Second Sunday of Advent, December 7, 2014

Kristin White

Advent II – December 7, 2014

St. Augustine’s Church – Wilmette, Illinois

Mark 1:1-8

There’s a voice in the wilderness, crying:

‘I can’t breathe.’

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John the Baptist comes into the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance.   It’s one of those words, repentance…a word we can hear and then stop listening to anything else that comes after it. It’s a street corner preacher kind of a word. It’s a loaded, coded word. It’s a word that calls out for a placard and a bullhorn.

I don’t mean that word, repentance, in the way you may anticipate hearing it. So I hope you won’t stop listening. I mean it, instead, in the way that it means to turn: to turn away from my own, from our own, perceived protection and safety and comfort…to turn toward the one who is my neighbor, but who looks entirely different than I do.

And honestly, I would take that street corner today, right there next to the prophet Isaiah speaking to his people in exile in Babylon, right next to the prophet John the Baptist with his strange and itchy camel’s hair shirt and his leather belt and his bugs and his honey and all of it. I would take that street corner today, uncomfortable as it makes me. And I would take the placard, and the bullhorn. I would take them all.

Because there’s a voice in the wilderness, crying.

Because John the Baptist comes into that wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance, a baptism of turning from, a baptism of turning toward. And as he baptizes those people in the Jordan, he tells them of the One who is coming, the One whose shoe he is not worthy to untie, the One who will baptize them, the One who will baptize us, with the Holy Spirit.

Remember. Remember what happens when the Holy Spirit comes into the world. Creation happens: the Spirit broods over the waters, and Creation is born. And it is good. The Church happens: the Holy Spirit rushes into that room where the disciples are all locked up in their fear, a mighty wind that those followers of Jesus breathe in, and the Church is born. And it is very good.

What if this is a moment of our creation, once again? Hear and claim the first line of today’s gospel: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” What if we are being called to breathe in the Spirit as those disciples did, to receive it together as co-creators with God, to begin again, to turn and make room in relationship with those who are our neighbors?

What if our Advent is to watch for God’s messenger sent to us, to notice him, to recognize her, in a person most unlike ourselves, even in a person who challenges us, even in a person who makes us uncomfortable?

What if we hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and instead of turning away, all locked up in our fear, in our hunger for safety, in our desire for protection…what if, instead, we turn toward that voice with the full breadth and depth of who we are? What if we join our voices with the one who cries out, calling out together, proclaiming that if one of us can’t breathe then none of us really can? What if we prepare the way of the Lord by walking on ahead, together with those who must, as those who must?

What if that is the beginning of our Good News?

And what if our baptism of repentance, our baptism in the Spirit, is to turn? To turn away from our own protection, from our own isolation, living and moving only among people who talk like we do and think like we do and who watch the same news channel and listen to the same music and share the same education and read the same books and eat at the same restaurants…to turn away from our own supposed safety, our own assumed comfort? What if our baptism calls us to turn toward neighbors who look entirely different than we do, whose stories we do not yet know, who do not talk like we do and think like we do and who watch different news channels and dance to different music and who have different education and who read different books and who eat different sorts of food than we do?

What if our baptism in the Spirit calls us to take a deep breath and turn toward the stranger, trusting that we will not overcome our fears, we will not overcome all that separates and would divide us, by knowing about people, but by knowing and being known by them?

What if our baptism of repentance, our baptism in the Spirit, is to turn toward neighbors we do not yet know, and there, in them, see God’s own face?

Only then. Only then will we have begun to prepare the way.

It’s Advent, dear friends. It’s Advent.

And there’s a voice in the wilderness, crying.

First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2014

Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas—out there anyway—actually it has looked that way since at least since October. In here, though, it is not yet looking at all like Christmas, with today’s scriptures being exhibit A: Isaiah with his frightening images of torn open heavens fire and shaking mountains, and Jesus with his dire predictions of the day Jerusalem would be destroyed. Not at all like Christmas.

Then again, even out there, out in the world, it isn’t looking like Christmas everywhere. As I watched TV Monday night, waiting with many for the judgment of the grand jury in Ferguson, looking at images of the crowds gathered, full of tension and worry and uncertainty, I noticed a lit sign at the bottom of the screen, strung across Florissant Ave. “Season’s Greetings” it said. But it wasn’t looking at all like Christmas.

Oddly enough, that sign did announce “Season’s Greetings”— but they were the tidings of Advent, like our readings today, full of the tension between the way the world is, and God’s promise of how it will be, how it is meant to be, when things are on earth as in heaven.

Watching the situation unfold in Ferguson, marked by anger and fear, distrust and the threat of violence from all sides, it struck me that it was not too unlike the scene in today’s gospel passage, written either just before or just after the terrible destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD: boots on the ground from Rome surrounding the city, soldiers dressed in a different kind of “riot gear” a population in revolt, armed and armored in its own way, and the little church in Jerusalem caught between them, still hoping for rescue in the glorious return of Jesus.

The ancient Hebrews speaking in the prophet Isaiah in the first reading were in a similar position, in exile in Babylon, Jerusalem a smoldering ruin, wondering if they would ever know God’s favor again. All these communities lament with the psalmist today: How long, O Lord? Let your face shine, they pray, that we may be saved!

How long? the lament rises from so many places. How long? lament the people of Sierra Leone, as Ebola ravages their country. How long? lament the millions of people living with HIV and AIDS, whom we remember this week with World AIDS Day. How long? lament immigrants here and elsewhere in the world without legal status or the protection of law. How long? lament the people of Syria and Israel/Palestine and Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan and Nigeria and South Sudan and every place where conflict seems without end. How long? lament people here in our city who struggle to get by day after day on poverty wages and hand-me-downs and the charity of others. How long? lament our neighbors in communities where violence and poverty are an everyday fact of life.

How long? we also lament, when our own personal Jerusalems seem surrounded and ready to fall, when our families fracture or fail us, or our communities or our friends abandon us, or our bodies fail us, whether we are in our hospital room or our living room.

And yes, how long? lament people in Ferguson and in other communities of color. How long will it be until our children get the same resources, have the same chances, the same protections, are treasured and loved and valued as much as children, at least some of them, whose skin is not black or brown? How long? is the lament of Advent. Let your face shine, that we may be saved, is its prayer.

And yet, there is good news to be had. Listen to Paul: In every way you have been enriched in Christ, in speech and knowledge of every kind, so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Not lacking in any spiritual gift”—even as we lament “how long”? “Not lacking in any spiritual gift”—even as we struggle to respond to the world around us. “Not lacking in any spiritual gift”—even when our Jerusalems seem ready to fall.

Jesus has not abandoned us or left us empty-handed; in the spirit of Jesus we have everything we need, in “knowledge and speech” and I’d add in money and talent and energy to do the work God is sending us to do in this world of lament. In the spirit of Christ, we have the gifts and the grace to respond in helpful, meaningful ways to the great challenges that face us, whether the inequalities and injustices exposed once again in Ferguson, and which mark Cook County every bit as much as St. Louis County, or the root causes of hunger and homelessness, which are so much a part of the mission and ministry of St. Augustine’s. God has equipped us for this Advent work, and God is sending us to do it.

In that light, Advent seems less about waiting for Christ to come and rescue us, more about Christ waiting for us, the world waiting for us, to reveal the body of Christ we have been called and equipped by God’s grace to be. How long? our Christ laments. Let your light shine, he calls to us, that the world may be saved. 

Thanksgiving Day Eucharist, November 27, 2014

Kristin White

Thanksgiving Day Eucharist – November 27, 2014

St. Augustine’s Church – Wilmette, Illinois

Luke 17:11-19

            I wonder how the family of Michael Brown will observe Thanksgiving today. And I wonder the same about Darren Wilson, and his family and friends. And I wonder about all those who have gone to Ferguson in protest and lament, and about those who live there already, and those whose lives or businesses have been damaged or threatened, and those who see themselves as removed, just trying to get on with their lives. I wonder about them all on this Thanksgiving Day, today.

         These are difficult, disparate pieces to hold together with all that has happened in these past days and months. And the thing is, we’re not in Ferguson, Missouri. We’re here. And Ferguson feels a long, long ways away from Wilmette, Illinois, right now.

         Instead, in thinking of the two: whatever that confrontation was between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson that resulted in Michael Brown’s death (not mine to sort, but surely ours to mourn)…and the abundance of the gatherings so many of us will likely share today – the tension of them makes me want to force them even further apart, to make today a day of gracious plenty, of politeness and kindness and comfort. And to return to those difficult pieces tomorrow. And maybe, it’s uncomfortable to say, but maybe to disregard the fact that I have the privilege of doing that.

         Just for a moment, just for a day, I’d like very much for things to be clear, unambiguous: good or evil, right or wrong, innocent or guilty.

         But that preference is neither the fact nor the history of this day. And it’s neither fact nor history of our faith. The things that are most unambiguous in God’s economy as revealed in the Gospel are in fact the most difficult: loving people who don’t seem all that lovable; forgiving the same; crossing boundaries of privilege; doing mercy; practicing faithful gratitude, even in the face of uncertainty.

         Jesus’ command to the lepers in today’s gospel story is clear, unambiguous. They call for mercy, and he tells them to go present themselves to the Temple priests. (It’s clear, but probably makes zero sense to them.) There is no convincing reason for people with leprosy to do this: temple priests are not known for keeping office hours during which they receive lepers. But they hear him, and they go. And as they go, they are made clean.

         One of those 10 lepers, a Samaritan, realizes what has happened. He turns back from the group because he can’t keep going until he has given thanks. He can’t keep going until he has turned around and given thanks.

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         The history of this day, Thanksgiving, is a complicated one. Originally borne of an ambiguous relationship between the native people of this land and those who would claim it, Thanksgiving became a fixed day under President Abraham Lincoln…right in the midst of the Civil War. His proclamation says this:

“To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible…No mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God…It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”[1]

         President Lincoln ends by commending to God’s care all those who suffer, words that find their epilogue in that last paragraph of the President’s second inaugural speech, which he will deliver two years later at the end of that war: “Let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”[2]

         The President does not wait until the war’s end, does not hold off for some unambiguous moment (which would not be found in his lifetime), when the world as it is and the world as it should be find their happy alignment with one another, before proclaiming this day of Thanksgiving that we celebrate. Instead, the war persists even as he makes this declaration, and will for months ahead. Still, he calls for gratitude. Still he calls the people with one voice and heart to give thanks for the “gracious gifts of the most high God.”

         That Samaritan, that leper, can’t know as he turns to go toward the Temple that his skin will heal and clear, that the sores will disappear. He can’t know what lies ahead for him once he returns to life inside the gates. But he knows he is changed. He knows he can’t keep going until he names that blessing and gives thanks, whatever comes of it.

         He falls at Jesus’ feet, praising God, thanking him. “Get up,” Jesus says, “Go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” Some versions translate this as Jesus saying: “Your faith has made you whole.”

         I don’t know how the family of Michael Brown will observe Thanksgiving today, or that of Darren Wilson, or those who live in Ferguson, or those who have gone to Ferguson. This is no unambiguous moment in the life we share as a people. And the words of a President in the midst of a war within a people echo forward: Let us “commend to (God’s) tender care all those who have become…mourners or sufferers in (this) lamentable civil strife… (asking God) to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it…”[3] To restore us.

         However ambiguous this moment, I pray that our own hearts will be softened. I pray that we will seek peace, and build it, binding up those things that have been broken in our midst. I pray that we will act in love and mercy and forgiveness and care.

I pray that we will not be able to keep going until we turn, as that Samaritan did, and give thanks.

         And I pray that, like that Samaritan, our faith will make us whole.

[1] http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

[2] http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/lincoln_address2.html

[3] http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

Bruce Caris & Carrie Bach - Lay Stewardship Talks

Stewardship Talk

Bruce Caris

November 16, 2014

Good Morning I’m Bruce Caris and Robin and I have been members of St A’s for almost 25 years.

25 years ago we were very reluctant move from our house in Chicago to Wilmette with our than 4 year old son. Like many we left Chicago because of the schools and picked Wilmette due to the schools and its proximity to downtown.

When we first came to St A’s, it was an older congregation with very few children.  So that first day we sat in the farthest back we could go and really tried to keep a low profile, which is difficult with an energetic 4 year old boy. When we got home, Father Tom Chaffee was there to greet us and give us a loaf of bread.  He then proceeded to spend the next few hours camped out in our living room regaling us us with all kinds of stories and stories and stories.  At one point, when our son came bounding into the room, Father Chaffee announced “That boy needs to be in church” To this day I am not sure if that was intended as an invitation or a comment upon our parenting skills. We took it as an invitation and with that kind of invitation what were we to do?  Of course we came back to St A’s.

Such was our introduction to St. Augustine’s.

Initially, we got involved with the church school and over the years many other aspects of life at St A’s, but the question is “Why have we stayed and continued to support St. Augustine’s for all of these years?”  I would like to share 3 experiences which illustrates why we continue to attend and contribute to St. Augustine’s.

-       First off connecting with the St. A’s community was easy. When we first arrived at St A’s the influx of kids was not only welcomed by the congregation, they interacted with the kids. This was especially important for us since it gave our children a casual intergenerational interaction they did not have with Robin’s family on the east coast and mine on the west coast.  Imagine, Jim Hughes and Peter DeVryer teaching church school before there was a youth group program.  Their kids had kids, yet they wanted to not only share, but were also interested in what the kids thought and how they viewed the world.  They, as did others at St A’s connected with our kids.

-       While we were not planning on this, we have also become very close friends with people we met at St. A’s.  We participate in each other’s lives and have sustained and grown those relationships over the years.  We are truly there for each other.

-       Additionally, Robin and I have found the youth groups to be a great way for equipping our kids with what it means to live a socially responsible life. Because of people like Kim and Mark Stone, Julia and Ray Joehl and many others, we firmly believe both of our children our better adults today due to what they have learned and experienced from these people and their experiences at St A’s.

So, while we were reluctant to move to Wilmette, we are now reluctant to leave St A’s. Robin and I have found the return on our investments of time, energy and money to the St A’s community, has given us immeasurable returns on the quality of our lives and relationships. 

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Stewardship Talk

Carrie Bach

November 16, 2014

The first few years after we moved to Wilmette were utterly nuts…my daughter Campbell was born, I was working full time, my son Henry was starting nursery school, my husband was out of work, my nanny didn’t drive and my in-laws were dropping in unannounced…frequently.

I share this not only to tell you a bit about me….but also as a way to explain why it took me 6 years to get here.  I’ve always been spiritual and at certain stages was a regular church-goer.  So once we moved to Wilmette finding a church was on my mind…..it was just not on my mind as much as finding transportation for my kids, and sleep and the fortitude to weather the financial crisis.  So days turned into weeks and months, time passed, more chaos ensued, life happened.  It was messy.

Then in December of 2011, my brothers and I received a letter from my Dad.  The occasion for the letter was the death of a very close family friend, who suffered privately from severe depression, and ultimately took her own life.  As my Dad recalled, she was the epitome of a modern Renaissance woman – financially able to do and achieve great things, smart, attractive, healthy and outwardly enthusiastic.   My Dad was particularly disturbed by the collision of two seemingly incongruent personas and the devastation it had caused.

In his letter to us he wrote, “I think we all go through periods of self-doubt, wondering if we could have done more with our life – made more money, had more friends, done a better job raising our family, etc., etc., etc.” [at this point I’m totally tuned in]. He wrote, “When I get down on myself I think of all my blessings – you guys and your kids, and my career, and 42 years of marriage – but I also look to my religion for strength and reassurance that I am OK and that I am a good person living a worthwhile life.  It is, in the long run, the peace of God that passes all understanding and that ultimately brings me back to believe in my self-worth.” 

He finished by saying…”I hope and believe that you each have an inner faith that goes beyond all the trappings of our day-by-day life.  Even if regular church is not part of your routine, just keep in mind that there is more to life than money, or excitement, or travel or good looks.  It is the mystery of faith that has consumed the human intellect for centuries.  It is what keeps us going even in the face of personal challenges.  It is what lets us sleep soundly and wake up refreshed.”

Love to you all, Dad

p.s. Since I know that regular church is not currently part of your routine, I willtake this opportunity to once again highly recommend it as a worthwhile and enriching pursuit  that will serve and guide you always.
 

Not long after receiving that letter I realized I couldn’t ignore any longer my need for spiritual nourishment and community.  So on a beautiful sunny day, just over a year ago, I walked up the front steps of St. Augustine’s,  shook hands with Kristin, and said, “Hi, I’m Carrie, this is my first time here.”

And that’s how, amidst a fairly messy day-to-day “routine”, a not-so-gentle but beautifully well-timed “suggestion” arrived from my Dad…and I subsequently arrived at St. Augustine’s.   

It is, I believe, the story of what brought me here.

What keeps me here is all about what happened next. 

Those of you who have been coming here for a long time may not remember, or perhaps it wasn’t always this way, but when one walks up the front steps and introduces oneself as a Newcomer, it appears that there is a secret code or perhaps a system of hand signals and spot lights, which alerts our Parish community to said Newcomer…and this community, with its hunger to know and be known, springs into action. 
 

That first day I came to St. Augustine’s, many of you were introducing yourselves and welcoming me and offering the Peace.  One of you was even kind enough to discreetly hand me the WLP hymnal when I couldn’t find the recessional hymn in the Blue hymnal.   And then came one of the most beautiful blessings, one I’d never heard before.….that Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us….well, I felt compelled to respond and participate.  That morning I went home and called my Dad and told him Church WAS in fact part of my regular routine. That is the story of why I stay.
 

What I hope for the future is built on (thus far) a short but profound connection to St. Augustine’s.  For me, the first part of our Mission Statement…”we invite people into the Church, which is the body of Christ, we connect with God and one another”…for me, that was evident at the point I walked up the steps.  I believe this is unique to St. Augustine’s and must be nurtured and cultivated.  I don’t think it’s a simple thing to create and I know it’s not easy to sustain.

But it is what keeps me coming back, it’s what I tell people when I describe St. Augustine’s, it is palpable and it is a significant part of why I contribute.

I’m grateful for St. Augustine’s, for the opportunity to share my story and most grateful to keep the feast. Thank you.

Kristin White, Stewardship & Pentecost XXII

A Stewardship Sermon Preached

Kristin White

The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost – November 9, 2014

St. Augustine’s Church – Wilmette, Illinois

            It was the bride, not the bridegroom, who was late to the first wedding I ever celebrated. The bridegroom and the best man waited in a side room with me for the bride’s arrival. I left and returned at increasing intervals, checking to see if she had gotten to the church, feeling (I’ll confess) my own tension rise, and trying to contain that so I didn’t increase the groom’s anxiety, or the guests’. The organist played through all the prelude music. No bride. And then he played through it all again. Still…no bride. After that, he moved into what I recall as 20 minutes of continuous playing of “Jesu, Joy of our Desiring”…a piece which, before that occasion on that day, I really used to like.

         She did arrive, finally, and we continued with a lovely wedding liturgy. I had a note from that bridegroom about a year ago, as the couple celebrated their fourth anniversary.

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         Weddings were no less fraught in the time when Jesus tells today’s parable of the bridesmaids and the tardy bridegroom, with similar possibilities that everything could very well go sideways. In that period, guests arrived at the bride’s home, where they would be welcomed by her parents.[1] When the bridegroom arrived, everybody lit their torches and met him outside. Then they all joined what must have been a kind of beautiful and haphazard parade to the groom’s home. The groom’s parents would welcome all the guests, and then the wedding ceremony began. Finally, after all that, they kept the feast. Like, for days, they kept…an epic feast.

         As Jesus tells this story, he says that this is what the Kingdom of God will be like. And having read the history, I love to imagine those snapshots in my mind – excited parents welcoming people into their home…everybody waiting in anticipation for the groom to arrive…the first person to spot him, crying out, and then all the guests lighting their torches to go and meet him…a procession by lamplight of these people who promise to love and support the couple in their new life…their arrival and welcome at the groom’s home…a beautiful ceremony…and finally, that chance to keep an abundant and joyous feast.

         Of course, in real life, something always gets mixed up. And even in Jesus’ kingdom story, that happens as well. The bridegroom is late. Really late. Later than I can imagine any organist willing to keep playing. He’s so late that members of the party have given up on him, and gone to sleep.

         As much as it would make this celebrant crazy, the crux of this passage is not in that groom’s late arrival. And it’s also not in the fact that the folks who wait have gotten drowsy (yes…he was really, really late…) – but no. The message at the heart of this parable is the fact that some of the bridesmaids are prepared for the wait, with extra oil so they’re ready when the time finally comes; and other bridesmaids…are not prepared, not at all.

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         We’re nearing the end of our liturgical calendar. Just three weeks from now, we’ll celebrate the first Sunday of our church year, the first Sunday of Advent, when the altar and the clergy will be draped in beautiful blue and the Advent wreath will hang again, right over there. We’ll gather after church in Puhlman Hall that day to make Advent wreaths of our own to take home, marking the time between then and Jesus’ arrival at Christmas, by lighting candles and praying prayers.

         But right now, Jesus prepares us for final things. He is getting us ready for the end. And he uses a wedding banquet as his illustration.

         Today is also the Sunday when your rector’s role is to talk about our annual giving campaign, about how we at St. Augustine’s steward the life and the gifts that you entrust to this community of faith.

         In many ways, we’ve been preparing for this for a long time. I talked with the wardens and our assistant rector about this season of giving back in July, enlisted Mary Ellen Davis’ help as Invitation Mastermind in August. Thanks to facilitators and hosts recruited in September, we kept the feast at meals in each other’s homes throughout the month of October.

         And we heard you…all nearly-200 of you who joined those feasts. We heard about your hunger to know and be known, to listen to each other’s stories, to find chances to wrestle with and name what you believe. We heard you give thanks for the opportunities we share to grow in friendship across generations. We heard your yearning to do justice in the world.

         At the same time, we have worked together this fall to shape a mission statement that fits who we are and challenges us to grow in faith, one that frames our dreams and goals, and offers us a way to reflect on our shared ministry. It continues to be refined, but right now that statement sounds something like this: At St. Augustine’s we invite people into the Church which is the Body of Christ, we connect with God and one another, we equip ourselves as disciples, and we ask God to send us out to do the work God gives us to do.

         All of this is preparation. And all of it has been marked by the truth of who I believe this church is, at its core: practical; unsentimental; fiercely honest; willing “to risk something big for something good;”[2] deeply, deeply committed to each other and to St. Augustine’s.

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         The thing about the kingdom, though, is that it never arrives in the time or the way we expect. The bridegroom is late. The organist plays through the whole prelude repertoire, and now everybody has heard their fill of Jesu, Joy of our Desiring. And still, we wait. And after a while, like that wedding party, we get tired of the waiting.

         Our second reading, from the Letter to the Thessalonians, reflects this anticipation fatigue. People of the Church of Thessalonica believed that Jesus’ second coming would take place in their own lifetimes. So as their friends in that community, other followers of Jesus, began to die, those who lived began to worry. They didn’t know what it meant. They didn’t know if the people who had died would be able to share in Christ’s resurrection. They were scared. They wanted that bridegroom to get to his bride’s house already. So the passage we heard from that letter is all about promise and trust, in the midst of waiting…and finally, concluding with these words: “therefore, encourage one another.”

         I view our work as church, and my work as your pastor, is for us to encourage each other as we wait with expectation for the Kingdom. And also, to live our lives, in the meantime – lives shaped, not by vigilance or fear, but by patterns of faith in preparation and trust of the promise, as we seek to keep the feast to which we are bidden.

         Part of that preparation, both practical and spiritual, is the offering of our gifts – those first fruits we set aside and return in thanksgiving for all that God has given us.

         Yours are the gifts that make this feast possible. Yours are the gifts that afford us the chance to gather, day by day and week by week, marking our joys and mourning our losses, as we continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. Yours are the gifts that allow us to worship in the beauty of holiness. Yours are the gifts that create space for kinship across generation and class and ethnicity, and anything else that would divide us. Yours are the gifts that challenge us to do justice, to love mercy.

         Our circumstances are varied. I will not tell you that there is one standard in giving, because I don’t believe there is. I do believe God calls us to give from the first fruits of what we have received. I do believe God calls us to generosity. And I will tell you that John and I give 10% of what we earn to St. Augustine’s. I bid your prayers about all you have been entrusted with, about what this community of faith means to you. And I ask that you make what is, for you, a meaningful gift in offering.

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         He arrives, in the end, that bridegroom. Everybody’s asleep. Some are wise, some are foolish. Some are prepared, and others are not.

Whenever it happens, and however long it takes, and however many times Tom has to play the prelude in anticipation, I’m grateful that we gather here, together. I’m grateful for all the gifts you bring, for all the gifts we are blessed to inherit from those who came before us. I’m grateful to belong to and with one another as the Body of Christ that is St. Augustine’s Church. I’m grateful to prepare and encourage each other, as we watch in expectation for the Kingdom of God’s promise.

         I am grateful, grateful indeed, to keep the feast.

[1] Thomas G. Long. Matthew. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. 284-288.

[2] William Sloane Coffin

Kristin White, Fiona Wilcher Funeral

Kristin White

Fiona Wilcher Funeral – November 7, 2014

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

We have a new ministry, begun here at St. Augustine’s in recent months. Our prayer shawl guild draws people together a couple of times a month. They share in conversation and fellowship. They pray together, and they knit lovely prayer shawls, which we bless and then take, often to people who are sick and unable to be here at church with us. Several members of that guild have been friends of Steve and Fiona and Katie for many years. When I met Fiona for the first time in September, I took her one of the very first of those shawls.

Fiona was straightforward in our conversation that day at Whitehall about what these past five years had been in her life, in the life of her family. She spoke with a scientist’s expertise about her diagnosis, and honestly about prospects of the future. And the whole time, as we talked about her family and her hope for you, about chemotherapy and clinical trials, about pain and relief from pain, she had that prayer shawl wrapped around her. As she talked, she patted it into place, straightened out the fringes at the ends, tucked it around herself more tightly.

Three strands from the passages of scripture we’ve heard read this afternoon have knit themselves together in my mind over these past days. They have wrapped themselves around my prayer for Fiona’s rest and release, for Steve and Katie’s comfort.

From the first reading, in the book of Ecclesiastes: “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” From Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “when this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality.” And from John’s gospel: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

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These past years of Fiona’s life, and of the life you have shared with her, have been a particular season. And from what you have told me, it’s a season marked by too much pain, by loss. But that has not been the entirety of it all – because there have also been times of grace and joy, times of sharing, within this season. And as painful as these past five years have been, they have been a season – they are not the entirety of Fiona’s life. She leaves a legacy, a life lived fully and whole. Those many seasons of her lifetime – as an engineer living in Siberia under communist rule, as a competitive sailor giving all she had to the race, as a very soon-to-be mother determined to find exactly the right time to wake her sleeping husband and go to the hospital delivery room, as an established professional risking a new path and profession, as a mother newly diagnosed with cancer whose first move was seeking to prepare her teenage daughter for this most recent season…all of those and more, the stories you have told and will tell…those are the seasons that comprised who Fiona is and was.

Now she passes from what this season has been and on into the next. As Paul writes to the church at Corinth, this perishable body puts on imperishability, this mortal body puts on immortality. And now we pass from what we can see and hear and touch with our hands to having to trust instead in a promise yet to be fulfilled – that indeed death will be swallowed up.

But in the meantime…the pain and the loss constitute a season of their own, one marked, honestly, by troubled hearts.

Jesus says some seemingly impossible words in today’s Gospel: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” I’m not sure how to have hearts that are not troubled in this moment – Steve, Katie…you who are Fiona’s family, you who are Fiona’s friends.

Just after he speaks that impossibility, though, Jesus says this: “Believe in God, believe also in me.” Often we understand “belief” as something we do with our brains, as some kind of intellectual comprehension. And I don’t know quite what to do with that notion in this moment, when so much is incomprehensible. But what if, instead, we consider belief as where we entrust our hearts?

Do not let your hearts be troubled, but entrust them to God.

Trust that Fiona has gone ahead, that she has been preparing you for a long time. Trust that this season, for all that it has been and all it is now, is a season – not our entirety. Trust that, indeed, there is a time to every purpose under heaven. Trust that Fiona now leaves this perishable body to put on imperishability, leaves her mortal body to put on immortality. Trust that there will be a time when your hearts are not so troubled.

And in the meantime, look around at the people who come together here today. Let this gathering of love, this church, knit itself together for you as a source of warmth and care. Be enfolded by it. Be enfolded by us, just as Fiona was that day by a prayer shawl knit by a friend, all wrapped and tucked around her.

Kristin White, All Saints

Kristin White

The Feast of All Saints – November 2, 2014

1 John 3:1-2

            This is the feast of all the saints. There is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you have come here today to sing those saints into our midst, to remember the ancient stories of who we have been as a Christian people, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you have come here today to honor someone you love who has died, to hear their name read into our holy communion; if you, truth be told, come with a heavy heart in that loss, wishing instead to have that person living and breathing in the pew right next to you instead of borne witness by reading and the lighting of a candle, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you hunger after logic attached to circumstance, if you can’t stomach platitudes and easy responses in your grief, in your loss, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you long for justice; if you recognize that the acts of the saints are always and only acts of grace and love, lived out over the space of a lifetime within a community of people trying and trying again (ever imperfectly) to do the same; if you hope to join that witness in your own imperfect practice within this loving and imperfect and grace-filled community, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you are new to this Body, seeking a place in which to belong…or perhaps not even knowing what exactly you seek, but longing after something bigger than you can name, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you have been a part of this Body for a very long time; if you know the stories of who we have been, and long to tell those stories again to your children and grandchildren, to others who would take their place alongside you, there will always be a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you trust that this is the place and moment where heaven meets earth and earth meets heaven, together with angels and archangels and all that sacred company; where we catch a fleeting glimpse of the holy banquet to which we are all bidden, together with everybody, everybody, everybody who has ever received “bread and wine and been told it was Jesus and it was for them,”[1] there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you are skeptical but seeking, struggling with what any or all of this means; if your doubts outnumber your certainties and your questions still go unanswered, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you are young and unknowing, growing in faith and still discovering the story of who you are, of who we are; if you long to know the prayers by heart and to clothe yourself within this narrative of hope, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

         If you are elderly and striving to remember; if you know all those prayers by heart; if you hope to share this story with others longing for words of faith, there is a place for you at this table. Help us keep the feast.

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         This is the time, this is the place, where we remember who we are, reminding ourselves that we have good reason to hold our confession of faith, because we have experienced its truth in our very existence as a community.[2]

         “See what love the father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

         “That is what we are,” writes the author of the first letter of John that we heard Carrie read. And before that occurs, earlier in the same book:

         “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…”

         Children of God (for that is what you are): this is what I declare to you about what was and is, what I have seen with my eyes, what I have heard, what I have looked at and touched with my hands concerning the word of life: there is a place for you at this table. You who are children, still learning our stories; you who are elderly and have our prayers in your bones; you who sing of the saints; you who grieve unspeakable loss; you who strive after justice; you who seek to belong; you who have belonged for a long time (and still do, and always will); you who believe; you who struggle with belief…

Children of God: there is a place for you at this table.

         This is the feast of all the saints. Help us keep the feast.

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/11/778/

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2243

Bryan Cones, Pentecost XVIII

Exodus 32:1-14; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

I forgot.

Kristin preached last week on those “10 best ways,” the commandments that are the charter of life with the God of Israel. There are only 10 or so of them, but, if the world is any indication, they are fairly easy to forget. Even the people that received them directly from God, so the story goes, forgot them almost immediately. In Moses’ absence they forgot not only the commandments, but who they were: God’s people, slaves delivered from the land of Egypt and made free.

It got so bad that it seems even God forgot: Imagine Moses’s surprise when he found out what his people, whom he brought up from Egypt were doing. My people? I imagine him saying. I was in a whole other country when you came to get me. They all forgot, forgot themselves, forgot God, forgot Moses, forgot each other.

Forgetting is a common problem—it’s in every reading today. Euodia and Syntyche in the second reading, two pillars and leaders in Philippi, evidently had such a hard time getting along that the church had to send a messenger to Paul, in a Roman prison, for his intervention. These two women had forgotten that they were sisters in Christ, partners in the work of the gospel.

Even that odd parable in the gospel of Matthew has some “forgetting” in it: All those original invitees forgot just whose kingdom they were living in, so much so that they killed the king’s messengers. It might be convenient to see this reading as some sort of diatribe against the Jewish authorities, but Matthew wasn't writing to Jews as such; he was writing to Christians, some of whom were already forgetting, going back to their old lives, not living up to the “wedding garment” they had been given. Jesus, like Moses, had been gone for a while, and some of his followers were forgetting him and all those feasts they shared with him.

It’s so easy to forget. And we know that when we start to forget the little things, the big things are sure to follow. It can be easy to forget what life is really about, to forget the best ways to live by. Relationships erode little by little until people “forget” that they are married, or that they are friends, or sisters.

Forgetting can take on a life of its own: I've often wondered if addiction is a kind of forgetting, when something else has so taken over life, that it becomes its own thing, replacing or masking the memory, of the person that’s really there. Perhaps in our own lives we've had moments when we've come to our senses, woken up and wondered: How did I get here? Who am I?

I forgot.

Perhaps in moments of doubt or guilt or shame we've wondered if God has forgotten us as well.

Thank God for Moses. Thank God for Paul. Thank God for all those people who help us remember who we are and who God is. Thank God for the people who stand in the gap and say: This isn't you. Remember yourself, remember who you are called to be. I hope we all have people like that in our lives.

And thank God for those laws, those practices, those best ways that help us remember. As a child one of the nightly rituals in our family was the obligatory “I love you” before going to bed. Often enough, it was preceded by an equally obligatory “I'm sorry,” to mend whichever relationship had suffered that day. Sometimes it felt like we were faking it, and sometimes we were, but we always remembered we were a family, so that we never got so far down the road that we forgot. Perhaps we all have our own home rituals our own ways of remembering who we are.

I’d like to think of this Sunday gathering as one of those ways of remembering. When we touch that blessed water at the door of the church, we remember ourselves as God’s beloved baptized, made one in the new covenant in Christ.

When we greet one another here we remember that we belong to the company of those invited into living the best ways of God, even if sometimes we forget. And even when we do, here’s a whole jumble of Moses and Pauls to help us remember.

When we hear the story of God’s people proclaimed, we remember that it’s our story, too: we are the characters, actors with God in the drama of the world’s salvation.

And when we gather at this table we remember that we are the ones drawn from everywhere to feast at God’s banquet. We are the ones Jesus is talking about. We are the ones gathered and fed to in turn be sent out again, so that the world might itself remember the best way God has made it to be.