Maundy Thursday

Posted on March 24, 2016 by shepsewell

Maundy Thursday – James Tissot

It is interesting that the Church followed the story line of Matthew, Mark & Luke + Paul in the reading from his first letter to the Corinthian Christians when they established the core act of worship for the Church. So ever since the Church has gathered to break the bread and drink the wine as the principal metaphor of Christ’s continuing presence in the world.

Have you ever thought how things would have been different if instead the Church had cued on the Gospel reading from John? What if foot-washing had become our central Sacrament rather than communion. Think of all the glaring questions we could be debating:

How to wash feet?
Should they be immersed?
Should they be sprinkled?
Should the right or left foot come first?
Who is authorized to wash feet?
Can women’s feet be washed?
Perhaps most importantly could women wash feet?

We laugh but are not similar arguments about Eucharist and Baptism in the same category? What is going on here? What is Jesus telling us?

During Supper, Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe and tied a towel around him. The word, “took off” or literally laid down is the same word the Jesus used when he spoke of laying down his life. When he took up his clothing again it is the same word as taking up his life again. There seems to be a connection between the foot washing and the death/resurrection of the Lord.

Womn Washing Jesus’ Feet

This is what Paul was speaking to in the Epistle to the Philippians last Sunday when he remarked that equality with God was not something that Jesus exploited but humbled himself taking the form of a servant. I will not go into all the discussion of Greek thought which that represents but let me say that Paul is saying that servant-hood and glory are each genuine expressions of who God IS! Taking the towel is taking the role of servant.

People walked everywhere and so feet got dusty when you arrived at your destination. Each house had a pitcher of water and basin + towels provided for people to wash their own feet. Mosaic Law provided that Jewish servants did not have to perform such menial tasks. Jesus makes the point that for God nothing is menial. The very core of our understanding our understanding of God is that He is self-giving.

So Jesus did for his disciples what they were not willing to do for each other and to those beyond the group. Not much has changed has it? Jesus is still more willing to reach out to us than we are to reach out to him and each other.

There is also an ancient tradition that the spirit enters and leaves us not through the head but through the “soles” (souls) of the feet. The pattern of whorls is the path of the wind of life as it entered and left the body. So there is a spiritual idea about feet — that we to which we pay little attention to may be of profound importance.

So tonight we hear the call of God. By our baptism we are to be servants to all that we encounter in the world. Servanthood begins in baptism and is acted out in worship tonight so that we may serve in the marketplace. There is really a profound connection between getting to know each other “hand to foot” that is terribly important.

To put aside our embarrassment at WASHING feet and having OUR feet washed by someone else. Being embarrassed is not fatal. A South American priest has said, “Embarrassment is as close to suffering as most of us have ever been.

Tonight we remember just how much we really need each other. I am never more aware of that truth than when we bury our children. We need each other to be real. We are not perfect. We are not always wise. We are lonely – we are afraid – we long for people who will forgive us and love in spite of what we sometimes are and sometimes are not.

jesus washing peters feet by ford madox brown

Jesus washes the feet of Peter – Ford Peter Maddox

There is something about the washing of feet that breaks through all of our cosmetic differences and barriers. No one must do this, but I encourage you to stretch a little.

We are a blessed people. Remember that one is not blessed at the expense of others but for the sake of others. We bring food tonight for the hungry as Christians have been doing for hundreds of years. We are called to remember that human beings are more alike than they are different.

Parker Palmer defines grace as, “the constant availability of abundance with the question always being am I open to it or not?”

Tonight like our Lord, we also are called to lay aside our pride and our dignity, as he laid aside his life as a sign of our life in him. He came among humanity as a servant. Let us claim his name now act like him. There is something about getting to know people hand to foot that is transforming and liberating. Let us do for each other what he did for those with him that night.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Why I Don’t Believe in Grace Anymore

Posted on July 16, 2014 by shepsewell

Why I Don’t Believe in Grace Anymore | UnTangled.

Giving Grace is the incarnating movement of love crossing the liminial wasteland of culture wars. In the smoky silence lie the litter of bodies; those going into battle hoping for more, finding only the debris of hope among the scattered dreams .Battle Ruin – Jaecheol Park

It is up to us to walk the boundaries, the verge of chaos and gather up those who long for someone to just be glad to see them and take delight (often a matter of choice in the begininning – feelings following) in the simple fact that they exist.

I know someone did it for me, one time long ago, and it has made all the difference. JWS+

Brokenness elim…

Quote

Posted on July 2, 2014 by shepsewell

Brokenness eliminates the need for a self-preserving agenda.

Julie A. Gorman

June 26, 2005

Posted on June 27, 2014 by shepsewell

NOTE; Obviously this is an old sermon. The themes are exactly the ones I struggle with today. You can interpret that several ways. I’m not sure myself. I feel the same issues but with greater intensity. As our Lord says, “Work while it is day for night is coming when no man can work.” John 9:4

THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Almost ten years ago I was interviewed for the local evening news in Jackson, Mississippi. The young reporter came to ask my opinion about prayer in public schools.

I thought long and hard about how to say what I thought.

For one thing a sound bite format is not kind to Anglican ways of thinking. Most issues are more complicated than that.

Secondly as a minority church in a sea of free-church Protestants, Episcopalians have some inkling of what it is like to have the “majority opinion” forced on us.

I am sympathetic to the concerns that prompt such controversy. But in many ways we have entered a post Christian era in this country. Which is to say that we can no longer assume that Christianity and culture are contiguous. I thought back almost twenty years to an article from the October 1986 issue of Christian Century. Here is an excerpt from an article by William Williman.

“THOUGH I COULD NOT have known it at the time, a momentous event in my faith journey occurred on a Sunday evening in 1963 in Greenville, South Carolina, when, in defiance of the State’s archaic Blue Laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.

Only lately have I come to see how that evening symbolizes a watershed in the history of Christianity in the United States. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina – the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western World – gave in and served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the Church. If Christians were going to be made in Greenville, that the church must do it alone.

There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head-to-head with the church to see who would provide ultimate values for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.

In taking me to Church, my parents were affirming everything that was American. Church was, in a sense, the only show in town. Everybody else was doing it. Church, home, and state formed a vast consortium working together to instill Christian values. People grew up Christian simply by growing up American. All that ended the night that the Fox Theater opened on Sunday.”

Dearly beloved, take nothing for granted!

We can no longer assume that people who come here for the first time on Sunday morning have any idea about what we believe. The truth is that we often are not all that sure ourselves.

• Some come because it is what they have always done.
• Some come because it is good for the children to get values.
• Some come because one can make business contacts at Church.
• And some come because they are hungry for God.

Many come for a bundle of reasons.

Regardless of how it has been in the past, the culture will no longer prop us up. If we are going to be Christians and make Christians we will have to do it the old fashioned way: by depending on God and each other, and that, my fellow Episcopal Christians of Saint John’s is a choice.

Christ and sword

W. F. Albright translates the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:34 this way: “Do not think thatI have come to impose peace on earth, Do not think that I have come to impose peace on earth by force; I have come neither to impose peace, nor yet to make war. I have come to divide . . . a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be members of his own house.” Albright continues, “Jesus does not come to impose peace by FORCE. On the contrary, his coming will involve painful decisions. He will not interfere with human freedom.”

We are free to choose. The culture will not prop us up. It may no longer be good business to be Christian. In point of fact the Gospel is increasingly not the worldview the culture proposes.

And yet the call of Jesus is clear, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The country is anxious. Many want props. But I am not convinced that legislating props will do the job. When we venture beyond the safety of cultural Christianity, (civil religion) we will find that life is changing. Several things become evident.

• We want to see all bad in others and not in ourselves.
• We don’t know the reality of the Gospel all that well ourselves.
• We have majored on minors and minored on majors.
• We despair.
• We see the bad in others and not in ourselves.

This produces self-righteousness and contempt that is alien to the Gospel. A poem from He Sent Leanness, A Book of Prayers for the Natural Man by David Read

HOPE FOR HEAVEN

“Lord, I am quite convinced that I shall not be at home in heaven. Is this all Thou hast to offer? Thy eternal City as men have described it seems unbearably cosmopolitan. There are some nations (which I will not at present specify), some denominations (which shall be nameless), one political party (Lord, Thou knowest), and many types of musicians (if such a word can be applied to them at all), with whom I could not possibly live. Could I, perhaps, have a quiet detached mansion on my own, with a few specified visitors for short periods?”

Most of us are not that honest! By being “good” and keeping some of the rules we see ourselves as O.K., rather than saved by grace and NOTHING else. [Period]

• We don’t know the reality of the Gospel too well ourselves.

We’d have something more to share than rule and moral codes. We know the form but deny the power there of. We are always prepared for God to do nothing. When he does something we are ill prepared. We do not live as if there is a resurrection. We live as if we hoped there might be something, but we are not sure what it is.

• We have majored on minors and minored on majors.

Christians have been busy fighting about number of issues. Many issues cannot be “solved” or “voted on” and put to rest as much as we might like. We will have to pray and live through most of them. It is messy but throwing stones and being willful will not promote the Kingdom of God.

We have gotten things backwards. We build buildings and then try to figure out what to do with them, rather than preach the Gospel and build buildings to house the community that grows from that Gospel. We are in the process of looking at long range building here. But we are not doing neutron bomb evangelism: kill the people and save the buildings.”

For much of the late 20th Century the Church rearranged the deck chairs on the luxury ship Episcotanic. And when we do venture out beyond the doors of our churches we look around and we despair.

• We despair.

We act as if there is nothing that can be done and that God is finished. Despair is a sin!!! To despair is to say that God cannot act. We have never yet had to face any real difficulty for being a Christian. The most that we have ever suffered is mild embarrassment — and that not for long.

Let me be clear this morning about what I believe. Let me make a brief “I have a dream speech”. I believe that Saint John’s exists for one reason and one reason only: to be a place where souls are transformed in relationship to God! God in Christ Jesus calls us to follow him, and this journey is not one of convenience. It is a cross we pick up not a hammock. The Journey to God begins with you and with me.

There were three friends who were eager workers, and one of them chose to devote himself to making peace between people who were fighting, in accordance with ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. The second chose to visit the sick. The third went off to live in tranquility in the desert. The first toiled away at the quarrels of men, but could not resolve them all, and so, in discouragement, went to the one who was looking after the sick, and he found him flagging too, not succeeding in fulfilling the commandment. So the two of them agreed to go and visit the one who was living in the desert.

They told him their difficulties and asked him to tell them what he had been able to do. He was silent for a time, and then he poured water into a bowl and said to them, ‘Look at the water.’ It was all turbulent. A little later he told them to look at it, and see how the water had settled down. When they looked at it, they saw their own faces as in a mirror. Then he said to them, ‘In the same way a man who is living in the midst of men does not see his own sins because of all the disturbance, but if he becomes tranquil, especially in the desert, then he can see his own shortcomings.”

I long for Saint John’s to be like a desert place where we become still and see ourselves and in that stillness hear the call of God. That is why we are here. Welcome in name of the resurrected Jesus!

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Amen.

THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE

Posted on February 3, 2014 by shepsewell

Presentation of Christ in the Temple – Rembrandt

The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple is not one we know well. So, let’s talk Theology: The Presentation marked on February 2^nd is the other half of the Annunciation marked on March 25^th (9 months from Christmas

Gabriel – Annunciation of great joy – He is Messiah & Virgin born
[Contradiction]
Anna & Simeon – Presentation of great suffering – He will redeem his people at great cost.
Equals Paradox

The reading from Hebrew Scripture is from Malachi, the last of the prophets. He writes, “. . . and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight — indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

The prophet tells the House of Israel and us two things: 1. The Lord is coming and 2. He is coming to the temple.

In the 1^st Century the longing for Messiah was keenly felt in the era of Roman occupation. The temple of that period, the third temple was built by King Herod, the Roman puppet king. In 19 BC he began work on a new temple at Jerusalem. He did this to win favour with his subjects and to impress the Roman world with his splendid building. The main building was finished in ten years but work continued for the next fifty.

The temple itself was covered with so much gold that it was a blinding sight in the bright sun. The temple platform was extended beyond the hill to enclose an area of 35 acres. I have read that 24 or so football fields would fit on that vast platform. It could be seen from outer space. At its southern end, it stood 100-150 feet above ground level. A covered cloister ran right around the outer courtyards.

The Temple was laid out in concentric courtyards.

The main entrance was from the south, and led to the Court of the Gentiles. Anyone could enter this part of the temple. [Notices in Greek and Latin forbade non-Jews to enter the inner court of the temple.]
The next court was the Court of the Women. This was as far women were allowed to go into the temple itself. It was here where Mary and Joseph stopped.
Men could go further, into the court of Israel.
The inner court was limited to priests only.
In the center of the complex was the Holy of Holies where only the High priest went once a year on the Day of Atonement.

The point I want to make here about Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the Temple, is that it is nothing like anything we have ever seen. You may think this is sort of like a baptism since we tend to view the Scriptural setting as identical to our own.

Not so, put that right out of your head.

Going to the Temple was less like going to Church than going to the Fair!

Model of Temple

The centerpiece of temple worship was the ritual slaughter of animals: sheep, goats, bulls, and if you couldn’t afford four-legged animals a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By this time the Jews were no longer a nomadic people, each family with their own flocks. But you still needed animals for sacrifice. A thriving business grew up supplying animals for sacrifice. [You recall that Jesus did something about that but that is 33 years in the future.] So:

You bought your animal, got in line and when your time came you presented your beast to the priests.
They killed the animal and it’s blood poured down a special drainage system designed to drain away the vast amounts of blood spilled every day.
The outdoors altar was a slaughter assembly line with the Sun shining and the animals bellowing.
Some of the meat went to the priests;
Some of it was used for your family ritual meal, while the remaining parts were burned.
It was a bloody, smoky, smelly place.
At the same time worshipers were praying out loud,
Choirs were singing psalms
Religious scholars were holding forth to their students in the porches around the courtyards.

Going to the temple and going to church have little in common unless we open a stock yard at the Cathedral and hold graduate classes in theology and choir rehearsal at a continuous Pentecostal revival and barbecue!

“ . . . And the Lord you seek will suddenly come to His temple!” Certainly Simeon knew the words of the Malachi. And then it happened one day, not perhaps the way he had imagined but nevertheless it happened. A couple came into the temple to make sacrifice, as required by the law, for their first-born son. Most families sacrificed a sheep or a calf. The law made provision for people of less means. They could get by with a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

The irony is that all the crowds that thronged the temple that day did not discern the presence of Messiah, the very one that they desired. They were so busy doing what was required that they missed the great day, when the Son of God had his coming out, presented to all the world and only two eccentrics whose eyes were fixed, looking for God, saw him.

The Spirit gave Simeon the gift of recognition. So Simeon spied them and his heart, long trained to look for Messiah, discerned in the face of the little one, the face he had longed to see: the face of the holy one. Taking the babe in his arms, he blessed God in the words we sing at evening prayer or often at the burial of a Christian, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”

Anna, eighty-four years old, who lived in the temple and worshiping there fasting and praying day and night came in. She too recognized the child as the promised one, and began to tell the news to all who were looking for the redemption of Israel.

This Day is also called Pro Orantibus [For those who pray] These two old people, Simeon who prayed and dreamed, Anna who prayed and fasted may have been half blind with age but the eyes of their imagination were clearly and sharply focused.

Mark Twain once said, “

“You cannot trust your eyes, if your IMAGINATION is out of focus.”

If Renewal Works has taught us anything it is that while everyone owes God One soul, the care and feeding of your soul cannot be delegated, hired out or left to force feeding by the clergy. It can however be neglected, starved and abused.

RenewalWorks is a process we are using to get our imaginations in focus! How?

We are reading some scripture from day to day or at least regularly; not enough we believe but more scripture than we have in the past. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly! It doesn’t take much Bible to affect us! Embedding our lives in Scripture focuses our imagination!
In the breaking of bread: To discern the presence of our Lord in the bread and wine. We believe that in this place we encounter the risen Jesus in bread and wine just as he promised. If this is true do you see it is the most important thing we do all week!
In our own inner life I believe that God is speaking to us constantly in our prayers, dreams, visions, and hunches. But we are to busy doing our daily sacrifices of time, talent and ambition to even notice. It is only when we are willing to slow down and focus our imaginations that we can trust our eyes.
In each other: God often seems to speak to me through the people in my life. Parker Palmer once wrote that, “Community is that place where the person you cannot stand always live.” It takes a work of imagination to see that we are all gifts of God to each other, especially those who irritate and scare us the most.
In the faces of the poor and stranger: The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta spoke of Jesus in his disturbing disguises. She said that when she encountered him in the breaking of bread that she could encounter him in his most distressing disguises. Eyes with focused imagination see him and hear him, “If you have done to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters you have done it unto me.”

Icon of the Presentation

I ask you to take better care of your souls. Please call on us. The clergy are not paid to be Christians for you. The clergy are here as player-coaches. We are in ministry of equipped and coaches ministers. Please, Please, by the mercies of God come and join in this movement.

In our baptism we are given the gift of the Spirit, who penetrates history and existence in order to focus our imaginations will come into focus. With clear eyes it is easy to discern the Holy One in us, between us and to holy hands for the care those in need.

I see you. I see him in you. Look around you will see him too. To him be glory now and forever. Amen

The Origin & Healing of Sin

Posted on January 25, 2014 by shepsewell

Abel and Cain offer their sacrifice to God

Prudentius(1) in a work entitled The Origin of Sin demonstrates the Type – Antitype(2) Structure of Christian Biblical interpretation. He shows this through the story the murder of Abel by his brother Cain enraged that Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God and his was not.

Then a brother in jealousy of the goodness that was accepted arms his hand to commit parricide, and breaks his own brother’s neck with his bent hoe, staining the new-made world with unnatural bloodshed, a world to be purified late in time when it was already growing old, by the sacred blood of Christ whereby the destroyer fell. Death first began with he wounding of one that was innocent, and passed away by the wounding of one that was innocent, and passed away by the wounding of one that was guiltless. Through sin it arose, by sin it was done away, in that afortime it smote Abel, and then Christ; it was itself brought to an end in aiming at one who is without end.

: The Origin of Sin: Prudentius

The Type/Antitype typology speaks to the criticism that says the God of the Old and New Testaments are not the same God. The old one is vengeful and the new one is don’t worry be happy. This is really grossly over-simplified as the Hebrew Scriptures are full of the loving kindness and never failing mercy of God. While the Book of Revelation for one in the New Testament has plenty of judgement (thank you very much).

For me at least, I see the difference as not about God’s character at all but rather about the development stage of humanity. There is a story I remember reading about John Wesley (where I have no idea) who went to the mines preaching grace and the miners paid him no mind. The next day he returned, this time preaching hell-fire and judgment. That day they heard him.

The structure of Type & Antitype display the essential and deep harmony of the entire sweep of the Bible. It is one story. The murder of Abel is the murder of our brother and the failure of Cain is the failure of our brother. When that becomes true we will be a long way toward understanding the amazing grace of God’s steadfast love demonstrated in the saving acts of God in history.

(1)Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in the Iberian Peninsula some time after 405, possibly around 413. Wikipedia

(2)Type – Antitype

1. One that is foreshadowed by or identified with an earlier symbol or type, such as a figure in the New Testament who has a counterpart in the Old Testament.

2. An opposite or contrasting type. Free Dictionary

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.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Holy As The Day Is Spent

Aside

Carrie Newcomer

Holy as a day is spent
Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, and the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Shower heads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With bits of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent
Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion’s beat
And the check out girl, counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today
And hymns of geese fly overhead
And spread their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog that runs in her sleep
To chase some wild and elusive thing

Holy is the familiar room
And quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can
I’m letting go of all my fear
Like autumn leaves made of earth and air
For the summer came and the summer went
As holy as a day is spent
Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
And the empty page, and the open book
Redemption everywhere I look
Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
And with grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent
And morning light sings ‘providence’
As holy as a day is spent

Bible Repair and Other Services as Required

Posted on May 12, 2013 by shepsewell

Tim Powers tells a good (though dark) tale in his collection of short stories, The Bible Repairman. I was, of course, intrigued by the title and began ruminating over how and what one would repair. I learned that “repairing” Bibles is actually a side line for Torrez, though I will leave it to you to read Mr. Power’s short story and find out his primary occupation.

“He [Torrez] had a couple of Bibles in need of customized repair, and those were a easy fifty dollars apiece – just brace a page against a piece of plywood in a frame and scorch out the verses the customers found intolerable, with a wood-burning stylus; a plain old razor wouldn’t have the authority that hot iron did. And then of course drench the defaced book in holy water to validate the edited text. Matthew 19:5-6 and Mark 10:7-12 were bits he was often asked to burn out, since they condemned re-marriage after divorce, but he also got a lot of requests to lose Matthew 25:41 through 46, with Jesus’ promise of Hell to stingy people. And he offered a special deal to eradicate all thirty or so mentions of adultery. Some of the customized Bibles ended with little weight besides the binding.”

In a peculiar sort of way, one must accept the authority of Scripture to even want to find a way around the verses that trouble our consciences. Having established a twisted respect for the power of Holy Writ the only way to manage its demands is to stoop to the use of magic. And so, people pay Torrez fifty bucks a pop to neuter the offensive passages.

Mark Twain once said it was not the passages that he didn’t understand that bothered him as it was the passages he understood clearly. What would happen to me and you if we simply began to do the things we already know to do? People of faith recognized long ago the sacramental nature of confession. In fact even in this post-Christian/Modern period the State of Tennessee recognizes the power and authority of private confession by statute and actually Tennessee goes even further and criminalized the betrayal of such confidences!

What if rather this week we do a moral inventory and throw out those things that trouble us, deal the people we hurt or who hurt us. If after that, for any heavy lifting call a discreet priest and let him/her take out that particular garbage for you. Really, call me, it comes with your baptism, really, it’s on the house! I promise.

Beyond Contradiction

Gain Disguised as Loss

Tag Archives: sacrament