November 13, The Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 65:17-25

Kristin White

“For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth,” the prophet says.

The People Israel are up against it in today’s reading from the Book of Isaiah. They’re divided and cynical. They have been driven into exile, which means they have lost the comfort and familiarity of their lives in the Land of Promise. So there, in captivity in Babylon, they have to find a new way to get along. They have to begin their lives again in a new and foreign place. Everything presents a challenge, everything seems like hardship, every hope seems lost. And the Israelites don’t trust their new neighbors…they resent them. 

In the year 597 BCE, the region of Judah revolted against the emperor Nebuchandezzar. The emperor responded by sacking the city of Jerusalem, burning the Temple, and sending Israel’s leaders into exile in Babylon. They left the land that God had promised them so many generations before, when a stranger took Abram out under a sky full of stars and promised to lead Abraham to a land that God would show him. The People Israel left the magnificent Temple they loved – not just that but they watched it burn – the very place that they believed to be God’s dwelling here on earth. They left their lives and their understanding. They left it all, and they left it for a long time.

Nearly forty years later, when Isaiah proclaims this message of God’s vision, the People Israel are up against it.

“For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth,” Isaiah says.

“Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;

I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people;

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.”

What a passage this is, appointed a long time ago for what would be the Sunday following the most divisive election season of my lifetime, and maybe yours.

And the thing is, nobody’s got the market cornered on chaos and divisiveness and resentment right now. We’re all in it. And we don’t know why, exactly, though lots of people have a great deal to say about their theories on that count. And we don’t know what comes next.

I heard an interview the week before the election about a working-class white man whose life has not gotten better in recent years. He dropped out of high school – which was a source of embarrassment and shame to him – but then he found a training program, and he learned the trade of welding. He found work with a livable salary in that job, and he did it for a number of years. He got married, had a couple of kids, one of whom has a learning disability. And then the crash of 2008 hit, and he lost his job as a welder. So he was out of work for awhile, and then he went through another training program, and found work again, though this time it was hourly instead of full-time, and at a lower wage. His family lost their health insurance with the welding job; then they found a policy through the Affordable Care Act, but then they couldn’t afford it. They lost their home, were in and out of homelessness.

The thing that stopped me short about this whole story was what the reporter said at the end: this man, this former welder, had tried to do everything right. Like I said, he was embarrassed by his lack of education, but he had tried to compensate for it by learning in other ways. And he and his family were really alone – they didn’t belong to a church, the reporter said; they didn’t have anyone to come around them, to champion their cause, to provide ideas and support.

They didn’t belong to a church, the reporter said.

And I thought – oh – have we forgotten that we belong to each other?

I hold that man’s story of exile, together with the palpable and profound fear I see in my own friends right now. A friend from high school now living in California had her Mexican–born adopted daughter come home from school on Wednesday to say that her classmates told her she was going to be deported. A lesbian couple who are very special to me are making legal arrangements to protect their parental status as two mothers of their beautiful infant daughter. Another friend shares stories of trans folks they know who are helping each other get passports right now in case they need to leave the country quickly.

And again, I wonder: have we forgotten that we belong to each other? How did we get so far away?

“I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

            or the cry of distress.”

Isaiah shows up in the midst of an exiled and divided and resentful and frightened people, and shares the word of God. The word of God is capable of creating something new out of something that is very old. The world of God has the power to restore order from chaos. The word of God can make beauty where every single thing seems broken.

In the middle of the People Israel, Isaiah returns a word of promise…in concrete and practical fashion:

“God’s people shall build houses and inhabit them;

            they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

            they shall not plant and another eat;

For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

            and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their               hands.”

I want that vision. I want that vision of safety and belonging, of a just return for the work of our hands, of a long life, and enough to sustain it. I want that. I want it for my friends who are American Indian and Black and Latino. I want that vision for my friends who are lesbian and gay and trans and queer. I want Isaiah’s vision for that welder who got laid off and who now finds himself really, really alone. I want that vision for your family. I want that vision for my own.

And I don’t know how we get back from the exile of our own fear, but I trust in the power of God’s promise and prophecy. I’m clear that I will struggle together but not fight for vindication. I will speak aloud the truth that I see, but I am finished with vilifying – on all sides. My dear friend Kate says this more eloquently than I can, as she preaches from her own pulpit this morning: “We have elected a president who I would never allow myself or a female friend (or my daughter) to be alone with. But I will be praying for Donald Trump in the weeks and years to come, and I hope you will too.”

When I was in discernment to the priesthood, I found myself praying with an image that would never have been something of my own choosing or creation. I found myself praying like this, with a posture of my own hands outstretched and open. It felt a little vulnerable and strange, and it also made sense. It forced me to imagine God placing things in those open hands of mine…and maybe taking them away, too.

Wednesday morning, I had an email from Meghan Murphy-Gill. She ended it by telling me that she is praying, palms up, looking for the paths.

Me too, Meghan.

So I will pray, and I will listen. And I will seek to live the promises of my baptism, which are the property of no party and which are subject to no election. And I hope you will too.

Because it’s time for us to find the paths, to find our way back to each other. It’s time for us to return from this exile we have created here in this great nation of ours. It’s time for Isaiah’s promise of “a new creation, where the heavens and the earth are no longer alienated.”[1]

Because I want that vision Isaiah speaks into a word of hope, with conviction, for us all:

“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together…

The lion shall eat straw like an ox;”

The vision that

“They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,

            says the LORD.”

[1] Nelson Rivera. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4. “Theological Perspective.” Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 290.

November 6, The Feast of All Saints

Luke 6:20-31

Kristin White

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, brand-new bishop-elect of the Diocese of Indianapolis, preached at our friend Amity’s installation as rector of Grace Church, Chicago, last Tuesday. She talked about the walls of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Now, those walls are painted with icons of saint upon saint upon saint – 90 of them – people both new and ancient, whose lives showed forth God’s glory: King David and Teresa of Avila and Francis of Assisi…Margaret Meade and Thurgood Marshall and Desmond Tutu. There are even some who would not claim the Christian faith – Gandhi and Macolm X, Anne Frank and Martha Graham, Abraham Joshua Heschel.

They’re all up there on the walls of St. Gregory’s Church, now; and they’re dancing – one hand on another shoulder, a foot lifted and ready to take the next step, hands clasped to join.

But they weren’t always there. In fact, it took a long time for them to be written into that space the saints now hold. In the time before, for the years and months that led up to their completion in 2009, those saints existed in blank space at St. Gregory’s, and then only as outlines. It took time for them all, the known and the less-well-known, to be written into that dance.

Today is the day, in the life of the church, that we set aside to give thanks for the lives of all the saints – those known and the less-well-known – who are written into the dance of our faith. You can see some of them here, drawn into our memory in glass that is both etched and stained: Augustine and his mother, Monica, who prayed for her son’s conversion a long, long time before it happened. Margaret of Scotland, and Polycarp; Andrew, and Anne.

Our saints will be spoken into our midst today as well, as we receive the bread and wine of communion, we will hear the names of those we love but see no longer, whose lives are imprinted on our own: mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, grandparents…children…friends.

And with the reading of their names, the memory of their lives etches itself in color among us once more.

“Blessed are you,” Jesus says, in the gospel passage appointed for our celebration of all the saints today. “Blessed are you. Blessed are you. Blessed are you.”

He comes down to the people, scripture tells us in the verses leading up to today’s lesson. This is not the Sermon on the Mount, as Matthew’s gospel tells the story of the beatitudes. Luke tells this story another way. He tells us that Jesus comes down from the mountain, comes down to the people and stands with them on a level place. They’re sick, after all, and hurting, and troubled by unclean spirits. And they try to touch him, because they know that he has the power to heal them. And he does. He heals them all.

Then he looks up.

“Blessed are you,” he says. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, revile you, defame you because of the Son of Man. For that is what they did to the prophets.”

And correspondingly, “Woe to you who are rich, and full, and laughing, and well-regarded.”

Finally, this last piece: “But I say to you that listen: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who abuse you. Offer your cheek and your coat and your things.”

Is that what our saints have done?

We all have stories of the ways they are written into our lives – in lightly chalked outline, or etched in color and glass and gold. And on this feast when maybe not so very much would separate us between the living and the dead, we remember their dance in our lives.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you, Augustine, who sought and sought and sought after truth, with your restless heart and your brilliant mind.

Blessed are you, Julian of Norwich, who promises us still that all manner of things shall be well.

Blessed are you, Patrick of Ireland, who bridged ancient mysticism and Christian faith to exalt God in the midst of our natural world.

Blessed are you, Elizabeth the First, who held the people of England together and forged religious peace by way of Common Prayer.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you, Marjorie and Thomas, whose team that saw a dream made manifest after 108 years of waiting, the celebration adorning your resting place outside in our columbarium.

Blessed are you, Kathie, who knew that it was good.

Blessed are you, Pieter, now rejoined to your beloved Miepje.

Blessed are you, beloved Caroline.

Blessed are you, Jim, your name written in chalk on the wall at Wrigley Field.

Blessed are you, Roy, and Georgia, and Fritz, and Brett, and George, and Rodney, and John, and Alfred.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Their names are written onto our hearts, and their dance illumines our lives. And by the gift of faith, by the icons of their lives and witness, we are reminded again: Jesus comes to the people. He stands with them on a level place. The people are sick and troubled and hurting. And Jesus comes to be with them.

“But I say to you that listen,” Jesus says to the crowds: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who abuse you. Offer your cheek and your coat and your things.”

We need those saints, all of them. The ancient and the new, the familiar and the less-well-known. We need their chalked outlines, their images etched in color and glass and gold. We need them written into our lives as they are. We need their light – maybe now as much as we ever have. We need their light and their dance.

And so today, let us pray those saints, every one of them, into our midst. Let us clasp hands and remember that we are not alone. And let us be the ones who listen to what Jesus says to the people as he stands with them there, on that level place: “Blessed are you. Blessed are you. Blessed are you.”

October 16, Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 32:22-31, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Luke 18:1-8

Kristin White

“Be persistent,” the author of our second reading today says. “Proclaim the message, and be persistent, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience.”

“This is what you do,” the writer of this letter seems to be saying: to Timothy and the people of his community then; and to us, now. “This is the way to stay on course, this is how to live as people who are trying to live faithfully.”

It’s easy to get distracted right now, easy to forget our need for persistence…easy to get discouraged.

And today’s gospel offers distractions of its own, as well, with its unjust judge who neither fears God nor shows respect for the people, with its widow who continues going before the unjust judge (who, the text tells us again, does not fear God, does not respect the people), this widow who persists – who asks again and again and again for justice.

My own mind wants to make sense of this parable, to make it logical and neat. My mind wants to draw parallels, to seek real-life examples of the unjust judge (not so difficult a task right now, it turns out), people in positions of power and responsibility, people who neither fear God nor respect the people. My mind wants to look for the persistent widows in action right now, people on the margins who speak and act with conviction regardless of the cost, who continue to push and to bother, who persist…until at last they wear that unjust judge down with their continual cry, until they bother him enough that justice is finally, finally done.

And that’s it, really, my mind wants to see the Right Thing done: to see some good sense made of it all. My mind wants a dose (perhaps a large dose) of humility dished out for that unjust judge, and (proportionately great) triumph for the widow.

There’s so much here theologically to be pulled apart, so many questions that we can understandably ask: Why is this judge so uncaring, so disrespectful? Who is the widow, and what justice does she seek, and what has her opponent done to upset her so much? Can we, really, like that widow, wear down unjust structures…can we bother the powerful and rude to the point that, if we’re just persistent enough, we, too, will get what we seek? And if God really does hear our cry, more than this awful-seeming judge, why has God not alreadygranted justice, and quickly?

What was it that Meghan said about parables, when she preached a few weeks ago? That they make mincemeat of our expectations?

As rich as this parable is, as curious as we might be, as much as we might decry the disrespect of the judge and champion the widow in her cry for justice, I want to draw our attention somewhere else today.

Remember, this parable is told as an illustration. It didn’t actually happen. Or, maybe it happens all the time. Either way, it probably wasn’t one particular event. The purpose of the story Jesus tells is to teach his disciples a lesson he finds important for them.

Look at the beginning of the gospel: Jesus tells the disciples a parable about their need to pray always, and not to lose heart.

Look at the end of the gospel: Jesus asks, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

And hear again, from the Second Letter to Timothy: “Proclaim the message: be persistent, no matter what; convince, rebuke, and encourage; show the utmost patience.”

“This is what you do,” the texts seem to work together to say to us today, at a time when distractions and discouragements abound. “Do not be distracted, do not be discouraged. This is how to stay on course, to live as a people seeking to live faithfully.”

Last Sunday at the reception celebrating the beginning of our annual giving campaign, I talked with someone who is understandably lamenting the deep unkindness and disrespect unfolding across the news. She was understandably wishing something better for the world that her grandchildren are growing up in right now.

We paused for a moment, and looked around. Folks were talking together and sharing good food as they watched children play. New members to the community were being introduced and welcomed by people who have been members of St. Augustine’s for decades. People were checking in with each other about what was going on in their lives – both the challenges and the occasions of joy – and sharing those with one another.

“This is the good news,” I said, as we looked. “This is the very thing we need more of in this world.”

Today is the day when it’s my job to preach about Everybody, by Faith: the theme of this year’s annual giving campaign at St. Augustine’s. We chose those words from our invitation to communion – welcoming everybody, everybody, everybody to feast from God’s table.

Because it takes everybody, for us to be most fully who we’re called to be as the Church – the Body of Christ – in this time and place. We don’t have time, honestly, for the disrespect of the unjust judge. Because we know enough to know that we need each other, in all our differences. We need the persistent offering of the gifts we have, for the sake of justice, for the sake of faith, in the hope that we will not lose heart.

Remember, friends, this is who we are:

We are a church that extends hospitality from this table to the table in our parish hall, where, in a couple of weeks, we’ll serve breakfast and dinner every day to people who take shelter here as they work toward a day when they will have a home of their own once again.

We are a church committing ourselves to challenging conversations about race, to bothering and wearing down and finally breaking those unjust structures that would divide the children of God from one another.

We are a church that takes care of each other, with visits and phone calls and meals and notes of encouragement and rides to the doctor, when those are the things that people need.

We are a church that cherishes and nurtures relationships between generations. We choose to spend time together, and we throw a good party, and we’ll have the chance to plan for more of those in coming months in our time together after worship today. And we’ll have the chance to continue in fellowship, rain or shine, at a barbecue and picnic later this afternoon.

We are a church filled with people who offer ourselves, as we are, before God in worship. We affirm and lament and bless and pray and intercede and give thanks and confess…and we sing.

So do not lose heart, friends. Because this is good news. You are good news.

Instead, join me in trying to follow the directions that today’s scripture sets before us, for people seeking to live faithfully: be persistent, whether the time is good or bad, proclaim and convince and rebuke and encourage, always with deep patience.

Offer the gifts you have to give, as generously as you are able, to support this good news we have to share, to build the kingdom of God’s promise.

Do not be distracted. Do not be discouraged.

Instead, pray as often as you can, and do not lose heart; that when the Son of Man comes, he surely will find faith on the earth.

October 9, Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 17:11-19

Before his spiritual awakening some years ago, the writer AJ Jacobs described himself as “Jewish…in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian.”[1]

In other words, he found himself not so very Jewish.

But AJ Jacobs had gotten married, and he and his wife had a child, and he was aware of the fact that for millennia, people have found comfort and courage in the practice of their faith. So, he decided to practice it too.

Like I said, AJ Jacobs is a writer, so he turned this whole experience of the found practice of faith into a book, called The Year of Living Biblically.

For a whole year, AJ Jacobs didn’t shave the corners of his beard. He couldn’t figure out where the corners of his beard actually were, so he didn’t shave at all…a practice that, as he told it, brought him into closer and more frequent contact with airport security. He wore clothes that did not have mixed fibers – no cotton/poly blend tee shirts. He did his best to never lie, even in small ways for the sake of social graces, like when he and his wife ran into an acquaintance of theirs at a restaurant (“We should get together sometime,” the acquaintance said. And instead of nodding and saying something polite, Jacobs forged ahead in rather not super-kind…honesty: “You seem like a nice person,” he said, “but my wife and I already have lots of friends that we never have enough time to see anyway, and we really can’t afford to add more to the mix right now…”)

It wasn’t all social awkwardness, though. Jacobs built a sukka in his apartment, to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. He learned to live the Sabbath – a self-admitted workaholic, he practiced the faithful rest of taking a real day off every week. He practiced lots of things during that year. He practiced and he practiced. 

When Jacobs was interviewed about the book on the TED radio hour, he talked about that notion of practice. He had been changed by his year of living biblically. He talked about his surprise at how much the outer practices of his life affects his inner experience – about how much his behavior affected his thought.

“There’s a phrase,” he said, “that it’s easier to act your way into thinking than it is to think your way into acting.”[2]

When the interviewer remarked about what Jacobs had learned throughout the course of that year, he responded: “One thing that really stuck with me was the idea of gratitude. Because the Bible says you should give thanks for everything in life. And I took that literally.

“So I would press the elevator button, and then give thanks when the elevator came. I’d step into the elevator, and give thanks for the fact that I didn’t plummet to the basement and break my collarbone.

“It was a strange way to live. But it was also quite beautiful. I realized that there are hundreds of things that go right, every day, things that we totally take for granted. And we tend to focus on the three or four that go wrong.

“I’ve tried to keep this practice, this perspective of gratitude, and it has made my life better.”[3] 

The opening prayer that is our collect from the beginning of worship today says this: “Stir up in us a saving faith, that believing, we may be healed, and being healed, we may give you thanks.”

Look at the people who find deep healing in today’s lessons:

In the first reading, from the second book of Kings, the passage tells the story of a great leader. Naaman commands Syria’s army, has power and wealth and strength and the favor of a king. And he also has leprosy, which no one can cure.

A servant girl, a young captive, suggests the help of a prophet in Israel. When Naaman goes to Israel to see the prophet Elisha, with an entourage that displays Naaman’s power and wealth and strength and favor, Elisha doesn’t care about any of that. Elisha doesn’t even come out of his house to say hello. Instead, he sends a messenger out, with a humble task for Naaman to do. That great commander turns in rage at the offense of it. And it takes the challenge of another servant, for Naaman to do the simple thing the prophet has given him to do.

Naaman, this man of power and strength and wealth and favor, finds the humility to follow the word of Elisha, the man of God. He washes in the Jordan, as he’s been told to do, and he is restored. What he does next, is important: Naaman returns to Elisha. The great commander stands before the Jewish prophet, and declares that the God that Elisha serves is indeed God over all the earth. 

In the gospel lesson for today, Jesus is walking in the borderlands, a space not really inside or outside of Jewish territory. Samaria is the place…of Samaritans…folks who keep themselves separate from the rest of the Jewish community, people seen as other and not really trusted. Samaria is the place of the Samaritan village, the one the disciples offer to call God’s judgment down on, after that village refused to welcome Jesus when he set his face toward Jerusalem.

This is not friendly country. It’s where people go when they don’t have anyplace else.

Ten people who have leprosy approach Jesus, but they still keep their distance. They are people of these borderlands, after all, regarded as unclean and unwelcome by the people and the community where they used to belong.

“Have mercy,” they call out.

Jesus doesn’t tell them to go wash in the Jordan, but he does give them a task, as Elisha had given to Naaman. “Go show yourselves to the priests,” he says. He’s moving them out of their borderland existence and back to the communities that used to be theirs.

As the ten go, their skin is restored – they are made clean. As they are made clean, one of them turns back, to give thanks. The one who turns back is a Samaritan.

Again, the words of that prayer: “Stir up in us a saving faith, that believing, we may be healed, and being healed, we may give you thanks.”

A dear friend of mine named Deborah went through a traumatic separation and divorce in her 30s. It’s a story that I knew it part, a story she shared with me more fully when we were together last week; a story she gave me permission to share with you.

She described that period of time like being upside down. She was so demoralized by her circumstances, so exhausted by the hardness of the situation that she was inside of, that she thought that was the only reality. She found herself in a kind of borderlands of her own, at too much of a distance from grace and hope.

Through the difficult right-foot, left-foot process of making the changes she needed to make, she finally began to emerge. And as she emerged, she could see that she was no longer captive to what had been her reality. When that happened, she said to me, “Kristin, my whole life became pure gratitude. I gave thanks for everything. And everything was different, was better.”

What if the now more-Jewish-than-the-Olive-Garden-is-Italian writer, AJ Jacobs, is right? What if there really are hundreds of things that go right, every single day, in ways that are both tiny and huge? What if God is saving us all the time?

And what if our best response to that is found in our actions, is found in what we do? What if our response is found in how and what we choose to practice?

Will we find ourselves restored? Like both of those biblical characters, like the author AJ Jacobs, like my dear friend Deborah, will our salvation be found as we take our place again among the people and the communities that are ours to claim, with the God who names us as beloved, in the place where we belong?

In response, will we practice taking notice? Like Naaman, to recognize that there is a God who is greater than we are, and to find ways to declare it with our words and in our lives?

In response, will we practice giving thanks? Like the Samaritan, to see that the very things we need have happened, and to show our gratitude?

 “Stir up in us a saving faith, that believing, we may be healed, and being healed, we may give you thanks.” May it be so, indeed.

[1] I’m grateful for the interview by Guy Raz of the TED Radio Hour found here, which frames much of this sermon: http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/431363633/amateur-hour

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

October 2, Feast of St. Francis

Matthew 11:25-30

“Francis, go and build my church, which is falling into ruins.”

I didn’t know much about St. Francis, growing up, other than the pet blessing day every year, which meant that we got to take our dog to church. As an adult, I knew about his love for creation; had heard about, but not seen the 1970s movie: Brother Sun, Sister Moon; had seen the garden statues of Francis, with his robe and his tonsured head and a bird on his shoulder or his hand.

And then we went to Assisi last year.

People told me that it was a tourist town. What I found, instead, was a pilgrimage site. Sure, you can find the same sorts of plasticky trinkets that are sold in lots of other places. And yes, there were tour groups with lots of cameras and leaders holding flags: “we’re walking, we’re walking…” And. And we walked the same cobbled streets that pilgrims to the sacred places of that town have walked for nearly a thousand years now. We walked the pathways of Francis’ hermitage at Mount Subasio, and picnicked afterwards higher up the mountain, with wild horses grazing nearby. We walked the places he would have walked, saw things he would have seen.

I hadn’t known what to expect of any of that first trip of ours to Italy after Easter last year, especially the first week of it that we spent in Assisi. We were grateful to be blessed and gifted and sent by all of you, grateful to Liz Caris for her recommendations of places to go (especially for the gelato, my favorite), and so excited to see our daughter Grace after her three months of study abroad.

We didn’t know what to expect. And then we found ourselves at San Damiano.

It’s a little church (“little,” comparatively, in terms of the churches in Italy) at the bottom of a long walk down the hillside from Assisi, through vineyards and along the cypress trees that define property lines. After our walk down the hill, we had waited in the square outside the church, with signs all around telling groups to keep silence (it didn’t happen), not to take pictures (they did). And then we went inside.

The walls of the church are bare stone, and close, with frescoes painted in the arch above the altar. There’s none of the grandeur we would see during the weeks to come as our trip continued, in Siena and Florence and Rome. This church felt intimate, and cloistered, and held. We walked in and the noise that had been outside just dissipated. We were pilgrims. And this was a holy place.

So the story goes, Francis prayed in that same church, before a crucifix that is also an icon, hanging at the arch above the altar.

As he prayed, he experienced God speaking to him: “Francis, go and build my church, for it is falling into ruin.”

It turns out that icon which is also a crucifix, the original from San Damiano Church now hanging in St. Clare’s Church in Assisi looks just like this icon which is also a crucifix, which normally hangs above the fireplace in our Lounge.

So Francis heard the call to build the church, and he looked around and saw the church in which he prayed really was falling into ruins. Stories vary about what happened next. Some have Francis picking up stones right away to physically rebuild the church. Some tell of him offering the proceeds of sales from his father’s silk trade to cover the cost of rebuilding. Maybe both are true.

What is clear is that Francis’ father, a wealthy fabric merchant, was not pleased about the way Francis perceived this call. He reprimanded his son, tried to shift Francis’ focus back to the course he would have chosen for him. The struggle between them persisted until finally, standing before his father and the people of Assisi at a gathering with the Bishop, Francis renounced his inheritance. He left the life his father would have chosen for him. He removed the very clothes he was wearing – stripped naked, and walked away.

Francis would live outside in the creation that became his home around Assisi for the next period of time; the only things he would have were what people gave him as a beggar. Stories are told of his relationship to the natural world: calming wild animals, preaching to birds, hearing prayer in the sound of the wind. I think we do him a disservice by constricting who he was to the caricature that I – at least – had in my mind before that trip. His reality was wilder and bigger and more faithful that all that.

In his writings he would declare that everything God has created has the ability to praise God. The shining of the sun and the cracking of thunder and the blooming of a flower – all of it, praise, all of it, holy.

The church at San Damiano was restored, and still Francis heard the call to build. And this is what makes me love this icon that is a crucifix. It has Jesus crucified at the center; and it also is filled with people.

The thing that might have pushed Francis into his life of faith was a call to build a physical church. But the work of his lifetime, I believe, was to build up the very Body of Christ which is the Church, people coming together as members of that body. His deepest call was to build that. He strove to build a church at peace with itself, each person seeking to be an instrument of that peace; a church striving – not for control over the wild of nature, but finding its harmony with all creation.

“Come to me,” Jesus says in the gospel appointed for this feast today. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of our time in Italy – any part of it, really – especially our time in Assisi, and at San Damiano.

What I found there was a crucifix that was also an icon. It has Christ at the center and has people all around. What I heard was the story of a call: build the church. Build my church, the Body of Christ in this time and place, knit together member by member of people coming together in praise, and thanksgiving, and petition, and lament, people offering to share the gifts they have been given. Build a church that is at peace with itself and is itself an instrument of peace, a church in harmony with creation. And what I couldn’t stop thinking about, as we walked, and rested, and drank coffee, and lit candles, and ate really good gelato, was you…was the Body of Christ that is this church in this time and place.

It’s good work, this easy yoke, this light burden we have carried together for the past four years now. I knew it before we were across an ocean and on another continent away in the week after Easter last year, and I know it now and still.

So what comes next for us? How will we live into our call in the weeks and months that stretch ahead of us, carrying the easy yoke and light burden that God continues to offer us? How will we strive to be an instrument of peace in a world that cries out for it? How will we find our harmony with all creation, singing praise to our creator?

How will we build the Church?

September 18, Homecoming and Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 16:1-13

Nobody quite knows what to do with today’s gospel. After consulting more bible commentaries than I had time to keep track of this week, the only consensus I found among the scholars who study scripture is that this story Jesus tells his disciples is a strange one. “Jesus’ most confusing parable,” said one commentator.[1] “A difficult text,” wrote another,[2] in characteristic understated fashion. “Jesus’ weirdest…” said a third.[3]

It’s an interesting lesson, I’ll admit, to have at the center of a day when we’re welcoming people back to worship at this one time and in this one space. Many of you have delighted in the beauty of God’s creation at our summer beach service, our Sandy Mass on the Grass at Gillson Park. Many of you have been away, as my family and I were, part of the time, for travel and rest and play. And some of you may be here with us for the first time today, searching for a new church to call your own. Welcome home, everybody, on this Homecoming Sunday. We’re glad you’re here.

In keeping with what’s happening in people’s lives right now, as lots of folks both tall and small have begun and returned to school, and as we prepare to begin our own church school year here at St. A’s, we will bless the gift of learning today. We’ll give thanks for the opportunity to study, and we will give thanks for those who teach. We will bless backpacks, giving thanks for students having what they need in order to learn and grow. And we will ask God’s provision and the community’s generosity for those who don’t.

So recognizing all that, I spent a good deal of time this week, studying for what exactly the good news of this gospel story might be.

As Jesus tells his disciples, a rich man has a manager who is about to lose his job. The manager hasn’t done that job well, and his boss, the rich man, finds out about it. Before the manager leaves, though, his soon-to-be-former employer asks for a reckoning of the accounts. The manager is scared. He knows his options are limited, he knows this is probably his last chance to lay any kind of groundwork for his own future. So he uses what he has, while he can. “This way, maybe people will remember, and help me,” he thinks.

The manager brings in his boss’ clients, and he cuts their debts. One debt he cuts by a fifth; another, by half.

As Jesus tells the story, the manager’s still-for-now boss finds out about what this manager has done. And the wealthy boss – who now has lost a fifth or even a half of what was owed to him – this wealthy employer congratulates the manager for his shrewdness. “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it’s gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes,” Jesus says. “If then you have not been faithful with dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” Jesus asks.

Huh?

Honestly, I’m grateful that we’re blessing curiosity today. Because I find Jesus’ words here…curious…indeed.

So I went to school on this passage. I found confessionals from scholars who said the kinds of things that people who study and write about scripture don’t usually tend to say: “This is confusing.” “It doesn’t make sense.” “I don’t know.” I found an argument claiming that the manager is actually a hero for helping to dismantle an unjust system by his dishonest actions. I read arguments that questioned and parsed where exactly the parable ended and Jesus’ instruction began. Some writers claimed that this passage is an imperative to preach about money. Others were equally insistent that it isn’t actually about money at all, but relationships.

In short, after no small amount of exploration, I can tell you that there was zero consensus about what this story means.

And my job, as I see it, as your rector and preacher, is to bring you the good news of the gospel; not to stage my own version of what one delightful preacher called a “desperate attempt to rescue Jesus from his own parable.”[4]

The succession of events seems curious. Last week’s gospel lesson began with the scribes and the Pharisees complaining to each other: “This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them.” Jesus responds by telling the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. After that, he also tells the story of the prodigal son – which will be read another Sunday. So there’s the gap of missing the prodigal story, and then today’s parable about the shrewd manager.

There doesn’t seem to be much separation in this process. Jesus is teaching, he hears the scribes and Pharisees complain, and he responds with the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal.

After that, Luke’s gospel says, Jesus tells the disciples the parable of today’s gospel passage about the dishonest manager and his rich boss. We know from the very next verse after today’s lesson that the Pharisees hear this parable, and they’re mad enough about it that they ridicule Jesus. But the text tells us that he’s not talking to the Pharisees. He’s telling the disciples.

So I wonder what it means, that after hearing grumbling about his inclusiveness of people (tax collectors! sinners!) whom respectable folks would tend to hold at a distance, Jesus turns to his twelve disciples and tells them a weird and confusing story that champions a rather more than shifty kind of a guy as the example the disciples should follow.

I love this season of going back to school. I love the smell of sharp pencils and the opening of new notebooks. From my mid-20s until beginning seminary in my mid-30s, I served as a high school teacher. And the thing I loved to teach best of all was writing.

In my last couple of years in that role, the administration team for my school made the decision to adopt a new writing curriculum. I don’t remember much about the curriculum adoption process, except that it seemed like the teachers who would be implementing it were maybe not as involved in that process as we would have hoped. It’s possible that I might have wrinkled my nose about that. And even worse, to my high-minded ideals about what teaching and writing are supposed to be: this curriculum used a formula…a script, even.

Well. “This administration welcomes curricula, and expects teachers to teach…” like, had I known this weird passage a little better at that point, it’s possible that I might have been the one grumbling it among the scribes in the teachers’ lounge.

But here’s the thing: it worked. My students who were already strong writers mastered the rules quickly and well enough that they could break them, and they became even better writers. And my students who had convinced themselves that they couldn’t write used the formulas, and yes, even the scripting, as a scaffold to help themselves through the writing process. Students who had never turned in any writing assignments in my class began writing sentences and then paragraphs and then essays. And they were good.

And I would have thought I had nothing to learn – and worse, that my students would have nothing to learn – from a writing program that taught by formula.

“This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them.” It’s interesting that this complaint provokes a series of parables about finding and restoring what was lost, about celebrating that restoration with joy.

If we look only at presentation and formula, it can be too easy to excuse our own lack of curiosity. Because what are we actually doing when we dismiss the dishonest manager? Are we saying that we have nothing to learn from someone like him? Is that why some of the commentators I found contorted themselves to make the manager into a socially acceptable guy? And if that’s what we try to do, underneath it aren’t we really trying to say that there are some kinds of people who have nothing to teach us about God’s kingdom? Aren’t we really trying to draw a bright line between ourselves as earnest-and-trying-to-be-faithful people, and those “others,” whoever they are?

The confounding good news of this gospel is that Jesus welcomes sinners, and he eats with us. The curious and interesting hope of this weird story is that he is talking to his disciples – the ones who will be the teachers of what he has taught – and he uses a strange and unlikely illustration of someone those earnest-and-trying-to-be-faithful disciples could stand to learn something from. And he does it all to point again and again and again to a kingdom where everybody is welcome.

So blessings, this day, on confusion and strange teachings and holy weirdness. Blessings on questions and curiosity. Blessings on backpacks and bibles and writing pads and calculators. Blessings on formulas and scripts, on shrewdness and discovery. Blessings on you, as you come home to this church. And blessings on the God who welcomes us all to the kingdom.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2746

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1783

[3] http://day1.org/5220-jesus_weirdest_parable

[4] http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-20c/?type=the_lectionary_gospel Thanks as well to the author of this text, Scott Hoezee, for the frame that set much of this sermon for me…after such head-banging.

September 11, Fifteenth Anniversary of the Attacks

Kristin White

The Fifteenth Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

Luke 15:1-10

You remember. You do, don’t you? You remember where you were, fifteen years ago right now.

I invite you into your own memory of that day: September 11, 2001. I invite us all to pause, in silence, to remember.

What I remember is driving home at the end of that day, after struggling throughout the day, together with my high school students, to take in the news, to try and understand any piece of what had happened, much less why. What I remember about that day was that every house along our street had a front porch. And by the time I drove home at the end of that day fifteen years ago, every porch on my street had an American flag flying from it. And it felt like prayer.

What I remember, in the days that followed immediately afterwards, was looking out the window in my classroom or at home, looking up at the sky, and wondering when I would see a plane flying out there again. In the immediate future, and in the future that stretched ahead of us, I wondered who and what we might become.

John Ohmer is an Episcopal priest, a friend of mine and the rector of The Falls Church in Virginia. This week as he wrote about remembering the occasion of this fifteenth anniversary, he said: “When we remember, we not only recall, but we participate in God’s saving actions – actions designed to (give hope) in the face of relentless, merciless evil.[1]”

Isn’t that what we do at our altar every week? Much more than some kind of historical recitation, through mystery that defies our comprehension, couldn’t we claim that as we hear again: “take, eat, this is my body…drink this, all of you…do this for the remembrance of me…” – are we not also making the audacious claim of participating in God’s saving actions?

The tax collectors and sinners can’t stay away from Jesus in today’s gospel lesson. They get closer and closer so they can hear what he has to say as he teaches. The scribes and the Pharisees, used to being the ones closest to whoever is the esteemed teacher in a crowd, have trouble with this. Maybe they feel threatened by having to be so near to people who usually keep themselves at a distance from folks like Pharisees and scribes. Maybe they’re just a little upset at the scandal of having to share space, of not being held aside as special. Whatever it is, the Pharisees and the scribes grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”

In response, Jesus tells two parables: first, the story of the lost sheep, searched for and found and carried home over the shoulder of a rejoicing shepherd. The second, a woman carefully seeking a lost coin – when she finds it she gathers her friends for a party to celebrate.

            “Rejoice with me!” the shepherd says.

            “Rejoice with me!” the woman says.

            “For I have found what was lost.”

So much has been lost in these last fifteen years. We have lost a great deal, through wars and rumors of wars, lost privacy in the name of security, lost trust among neighbors and between nations.

When a nation that has not known itself as vulnerable sees its vulnerability manifested by crashing planes and crumbling towers, we can become forgetful. More fractured, less connected. More isolated, less hospitable. More fearful…less generous.

“This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them,” the Pharisees and the scribes grumble.

But something else is waiting to be found, these fifteen years later. Something more, I trust and believe, is very near to us on this anniversary.

I have heard a number of news stories in recent days, as I imagine you have, too, about the September 11 attacks. So much loss and pain and devastation. Such excruciating beauty at the stories of people helping each other, sometimes at the cost of their own lives; of people calling the people they love best, assuring them that everything would be alright – only to discover later that it would not, stories of people calling the people they love best, to say goodbye.

I heard something else, though, too – something that seems to hunger to be found. In the span of an hour, this past Friday morning, from five seemingly disparate segments: from the woman who had served as chair of the senate intelligence committee, to a candidate seeking elected office, to the CEO of Starbucks, to a hiphop artist named MIA, to the president of Union Seminary, writing for Time magazine – I heard again and again and again and again and again the unwillingness to be defined only by what has been lost. I heard a rejection of the notion that what is wrong and broken will have the final word.

“We need a new narrative,” I heard the former senator say.

“We need good news,” I heard the CEO say.

We need to remember who we are, I say to you now.

Because we have that narrative, in the gospel that is our good news. And as we remember it, as we put the words of that gospel into practice, we do the very thing that my friend John Ohmer was talking about in his writing this week. As we remember the good news of who we are as a people, we participate in God’s saving actions.

Remember: the occasion we celebrate every Sunday at our Holy Eucharist is the occasion of God’s greatest vulnerability. Resurrection is victory because death is real, and to deny that is to forget the weighty blessing of God’s promise.

Living into the gospel means allowing ourselves to be found by the God who searches for us with the diligence of a woman holding her lamp, with the tender strength of a shepherd who would carry us across his shoulder, all the way home. The narrative that is our gospel is a story of defiant hope.

Remember: God calls us to participate in holy and saving acts. As we are right now, as we do together, Sunday by Sunday in prayer at this space and in the times between Sundays outside of this space, as we will at the end of our time together today, lifting our voices to sing these words:

            O day of peace that dimly shines

            through all our hopes and prayers and dreams

            guide us to justice, truth, and love,

            delivered from our selfish schemes.

            May swords of hate fall from our hands,

            our hearts from envy find release,

            til by God’s grace our warring world

            shall see Christ’s promised reign of peace.[2]

Yes. This fellow welcomes sinners, and welcomes us to eat with him. May it be so, in the trusted promise of that day when he finds us, lifts us up, and cries out: “Rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost!” and there will be joy in the presence of the angels.

[1] http://unapologetictheology.blogspot.com/2016/09/keep-calm-and-9-11-and-remembering.html

[2] Hymnal 1982: 59

August 27, Funeral of Pieter DeVryer

1 John 3:1-2

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

Most Sundays, for the past couple of years, a member of our parish named David Powell would drive Pieter to church. I tend to stand outside to welcome people as they arrive; Pieter would make a point to walk up and greet me by saying “I give you three Dutch kisses,” and then he’d kiss me: right cheek, left cheek, right cheek. And then he would laugh, as he did, and always inquire about how I was, and about my family, and he would ask about anyone in the parish that he hadn’t seen for a while.

It wasn’t easy for him to hear, so he was grateful that I printed copies of my sermon to share with him. Sometimes he would ask me to come visit so that we could talk about those sermons, or so he could ask questions about matters of faith.

He loved his family: Miepje; their children - Pieter and Johanna and Leonard. He loved this church. He loved his friends. He loved you.

Early on in the time after my family and I arrived at St. Augustine’s, Pieter and Miepje invited us to dinner in their home. They told stories of their lives – of how they met, of their work as psychiatrists, of how they found their way to the Episcopal Church through Bishop Anderson House, a chaplaincy program through the Episcopal Church, housed at the Rush Medical Center.

Pieter talked sometimes about his childhood in Holland. He shared stories of the Dutch Resistance during World War II, about being forced to work as an interpreter when the Nazis discovered his fluencies.

He took an interest in our daughter Grace. When he learned that she was studying German he made a point of speaking to her in German each time he saw her.

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“See what love the Father has given us…beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”

Pieter and Miepje lived with honesty and integrity as guiding principles. In their work, they helped people find a way toward wholeness. When Miepje woke one day, two and a half years ago, and told Pieter that she had lost her memory – the diagnosis an aggressive and incurable brain tumor – Miepje and Pieter manifested those principles again to all of us. They showed deep love to this whole community, in their willingness to share the journey of saying goodbye. And in sharing that process, in preparing for Miepje to die a good and holy death, they helped members of this congregation find our own way, as well, as we talked together about what our wishes were for the ends of our lives.

Not long after Miepje’s death, Pieter moved to the apartment at Three Crowns Plaza where he would live for the rest of his life. His reasoning was sound – of course it was. He would be less isolated there, could share meals with people and have easy access to the resources he needed. He could still come to church without too much trouble, could join our monthly men’s breakfast at Panera, as he did at least briefly when they gathered the first Saturday of August. I’m not sure if he knew before he moved about the group that assembled each evening at Three Crowns for a glass of wine and a discussion of the day’s news, but those of you who are here should know that he looked forward to that time together each day.

Pieter brought the things he loved with him to the new apartment: books and special pieces of art…and lots and lots of pictures of Miepje. He talked often about being with her again – not knowing when that would be or what it would be like, just trusting that it would be.

See what love…

In April, Pieter traveled to Florida to be with his family on the occasion of his birthday. He walked on the boardwalk at a nature refuge, spent time with his children and grandchildren. He looked forward to frequent visits from his daughter, Johanna, and from his son, Leonard; he was grateful to see his son Pieter almost daily. Just two weeks ago, Johanna took him to a concert at Ravinia, and afterwards to dinner at the Happ Inn.

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The writer of the second lesson that the DeVryers chose for today, from the First Letter of John, has seen a community strained by turmoil. John’s letter is testimony to the essential identity of that church, and – I would say – of this church, of every church. He writes emphatically at the outset: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…”

That word of life, this author contends, is love. Love is the essential character of God. Love is the clearest shape of that which binds us together.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we might be called children of God. And that is what we are.”

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Shortly after returning home to Florida after her last trip and subsequent concert at Ravinia, Johanna sent me a message saying her dad was failing, asking me to visit. I was still in Oregon at the time, so I reached out to our ministers of care. Julia and Ray Joehl went to see Pieter the next day. Pieter talked with them for close to an hour, walked them to the elevator when it was time to go. He was himself, to the end. He was who he was – still playful, still asking about the well-being of others. By Saturday, Leonard said, he stayed in the apartment. By Sunday, he was mostly in bed.

My family arrived home late Monday night. Tuesday morning I woke at 6:00 to Leonard’s call asking for prayers. By the time I arrived at 6:15, Pieter was gone. Leonard and I talked together, laid hands on Pieter and prayed him out of this life.

I returned later that day to spend time with the DeVryers, to ask about their hopes for today. As I was leaving the apartment, I commented on a photo of Miepje hanging on the wall in the living room. I said that I hadn’t remembered that picture being there, the last time I visited Pieter. It was taken in Alaska, with Miepje sitting in front of a mountain. She’s looking directly at the camera, looking exactly like who she was. It’s a stunning picture. “Yeah, that was Dad’s favorite,” Leonard said. “I think it replaced a Chagall that used to hang there.”

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“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

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None of us can know those things that have not been revealed to us yet. But we have promises. We have God’s great promise of love. I pray for that greatest revelation to be made manifest now, for Pieter and Miepje, and for all those we love and no longer see face to face, that blessed cloud of witnesses, that communion of the saints.

May each one of us see what love the Father gives us, that we should be God’s own children. For that is what we are.