October 7, 2018

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Proper 22

The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis

I love richly flavored food.  The more layers of spice the better.  I remember a conversation a few years ago with a colleague.  I asked, “Why is Mexican food so rich and flavorful and the food of my people – Britts and Irish - so boring?”  “It is because in my culture for thousands of years we have been preparing food for the gods.”

Be the recipes simple or complex, good cooks and culinary artists of every culture generate satisfaction through flavor parings, and classically the parings of opposites or contrasts.  Like the salty and sweet of barbeque or kettle corn, or the sweet with the sour of sweet-and-sour pork and the addition of lime juice to sweet melon.

The pairing of contrasting textures can also be a winner.  I spent years as a child wishing for the world’s largest Twix bar.  The Twix candy bar has the crunch of the cookie and the satin of the caramel; not to mention the salty and sweet combination.  And, when all else fails for flavoring, there is always salt and pepper.

The phenomenon of pairing two distinct flavors or two opposites in a way that generates a third reality or singular taste is a winning culinary strategy, and it is a phenomenon that recurs outside of the culinary arts.  It is a universal phenomenon that pervades many dimensions such as color, music, and even relationships.

It is curious to pair two opposites and have the outcome of the pairing bring delight or harmony or strength.  Yet it can be done and seems to be a recurring phenomenon.

Several of the Bible passages for today suggest that mastering this phenomenon is an imperative exercise for spiritual growth.  First, this seems to be a fundamental thread of the hyperbolic, over-the-top story of Job.  At the onset of his troubles Job’s oxen and donkeys have been stolen, his servants killed, his sheep destroyed by fire, his camels raided and carried off, and all his adult children swept up and destroyed by a fierce wind.  To top it off, Job is then inflicted with sores from head to foot.  What is his response?  To insist that a person may not experience what is good without also experiencing what is bad.  Job is unwilling to divorce them, implying that good and bad are inseparable components of a singular phenomenon; the human experience.

We cannot take our lives and chop them in half – my good life and my bad life.  It is one life.

Job’s words suggest that such a separation is a false one.  The division is not real.  Furthermore, that kind of division is not faithful.  He tells his wife who wants him to condemn his own suffering, “You speak as a fool…Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

In Job’s words the discipline for reconciling contrasts is shown to be an act of spiritual formation and faithfulness.  The ability to accept and contain two distinctions or distinct realities and reconcile them as one is the spiritual conundrum and discipline that is highlighted in both the book of Job and also the gospel for today.

When Jesus insists that the little children be received in the inner circle of society, he is saying you cannot separate the undesirables from the desirables.  It is one singular society and set of people.  The power class cannot eliminate or pretend that those with no power do not exist.  This conceptual divorce is a denial of reality.  It is one population.

It is a similar principal that Jesus highlights in divorce discourse when he says, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  Here we have the same formula: one person plus one person equals one new singular spiritual entity.

Can we try to set aside our fears and trauma of divorce to hear these words not in their moral context, but in the context of the phenomenon of reconciling two contrasting elements?  If we can for a moment peel off the layer of ethical concern about divorce, we may hear Jesus speaking of an ethical concern more focused on the general human tendency to sever and separate when what humanity most needs is reconciliation.  Maybe the point is less about staying married to the same person, and more about the ways and places – marriage chief among them – we can constantly build muscle for reconciling difference.

Yes, opposites attract.  We build friendships, courtships and engagements based on contrast.  The introvert is drawn to the extrovert; the scientist to the artist; the emotive person to the intellectual; the spender and the saver; and most dangerously – the dancer to the non-dancer.  These differences are reassuring, interesting, even thrilling at first.  Once we get married, these same pairings would seem to threaten our very lives.  In this way, inside the sacramental life of marriage we constantly practice reconciliation.

One of my favorite breakfast dishes is huevos divorciados, divorced eggs.  But the name is dishonest.  While the dish is comprised of two fried eggs, the eggs are almost always conjoined.  They are called divorciados because one egg is covered in green salsa and one egg is covered in red.  The flavors are distinct and complementary.  While it is two eggs, it is one dish.  While some people neatly eat one side followed by the other taking care not to mix the salsas, others love it when the juices all start to mix together.

Opposites, distinctions, dualities are not inherently problematic.  In fact they can come together to a balancing or strengthening effect; but that effect must be sought and seized upon.  We must want it.  We have a choice to make.  And the human tendency to literally divorce aspects of society, one from the other; populations one from the other; races one from the other; species one from the other is when danger sets in.  It is when we pit one against the other that we step completely out of the flow of the Spirit and our spiritual potential.

Whereas practicing acceptance and mastery of contrasts and opposite pairings, we can gain the power for the highest levels of reconciliation, healing and peace.  The measure of our mastery of this art is most certainly a measure  of wisdom.  May we seek it.  May it find us.

 

September 30, 2018

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Proper 21

Genesis 28: 10-17; Psalm 103: 19-22; Revelation 12:7-12; John 1:47-51

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.  The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.  The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

            What a bizarre reading.  A dragon? Angels?  War in heaven?   This doesn’t sound like the Bible, it sounds like The National Enquirer!  What do we do with this language, can we make sense of it?  Is it relevant?  I am going to try my best to answer those questions.

            A good place to begin might be to identify what kind of book Revelation is in the first place.  Revelation falls into a particular genre writing, called “apocalyptic literature.”  Apocalyptic literature was pretty popular back then.  I used to think that was odd until walking through a bookstore one day I noticed that they had an entire section of the store dedicated to a particular genre of writing called “paranormal teen fiction.”  Basically teen romance novels involving werewolves and vampires.  Suddenly apocalyptic literature doesn’t seem so strange, does it? 

The word “apocalypse” comes from a Greek word which simply means “to reveal.” A book in the Bible like Revelation is considered apocalyptic because it reveals a world to the reader previously unseen. 

            So this language about dragons, wars, the angel Michael (who is pictured on the cover of your worship bulletin this morning and whom you can read about more on the last page of your worship bulletin if this sermon is already boring to you).  This language about war in heaven, angels, and dragons is meant to be revelatory – it is meant to show us a world we’ve never seen before, kind of like if you go to a theater that has a large curtain in front of the stage before the performance.

            Before the performance, you don’t know what is behind the curtain, do you, because the curtain is drawn – it forms a wall between the audience and what is behind it.  You can guess.  You can think of the actors or the set pieces or props that might be behind the curtain, but you don’t really know what is behind it until the curtain rises and the performance begins.  When the curtain on the stage rises – that is an apocalyptic moment – it is a great revealing – it’s a revelation – of what lies behind it.

            That is what apocalyptic literature sets out to do.  That is what our reading today sets out to do.  So what is revealed?  What do we learn?  I have identified three revelatory moments.

            Revelation #1 Perhaps most obviously, we learn how uncomfortable this language of the dragon (who is the Devil, or Satan) is.  I saw you all roll your eyes and squirm in your pew when I read those  verses earlier – I know you all and how uncomfortable this talk about dragon slaying angels is.  Modern, progressive people don’t talk about this.  Are we meant to take it seriously? 

A second revelation I have concerns the problematic nature of the story itself.  There is a war in heaven between Michael and all the angels and the dragon and the solution to this great war is that the dragon and all the forces of evil are kicked out of heaven, which is great for them, but bad for us on earth, because guess where the dragon and all of its followers end up – here!  Earth!  Something else that is revelatory about this reading is that it is an attempt to explain why evil exists.  This mythological explanation may seem crude. 

            Finally, a third revelation is in regard to the church, which throughout history has used demonic and punitive imagery for good reason – it brought great financial profit.  Several hundred years ago, a clergy person could open Revelation and threaten good church going folks of eternity in hell, but also that that eternity could be reduced with a financial gift to the church.  Putting the fear of hell into people was tremendously profitable for the church in the middle ages.  As an example, Johann Tetzel was a 16th century Dominican friar, famously was quoted saying “when the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."  Fear of hell helped build a lot of grand cathedrals in Europe. 

            So the symbolism of evil in the Revelation is problematic.  But it is also purposeful.  This language is purposeful in that it pulls the curtain back, allowing us to comprehend and understand forces at work that upset and subvert our lives.  There are so many in our world today.  What would the author of Revelation today reveal to a 21st century culture that addicted to chemicals and technology?  I don’t know.  Perhaps the voice of Revelation’s author spoke a century ago through a wise German philosopher, who said that “the best slave is the one who thinks he is free.”  That’s my revelation.  I know many of us, including myself, are here today thinking that we are free, because we haven’t allowed the curtain to pull itself back, revealing that really we are enslaved.  We are enslaved by fear.  Enslaved by anger.  Enslaved by resentment.  The list just goes on and on – and still somehow we think we’re free.

            The dragon symbolizes that which stands between people and the divine presence of God.  Revelation works because it seeks to unmask, it seeks to unveil the power evil holds in this world so that we can see it, rebel against it, and no longer be enslaved to it.  As an example, corporations spend billions of dollars in advertising each year just to convince us that we are worthless, that we are without value, that we are without importance, unless we buy their product - spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.  How is that not evil?

            I will close with this: it is no coincidence that when Jesus was crucified, the large curtain hanging in the Jerusalem Temple – the curtain which blocked off the Holy of Holies, the holiest part of the temple, from everyone else except the clergy on certain holy days – this curtain which maintained the mystique of an institution and kept ruling elite clergy in power – that curtain was torn in two when Christ was crucified.  It was an apocalyptic moment – a revealing.  The curtain raised.  All was revealed.  Nothing, not evil, not death, nothing separated humankind from God.

            May we see with new eyes the world God reveals to us.  May we be courageous together, to unmask evil, and, with God’s help may we all be emancipated, no longer slaves, but free.  AMEN.

September 2, 2018

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Proper 17

Song of Solomon 2: 8-13; Psalm 45 1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Rev. James M.L. Grace, 8:30 am service

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

            “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” James 1: 19-20.

            If you are coming to church today because you need to hear a message.  This perhaps may be it.  Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. We have so many reasons to be angry, don’t we?  So and so did this to me.  They don’t understand how I feel.  Bob is a lousy co-worker.  Sue is a lousy wife.  And on and on and on. 

            The anger we carry often expresses itself in resentments.  I want to explain the meaning of that word, resentment.  Now if you put the word “re” in front of something it means to do something again.  As in remember or repeat.  The other part of that word resentment is the second half, sentment, which comes from the Latin word sentir, which means to feel something.  So the word resentment literally means to feel again.

            Each one of you has a part of your brain that is a resentment machine.  When you get up in the morning and you start playing all your resentments, over and over again.  “No one at my work respects me.”  “That priest at the church doesn’t understand a thing about me.”  “My sister doesn’t care about me at all.” Blah, blah, blah.  Now tell me – do you think God can get through to us with all that garbage in our minds?  You bet not. 

            As long as you hold on to your resentment and your anger you won’t hear God say a thing.  You have to let it go, and it has hard.  It is painful.  But when you let go of your resentment and anger, you begin to hear God’s voice.  I am slowly learning to do it, and it is changing my life.  I will give you an example. 

For the last seven months, the church staff has prepared for our annual Bishop visitation, which we have assumed, would be September 9 – which is next Sunday.  On Tuesday of this week, we learned that the Bishop would in fact be coming today, September 2.  Surprise!

            Now if that’s not an opportunity for resentment and anger to settle in, I don’t know what is.  Who made this mistake, and why didn’t we find out earlier? That was what the garbage in my brain was telling me initially, and I had to stop it right there.  No one set out to do this intentionally, it was just a mistake. Things happen, it’s okay.  I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t resentful.  Now I guarantee you that the me from a few years ago would have been.  Oh I would’ve gotten real angry.  Instead I had serenity.  I had peace.  I was not disturbed.  This had nothing to do with me.  This was God – I can’t explain to you the feeling of peace and serenity that I had in any other way.  The outcome of knowing that God was present with me and leading me, well that meant that I could pause.  I could listen.  I didn’t need to speak.  I didn’t need to be angry.

            What a gift that is.  What useful information that is to know that we have a God that we can entrust everything to.  That God will meet our deepest needs. That is so important, and yet, I forget that all the time.  I hear the message that God is leading me and leading you through this life, and I believe it and I know it, and then something happens, the phone rings, a news headline appears on my phone, and then that security, that knowledge of God’s consistent presence, it vanishes.  And I forget.  How frustrating that is to me. 

            Elsewhere in the passage from James we hear verses 23-24, which read: “For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”  I don’t know about you, but those verses describe me perfectly. 

            In a few weeks I am going camping with some close friends for a week in the Pacific Northwest.  For that week I won’t have access to a mirror.  I don’t know about you, but when I go for awhile without looking at myself in the mirror, I forget what I look like.  That first glance at myself in a mirror after a week-long trip is always surprising.  Is my nose really that big? Wow – I forgot. 

            In the ancient world, mirrors were not common as they are today.  A mirror was state of the art – something that only the very wealthy had access to. Most people lived their lives not knowing what they looked like, as they never had mirrors.  How easy we forget – not only my appearance after time away from a mirror – but how easy I forget God’s reassuring message of abiding love.  That is why I go to church – I need to be reminded of this good news.  I need to hear, and hear again, the message that there is a God much larger than I, that will make all things right, if I surrender everything to God’s will.  I cannot hear that message enough. 

            Return to God again and again.  Once a week is not enough.  Pray daily.  Start your day with meditation, and you will suddenly realize that God is doing for you what you cannot do for yourself.  AMEN.

August 26, 2018

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Proper 16

1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6: 10-20; John 6:56-69

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

            So I am going to do something today which I have never done before – I am going to talk about the letter to the Ephesians, which we hear today.  Why have I never preached this chapter of Ephesians before?  There is a story there, and I will share it briefly.  When I was an impressionable teenager I was instructed by an evangelical adult Christian, who was also one of my teachers at school, to read a really bad Christian fiction book entitled “This Present Darkness” – which takes its name from the Ephesians reading today.  The book told the story of a fictional small town in Idaho or somewhere where angelic and demonic forces were locked into this spiritual battle over the souls of the people living there.   

            If you were to read the book today, you would probably laugh at the poorly written dialogue, the predictable plot, and clichéd characters.  But for a twelve year old reading that book, even though I knew it was fiction, I was told that “you know there really are demons in the world, and they will find you, and they will possess you unless you follow Jesus perfectly.  Don’t mess up.”   Yeah – that was part of my childhood.  Fortunately a really good therapist helped me through all that.  Thank God for therapy, right?   

So perhaps context can be helpful for us here.  How can we understand what the author of Ephesians is really trying to say?  Here are a few facts about Ephesians – everything you ever wanted to know about this letter in a one minute crash course history.  First, Ephesians was probably not written by the apostle Paul.  Second, it was probably written toward the end of the first century – approximately sixty years after the crucifixion.  Third, we are unclear who Ephesians was addressed to.  Finally, we do know that Ephesians was addressed to people who were living within the Roman Empire. 

The Roman Empire was big on military as many of us know.  The strength of its military  helped to ensure the Pax Romana, or the peace of Rome, which was the glue that held the Empire together.  Because of the obvious military presence all over the Roman Empire, things like breastplates, shields, helmets, and swords were as common a sight to the average Roman citizen as iphones are to us today. 

One more piece of context is important for our understanding of this passage.  Rome was not a Christian Empire at this time.  Ephesians was written a short time after Nero was emperor.  If you have studied Roman history, then you might remember that Nero was an ineffectual and brutal leader who was notorious for persecuting and killing Christians.  He famously burned Christians at the stake in the evenings to create light.  Nero’s reputation amongst Christians was so evil that in the book of Revelation, chapter 13, v. 18, refers to Nero.  The verse reads: “let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person.  It’s number is six hundred sixty-six.  That number, the number of the Beast, in Hebrew, is the numeric value of the name Nero Caesar.  In this hostile environment, it is understandable to me why the author of Ephesians would advocate wearing the armor of God.  The Number of the Beast is also a great Iron Maiden album.

But there is more – one more thing that is super easy to miss in a quick reading of Ephesians 6:10-20, and it is this.  When you see the word “you” in these verses, it’s actually the plural form of you – “you all”, or in Texas – ‘y’all’  That is important because as a community, we stand against evil together.  We don’t do it alone.  You don’t stand against the wiles of the devil – we stand against the wiles of the devil.  It may seem superstitious to imagine a wily devil. However, it is helpful to remember that evil often comes in deceptively attractive forms rather than in the obviously repulsive.

The latter of course happens, for example in genocidal violence. But more often evil seems to lurk beneath the camouflage of cultural common sense.  Evil seems to find great comfort in compromise in the name of being reasonable, and unacknowledged personal benefit from unjust systems. Despite the ways such language gets abused, for example in really bad Christian fiction books, Ephesians call to “spiritual warfare” can remind us that we are called into a struggle deeper than private temptations, and that it is easy to fail to recognize the true enemy.

Only God can and will finally defeat all the forces of evil. We have been enlisted into this mission, and we can respond boldly only because God has already won the war and set us free. Therefore, there is no need for fear in the face of whatever challenges you are facing right now. We have been given all that we need to stand strong against the losing efforts of anything that opposes God’s peace.  We stand together.  AMEN.

August 19, 2018

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Proper 15

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2: 1-21; John 15: 26-27; 16: 4b-15

The Rev. James M.L. Grace 

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

            Hi, everyone.  It is good to see you all again, and good to be standing here now.  I had a great sabbatical, but I know sabbaticals are not possible without things like church vestries and church staff members.  So I want to recognize two people for whom this sabbatical would not have been possible.    First, the Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis, and her leadership of this congregation before, during, and following the sabbatical.  She made it seamless.  Thank you, Carissa. (Applause).  Secondly, your Senior Warden on the Vestry, Collin Ricklefs.  Collin stepped up to the plate (I’m using a sports analogy because Collin works for Academy and gets those kind of things) and went above and beyond as the Sr. Warden of this parish. (Applause).  Collin and Carissa are a both a blessing to this church.

            So I left three months ago, and if you follow my wife on facebook you have a pretty good idea of what we did and where we went.  So I’m not going to talk about that, but what I do want to do is see if any of you recall that when I left three months ago, I left you all with a prayer.  Anybody remember that?  Anybody remember what the prayer was?   The Prayer of St. Francis.  That is a really important prayer to me, it’s one I pray daily, arguably one of the greatest prayers ever written. 

            I hear from some of you all a desire to learn how to pray.  How do we talk to God?  What do we even say?  One of my favorite movies is one called “Gravity” which starred Sandra Bullock as an astronaut in outer space working on a space station.  When the space station she is working on is nearly destroyed by floating debris in space, she is the last one left alive and she has to figure out how to get to earth, while her oxygen is running out, and the space station continues to fall apart.  In the film there is a scene which was powerful for me where she believes she is going to die, her oxygen is nearly out, the space station is beginning to freeze and she is facing what seems to be her end. In a monologue she starts talking to herself, and she asks the question out loud if anyone is praying for her on earth.  Then she says “I would pray for myself, but I don’t know how.  No one ever taught me how to pray.”

            How do you learn to pray?  For me, I learned by praying.  A recall of my entire history of prayerful conversations with God would certainly yield many embarrassing moments as it would moments of sheer desperation.  My prayer life has not been consistent.  But over the past years or so, I have made daily prayer a priority for me.  And slowly, over time, I think I have changed because of it.  Here is an example

            Two weeks ago our family was at an indoor rock climbing gym in Berlin, Germany.  It was the kind of gym where you didn’t have a rope to catch you if you fell, it was all free climbing.  I was climbing down a wall when my hand slipped from a grip and I fell about a meter, landing onto my left shoulder.  I felt a pop, and knew pretty quickly that I had dislocated my left shoulder.  I went to the hospital and as I was waiting to see the doctor, laying on a hospital gurney in some hallway, I began to pray.  This desire to pray when I am injured does not come naturally to me.  I know this because I also dislocated my same left shoulder twenty years ago and when I was in the hospital for that, I was yelling at the doctors, complaining, and creating such a stir that they threatened to not fix my shoulder unless I stopped swearing at the doctors.  That was twenty years ago.  True, and embarrassing.  Two weeks ago, with a second shoulder injury, my experience in the hospital was very different.  Why?  I was older, maybe more mature.  That’s true, but I believe it is because of my praying.  While on that gurney in Berlin in some hallway, I thought, “I don’t know how long I will be here,  I’ll just go through my prayers.  Why not.  It’s not like I’m going anywhere!”  I began to pray for my family, for the doctors in the hospital, the patients.  I prayed for this parish, for each member of the staff of this church, for each member of our Vestry. 

            And those prayers took me out of that hospital somewhere else – into your hearts of those I was praying for and maybe somewhere into the heart of God. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer, which we will pray today, and then I prayed one more prayer – the prayer that is inserted into your service bulletin.  It’s often called the “Serenity Prayer,” and you might be familiar with the first few lines of the prayer, but I wanted to give to you all today the full version of this prayer.  It is one of my most favorite prayers, one I also pray each day, and I would like us to pray it together:   God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.  Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would like it.  Trusting that you will make all things right, if I surrender to your will. That I may be reasonably happy in this world and supremely happy with you forever in the next.  AMEN.

            I am convinced a lifetime of praying this prayer will not unveil all of its meaning.  One could spend decades alone learning to accept hardship as the pathway to peace, which I believe is true.  A reason why this prayer is so meaningful to me is because it is a prayer that is asking for wisdom.  More specifically this is a prayer which asks for the wisdom to know the difference between what we can change and what we are powerless to change. 

            Today we hear the story of another prayer asking for wisdom.  A prayer spoken by the Jewish king Solomon, the son of David, pictured in color on the first page of you order of service.  Solomon asks God for wisdom, in which he says, “[g]ive your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.” 

            Solomon prays for wisdom.  For those of us here today with no idea of how to pray, perhaps the words of the Serenity Prayer, or the words of Solomon might be helpful to you.  They are for me. 

            I will stop there.  I left you with the prayer of St. Francis three months ago.  I come back to you today with the Serenity Prayer – two prayers, that have changed my life.  If praying is too difficult for you, start with either one.  They are excellent, and slowly, over time, you will notice that as you pray these prayers, you will become them.  You will learn to pray.  AMEN.

July 8, 2018

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Proper 9

2 samuel 5:1-5; psalm 48; 2 corinthians 12:2-10; mark 6:1-13

The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis

What is grace?

To me grace is the gift of my daughter.  She was the favor shown to myself and my spouse after a sad and difficult journey to becoming parents.  So we named her Nori Grace, and Nori Grace was favor shown to us when we were certain there was nothing favorable to be found.

If you look up ‘grace’ in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, the first thing you will encounter is the etymology of the word’s meaning.  It is from Latin gratus meaning “beloved, agreeable.”  The dictionary goes on to read, “grace is…favor…shown to man by God.”  In today’s parlance then grace is God’s favor shown to humanity.

There is a ministry in Houston called Grace Place.  It ministers to teens living on the streets.  Grace Place is a safe place with a hot meal, a clothing closet and small community support for youth who have been rejected by their families or aged out of foster care.  Grace Place is where they go to experience God’s favor through the work of the church.

A member of this congregation described for me grace as unearned forgiveness from God that provides a sense of peace.  That peace frees us from the shame of our weakness and our mistakes.  In that sense grace may be the source of that peace which surpasses all understanding.  Any person’s grace place, then, is their peace place that one cannot create for oneself, but it gets created for us somewhat mysteriously from beyond.

Grace is not something one is likely to miss.  Grace is hard to overlook.  My son who is obsessed with lightening and wants to see every illumination.  He will ask me desperately, “Did it flash?!” because he is worried he will miss one such instance.  One may miss a lightening’s strike, but you will never miss the sensation of God’s forgiveness, because it is a moment of relief from some agony - small or large – that refuses to be ignored.

There are little graces in life, like food on the table.  This is perhaps how the southern expression, “To say grace” came about.  On the surface saying grace is to to say thank you to God or to bless what has been provided.  But more than thanking God for the substance of what we may have grown or paid for, it is the food’s power to sustain us that we cannot generate.  The nutritive power of the food is the grace given to us in creation.  So we say thanks to God for that power as we bless it.

St. Paul says a word about God’s grace, speaking to its power dynamic.  He says, grace is “power made perfect in weakness.”   So then grace is the nourishing power of food as it comes to our hungry or depleted frames.  Or grace is the shelter of a church when its roof extends over the lives that are lived in total exposure.  Or grace is the power of the life of a child when it comes the into the care of the otherwise impotent and broken hearted.

When God’s power finds its way to our week places, that is grace.  Paul has me thinking of a God that touches our weakness with all the care in the world.  Paul has me thinking that contact with frailty is what makes God’s power perfect.  The more God’s power can meet what needs healing, the greater God’s power can flow in the world.  It is as though the nature of God is to seek out those encounters to keep the power in God’s power.  If so, then we need not strive to be perfect, nor need we pursue a perfect God.  We need rather to pursue a God who has a power made perfect through weakness; power expressed as grace.

Just as an experience of grace is nearly impossible to overlook, St. Agustine argued that grace is impossible to deny.  Some heady gentlemen in the earlier church asserted that because humans have free will we must not necessarily accept God’s grace.  But Agustine replied that while people exercise free will, there is no will to refuse grace.  For grace is irresistible.  Even when defended or defensive, we are defenseless against God’s grace.

Lay woman from this congregation, Priscilla Burroughs, wrote to me that “Grace is a gentle lullaby sung to us by our God. And, like the 1000 definitions of Love, no one definition [of grace] is the ultimate answer, but all together the one same thing.”

The church says sacraments are graces.  Communion is a grace.  Baptism is a grace.  So, Priscilla has me thinking that the invitation to the altar or the font, is an invitation to hear God’s singing.

The only problem with grace is that we cannot will it for ourselves.  We can only hope to channel it for others.  About this channeling, the Rev. Eric Law teaches about what he calls grace margin.  He says the church can create a margin of grace when we set up opportunities in the church for people to speak and be heard without interruption, without judgement.  He teaches ways for a church to foster the flow of God’s power and grace for its people, for those outside the church and in the church’s very way of life.

At last, if I could pick up my daughter’s play wand and wave it over us all, I would do so first to create grace places in all of us where God’s power could touch perfectly our weaknesses and our shame.  Then, I would wave it a second time in hopes of creating a grace margin so wide that we all would fall in.

June 17, 2018

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1 samuel 15:34-16:13; psalm 20; 2 corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17; mark 4:26-34

The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis

I have been thinking about story telling perhaps because I have had more time to spend with you, and you have been generous in sharing your stories.

Stories are integrating and impact us at many levels.   Stories convey more than a simple list of facts.  For example, I can tell you my mother is a consummate helper with the spirit of St. Francis.  The statement tells you something.  But if I tell you the story of the time she followed a hairless Chow around her neighborhood for hours to rescue it only to be bitten on the hand.  It would tell you more.  The hand became infected and swelled up like a baseball glove.  That Chow remained hairless and in my mother’s home for a few years until it died.  This story conveys more about my mother than my original statement.

Stories are told in public and private.  Stories are told for a multitude of purposes; for bonding, healing, threatening, or instruction.  A history professor I know said she uses stories to introduce her college students to larger concepts.  She says if she can compel them emotionally or personally with a story, their minds are more likely to grasp a larger concept that may be new to them.

Story telling can be a way of loving people, especially in dying.  Hospice workers remind us that hearing is the last sense to go.  When a dying person hears stories about themselves and their life, they are reassured that they are not alone in their final hours.

It occurs to me that Jesus sometimes loved people through story telling.  One type of story he told is the parable.  The parable a timeless tool for agitating, elevating and even illuminating the minds of its hearers.  Parables cannot always be understood at first or without help, because like myths parables point to something beyond themselves. 

The realm of God is best described in parables.  While it has universal properties, it cannot sufficiently be portrayed by a straightforward description.

Perfume, for example, cannot sufficiently be described by simply enumerating its scientific characteristics.  It is a liquid that when dispersed is more than its dispersal.  The scent carries beyond the reach of those diffused droplets.  It has an olfactory impact that sometimes triggers emotion, attraction, repulsion.  Perfume can make us to follow someone or to think we are falling in love.

Like perfume, the phenomenon of God’s realm, reign, kingdom or kindom cannot be explained by a list of characteristics.  So, Jesus uses parallels.  He said the Kingdom of God is like one who makes provision.  It is like one who brings in harvest with seemingly no effort of his own.  It is like the tiny seed that makes great shade in the middle of the desert.

The Kingdom of God has the capacity to grow and spread always for the good.  We never say the Kingdom of God has the capacity to grow and spread like a mushroom cloud, colony of roaches, or aggressive cancer.  Kingdom of God always makes a provision for something good; something necessary.  Food.  Shelter.  Survival.  Survival beyond the body.  Survival beyond one single person.

Edward Sellner writes of the St. Ciaran of the 6th Century, one of the first founders of Celtic monasticism in the early Irish church.  The lore of St. Ciaran is that he went to visit a friend.  Upon meeting both had a vision of a grand tree growing in the middle of Ireland.  “This tree, while protecting Ireland, also had its fruit carried across the Irish Sea by birds from around the world which filled its branches.”  It is said that Ciaran speaks to his friend of the vision, and the friend interprets it back to Ciaran.  “The tree is you, Ciaran.  For you are great in the eyes of God.  All of Ireland will be sheltered by the grace within you, and many people will be fed by your fasting and prayers.”

This story about Ciaran and the parables of the kingdom of God offer concrete images to convey a most complex mystical phenomenon; that the seed of divinity which dwells in you has enough life or life force to effortlessly yield something plentiful and sheltering.

A contemporary spiritual teacher from India puts it this way:

The seed of purity [in our own hearts] must be nurtured and made to grow in such a manner that it radiates beyond the confines of the individual human system, radiates beyond his home and beyond his small world until finally the whole universe comes within its divine embrace.

From a miniscule, spiritual seed The Kingdom, or work, or realm of God has the power to sprout concrete expressions of provision for the world.  Provisions of love, acceptance, compassion, food, water and shelter.  “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat,” says the Lord.

On this Father’s Day we could say that the nature of the Kingdom of is a guideline for the highest order of fatherhood.  It is the spiritual seed that provides for all of creation.  It is a spiritual seed that works in a very particular way.

In his poem, “The Seeds,” Wendell Berry writes, “The seeds begin abstract as their species…But the sower going forth to sow sets foot into time … the seeds falling on his own place.  He has prepared a way for his life to come to him, if it will.”

What starts out as a seed of spiritual abstraction has the potential to grow into the life of a saint.

The life is yours.  The tree is you.  The grace within any one of us has the power to shelter a nation and bring fruit to the world.  What starts out in any person as a seeded spiritual abstraction turns into a life lived.  Your life is the kingdom of God.  May it provide for your own needs as well as the needs of others.

May 27, 2018

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Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8; Canticle 13; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

The Rev. Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis

The church season after Pentecost is long and sustained by the Holy Spirit.  Lent lasts forty days.  Easter season lasts fifty days.  The season between Pentecost and Advent this year lasts twenty-seven weeks.  That is 189 days, many of which will reach temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit here in Houston.  The season after Pentecost for us can feel long, hot and boring.

An often untold secret is that the season after Pentecost is the season of the life and labor of the church.  We have celebrated Easter and the cycle of death that is rebirthed into new life.  Without saying so, we simultaneously tip our hats to spring.  By now flowers have bloomed and summer crops have been planted.  Cucumber and tomatoes are already maturing in our backyards.  Hatchlings have emerged in our trees, and some have been pushed from their nests.  Now begins the season when we steward what has sprouted and take care of what has been born.

The season after Pentecost includes at the end of which crops will be brought to table.  The season after Pentecost also includes fall when even more food will be taken to market and brought into homes.   The season after Pentecost is the season when worship is not fancy, and we are left to labor in the vineyards with permission to enjoy their produce.  The season after Pentecost need not be boring, if we are up for the work of our Father in Heaven that needs to be done here on Earth.

The call to Isaiah read aloud today is often heard as his first call by God into service.  But is it not.  Isaiah is already prophesying.  He is already a poet and a servant of YHWY.  He is, however, disoriented in his vocation.  “Woe is me for I am lost!”  He does not know the know the likes of his own people anymore.  He does not recognize the immoral character of his own kingdom.  Isaiah in chapter 6 of the book of the Bible named for him is an overwhelmed prophet. 

God responds to Isaiah’s cry of disorientation with a new mission.  The kingdom built of the Israelites is likely to fall to foreign powers.  It’s leaders are being coerced, and they are making poor strategic decisions.  God wants to send Isaiah into this confusion as a clarifier and light post.  So, God asks, “Whom shall I send [into this mess]?  Who will go for us?”

Isaiah responds, “Here am I; send me!”

I was already a swimmer the summer my mother played a trick on me.  I knew how to swim, but I was a young simmer.  I could dive off the board, swim to the side, and do it all again.  I could float, hold my breath, sink, spring from the bottom and do flips in the pool.  What I had never done was swim the pool’s full length.

My mother delighted me one day by swimming into the deep end just before I jumped off the board.  I was thrilled by her interest in what I was doing.  After I leapt into the depths and rose again to the surface, she called me to swim to her.  So, rather than go the ladder on side of the pool, I sawm toward her.  “Come on!  Swim to me!” she said with a bit of a laugh.  So, I did.  As soon as I reached the location from which she had called me, she was no longer in that location.  She had moved away from me and then beckoned again, “Come here!  Swim to me!”  Again, she spoke with a wry chuckle that I did not appreciate any more than her betraying backward movement.  This happened over and over until I had reached the far end and shallow water of the pool.

This is not exactly a positive memory for me.  Therefore, the story is not a perfect analogy for the call of God.  But it was a moment in which I, already a swimmer, was lured past the pool tricks I had mastered into a much more challenging swim.  When it was all over, I was alive and had the proven ability to swim the full length of the pool.

There are seasons in which we are called past, lured past, or carried past our original vocational call.  For example, we remember on Memorial Day that a person becomes a soldier once but is likely called into service many times.  The same is true for saints.  Perhaps you have been serving as a Christian, accountant, parent, married person or whatever you were called to be for a while already.  It sometimes happens that God circles back around to call us to a deeper thing or harder thing or the same thing in new location.

In Easter we are lured by resurrection not into hope for an afterlife but into the life of the world.  God may say, “There is sugar cane to the north.  There is rice to the south.  Who will harvest?”  God may say, “There is loneliness to the east.  There is violence to the west.  Who will go for us?”  Or in the hot, boring, season of Pentecost, God may say nothing at all and assume that we know we are expected to go out, to harvest and to heal.

As with Isaiah, God calls upon the church in abundant times and in confusing times.  God will point to the complexities of the world and say, “Who will go for us?” 

Someone has to speak up.