Healing on the sabbath: do you want to be made well?

Today's reading is John 5:1-18

Yesterday afternoon I made several pastoral calls on elderly parishioners. Soon I'll be on vacation and I wanted to connect with these folk. I love all of them, and I will genuinely miss them, and I would by lying if I didn't also admit that doing so was part of my pre-vacation to do list. It was a fantastic day!

One woman, in her 90s lives in a retirement home. She gets to church regularly, thankfully because her spirit is as contagious and life-giving as any I've ever known. Her beam lights up a whole room. She loves sermons...has a whole collection of them from former rectors, from me, as well as from other churches. She just reads them, over and over. In her words she reads them "for some new way to hear or to see."

I told her about my posting to this blog. She seemed both perplexed (why would I do this?) and relieved for not having a computer so that she didn't feel obligated to read these posts, in addition to her sermon regimen. Still, I told her about the daily office readings, and how I try to link my writing here to the day's gospel lesson.

Without missing a beat she said, "what's the reading for tomorrow?" So I pulled out my iPhone, found the reading, and read it to her. When I looked up she was her beaming-self, but even brighter than usual, like a little kid at an amusement park. "What's so funny?" I asked. "Oh, it's not funny, it's the best coincidence ever is all. That question, 'do you want to be made well?' was the question my friend posed to me the day I got sober. The answer back then was 'yes' and I've had a whole new life every since."

When Jesus asked the man "do you want to be made well?" he was doing that on the sabbath, a Saturday. Today is Saturday, and I wonder how you might answer the same question: "do you want to be made well?"

Let us pray.

In your boundless compassion, O God, lead us to pools of healing water, and to paths where we will walk with integrity, and even into your constant embrace. By the might of your Spirit heal us and make us well, through Jesus Christ, our friend and Savior. Amen. 

Welcome

The Gospel for today is from John 4:43-54.

The Galileans welcomed Jesus. They welcomed him.

At the Parish of the Epiphany we've had a welcoming team working really hard for over two years. We've redesigned things, organized events, delivered flowers, held inquirer's classes, and just about everything else evangelism experts suggest. No question we've been successful, but integrating those visitors and newcomers, well, that's been a much bigger challenge.

In the olden days the rector used to ring the doorbell of those who visited or who were new to the area. Now, we "shop for a new church" and the sign of a good and successful rector is the presence of a welcoming team whose ministry is to welcome and assimilate newcomers.

Really?

As I approach middle-age I'm discovering that some of the old-fashioned techniques of parochial ministry might need to be applied anew in 2012. I have never rung the doorbell of a newcomer. But maybe I should.

In a conversation with one leader I mentioned that I was thinking about doing this. She was stunned to learn that I don't: "trust me, if you or Audrey show up at the door, get to know them, invite them to serve in some way, they'll feel welcomed, and they'll get involved!"

The Galileans welcomed Jesus, true enough. But they welcomed him because they had "seen all that Jesus had done." I haven't seen everything that Jesus has done in your life, but I've seen it in mine. How can I do anything else but to welcome him, and by extension, to welcome others?

Hearing for ourselves

Today's reflection is based upon the Gospel reading appointed for today, John 4:27-42.

Yesterday I officiated at the funeral of Constance Davy, the oldest member of the Parish of the Epiphany. She would have been 99 this November. Connie Davy grew up in Winchester, and in these latter years she was completely blind, but always eager for a visit, and really glad whenever Peggy Roll, another parishioner and a fantastic baker of cookies, dropped off a half-dozen or more, preferably fresh from the oven.

When Connie's health began to fail, early in July, I visited with her. She spoke about her readiness to die. When I queried, around the edges, about her faith she said, "I really don't pray." Honesty matters, I say. So I responded by saying so, and assured her that formal praying is not a prerequisite for God. 

The day she died her great-nephew, Chris, a man about my age, and Chris's 6 year old son, Quinn, were singing to her. This father and son duo, with guitar and violin (the little boy with the violin), stayed with Connie until she died, a holy moment for all of them, I'm told. 

Just before the funeral started I learned that Connie had a Bible, and I saw for myself page after page of underlines and margin notes, clearly something she did before she lost her eyesight. Just because she didn't want to speak to the rector about her prayer life doesn't mean she didn't have one!

In today's gospel reading John 4:27-42 the disciples are astonished that Jesus had been speaking to a Samaritan woman (a double outsider), and she herself returns to the city to say, "he told me everything I had ever done!" Meanwhile Jesus is getting pestered by the disciples to eat something, so he responds not by eating, but my preaching. From those conversations (with the disciples) Jesus spends two days with Samaritans, and it is they--the Samaritans--who turn to the woman who had been at the well with Jesus, to say, "it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."

Connie Davy didn't need to hear about Jesus from me! She had heard for herself.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, by whose will it is that we walk by faith and not by sight in the mysterious universe you have created, increase now our faith in you that in the midst of things which pass our understanding, we may not doubt your love, or miss your joy, or fail in our thanksgiving. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Mary, the Mother of our Lord

I'll never forget the St. Mary day, in 2006, when I was walking across Spain. I didn't realize it was the 15th of August, but about noontime, as I entered a tiny village west of Leon, there were throngs of people walking out of their doorways and crowding the steps of the local church. At first I figured it was a funeral procession, but the mood was too light for death. I noticed a number of women wearing blue, and also that children were carrying flowers. A wedding? No, not at noon. Then I remembered: it's the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin!

In our creeds only two people, besides Jesus, are mentioned. One is Pontius Pilate, and the other is Mary. 

I think of Mary as a role model, a pattern to follow in my response to God. She was a woman whose life said "yes" to God, who called herself God's servant, who praised God for turning the world upside down, who joined others in prayer. I like to think of her inspiring me to open my heart in a way that's similar to how she opened hers.

The Episcopal Church is all over the map when it comes to Mary's role in worship. Some of us have rosaries, and most of us know the "Hail Mary" a traditional prayer, from Scripture, asking Mary to add her prayers to our own, interceding for us. In our Prayer Book we find the "Song of Mary" in the Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child (p. 439), and we acknowledge in our calendar several days commemorating her life: the 25th of March (the Annunciation, when Gabriel tells her she is to bear God's child; the 31st of May, when Mary visits with her cousin Elizabeth and the child in her womb leaps; the 15th of August (today, her feast day); and 2 February the day Mary & Joseph presented Jesus in the temple. 

Let us pray.

Almighty God, 

of your saving grace 

you called Mary of Nazareth 

to be the mother of your only begotten Son: 

Inspire us by the same grace 

to follow her example of 

bearing God to the world. 

We pray through Jesus Christ her son our Savior. Amen.

Collect for the Blessed Virgin Mary, Godbearer, from Holy Women, Holy Men, p. 729

Jonathan Myrick Daniels

Today's is Jonathan Daniels day, at least on the official calendar of the Episcopal Church. But I'm struck that in some parts of the country, especially his home state of New Hampshire, and here in Massachusetts, and most certainly among many in Selma, Alabama, Jon is one of those saints who seems a whole lot more connected to us, certainly more than many of the "saints" listed in the pages of Holy Women, Holy Men.

His story goes back to the mid-1960s. A seminarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jonathan Daniels joined others in responding to Martin Luther King's appeal to help ensure access to voting booths for African Americans. He ended up taking a leave from seminary to live in Selma to continue the work there. The "outside agitator" (the phrase some locals used to describe freedom riders) died from a gunshot wound on 20 August 1965. The bullet was not intended for him, but rather for a 16 year old girl, Ruby Sales, but Jon stood in front of her, saving her life and giving up his own. Years later Ruby Sales herself attended the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.

In Jonathan's own words, found in his letters and papers after his death:

“The doctrine of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments, were the essential preconditions of the experience itself. The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown. . . . I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection. . . with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout. . . .We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”

May his soul rest in peace and rise in glory. 

Be Kind, the 4th of 4 on St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians

A sermon for the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts, preached on Sunday, 12 August 2012. To God be the glory. 

In the end is our beginning. So saith T.S. Eliot (East Coker).

For those of you who are visiting or who have been traveling, today is the fourth of four sermons on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. We’ve discovered several invitations: to be in, to claim the expansive embrace which Christ offers all to be part of the church. Be in. And we’ve heard the exhortation about fulfillment, and maybe even understand a little more about how life with Christ is much richer than anything we can achieve or attain or acquire. Be fulfilled. Last week we noticed a shift in the tone of the letter, from doctrine and theology, to practical counsel for living. Be mature, humble and faithful, even if there aren’t any medals for living a grown-up faith. 

Today we end with “Be kind.” But it’s really the beginning, it’s a first step in a life-long Christian practice. I think of kindness as the essence of resurrection-shaped life. Kindness is more than being nice, more than putting into practice the sentiment on the bumper sticker “practice random acts of kindness.”  To be kind acknowledges the Christ within, a way to show forth the truth that each of us is made in God’s image. 

The story is told that a pastor in an Alpine village wrote a blessing following an avalanche which took the lives of several of his parishioners. Funeral after funeral, the kind that are really sad and mournful, the pastor looked out onto a congregation of pain, so he wrote a blessing, which he used at the subsequent funerals. (told by Marcus Borg at a Jesus Seminar conference at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, in 2002).

Before long it became the signature blessing at the church. Years later the rector at St. Bartholomew in Manhattan made it famous, first using it at the hastily put together 9:00pm service on September 11, 2001. The church was packed with people, many of them already grieving the deaths of their loved ones, others awaiting word in hope that the inevitable wasn’t true. So William McD. Tully, a preacher’s preacher, ended the candle-lit service by saying, Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love, make haste to be kind, and may the blessing of God be with you.

Make haste to be kind. It’s a more colloquial way to say what St. Paul says in today’s reading: “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” To what extent though? How much kindness should we, or in the face of real evil, can we show? Well, the word “all” is used in this section not once, but twice. “All bitterness and wrath,” “all malice,” 

Notice the word anger is not preceded by the word all. There’s nothing unfamiliar about anger; Jesus himself expressed it when he turned over the tables in the temple, and when he confronted the pharisees about their narrow interpretation of the law. So let’s be clear: the opposite of anger is not kindness. Anger can be a productive and even God-sanctioned response. I think St Paul refers here to the inner bitterness and malice--those are the things that must go. Here’s how I think about it: kindness isn’t merely an external display of manners, it’s an internal change of heart. To be kind is to be tenderhearted. If our hearts are hard on the inside, and the manners are meek and polite and helpful on the outside, it’s not kindness. 

My friend Diana Jewell Bingham tells the story of her mother, Anne Rea Jewell. Near the end of Mrs. Jewell’s life she spent much of her days in bed, though she was still very much alert and able to talk. One day Diana was grousing about her sister-in-law, going so far as to suggest that only Diana herself should be nearby. Mrs. Jewell took Diana’s face in her hands and said, “Diana, be kind.” 

Sometimes you hear me say that I believe a Gospel value is to have a thin skin, not a thick one. Soccer coaches tell their players to get a thick skin. It’s easier to get through middle school, at least, with a tough skin. So we say “shake it off. Tough it out. Don’t let it bother you.” To be kind or to be tenderhearted is to have our insides easily touched. When our skin is tender it’s not very long before we feel pain, and when our hearts are tender, we feel easily and quickly. 

Which is why we can’t just decide to be kind, it’s not like a faucet that can be turned off and on, and that’s because kindness is a deep character quality. From whence does it come, kindness? For sure it’s not exclusive to Christians, or even to Jews, though its importance runs throughout both testaments of our scripture. Nor is it limited to religion, plenty of non-religious people are kind, even folk who are hostile about religion and spirituality. What then about kindness is particularly Christian? 

Let’s look at the text to find two things. 1) Forgiveness, and 2) Christ’s love, so fierce that it became a fragrant offering. Forgiveness and Jesus’s love--they’re the lenses through which we see kindness, and the roots from which our own kindness grows outward and upward. Something else that’s particular to Christianity and kindness is that our baptisms incorporate us, fuse us if you will, into Christ’s own self. We are anointed with the Holy Spirit, and from that moment all the way through life and beyond death, we  embody the loving kindness of God.

About a month ago I called a friend to apologize for something I had said, and on the phone I asked his forgiveness. He didn’t say, “oh, that’s okay” nor did he say, “don’t worry about it, it was nothing.” He said, warmly and genuinely, “forgiven and forgotten.” He meant it, I could tell. We can’t have a kind core if we forgive a wrong but secretly plan to keep it in the back of our minds for a later argument. 

T.S. Eliot’s words, “in the end is our beginning” couldn’t be more apt. To be kind isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. As we conclude this series remember the expansiveness of Ephesians, hold fast to its strong counsel about how to live, its gentle and unswerving principle that growing up is an ongoing task for which we’re already equipped. We must never forget that we’re in, and we will live well if we claim the wisdom to be fulfilled, and the gentleness to be mature. But that’s not all. From Christ’s own store of love, we’re given a precious and infinite gift, sometimes quietly given, sometimes loudly, throughout every generation, in every person every morning, when we hear him say, perhaps even with a sense that his hands are holding our face, addressing us gently by our name, to say, “be kind.”