October 11, Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Mark 10:17-31

When I was chaplain at Northwestern Hospital, one of the big events of the year was Nurses’ Day, a celebration and recognition of the work of nursing. We chaplains had a table where we offered a blessing of hands. We would usually ask the nurses which unit they worked on, and then offer some blessing appropriate to that unit. The last nurse who came to me that day was a little different: She had been a nurse in direct care on a unit, and later had gotten a MBA and become a nursing administrator, specifically working with budgets and cost control. As we prayed about her work, I remember praying something about her care for and shepherding of money. Afterward she noted that she had never heard a prayer that specifically mentioned money before, or had asked blessing on her particular work, as if working with money were somehow unworthy of prayer.

I was thinking of her as I was reading the story of the rich man, because one of the standard interpretations of it might explain why that nurse had never received a blessing about her work with money, and maybe reflects a common Christian presumption about wealth, one that might be getting in the way of hearing what the story of the rich man might be saying to us.

In my head, that interpretation goes something like this: If you want to really follow Jesus, and I mean really follow Jesus, you have to sell what you have or give your possessions away, and be a wandering beggar for the sake of the reign of God, living totally on faith and trusting that God will provide. That’s what the serious Christians do anyway: they become medical missionaries, or join a volunteer corps at home or abroad, or enter a monastery or convent, or an intentional community of social workers— all worthy vocations by the way. What you don’t do is save too much money, or have investment accounts, or shop at the mall, or heaven forbid, spend all your time working with money—as if Jesus said it would be really hard for an accountant or a mutual fund manager or a banker to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Of course, like today’s rich man, not everyone can really do that, so the rest of us try to make up for it by trying not be too materialistic, sharing the money we have, maybe making a nice pledge to the church or to charity. Maybe we try to find ways to support those “serious Christians,” while still feeling more or less guilty about not being super hardcore followers of Jesus.

Now I am probably just working out my own salvation there, revealing my own insecurities and assumptions about what it means to follow Jesus. But I think it’s not uncommon to boil this story down to the basic “moral” that wealth and possessions are more or less corrupting, and serious followers of Jesus do their best to limit contact with material things, which is one reason why my nursing friend had never heard a prayer blessing her work with money.

Now I’ve found that when I think I know what some passage from the Bible “means,” it’s a good idea to go read it again because I am probably missing something important. For example, even though Jesus highlights how hard it is for a rich person to enter the reign of God, he goes on to promise Peter and the disciples a “hundredfold” of all that same stuff now and in the future. Who needs a hundred houses? Much less “brothers and sisters”? Maybe this teaching is a bit more complicated.

When I reread this story this week, what struck me was the basic response to Jesus’ teaching: The rich man was “shocked.” Jesus’ disciples were “perplexed,” then “astounded.” “Who can be saved?” they start asking.  After all, the rich man in Mark is not like those wicked wealthy and powerful people the prophet Amos is denouncing in the first reading. He’s not defrauding the poor, or taking their land, or cheating them of a fair measure of grain, as the rich were doing in ancient Israel.

On the contrary, Mark’s rich man is a paragon of Israelite virtue: He is keeping the covenant perfectly, and like any righteous Jew was probably giving some of his wealth as alms for the poor—just like the Torah says he should. In fact, if he got rid of his wealth, he wouldn’t be able to do that anymore; he would actually be less righteous than before.

Mark’s rich man hasn’t done anything wrong— in fact, it seems he has done everything right, and everyone there would see his wealth as a sign of God’s blessing on his righteousness. Even Jesus is moved by his example: “He loved him,” says the gospel, or “Jesus’ heart warmed toward him.” And then Jesus bursts his bubble: “You lack one thing: go, sell what you have, and give to the poor.” In other words, what you think is a sign of your righteousness actually has nothing to do with it. Your wealth is not a blessing for you; in fact it is holding you back from the life you seek. And everyone is shocked, perplexed, astounded, because Jesus is questioning their basic belief: If you do good, God will make sure you also do well.

Now before I go looking for a spiritual lesson here, I don’t want to let us off the hook: Jesus is talking about wealth and possessions, about the danger of having too many (or even any at all), and about the obstacles to full living and a just society that too much wealth in the wrong places can bring. Jesus was familiar with the prophet Amos, whose words to my ear ring as true now as they did then. It can’t hurt us to let the sting of Amos’ denunciations and Jesus’ warnings unsettle and disturb the common American wisdom about wealth: that more is always better, that money is the key to security and happiness, or even a sign of God’s favor or of the virtue of the person with the money.

But to let this story be just about the rich man and his wealth would also leave those of us who aren’t rich off the hook. Perhaps Jesus’ advice to the rich man was specific to him, and I wonder if Jesus might have advice for each of us about what it means to follow him. What might Jesus say to each of us if we came asking what we must do to follow him more closely? Is there anything about ourselves we cling so tightly about what makes us worthy or righteous or good that we would be shocked, perplexed, astounded, if Jesus told us it was getting in the way of to following him? What is it that I hang my hat of virtue on? What would it be like to let it go or give it away?

After all Jesus has called all of us to be “serious Christians,” whether we are bankers or teachers or stockbrokers, or health care workers or priests or full-time parents. And rather than wanting us to feel guilty about not measuring up, Jesus is inviting each of us instead to enter more deeply into the gospel path of life and freedom. So what would Jesus ask you to do or to let go of, so that you could have life and have it to the full?

October 4, Baptism of Charlotte Jacobsen and Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Kristin White

On Wednesday, July 22, at 1:44 p.m., this is a text I was so glad to send: Welcome to the world, Baby Charlotte. We’re glad you’re here.

And today, October 4, I'm really happy to say this: Welcome to St. Augustine’s Church, Baby Charlotte, where you will be baptized in a little while. I understand that you like baths! We’re going to baptize you at the same font where your mom and your godmother, Auntie Lizzie, were baptized, in the same church where they were both confirmed, which is the same church where we prayed and sang your grandfather, Bill Thullen, out of this life and into the next.

I never had the chance to meet your Grandpa Bill. But I got to know him in the same ways that you will, by hearing stories of who he was, stories your family told, stories they will tell you too. You’ll hear about how he loved to do yard work, and how he loved to organize things like numbers and files, and places like the attic, how he slept here at church a few times a year so that people who didn’t have houses to live in would have a place to stay until they did. You will hear, Charlotte, about how very much he loved his family, and his neighborhood, and his friends, and this church.

A year after your Grandpa Bill’s funeral, it was a blessing to pray the blessing of your mom and dad when they got married. You will hear some good stories about that day too, and some that are a little bit funny…now…like the one about the priest who was very serious about all of the people in the wedding remembering to sign the marriage license right afterwards, but then who maybe, just a little bit, forgot to sign the marriage license herself.

You will make and tell stories of your own, Charlotte Marie, right here at St. Augustine’s and out in the world. We will tell the story of your godparents, your Auntie Lizzie and Uncle Walter, who promise today to love you always, to raise you up in good faith as the child of God you are. We will tell about lighting the candle of your baptism, which is the very same candle that the Rev. Joe Mazza lit when your mom was baptized right here. We’re going to light it from the same big paschal candle that burned while we prayed and sang our way through your Grandpa Bill’s funeral.

Welcome, Baby Charlotte Marie. Welcome to this family in which you are a gift of legacy. We belong to you. And you belong with us. And that is what we acknowledge together, today, as we baptize you and welcome you into this household of God.

We have more stories to share with you. Some of those stories tell about who we are – like the first story today that your godfather, Uncle Walter, read – about how God loved us too much to leave us alone. So God made creatures, like your dogs Artie and Phoebe, to be our companions. And when that wasn’t quite enough, God did more. God created us in partnership with and for one another – bone of bone, and flesh of flesh.

Some of the stories we have to tell are confusing, like the one about the people coming to Jesus in the gospel that I had to read just a little while ago. The people were testing Jesus. They were trying to trick him in a way that proved him wrong. And what Jesus said about divorce and adultery can seem harsh and unkind. Sometimes people – even people in church – have taken Jesus’ words and used them to be harsh and unkind to other people. So we need each other in those moments, Charlotte. We need each other, to remember that the people who were testing Jesus cared a whole lot less about what Jesus said than they did about proving him wrong. We need each other to remember, like your dad the lawyer will one day teach you, that the law was never meant to do people harm. Instead, God gave us the law to help us all take care of the people who are smallest and the most vulnerable, who need the most protection: like children, like babies, like you.

Some of the stories we have to tell will never make sense, and shouldn’t, and can’t, Baby Charlotte. Because this world, as it is, is not the world as it should be. People get lost in terrible ways. Sometimes, and even more than sometimes, they hurt one another. Sometimes, and even more than sometimes, they kill each other. It happened this week in the place where I come from, in Oregon. It happened this week in Chicago, a place very close to where we are right now. And it happened for awful reasons…and for no reason at all. So we need you. We need you to remind us that God calls us each and all to work together to help create a world that is safe and beautiful for you to grow up in, and for Baby Grace, and for Baby Piper, and for Flora and Violet and Brady and Jack and Taylor and Lauren and Teddy and Anthony and Robbie and Clare and Allison and Sadie and Asher and Daniel and Anderson and Angus and Julia and Jake and Rachel and Jasmine and Rosie and all the other small people and babies who are part of this community and every community. We need you. Because we all have moments when we have to remember that we’re a lot like you – a little bit vulnerable, in need of somebody who watches out for us, someone who will reassure us that we’re not alone, who will care for us when we can’t quite do that for ourselves.

Most people didn’t pay much attention to babies like you during Jesus’ time, Charlotte. I’m embarrassed to say that, but it’s true. Babies and children were kept off to the side, out of the way of adults – especially fancy adults with money and lots of power. But in this story about Jesus today, moms and dads like yours tried to bring their own babies and children to Jesus. And the really embarrassing thing about that part of the story is that even Jesus’ disciples – his friends, the people who followed Jesus all around and tried to learn all the things he taught – even they were harsh and unkind to the moms and dads, and to the children and babies.

So Jesus stopped them. “This is the way the world is supposed to be,” he said to the people who had tried to trick him into making a mistake, and to the people who were his friends but who had lost sight of what was most important. “The world as God means it to be, is a world where even the smallest people belong and are as important as everybody, everybody, everybody else.” And so he picked up the children, he picked up the babies. He picked them up in his own arms, and he blessed them.

That’s what we’re going to do right now, Baby Charlotte Marie. We're going to carry you to the font of our salvation, the font of your mother and godmother, where we will welcome you with singing and prayer and water and oil and light. And joy, Charlotte; we'll welcome you with the joy that is your legacy as well. We will welcome you into this sacred and growing family that is yours and ours, and has been for a long, long time.

Together, we will welcome you into this household of God.

September 27, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50

Bryan Cones

I occasionally hear from folks, both Christians and people who are not believers, that they don’t find the Bible very helpful. It doesn’t correspond, for example, with what we know about the Big Bang or evolution. It’s primitive and violent, it’s patriarchal and sexist. And people use it in ways that hurt and exclude others.

Often I have to admit some of those things are true: We should definitely not go looking for the grand unified theory of physics in the Book of Genesis, and I don’t think I want to rely on some of Paul’s writings for guidance on relationships between men and women.

On the other hand the Bible is full of such good, everyday advice. Take our reading from the letter of James, for example. I could see some of James as an advice column in the Tribune or online:

Dear James, I’m feeling cheerful. What should I do? A Happy Disciple

Dear Happy, If you are cheerful, sing songs of praise. XOXO, James

Dear James, I’m suffering. I guess Jesus was serious about that whole “taking up your cross” thing. What should I do? Stuck on Good Friday

Dear Stuck, If you are suffering, you should pray. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. XOXO, James

Dear James, I’m sick. What should I do? Nauseous in the Lord

Dear Nauseous, If you are sick, you should definitely call for the elders of the church and have them pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise you up. Hope you feel better. XOXO, James

 In fact the whole letter of James is a gold mine of good, practical advice for Christians—just read it. I’m sure he would give Dear Abby a run for her money.

Then there is Jesus in today’s gospel. Now sometimes he can be helpful:

Dear Jesus, I saw someone else doing good works in your name, and she wasn’t an Episcopalian, and I doubt she’s even baptized.What should I do? Eminent Episco

Dear Eminent, Don’t be such a snob. How about minding your own business? You think I only work in the Episcopal Church? That would not be a good business plan. XOXO, Jesus

 But then there’s the rest of today’s passage: Dear Jesus, I’ve noticed my left eye keeps wandering over to that really cute guy on the first row, who is not my boyfriend and is actually going out with someone else, but I think I’m going to go for it anyway. My right eye more or less behaves. What should I do? Hot and Bothered in History Class

Dear Hot, Gauge out your left eye and throw it away; better to have to wear an eye patch in heaven than to be hot, and I mean really hot, with both eyes. XOXO, Jesus

Dear Jesus, I convinced a straight-laced friend of mine to try pot to help him loosen up. He really liked it and now wants to get high every day. He’s neglecting his family and I think he might lose his job. What should I do? High on Christ

Dear High, You did what? Find a large stone, tie yourself to it, and jump off Navy Pier. I’ll see what I can do about the mess you made. XOXO, Jesus

Maybe we shouldn’t try to get Jesus his own advice column yet. These sayings of Jesus from the gospel are probably among those other passages people find unhelpful: Jesus may have been exaggerating, or even telling a joke, but to contemporary ears he seems weird, even violent, and his advice keeps ending with the threat of hell. Just the kind of thing that turns my friends away from the Bible.

So should we just write off these awkward, difficult passages? Or is there a way we might reach across this 2,000-year divide and discover something useful for us, a way to translate what sounds weird into words to live by? Take the order to cut off that offending body part, lest we end up in a living hell. I’ve been blessed to know many Christians who have shared their stories of addiction and deliverance, of the literal hell that drugs or alcohol made for them. Some have shared how they had to cut off from themselves that craving so that they could live again in freedom. Jesus’ advice doesn’t sound strange to them at all.

Or perhaps we’ve all had a relationship or two that had to be cut off: a friend or romantic partner, or even spouse or family member who was just a bad mix for us, or maybe they were cruel, and so we had to bring that relationship to an end. We literally had to cut ourselves off from that person.

Or take the millstone: I admit I’ve had some conversations about how unhelpful the Bible can be, but I’ve had a lot more about how unhelpful the example of this or that Christian has been. I think it’s fair to say the gospel has suffered more damage from those who claim to follow it than from anything that’s written there.

Pope Francis is a great counterexample here: He isn’t saying anything about immigration or the economy or the environment that popes haven’t been saying for more than 100 years: It’s his example, his style, and his tone, even where he lives, that’s what’s preaching the good news, and people are responding.

Which brings us back to our gospel passage: There is a question in there, the kind we might need advice about: What does it mean to live life in Christ? And there are some basic, useful answers in there: Don’t get so full of yourself that you can’t see God working outside your little group. Be a good example of the gospel, and don’t lead anyone else astray. Some things lead to death and some that lead to life; it’s important to know the difference and make good choices if you want to live that life that God calls you to.

But the details? No Dear Jesus for us. That we have to do for ourselves; but luckily we don’t have to do it by ourselves. That’s one of the reasons why we are all here working it out together: just like the church that James addressed, and the one Mark was writing to. And I feel pretty confident between the Bible and Jesus, and the examples of the people around us, we can put together some good advice and guidance about what it means to live as those “in Christ” in the here and now.

September 20, Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 9:30-37

Bryan Cones

One of the things that I learned fairly quickly when I came to St. Augustine’s is that the window behind me of Jesus welcoming children, is particularly beloved. I have especially heard from parents that this icon has been a great source of comfort in times of worry about children, or even when parenting itself seems too difficult. It’s always nice to that Jesus has our and our children’s backs. I doubt our own love for this image is unique in churches: This picture of Jesus caring for and protecting children has inspired Christians across the centuries to treasure not only their own children but everyone else’s as well.

I wonder if today, however, we might use our imaginations to break the glass of this particular Victorian image—I promise we’ll try to put it back together again. But putting this image of Jesus and the children back in its context might give us another view of what it’s trying to say to us. After all, the saying about the children comes at the end of a passage in which Jesus has been predicting his death, and has just had to straighten out the disciples again, who have been arguing about who is the greatest.

I imagine when the disciples saw Jesus picking up this child, who probably was not as clean and well cared for as our children in the window, they were a little less moved than we might be. The idea that following Jesus might mean babysitting—the very essence of women’s work in the ancient world, which probably hasn’t changed all that much—probably threw a bit of cold water on these male disciples’ aspirations to greatness.

Being great in the ancient world, after all, meant being rich, and having relationships that could help keep you that way. It meant being invited to dinner and inviting others, so that the web of relationships around you grew stronger, a community of patrons and clients with clout who might protect you and help you ascend the social ladder. Jesus, on the other hand, was placing at the center a child, barely a person, with no real social value at all, much less clout. It wasn’t even highly likely that the child would make it to adulthood. Children were socially useless, at least until they could start working in the household. And yet it is to such as these that Jesus calls his disciples, that Jesus calls us, to welcome.

Given the way children are treasured now and in this church, it might be helpful for us to imagine the folks Jesus might take into his arms today, those “socially useless” human beings who don’t bring anything to the table of greatness. Of all things, our slow-moving state budget crisis came to my mind: I have found it interesting to note how quickly, even without a budget, folks with connections, who exist in that beneficial web of relationships, who have “clout,” managed to keep on getting paid: unions could muscle out the payroll for state workers, parents could demand the funding for the schools, those with access to the courts or who can pay good lobbyists, they are mostly still getting paid.

Which leaves only a small pot of money to fight over, 10 percent of the total. That last $3.5 billion held hostage to politics is mostly money used for people outside all those webs of power: people with cognitive differences and developmental disabilities, people living with chronic mental illness, adults experiencing homelessness, women and children in danger of violence at home, teens with heroin addictions, and education for the youngest and poorest children. Not the sort of people who can do much for anyone, and yet surely among those whom Jesus calls us to place at the center of our ministry.

I don’t think that’s an easy thing, any more than it was an easy thing for those first disciples to see Jesus cuddling a small child as an example of “greatness” in the reign of God. So how do we cultivate that welcome Jesus is calling us to? A friend who is preaching on this same text today decided to make the heart of her homily a simple invitation to imagine ourselves for a moment as the child in the story, not with all the talents and relationships, experiences and degrees, that contribute to “greatness” in this world, but at our most “useless,” especially with those parts of ourselves that we hide or deny because they are not welcome in our world of "greatness." She then invites us to experience ourselves as welcomed by Jesus exactly as we are, in our wholeness rather than our usefulness, and to welcome ourselves with that same fullness, and to really believe that to do so is to take part in the divine pattern of welcoming that reveals the reign of God.

My friend Kara said she believes that until we can do that, until we can believe that it is we who are being welcomed, it will be hard, maybe impossible, to welcome those to whom God is sending us. Returning to our window, that may mean looking through it again, and seeing not clean, anonymous Victorian children, but ourselves whom Jesus is welcoming, that we may also welcome all those whose images are never etched in stained glass.

September 13, Feast of Augustine and Homecoming Sunday

Kristin White

What does it mean for you, to come home? Think about that for just a moment. Think about walking in the door after a full day, entering your own familiar space, setting your keys in the dish on the table, kicking off your shoes, sorting through the day’s mail, opening the refrigerator, thinking about what the plan might be for dinner…

Whatever your own variations on that theme are, what word would you attach to that daily ritual? Return? Refuge? Rest?

And how does that translate to your life of faith, as you live it out here at St. Augustine’s? Walking in the door on a Sunday morning, entering this familiar space, being welcomed by someone who knows you, or hopes to, entering the rhythm of worship that works its way into your bones, praying the prayers we learn by heart, singing on the same breath and with many voices as one, being fed…

What word would you attach to that weekly rite? Return? Refuge? Rest?

Whatever that word may be for you, welcome home. Welcome home on this Homecoming Sunday at St. Augustine’s. Welcome home, to those of you who are returning to what is familiar after a summer away. Welcome home, to those of you who were here all along. Welcome home to you who seek to find a new place that will become familiar for you.

Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.

And welcome to the feast of our patron Augustine of Hippo, one of the great theologians of the Church. We’ve transferred his feast day a bit liberally from August 28 to today, so that we might celebrate even more fully.

It’s especially fitting to celebrate this day of return on the same day we celebrate Augustine’s life, because in many ways what he is known for is wandering and striving. You can see it in the glass doors recalling his life at the entrance to the church: the path he follows, and that most famous quote of his: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Restlessness and relentlessness are two words that fit well who Augustine was. Born in north Africa in the fourth century, educated in rhetoric, Augustine learned early and well how to craft an elegant argument. He taught others to do that too, first in Carthage, then in Rome, then in Milan. He sought after truth in the stars of the night sky, talked with astrologers who promised him answers. When that fell short for him, he listened instead to Manicheans who told about a cosmic battle between the spiritual realm of goodness and light and the material world of wickedness and dark. From there he became a Neoplatonist, seeking truth through philosophy. He loved a woman he would not marry, fathered a child whom he adored. And finally, after a lifetime of his mother Monnica’s prayers, Augustine found his way to Christian faith. Agonizing again and still over truth and how that truth can be seen and lived, he walked through a garden. He heard a voice say, ”Take up and read,” opened to Paul’s letter calling him to “put on Christ.”

“I have read in Plato and Cicero things that are wise and very beautiful,” Augustine wrote in his Confessions,” But I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden.”

Something within those words encompasses something real about who Augustine was, about the namesake of this Church. He sought and sought and sought after truth – in the life of the mind, in the life of the body – and finally, at least in that moment, he found it, in the promise of refuge.  At least in the breath of the moment he wrote those words, our patron Augustine found his way home.

Home is something I have found myself thinking about often, lately. We have been blessed with great growth at St. Augustine’s in these past several years, and I have been blessed to have conversations with many of you who have recently joined the parish, and with many of you who have been here a very long time. You have told me what you sought in this church that you make your home. And this is what you’ve said, the truth of what you have been looking for: “A place where people know me, and they know my kids, and I know them…A place to be nurtured, to grow…A place to serve…A place where people tell the truth about what matters…A place to worship God together with others…A place where different kinds of people really are welcome…A place where I still get to think for myself…A place where I can ask questions that maybe don’t have answers…”

Home is something that many of us are thinking about right now, with the news unfolding in the world. I thought about home this week as I read the story of a mother of three children. They fled Syria, eventually found their way to Hungary; they may have been part of the same group walking toward the Austrian border that Bryan spoke of last week. The mother pushed her toddler in a stroller as her other two small children walked next to her. They had been walking for eight hours along the side of a highway in Hungary. The woman’s daughter sobbed as she walked next to her mother. “I’m so tired,” she cried.

What word might that mother attach, for her self and her family? Home as a place to rest? Home as refuge?

And home is what I thought of as I heard a 13-year-old Syrian boy standing before the press, saying that he didn’t want to have to go to Europe. He didn’t want to be a refugee. “Stop the war,” he said to the people and the cameras. “I want you to stop the war. I want to go home.”

I thought about those words, about what home means: a landscape of familiarity, a place where it’s safe to rest awhile, a place where you really are welcome, and known, and cared for, nurtured and encouraged to grow. And I ached for all those things, for a mother walking alongside a highway pushing her children toward safety, for her daughter sobbing from exhaustion as she walked, for a defiant 13-year-old boy speaking before news cameras. For a little child lost to the waves.

Home means different things in this restless and sometimes relentless life. Yes, refuge and safety and renewal. And not only those things, but those things in the service of return and offering, in co-creating a future that will be greater than the sum of all its individual pieces, with a God whose dream is more. That little girl needs to rest. And there will be a time when she’s done resting, when what she needs is to begin again, to forge ahead in whatever it is that is hers to do.

My prayer for us is that we as this Church, as this Home, will live into the mission to which we’re called. My prayer is that we will invite you into this place, and if what you need is a space of rest for a time, I hope you’ll find that here. I trust that you will feel connected – that our children will grow up within a circle of folks who have known them for a long time, and where we will all be encouraged to grow as well. And for that, we’ll equip ourselves, together, in preparation for whatever ministry we’re called to, asking God to send us out in service to this beloved world, until we return once more. I, and we, will do these things imperfectly…as is the nature of what it means to be human. And we’ll do them with the goodness in which Augustine argued that God created the Church to do and to be, that divine spark that inhabits and pervades.

Augustine never really did stop striving. He battled with those he considered heretics, fought about sacraments and goodness, crafted (no doubt, elegant) arguments over salvation and grace, about what he believed was original sin and what he thought constituted a just war. And whether it was in the stars or in an explanation of the cosmos that didn’t stretch far enough, or in wisdom that was finally incomplete, or ultimately, in the faith that became a kind of pavement upon which Augustine could trace his journey, that sacred relentlessness with which he lived also became a kind of testimony to the One he sought: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” And that all became a kind of testimony to the One I trust he found, ultimately, face to face: “I have read in Plato and Cicero things that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Welcome again and still and always to this familiar landscape. Welcome to people who have known you for a long time, or who hope to. Welcome to a space in which we worship the God who has known you from the time you were knit together in your mother’s womb. Welcome to a church where you can rest in grace, and where we will strive together when it’s time.

Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.

Welcome home.

September 6, Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 7:24-37

Bryan Cones

I always feel a bit bad for the man healed in the second half of today’s gospel story: It seems hardly anyone ever notices him—he’s always upstaged by the incredible encounter that precedes him. That story, of the Syrophoenecian woman, is startling to me because it seems to reveal a particularly unattractive side of Jesus: instead of the compassionate teacher of so many beloved images, we get a dose of ancient ethnocentrism, religious exclusivity, even ancient sexism. What would you say about a man who calls a woman and her sick daughter from an ethnic group other than his own a “dog”— even if, as scripture scholars might point out, he might have used a word more like “puppy”? Would any of us here allow a stranger to refer to our sick loved one that way?

What’s even more incredible about the story is that it’s not the woman who is the “foreigner” in this case: It’s Jesus who is outside of his homeland; he’s the migrant, the outsider, the foreigner, traveling through Gentile lands and Gentile cities, presumably to preach to Jewish communities there. And yet, when a local woman, a native, hearing of this outsider’s healing power, comes asking for help for her child, Jesus insults her in a way that would make Donald Trump blush—except The Donald would have to repeat the insulting things he said about Mexican immigrants on the other side of the Rio Grande.

The sheer outrageousness of Jesus’ reaction to her request makes this woman’s response all the more intriguing to me. It would be easy to imagine her (and I can imagine myself) reacting in kind: “Then go back to where you came from, you self-righteous jerk. While you’re at it, maybe you should also go … <insert language too strong for a Sunday morning>.” You get the idea. I, for one, would understand that reaction.

But instead of being reactive, this woman gets creative, transforming Jesus’ insult into an argument in her favor. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And her creativity surprises Jesus—he even applauds her argument—and her daughter gets healed. And, arguably, so does Jesus, who at least has a new understanding of his mission.

Creative, rather than reactive: What a gift this ancient woman could give to this constantly reacting world. I think I caught a glimpse of her this week as I read stories of other migrants and foreigners, all those thousands gathered in Hungary, trying to get West. In the midst of all that reaction against them, even as they were insulted by having numbers written on their arms, or lied to about where the trains were taking them, or surrounded by police in riot gear, as if they were criminals, and not victims and refugees desperate to save their families, thousands of them showed her creative spunk. They didn’t riot or fight or throw rocks, they just started walking again, along the highway, a sea of people making her argument with their bodies: We are people, too, and we deserve at least the scraps from Europe’s table. And before you knew it, the busses came, and they had won their argument, at least for now.

Creative, rather than reactive. What would it be like if we were able to employ her wisdom in our own efforts to engage the problems of the world? How might our politics be different? How might our creativity guide our response to racism or sexism, or to violence or homelessness or hunger or poverty, if we could sidestep the reactivity that is so baked into our culture of instant responses on Twitter, or Facebook, or the 24-hour news cycle. What would that look like? It might reveal as surprise that heals the world.

How about in our personal lives? I’m hoping I’m not the only one here who has a relationship or two so locked in patterns of reaction—old arguments, bad habits, hurt feelings—that it’s sometimes hard to imagine things any other way. Does anyone else have a relationship like that—maybe at work, or with a family member? Maybe like that man in the second part of today’s gospel, we discover that our reaction is so strong we are not really able to hear that other person anymore, or we find that we are no longer able to speak in ways that allow us to be understood. What would it be like to pause in that next encounter, to remember this ancient woman, to allow our reaction to pass, and to discover a creative response?

Perhaps with Jesus and the Syrophoencian woman, and the man who could not hear or speak, we would be surprised by the healing God is longing to reveal to us.

August 23, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, John 6:56-69

Kristin White

Joshua is going to die, soon. In today’s first reading he stands before the people whom he has served, first with Moses, and now on his own. These are the People Israel, a people he has loved and led. He has claimed this Land of Promise with and for them, the land they wandered 40 years to find, the land they had heard about for generations all the way back to Abraham. Now, it’s all true for this people. The promises are fulfilled. Now, they drink from wells that they did not dig. Now, they eat the fruit of trees they did not plant. And now, Joshua’s life draws near its end. He calls the people together at Schechem, the center of that Promised Land. He reminds them of all that God has done. And he says this: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Choose. The gods of your ancestors? The gods of the strangers in whose land you now live? Or the LORD: the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, the God of Isaac and Rebecca, the God of Jacob and Leah and Rachel…the God of promise, fulfilled. Choose. Choose this day who it is that you will serve.

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Jesus stands in the synagogue at Capernaum, in today’s gospel. He talks about bread and wine and flesh and blood and the father sending him and who will live forever. “This teaching is difficult,” his followers say. “Who can accept it?” Pay attention here to who is named in this gospel: John doesn’t call them Jews or Gentiles or Pharisees or scribes or crowds or regular old people. He calls them disciples. These are people who have declared their colors, named Jesus as their leader. These are people who have given something up in order to go where he goes, to listen to what he teaches. They’re his people. Or at least they thought they were…and he thought they were, too. Until now. So they complain among themselves about this crazy teaching of his. And Jesus, being who he is, doesn’t soften things for them, doesn’t make it easier for them to stick with him. No. He makes it more difficult. “Oh!” he says. “Does this offend you?!” And he makes it even harder, with talk about how people must come to him, and how they must not…with talk about who will have eternal life, and who will not. And that’s…kind of…it…for these followers. The ones who were complaining are now the ones who are packing it in, deciding “not to go about with him” now, returning instead to what they think was, to what they think is not so difficult, to what they think they can accept. “And what about you?” Jesus asks those who remain. We know the twelve are there, we don’t know how many – or if any – others have stayed. Can you see them in this exchange? Avoiding eye contact with him, watching the others gather their stuff and go, kicking the dirt around in circles with a sandaled foot. “What about you? Are you going, too?” Jesus asks them.

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“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua challenges the People Israel at Schechem.

“Do you also wish to go away?” Jesus asks his friends at the synagogue at Capernaum.

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It’s the fifth week, now, the fifth of five Sundays in the Bread of Life discourse. Congratulations, people of St. Augustine’s. You’ve made it. We’ve made it, through five weeks of Jesus saying to those who follow him: “I am the bread of life,” “I AM the bread of life,” “I am the BREAD of life,” “I am the bread OF life,” and, finally, today: “I am the bread of LIFE.” By the end of today’s service we will have sung every hymn I know of about bread. We will have had our fill, like those 5000 besides women and children who sat down on a great deal of grass to watch Jesus bless and break what was five loaves. We will have had enough bread, already. And more than enough, perhaps.

Here’s the thing, though. I wonder if, as your preacher for several of these weeks, I missed an important point before now. Because in those others sermons I talked a lot about the “bread” part. But I’m not sure I paid sufficient attention to the “of life” half of the equation. And isn’t that really the heart of it, the point of the whole thing? Jesus says: “I come that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” At the very earliest moments of creation, God takes a handful of dirt, shapes it into a person, and breathes sacred life into Adam’s mouth.

So today we have two passages from scripture from that other half, the “of life” part of the statement over these past weeks, passages challenging the people to choose…life. They can choose those other gods – the gods their ancestors worshiped, the gods of strangers in foreign lands now claimed – or they can choose to worship the God who has fulfilled promises, promises that nurture their lives as people and as a People. They can choose to remain steadfast in the midst of teachings that are difficult, things that are hard to accept, or they can turn back with the others, stop going about with the leader who teaches such things.

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Jimmy Carter is teaching Sunday School today at Maranantha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. I was five years old at the time that he took office as President. And I don’t know much about his politics, beyond what’s on the list of historic events of the late 1970s. And anyway, politics are not why I bring him up. The reason I bring his name into this space is because he served as an illustration to me about what it means to choose whom you will serve, and to live that choice.

The former president gave a press conference this week, as many of you probably saw. He had surgery in recent days to remove a tumor from his liver. Tests and a scan later revealed that the cancer was melanoma, that in fact the doctors had not gotten it all, that there are four small spots on his brain, that it’s likely to be found in other places in his body as well. Later on the day of the press conference, President Carter would have the first in a series of radiation treatments aimed at shrinking the cancer, at slowing its progress.

If ever somebody had an excuse to say, “This is difficult! Who can accept it?!” and pull the covers up over his head, he does. Instead, Jimmy Carter spoke as somebody who knows in his bones that life is short, that we do not have too much time. He talked about what a good life he has had. He said that marrying his wife, Rosalynn, to whom he has been married for almost 70 years, is the greatest thing he has done in this life. He talked about his hope that Guinea Worm, an awful disease that he has worked through the Carter Center to eradicate, would be gone before he is. He said he hopes to make one more trip to build houses for people who need them, this time in Nepal. And he’s teaching Sunday School today in Plains, Georgia, perhaps right now, at Maranantha Baptist Church.

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“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua tells the people as his own life draws to a close.

“Do you also wish to go away?” Jesus asks those who have followed him.

“Choose,” the scripture tells us. Choose what you will serve, and whom. And yes – choose, knowing that things are difficult, they’re hard to accept, and that some will turn away…understandably.

Isn’t that what is set before us every day? Choose whom you will serve. Choose if you will be kind to someone who maybe doesn’t deserve it. Choose to fulfill your promise to come home at the end of the day, instead of putting in an understandable couple more hours at the office. Choose to pick up the phone and talk to someone you love but have been avoiding. Choose to spend your money in ways consistent with who you want to be. Choose to pray. Choose to take on the hard work of reconciling what has been broken, and see your own fingerprints in the breaking. And do that now, instead of assuming there will be a chance for it in some distant future. (Life is short. We do not have too much time…)

We have chances throughout our days to make choices that, together over days and weeks and years and decades, shape who we are. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua says. “As for me, as for my household, we will serve the LORD.”

In the end, the twelve stay with him. Yes, Jesus’ teachings are difficult, hard to accept. And maybe there’s a part of each of them that does wish to go away also, with the others. But in the end, at least for now, the twelve stay. Not because they’re smarter or stronger or even more faithful. They stay with him because they have chosen.

“Do you wish to go away also?” Jesus asks them.

“Where are we to go?” Peter responds. “You have the words of eternal life.”

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(Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those we travel with. So be swift to love. Make haste to be kind. And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you and remain with you always. Amen.)

August 16, Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

John 6:51-58

Kristin White

           Bread is the substance of possibility.

           In the stories of the Bible, stories of who we are and who we have been, bread is the thing that makes a difference, the thing that transforms, at moments of oblivion or exhaustion or confusion or despair.

            Early in the book of Genesis, bread means hospitality. Abram and Sarai welcome three guests who arrive in the heat of the day to join them in their home at their table, to eat the bread that Sarai prepares. How are they to know that these three mysterious guests might just be the three persons of the Trinity? How are they to know that God will call Abram from there to a land he does not know, lead him out under a sky full of stars and promise more descendants than he can count? Would it all have happened, without that bread at their table in the heat of the day?

            Bread means freedom to the People Israel as they wander in the wilderness, a people becoming a people, a people afraid of all they’ve left behind and afraid of all that lies ahead of them, afraid of everything they do not know. These are stiff-necked people, scripture tells us. And maybe they are. I think they’re terrified, which is never a condition for people to be at their best. And at the moment when they are most fearful, crying out for what they think they used to know, God gives them what they need. God rains down manna from heaven. “So mortals ate the bread of angels,” the psalm tells us. “God provided food enough.”

            Bread means perseverance to a prophet on the run in the person of Elijah. Convinced that his life is over, he finds a place to rest. He sleeps and wakes at the hand of an angel who encourages him to eat the bread prepared for him. And again, it happens, he sleeps and wakes and eats more bread. So instead of dying, the angel nourishes Elijah for the journey that lies ahead of him. With bread. And more bread.

            Bread means community to the 5000 people, besides women and children, who dare to follow Jesus to the far side of the Sea of Galilee, and on up a mountain (just for good measure). There, as they sit on the great deal of grass in that place, five loaves become much more than five loaves for those who have followed Jesus. Five loaves, transformed, means that those 5000 people besides women and children don’t have to fracture themselves off and go find their own food at the end of the day. Instead, those 5000 and more eat together, as a body. The transformation of what will be their food becomes their own transformation, as well. Everybody eats and is satisfied. Everybody has enough.

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          Today marks the fourth Sunday of five in what Bible scholars refer to as the Bread of Life Discourse from the Gospel of John. What that means, in non-Bible-scholar language, is that for these five weeks (stay tuned, there’s one more left next week), Jesus says to his followers: “I am the bread of life.” He says it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. I will confess that some preachers…this one among them…have (ahem) hungered, on occasion, after something else to talk about, something else to preach about, something new to say in the midst of this sustained message. There’s quite a lot of bread to be had, here.

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            I’m grateful to serve a church - the Episcopal Church broadly, and St. Augustine’s in particular – which values our minds, which trusts that God feeds our intellect and imagination. I love deep theological discourse, I love wondering together about who God is and who we are and what we are called to do and to be in this place and time. And I love the fact that we gather every week as a people in a wide-ranging, very big theological tent of understanding about what it is we’re doing here at the Eucharist.

            There are people at St. Augustine’s who hear the words about Jesus’ body and blood in today’s Gospel and in the words of the Communion Prayer and believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ blessed and broken and given from this table. And there are people here who are a little weirded out, honestly, by the language of the Gospel and the words of the prayer, but who think the Eucharist is a lovely ritual of remembrance. There are people here who don’t know what to think, but who have entrusted themselves to this community of faith. And there are very small people here who have received the sacrament for as long as they have known, whose theology would be both simple and profound if they were to share it with us (“Hey! I know this place,” Anderson Broxson said to me when he was four years old…”This is where we have the feast!”).

           And I love the fact that we gather here every Sunday to do one of the least abstract, most basic things that we know how to do. We eat. We reach forward with empty hands, receive the bread, and eat it. And I have to believe in that moment that the fact of what we are doing matters a great deal more than how we might interpret that act. I have to believe, in that moment, that the words of Augustine’s sermon on the Eucharist resonate through the years: we become what we see, we receive who we are. The bread of life. The substance of possibility.

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            Many of you know that I have Celiac Disease, which means I can’t eat anything that contains wheat. So I have to say, it’s kind of a funny thing to be preaching about this whole Bread of Life Discourse, as someone who can’t eat bread in its most common form.

            I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2004. At the time, I didn’t know anything about gluten-free wafers. So first I tried breaking off tinier and tinier pieces of the host for communion. But it didn’t work. I still got sick. So, finally, I stopped receiving for a while. I told myself that it was okay, that I was there within my community, that participating in the sacrament was itself a sacrament. I would receive the wine, was even told that receiving in one kind was the same as receiving both. I’ve been an Episcopalian my whole life. And for the first time that I could remember in my life, I couldn’t put forward my own hands and receive that bread, that substance of possibility. I couldn’t receive the Body as a member of the Body, becoming the Body.

            I track the theology of it all, in the abstract. I understand the arguments of accidents. And what I can tell you is that I remember the day my priest found gluten-free hosts for me to receive. I can tell you that it was not an abstract experience. It was visceral, and whole. And holy. And I remember.

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            Throughout our story as a people, bread is the substance of possibility. It’s the thing that transforms from oblivion and exhaustion and confusion and despair, into hospitality and freedom, into the thing that nurtures a new community. And I have to wonder, in all this talk about bread, if we can take Augustine’s words in their most visceral and elemental way. I have to wonder if, as we eat from what might have been five loaves to begin with, we, like they, become so much more. I have to wonder if we become the bread of life for a world that starves for it, if perhaps we become the substance of possibility.