May Choirs of Angels Sing you to your Rest!

Posted on July 26, 2016 by shepsewell

P. Jacques Hamel (1930-2016).
Requiescat in pace.

I suppose we all wonder from time to time as the cause and time of our own death. When Fr. Jacques awakened this morning he rose to celebrate the Holy Eucharist for his people at Saint Etienne. After 58 years of presiding at the table of the Lord in the midst of the Holy Mysteries, there was little that would have surprised him. However, this morning at this mass he was attacked at the altar by evil men who mixed his blood with the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation. Today, the faithful 84-year-old servant of Christ laid down his life for his faith. He is the most recent martyr for the sake of Christ. God grant us grace to follow his example.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

JWS+

Easter III

Posted on May 4, 2014 by shepsewell

Abraham’s Oak – Henry Ossawa Turner

Pausing, looking back toward where the story began there is symmetry, a type–antitype. The place God began his self-revelation was at Mamre, which wasn’t much even then except for one world-class oak, In fact the place was known as the Oak of Mamre as the tree gave it about its only reason for being.

God and two archangels some say or perhaps God, the Trinity, dropped by for lunch with Abraham and his wife Sarah. Since most have not seen an archangel and no one at all has seen the Trinity, it’s a little hard to know where one left off and the other began. It is safe to say that neither wife nor husband recognized their guests until all was revealed over lunch.

Abraham & the Three Angels – James Tissot

Abraham bent over backwards showing hospitality that day and Sarah would have baked a cake if they had given her warning. The holy ones gravely accepted Abraham’s spread under the spreading branches and then got on to the business at hand. You know how it turned out of course. The childless couple had a boy come new-year and Sodom and environs became the Dead Sea by year end.

Turning toward home, see the script? Cleopas and his companion are running away from home and bump into Jesus and then it all becomes clearer over supper. Both stories come to the moment of insight because of hospitality. Extending ourselves in service of the comfort and welcome of the stranger will often lead to gifts unforeseen. Do not neglect hospitality for some have entertained angels unawares. So you never know who might put their wingtips under your table, either expensive shoes or feathers. Prepare to hear the good news.

Jesus came near Cleopas and his un-named companion on the road from Jerusalem and Emmaus. Let’s get the actors straight on our program before we get confused. Hegsippus (early historian) records that Cleopas was the brother of Joseph the husband of Mary and step-father of Jesus our Lords. His companion may have been his son, Simeon. who became bishop after James, Jesus’ brother, was martyred?

Cleopas and company are running away from the scene of the crime. Their deepest hopes have become their deepest wounds. There is no one more cynical than a deeply wounded idealist. Their eyes were “held” so they did not recognize him. When they explain their distress, Jesus showed them, beginning with Moses and so showed them that another way to read and understand the Scriptures was exactly what happened to Jesus. Thus he reframed their history and made bad news into good news.

Anyone who has lived for very long has come to know that sometimes the only thing worse than the disappointment of not getting what we want is the remorse of getting exactly the thing longed for only to learn how bad it was for us and our souls. Of course, hopefully we learn from the consequences of getting what we want. It may well be that our “wanter” is broken. Actually it has been since Adam at the apple. It may be that God knows better what we need and want than we do.

Emmaus – James Tissot

They come to Emmaus, perhaps to the family home, where Cleopas and his older brother Joseph were brought up. It was there it happened. They were sitting at the old family table, the very one that for all their lives on Friday they had the prayers and only the day after the Passover Supper where again they had eaten and told the story of rescue, how God brought them out of Egypt into the promised land and where they hoped for Messiah, the anointed one of God.

Here Jesus did what is always done at this table, all Christian tables, at this service of Holy Thanksgiving.

Supper at Emmaus – Abraham Bloemaert

The four movements of the Eucharist, He took, he blessed, broke and gave.

He Took

In reply to Satan who suggested he turn loaf-shaped stones into bread Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Of course he doesn’t live without it either. In the only story told by all four Gospels (other than the passion) Jesus took a lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish and fed 5000 people. If Jesus is God, then he was on the ground floor when the Universe began and if you can make matter from scratch then he can stretch molecules of bread in hand.

Supper at Emmaus
– Diego Velazquez

What folk should have learned that day was (and is), whatever we make truly available to Jesus can (and will) be used. In addition, we should have learned by now that when Jesus takes something (any old thing) it is transformed and it becomes enough..
Now, think of all the “castoffs” of our lives. . It is a hoot seeing what Jesus does when he up-cycles what we distain into something needful. Today, look around, take inventory and then offer what we find to Jesus. He can do more with less than anyone I have ever I have ever known.

HE BLESSED

A couple makes promises and then is married but when they are blessed their relationship is filled with divine content. Having taken the bread, ordinary stuff to sustain life in the body, Jesus now makes the bread “different/holy” and it is no longer just bread, but, like Manna in the wilderness, it is the bread of Heaven.

Blessing changes things. It changes relationships. It changes effect. It changes value. To be blessed by God gives dignity and worth. If we are worthless by all human standards not so with God, divine love and blessing creates value where none existed before.

What we will give up, Jesus will take up. What Jesus takes up, he blesses as he did that day when the children came running to him. And what he blesses has merit and dignity if for no other reason, because he blessed them. If God can do that with ground wheat seed mixed with water and baked, what can God to our lives?

HE BROKE

The most solemn moment in any Eucharist is the “fraction” – the actual breaking of the bread. On a day with low humidity there is a discernible “cracking” sound heard through the room. In that moment we are confronted symbolically with the suffering of Christ.
The rubric (stage direction) in the Prayer Book is, “The celebrant breaks the consecrated Bread. A period of silence is kept.” What can we do in face of his sacrifice other than be silent? I believe that the breaking of the bread is all the broken things in our lives, our souls and bodies, those things done, those things left undone, are all (everyone) broken there as well. It is a good breaking, like re-breaking a leg that was inadequately set, in service of fullness of life.

HE GAVE

What Jesus’ taking, blessing and breaking make, he gives. It is food. It is life. It is healing. It is celebration and it is joy. Above all it is Viaticum, literally “food for the journey.” That which God requires of us, God in grace provides us. We need not grow hungry, forced to eat fast-food along the shoulder of the road. Lest we succumb to the junk-food at the Jiffy Mart, Jesus provides us nourishment such that we will arrive prepared to do what needs doing.

When we come for “solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal;” (BCP. Page 372) then we miss the best part. And what is the best part, you ask?
Why, the best part is going out and doing what Jesus said for us to do and seeing that indeed it is happening. What’s not to like? Join a ministry team and find out. These are the four movements of the Eucharist.

THEY WENT

In truth there is a fifth movement: they went. Having the last say, the Deacon exhorts, “Go and do what needs to doing. If you have been fed – be bread.” (My language)

Jesus gave them the bread, they eyes were no longer “held” and they recognized him. Then he vanished. Then, no longer tired; (interesting how that happens) Cleopas and company marched immediately from Emmaus back to Jerusalem with the news of Jesus’ resurrection. Upon arriving they discover that the risen Christ has been busy and there afore them.

Our hearts burned as he reframed the scriptures to include Messiah’s “failure” death upon a tree, they marveled. It’s really a simple matter, you see. Their unconscious got it even if their eyes were “held” and the same, beloved, is true in our own day.

Ever since Emmaus, Christians know that Jesus shows up when the bread is broken. We don’t have to see him with our physical eyes. Our hearts will tell us even when our eyes fail us. Pay attention to the awaking fascinations of your soul. The soul turns unconsciously to God, as sunflowers follow the sun. .

JWS

RECTOR’S ADDRESS

Posted on December 15, 2013 by shepsewell

Christ of the Homeless – Fritz Eichenberg

Saint John’s Episcopal Church – Memphis, Tennessee

I want to tell you a story I heard this week. It happened in one of the Episcopal parishes in Memphis last Sunday. The clergy and staff were busy preparing for the service when a man came in from the cold. A staff person saw him and introduced himself. The man’s hands were rigid, clammy cold. He was welcomed in given coffee and a place to warm himself.

Later the Rector learned the back story. The man had tried to get the Union Mission but they were dangerously full. He could find no place to be so he walked through that night because to stop, rest, perchance to sleep, was deadly in 22 degree weather. By morning he had walked a long way and happened upon that parish.

Everyone gathered themselves for church and one of the clergy invited the man to church and he came, sitting near the front behind a parish family. They invited him to communion and he went. The service ended as Episcopal Eucharist does with the congregation dispatched to do ministry in the name of the Lord. As everyone in Church busied themselves preparing to go off to lunch as folk in Memphis have done for generations, the man from the pew in front of the guest asked if he had a coat. “No.” He took off his own overcoat and put it on him.

And the Kingdom came near that parish that morning. And that parish, beloved was this parish, your parish, Saint John’s.

N T Wright, Bishop of Durham (retired)

I was listening to Bishop NT Wright a few days ago as I walked in my neighborhood. He spoke directly to me about these men when he spoke of the empowering nature of the Eucharist, giving those that receive it the energy to become the occasion where Jesus’ incarnation breaks out again.” The moment that coat left its owners back and was slipped on the man Jesus was in-fleshed again – We know what Jesus would have done if he had been there because he WAS there!

While I was in York, I heard Dr. Anthony Campolo lecture in the choir of York Minster.

Anthony Campolo

Britain is in a national debate about these very concerns. Dr. Campolo launched his lecture from Genesis 4: 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

People rather love quoting Cain. It distances them from any genuine connection. Even in the Church we rather like to quote Cain, of all things? That being as it may, the real answer Dr. Campolo announced is, “You are not your brother’s keeper. You are your brother’s brother!”

That is my very theological point about the encounters in the film and in Saint John’s nave. It is one thing to give, even vast sums of money, from a safe distance and from a higher position. A story from my years in Mississippi is illustrative. The Stew Pot was inter-faith soup kitchen in Jackson. People from lots of religious communities had volunteers who went to serve food at the daily noon meal. That was all well and good until a new director was appointed. He decreed that food would no longer be served at the counter but that the volunteers would serve the homeless at their table and then when they had waited their table sit and eat with the people they served. I don’t need to report the sad fact that when people had to come from behind the safety of the counter, serve as waiters and then break bread with the same people …. they were never seen again.

Mahatma Gandhi

E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist Missionary to India, was a great friend of Mahatma Gandhi. He once asked Gandhi what Christians should do? Jones then writes the following: “The greatest living non-Christian (Gandhi) asks us not to adulterate it or tone it down, not to meet them with an emasculated gospel, but to take it in its rugged simplicity and high demand. But what are we doing? As someone has suggested, we are inoculating the world with a mild form of Christianity, so that it is now practically immune against the real thing.” (E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road, “The Great Hindrance.)

Which leads me to ask me and you the question: If we do not contract a lethal strain of Christianity, how can we die to self as The Holy Spirit penetrates our history and existence…

How can those who do not believe contract the full influenza of grace?
How can those with just enough Christianity to have an allergic reaction;
How can those who contracted a comfortable Christianity, whose martyrdom is mild embarrassment;
Or God forgive us, those who contacted certainty leaving them twisted and almost invincibly immune from the faith as we have received it;

If we, you and I do not get up from breaking bread and be bread… If we have been fed and refuse to be bread, For God’s sake who will?

This city is starving to death for the very bread that only you and I can be…

That is why when I began to hear from a great distance the new life that was springing up among you as you read the scriptures, how Bible studies were organized not from the corner of Greer and Central but in offices and businesses and homes. When I heard how new energy infused Sunday School as the daily feeding quickened the life force of faith within you, I gave thanks.

Constantine the Great

As I wandered the streets of York, knelt in Churches where human knees have bent for a 1000 years I prayed for you. I stood near the spot that Constantine was proclaimed Emperor and went from that spot to relieve the Church from persecution and there I prayed, I asked the Almighty to give us vision for the freeing of the souls of Memphians from poverty and despair. As I sat in the Quire of the Great Cathedral of Saint Peter, the Prince of Apostles, who failed Jesus yet followed him anyway, and listened to the choir chant ancient Psalms there I asked God to give us strength for the living of these days.

Now that I am among you again, I see that the rumors of your quickening faith are not exaggerated and I give thanks.

What is the way forward? Please join with me in praying. The renewal team continues to meet, your staff and vestry pray and will take counsel together in the days ahead. What I ask of you is that you consider adding the ancient practices into the living of rhythm of your days. Some physicians among us will coach us as we take up fasting. We will offer this before Lent. There are valid ways of anyone to fast. Resources, companions and a map will be provided anyone who will. That is all required. The Renewal Works process will continue as a way of life here.

Before I close, let me speak to you who signed a card in September and now find yourself wandering with the Children of Israel somewhere in the Wilderness of Numbers or Leviticus, if you have read a sentence more scripture than you would have done otherwise that is good news. My philosophy is that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. So take up you Bible and read. This is not a sprint it is a long distance. No one will be left behind. We are in this together.

To Him be glory, now and forever. Amen.

For Matt and Brittany Legg on Their Wedding Day

Posted on November 16, 2013 by shepsewell

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

We are gathered here in the presence of God and of this company of the friends of your souls. We come to do a couple of things before nightfall.

We come to Celebrate and Bless

I. We Come to Celebrate!

To Interpret, to make sense of … So we come to figure out, make sense of what the two of you have gotten yourselves into…Now as Christians we interpret with Christ in mind. So we make sense of your relationship, the promises you are about to make, because of the paradoxical mystery of Jesus the Christ, what he has done and what that means continually and forever. We come here to witness your vows because Jesus is present among us as he said, if 2 or 3 are gathered in his name – he will be revealed, discovered in their midst. Saint Thomas Aquinas once said that Jesus is principally experienced by a heightened awareness of mutual love and concern.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor, patriot and martyr to the Nazi terror, wrote a letter to his twin-sister on the day of her wedding. In it he said, “The love between her and husband was theirs and theirs alone, but their marriage belonged to the whole church, to the whole community. How you live into the vows you make this day affects us all for better, for worse… Also Bonhoeffer said in his letter, “That the love between her and her husband is does not keep their marriage going. No, the marriage is to keep their love going.”

With that in mind, today we come to make a container for your love. The reading from The Song of Solomon proclaims a peculiar and mysterious truth, “that love is a strong as death.” That of course is true – our love has a singular and spare beauty – but like a glass that when dropped often bounces – but if that same glass lands just so it shatters, and in that moment death is stronger than love. So we come to make a container for your love so that regardless of circumstance it will continue of service to your love. What are these circumstances that your love faces?

In the vows is embedded an ancient notion called the Wheel of Fortune. The notion being that life is lived on a wheel that moves up and down and around as life moves inexorably into the future. For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health: what? To love and cherish until you are parted by death! Now your marriage is to be lived not on the outside of the wheel to be crushed by the wheel as it moves inexorably into the future and beyond; no live your marriage at hub of the wheel so it turns in your center, the holy place where Jesus is discovered: for he is the lynch-pin in the hub.

Now here we are all dressed up in our finest clothes and also our impeccable denial, and we will key on the words better, richer and health – and ignore all those other words. But anyone who is married more than 15 minutes knows that plenty of all it will come upon you. We come to celebrate.

II. We also come to bless you.

Sacrament: outward sign of inner and spiritual grace; Water/Baptism; Bread and Wine/Communion and for marriage holding hands (right hands in this case). These very material and human scaled things are filled with divine content – bread/wine – bread of heaven – cup of salvation = filled with divine content. Holding hands and giving receiving of rings – filled with holy energy to get out bed day after day to be married.

And we come to make our prayer that for better, for worse…in this world to be adorned with all Spiritual Grace and in the world to come, life and that life Everlasting.

Beyond Contradiction

Gain Disguised as Loss

Tag Archives: Holy Eucharist

May Choirs of Angels Sing you to your Rest!