I Christmas

December 28, 2014

John 1.1-18

+ As you have heard me confess many times from this pulpit; I am a church nerd. But, I think I need to be more specific with the self-description.  I am really, in all actuality, a liturgy nerd. Now, saying that I can say that I am no liturgical scholar. For me, I am more experiential in my love of liturgy.

No one has to guess what I believe, because I believe what I pray. You want to know what I believe? Look at the Book of Common prayer. Look at the Eucharist in it, look at the Daily Office in it—and there’s what I believe.  Liturgy is the basis for my personal theology, my spiritual life and my outlook on life.  So, I take it seriously, but maybe not intellectually so.  I am more interested in doing liturgy than studying liturgy at times (though I do like studying liturgy at times as well).

One of the most exciting liturgical experiences I ever had happened a few years ago. I was in Los Angeles attending a meeting. One of my dear friends and seminary classmates invited me to his church in Orange County for Sunday morning mass.  My friend is a Deacon in the Anglican Catholic Church, which is a church that is actual separate from the Anglican Communion, for various reasons. The Mass at the church he served was fascinating to me.  The liturgy was based on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and , I believe, the Anglican Missal, which was essentially an Anglican version of the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Mass. I was certainly impressed because I had never experienced that particular Mass before.

And it was lovely.  I was blown away by the beauty of this mass.  But the thing I loved it best about it was something called the Last Gospel.  Some of you who were Roman Catholic might remember this. At the very end of the Mass, the priest read a portion of the Gospel we just heard.  That essentially marked the end of the Mass.

When you think about it, it’s liturgically brilliant really. In a sense, a reading about the beginning—the very beginning—is read at the end of the Mass.

In our beginning is our end, in our end if our beginning.

I love the concept of the Last Gospel. Because I love this reading from the first chapter of John. In fact, if I had a favorite scripture, this one would be it.  It’s theologically compact. It’s a perfect summary of Christian faith and theology.  And there are just layers and layers of thought and sentiment in this passage from John.

The beginning we experience today in our Gospel reading is a bit different than the beginning we read about in Genesis.

The beginning we encounter today even harkens back further than the creation of Adam and Eve. It goes back to before those creation stories to who and what God was initially.

“In the beginning…” we hear at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel.

And they are certainly the most appropriate words if ever there were any.  Especially at this time of the year.  As this year runs down and the new year begins, our thoughts turn to beginnings.  

We think about that New Year and how important a new year is our lives.  It heralds for us a sense of joy—and fear—of the future.  All of a sudden we are faced with the future.  It lies there before us—a mystery.  Will this coming year bring us joy or will it bring us sadness?  Will it be a good year or a bad year?  And we step forward into the New Year without knowing what that year will hold for us. But, the fact is, at the very beginning moment, we can’t do much more than just be here, right now.  We need to just experience this beginning.  And we can’t let that anxiety of the future take hold.  We just need to be here, right now, and take part fully in this new beginning.

That’s what beginnings are all about, I guess.  That one moment when we can say:

“Right now! This is it! We are alive and we are here! Now!”

And we all know that just as soon as we do, it’ll be past.

In our reading from John this morning, it’s also one of those moments.  In that moment, we get a glimpse of one of those “right now” moments.  

It seems as though, for that moment, it’s all clear.  At least for John anyway.

We encounter, the “Word.”  The Word, as John intends, is, of course, Jesus.  Jesus as the knowledge and mind of God.  Jesus as the essence of God.  This is an appropriate way to begin the Gospel of John and to begin our new year as well.  And, in those early Masses before the 1960s, it was an appropriate way to end Mass.

It is a great beginning. It sets the tone for us as followers of Jesus.  He was there in the beginning.  And he is here, now, with us in our beginning.  And in him, we experience a beginning that doesn’t seem to end. In Jesus, God comes forward and becomes present among us in a way we could never possibly imagine.  

God appears to us  here not as God in the Old Testament, cloaked behind pillars of fire or thunderstorms or wind. Instead, in Jesus, God appears before us, as one of us in a whole new beginning.  God’s word, God’s wisdom, God’s essence became flesh.  

The Word spoken to us in this beginning moment, is a word of Love.  The commandment this Word tells us of is a commandment to love.  Love God and love one another as you love yourselves.

I enjoy this beginning because this is the true message of Jesus as the Word. Maybe the true message of Jesus is that, in God’s Kingdom, that beginning keeps on and on, without end.  

In God’s Kingdom there is constant renewal.  In God’s Kingdom it is always like New Year’s Day—always fresh, always full of hope for a future that does not end or disappoint.

As we prepare to celebrate 2015, this is a great way to live this beginning moment.  In this beginning moment, let us think about beginnings and how important they are for us personally and for our spiritual lives.  And let us do what we can to be the bringers of new beginnings not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others.

With this encounter with the Word, we, like John, are also saying in this moment, this moment is holy.  This moment is special.  This moment is unique and beautiful, because God is reaching out to us. Unlike how we might feel at the New Year—full of both hope and apprehension—in this instance, in our grasping of it, it doesn’t wiggle away from it.  It doesn’t fall through our fingers like sand.  Or snow.  It stays with us.  Always new.  Always fresh.  Always being renewed.

We’re here.  Right now.  We’re alive!  The future is happening right now.  The Word, the Essence, of God has come to us as one of us.  It’s incredible, really.  This moment is a glorious and holy one.

So, let us, in this holy moment, be joyful.  Let us in this holy moment rejoice.  And let us, in this holy moment, in this holy beginning, look forward to what awaits us with courage and confidence.  Amen.

Christmas

December 25, 2014

 +Once, a long time ago, when I was brand new priest, I had a parishioner at another congregation come up to me and critique one of my sermons. This is common thing that happens when you’re a clergy person. Now that I’m older and crustier and less patient about such things, whenever anyone makes a critique I listen politely and then, I very gently direct them toward the pulpit and say, “Next Sunday the pulpit is yours. I’m sure you’ll preach much better sermon than I ever could.”

Back then, though, I wasn’t the savvy, with-it, together priest who stands before you tonight.  Back then, this parishioner came up and said, “You preach way too much about love.” I was a bit shocked by that statement. I was, uncharactesrically, speechless, actually.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“All you do is preach about love. Love, love, love.”

I didn’t know how to respond then. But if I was going to respond, knowing what I know now, I would ask, “What should I be preaching about? Hate?”

I will say this: I very unapolegtically preach about love. Even to this day, I will preach about love.  I will, hopefully, with my dying breath, preach about love.  I’m a poet after all.

And love, after all,  is a good thing. A very good thing. Now, I‘m not talking about sweet, Valentine’s Day love with hearts and cupids. I am talking about real love. Solid, strong, oftentimes messy love.  

And I can tell you this: love is what Christmas is about.  A love from God to us.  A love very unlike any other kind of love.

When we think long and hard about this night, when we ponder it and let it take hold in our lives, what we realized happened on that night when Jesus was born was not just some mythical story.  It was not just the birth of a child under dire circumstances, in some distant, exotic land.  What happened on that night was a joining together—a joining of us and God.  God met us half-way.  God came to us in our darkness, in our blindness, in our fear—and cast a light that destroyed that darkness, that blindness, that fear.

On this glorious morning, we celebrate Light and love.  We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our collective and personal darknesses.  We celebrate the Light that has come to us in our despair and our fear, in our sadness and in our frustration.  And as it does, we realize---there is an intimacy—a love—to that action on God’s part.  

God didn’t have to do what God did.  God didn’t have to come to us and meet us here.  But by doing so, God showed us a remarkable love.  Or, as the great Anglican poet Christina Rosetti put more eloquently:

Love came down at Christmas,

love, all lovely, love divine;

love was born at Christmas:

star and angels gave the sign.

We will never fully understand how or why God has come to us as this little child in a dark stable in the Middle East, but it has happened and, because it happened, we are a different people. We realize that we are a people loved by our God.  All of us—no matter who we are, or what we are, or what we’ve done.  We are loved. And the proof of that love happened on this day.  And that love is all powerful.  It is all encompassing.  It is all accepting.  It is radical. And it breaks down barriers.

One of the things I enjoy doing at our Wednesday night Masses throughout the year—and we sometimes do it at Sunday morning masses too—is time travel. We sometimes will take a trip back in time. Well, this Christmas morning, we can take a little trip back in time, back 100 years today, to Friday, December 25, 1914.  On that day, in France, World War I, of course was raging.  It was already six month along and it was going to be bloody and more horrible than anyone could even imagine.

But, on that Christmas day, a brief and unofficial truce was declared and, for a moment, the German troops and the English and French troops crossed the battlefield and met.  They drank, they laughed, they sang Christmas carols, they played soccer. For a moment, in the midst of the darkness of one of the most horrible wars of all of humankind, there was a glimmer of light and peace and joy.

Even in the midst of our darkness and turmoil, even in the midst of the wars that are raging within us, what this day represents is peace and joy in our war-ravaged lives. This day is all about the love that descends into the wars of our own lives.   Our lives are different because of that love that descended into our lives. This baby—this love personified—has taken away, by the love he encompasses, everything we feared and dreaded.  

When we look at it from that perspective, suddenly we find our emotions heightened.  We find ourselves expressing our intimacy back to God.  But the love and intimacy we feel between ourselves and God is a very real one tonight—in this very holy moment.  We find that this love we feel—for God and for each other and for those we maybe don’t always love, or find difficult to love—that radical love is more tangible—more real—than anything we have ever thought possible.  And that is what we are experiencing this morning.

Love came down.  Love became flesh and blood.  Love became human.  And in the face of that realization, we are rejoicing today.  We are rejoicing in that love personified. We are rejoicing in each other. We are rejoicing in the glorious beauty of this one holy moment in time.  And we are rejoicing in that almighty and incredible God who would come to us, not on some celestial cloud with a sword in his hand and armies of angels flying about him.

We are rejoicing in a God who comes to us in this innocent child, born to a humble teenager in a dusty third world land.  We rejoice in a God who comes with a face like our face and flesh like our flesh—a God who is born, like we are born—of a human mother—and who dies like we all must die.  We rejoice in a God who comes and accepts us and loves us for who we are and what we are—a God who understands what it means to live this sometimes frightening uncertain life we live.

But who, by that very birth, makes all births unique and holy and who, by that death, takes away the fear of death for all of us. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

See, now you know why I love to preach about love.  This beautiful day, let us each cling to this love that we are experiencing today and let us hope that it will not fade from us when this day is over.  Let us cling to this holy moment and make sure that it will continue to live on and be renewed again and again.

Love is here.  Love is in our very midst today.  Love is so near, we can feel its presence in our very bodies and souls.  So, let us share this love in any way we can and let us especially welcome this love— love, all lovely, love divine—this love made human into the shelter of our hearts.

4 Advent

December 21, 2014

Luke 1.26-38

+ I know it’s hard to believe. But, I went to a very conservative seminary.  But…to be honest…it was kind of a good thing for me. Even people who are more progressive can be a bit close-minded about things at times as well. And I was a bit of close-minded progressive before I went off to seminary.  I learned a lot there.  A lot about how to deal with people who have different views and different thinking than my own. I didn’t necessarily have accept those views, but I did understand why people had those views.

I also learned some interesting practices at my seminary.   At the seminary I went to—Nashotah House in Wisconsin—something happened three times every day. Three times every single day the big bell in the bell tower—named Michael—would chime, once in the morning before Morning Prayer, once at noon and once in the evening before Morning Prayer. Whatever we were doing at that moment, we were expected to pause and quietly pray as the bell chimed.

The traditionally thing to do was to pray the Angelus as the bell rung. The Angelus consists of three Hail Mary’s—the prayer based, yet again, on our Gospel reading from today—interspersed with vesicles also from our Gospel reading today. It begins with:

V. The angel of the Lord announced unto Mary.

R. And she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Say the Hail Mary

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.

R. Be it unto me according to your Word.

Another Hail Mary

V. And the Word was made flesh .

R. And dwelt among us.

Another Hail Mary

Then it ends with a wonderful collect that summarizes the Incarnation for us:

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that as we have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel to the Virgin Mary, so by his cross and passion we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection; through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Angelus has a long tradition in the church.  No doubt you’ve sent the very famous painting called “The Angelus” by Jean-Francois Millet of the farmers pausing in the midst of their field work to bow their heads in prayer as they hear the Angelus bell. I always loved the Angelus, because in a very real, it is a theological microcosm of what we will be celebrating this coming week.   And it is an important week on which we are about to embark.

Today, of course, is the last Sunday of Advent.  The big Day—Christmas—is now almost agonizingly close.  On the surface level, we, hopefully, are as prepared as we can be.  Presents are hopefully bought (I still have a few to buy).  Cards have been sent. Menus have been prepared. But spiritually, where are we?

This time of Advent was a time for us to prepare ourselves spiritually for this glorious event.  Has it been worthwhile?  Are we prepared spiritually for this big day? The truly honest answer to that question can only be another question: are we ever truly prepared?  Or maybe even more honest would be the question: what exactly are we preparing ourselves for?

The answer to the first question finds its answer in the second question.  What are we preparing ourselves for?  What do we believe about this day that is about to dawn upon us?  Do we believe it is just another holiday full of trinkets and caroling?  Or do we believe that this Day is an awesome Day—a Day in which, truly God draws near to us.

And there, I think, is the gist of it all. This day we celebrate this coming week is not some sweet, gentle little holiday, just involving a smiling, bright-faced baby in a barn.

Not for us, anyway, who called ourselves Christians.

This day is about God coming to us. God, in the form of this baby. That is what we are hearing about in today’s Gospel reading with the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary and that is what we are celebrating this coming week in the birth of Jesus.

In the Gospel reading, we are looking back roughly nine months from now.  We are looking back to that moment when God came to us, when God moved—and it all happened because Mary said “yes” to the Angel.

Incarnation—God with us and among us—is at the heart of what we as Christians believe.  For us, Jesus isn’t just some nice teacher like the Buddha. (and to be clear, I greatly respect the Buddha) But Jesus isn’t like the Buddha or any other great teacher.  

For us, in Jesus God has come to us.  It is the defining belief among us.  It is what makes us different than our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Yes, we believe in the same God.  But we believe that this same God has taken on human flesh and come among us.

It is also what makes us different than our Muslim brothers and sisters.  Again, we believe in the same God.  Yes, they revere Jesus as a great prophet and Mary as a truly holy servant of God, but they cannot quite accept the fact that God has become flesh in the person of Jesus, that God would have a child.  We, as Christians, do believe this.  We profess it every week in our Creed.  We celebrate it in our scripture readings.  And we partake of this belief in a very tangible way at the altar when we share Holy Eucharist with each other.  And certainly it also a major part of our outreach and ministry.

Because God has come to us in Jesus, we now see God present in those we serve. Every person—no matter who or what they are—is holy and special.  And we can even see God present in own selves.  Everything we do as Christians proclaims the fact we believe that, in Jesus, God has come among us.

The fact is, most of us probably haven’t given this whole idea of God-with-us a whole lot of thought.  Even the early Christians struggled with this belief and defined it in various ways.  For us, though, as Episcopalians, we do believe in this remarkable fact.  And we celebrate it at every opportunity we can.

Certainly every Sunday we celebrate it—here at the altar.  Our Eucharist is a remembrance of the fact that, yes, God continues to come to us, in this bread and this wine.  

In Jesus, God has become present with us.   He also encompassed everything we longed for and hoped in.  He was—and is—God. In Jesus, we find God breaking through to us. In Jesus, God has come among us and dwells among us as one of us, speaking to us as one of us.  And although many of us are still resisting it, those of us who recognize it and see it, realize that God has truly broken through to us.

It’s all, of course, a mystery.  It is beyond our understanding and our rational thought that God could do this.  

But at the same time, for those of us who have faith in God, we can just easily ask the question: why not?  Why couldn’t God do just this?  Why couldn’t God come among us and dwell with us as one of us.

Certainly this is the reality we face this coming Wednesday night and Thursday.  For those of us who have been preparing ourselves spiritually for this day, this is what we are forced to examine and face.  Our faith might not be quite at that point that we believe all of it.  But what our faith does tell us is that, whatever happens on that day, it is God breaking through to us in some wonderful and mysterious way.  And all we have to do is not be stubborn or close-minded and cold-hearted.  Rather, all we have to do is be open to that breaking through to us.

The Word was made flesh.  And dwelt among us.  Our response to that word should be the words of Mary when this incredible mystery descended upon her. Let it be with me according to your word.

God has broken through to us.  Let us meet God at that point of breakthrough rejoicing.  And let us come away from that breaking through to us with God’s word being proclaimed in our own voice.

My new book THE DOWNSTAIRS TENANT due out MONDAY

Available Monday, December 22, 2014

THE DOWNSTAIRS TENANT AND OTHER STORIES

Jamie Parsley’s first book of short fiction contains 15 stories (and one play) of Dakota at mid-Twentieth Century, a time when morals, ideals and society in general were in flux. Capturing the “Prairie Gothic” genre, these stories are, at turns, tender and haunting, mystical and stoically unflinching, furtive and emotionally raw, violent and humorous. The characters in them struggle with overwhelming loss, tenuous faith, persistent doubt, nagging obsessions, haunted affection and, of course, an unpredictable natural world in which they ultimately find themselves exposed and vulnerable. 

 

JAMIE PARSLEY is the author twelve books of poems, including Fargo, 1957 (2010, Institute for Regional Studies). An Episcopal priest, he serves as Priest-in-Charge of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Fargo, ND. He was appointed an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota in 2004 by Poet Laureate Larry Woiwode.

 

Article from today's Fargo Forum

He's raising the bar with his vintage glassware

By Ryan Johnson Today at 10:28 p.m.

FARGO - When Jamie Parsley spotted a 1940s bar cart at an antique store, he knew he needed to buy it.

“I was really looking for something for my vintage (cocktail) shakers more than anything else,” he said.

But over the past two years, the small stand with brass legs and three glass shelves has become much more than a practical way of displaying his shakers, decanters and glasses.

“It’s definitely a conversation piece, and not everybody has one of these,” he said. “That was part of the other reason why I really, really liked it.”

Vintage bar carts are a popular home accessory once again, according to Brett Bernath, owner of Midmodmadhaus in downtown Fargo – but he has a hard time finding them for his midcentury modern store, and an even harder time keeping one in stock.

“They sell right away when I do find them,” he said. “They’re something that I’ll throw up on my (Facebook) page and usually get a call or someone comes in in the first couple days.”

While the resurgence of midcentury modern furniture, accessories and even cocktails from the 1940s-1960s is often said to be a reaction to the popularity of AMC’s period drama “Mad Men,” Bernath said the main driving force is easier to understand: nostalgia.

“For people of my generation and maybe a generation older, the people who are my prime customers, this is what was in their grandma’s house or was their parents’ secondhand furniture when they were a kid, and that’s the connection with it,” he said.

‘Epitome of style’

Parsley, a priest at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Fargo and a poet and author, said he had always loved the midcentury modern style. But he got a chance to embrace that six years ago when he moved into the church’s nearby rectory, a large single-family house built in 1959 that’s still full of detail from that period.

Through careful searching at thrift and antique stores, as well as gifts and freebies from congregants and friends, he’s filled the space with accents from 1957 to 1963, including an old aluminum Christmas tree with a retro color wheel to light it up.

Like the rest of his vintage goods, Parsley slowly amassed an impressive collection of vintage decanters, glasses, shakers and an old seltzer bottle to fill up the bar cart that he said has become a piece to gather around whenever he entertains at home.

“There’s a sturdiness to this, and you can tell the way they built it that it was meant to last,” he said. “That was the epitome of style at that point.”

While Parsley said it’s not necessary to use a bar cart like the characters of “Mad Men” – a morning cocktail at a business meeting is no longer as accepted these days – he said new owners of this fun, functional furniture should use it for its original purpose of serving drinks.

“I think the key is to be creative,” he said. “If they’re interested in the vintage stuff, this is probably going to be your focal point for the vintage kind of things. If nothing else, it’s a great place to put some of those vintage glasses out and to really display that.”

Vintage bar cart, classic cocktails

Like midcentury modern style and design, old-fashioned cocktails also are making a “huge comeback” in Fargo-Moorhead right now, according to Richard Pallay III, restaurant manager at Mezzaluna.

“Old Fashioneds, last words and perfect Manhattans, these are all drinks that are really, really booming and customers are getting aware of it again and they’re loving it again and finding little variations,” he said.

So it makes sense for new owners of vintage bar carts to up their game and master at least one classic cocktail to impress their guests, according to Pallay.

How to stock a bar cart will depend on the owner’s individual tastes and preferences, he said, as well as what kind of drinks they’d like to serve during parties and gatherings. But Pallay said quality tools, such as a bar spoon and shaker, will come in handy for any at-home mixologist.

He recommends stocking up on the basics, including sweet vermouth, a good whiskey and vodka that’s at least triple distilled and a gadget to squeeze juice out of fresh fruit – something he said will make every drink much better and fresher.

For those who are uninitiated with mixing up classic cocktails, Pallay offered a simple recipe for a classic Old Fashioned that’s sure to keep guests coming back for more.

First, pour about an ounce and a half of bourbon or rye whiskey over ice. Add two dashes of angostura bitters, a few dashes of plain water and a little bit of simple syrup, which is equal parts sugar and water.

“You just muddle all that together, garnish with an orange slice and you’re good to go,” he said.

Once comfortable with the basics, Pallay suggests incorporating variations into our own drinks to make a signature cocktail that guests will remember while still getting a classic flavor.

“It’s this re-picking back up instead of recreating something brand new,” he said. “Why not take something that’s been done before, put a little tweak on it and just make it delicious and fit your needs?”

Ryan Johnson

After four years of covering news for the Grand Forks Herald and The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, Ryan Johnson has been a features reporter for The Forum's Variety section since 2013. His prior beats included politics, business, city government and higher education. Johnson is a 2008 alumnus of the University of North Dakota. Have a comment to share about a story? Letters to the editor should include author’s name, address and phone number. Generally, letters should be no longer than 250 words. All letters are subject to editing. Send to letters@forumcomm.com

RMJohnson@forumcomm.com

(701) 241-5587

3 Advent

Gaudete Sunday

December 14, 2014

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11;1 Thes. 5.16-24

+ In case you haven’t noticed, it’s kind of a special Sunday. James yesterday posted a Facebook meme:

“Everything’s coming up roses!”

And it sure is. Today is Gaudete Sunday.  Or Rose Sunday.

Traditionally, on Gaudete Sunday, we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath.  

I’m impressed by all of you. More often than not, when there’s a shift in our liturgical season, you definitely notice it. You notice the change in the colors. I get lots of comments on the color of my chasuble when I greet you at the door.

And today, of course, it’s a noticeable change. We don’t get to trot out the rose-colored vestments often. The next time we’ll do it is in Lent.

But I love this Sunday. Lighting the pink candle is a sign to us that the shift has happened.  Now there are more candles lit than are unlit on the wreath.  The light has won out and the darkness, we are realizing, is not an eternal darkeness.

Gaudete means “rejoice” and that’s exactly what we should be doing on this Sunday.  We should rejoice in the light that is winning out.  We should rejoice in the fact that darkness has no lasting power over us.

This Sunday sets a tone different than the one we’ve had so-far in Advent.  We find that word—rejoice—ringing out throughout our scriptural readings today.  It is the theme of the day.  It is the emotion that permeates everything we hear in the Liturgy of the Word on this Sunday.

In our reading from the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah, we hear

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

my whole being shall exult in my God;

In our Epistle, we find even Paul—who seems a bit, shall we say, dour at times— rejoicing. “Rejoice always,” he writes to the church at Thessalonika. This emotion of joy is something we oftentimes take for granted.  Let’s face it, joy doesn’t happen often enough in our lives.  It certainly doesn’t happen enough in my life.  It is a rare occurrence for the most part.  

And maybe it should be.  It is certainly not something we want to take for granted.  When joy comes to us, we want to let it flow through us.  We want it to guide us and overwhelm us.  But we often don’t think about how essential joy is to us.  Joy is essential to all of us as Christians.  It is one of those marks that make us who we are as Christians. Or it should anyway.

Sadly, I don’t think there all that many joyful Christians.  But we all should be joyful Christians.  

Still, as we all know, there are moments.  There are moments when we simply cannot muster joy.  No matter how many parties we might plan or host or go to, no matter how much we try to break the hold the hard, difficult things of life have placed on us, it is hard sometimes to feel joy.  Cultivating joy in the midst of overwhelming sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression can seems overwhelming and impossible.

That’s why joy really is a discipline. When things like sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression descend upon—and they descend upon us all—we need, in those moments, to realize that joy might not be with us in that moment, but joy always returns.  We need to search deep within us for that joy that we have as Christians.  And when we search for it, we can find it.

That joy often comes when we put our pains into perspective.  That joy comes when we recognize that these dark moments that happen in our lives are not eternal.  They will not last forever. That, I think, is where we sometimes fail.  When we are in the midst of those negative emotions in our lives, we often feel as though they will never end.  We often feel as though we will always be lonely, we always be sad, we will always mourn.

As Christians, we can’t allow ourselves to be boxed in by despair.  As Christians, we are forced, again and again, to look at the larger picture.  We are forced to see that joy is always there, just beyond our grasp, awaiting us. Joy is there when we realize that in the midst of our darkness, there is always light just beyond our reach.  And when it comes back into our lives, it truly is wonderful…

It’s not always something one is able to identify in a person.  Joy doesn’t mean walking around smiling all the time.  It doesn’t mean that we have force ourselves to be happy at all times in the face of every bad thing.  If we do that, we become nothing more than a programmed robot or a trained puppy.

True joy come bubbling up from within us.  It is a true grace—it is a gift we are given that we simply don’t ask for.  It comes from a deep place and it permeates our whole being, no matter what else is going on in our lives or in the world around us.  It is a joy that comes from deep within our very essence—from that place of our true selves.

Advent is, essentially, a penitential season.  It is a time for us to recognize that we are slugging through the muck of our lives—a muck we are at least, in part, responsible for.  But Advent is also a time for us to be able to rejoice even in the midst of that muck.  It is a time for us realize that we will not be in that muck for ever.  The muck doesn’t win out.  The joy we carry deep within us wins out. So, as we gather together this morning, and as we leave here this morning, let us remember the joy we feel at seeing this pink candle lit.

We have made it this far.  The tide has shifted.  The light is winning out.  The dawn is about to break upon our long dark night. As we ponder this, as we meditate on this, as we take this with us in our hearts, pay special attention to the emotion this causes within us.  Let us embrace that welling up of joy from deep within.  And let it proclaim on our lips the words we, along the prophet Isaiah, long to say:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

my whole being shall exult in my God;

I Advent

November 30, 2014

1 Corinthians 1.3-9; Mark 13.24-37

+ Defining moments in our lives sometimes happen in very strange ways. I don’t know if it’s because we’re celebrating the beginning of a new Church Year today, or because we are now officially in the holiday season, or what it is, but I’ve been strangely reflective these last several days. And I found myself reflective on some of those defining moments in my own life.

There have been a few, let me tell you.  But, one of my first defining moments—and one that I think still has a lot of consequences in my life, in my own personal perspective on things—was one that happened when I was in the fourth grade.

When I was in the fourth grade, I had a teacher call me out of class one afternoon. We know what being called into hallway means. It’s never a good thing. In this case, this particular called me out into the hall way and proceeded to have a very intense “come to Jesus” moment with me.

“Jamie,” she said. “I just don’t understand you. You seem smart. You seem articulate. You have quick come-backs on things. You read an amazing amount. But none of that reflects in your grades.”

Not so bad, right?  Oh, but wait…

“You’re sloughing,” she said. “There’s no other way to put it. Actually, there is. You’re lazy.”

Now, for some reason, that word, “Lazy,” hit me like a ton of bricks. Or maybe I should say, it hit me like a slap across the face. And although I could not or would not admit it then, it was just what I needed.  Her words woke me up. I became a more committed student after that talk, as painful as it was.

In our Gospel reading for today, we get a very similar moment.  It’s not quite an accusation of laziness on us. But it is a kind of verbal alarm clock.  And we hear it in two different ways:

“Keep alert.”

“Keep awake.”

Jesus says it just those two ways in our reading from Mark: It seems simple enough.

“Keep alert” and “keep awake.” Or to put it more bluntly, “Wake up!”

But is it simple?  Our job as Christians is sometimes no more than this.  It is simply a matter of staying awake, of being attentive or being alert, of not being lazy.  Our lives as Christians are sometimes simply responses to being spiritually alert.

For those of us who are tired, who are worn down by life, who spiritually or emotionally fatigued, our sluggishness sometimes manifests itself in our spiritual life and in our relationship with others.  When we become impatient in our watching, we sometimes forget what it is we are watching for.  We sometimes, in fatigue, fail to see.

For us, that “something” that we are waiting for, that we keeping alert for, is none other than that glorious day of Christ, that we hear St. Paul talk about in his epistle this morning.  That glorious day of Jesus comes when, in our attentiveness, we see the rays of the light breaking through to us in our tiredness and in our fatigue.  It breaks us through to us in various ways.  We, who are in this sometimes foggy present moment, peering forward, sometimes have this moments of wonderful spiritual clarity.  Those moments are true moments of being alert—of being spiritually awake.

Sometimes we have it right here, in church, when we gather together. I have shared with each of you at times when those moments sometimes come to me. They sometimes come to me here at this altar.

One of the most common ways they happen for me is when I have broken that break and we are singing the Agnus Dei—the Lamb of God.  As we sing, and I have had moments in which I look down at that broken Bread and that chalice, I realize: yes, this IS the Lamb of God. This is Jesus.  This is the spiritual goal of my life.  This IS the Day of Our Lord Jesus.  Jesus has truly come to us this day.

This is what it means to be awake, to not be lazy. Certainly, in a very real sense, today—this First Sunday of Advent— is a precursor of that one glorious day of the Lord Jesus that St. Paul talks about.  But the rays of that glorious future day also break through to us now when, in our attentiveness, we recognize Jesus in here at the altar and in those we serve as Christians.  Those rays of the Day of Christ break through when we can see Jesus in all those we meet and serve.

In this beautiful Sarum blue Advent season, we are reminded that the day of Christ is truly about dawn upon us.  The rays of the bright sun-lit dawn are already starting to lighten the darkness of our lives.  We realize, in this moment, that, despite all that has happened, despite the disappointments, despite the losses, despite the pain each of us has had to bear, the ray of Christ’s Light breaks through to us in that darkness and somehow, makes it all better.

But this is doesn’t happen in an instant.  Oftentimes that light is a gradual dawning in our lives.  Oftentimes, it happens gradually so we can adjust to it, so it doesn’t blind us.  Sometimes, our awakening is in stages, as though waking from a deep, slumbering sleep.

Our job as Christians is somewhat basic.  I’m not saying it’s easy.  But I am saying that it is basic.  Our job, as Christians, especially in this Advent time, is to be alert. To be awake.  Spiritually and emotionally.  And, in being alert, we must see clearly.

We cannot, when that Day of Christ dawns, be found to lazy and sloughing. Rather, when that Day of our Lord Jesus dawns, we should greet it joyfully, with bright eyes and a clear mind. We should run toward that dawn as we never have before in our lives.  We should let the joy within us—the joy we have hid, we have tried to kill—the joy we have not allowed ourselves to feel—come pouring forth on that glorious day.  And in that moment, all those miserable things we have been dealt—all that loss, all that failure, all that unfairness—will dissipate like a bad dream on awakening.

“Keep alert,” Jesus says to us.

“Keep awake.”

It’s almost time.

Keep awake because that “something” you have been longing for all your spiritual life is about to happen.  It is about to break through into our lives.  And it is going to be glorious.

Thanksgiving Eve

November 26, 2014

Deuteronomy 8.7-18

+ OK. This might not some as a big surprise to some of you.

But…I am a bit of a curmudgeon. Especially when it comes to the holiday season. I know.  That’s sacrilege to some people.

“But, Father Jamie,” I hear people say. “It’s just a magical time of the year.”

I think magic, in this case, may be in the eye of the beholder. I’ve never been a big fan of the commercial aspects of either Thanksgiving or Christmas. And, I’m sure it’s no surprise to people here who know me: the food at this time of the year does not really appeal to me all that much, even before I became vegan.

But…before you judge me too harshly (and I’ll let you do that in this case), I think, idealistically, there are many positive things that can be mustered from this holiday season. 

Tonight is an example of what we can do. I have always loved the Thanksgiving Eve service. Back in the days when we were on rotation with St. Mark’s and Elim and the Shepherd of the Valley Moravian, it was great to worship together and to ponder a bit this wonderful thing we do when we give thanks to God. Now, you’ve heard no doubt many sermons and Facebook memes and other comments about how important it is to give thanks for all the great things in our lives.

A few weeks ago, on Stewardship Sunday here at St. Stephen’s, I shared that it is, of course, a good thing to give thanks to God for all those good things. But I said, on that Sunday, that we must take a step further. Paying lip service in gratitude for the things we’ve been granted is not enough.

Essentially, we are called to actually live out our Thanksgiving.  We should be a living, breathing jumble of gratitude at all times.

Tonight, though, I’m going to even take that all one step even further.  I think it’s a good thing to give thanks for all those things we’ve asked for a received.  And maybe even give thanks for those things we’ve asked for and did not receive.

(If you think about it, you know I mean. If we prayed at any time in our lives for a particular boyfriend or girlfriend and did not receive them, and later found out that they were pretty horrible people—yes, we can give thanks for those things as well. Or, maybe it was a job that we wanted—a job we felt we were perfectly made for—and we prayed it, but it went to someone else. Later, we found that job was actually quite horrible. The person whose position we pray for ended up having horrible time. Those are examples of things we didn’t get when we prayed for them.  ).

But, one thing we often don’t find ourselves giving thanks for are those moments of grace in our lives.  Now, grace is something we hear a lot about in church, but few of us really “get” grace. But I love to preach about grace. Or, at least, my definition of grace. For me, grace is something we receive from God that we neither asked for nor fully anticipated in our lives. I usually talk about grace at weddings, because, for the most part, marriage is an example of grace in our midst. People come into our lives we don’t ask for, we don’t even know how to ask for, but who are still given to us.  And the joy and contentment they bring is the greatest gift any of us can ever expect.

Children are another example of grace. No one fully realizes the blessings a child will give to one’s life until they come into our midst.  There are countless other graces we have in our lives that we are no doubt thankful for. Especially in the cases of marriage and children, these graces change our lives. We are never again who were before they came into our lives. And that, I think, is the sign of true Grace. True grace transforms us and makes us different—and hopefully better—than we were before.

In our reading from the  Hebrew scriptures tonight, we get a very beautiful image of grace.  In it, we find God bringing in the Israelites into a “good land”—a land of beauty and abundance, where all their needs are taken care of.  What’s so beautiful about this scripture is that, even if the Israelites would’ve know to pray for something like this, it still would not even come close to what God actually provides.  See. Grace.

In many ways, this scripture describes how God grants us grace as well.  Probably the greatest grace in our lives—and the one we might not fully appreciate—is Jesus himself. For the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, hungry and anxious, God provided them a glorious land of abundance—full of food and drink.

For us, this food we receive is more substantial. Our food is the Bread which comes to us to feed us in such a way that we will never feel hungry again. It is the Bread that will not feed this body, which will die on us and be disposed of, but the Bread which will feed our souls, which will feed that part of us which will live forever. The Bread we receive is a bread we could never, on our own, even comprehended.  The Bread we receive is Jesus himself.  And it is Jesus—that truly amazing grace in our midst—whom we should be most thankful for.

Jesus’ presence in our life, the fact that in him we see God—God who came to us like food in the midst of aimless wandering, in flesh like our flesh, and who, by dying,  destroyed that which we feared the most—death—that is something we didn’t ask for.

We are probably unable to even know how to ask for such a gift. And yet, unasked for, Jesus came to us and fed us with his own Body. Unasked for, God provided us with life in a way we still don’t fully appreciate or understand.  Jesus came to us, like food in a glorious land after we had wandered about in our personal wilderness, and fed us in a way we didn’t even realized we could be fed.

This is the ultimate grace in our midst.  This is the ultimate gift for us.

So, tomorrow, as we gather with our loved ones, as we take that time to inventory the blessings and all the good things in our lives, let us not forget to be thankful for that ultimate Grace in our lives—Jesus who is everything we need and long for and strive for.

Jesus—our food in the wilderness.

Jesus—our living Bread of life.

And let us thank God for the Grace above Graces, for the Grace that that is God.

Christ the King

November 23, 2014

Matthew 25.31-46

+ So, this is obviously not a question you hear too often, but: How do you know if you’re a church geek?

You know how I know I’m a church geek? Because these last few days, even though I’ve been sick, the most persistent buzz I’ve been hearing from my Facebook friends has been whether or not we should be celebrating this Sunday as Christ the king Sunday.

The argument has been that this is not an “official” feast in the Episcopal Church. Although the scriptures for today and the collect we just prayed would show that a pretty argument can be made that this should be celebrated as Christ the King Sunday, it is not officially defined as such according to the Prayer Book.

See, church geek stuff.

Let’s face it, most of us really just don’t care.  And I like celebrating this Sunday as Christ the King Sunday, because preaching about the Kingdom is a good thing.  Also, it’s an important Sunday for another reason.  It is the last Sunday in that very long, green season of Pentecost.

Today, for the Church, it is New Year’s Eve.  The old church year of Sundays—Church Year A—ends today.  The new church year—Church Year B—begins next Sunday, on the First Sunday of Advent.  So, what seems like an ending today is renewed next week, with the coming of Advent, in that revived sense of longing and expectation that we experience in Advent.

Today, we also get to hear Jesus tell us that story of the sheep and the goats.  Now, I actually love this parable—not because of its threat of punishment (which everyone gets hung up on), not because of its judgment.  I love this story because there is something beautiful and subtle going on just beneath the surface, if you take the moment to notice.  And that subtle aspect of this story is this:

If you notice, the reward is given not to people who work for the reward.  The reward is not given to people who help the least of their brethren because they know they will gain the reward.  The reward is granted to those who help the least of their brethren simply because the least need help. The reward is for those who have no regard or idea that a reward awaits them for doing such a thing.

Now I don’t think I need to tell anyone here who the least of our brethren are.  The least of our brethren are the ones who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are naked, who are sick and who are in prison. I think this ties in beautifully to our own ideas of why we do what we do as followers of Jesus.  Why do we do what we do, we must ask ourselves?  Do we do these things because we think we’re going to get a reward for doing them?  Or do we do these things because by doing them we know it goes for a greater reward than anything we ourselves could get?

In our Gospel reading today, we find that the Kingdom of God is prepared for those who have been good stewards, to tie into our theme from last Sunday, which was our Stewardship Sunday.  It is prepared for those who have been mindful of what has been given to them and have been mindful of those around them in need.

For us, we need to realize that the Kingdom is prepared for us as well.  It is prepared for us who have sought to be good stewards without any thought of reward.  It is prepared for us who have simply done what we are called to do as followers of Jesus.

For us, in our own society, we find that these same terms found in Jesus’ parable have a wider definition.  Hungry for us doesn’t just mean hungry for food.  It means hungry for love, for healing, for wholeness.

Thirsty doesn’t just mean for water.  Thirsty for us means thirsty for fairness or justice or peace.

Naked doesn’t just mean without clothing.  It means, for us, to be stripped to our core, to be laid bare spiritually and emotionally and materially.

To be sick, doesn’t necessarily mean to be sick with a disease in our bodies.  It is means to be sick in our hearts and in our relationships with others.

And we all know that the prisons of our lives sometimes don’t necessarily have walls or bars on the doors.  The prisons of our lives are sometimes our fears, our prejudices, our addictions, our very selves.

To not go out and help those who need help is to be arrogant, to be selfish, to be headstrong.  To not do so is to turn our backs on following where Jesus leads us.  Because Jesus leads us into that place wherein we must love and love fully and give and give freely—of ourselves and of what we have been given.

I like that because that is definitely what we have all been striving to do here at St. Stephen’s.  We practice our radical hospitality to everyone who comes through our doors.  And, I think, we accept everyone who comes through those doors fully.

Here, we not only welcome people, but I think we allow people to be the people God created them to be—without judgment, without prejudice, just as the Kingdom no doubt will be.  And is.  

Again, that brings us back to Jesus’ parable.  The meaning of this story is this: If you do these things—if you feed the hungry, if you give drink to the thirsty, if you welcome the stranger, if you clothe the naked, if you visit the sick and imprisoned—if you simply respond to one another as just human beings—if you do these things without thought of reward, but do them simply because you, as a Christian, are called to do them, the reward is yours.

The Kingdom is not only awaiting us in the next world. The Kingdom, when we do these things, is here.  Right now. Right in our midst.

As Christians, we should haven’t to think about doing any of those things.  They should be like second nature to us.  We should be doing them naturally, instinctively.  For those of us who are hungry or thirsty, who feel like strangers, who are naked, sick and imprisoned—and at times, we have been in those situations—we find Christ in those rays of hope that break through into our lives.

It is very similar to the hope we are clinging to in this moment as we enter Advent—that time in which the light of Christ is seen breaking into the encroaching darkness of our existence.  And we—in those moments when we feed the hungry, when we give drink to the thirsty, when we welcome the stranger, when we clothe the naked, when we visit the sick and imprisoned—in those moments, we become that light in the darkness, that hope in someone else’s life.  We embody Christ and Christ’s Kingdom when we become the conduits of hope.

So, as we celebrate the end of this liturgical year and set our expectant eyes on the season of Advent, let us not just be filled with hope.  Let us be a true reflection of Christ’s hope to this world. Let us be the living embodiment of that hope to those who need hope.  And in doing so, we too will hear those words of assurance to us:

“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for….”