The Conversion God Requires

The Conversion God Requires

By Fr Paul Bresnahan

Yesterday was an epic event for mathematicians at precisely 9:26:53am. That’s because when you place the numbers 3.141592653 you describe a mysterious number in the mathematical world and because yesterday was 3/14/15, the number only happens once in each one hundred years. MIT sent out notifications of acceptance yesterday at precisely that moment by email. Harvard kids held Pi parties. Mathematicians were beside themselves with delight. The number Pi represents the ratio of the radius of a circle to its diameter and is referred to an an irrational number in mathematics, since an irrational number is any real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. Wrap your head around that one. No matter how many times I read the words, my mind tumbles in humility before the concept. And yet without the concept we would be unable to calculate many essential equations and thus have our hands tied behind our backs in some rather fundamental human endeavors. After all, any homemade pie would be impossible without the number and that is an obvious and everyday application. The history of Pi is found in ancient Greece, India and the Muslim mathematicians allowed irrational numbers to be treated as algebraic objects an important step forward in the world of calculus. 

I find it interesting that Pi is thus called a transcendental and algebraic irrational. The very universal application of the number intrigues me. Its purity and mystery hold humankind under its authority and as a theologian I am intrigued by the very idea of the thing. I cannot help but wonder what it is that dwells in the Mind of God particularly when we try in our own meager way to plumb the depths of God’s being in any comprehensive way.

It makes me smile at the wonder of it all.

What then does God require of us all, in a universal way? That question cannot be answered quite so simply with either mathematical precision or purity. It is easy for us to get bogged down in our specific religious traditions and then maintain that we are the only way to the truth the way and the life.

Micah took a good stab at it when he said “And what does God require but to do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” ~Micah 6:8

But humankind doesn’t seem to warm up to such universal claims that God makes upon us.

In following the trial of the Boston Marathon bomber we read with interest the misguided words of the young man whose brother he says looked down the barrel of a gun and did not see death but heaven.

Talk about religious delusion!

On the other hand he does lament the death of the innocents, the victims of warfare inflicted on the Islamic world by the west. Yet, there is no such compassion or mercy in the heart of this young man for the innocents he wounded, maimed and killed by planting explosives in the midst of a festive unarmed crowd. What of that act of violence and terror? And such acts of terror are on the rise around the world.

It made me wonder what God thinks about the bloodshed inflicted by Christians, Jews, and Muslims on one another in the name of the one and same God. Sheiks and Hindus oftentimes do likewise and all of human history is stained with such religious fervor and in its wake leaves many souls so broken with grief.

Does God want everyone to be Christian? And if so what kind of Christian; Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran or my own personal favorite, Episcopalian?

Or would God rather we all be Muslim? And if so which kind? Sunni or Shia? 

Perhaps God would rather we all become Hasidic Jews, or Ultra Orthodox, Conservative or Reformed?

Then again, like so many in our modern world, God may be fed up with the whole bunch of us and like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens decide it is not worth the risk of all the warfare, violence and terror to have any God at all to worry about and trust the world to the hand of Science and Secular Humanism.

That is a tempting alternative and many of our contemporaries have turned to it. As tempting as it may be for God to consider washing his or her hands of the whole thing, God cannot leave us merely to our own devices. For I believe with all my heart that when we turn our backs on God we turn our backs on the essence of human nature itself. For who is more at the center of the human heart than God?

No. 

The conversion God wants can be seen in all the great prophets. Again and again God has called us to return and then in the fullness of time we believe that God did something quite decisive in Salvation history.

In our tradition, it is seen most vividly in the person of Jesus whose claim on our conversion rests quite simply on the one essential Gospel Proclamation.

“Love one another.”

And then as is so exquisitely stated in today’s Gospel, “ When I am lifted up upon the cross I will draw the whole world to myself”

After all, in that cross is God’s forgiveness of us and God’s mandate that we forgive one another. That’s the only possible way forward.

When Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father by by me,” many take that to mean that there is no salvation outside those two syllables “Je-sus”. Frankly, that just doesn’t quite have the ring of truth to it.

But if you were to say to me that the way of God and the way to Salvation is through the kind of life taught to us by Jesus

Love one another

Love your enemies

Be reconciled

Be forgiven and forgive

Then I would say, “You are not far from Heaven”.

Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness to remind the people that God brought them out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the promised land. Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness to remind the people that the Evil One is still everywhere.

Mohammed, may peace be upon him, taught that is God is the All Merciful, so we are to have mercy and "Thou shalt not kill".

In the words of the Holy Koran we read as follows; "anyone who murders any person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he murdered all the people. (5:32)
"You shall not kill any person - for God has made life sacred"(17:33)

Therefore the Conversion God wants is not so much a conversion to or from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or Atheism and so on, but to stop the violence in the Name of God, or Science or any other ideology.

Stop the violence.

Stop the warfare.

No more terror.

But instead

Quieten your hearts and be silent before God

In the Name of Justice and Peace

Feed the poor, visit the sick and those in prison, bind up the brokenhearted. And if you discover that you are persecuted for doing so, give thanks to God and rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven.

The struggle we face in our modern context is indeed a “holy war”; a “jihad” and our young people are being drawn to decide between the extreme of the so-called “Islamic State” or the way that leads to Peace with Justice without violence.

Many fall into the hands of the Evil One who seeks only to kill and destroy.

So too we in the west must turn our backs on so much warfare on foreign soil.

When Jesus tells me to turn the other cheek that’s where I get stuck. How can I thus defend myself?

That’s why this conversion is so urgent. 

Unless we find a way to Silence the human heart and bring justice and peace onto the stage of human history, then history merely teaches us that non only will the bloodshed continue, it will ultimately bring us all to naught. For as Gandhi is reputed to have said “The only thing that an eye for and eye and a tooth achieves is to make the whole world blind and toothless.”

This is why the only way to the Father is the way of Jesus. Shhh…not in the name by itself but the way of life for which that Name is shorthand. 

Therefore you shall 

"Love one another."

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

Amen.

Fr Paul 

God's Laughter: God's Tears

Abraham Laughed

Happy St. David's Day by the way to all my Welsh and Celtic friends.

As you and I take up our cross to follow Jesus each day, no doubt we know of the laughter and the tears that life brings us.

It is, of course, a great joy when a baby is born and for us today when a baby is baptized. I rejoice with you all today as you do with me at the baptism of Bryson Fredrick Scott. This is a day of great joy for the church and for God in heaven above. And while it is unusual for us to baptize folks in Lent, it will not surprise you to learn that I am doing something unusual.

We are told in our first lesson today that Abram was an old man when his first child was born. To tell you the truth the story, as the bible tells it, is quite a funny one.

When he is 99 years old, God renames Abram which means “honored father” in Hebrew and names him Abraham which means “honored father of many nations”. God also renames Sarai to Sarah for she shall be the honored and blessed mother to many nations.

Well Abram/Abraham took a good look at himself and then at Sarai/Sarah and it tickled him to consider this promise of God. After all how was he going to break this news to his wife? 

"Sarai/Sarah, it looks like were going to take a long walk, lets say about 500 miles to the land of Canaan. So I’m 99 years old! And so you’re and old woman too. Come with me to the land of Canaan.”

“Why?” she may have quite reasonably shot back at him. After all this kind of journey at that age requires a great deal of effort. 

Not to mention all the packing. Cindy and I have to pack the car every week to just to travel between Sandwich and Lynn, and the conversations between us are always a bit funny as we consider what to take and what not to take.

“So why are we going to the land of Canaan?” she may have asked, again quite reasonably.

Ah then comes the poetry the beautiful Hebrew poetry; 

“And look at the stars in the sky and count them too if you can;
“Look at the grains of sand on the earth and can them if you can;
“So shall our ancestors be!”

Sarai/Sarah may have been a practical woman capable of bursting the inflated notions of the old man, the noble dreamer.

“So who have you been talking to?” 

Abraham fell on his face and burst out laughing at that point as the scripture says ~Genesis 17:7

The Hebrew word laughter is “Yitzhak” or Isaac. And so the child born to him, his only child was Isaac. God tickles us with so much laughter and joy in life. 

To be sure, there are the dirty diapers, the sleepless nights, and the ear infections. But the joy and the antics of a child so often tickle us with laughter.

Please remember to treasure these moments and be watchful too because the Evil One always seeks someone to devour.

I’m not kidding. We hardly missed a Sunday with our children at church. I wanted them to have the advantages I had as a child. I wanted them to know that at the very center of our souls there is a living God who loves and cares for us in every way. 

We were fortunate because our children went off to college and have become very fruitful in their adulthood. One of our young men got in with a crowd for a while and it was touch and go with the drugs for a while. There was an unforgettable night where the threat of an overdose nearly took his life.

But my children knew of God. The one who creates us.

They knew of Jesus. The one who saves us.

They knew of the Holy Spirit. The one who is there with us in every breath we take.

And because they know of all this they also knew of the faith of Abraham and this is what is counted to us as righteousness. It is not a thing we achieve. It is a free gift of God. God knows it is not the messes we make but the way we care about one another that redeems so much of life.

There is great joy and even laughter in that gift.

Do not deny that gift to your children.

God is the beginning and the ending; the Alpha and the Omega.

The joy of it is today with this baptism.

But Wednesday morning I was at the grave of a soldier unknown to me or to the church. But he asked for an Episcopal service in his will and I gathered with a few family and friends on a lovely snow covered hillside at the National Cemetery.

I said the ancient words “I am the Resurrection and I am the Life”. I read the burial office of the church. A soldier played the plaintive tones of taps. And a grateful nation gave the soldier’s son a flag.

God is there in the beginning with the child.

God is there for the old man and woman who bring that child into the world.

And then God is there for the old soldier who just seems to fade away.

Harder to take was the news that a friend died yesterday. Mark had been sick for only a short time and we knew it was serious when he was admitted to ICU yesterday, but we had no idea that it would come to this. I saw the news on Facebook. What is there to say?

I called his wife Nancy. Her voice had the sound of shock in it. I said I did not want to burden her with yet another phone call, but she said that a call from me would never be a burden.

She was not ready for this. She has no idea how to be a widow. All this had happened much too soon.

And here it is again. Like with my dad at Christmas so many years ago, like the time with my beloved grandmother at Thanksgiving, like the hundreds of times as a parish priest we are reminded that all our days are numbered. Then we are gathered to our ancestors and ultimately we are all gathered to You my God.

Yes to You. I am now talking directly to You. This wonderful and blessed child, the unknown soldier on the snow-covered hillside and my friend Mark. 

I call my blog Heaven and Earth and so it is. We know of earth all too well. We are rudely reminded of Earth day after day. 

But there are those who lay claim to Heaven as well. We lay claim to God’s Holy Word.

God’s Holy Word lays claim to us. 

And every week we gather to hear God’s Holy Word and then to embrace it in our Baptism. 

Mark embraced it.

Bryson embraces it today for the very first time in a very special way. 

How in the world can I understand the mystery of it all?

Obviously I cannot, but I can proclaim it. God’s mystery. The One who lays claim to us on Earth but not only there but in Heaven as well.

And so I am not here with you today to wonder about Heaven and Earth but to embrace them both as God seeks to embrace us all.

This is all I seek to do every day as God looks on. As You look on. And so let us take up our cross and follow Jesus.

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

Fr Paul

"Are You Running With Me Jesus?"

“Are You Running With Me Jesus?

The year was 1965 and I remember picking up a book of prayers by that title, by Malcolm Boyd, an activist Episcopal Priest. He was struggling with issues of faith and ethics. Is there a God? How can we know? And if there is a God how can people who call themselves “Christian” treat black folks the way they do?

I received word from some friends on Facebook yesterday that Malcolm Boyd is not expected to survive the weekend. I pray for the Companionship of Christ and the repose of his soul. 

We were in the midst of the Civil Rights Struggle at the time. Malcolm Boyd was one of the “Freedom Riders” of 1961. We were in the midst of the “Honest to God” debates where many of us were struggling with our faith at one level or another. The whole idea of God came under close speculation. Many abandoned the quest for God altogether and we entered what many historians call “The Post Christian Era”.

Malcolm Boyd wrote this book of prayers and it hit the New York Times best seller list. It is still worth reading. In it Boyd traces his long journey from a boyhood faith to a manhood atheism and back then to a place where the emptiness of the modern age seemed to beg for something more.

He put his questions to prayer. I put my questions to God in prayer as well. He entered the wilderness of the quest of God. I did the same. He became a priest. I became a priest. We come now to Lent, a time when we acknowledge that Jesus too was driven into the wilderness.

I must confess that there is part of me that loves the wilderness. As a boy, I loved it when it snowed. I am getting over that particular enthusiasm in my riper years. As a young man, my best friend and I used to travel to the north country in Ontario during the winter. We lived in Toronto at the time. The temperatures were often sub zero and the winds beat against us as we made our way on snowshoes across the lake to the family cabin. I loved the pure adventure of it. Even when I got a bit older, I loved going up to the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center and venturing out to climb parts of Mount Washington under the direction of the guides they had there. That was a long time ago. I’ve grown more cautious in my riper years. Hard experience has also taught me to respect the wilderness and to acknowledge my own mortality and vulnerability. 

The long journey through the wilderness of so many ethical questions was still before us at the time. Race, ethnicity, war and peace, class, gender and sexual orientation all the barriers we had before us to break in 1965. They still are of course. Malcolm Boyd posed the question in his little book of prayers. To him the answer to the question; “Are you Running with me Jesus?” was an a undone “Yes!”

After all, as the Epistle tells us today; “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”

This meant that God was there not just for Malcolm Boyd, or for Paul Bresnahan. God was there for all of us without exception.

This is now 50 years ago. At the time we posed the question, at the time I read the book, I thought the answer was obviously; “Yes”.

Of course there is a God. 

Of course God loves everyone without regard to race, ethnicity, class, gender, or orientation. After all, uncle Al and his partner were welcome at our Thanksgiving table in our home. Why wouldn’t he and Jimmy be welcome at God’s table too?

Little did I know.

It all began in Hyde Park, Boston during the days of integration. And let me tell you; the business of race was real then and there right there smack dab in the City of Boston. And it was not a pretty sight.

We moved to Cleveland’s east side to the city of Euclid. And guess what, the business of race was real there too?

And if that didn’t teach me all I needed to know about race in America, I went then to Pawleys Island in South Carolina. It was in the wake of Hurricane Hugo, and much help was needed. The Yankee from Boston did not last long there before he was shown to the door and rather unceremoniously bid farewell. I had the temerity to raise questions of how minorities were treated there.

In West Virginia, I stayed in safer territory, and took on the matters of poverty, hunger and homelessness especially among our veterans. Honest to God, you’d think that was a theological “slam dunk”. But not so fast! It was a battle all the way.

Then there was a cross burning I led the march from St. Mark’s to the Black Baptist Church with Mike Poke the pastor there. And that was not in the 1930’s. It was in West Virginia in 2005. 

Then the Diocese of New Hampshire elected and consecrated Gene Robinson and a hoopla over that cause all kinds of divisiveness in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion. I spoke openly of my support of Gene Robinson’s election as well as of my children; two of whom happen to be gay, both of whom love this church with all their hearts; all because they love God with all their hearts.

“Are Your Running With me Jesus?”

It is a question that is profoundly spiritual and ethical at the same time.

Not only do we believe that Jesus runs with Malcolm Boyd in these ultimate moments, we believe that Jesus is running with all of us, because it is his belief as well as our own that “Christ’s Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is increasingly “A House of Prayer for All people” (Isaiah 56:7 & Matthew 21:13). And when I say all, I mean ALL. 

Admittedly we are a tiny corner of of Christianity and even in the rest of the world of faith, to come right out and say so. Our ministry and membership are open to all. There are now no barriers to ordained and lay ministries in this church.

“Are you running with me Jesus?” 

That is such a fruitful question both for our spiritual and ethical lives. Both are inextricably connected.

As for me and my house, the answer is an abundant; “Yes!”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Fr Paul

Transfiguration and Trinity: Into the Silence of God

Transfiguration and Trinity: Into the Silence of God

Last week several folks asked me about the Trinity; one of “riper years” and another just budding in his youth. In both cases, it was more the third person of the Trinity that caused the doctrinal difficulty. Obviously, if we believe in God the Father, we believe in the One who is the creator of heaven and earth. Most of us get that.

No problem either with Jesus as Savior, although the fact that he was there with God at the creation is a bit of a stretch for some even though it says as much in Scripture. ~John 1:1,2.

But the business about the Holy Spirit; just who is that? and how do we experience the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity?

Please note that the word for the Holy Spirit in much of Eastern Christianity is "Sancta Sophia". She is the Holy Wisdom from God. I love that imagery. The great church built by Constantine in modern day Istanbul was named for her.

One thing about the word “doctrine” in Anglican/Episcopal theology may be helpful. When we speak of doctrine we are not speaking of a teaching in the didactic sense as if it is something that we merely pour into the believer’s head out of some kind of arbitrary authority.

Rather, we think of doctrine as a “signpost” for the journey. Doctrine is an invitation to consider the experience of God as something we encounter in life as a reality we seek to make sense of.

Elisha, for instance, encountered this amazing prophet Elijah. “Elijah” means literally God is my Yahweh, my very being. God is the Name as revealed to us on the Holy Mountain by Moses. That’s who my God is. Baal conversely is no god at all. In fact the is no other God other than Yahweh. That’s my God. That's what Elijah means. 

“Elisha”, means God is my salvation. Notice the closeness of the name for both prophets, as if Hebrew, by nuance sought to indicate that the two fellow travelers were of much the same spirit. Ah, there it is; the word “spirit”.

In fact, Elisha asks for a double measure of Elijah’s spirit. Alas, that was a difficult task. But then there was this experience of the chariots of Israel and the whirlwind, a very intense experience of a vortex of Godly spirit.

We know from a reading of Genesis, that the breath of God brooded over the waters at creation; ~Genesis 1:1,2. God saw the chaos, the void and the emptiness, and began the process of dividing the light from the darkness, the land from the sea, and then breathing the breath of God into humankind.

The Holy Spirit then has to do with the very act of breathing itself. Anyone who has ever suffered from asthma or pneumonia knows how much of the essence of life breathing is. 

Therefore all practitioners of meditation begin with the act of breathing to quieten the spirit. To listen to the silence. This is not easy for a noisy world. We don’t listen well, particularly to the silence. It is no wonder we, in this part of the 20th and 21st centuries have such difficulty with spirituality. We find it hard to listen, to be quiet “to be still and know that You are God” as the Psalmist says. ~Psalm 46:10

Without the ability to listen, it will be difficult to forgive.

Without the ability to listen, we test our ability to love.

Without the ability to listen, it is impossible to be reconciled.

Our inner conflict, our conflict with others, our political conflict, indeed, much of our warfare comes from the fact that our listening skills in our time are wanting in the extreme. To the contrary our language and our speaking to one another is often strident, rude and disrespectful. How can we learn anything from one another or from God unless we listen to one another’s hearts? 

Jesus came to us in this way; to teach us to listen to the Law and to the Prophets and to his way, his truth, and his life.

On the mountaintop Elijah and Moses appeared and were speaking to one another. What a conversation that must have been! Elijah representing the prophets, Moses representing the Law, and Jesus representing God made flesh and blood together. 

Peter, representing us; said “Let’s make some dwellings, “lean to’s” if you will” not knowing what to say. 

Lets face it, in the Presence of God, we don’t have much to say and need to have the sense to just be quiet. And my friends, we are always in the Presence of God. We don’t have anything to say. Thankfully the Church gives us an approach to the throne of grace in the Word of God and in the Eucharist. God has much to say, but the only way we can hear it, is to listen.

That is why the practitioners of Christians Spirituality begin with the Silence. We begin with the Spirit. We begin with the breath God breathed into us in the very first moments at the creation. 

We discover in our breath and more significantly, God’s breath within us, that we “live and move and have our being.” ~Acts 17:28 

Not only is my spirit and my breath my connection to God, it is also our connection to one another. It is our connection to the eternal. So then, as Moses removed his shoes from his feet at the burning bush, we must do the same with one another at least figuratively, for the ground we all stand on is holy ground.

What a difference it would make to the frantic, noisy, lives so many live, it would make a difference to our politics and our history as well.

Jesus came into the world not to condemn it but that it should be saved by knowing the way to the Father; through the person of Jesus who is the Incarnate Word of God; Love, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Mercy, Obedience and so on.  God in the flesh and Blood of Jesus taught us the Way and The Truth and the Life. 

I am not saying that it is only through Jesus that there is salvation. I am saying that it is only through the kind of life Life he lived that salvation is even possible. There can be no salvation without Love and Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Obedience, Mercy and Kindness and so on. 

This way of life is a life of Joy and Wonder. So my friends we come to the Feast Day of the Transfiguration; the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. As Jesus was transfigured before their very eyes, so as the Collect of the Day puts it; “may we be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory”.

We begin with our breathing, our listening, and with the Silence of God. This Silence, this listening will most certainly bring us to the heart of God. 

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

Fr Paul

So You think You're Busy

Imagine Being Jesus

If you ever think you're busy or that you are under some stress, or that the demands of your job are getting to be too much for you, imagine being Jesus.

We're told in today's Gospel that, as Jesus sets up headquarters in Capernaum at the home of Simon and Andrew, first Simon's mother-in-law was sick with a fever. Then the town's folk heard that Jesus had amazing powers to heal those with physical, mental and spiritual illnesses, and eventually the entire town was at the door clamoring for Jesus' healing touch.

Such were the demands on Jesus, that he found that he needed to rise up very early in the day, while it was still dark, and find a deserted place where he could pray, and get his spiritual batteries charged up.

Then of course the disciples found Jesus and told him; the whole town is at the door and is crying out for Jesus to come and attend to their wounded bodies, spirits, and souls. And of course he does exactly that. 

But first he must tend to his own spirit.

This is why I am recommending to you that we learn to journal as part of our lenten discipline together. I have set myself under the discipline of the journal for over twenty years now. It is the first thing I do every day.

Well, that's not quite true. Truth be told, I tend to the necessaries first, then have my breakfast and read the Boston Globe, but then I go to my journal. I review the events of my life, my feelings about these events and how I find that God is inviting me to deal with these matters. And in doing so, I discover that God is guiding and strengthening me. 

Given that St. John's has been through significant upheaval in the recent past, I think we too need to tend to our spirits. After all, these events were out of your control and imposed themselves on you and you by external circumstance. Several clergy have been abruptly removed from your life as a church and you have been left with significant feelings around these events.

There is no need for us to dwell on the matter, but we do need to name what has happened and deal with how we feel about it and then move on.

I sense that this congregation is now seeking some stability. Your lay and clergy leadership need to establish the bonds of warmth, affection and trust for us to find a way to turn the page and move along.

Therefore I am going to make three recommendations to help us move ahead into our future and prepare the groundwork for you to receive your new priest however soon or long that takes in God's time.

First we owe Joyce Harrington a tremendous debt of gratitude. She came into our midst at a time of upheaval and she helped steady the ship and has done good and faithful service for this church. I am grateful that we can take some time today at our annual meeting to recognize the significance of her contribution and express our gratitude to her.

Therefore, among the first things must do is to make a decision about staffing the office with an effective and efficient parish administrator and secretary. That will require some time, but I am hopeful that by the end of February we will be able to move ahead with a decision as to who will provide coverage for us in our parish office.

The second thing I think we need to do is to establish a Membership Committee. We need to work on our parish list and take attendance often enough to track new members and make sure we are doing an effective job at shepherding their entry into the life of the church. We also need to notice as soon as possible that some of our membership seems to be drifting away or not in attendance for whatever reason. Then we need to establish a way to follow up with any significant patterns we notice so that we are more effective and timely in our pastoral care.

Thirdly, I'd like to establish a Parish Council who will help prepare a calendar going out over 18 months. After all, Shrove Tuesday always comes on the same day every year. Even if the Sunday Bulletin calls it Shrove Thursday, the fact of the matter remains, this year Shrove Tuesday comes on a Tuesday evening, namely February 17th from 4-6 pm. I would like to have a small group of planners work with me and the office in establishing clarity of dates, times, clarifying the purpose of all parish activities, and then assist in recruiting leadership teams for each event.

Yes, do too few folks do too much work? Indeed they do. But that is not peculiar to this congregation. This is the tendency in all congregations especially after they have been under significant stress over an extended period of time. When we plan, we will learn to extend our leadership base more effectively.

Friends, at last count I have noted that 14 new families and individuals have become involved at St. John's in various levels of commitment. This is very encouraging news and speaks well of the leadership of the church at least at the lay level, and hopefully your ordained leadership as well. 

We are all on the same side in these efforts and we ask God to bless us in this work.

But that only underscores how critical it is for us to remember what brings us together each Sunday. We are here to encounter the God in the Word and Jesus in the Sacraments. We are here to remember that the Holy Spirit seeks to share with us the Holy Wisdom from on high and to equip us with gifts to do the work of the church. In that Spirit then, we are called to learn how to love one another as God loves us.

In review then,

We will be making a staff decision about our parish administrator within about a month or so.

We will be seeking to establish a Membership Committee

We will be working on a Parish Council who will assist with planning activities for the church.

This is not just busy work. As Jesus reminds us, we will need to take time to find a quiet place where we my pray and know the living God. That's what brings us together each week. It is to learn to love God and to learn to love one another.

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

Fr Paul

The Journal & Spirituality

You and I and Us

My journal led me to You. You led me to the "I" within me. And You led me to "Us"

For over 20 years I have been recording the events of my life in my journal. My spiritual director led me to record the feelings I had around these events since my feelings are my "angels" or messengers from You. These feelings led me to accept Your invitation to explore my life with You and Your life within me.

We dealt with difficult people like my mother and me. 

We dealt with Your church for over 42 years now. We managed a great deal of joy and compassion and conflict. You taught me to do so without complacency; an amazing lesson!

We built a homeless shelter and fed the poor. We housed battered women and children. We were resolute together against the powers and principalities. 

You led me to the ministry of reconciliation and taught me that You and I and Us are becoming increasingly One. 

You led me to retirement and You insisted that I work on in Your church. Thank You. I love the Church, her people, and her gracious buildings. You lead me to the Holy within me. You lead me to the Holy among us.

I found you in the journal, the Holy of holies within. Just by telling the truth to my heart I realized that You are there with me. The nearer I journey within my heart, the nearer You come to me as my Friend and Companion.

Like the writers of old who spoke of the "Muse", I noticed You. Thus in the art of conversation between us, we discover one another. It is in the art of conversation that we do that among our friends and the deeper that conversation goes, You too become part of our life in one another.

As the Jewish mystic Martin Buber speaks of the I-Thou relationship within
As Moses met You at the burning bush and asked Your Name
As You spoke those amazing words "I AM"
I discovered "I am" too but without the caps. 

You are my only connection to the eternal. You are my connection to those I love, those I don't love so much and those I don't know at all. But we are all still One. 

And now You led me at long last to take care of myself in these latter days. You have led me to gastric by-pass surgery and weight loss...more than 80 lbs now. 

You led me to see that I cannot do this without you. 

You led to to see the joy and compassion of seeing myself as You see me.

You are now leading me to look upon myself without complacency as I rejoice with compassion.

This I learned again just today.

So many things to learn every day, again and again.

Adieu,
Paul

Discipleship & Apostleship

Discipleship to Apostleship

Not long after we were engaged to be married, after the initial rejoicing, there were those “reservations” shall we say particularly around the fact that Cindy came from a large Roman Catholic family; the eldest of seven children.

One day Cindy’s dad and I went for a long walk and eventually we got around to the subject at hand; “I don’t like my daughter getting married outside the church,” he said as a simple matter of fact.

Equally as a simple matter of fact I said to him; “The day that you start going to church is the day that I will give credence to what you say. In the meantime, thank you for your thoughts, I hope you too come back to the church”. 

Not long afterward, Cindy’s mom came to my office and after a few initial pleasantries she said; “Just what is it you people believe anyway?” 

One always prays for the grace to have an answer to such a question, and this time thankfully, God gave it to me; “We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” 

She said; “You do!”

I said; “Indeed we do!” and then I showed her the page in the Book of Common Prayer where we recite the Nicene Creed every single Sunday.

Not that they were completely satisfied with the answer at the time, but in the succeeding years we indeed have grown very close to one another. Just last year when Cindy’s mom was so sick, she listed me as her “priest” in the hospital intake records.

And so yes, I do believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. This is at the core of our faith as a matter of fact.

We are disciples of Jesus. We are his followers.

We are apostles of Jesus. He are his ambassadors in and for the sake of the world.

We are told in today’s first lesson that God called Jonah to be his disciple and to go to Ninevah, far to the east in modern day Syria. So where did he go? In the other direction as far as he could. He went to Tarshish, in modern day Spain, as nearly as we can tell, near Gibraltar. When God calls us to do God’s bidding do we always do exactly what we are told either with regard to our own care or with regard to the care of others? Or, do we sometimes do exactly the opposite, in fact will we go to great lengths to go as far was we can to escape our responsibility to God. 

This is exactly the case with Jonah. As it turns out, he boards a ship and a storm arose such as has seldom been seen before. It was one of those hundred year storms that we’ve been seeing lately every few years on our shores. And the sailors knew that someone aboard had offended the Fates or God or one of the many Deities that that sailors often believe in. They cast lots, and the lot fell to Jonah. In the Hebrew Bible, the lot is cast once, in the Koran the lot is cast three times to be certain the lot spoke the truth…after all Jonah’s father was Amittai, meaning he was “the son of the Truth”. When the lot fell to Jonah, he confessed that he was the cause of the pending calamity. The sailors tried to cast the cargo overseas in hopes that doing so would satisfy the raging storm. Alas, it came then to Jonah, and he was cast away into the depths and immediately a peace fell upon the sea. The parallels between this story and some of the stories of Jesus are fascinating. After all, didn’t Jesus tell the tossing tempest, “Peace, be still”.

We all know what happens then. God appointed a huge fish and he swallowed Jonah and there he remained for three days. But Jonah prayed to God from the belly of the whale.

In Judaism, the story is told at Yom Kippur every year so that we might know that God seeks to forgive a repentant sinner.

In Islam, the story is also very important. In much of the 37the Chapter of the Koran, and Allah forgave Jonah our of his mercy and kindness. By the way every chapter of the Koran begins with the phrase “Alla, the all merciful”. 

One wonders as with extreme fundamentalists of all faith traditions if in fact they have ever read the Book at all.

And in our own faith tradition Jonah prefigures Jesus’ death and resurrection, since Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale. 

Allegory?

Metaphor?

Literal fact?

We have a minds to think with. Use them. I know that as I read the holy writings I appreciate the full meaning of their literature, as I do great poetry itself. There are so many layers of meaning in all that we read in these sacred stories.

We see in the second reading that Paul is becoming anxious about the fact that the appointed time is drawing near. His understanding of eschatology or “the end times” is often misunderstood to mean that the end of the world itself is immanent. In fact he may have thought so. The language of this brief passage seems to indicate that. And many have thought for the two thousand years since that the end is at hand. 

Frankly, I have my doubts. Yes, I believe in a new world order that is growing in every heart that honestly comes to God and who becomes a follower of Jesus. That’s the point. You and I have been called to follow and that’s what changes the world. That’s what brings the new world order into focus. As Paul more correctly says; “The present form of this world is passing away.” That indeed makes more sense to me. And it seems to be abundantly clear as we look at current events that the world is indeed in an upheaval.

So then that begs the question. What will its future be? Obviously, that will be up to us as we seek in our own way to answer readily the call of Jesus to follow him in the way that leads to eternal life; into the life that brings life to others and continues to do so from one life to another and for ever. 

You will notice that Jesus called rather ordinary fisherfolk to follow him.  They were folks like Simon and Andrew; James and John. Folks who cast their nets into the Galilean Lake, folks who sat mending their nets as a million more had done centuries before and since.

But Jesus had folks to fish for. “I will make you fishers of men, women and children” Jesus was soon to say. The Kingdom of God has come near. It is at hand. As we mend our net so let us mend our hearts. for the old order is passing away. Therefore Jesus calls us to follow.

As disciples, there is a discipline to follow. There are responsibilities we have to one another to build God’s Church. The mending of our nets now includes extending God’s heart to the world in this place and from this place. The essence of discipleship is the extension of God’s Kingdom from one human heart to another as we extend God’s love, Christ’s forgiving power and The Holy Spirit’s reconciling grace.

Disciples are called together at least once a week to hear God’s word to receive the sacramental presence of Christ in our lives and then we are sent out to be God’s Apostles, Ambassador’s of Christ, if you will, in our work places, at school, among our friends and family and in the communities in which we are planted.

Notice then if you will the relationship between our Discipleship and our Apostleship. In our Discipleship, we follow. In our Apostleship we are sent. It is the life and breath of the church. As we breathe in, we gather, as we breathe out we go forth. Much like we do from our homes; we gather to share our meals, tell our stories, and take our rest. Then, strengthened, we go forth into our daily responsibilities and go about our daily rounds. Sometimes we come back bruised and battered. So it is in life. But then at home we tell our stories, our wounds are bandaged up, we take our sustenance and rest. Then we do it all over again. 

This is how it is as we seek to be God’s Disciples and God’s Apostles. Of course life bruises and batters us around a bit but we gather then to tell our stories, God speaks to us, and nourishes us in the sacrament and then we take our rest here in the arms of Jesus. Only to do it all over again.

As I said to Cindy’s mom so many years ago, so I say to you today, so we say to God week in and week out; “We believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

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

Fr Paul