January 29, 2022
Micah 5.1-8
This
past year, we became home to 17 new members!
Our uniqueness is in the fact that when it seems the odds were against us, we find they have actually been with us.
but to do justice, and to love
kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
It is in our humility and the love of God that dwells within each of us.
Jonathan Andrew Flom
(October 21, 1965-January 10, 2023)
January 14, 2023
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
Fargo, ND
+ For those of you who know me know that I have been friends
with Jonathan for more than 25 years.
Actually we became friends thorough my long, wonderful friendship
with Leslie.
Again, most of you who know me know that Leslie and I have had
a very long, sibling-like relationship from the moment we first met each other
back when we were very young at Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral in Fargo, where we
were both active, Leslie in the Choir and music ministry and me as Ministry
Coordinator and Youth Leader.
Now, I guarantee you this: you can judge a lot by a man in how
he reacts to his wife being very close friends with some weird asexual guy in a
church.
And Jonathan passed that test with flying colors.
(not all guys do, let me tell you)
And through these many years—years
of great joys and terrible tragedy and deep sorrow in both of our lives—I have
been very grateful for my friendship with my sister Leslie and her wonderful family.
And during that time, I have walked with Jonathan. From afar.
In fact, Leslie and I just talked on the phone the last Monday
night about our careers and our families.
I asked about Jonathan and had all the information about his
latest move back to Fayetteville.
Early the next morning, I was awakened by a text from Leslie
at 3:00 a.m. telling me that Jonathan had died so suddenly earlier that morning
I was, like all of you, devasted.
And also like you, I don’t know why this happened.
I mean, I know how it happened.
Jonathan, like all of us, was fractured human being.
Like all of us, he was fighting his own demons.
And sometimes those individual fights we end up sucking those
closest to us into our struggles as well.
But it still just frustrates me, as I know it does all of you.
It frustrates me that this incredible man who had just kindness
and gentleness and graciousness struggled as he did and was in the prime of his
life taken so quickly.
And there was nothing any of us could do, no matter how hard
we tried.
Like you, I hoped for something else.
For something better for Jonathan.
I don’t know if any of us knew exactly what that was.
But we just hoped it would be—just something other than what
it was.
For me, the only answer I have to all of us this—and it isn’t
much an answer—is that I’m am frustrated.
I feel frustration in it all.
None of this should have happened to someone like Jonathan.
None of this should have happened to Laurel or Jillian or Ben
or Leslie or to Jonathan’s mother and father or brother or the rest of the
family.
We shouldn’t be gathering here in this little church in some
far=flung corner of Fargo, North Dakota on this cold afternoon to say good-bye
to Jonathan.
I’m really frustrated that there wasn’t more time to just make
things right.
But Jonathan would be the first to tell us that life’s not
fair.
Nothing’s fair.
It’s just the way it is.
And we could leave it there.
But, for those of us who have faith—for us, even in the face
of this gut-wrenching pain we feel today, even in the face of our frustration
and sadness and numbness we know this…
This isn’t just the way it is.
Despite everything, Jonathan was a person who made a
difference in the world and in other people’s life.
Jonathan helped people.
He helped me.
I have shared this story many times over the years but here it
is again:
Way back in February of 2002, I was diagnosed with cancer.
It was a terrible time in my life.
I did not see that diagnosis coming.
And it floored me.
Actually it pulled the floor from right out beneath me.
The day of surgery was actually a horrendous day.
I did not want to be dealing with this in my life.
But that day, as I sat there waiting for surgery, I was surrounded
by people who loved and cared for me.
My parents were there. My bishop was there. My dear Ann Anderson
(now Ann Schutz) was there. And Jonathan was there (Leslie had to work that day;
she would’ve been there).
And Jonathan, with his medical knowledge and his natural compassion,
made very clear to me that everything was going to be all right.
And you know?
It was!
Everything turned out all right.
And here I am, twenty-one years later.
I wish I could’ve said the same thing to Jonathan.
I wish I could’ve returned the favor.
I wish I could’ve told him that everything was going to be all
right.
But that was not meant to be.
But I do believe, today, in my core of cores, with the faith I
have in a loving God, and in the eternity that that God promises us, that for
Jonathan, everything now is all right.
He is freed from all that he had to carry.
He is freed from those unhealed wounds, from all that pain,
from all that suffering.
When Harold and Alita stopped by the church the other day,
Harold gave me this slip of paper, that read,
“Now Johnny feels no
anxiety or urge for alcohol.
He feels no pain and will
never be depressed again.”
And we can find comfort in the fact.
But, still, we will all feel that absence and loss in our
life.
This world is a bit more empty today without Jonathan in it.
But, it is vital to remember this: our goodbye today is only a
temporary goodbye.
We must cling to our memories of all that was good about
Jonathan, all that was loving about Jonathan, all that we loved in Jonathan.
We can put his demons to rest to today.
But we can hold close all that was beautiful and wonderful about
him.
All that we knew and loved about Jonathan is not gone for good.
It is not ashes.
Is not grief.
It is not loss.
Everything that Jonathan was to those who knew him and loved
him and now miss him is not lost forever.
All we loved, all that was good and gracious in Jonathan—all
that was fierce and strong and amazing and loving and caring and beautiful in him—all
of that lives on.
It lives on his children.
It lives on with all of you who experienced the kindness and generosity
and love of Jonathan in this life.
It lives on in those who were on the receiving end of his love
and compassion.
And for those of us who have faith, faith in more than this
world, we know that that love and compassion and beauty continues on somehow
too.
I don’t claim to know how.
I don’t claim to know for certain what awaits us in the next
world.
But I do cling to the words we find in scripture and in the
Book of Common Prayer.
I do believe that all that is good and gracious and loving in Jonathan
now dwells in a place of light and beauty and life unending.
And I do believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will see him
again.
And that he will be whole and beautiful and as he was created by
God to be.
In that glorious Light there will be no shadows, no darkness,
no pain, no unhealed wounds.
He will be our ideal of him, in that day.
And on that day every tear will truly be wiped from your
faces.
And it will be beautiful.
We will all miss him so much.
But I can tell you we will not
forget him.
Jonathan Flom is not someone
who will be easily forgotten.
He is not someone who passes
quietly into the mists.
His presence lives on in us.
His strength, his dignity lives
on in Jillian and Laurel and Ben and in everyone who knew him and loved him.
His strength and his compassion
live on in those lives in those he helped and encouraged and led and was an
example to.
At the end of this service, we
will all stand and I will lead us in something called the Commendation.
The commendation is an
incredible piece of liturgy.
In those words, we will say those very powerful words:
All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia.
That alleluia in the face of
death is a victorious alleluia.
This alleluia we sing and say
today is an act of courage and victory and unending life in the face of death.
By it we can hear this:
Not even you, death, not even
you will defeat me.
That is Jonathan’s voice.
That is what Jonathan is saying
to all of us today.
Death does not have victory
today.
This world and all its
suffering and pain is not victorious today.
Death and this world have not
defeated Jonathan Flom.
Even at the grave, he makes his
song—and we with him:
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
It is a victorious alleluia we
make today with him.
Let us say our Alleluia today with
confidence.
Let us face this day and the
days to come with gratitude for this incredible person God let us know.
Let us be grateful.
Let us be sad, yes.
But let’s remind ourselves: death
has not defeated him.
Or us.
Let us sing loudly.
Let us live boldly.
Let us stand up defiantly.
Let us embody courage
That is what Jonathan would
want us to do today, and in the future.
Into paradise may the angels lead
you, Jonathan.
At your coming may the martyrs
receive you.
And may they bring you with joy and
gladness into the holy city Jerusalem. Amen.
January 8, 2023
Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17
+ Let’s go back in time, shall we?
We’re going back all the way to…1995.
More specifically, this Sunday, and
this day in 1995.
In 1995, January 8 fell on Sunday.
And that Sunday was also the First Sunday
After Epiphany or the Celebration of the Baptism of Jesus.
That Sunday was a momentous Sunday for
me.
The 25 year old Jamie.
25 year old grunged out Jamie who was
probably wearing my Sunday best plaid flannel and sporting a goatee.
I was a bit of a searcher at the point
in my life.
I had been a good Catholic boy in my
teens, converting to Roman Catholicsim 10 years before in 1985.
But by the time I was in my late teens,
the Church had changed, or I had changed, or we both had changed, and I no
longer felt comfortable and at home there.
And so I began wandering.
My wanderings took me far and wide.
I explored Zen Buddhism, I became a
Unitarian-Universalist, and then finally I became a plain old-fashioned agnostic who still loved things Christian,
just not the Church.
For some time before that cold January
morning in 1995, I was craving something more.
I had tried to go back to the Roman
Church, but we were both so different from each other.
I tried to go back to my parents’
Lutheran Church, but it didn’t quite challenge me enough.
It seemed too simple. It seemed to lack
the mystery I was longing for.
I was friends at the time with my parents’
pastor, and around Christmas of 1994, I shared with her my frustration that I
was just searching for something and was not able to find it.
It was she who said to me, “Have you
tried to Episcopalians?”
Hmmm, I thought.
By this point in my life, I was a poet,
I had published a book of poems when I was 22, and my second book would be
published the following April.
And so I looked at the whole experience
through the eyes of a poet.
T.S. Eliot was an Anglican, I
rationalized. And Robert Lowell was an Episcopalian. Anne Sexton had been attending
the Episcopal Church in the months before she died.
I loved the beauty and poetry of The
Book of Common Prayer.
So, yes, I thought I would try it out.
So, I looked for a church to attend.
I perused the phone book (that’s what
we did in those days of the infancy of the internet), and I came across a
little Episcopal Church.
I talked my mother into going with me.
And so we went that morning.
And we came to a little red left-wing church
in a far corner of Fargo.
St. Stephen’s.
St. Stephen’s in 1995 looked very
differently than it does now.
The entrance was on the side, where the
labyrinth is now.
There was no narthex at that time.
We arrived early.
No one else was here except for
organist.
Who was James.
We sat in the back pew, along the wall.
Sandy came in and gave us bulletins.
And the Mass proceeded.
And suddenly…I felt at home for the
first time in a long time.
It was everything I longed for.
It was the Eucharist, which of course I
loved! And craved!
And with a woman priest nonetheless.
It was the Book of Common Prayer.
It was Anglican hymns.
It was mystery and beauty.
And it was also weirdly liberal and
against the norm and eccentric.
And it was beautifully Anglican.
And that was it for me.
I never looked back.
And, all these years later, here I am.
I never would’ve thought on that cold
morning in January 1995 that I would one day be the Rector of the first
Episcopal Church I ever attended.
But, you know what?
That’s how life works sometimes.
That is what this crazy, bizarre
journey of following Jesus is like sometimes.
All the paradoxical stuff, all the
strange, bizarre things that don’t make sense suddenly, somehow making sense, is
what this baptismal journey is like sometimes.
I think it’s especially great that the
Sunday I first visited here was the feast of the Baptism of Jesus.
And today, we celebrate it again, as we
do every year.
As I do on a very regular basis, I
preach about baptism, and how important baptism if for us as followers of
Jesus.
After all, everything we do as
Christians should come from the joy and amazing beauty of that simple event—that
baptism, in which we were washed in the waters of Baptism and marked as
Christ’s own forever.
As you all know, as you have heard me
preach from this pulpit many, many times, probably to the point you start
rolling your eyes, Baptism, for me anyway, is not a sweet little christening
event for us as Christians.
It is not a quaint little service of
dedication we do.
For us Episcopalians, it a radical
event in our lives as Christians.
Just as the Eucharist is a truly
radical event in our lives, over and over again.
It is the event from which everything
we do and believe flows.
It was the day we were welcomed as
loved children of God.
And it was the day we began following
Jesus.
And when we look at the actual service
of Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of that service drive home
to us how important that event is.
For example, after the Baptism, when
the priest traces a cross on the newly baptized person’s forehead, she or he
says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own
for ever.”
You have heard me preach how truly
transformational those words are many times before.
And trust me, I will preach them again
and again.
I will because they are probably the
most important words we are ever going to hear in our lives.
That is not just some nice little
sentiment.
Those words convey that something
transformational and amazing has happened in the life of that person.
This is essential to our belief of what
happens at baptism.
In baptism, we are marked as Christ’s
own.
For ever.
It is a bond that can never be broken.
We can try to break it as we please.
We can struggle under that bond.
We can squirm and resist it.
We can try to escape it.
But the simple fact is this: we can’t.
For ever is for ever.
On this Sunday on which we commemorate
Jesus’ own baptism—on this Sunday in which we remember the fact that Jesus led
the way through those waters of baptism and showed us a glimpse of all that
happens in this singular event, we should remember and think about what
happened at own baptisms.
Yes, we might not remember the actual
event.
But the great thing about baptism is
that, our own individual baptismal event was, for the most part, just like
everyone else’s.
In those waters, God spoke to us the
words God spoke to Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.
In those waters, the words we heard in
our reading from Isaiah were affirmed in us as well.
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul
delights;
Those words are our words.
Those words were spoken to us in those
waters.
In those waters, we were all made
equal.
In those waters, the same water washed
all of us—no matter who are.
In those waters, there are no class
distinctions, no hatred, or discrimination or homophobia or sexism or war or
violence.
In those waters, we are all equal to
one another and we are all equally loved.
In a few moments, we will stand and
renew the vows we made at baptism.
When we are done, I will sprinkle you
with water.
The sprinkling of water, like all our
signs and actions that we do in this church, is not some strange practice a few
of High Church-minded people do.
That water that comes to us this
morning is a stark reminder of those waters in which we were washed at
Baptism—those waters that made us who we are, those waters in which we all
stand on equal ground, with no distinctions between us.
Here at St. Stephen’s, all of our
ministry—every time we seek to serve Christ and further the Kingdom of God in
our midst—is a continuation of the celebration of baptism.
Sometimes we lose sight of that.
Sometimes we forget what it is that motivates
us and charges us to do that wonderful work.
Sometimes we forget that our ministry
as baptized people is a ministry to stand up and speak out against injustice.
Our ministry is to echo those words from
Isaiah God spoke to us at the beginning of our ministries:
I have put my spirit upon [you];
[you] will bring forth justice
to the nations.
[You] will faithfully bring
forth justice.
[You] will not grow faint or be crushed
until [you have] established
justice in the earth;
The water of our baptism is a stark
reminder to us of our call to the ministry of justice.
There is a reason the baptismal font in
the narthex—the place we actually baptize—is always uncovered and always filled
with fresh, blessed water.
Again, this is not some quaint,
archaic tradition that spiky Fr. Jamie introduced here.
This is a very valid and real reminder
that in that place, in those waters, we began to do the radical things we are
called to us as Christians.
It is good for us to take that water and
bless ourselves, and with it to be renewed for our call to justice.
It is good for us to be occasionally
sprinkled with water as a reminder of what we must still do in this world
It is good to feel that cold water on
our fingers and on our foreheads and on our faces as a reminder of our equality
and our commitment to a God of love and justice.
And, as you have heard me say so many times, it is good to remember the date of
our baptism and to celebrate that day, just as we would a birthday or a wedding
anniversary.
Today, on this first Sunday in
Epiphany, we start out on the right note.
We start out celebrating.
We start our commemorating the baptism
of Jesus in the river Jordan.
And by doing so, we commemorate our own
baptism as well.
In our collect today, we prayed to God
to “Grant that all who are baptized into [Jesus’] Name maybe keep the covenant
that they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Saviour.”
That should be our prayer as well today
and always.
We pray that we may keep this Baptismal
covenant in which we seek to follow Jesus and serve all people equally and
fully in his name, no matter who they are.
And we pray that we may boldly live out
our covenant by all that we do as Christians in seeking out and helping others
in love and compassion and justice.
May we always celebrate that wonderful
baptismal event in our lives.
And may we each strive to live out that
baptism in our radical ministry of love and service of God and of one another.
Amen.
December 8, 2024 Luke 3.1-6 + We are now well into this strange and beautiful season of Advent. As I’ve said before—and...
