things I cannot control—a central theme of any 12-step process. Today’s Gospel prompts in me some very human questions about fear, and control, and trusting God. When do we allow our fears to inform and guide us to calmer seas, and when do we face our fears and proceed on the journey despite them?

A number of years ago I joined my sons on a trip to climb Mt. Baker, in the Northern Cascades. We spent several days on the mountain, training in glacier and crevasse techniques, preparing to summit this lovely jewel of the Cascades. On the day of our summit attempt, we arose at 2am, put on our crampons and roped in together, and began climbing up the glacier through the night. We came within 500 feet before encountering storms we saw moving in off the Pacific, and, after consulting with our wise guide, we made the group decision to return to camp. I was so disappointed, and told my sons as much the next day. Our older son, a gifted and experienced climber, said “Dad, the first rule of mountaineering is that you never intentionally climb into a storm. We made the right call.” His wise younger brother nodded his agreement. “Besides, he said, just look around.” And he was right. I had almost allowed my desire for the mountain top to blind me to the moment at hand. Mt. Baker, high above us, glistened in the sunlight and seemed alive after the storm—and indeed it was alive—and the Roosevelt-Deming glacier lay stretched out below us, glimmering like a sea of diamonds in the clear mountain air. The meadows spread around us fulsome with wildflowers, and marmots called from their mounds, alert sentinels in this glorious mountain aerie. For a while we were silent, listening only to the wind, and I was able to be fully present with my two sons. What I most needed was right there all along…connection, love, a small taste of heaven. And in order to see it, I needed to give up my over-functioning agenda. I needed to “deny myself” in order to find myself, and to be present with my sons.

The disciples were of course sailing into a storm, rather than climbing into one, and it would not be the last time. They must have thought “this is not exactly what I signed up for on this trip,” and, “what was I thinking?” When Jesus told them that he was to be rejected, abused, and even murdered, Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter could not imagine such a thing happening to a Messiah. Perhaps he envisioned the great and powerful things that Jesus would do when his “Messiah-ship” came to its fruition. Perhaps he imagined himself standing beside Jesus as a trusted assistant, sharing the glory. Surely, suffering was not a part of Peter’s dream for Jesus, or for himself or the others. And that humanity is, I suspect, one of the reasons we are drawn to Peter throughout the Gospel accounts. We can easily see ourselves acting likewise. We know that taking up one’s cross is no easy task. They were all weary, and afraid, and uncertain. Jesus asks that we become disciples too, and we have his promise that nothing can separate us from God’s love. I was focusing too much on myself and my agenda atop Mt. Baker. Perhaps the best way to “deny ourselves” as a form of spiritual discipline, is by getting ourselves off our hands, doing the work we have to do, handling our tasks joyfully so that when we are called to do God’s work our issues do not get in the way.

I think we made the right decision that day on Mt. Baker in returning to camp. But, I wonder, when is God calling us to proceed in the face of uncertainty, and risk, and possible danger? How do we know when to climb into the storm? In 1986-87 I was doing a chaplaincy internship at Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory, now CHOA, and Vicky and I were trying to decide what to do next. I had been accepted to law school, and into a doctoral program in psychology and religion, and I hoped the year of chaplaincy training would help me decide. I was as confused as these choices might suggest. I had worked in a psychiatric hospital with children and adolescents, where Vicky and I met, before heading to Vanderbilt Divinity School, where I continued to study psychology and ethics, took a few courses at Vanderbilt law school, got my Master of Divinity degree, and pondered next steps. In late December of 1986 a small group of civil rights activists marched in Cumming, Georgia, to protest a long history of racist housing, economic, and educational practices in Forsyth County, and they were assaulted with rocks, bottles, and racial epithets. On January 25, upwards of 20,000 marchers filed into downtown Cumming in support of the first marchers, and I was among them. At one point we slowed to a standstill, and through the helmeted National Guard troops I saw a group of young white men, screaming at us words I cannot repeat here, and throwing rocks and bottles over the phalanx of troops.   

They were looking at me and my colleagues, waving their Confederate flags—the flag of my own ancestors…one of whom was wounded at the Battle of Atlanta—and their faces were filled with rage. I remember feeling both scared, and a bit self-righteous, and I began to say things, in my heart, about them, that were just as uncharitable as those things they were saying to and about me. You can use your imagination here. And then I realized what I was doing. I was relegating these young men to the status of the “other”—just as they were doing to me—and I was engaging in the very behavior we were marching to protest…the very hatred and injustice that resulted in the Juneteenth narrative. If I called them “white trash”—and worse—was I not in fact committing in my heart the same injustices we sought to end by marching through the snow on that cold January day? I was. And this was hard for me to hear, even if I was the one saying it… maybe especially because I was saying it…to myself. And this revelatory self-reflection, this confession of things done and left undone, could not have happened had I not chosen to show up authentically on a stormy sea of epic proportions. I had to ask God’s forgiveness for this. I needed some healing, and I had to ask for it. I needed to ask Jesus to calm the sea of brokenness born of fear, just as the disciples in today’s Gospel.

Compassion means to do “Hesed”—love and justice—in relation to the suffering we encounter. It means to take action: and faith-in-action is the key here. This is different from “belief,” which is an act of intelligent assent only. “Faith”, however, is a verb—an act of the whole person. It is an attitude of wide-open, expectant trust that moves toward action. This is the same kind of both/and faith that impelled Jesus to calm the storm that day, and also to proceed into Jerusalem knowing full well what the outcome would be. I recall once in college, while on a track and field trip, the conditions were, frankly, awful. The track was old and poorly maintained. The infield, where field events would take place, was overgrown with tall grass, and pitted with rocks. We voiced our complaints to our coach whose true vocation was that of a classics professor at our college. He paused, and told us the story of runners from Crete who visited the island of Rhodes for competition. In similar fashion, they complained of the conditions of the playing field. Laconically, the Coach from Crete said, “Hic Rhodos, hic salta.” Translated, this simply means, “Now you are in Rhodes, you will do your jumping here.” Put another way, the writer Frederick Buechner has said that the grace of God means something like this: “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party would not have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and difficult things will happen. Do not be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can by yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.”

Both of these desires occur in what my colleague Walter Brueggemann has called a “narrative of scarcity”…in which the past is barren of miracles and the only way to get anywhere is to invent and reinvent yourself and scramble for whatever you can get. A past without gifts and a future without hope give us a present as an arena for anxiety— anxiety endlessly stirred by those who generate the theology of scarcity. This anxiety paralyzes us so that we cannot act, and we do not reach out for the gift of grace that is ours. Let us go forth with courage my friends—with vitality and wonder—into the unknown new creation made possible by our saying “no” to a narrative of scarcity and anxiety, and “yes’ to the world to which the Gospel text points. It is a Resurrection world, in which there is meaning and hope in each of our lives and, yes, in each of our deaths, both small and large. On both that day on Mt. Baker, and in Forsyth County, I had to die a little to myself. I had to give up a self-righteous need to be “right,” and make a choice to be in relationship. I needed to be curious about what form that might take, but I was clear that name-calling and stereotyping was no longer an option, even if I believed I was on the right side of an issue. God promises that God’s word of love will be the last, best, and strongest word. God promises that God will make all of creation new, and that we will be a part of that new creation. Dr. King said that the moral arc of the universe is long, and bends toward justice. I hope that is true. In one of my favorite of his poems, a poem ultimately about resurrection, Wendell Berry says:

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 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.

What we need for our long Pentecost journey is here, and when we find that place in ourselves of peace, and pay attention to this moment of grace, no matter the storm, we arrive back home, and know that place for the first time. What we need is here. Amen.

4th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B Proper 6 – Father’s Day – Bill Harkins

Mark 4:26-34

4:26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,

4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

4:29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

4:30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?

4:31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;

4:32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

4:33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;

4:34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. If you are visiting with us this morning, we welcome you and hope you will let us know who you are. Regardless, we are so glad you are here today! And Happy Father’s Day to those for whom this applies in any way—those of you who have mentored, parented, and been paternal in any way, in so doing, caring for others along the way. Thank you to each of you!

Some of you may have heard me tell stories about my paternal grandfather, whose hardware store in middle Georgia was a magical place for me growing up. In my mind’s eye I can see myself as a young boy, following along behind him as he assisted his customers with grace, and humor, and care. On this Father’s Day I remember with deep gratitude his presence in my life, and his quiet, graceful presence. Whatever needed building, or replacing, or repairing, I believed he had the answer, and it could be found somewhere in the mysterious recesses of his store. It was filled from floor to ceiling with anything needed to supply the county seat of an area of Georgia still deeply agricultural in orientation. It smelled like mystery in there, a wonderful combination of leather, cottonseed oil, hot coffee, and fresh apples on an early fall day, or peaches in summertime, which could also be purchased in season near the cash register.  

My favorite spot in the store was atop his roll-top desk, where I could survey the entire store, and go largely unnoticed. From this vantage point, often armed with a small bottled coke from the cooler and a comic book, I could pass away an entire summer afternoon. Motes of dust rose in beams of sunlight as they moved across the store, marking time in a timeless, magical world that exists only in my memory now. I remember the way my grandfather treated his customers with dignity, and respect, many of whom were local farmers—black and white alike—who brought their stories and their business. In the Jim Crow south of those days, he practiced business by casting a wide net of compassion. After we anonymously delivered a bag of groceries on a cold December day near Christmas to what I suspect now was a poor sharecropper’s family, he said “A random act of kindness is always a good thing, and you never know where it might lead.” He never spoke of it again, but the lesson did not fall on barren soil. I suppose this was his way of both doing good business and living out his life in a small town where, one way or another, we were all connected.

One of the items he sold in his store was a disc harrow, a large cylindrical blade designed to dig into and turn over the soil in late winter. To “harrow” the soil is to prepare it for planting, new growth, and eventual harvest. Indeed, the Latin root of our word “harrow” is “harve,” from which we also get our word “harvest.” In this sense, then, our normally culturally pejorative word “harrowing”—meaning to vex or distress—can also mean to prepare the soil for harvest.  I never talked with my grandfather about the parable in the Gospel text for today, in which there is no mention of harrowing the soil. I do know that he appreciated good stories—they were always in the air one breathed at his store, if one took care to listen—and he would have acknowledged that a good story can often reverse our expectations, and reorient our ways of looking at the world. Today’s Gospel mustard seed parable does just that, by, well, harrowing our souls, and Jesus, who takes special care to tell us to listen, wants us to pay attention not only to the story, but to the power it has to transform our lives. He wants to pull us out of our entrenched patterns of relationship and ways of being in the world—to dislocate us in ways that may be harrowing in the more culturally familiar sense of that word. A parable doesn’t inform, so much as transform those who really listen. This can be distressing.

So, what do we make of a sower of seeds who indiscriminately spreads seed everywhere? How do we learn from this and similar agricultural parables, including the parable of the mustard seed? All the best agricultural practices aside, one wonders at the wisdom of throwing seeds on paths where birds eat them, or on rocky ground where they likely will not grow, or among thorns that may well choke them. Whether one is a farmer, or businessperson, or new-church development expert, one may hesitate at the potential waste of precious resources and lack of planning. What happened to harrowing the soil? Where are the demographic studies, branding and marketing strategies, maximizing of available capital, and so on? Why not simply find the best soil, and plant there, and support the local economy by buying a new disc harrow at J.W. Harkins and Son’s, while you’re at it!

Well, as is often the case, Jesus turns these expectations upside down. Mark tells us we do not know how it grows, but it does. No one can anticipate what the harvest might be at the time seeds are sewn and scattered on the ground. Even the sower does not know how it happens. But when the grain is ready, it is harvested. We see that things happen, but we don’t know how, we simply trust that they do. Jesus tells these parables not for explanation but for exploration. Not for answers but so as to engage the imagination. Not for certainties about faith but for discoveries about how faith works. In this regard, Jesus asks us to talk in parables, too. Because something happens in telling parables that cannot occur in just listening to them. Figuring out a parable to tell is a different experience than securing its purpose.

Perhaps in this story, parabolic and paradoxical as it is, the sower throws the seed anywhere, everywhere, to suggest that anywhere and everywhere are ultimately the provinces of God’s compassionate, grace-filled, redemptive activity. Even in the rocky, barren, broken places we may find God. When I was a first-year student at Vanderbilt Divinity School I began visiting an inmate named Phil Workman who was on Unit VI at the Tennessee State Prison, also known as death row. Even back in 1982, I suspected that some form of pastoral counseling focus would engage my life’s work. So, in addition to visiting Phil, I spent part of one summer helping in the Chaplain’s office where, along with other mental health professionals, we worked with prisoners who were approaching parole. We gave them a simple battery of tests such as a vocational inventory, a simple intelligence survey, and a modified form of the Myers-Briggs. Later, we scheduled appointments with those interested—and not all of them were—to go over the results and offer suggestions about next steps. We had no way of knowing what, if any, difference our efforts would make. You might say we were spreading seed on many kinds of soil, and not doing much in the way of harrowing it in preparation. It was a pilot program whose funding ran out, and it was not repeated. That summer eventually got lost in those frantic years of education, parenting our two sons, and vocational formation. I soon forgot about our efforts, but I did not forget about Phil, whom I continued to visit long after we returned to Atlanta.

One Saturday in the mid-nineties, during a visit to Nashville, I went to visit Phil, a visit always punctuated by a thorough search by the guards. While waiting to be searched, a middle-aged man in a coat and tie came into the holding area and sat down across from me. He was looking at me intently, and finally said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I confessed that I did not. He went on to explain that he had been an inmate at the prison in the early 80’s, and among those whom we interviewed that summer some 15 years earlier. “Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked. Again, I said that I did not. “You encouraged me to finish my GED in the year before I left this place,” he said, “and I’d heard that before. It was what you said next that made me sit up and listen.” Now he really had my attention. “What was that?” I asked. “You told me I scored well on my aptitude test. You said I should finish my GED, and when I got out, I could consider going to college. You told me I was smart. I know it may sound strange to you, sir, he said, but I was a 25-year-old headed nowhere, and not once in my life had the words “smart” and “college” been used in the same sentence referring to me. Nobody ever encouraged me to do anything.” “So, what brings you here today?” I asked. “By the time I left here in 1984 I had my GED. I realized I enjoyed learning. I went to Nashville Tech, then TSU, and I got my degree in accounting. Now, I’m a CPA. I volunteer here one Saturday a month, teaching a literacy course and helping inmates work on their finances.” About this time the guards came to take me back to Unit VI, and we parted ways once again. I have thought about this encounter many times in the years since, and while I know his story is very likely an exceptional one—perhaps our efforts most often fall in rocky places, or among thorns—I remembered it again this week in light of today’s Gospel. Perhaps today’s Gospel is not so much about good soil, but rather about God as the good sower; about, that is to say, what God is really like. It is a parable about the abundance of a God not so much concerned with harrowing the soil as with harvesting—and harvesting abundantly. Like the inmate who became a CPA and a prison volunteer, some of the seed sown in today’s parable brought forth an unexpectedly abundant result, against all odds. God is not concerned so much with cautious agricultural strategy as with spreading seed as if all soil is potentially good soil. Begging the question, dear one’s, is there anywhere, really, God’s abundance might not potentially be found…and others might be blessed, you might say, by bearing witness to this blessing, and so often this is how it happens. It makes a difference—this spreading of Gospel seeds—sometimes in ways we cannot imagine and least expect, in a harvest shocking in abundance. “Practice resurrection,” the poet Wendell Berry says to us all. “Say that your main crop is the forest you did not plant, and that you will not live to harvest.” We are called to spread seeds of hope, and grace, and to trust that our God is a God of abundance. In a way, being up here this morning reminds me of the view from my grandfather’s roll-top desk, with so much abundance, so many stories, and so much hope. From up here, I see so many faithful seed sowers, and so much abundant possibility. Thanks be to God! Amen.

3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins

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 Third Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here this morning. In the reading for today from the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus asks the crowd “Who are my mother and my brothers”? This is among a variation on a theme of texts in which Jesus asks questions such as “Who do you say that I am?” and, “Who are my brothers and sisters?” They are questions that have significance for each of us, too. I love these similar gospel readings for a number of reasons. For one, they often show Jesus in a paradoxical light; he is alone, praying, yet with the disciples around him; he is accused of being “out of his mind,” yet he is clear, non-anxious, and resolute; he is curious about what others are saying, yet he shows an awareness of his journey as part of something much larger than can be encompassed by the events and opinions swirling around him—in short, he is being an effective leader. He wonders what others call him, even as he knows that in terms of his earthly fate, it does not matter. Indeed, this awareness of his fate—that he would undergo great suffering—suggests an awareness of the larger divine narrative and his role in it, and is directly tied to the passion narrative. Paradoxes often contain important truths, however, and this is no exception. 

I’m also drawn to these passages because of the questions themselves. Ever notice how we respond to simple, honest, straightforward questions? They have a certain power because they generally reveal something about both the one asking the question, and the one of whom an answer is expected. One reason Jesus asks these questions is so the disciples can learn something about themselves, and so we can we learn about ourselves, and about our relationship with God. Isn’t this the beauty of questions, whether in the scientific method, or psychotherapy, or a good mystery novel? In fact, this was in part the source of Sigmund Freud’s genius. He discovered that paying attention to the ways in which his patients answered the question “Who do you say that I am” was the most powerful clinical tool at his disposal. They often made him out to be someone he was not; someone from the past, in relation to whom healing was needed, or someone they wished he might be; perhaps someone with whom they were angry, or in relation to whom they had experienced some pain. Sometimes they were actually projecting aspects of themselves onto him. Working through this “transference” as Freud called it, is the heart of the therapeutic journey. And the more clear his patients became about who Freud really was, a caring, wise, somewhat strange Viennese psychiatrist who smoked smelly cigars and was just trying to do the best he could, the more they came to accurately know themselves, and this is where the healing began…for it is ultimately self-knowledge in the context of relationships that heals. We inevitably discover possibilities in relationships, and our lives, where previously we had seen none, and we learn something about who we are, too.  

We are all creatures of narrative and naming, and good writers know this too. This is how meaning is found…in our stories of naming, and relationship, just like today’s Gospel. In one of my favorite of Cs Lewis’ books, he has a character say, “When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years…till that can be dug out of us… till we have faces…how can God meet us face to face.” This is what Jesus wants from the disciples and from us: he wants to be in relationship, he wants us to have “faces” and in order to do this, we have to come to terms both with who we are, and who he is. This is an ongoing, daily, life-long task. In response to the first question in today’s Gospel reading….who are my sisters and brother… several possibilities are explored. Our human family, for any of its virtues, is ultimately just too small, too closely circumscribed. As a priest and therapist, I spend much of my time helping people understand their family stories, and how they were shaped by them. When someone steps up and answers Jesus’ call to follow him, the church washes that person in baptismal water, and it is as if the person gets a new name—a new identity that takes precedence over even that person’s family name. The chief act of Christian worship isn’t some mysterious, dark, esoteric rite. It’s a family meal with everyone around the table, the Sunday dinner that we call Holy Communion; family as God intended family to be.

In a world of grandparents without grandchildren close by, and single-parent families, and grandchildren growing up without grandparents, and marriages often under stress, we need a bigger family than the one we were born into. As John the Baptizer said, “God is going to have a family, even if God has to raise a people out of the rocks in this river. To become a Christian, to have your life taken over by Jesus, is to be joined into a family, a people convened by “water and the Spirit,”[ix] a family bigger and better than your biological family, a worldwide, barrier-breaking family that goes by the name, “Body of Christ.”

A sense of curiosity and wonder is essential, too, for learning about ourselves, and one another, in the context of our life’s narrative. One wonders what the answers would be if Jesus asked these question today. For many, the crowds described by the disciples would feel right at home, what with their rather benign view of Jesus. Walter Brueggemann, a colleague of mine at Columbia Seminary, has said that the gospel today is “a truth widely held…but widely reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.” Moreover, Brueggemann suggests, the gospel is for many an old habit, neither valued nor questioned—not really fully alive. And more than that, our sometimes too technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, and takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes and forms. How often do we answer Jesus’ questions and keep the gospel alive in our daily lives? Perhaps these are questions we should seek to answer each day.

One of my roles at Columbia Seminary was as a faculty advisor to students. We had a remarkable diversity of students in those days, including physicians and business/persons, former attorneys, retirees, and students just out of college. One of my advisees was an engineer by training, who after 25 years with an aerospace corporation decided to go to seminary. He was accustomed to going by the book, following the engineering manual, and struggled at times with the fact that there was no extant manual for every act of pastoral care ministry. After his first hospital visit I found him outside my office, visibly shaken Once settled inside, he said “Bill, I want a book that will tell me exactly how to respond to what I saw in the hospital this morning,” “Jim,” I said, “there is no such book, and even if there were, I would burn it. You’ve got to find a way to be present, to show up, and listen to the story as it unfolds, and let your heart, and God, and the other person in the room, guide your actions.” The questions such as, ”Who are my sisters and brothers?” require that we respond in exactly this way, out of our Baptismal Covenant; you remember, the part where we promise to proclaim by word and example the “Good News of God in Christ” and respect the dignity of every human being.

“But who do you say that I am?” and “Who are my sisters and brothers?” Jesus asks, and these are the essential question, aren’t they? Because they require that we get to know ourselves and that we be creative, and have courage in relation to our images of Jesus. Sallie McFague, one of my seminary professors, taught us that the images we use for God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, very much inform how we respond to the question of who we say they are. I believe that what Jesus is doing in this passage is calling us to be in relationship. I am reminded of a wonderful story told by Garrison Keillor in which he recalls a game he played with his favorite aunt Lois. Keillor writes: “My favorite game was strangers,” he said…”pretending that we didn’t know each other. I’d get up and walk to the back of the bus and turn around and come back to the seat and say, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ And she said, “No, I don’t mind,” and I’d sit. And she’d say: “A very pleasant day isn’t it?”

We didn’t really speak this way in our family, but she and I were strangers, and so we could talk as we pleased.

“Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?”

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, I’m going to New York City. I’m in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died, and I’m going back to Broadway now on the evening plane. Then next week I go to Paris, France, where I currently reside on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps you’ve read about me?”

“No, I never heard of you in my life, but I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person.”

“Oh, she was pretty old. She was all right, I guess.”

“Are you very close to your family, then?”

“No, not really… I’m adopted, you see. My real parents were Broadway actors—they sent me out to the farm thinking I’d get more to eat, but I don’t think that people out here understand people like me.” She looked away from me. She looked out the window a long time. I’d hurt her feelings. Minutes passed. But I didn’t know her. Then I said, “Talk to me. Please.” She said, “Sir, if you bother me anymore I’ll have the driver throw you off this bus.”

“Say that you know me. Please”… “And when I couldn’t bear it one more second, she touched me and smiled, and I was able to be myself again.”

Who do you say that I am? Who is my family? Who is my mother, and my sisters and brothers? In asking, Jesus is saying…tell me that you know me. Please, say that you know me. He invites us into relationship, and in answering the question, we encounter the possibility of change, and growth, and transformation. And this requires that we die to our old selves- our “transferences” and projections and illusions– and each day take up this cross. For my former engineer student Jim this meant dying to his old engineer self. Change makes us vulnerable, but it is precisely our vulnerability that can be the occasion for growth in relation to God. Growth and life paradoxically require death; transformation requires vulnerability. Knowing God requires being fully alive, even as we die to our former selves. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like Easter…And so we pray in our ordination and Easter services:

Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Second Sunday of Pentecost – Bill Harkins

Luke 1:39-57

1:39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,

1:40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

1:41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit

1:42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

1:43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?

1:44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.

1:45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

1:46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,

1:47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

1:48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

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

Grace and peace to each of you on this Second Sunday after Pentecost, and welcome to Holy Family…we are so glad you are here. On Friday of this week we in the Episcopal Church observed the Visitation of Mary to the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. These Feast Days often occur mid-week, so it isn’t always the case that we observe them on Sunday. Today, I’d like to focus on this beloved story in our heritage because like Mary, we too are waiting, and hoping in this season of transition. And this asks us to be resilient and courageous too.

In the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, we are presented with two women living in expectation. Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary, with Jesus, both of whom embody the hopes and expectations of Israel. Theirs was not a passive waiting, but rather one full of promise. In his essay “A Spirituality of Waiting,” Henri Nouwen writes: “People who have to wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow.” This kind of waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. Rather, it is a movement from something to something more. We, too, are in a season of waiting for something to be born…for something new to grow in this sacred place.

Back in Advent Pete and June Giglio graciously hosted the choir at their lovely home, and we sang what is actually one of my favorite Advent Hymns, “Mary Did You Know?” It’s a lovely hymn, but for the first time it occurred to me that this hymn is an example of “man-splaining” if ever there was one—that is, the assumption that until a man explains something to or about women, nobody else will get it. In any case, if the author of this hymn had read, or remembered the passage from Luke for this past Friday, he would have known that, of course, Mary did know—and she knew in ways no one of my gender could fully understand.

I hope it’s not too irreverent to think of this meeting of Mary and Elizabeth as a first-century baby shower of sorts. It was a gathering like 21^st-century baby showers in some ways; pregnant women and their friends and family, getting together to support one another. Conversation that runs the gamut from the mundane to the monumental aspects of pregnancy and motherhood: cravings, hopes, and fears about a new role in life, which pediatrician to choose, and so on. Having been on the periphery of many such gatherings I can tell you that countries have been founded on less.

In other ways Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting was not like any shower I’ve ever been to—that is, when I was invited. There were only two women present, and the only gifts exchanged were those from God: an awareness of their place in salvation history, and the guiding, inspiring presence of the Holy Spirit in living out their roles. The other key difference is that the impact of this meeting extends many centuries into the future, to the present day, in several significant ways. This scene is part of a larger, overarching story of salvation. The overarching story line with which Luke opens his gospel is the story of John and Jesus, the relationship of the forerunner of the Messiah (John the Baptist) and the Messiah, Israel’s expectation and its arrival. The two stories of John and Jesus intersect in the meeting of their mothers. This meeting draws on prior themes in the traditions of bold women in Israel’s history and it reaches into the present to inspire us, men and women alike, with boldness today.

It’s significant that this is a scene the two women meet and converse without the presence of any male character (other than their unborn babies). Biblical scholar Richard Bauckham points out that the Bible is an “androcentric narrative” or male focused, and as such rarely includes scenes in which women appear together without men (51). There are some exceptions to that rule; several “women only” passages we find in the Hebrew Bible (from Bauckham, 51): this includes the lovely story of Ruth and Naomi in the Book of Ruth—Ruth refuses to leave Naomi in a deeply moving and compelling story, and the two travel from Moab to Judah and amicably work out the details of their future in a new land.

Well, I am so very grateful to have had female role models who were fiercely smart and independent, and to be married to a thoughtful, strong, and compassionate woman who is in many ways my superior. Our two sons have found bright and remarkable wives, and we now have two granddaughters who are such a joy to this father and grandfather—who learns from them all, every day, about seeing the world through their eyes. Here at Holy Family women are so often at the heart of our parish life in so many ways, leading, forming, teaching, serving on our vestry and nominating committee, caring for others and tending to this flock that is our beloved parish. For several weeks now a group of women have been learning together about women in history whose spiritual lives have inspired generations. We have added three

For a long time now, I have wondered what MARY might think about the passage from Luke’s Gospel. During the Evensong service in our tradition, the choir sings the Magnificat or, “the Song of Mary,” also derived from Luke’s Gospel. Once, as our choir sang this in the lovely way they do, I had what might be described as a vision of sorts. The vision, or daydream, was that I was watching the scene we just heard read, in the Gospel for today, from Mary’s perspective. And I heard those words of grace and forgiveness just as you must have heard them. I realized that every time I have imagined this, my thoughts eventually lead to that day on Calvary. I have imagined myself on some distant hill, watching from afar. Why? Would I, like others who loved Jesus, have been afraid, and kept my distance, when Mary and the other women remained steadfast and fully present there beneath the cross? And what’s more, how do I know I would not have been on either Jesus’ left or right. As my ordination brother Thee Smith reminds me, quoting Terence the Playwright, “Because I am human, nothing human is alien to me.” Perhaps I need to be prepared move closer to the cross, one way or the other. I wonder if during that time Mary spent with Sarah you had any idea how your life would unfold. I wonder what it’s like to look back on it now. I wonder.

And then I remembered a song by someone named John Prine, a songwriter and singer whom we lost not too long ago. It may be that thinking about John Prine during the Magnificat, as the incense fills the air, is like going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but bear with me. In one of his lovely songs he imagines what it would be like to be an old woman. He was intrigued by the idea of “a song about a woman who feels even older than she is.” And he had a vivid picture of this woman standing over the sink with soap in her hands…She wanted to get out of her house and her difficult life, filled with pain, and loss. “She just wanted an angel to come to take her away from all this, Prine once said.” The song goes like this:

I am an old woman named after my mother

my old man is another child that’s grown old.

If dreams were lightning, if thunder was desire

   This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.

Make me an angel who flies from Montgomery.

Make me a poster from an old rodeo.

Just give me one thing I can hold on to;

to believe in this living is just a hard way to go.

Somehow, remembering this song helped me to imagine Mary’s life—almost as if I were standing in her shoes….almost, that is, as if viewing the world through her eyes, imagining how she might be feeling. And so I wondered about the view of the cross from the ground up real close, where Mary and the other women were that day.

I recalled these lines, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” Perhaps by staying in Jerusalem, Mary was teaching us, reluctant students that we are, that paradoxically it is through acknowledging and living into our vulnerability that we find courage, and what peace we may find.

I wonder if Mary stayed in Jerusalem because God’s own self remained just enough in the dust of the streets and the resilient mud of the walls to keep her deeply connected to the one to whom she gave birth. And the one whom you saw die here. You must have asked, as we are asking this morning in our season of watching, and waiting, and hoping, “Where am I? Where is my spiritual journey taking me?” I wonder, were Isaiah’s words in Mary’s heart? For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. ¹⁸But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

I hope Mary was able to find joy in Jerusalem. She had so much perseverance. She must have longed for justice, and for hope, and perhaps that is what sustained her and what sustains us all, come to that, for hope is a good thing. It may be the best of things. Did she remember the words of Jeremiah? The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ⁶In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.” I have so many questions about how Mary and Joseph managed all that they did, in a time when women were stoned for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and when the father was in question…a time when women were marginalized in so many ways. It is a story available to us all, in our own brokenness and vulnerability and deep fragile beauty, and our miraculous capacity for compassion. And that’s it, really, isn’t it? Compassion means to suffer with another, and to do justice in response to that suffering. It is no surprise that the Hebrew for compassion is Rachamim—which means “womb-ish” or womb-like. And so it was that the one who taught us compassion grew in you, and it is in God’s womb-like embrace that each of us is held, and in that image that we are created. And so it is that we, too, are called to do justice, and seek mercy, and walk humbly, just as Mary did, and as her son taught us. We need mercy, and justice, and forgiveness in this season.

So I imagine Mary in her old age, and I imagine her knowing that her son belongs to everyone. I pray that one day, God made her an angel, and she was able to fly. I pray that we might have even a fraction of her resilience and faith in our journeys in the ministries to which we have been called as the Body of Christ. It’s the inner journey that’s essential as we seek to be Christ-bearers. And I give thanks for the strong, resilient women in my life, and in this parish. Thank you for your steadfast faithfulness among us. As the mystic Meister Eckhart said, “What is the good if Mary gave birth to the son of God two thousand years ago if I do not give birth to the son of God today? We are all meant to be mothers of God. For God is always needing to be born.” And we are called, each in our own way, to prepare the way in our own hearts first. I am grateful for Mary, who taught us something about how to do this faithfully and well. Amen.

Trinity Sunday – Bill Harkins

John 3:1-17

3:1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.

3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 3:5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 3:6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 3:7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 3:8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 3:9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 3:10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 3:11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 3:12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 3:13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 3:17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this Trinity Sunday in this season of Pentecost, and on a morning when we hear a Gospel text providing us with nothing less than a template for transformation. If you are visiting today, please let us know, and regardless, we are so very glad you are here. Today we observe Trinity Sunday, a day set apart in the life of our church to reflect on the nature of God, and on our experience of being in relationship with God, with ourselves, and with others. Although the history of the great doctrinal councils of the fourth and fifth centuries regarding the Trinity is rich and interesting in its own way—as much for contentious debates as for the conclusions reached—it all comes down to this truth: the Trinity reveals that the essence of God is found in relationship, and we are created by God to be in relationship with God, and with one another. And we are called to go forth in love, with the comforting assurance of the Spirit as our advocate and comforter.

Indeed, as advances in neuroscience are now showing us, it’s written in our very DNA that we are creatures of relationship—and maybe even of compassion. But to explain the trinity is not now nor has it ever been easy. Indeed, it strikes fear in the hearts of preachers, and with good reason. St. Augustine once said that anyone who denies the trinity is in danger of losing his salvation, and anyone who tries to explain it is in danger of losing his mind. I don’t agree with the first proposition, but I can relate to the second! A few years ago at the Cathedral, a family with three teen-aged children approached me in the Narthex after one of the services, and said that one of the children, a bright and inquisitive young theologian of 14-15 years, had a question about the Trinity. I desperately looked around for a colleague to whom I might suggest she speak, and seeing none, asked the young lady what her question was. She promptly, confidently asked: “How is it possible for God be God, and at the same time be the Son, and the Spirit? In the Garden of Gethsemane, was Jesus praying to himself?” Then she looked at me imploringly, and with utter earnestness, confident that one of her priests could answer her question. I was momentarily silenced, but then, out of nowhere, I said, “Think of the Trinity as being like water. Water can take on three forms: solid, and liquid, and steam, and yet it is the same element. By analogy, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit also take on three forms, yet are one in the same.” I waited for what seemed an eternity, holding my breath, and she said “OK…now I understand. Thank you.” And she turned away satisfied. I kept waiting for her to come back to tell me that this analogy only goes so far—that it breaks down because temperature produces only one of these at any given time, actually leading to a false doctrine of the Trinity, suggesting that it’s only one person taking on one of three forms at any given time….and, well, you get the idea. This can be really tough.

Often in this season, including the Feast of the Holy Trinity, we are reminded that we are called by our vocation to let the same mind be in us that was in Christ, who emptied and humbled himself on the cross. This emptying, we imagine, might even result in our being born again, like Nicodemus. The Greek word for emptying is kenosis, and means relinquishing our ego control and our ultimate authority. As a psychologist, I can tell you that from a clinical perspective this is not easily done. When we mark ourselves with the symbol of powerless submission I need to be reminded what this really means. I’d rather not give up control, and yet it is precisely the vulnerability that comes with doing so that leads to humility, and grace. And giving up control, as we know from the deep wisdom to be found in any 12-step process, is a form of suffering. After many years of benefitting from Al-Anon support for those with addicted family members, I have reduced the 12 steps to four: show up, pay attention, speak my truth, and let go of attachment to outcomes we cannot control. That fourth step creates an emptiness that can be life-giving, if we allow the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom to be poured into that space. And, this can lead to endurance, and character, and hope. And hope, as we know, is a good thing…indeed it may be the best of things.

And, my friends, we may need to walk for a time in darkness to fully understand what this means. Yet, this is exactly where Jesus would have us be – emptying ourselves, coming out of darkness into light, and promising that he will be with us regardless. Like everything else about him, the way Jesus died—the cross we observe—represents the paradoxical way he asks us to live. Marked as Christ’s own forever, we are marked with the real suffering of a broken world and we are called to heal it from our own vulnerable places, with compassion. Sometimes this can be scary, because vulnerability is the road to compassion, it is often accompanied by the shadow of defensiveness, and this compromises our self awareness.

When I was a freshman at Rhodes College I was befriended by a track teammate who was a year ahead of me. I was scared, and lonely, and I had left far behind my high-school sweetheart and football teammates—most of whom were at local schools back in my home state—for a small liberal arts college 8 hours away. My new friend Mark sensed my isolation, and during our training runs that fall he was a steadfast and reliable companion. He had a lively and delightful sense of humor. We were both there because we wanted to learn in an academically rigorous context, and we loved to run. Both of us had given up the gridiron for track, and he was a wonderful distance runner who would go on to run a 2:38 marathon at Boston in April of 1992. In February of that year a cancerous lymph node was removed, and still he qualified for the Boston marathon. In early summer the cancer returned, and after a clinical trial at NIH, by December he was gone. In typical care-giver fashion, I responded to the loss of my friend by over-functioning in relation to our beloved running community. After giving Mark’s eulogy at Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, I drove home and went back to work. Over-functioning in this way is one of my golden calves, so cleverly disguised in various professional roles—and often connected to my need for control. In my pain I withdrew, and I would not let anyone in. I needed to allow my grief to do its own good grief work—to begin to let suffering lead to endurance, but I would not acknowledge this to myself, or to anyone else.

One day, late in the fall of the following year, I drove to the mountains, alone, and set out running on a trail near Amicalola Falls, near the beginning—or end—of the Appalachian Trail, and just around the corner from Holy Family as the crow flies. Mark and I had run the same trails together often over the years, and we loved the freedom from urban streets, and the gift of God’s presence, the sheer wildness of the southern Appalachians. Although the day had dawned cool and clear, a fierce low pressure system churned up the east coast while cold air poured in from the west. It began to grow cloudy, and the wind began to blow through the high passes beneath Springer Mountain. As today’s Gospel reminds us, “the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  Soon, it began to rain. Running on, I reached a spot called Nimblewill Gap where 5 trails intersect, like spokes in a mountainous wheel spinning off in different directions. There, the wind blew through the gap, driving the now steady rain. My map—in those days prior to GPS, now useless, dissolved in my hands, and in my confusion I took the wrong trail. Hypothermia was beginning to set in as the temperature fell and the wind and rain made that declination all the worse. I realized I was completely lost, and that darkness would be upon me in due course. Where am I going? I wondered, and how did I get here?

Suddenly, around the bend on the rutted forest service road an old, battered pick-up truck appeared. I waved it down, and inside sat a farmer and Deacon at lovely High Shoals Baptist Church, which I had passed miles, and what by now had been hours, before. He was as worn and weathered as his truck, looked as old as Abraham, and extended his hand…”Name of J.R. Chester,” he said. I told him I was lost. “Climb in, son” he instructed, opening the passenger side door. Inside, the truck smelled of leather, and wool, and oil, and it was blessedly warm and brought back dear memories of my paternal grandfather’s hardware store. He asked me, “Son, what are you doing so far from home on such a miserable day.” And my story came pouring out: the death of my friend, the unremitting grief, and the isolation that led me to run alone on mountain trails. I was sad, and I was angry with God, and I missed my friend. The old man just listened. And, somehow, there in the warmth of that old truck and in the care of a compassionate stranger, I began to feel something shift in my soul—it was almost like…I would say it was exactly like an emptying out—a kenosis. As we made our way over the muddy roads, in the growing darkness, and the wind, and the pouring rain, down the mountain and back to my car many miles away, I began to come back to life, and to feel some sense of healing and restoration, and with it, some sense of courage, and resilience, and hope. This chance encounter with a fellow sojourner—a shepherd of sorts, offered me hospitality. In so doing, he allowed me to name my lament out loud, to become reconciled to myself, and to those whom I had cut off, including God, and return to relationship, to express and experience gratitude.

In so doing I began to embark on a journey into a new country, a journey less Odyssean than Abrahamic, the outcome of which was uncertain, but was, to be sure, no longer one of despair. We finally arrived at my car, and as he let me out of the truck, the old man said “Well, son, it looks like we’ve gotten you back home.” “Yes sir,” I said, “In more ways than you know. Thank you.” And, it was a home to which I arrived, as TS Eliot said so well, only to know it for the first time.

There is a lovely African American spiritual, the words of which go something like this: Deep River, My home is over Jordan. Deep river, Lord. I want to cross over into campground. As I drove back to Atlanta, to my wife and sons, to that precious linen on the altar in the world woven of the grace-filled threads of relationships I had almost lost, I remembered a last conversation with Mark, weeks before he died. I told him how much I would miss him. “Keep running the Peachtree Road Race for us both, “he said. And I promised I would. And so I have. God willing this July will be my 48^th consecutive PRR. And then he said something I will never forget. “God put us here to learn, and to love, and to be thankful. I have had so much love,” he said. “Yes, there are so many who love you,” I replied, “and I am among them my brother.” “What I mean,” he said, “is that I have had so much love to give, to so many. And that is how we are fully alive. And I am so grateful. “Gratitude, that’s the word. And that is what my friend Mark knew and tried to teach me as he emptied himself, and came into the light. Now, I run primarily for relationships. Campground is that home to which we come, and know for the first time, and where we are willing to risk the vulnerability that comes with being reconciled, with not cutting ourselves off from God’s Creation when our hearts are broken. It is that broken place from which we extend compassion…for others, and for ourselves. Rabbi and family therapist Ed Friedman once said that grief that is not transformed is transmitted. I had been transmitting my grief, and I am so grateful for the gift of relationships with Mark, and Mr. JR Chester, a stranger, and shepherd, who taught me something about how to transform my grief. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit, who guides our journey as we allow the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus, even if we have to walk for a time in darkness to become children of light. On that journey we may find some measure of suffering, endurance, character, and hope. Thanks, be to God. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs– in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

`In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ “

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen…Good morning, and welcome to our beloved Holy Family on this Pentecost Sunday. Today brings to a close the Easter season, and the Feast of the Pentecost is the liturgical marker of Christ’s promise to send the Holy Spirit among us. It was, after all, the occasion of his Baptism on which he received the Holy Spirit, a Spirit that henceforth informed every action of his earthly ministry. On the Day of Pentecost, the power of the Spirit was given to the community of faith—the disciples, wherever they might be gathered—to remain with them for all time.

As we heard read so well in today’s passage from Acts, the disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, as it was known among Greek-speaking Jews. This festival occurred fifty days after Passover, and was originally an agricultural festival in which the first harvests of the season were offered. Over time it became an opportunity to commemorate the giving of the Laws to Moses at Sinai as well, so this festival day was significant indeed. On this particular day, ten days after the Ascension of Christ, the disciples were no doubt scared, and sad—grieving the loss of their risen Lord. I imagine that they were still uncertain as to the true nature of the events swirling around them. I wasn’t there of course, but in my imagination I hear them saying one to another, “Where do we go from here?” On some level, they must have felt abandoned, and wondered, “What do we do now?” Like most of us, I know what it is like to be in search of meaning, and purpose, and to be afraid. I suspect we all know how this feels. And we sometimes ask ourselves, “What do I do now…where do I go from here?” This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, as Eliot reminds us in this brief poem:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

In a real sense, the Day of Pentecost is the final, answering verse in the tone poem that is the Paschal Mystery—that process of transformation by which we are given new life, new spirit, and a new way of looking at the lives we lead. And it is fitting that Pentecost brings us full circle in the liturgical cycle of Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide. In this sense, following Eliot’s musings, we come back home to arrive where we started, and know what it means to be at home with God for the first time. But what does this mean, really? I want to suggest that it involves our grieving what is past and what has died or needs to die, followed by a period of waiting and hoping, then claiming and living into our new births, and finally accepting the spirit of the life that we are in fact already living. We see this process writ large in our liturgical year, especially in the cycle of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, and Pentecost. The disciples went through each of these stages, and on the day of Pentecost so long ago, we are told that “a sound like the rush of a violent wind…filled the entire house where they were sitting….All of them filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Now, we know that one interpretation of the Holy Spirit is that this is the one who comforts us. I find it fascinating that the root of the word “orphan” in its Latin form means “one without comfort.” So, in precisely this sense, the Holy Spirit is one who comes to comfort us, and serves as an Advocate for God, who has adopted all of us in the Spirit of Baptism. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. In other words, until our restless hearts are finally at home in and with God, we are orphans, among those without true comfort, without a home. That house where the disciples were gathered on the Feast Day of Pentecost was in this sense an orphanage, into which the wind of the Spirit blew, and they were filled with the Spirit and adopted by that Spirit and in this way, they, and we and the whole church, were transformed. I invite you to picture a time and place in which you felt at home, and safe, and where you experienced, perhaps even despite loss and grief, a sense of the peace of God. And, I invite you to consider with me the implications for our lives of relationships like this, those sacred moments in which the gift of love, breathed upon us by the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom, can transform our lives.

When I was growing up my maternal grandparents had a small farm in north Fulton County in what was then very much the country. It had a pond, and a small lake, and acres of fields and woods with streams, wildlife, and a large garden to which they lovingly tended. The land was in many ways a sanctuary for me, in no small part because of my grandmother. I would spend hours fishing, or walking with the dogs in the woods, or lying in the hammock, or sitting by the fire reading. My grandmother was always glad to see me. She was never preoccupied with my academics, or how many touchdowns I had scored, or the other daily concerns of my—at times—too-busy adolescence. I spent as much time there as I could. Often I would whistle up the dogs and be gone for hours in the woods. And always, upon my return, there would be on the dining room table a piece of her homemade pound cake and a cold glass of milk. It was almost like—I would say exactly like this gift was an outward and visible sign of her love and care. Through her pound cake she seemed to say, “I am glad you are here, and you are home, and here you are loved.” From time to time she would ask me to help her make the pound cake—she knew I liked to cook, in part because she had taught me how—and she often said that someday I would need to write the recipe down, because she knew it by heart and did not have it in written form. As the years went by, I married and had children of my own who also loved to visit there. And one year, while we were living in Tennessee and visiting the farm, she called me into the kitchen. She wanted me to watch her as she made pound cake, and write down exactly what she did, just the way she did it, and take the recipe back to Tennessee. She was insistent, and persistent, and I did as I was told. It was to be the last time I ever saw her. Months later, sitting out on the front porch after her funeral, I tried to imagine my life without her in it. It seemed a much-diminished world. And then suddenly I made the connection with our last visit. There was no pound cake on the table this time, but she had, through her persistence and out of her love for me, provided me with a gift of grace–the means to create it myself and the desire to do so. Yes, and to share it with those whom I love and others as well, in times perhaps of sorrow or joy. Today’s Gospel is just like this, and our lives can be like this too.

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, piecing our lives back together no matter the damage.

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 windows at Westminster were lovingly replaced. When we participate in loving relationships, for example, just 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, and our worship in spaces just like this one. 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. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives, and it’s in the context of loving relationships of all kinds—partners, spouses, children, 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 the Disciples’ questions, which are after all ours too—“Where do we go…what do we do now?” by turning to one another in love. If you’re in a committed, loving relationship to another—including a relationship with God—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. We can turn, like sunflowers in a Kansas field, and face the source of love, and compassion, and our best selves. “Practice Resurrection,” the poet Wendell Berry wrote, and that may begin with reaching out in hospitality and love, to others. And that’s how the “better angels of our nature” come to us, become part of us, sustain and transform us, with the help of the Holy Spirit, throughout the long green season of Pentecost, and beyond. Amen.

Seventh Sunday of Easter – Bill Harkins

John 17:6-19

17:6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 17:7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 17:8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 17:9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 17:10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 17:11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 17:12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 17:13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 17:14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17:15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 17:16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 17:18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 17:19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning friends, and welcome to Holy Family on this Seventh Sunday of Easter. I am glad you are here. In the passage for this Sunday, we hear a heartfelt passage as Jesus looks to the heavens, praying for his friends. Surrounded by his loved ones, Jesus begs God to watch out for his friends while he’s gone. “I am asking on their behalf,” Jesus says as he offers his supplication. “Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.” He pleads for God to “protect them in your name.” With both crucifixion and ascension on the horizon, the thought of being gone, and his awareness of this comes from his soul; “While I was with them, I protected them,” he says to the stars, “I guarded them.” For the third time in this short passage, Jesus pleads for God’s protection— using the same word again and again. He has lived his life for them—“for their sakes”—and now glimpses a future without them. His spirit is in pain because he can’t imagine being away from them; “you in me, and I in you.” All of this is a very difficult trail to be on.

Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century theologian, is compelling in her vision of Jesus’ thirst for reunion with his friends. “We are his joy,” she writes in chapter 31 of the long text of Revela­tions of Divine Love:

“He has longed to have us.” Julian explains: “For this is the spiritual thirst of Christ, the love-longing that lasts and ever shall do until we see that revelation…. Therefore it seems to me that this is his thirst: a love-longing to have us all together, wholly in himself for his delight.

As Julian says, Jesus thirsts for companionship with us. We are his delight. Our union with him is his hope, and his burden. “For that same longing and thirst which he had on the cross—a longing and thirst which it seems to me had been in him from eternity—those he still has,” Julian comments on the passion of Christ, “and shall have until the time when the last soul which is to be saved has come up into his bliss.” On this Mother’s Day we give thanks for all who have been mothers to us—including Julian of Norwich and her many spiritual sisters.  Christian theology is in this sense a love story. “For God so loved the world,” the Gospel of John declares at the beginning (3:16). That love is Jesus. And in chapter 17 he reveals that his heart beats with this longing for communion with us. This love proclaims the truth of the gospel, the truth about us: that we are the beloved of God, and that in Christ the eternal love of God longs for connection with us.

In his wonderful book “Tattoos on the Heart,” Father Greg Boyle, recently awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom, tells of his work with “Homeboy Industries,” a gang-intervention program in Los Angeles. In one chapter he quotes Mother Teresa, who said that most of the world’s ills can be traced to the fact that we have forgotten that we belong to each other. With kinship as a goal, Boyle says, we would no longer be promoting justice, we would be celebrating it. Boyle describes kinship as a “circle of compassion… outside of which no one is standing, and we gradually move ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there,” he says, “with those whose dignity has been denied…we locate ourselves among the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join with the easily despised…we situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.” At Homeboy Industries they seek to tell each person this truth: they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them. I think Jesus is saying the same thing to us in today’s Gospel. And I think he is talking to me and to you, and asking what walls we may have been building, and why, and when.

Boyle tells the story of driving on an errand with three members of the community when he says to the one riding in the front seat, “Be on the lookout for a gas station.” The companion leans leftward toward the gas gage and says “You’re fine.” “Como que’ I’m fine—I’m on ECHALE, Cabron,” Boyle says. Waving at him, Boyle says “Hello, E means empty.” JoJo, his friend, looks at him with shock. “E means empty?” “Well, yeah, what did you think it meant?” Boyle asked. “I thought it meant ‘Enough’.” “Well, what did you think F stood for?” Boyle asked? “I thought it meant ‘Finished’,” JoJo says. Boyle writes, “After I thank him for visiting our planet, I realized this is how the journey from change to transition has to play out. When others stare into the mirror and pronounce EMPTY, our collective kinship task is the suggest instead ENOUGH—enough gifts, talent, goodness, enough love to go around…and when the verdict is “FINISHED” we are called to lead instead to fullness—that place within—where Boyle suggests we find in themselves, in ourselves, what God had in mind. Dear friends, in this season of transition at Holy Family, can we practice a theology of abundance—can we say there is enough love and empathy and connection to go around when, in our anxiety we might be tempted to say we are on “empty”? I believe we can. I believe we are. But we have to work together.

I’ll never forget my sophomore year of football at Sandy Springs High School, entering the stadium with my teammates at mighty St. Pius for the Regional play-offs on a cold November night, and hearing 6,000 screaming Catholics telling us to go home. I knew we were in trouble, even though we had beaten them at our home field earlier in the season. I will never forget what it was like to be the opposing team on that night. And, I was to remember that night for other reasons as well. Just before this big game, the senior wide receiver in relation to whom I had been apprenticed that season was injured. I was given the task of filling in for him until he recovered, and I was scared. St. Pius—a stadium reminiscent of Clemson, or LSU’s “Death Valley”—is a tough place to play, and the game was hard fought until the end. I remember how, late in the game, a ghostly, menacing fog emerged out of the ivy covered ravine on the visitor’s side of the field, a fog into which a deep post pattern took me with only a few minutes left to play. In my fear, and in front of those 6,000 fans, I dropped a pass that I usually would have caught. My coach called me to the sideline and said, “Harkins! You’re killin’ me!”—which was actually an excellent but painful example of hyperbole for effect as a pedagogical tool. For the next week I had to stay after practice with my right arm duct-taped to my chest while the receivers’ coach fired passes at me almost, but not quite, out of reach.      

My coach sat me down at the end of the week and said, “William, the point of this exercise is not that you should never drop a pass. The point is that you let your being afraid compromise your ability to be in right relationship with your teammates, and with yourself. You let being anxious about starting on first string unexpectedly—about change, cause you to give in to fear.” I have successfully avoided thinking about this memory for a long time, but it came back to me in the reading of this text, and I found myself wondering why, in the context of this Gospel, it resurfaced. This made me curious, and I’ll say more about that in a moment, but any way you slice it, these passages are hard to hear. It is hard to bear witness to Jesus’ painful, heartfelt prayer. And yet, he is fully present to his pain, and he does not allow his anxiety and pain to mask what he is feeling. It’s all right there, and he’s giving it over to God. As we should, too.  Friends, when we are in a time of change, we are more tempted to give in to anxiety, which Family Systems Theory reminds us can spread like a virus. I am so very proud of each of you—of the members of the vestry, and the nominating committee, and everyone who continues to show up here each Sunday and serve in the choir, as Eucharistic Ministers and Vergers, as members of the various committees so engaged in sustaining and nurturing this parish. Let’s remember that as the author William Bridges has said, change is inevitable, while transition is not. Transition is not just a nice way to say change. It is the inner psychological process through which people come to terms with a change, as they let go of how things used to be, and reorient themselves to the way that things are now. In an organization, transition means helping people to make that difficult process less painful and disruptive. Family Systems Theory helps church leaders see the congregation as a system of interrelated parts. This asks of us that we be more self-aware and self-differentiating—paying attention to healthy boundaries, engaging in “good gossip” rather than allowing anxiety to be the occasion for spreading unhelpful gossip in parking lot conversations…it can help us be better equipped to identify those in our congregation with good leadership skills, as we are doing, and for each of us to consider how we might grow and contribute to Holy Family in generative and life-giving ways. We can better recognize and deal with unhealthy anxiety in the system; longing, for example, for the past in ways that keep us from what God is calling us to in our time. When we manage our own anxiety it enables us to function more effectively as a whole. So let’s give freely of ourselves, and our gifts and graces. Let’s promise to go above and beyond financially, and examine our hearts to see if there are other ways we might give to the common good. A robust financial picture, and an engaged, enthusiastic congregation positions us in the best possible way to call our new rector, whoever she or he may be.

Oh, and one more thing. The night after my first post-practice one-armed catching drill I went home and told my parents I was quitting football. I was ashamed, and angry, and anxious about being seen as a failure. They wisely suggested I give it ‘till the end of the week, and that I not make a hasty decision about something that was so important to me. The next day, with my right arm taped to my chest, I took my place on the goal line, ten yards from my coach, and we began the drill. Then, he suddenly stopped throwing passes my way, and looking toward the field house, I saw why. Headed back out onto the field were three of my teammates in the receivers’ corps, each of whose right-arm was duck-taped to his chest. Without saying a word, they took their places on the goal line, where for the next three days they could be found after practice in solidarity with me. I’m sure they had better things to do, but each of them stayed an extra hour, in friendship and loyalty. I had threatened in my shame to consign myself to the alienation of estrangement—and instead, because of the generous, extravagant searching of their hearts—because they “read between the lines” of the football field and said “enough” when I was saying “empty”—I found instead on that field a little bit of heaven; a vision of beloved, blessed community, and the connection for which Jesus prayed in our Gospel for today. May it be so for us as at Holy Family, as well. Amen.