The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

That sure sounds like current events to me. 

Open a newspaper, turn on the news. All the jarring headlines and brutal imagery we see is so deeply disturbing, because none of these things has anything to do with the God we know and love. There are vicious and violent words and deeds, that are heard done from various fundamentalist corners of the religious world. They make us shudder to think of them.

And yet as we read the holy words of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed we stop to think about the one who brings us out of slavery into freedom, the one who faces down sin and death and rises victorious up from both, and the one whose quiet soul listens to Allah the All Merciful and writes for us the words of the Holy Koran. 

Oh for the storytellers! 

The ones who can tell us of the little boy Samuel and how he had yet to hear of who God was and is. How can anyone “teach” God? Just yesterday, I prayed, how can I tell my own children? Or other people I love. How can I share this sense within my heart that God often comes to us in the night season as we rest?  God can call us by name as he did for the little boy in the Temple where he served faithfully the old man Eli; “Samuel, Samuel”

Did I hear somebody call my name, the little fella said? So he scampered off to Eli. “Yes, you called me.” 

And the old man Eli said “No, go back to bed. I did not call you.”

And then, he lay there surrounded by the darkness and the fulsome silence wakeful because he was certain that there was a voice that called his name. And then, perhaps as he was dozing off, there it was again; “Samuel, Samuel”

The little fella said, “Yes, I did hear somebody call my name”. So he scampered off again to Eli, and now insisted “You did call me”. 

“No, go lie down, I did not call you”

Then the Scripture makes it all clear. Samuel did not yet know the Lord. He did not yet know that God speaks to us in the very depths of our souls, in the dead silence, in the deepest corner of the heart, where the truth resides. It is here that God speaks to us all. I’m not talking about voices that you might hear in a psychotic episode. I am talking about the kind of voice that is always within you as your friend and companion reminding you to go deeper and face the truth; the truth about yourself with compassion and abiding love for yourself and those you love the most. 

This is the Truth that shall make you free. It is the Truth that shall bring you to God.

And then you see, he heard it again, that “voice” that something that speaks the truth within, and off again he scampers to the old man Eli; “Here I am, for you called me”. 

The old man knows now that this is how God speaks to us; often in the night season, in a restless moment or two, in our youth, where there is hope. Eli knew that he and his sons had made a mess of things in the Temple and that God was not the least bit pleased. 

Maybe, God had a word for him. Be that as it may, Eli perceived, he “discerned” that what was really happening was that God wanted to have a word with the little fella. After all, as we all know from sacred history, “A little child shall lead them”, as in the case of Samuel, David, and Jesus. 

This time the old man said; “Go back to your bed and when you hear the Silence speak in your heart once more, you stay there still and say, Speak Lord for your servant is listening”.

What God has to say is not the least bit pleasant because it spells the end of Eli’s priesthood. He had betrayed the trust of God and had let his unruly kids run rampant throughout the holy place. It was time to clean up the place once more and make God’s holy place fit for the Glory of God.

I have always loved this story. When my grandmother first told us that story, I was fascinated by the idea that a child could be called by God to serve the church. So I asked her, “Ma, does that mean that God can call children to be ministers in his church?” This is back in the days when we spoke of the clergy as “ministers” and not as “priests”.

And her eyes twinkled with delight as she said, of course God can call children to serve the Church. I went off to see the priest at the time and made an appointment to see him in his office. I remember that my legs still hung over the side of the chair not quite reaching the floor, as he smiled at me with that kindly smile of the clergy of our church. 

“What can I do for you young man?”

“I want to know what it takes to become a parish priest.”

To his eternal credit he didn’t laugh, but told me. Graduate from Hight School, go to College, preferably a secular college where you faith can be tested, and then go to Seminary, there is one right here in Cambridge. You’ll need to pass a number of tests, you’ll need the sponsorship of a local congregation, and the approval of the Bishop and Standing Committee obviously…but that’s the essence of it.

And so that’s is what I did.

For as long as I’ve lived out my priesthood in the church, I have often wondered what it is that makes the Church endure. Though the rise and fall of empires, as nations come and nations go as fashions and fads shine and then fade away, there is the enduring quality of the human heart in contact with the enduring Presence of God.

And then I remember that we belong to a kingdom not of this world; in this world, to be sure but not of this world. God’s kingdom belongs to those whose heats belong to God. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is rounding up his disciples at the beginnings of his ministry. He said to Phillip; “Follow me”. He did. 

Then Phillip said to Nathaniel; “We have found him of whom Moses and the Prophets spoke, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Nazareth!, can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

But when Jesus meets Nathaniel, he says; “Nathaniel, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Now, I have no idea what it was that Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree, but whatever it was, the fact that Jesus knew about it, brought Nathaniel to his spiritual knees and he was able to proclaim “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!”

Imagine, God knows us that intimately. It is in this manner that God seeks to build a whole new kingdom, a new Empire, built not with armies, weapons of mass destruction, or acts of violence but with compassion, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

This is the kingdom to which we have been called.

In the collect for purity the very first prayer from the very first Prayer Book ever written in English, Thomas Cranmer made it clear what our relationship to God was to be like; 

"Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord."

That’s God’s kingdom, God’s Empire. We are God’s citizens. God is our King and our Emperor. And to meet our King we need look no further than within our own hearts. 

As the old adage goes; “God is closer to you than the very next breath that you will take.” 

If the Word of God seems rarely heard in these days, it is only because we rarely listen. We need look no further than within your own hearts.

It is true, the body is the Temple of God’s Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul puts it.

And the Psalmists says it in soaring and magnificent language; 

My body was not hidden from you, *

while I was being made in secret

and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;

all of them were written in your book; *

they were fashioned day by day,

when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *

how great is the sum of them!

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

Fr Paul

Is God Dead?

Is God Dead?

A meditation on the Feast Day of the Holy Name

It is New Year's Day, January 1, 2015, the Feast Day of the Holy Name.

In my own personal Pilgrimage I am celebrating a weight loss of almost 80lbs since June 16th of this year. That was the day I underwent gastric bypass surgery. I thank God and the folks at Massachusetts General Hospital for all the support they have given me in the days and months leading up to and from that date.

The significance of the weight loss encompasses much more than a journey toward better health. 

It is a journey in coming;

To see You and me more clearly,

To love You and me more dearly,

To follow You within me more nearly,

Day by Day. 

How dear to me are those who first taught me the prayer of St. Richard of Chichester; Fred & Beryl, Mark, Allison and Gillian. What a lovely and gracious family to grant me a place at their table so many years ago. It was in that home that we debated the matters of theology, philosophy and church polity. 

How much they loved me. 

It took a long time for me to understand or proclaim what I knew to be the Gospel and how it propelled me through the trauma of my father's death at Christmas when I was a boy 8 years of age.

In some ways, I believe that loss is at the root of my bi-polar illness. My father's death and the knowledge that there is room in the heart of God for him as there is for me as there is for everyone on the planet. That is at once a distressing and exhilarating experience for the human soul. 

It is for me a journey to the deepest part of my soul; those places that are at the deepest corners of my being. This is the journey that brings me closest to You. It is a journey that requires the utmost courage.

The courage of which I speak is the necessity for truth and honesty that You and I must face together, namely, that there is the possibility that it is only I who write these words and that You are simply not there; that there is nothing beyond me other than all other human beings.  We are indeed the measure of all things and we are free to lust after all the sex, money and power we can grab. And there is no internal or external accountability within our hearts or elsewhere for all that we do on this side of death. This is because I am all that is and there is no You. We are all that is. And there is no You. There is nothing inherently Sacred in life even within me so I am not just free do do as I wish, I can engage in utter licentiousness with impunity. 

And that is what leads me back to God. 

The courage it takes to face into the abyss of the Absurd requires the courage to Renounce it. After all it makes no sense for this whole experience to be Absurd with a capital "A". 

I rehearsed this choice on one unforgettable visit with a man named Peter more than forty years ago.  He is a brilliant man and, at the time, a leader of a chapter of Atheists at Oxford University. We spent a few evenings in conversation with one another. With his rapier wit, he asked me three difficult questions.

1. If there is a loving God, how do you account for all the suffering of the very people he supposedly cares so much about?

2. The warfare and the violence done in the name of God throughout history is utterly inhumane. We'd be better off without religion of any sort.

3. Science has a much better explanation of the world we live in than the superstitious account of "creation" that we have from the bible etc. Peter is a physicist, and a brilliant and gifted one.

I spent a restless night twisting and turning with questions touching on the very center of all that I held dear. But then the next night came and it was my turn to ask some questions and his turn to answer. I asked him these questions:

1. If there is no God, what do you propose to be the Meaning of life with a capital "M".

He said that logically, we must admit that life is Absurd with a capital "A".

I said that I renounce that with a capital "R". 

2. While it is true that "Religion" is responsible, and scandalously so, for so much violence in history, there is nothing that makes me think that a "Secular" world would be any more merciful. In fact, from what I see so far in this past 100 years or so, I am terrified by what Science can do, especially with its new capability of atomic power. And if we have no "inner compass" to guide us, no God to hold us accountable, what will there be to put a check to human bestial tendency. He said that we will have to have strong police forces and armies. I said; "Well, that accounts for British Imperialism and American hegemony." 

3. The Church has made some impressive contributions to Western Culture; Oxford & Cambridge among them, great art, architecture, music and some of the finest outlets for human creativity. What do we put in the place of that creative genius? Shall we bulldoze the great British Cathedrals since they are merely harboring dangerous human superstition? That one got a bit of a rise out of him

I am grateful for the night of terror I spent wrestling Jacob-like with God and Peter. And I wonder sometimes if he remembers those two evenings. Apparently he stands at the other end of life in bitterness and without a whimper of hope, according to a mutual friend, also a brilliant Oxford educated physicist and fellow Christian (Anglican/Episcopalian)  since this is all that there is and there is nothing more. 

Should I write to him a letter of thanksgiving? After all, it was he who introduced me to a rather stark prospect; namely, that You are NOT there.

I faced that terror long into the night as I wrestled with You until we both understood something of one another. 

I am in You.

You are in me. 

You are in all whom I meet, with or without the Holy Name we honor today. The Holy Name I honor is the Name of Jesus, the Child, the son of Mary, the only begotten of the Father, the Love of God made flesh and blood the one we meet in the Eucharist and the one who makes it so vividly clear who You are within my heart. And while I am certainly Christ centered, I am not Christ exclusive.

You are the Holy Name.

But are you the only Holy Name under heaven?

Is not Abraham Holy?

Moses?

Mohammed?

Buddha?

Confucius? 

And a million more?

Is not every human being under heaven a Holy Name before God? And are we not each and everyone a God carrier in his/her own way? 

For every single Child of all the Holy Names above are Holy to God, are we not?

Again the question begs to be posed.

Suppose, for a moment that there is a God and that God were able to look into every human heart and, suppose this same God were to say; "How shall I bring obedience, love, mercy, wisdom, peace, and justice into the world? Suppose God were able to look at the world Google-like and the Universe as well; is it not possible that God would be free to send these Holy Names into the world God so dearly loves? 

This is obviously a rhetorical question. God is obviously free to do as God wishes. And God may also wish to bring Science and Atheism into the world since God may indeed become impatient with The Church, especially when it becomes a hinderance to the very Truth, Justice, Love and Mercy God intends for the planet.

And this is how I see You. I see You as reflected as an image within my own soul. 

As I am in You and as You are in me so You are in all, All in All. 

This is then my leap of faith, a leap that also requires a good deal of courage.

And this is how I choose to live in You. 

Seeing You more clearly,

Loving You more dearly,

Following You more nearly,

Day by day. 

Amen.

Fr Paul

Christmas at St John's

A Christmas Poem

Ring out, wild bells - Christmas Poem 

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

Storytelling

My grandmother was a great storyteller. She was from Downeast, Maine and by godfrey, she knew how to spin a yarn. She loved her stories too, old time radio shows that I can still remember listening to often. And before we went to bed at night, my grandmother held court in her room. She had all the dramatic flair of a consummate Shakespearean actress. My brother and I would sit at her feet and listen to her voice as it came alive with characters and tales that brought amazing adventures to life. And before it was all over, she opened the old family bible and recounted yet more adventures of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or Daniel and the Lion’s Den, or Jesus making the waters stand still in the midst of a storm. Her eyes held us as if in a spell because she knew these stories by heart and little needed the text of scripture to tell us what was next. Then, we said our prayers. We prayed for all the aunts and uncles and yes, the crazy cousins too, each by name and we concluded our prayers with the ever expansive love of Jesus; “And God bless everyone in the whole wide world. Amen”. And then we slept. 

And when it was my turn to be a father, this too became our bedtime ritual. I loved the accents of peoples from around the British Isles; the Irish brogue, the Oxford scholar and the dialect of London’s East End Cockney. Some of our most memorable stories are the ones the children still talk about even now that they are grown men. “The Tales from Fern Hollow and Trundleberry Manor”. They loved these stories much as many of us love the tales of Downton Abbey or Sherlock Holmes.

And when story time was over, I would light a candle, and then we’d pray for those we love near and far away, we’d pray for peace in the world, and we’d repeat a lovely and gracious sentence from the Book of Common Prayer; “Guide us waking, O Lord and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in Peace”. And with that I extinguished the candle, and the children slept in the arms of God.

And that brings us to this silent and holy night and to this sacred story. Because, I believe that it is in telling of the story that we find our rest and our peace in Christ, for our restless souls cannot come rest until they find themselves in the heart of Jesus.

When we were planning the Christmas pageant this year, we felt that we should let the children tell the story and we felt that, since we cannot improve upon the story itself, we would simply read the story from Luke’s Gospel. Yes, let the children proclaim the Gospel story of Jesus.

Those ringing words sound out like church bells across a Christmas landscape.

Words from Isaiah like “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders and he shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

Oh my, that brings back memories. It was our first date, 36 years ago, December 8, 1978 and we sat side by side, hand in hand at Symphony Hall in Boston, and the Handel and Haydn Society sang out those magnificent words, put to such exquisite music. And as our hearts beat with the love of God so too they beat with love for one another, at least I dared hope they might!

And here tonight on this most holy night we sing with the angels a new song as the Psalmist sings. It is at the same time new as now and yet as ancient as the sacred hands of the one who first wrote them down. As a mother and a father might light a candle at bedtime for their children, so too we now sing our sacred Silent Night by candle light. And “we worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”, just like the Psalmist taught us to do in ancient times.

As a child would ask a prayer of blessing on everyone in the whole wide world, so too Titus in tonight’s Epistle reminds us that “The Grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all.” Then he goes on to say that we are to “renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Much like St. John’s does by housing Toys for Tots, we spread much good cheer, and bring joy to the world. “God bless us, everyone” is the Dickensian turn of phrase. While recognizing the persistent reality of poverty and inequality, the story insists on hope and joy and merriment.

The power of this story has a very wide reach and broad appeal. In sending the Holy Child to us, God is seeking to remind us each and everyone of us that we are all born in innocence, we are all born vulnerable and that there is much of the world we’re born into that is cold, dark, poor, and very dangerous. There are kings and potentates that would breathe murderous threats against The Holy Child as well as all holy children.

We come back to the story year after year hoping and praying that this year we might hear the message of the angels and that the whole world might tune in to the message of Peace, and for God sake lay down those weapons.

I cannot help but think of families in places like Ferguson, Missouri who will be without their children this Christmas, or of those families in New York City who mourn the loss of their fathers cut down in a police cruiser, or fire fighters lost to a dreadful fire on Boston’s Beacon street or a thousand other Holy Innocents taken from us in rage, violence, by accident or in illness, or on the anniversary of those losses. All this tears at the heart of Christmas.

That’s why we must tell this sacred and holy story. We must tell it, it seems to me in the ancient words we know almost by heart;

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”

There that sounds familiar. What can be more certain than death and taxes?

But the story goes on and then comes this glimmer of hope.

“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; because he was of the house and lineage of David: To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.”

And then there is a smile as broad as the universe and as bright as the sun;

“And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Apparently there were shepherds biding their time keeping watch over their flocks by night, folks of a very ordinary sort, folks by the millions, not unlike you and me biding our time and keeping watch over our appointed responsibilities and that’s when it happened to us, in a thousand different kinds of ways; but it happened to us just the same; 

“The angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.”

God knows I’ve been afraid, terrified at times over one reality or another that we human beings must face.

But then it all changes. Everything changes. And all our hopes and all our fears are met in the Christ Child this night.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

This is why I insist on telling the story exactly as it has been told again and again throughout the millennia. Empires come and Empires go. There are times of War and Peace, times of gentle kindliness and times of terror, times of deep faith, and deep doubt, but when we tell this story and tell it well, the human heart finally, finally, finally, melts like wax and opens to God.

My heart goes back to the great storytellers tonight; people like my grandmother and the Scripture she loved so much and of course to Jesus most of all; the one whose stories are making us who we are and who we are becoming; storytellers for God.

Merry Christmas friends and tell your stories well. Let them cheer us all on our way and may God bless us all, everyone!

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

Fr Paul

A Word from God: Love

And Now a Word from God

“Love”

Paul concludes his great Hymn to Love with these words; “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

~I Corinthians 13:13

Most of us know those words since they are so frequently used at weddings.

John says it even more succinctly; “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

         ~John 4:8

And the Psalmist breaks into song about the matter in today’s selection from the Psalter. “Your love, O LORD, for ever will I sing; For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever.”

        ~Psalm 89:1,2

    

We come now to the Fourth Sunday in Advent. In previous sermons this holy season, we have pondered these words in our heart; Great Gospel Words like

Forgiveness

Reconciliation

And now Love.

Last week we had a visit from our Bishop and you now may see why I use these words in this Advent. Our history with Bishops, Clergy and Laity are filled with a whole kaleidoscope of events and feelings and no one person can have a full view of the whole truth of the matter. Only God can do that. That is why, at least while I’m here with you, I will point you toward the Gospel.

For Saint John’s as well as for all Congregations, Bishops, Clergy and Laity alike, Gospel words are at the very center of our life as we seek to live out our lives in God. These three Great Gospel words were at the center of Jesus’ Ministry in our midst. They are at the very center of our own continuing ministry.

As we wait for the Birth of the Savior this Advent or as we wait for his Second Coming either for each human life or for all human life, I suggest to you that Advent waiting is not a passive waiting like waiting for a bus or a train; or as our new bishop, Alan Gates put it in his Advent Greeting to us; “Advent discipline is unlike our typical experiences of waiting.  We wait in line at the grocery store and in congested traffic.”  "Other times, as in the run-up to holidays or when waiting for a vacation to begin, we fill our waiting with a checklist of frantic preparation.” What a price we pay when our Advent waiting becomes so anxious as to often preoccupy the soul with anxiety, hurry, and frenzy. 

Advent waiting is certainly not like like a meaningless exercise such as we see in the Theatre of the Absurd. In the play “Waiting for Godot”, Samuel Becket suggested, in his brilliant commentary on modern life, that life is merely an absurd disconnected sequence of incongruous events.  Many historians call the time we live in “The Post Christian Era”. Life is to many of our contemporaries “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more” as the Bard once put it. ~Macbeth; Act 5, Scene 5. 

More than once I have argued the case with pleasant pagans and devout atheists in our midst, many of whom, I’ve grown to know and love. In one of my more memorable encounters I spent a few days with the president of the local chapter of atheists from Oxford University in London. He toyed with me with his rapier wit on my quaint notions of faith. He asked me; if I believed in a loving God, how could I account for the suffering of the very people God supposedly so loving cares about. He asked me how I might explain religion’s violent predisposition in history. He noted that in the observable, measurable and predicable physical world, Science is in fact the only reliable explanation for the universe we must live our everyday lives in.

I spent a sleepless night thinking about that all he had to say. Like Jacob wrestling with God I tossed and turned, but then came the next night when it was my turn to pose the questions and his turn to provide the answers.

I asked him primarily what he thought of the Meaning of Life with a capital “M”. He replied that he thought life was Absurd with a capital “A”. Using a strong word from my own Baptismal covenant I said that I renounce that with a capital “R”. I also asked him what we would place in the human heart as a check and balance to the violent predisposition that our nature seems to lead toward. He said we will need good police and strong armies. I said, well, that explains British Imperialism and American hegemony. And finally I said to him, the Church has given this world her best Universities including Oxford, the greatest hospitals, the most beautiful art, music and architecture that history has ever seen. Where is that creativity to come from if it doesn’t come from the genius of our spirituality. That one got to him a bit, particularly when I suggested that we merely bulldoze our great cathedrals since they are merely harboring human superstition.  

Poor man believes his destiny is to be born, “to strut and fret his hour upon the stage, and then be heard from no more”. Is that the sum and total of or days; the ultimate Absurdity of Life.

No my friends, I Renounce that with a capital “R”!

And so says the Archangel Gabriel to Mary in today’s Gospel. “Don’t be afraid because you have found favor with God”. This is more to the point of human life. There is a reason for you to be here. You are not merely an unwed mother. Joseph considered having her put away quietly to save everyone the embarrassment of yet another child in the world born out of wedlock. Not so this child. Not so any child. And the Archangel spoke to her and said; “And the Child to be born to you will be holy.” The Archangel speak to every human life. “Your life is holy to God”.

Advent waiting is a very active kind of waiting where we make room for a new baby. We nest as all of nature does when a newborn approaches. There are so many twigs to thatch into the kind of cradle that will give warmth and security to our young.

Many of us here are mothers and fathers to children. And when it comes time for us to wait for them to be born we do not sit motionless, inactive and inert as we waited their birth. Nor do we sit idly by as they grow and waxed strong in God. We are active agents with them as they discoverer what it means to be loved by us and as we discover what it meant for them to love us in return.

I remember the months before our firstborn son David’s birth. I was a bit bewildered by the whole thing. Not so Cindy. There was painting and decorating to be done, furniture and diapers to buy, and an whole panoply of equipment to make sure we had, as we made our active Advent preparations for David’s birth. We transformed our home in preparation for what we certainly felt was a holy moment and a holy child in our lives. True enough it sent my head to spinning and our pediatrician, Dr. Mary, her name was, said with great wisdom and a knowing and broad smile; “Ah, your life will never be the same again”.

And it wasn’t. Before long there was more love, and Joshua, more love and Michael and the love continued to multiply in our household as the children grew and we taught them right from wrong, told them stories, prayed with them often and brought them into Church for their Baptism and eventually for their Confirmation. 

They are all grown now. They are all churchmen of a sort. David is really into it. Joshua loves to take photographs of the holy places of our church, and Michael loves to sing the songs of God in church.

We now come to this Advent at St John’s Church in Sandwich, Massachusetts on Old Cape Cod. What a pleasure it is for us to be with you. And your new Rector is coming to you and it may take the better part of a year for that gestation period to occur. But your waiting is an active kind of waiting.

Active, not busy. Please do not fill your lives with busy-ness.

Rather make room in your hearts for God. Advent waiting is a movement of the soul in which we make room in our hearts for God and one another. The words Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Love set us on a steady path toward receiving the Christ Child this Advent and this Christmas. This is the steady and true path; where we forgive ourselves and others, reconcile those spirits at odds with one another, and above all fill our lives with Joy and Wonder in all God’s Works because we are filled with the Love of God. And that Child will faithfully bring to fruition the life of this church to its new priest.

If there is room in our hearts for God there is room then for the Spirit of God to to heal and guide us. And that’s what God wants of this dark old angry world. There is much for us to learn in a world where darkness leads so often to such dreadful acts of violence. 

That’s why God needs this church to be strong. God needs a place to teach the world that Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Love is the Way and the Truth and the Life. That’s who Jesus is; the Way, the Truth and the Life.

And that’s who is Coming to Us this Advent. That's who we are actively waiting for!

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

Fr Paul

A Word from God "Reconciliation"

A Word from God

“Reconciliation”

And now a word from God: “Reconciliation”

This Advent we “Prepare the Way of God” within our hearts, and as we do, we consider three Great Gospel Words that really help make room for God; Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Love. Last week I shared with you some thoughts on Forgiveness. Today I do the same using a different word; Reconciliation. 

We begin with a story.

It was a cold and wintry night when the storm set in. The winds blew beneath the St Albans/Nitro Bridge over the Kanawha River among the hills of West Virginia not far from Charleston, and the Capitol district.  Just a few blocks away from the bridge was St Mark’s Church where I served as Rector. Unbeknownst to us a small gathering of homeless folk improvised a cardboard lean to against the elements and then, to warm themselves, they lit a fire. The ensuing events left three of them dead from asphyxiation and burns. Our church housed a soup kitchen and the deceased were numbered among our clientele. The press came to the church to report the tragedy.

A reporter and I went over to the scene to investigate. There we saw the remains of the burned out lead to and charred shopping carriages with a clutter of clothing and other items collected by the homeless over time. In what was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen, one of the most mean spirited things I’ve ever witnessed was the appearance of a DPW truck and a few men who gathered up all the worldly belongings of these folks. Everything was tossed into the truck and carted away. The police scattered the homeless while they looked to me and said; “This is all we have in the world.” The reporter and I took names and pictures and got a few badge numbers. 

The next day, to further exaggerate the tragic events now to almost grotesque dimensions, the police handed out tickets for loitering, littering, and vagrancy. I no more referred to these folk as the homeless. To me, they had become my friends. I told them to give me their tickets. I called all three networks and both newspapers and held a news conference on the front steps of the church. I brandished the tickets in front of the camera. By the way, one photographer gave me a wonderful power shot angled upward with the cross at the peak of the belfry slightly offset over my head. I told the cameras; “I am responsible for these tickets. If you want payment you will have to come to me. I will not pay them. If you want to arrest anybody, you will have to arrest me. I  vow that the homeless will have a warm dry place to live beginning today.”

Immediately, money poured in. I had to create a special fund and our poor treasurer’s work multiplied many fold. I began to put the homeless up in local motels, and that presented a whole new set of problems. More than once, I had to box their ears with corrective directions as to acceptable behavior in motels.

The reaction from City Council was swift and unpleasant. I arrived at the office one morning to find my secretary in tears. I asked her the problem and she said; “Oh Fr Paul, the President of the City Council just called and he was in a state of outrage. He referred to you in most uncomplimentary terms and said that the only thing the Irish ever did for this country was to bring whiskey and red headed women here.” No, he really said that!

The press got hold of that statement and called me up for a quote; “I’ll have one of each”, I quipped. Money continued to pour in as more and more support for a shelter continued to swell throughout the Kanawha Valley.

The executive director of Habitat for Humanity called me and we began a search for a suitable shelter. We found several possible locations. At each point along the way we were met, of course with the NIMBY syndrome; “Not is my back yard!” In one particularly memorable meeting, hundreds of folks crammed into an inadequate space at city hall and heaped insult upon injury. I relented and said, “I withdraw my request for a shelter in this location on condition that you help find a more suitable place for the homeless somewhere else in this city”. 

At last we did find a place; in an old abandoned upholstery shop along the main street. The City gave us the necessary variance to rehab the building. Then all we needed was the money to buy the place. Honest to God, that very day, an elderly woman called my house to ask me if I was the priest who was trying to build a homeless shelter. I told her I was and then she asked me if she could send $25,000 for the down payment. The cost of the building was $110,000. All in all we raised over $85,000 in free will offerings and made significant strides in preparing the building for occupancy. 

We organized a 501c3 non profit, and put a board of directors together. I met with federal officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A grantsman offered to write up a proposal to operate what is known in the law as a “Safe Haven” for the chronically homeless. I worked with the main Homeless Shelter in Charleston West Virginia and offered to give the place to them as a satellite operation. After all, what do I know about operating a homeless shelter? I’m just a simple parish priest. We drafted an agreement and then we received a grant from HUD for $250,000 for the first year’s operating funds. 

It wasn’t easy. In fact as we approached the completion of our efforts, Cindy received an anonymous phone call with death threats against her husband’s life. “We’re going to kill your husband!” In her best Boston accent she replied; “Take a numbah, I want to kill him too sometimes.” They did not call back. They must have found my wife’s words somewhat disarming.

I tell you this story as a way of looking at the second of our three Great Gospel Words; Reconciliation.

We begin with tragedy. The homeless, helpless and harassed beleaguered with catastrophe are met by a priest and a reporter who sing with the words of Scripture; “Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye My people, Speak ye tenderly to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished”. It was thus that I spoke to the homeless. But to the Powers and Principalities, I spoke words of some direct forthrightness. I had no choice but to speak up for the “least of these”. After all, that’s written in my job description. There was confrontation and a great and long way forward to effect reconciliation. 

We all knew that. It was the role of the priest to do his work, the police to do theirs, and the city council to do what it had to do. Then comes the work of reconciliation. As we know from our reading of scripture in the Old Testament, there is both a Sin Offering and a Peace Offering. Knowing that, I would frequently bring doughnuts over to the break room for the police. The first time I did that, I was not exactly welcomed with open arms. But I swallowed my pride and did it again and again and again, and eventually I was welcomed. 

One day a K-9 was killed in the line of duty and the Chaplain of the Police Department refused to bury the dog saying that animals had no souls according to his theology. The police knew where to turn. They knew me. After all Fr Paul would bless anybody and anything. Maybe he would bury the dog. And of course I did. The animals were there at the creation, God saw to it that they were included in the salvation plan on the Ark by Noah two by two, and our Lord was born one dark and chilly night with the barnyard animals looking on. Of course, I will bury the dog. After all, that dog, as the police will tell you, would give his life for his partner and so we commended him to God’s keeping.

There is so much work to do to effect reconciliation among those at odds. As John the Baptizer says in today's Gospel, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his pathways straight” or elsewhere as those wonderful words set to the music of the Messiah; “Every Valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.”

Reconciliation is an ongoing work in history. Just because we have a Civil Rights act does not mean that racism or ethnic tension is going to disappear as if by some magic. God knows that there is much work to do in the wake of Ferguson and urban violence in this country day after day. The Good Friday accords in Northern Ireland, as encouraging as that was, does not mean that strong feelings do not fester and stew beneath the surface. The work of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela in South Africa is a monument to reconciliation but the work is nowhere near completed.

Advent is a season for wakefulness and repentance; a time for a complete makeover of the soul. We are called to make room for God within our hearts. In the words of Cynthia Bourgeault, one of the Church’s finest contemporary thinkers, we are called in Advent to cultivate “an inner spaciousness and quiet heart that prepares us to receive this new birth.”

The work of reconciliation between ourselves and God requires of us to continue also in the work of reconciliation amongst one another.

John calls us to live a Baptized life in which something of the old self dies away, and then to live into Christ, the one whose focus is not on self will but on the will of God. Today we hear a voice crying in the wilderness of our dark world, one who bears witness to the Light.

In today’s Epistle are these words; “we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” As the Baptized of God we are among those who are making that new heaven and that new earth not just within our hearts but among the hearts of all we meet. 

This is urgent work. The business of reconciliation is a matter of urgent necessity. We live in a very dangerous world. Without the practice of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Love there is not much hope. But with us becoming more and more the Church, making room for the new born Child in our hearts, we can be Baptized into him and live a new life and make a new heaven and a new earth. 

When we make room in our hearts for God’s Great Words we live as the Psalmist prays; we live in a world where

“Mercy and truth have met together; *

righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”
   ~Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 85, verse 10

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

Fr Paul