Proper 7B

After many weeks journeying in the gospel according to John, we have returned to the gospel of Mark — the gospel with which we spend a lot of time this year. But we have jumped over a lot of action since we last visited the gospel. Check out the first four chapters to catch up.

The story that forms this morning’s gospel reading opens up the second major section of Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. This section (which begins in chapter 4, verse 35 and goes to chapter 8.21) opens and closes with a boat trip. Though Mark might use language sparingly, he seems to repeat himself in this section of the gospel by narrating two perilous crossings of the Sea of Galilee, and two feedings of the hungry masses in the wilderness. Besides, Jesus’ healings are neatly organised in pairs of two Jews and two Gentiles. What Mark is doing, beneath the seeming redundancy, actually is narrating stories of healing, mission and proclamation in both Jewish and Gentile worlds.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples nine times to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. We tend to think of the sea as a gentle and romantic place but for Mark, the sea is a metaphor for the demonic and apocalyptic chaos that confronts Jesus, terrorises his disciples and threatens the future of his mission. Perhaps Mark is tapping into the universal myth of the hero conquering chaos, represented by the sea, characterised by the Babylonian story of the god Marduk who slays the sea dragon Tiamat.

I think, too, we don’t really understand just what the power of the sea is. I have been thinking a lot about the unforgiving nature of the sea in the weeks following the Air France crash off the coast of Brazil and how we probably will never know what happened because the sea has swallowed up most of the evidence. I think of the sea for its vastness and mysteriousness, which I have seen from the safety of an ocean liner. And I think of the sea as a terrifying and merciless force as described by a woman who was the first woman to row alone across the Atlantic twice (once unsuccessfully and once successfully) in a 23-foot long boat. She got caught up in two hurricanes that turned her little vessel every which way, pitch-poled and capsised, to the point that she nearly died. So the sea is not just a metaphorical place of harshness but a real one.

For Mark, the sea is where discipleship is tested and where life always hangs in the balance. It also serves as a boundary between Jews and Gentiles. When Jesus and the disciples move to the other side of the sea, they move beyond the safe harbour of all the teachings they know to an unknown world. When Jesus moves from one side of the sea to the other, he is also breaking down the barriers that divide humanity from itself.

Jesus teaches the disciples in parables and then suggests they cross the sea — over into Gentile territory. As they push off from the shore, the sea churns into a dangerous squall. All that Jesus has taught the disciples about trust is lost as they panic. If we understand the sea as representing the forces of evil, then it makes sense why Jesus faults his disciples for their thinking that evil is stronger than he. But for the fearful disciples, they cannot see how Jesus, or God, could sleep through such a storm. Jesus must rebuke the sea, cast out its demonic forces. As is so often the case in Mark’s gospel, the outsiders understand who Jesus is, whereas the insiders, his disciples, do not.

But not only the sea tests the disciples’ faith: on the other side of the sea lies the geographic heart of Galilee, Gentile territory, and most of all, that which is alien, foreign and dangerous. Every single time he asks them to cross over, something powerful and frightening happens. They don’t want to go over there — eventually they clue in that their lives will be changed in ways they cannot control or anticipate. And why should they go over there? That side is full of strangers.

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Have you ever experienced a moment of terror or deep fear, that type of moment when your stomach sinks, when you tremble, and after the danger has passed, you can only shake your head at how close a call you had? It can be having a near accident while driving, hitting the ‘send’ button for a personal email that goes out before you wanted it to or to an entire list-serve rather than the individual you’d intended to receive it; nearly falling… any sort of near-miss event in life. There’s another sort of fear, one that can be deeper, one that is more, ‘What have I gotten myself into and how am I going to get out of it?’

Probably one of the most vivid moments of quiet but very heightened anxiety I had happened in 1987, flying into Guatemala City on the last flight of the day, a day after I was supposed to arrive. I was going to be met by relatives of someone I knew up in the states but I had never met them before. I worried whether they’d gotten any communication from the airline that my previous flight from Panamá had been overbooked…. And so I arrived in a foreign airport, without any local currency late at night. Little by little everyone else left until the only people left were the army guards with their machine guns, two car rental agents and myself. I did ask myself as I waited with mounting fear, why did I do this to myself, how I was going to get myself out of this jam since I didn’t have any money and there was no way to get any and what was I doing in a country that had barely stopped its civil war? The story turned out fine—but for forty-five minutes I was pretty worried.

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Fear is part of the human condition—it’s a survival instinct that protects us but it can also be an emotion that paralyses us. Fear can also be used by people in power or those who are afraid themselves as a way of controlling others.
Fear-mongers are not limited to politics — they function well within our church, too. Some people fear and threaten others that The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion facing schism and will shatter after this summer’s General Convention. I could have written these words three years ago, six years ago, nine years ago, twelve years ago. Somehow that fear doesn’t go away.

These threats were brought forth 33 years ago when the canon permitting the ordination of women to the priesthood passed at General Convention; they reappeared when the Diocese of Massachusetts elected Barbara Harris to be their bishop suffragen in 1988. They appear again and again with change.

I am not afraid of schism in the church. I am more concerned that the church will not cross over to the other side of the lake, and that the church will not continue to break down the barriers that classify people into better or lesser children of God. My concern is that we will lose sight of the fact that Jesus, not the church, is the boat in which we sail, that Jesus is the source of our strength and unity. Will the church have the courage to keep crossing the lake? And will we have the courage to let go of our fears and lay our heads on Jesus’ chest, find in him a resting place and be glad [Hymn 692]?

Pray for your bishop, for this Diocese of Vermont, its General Convention deputies and this Episcopal Church as it prepares for its General Convention in two weeks.

And whether it is someone heading off to General Convention, or those staying behind in the local congregation, God provides for us. As nourishment for the wild boat ride that takes us across stormy seas to unknown places and people, God gives us the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Come, join in the eucharistic feast, and then set sail, knowing that Christ dwells in us, fortifying us, quenching our fears and setting us free to find Christ in one another.

Proper 6B

With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed….

In two back-to-back parables based on agrarian imagery, Jesus speaks to the reality of his listeners. To the average Palestinian of the first century, the struggle to dry farm the rocky soil of Galilee is well-known. (I hazard that to the Vermonter of the early 21st century, the struggle to dry farm the rocky soil of most of the state is well-known, too! How many of us have spent hours digging up rocks in order to plant our gardens?!) In the parable that opens the gospel reading for this morning, Jesus describes the wonder of natural growth: once the seed is in the ground, growth happens automatically; the farmer does not know how this happens — it just does. What the farmer does know is that at a certain time, he must ‘put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.’

In the last of the agrarian parables, which we have also just heard, Jesus refers to the mustard seed. While some of the allegory is based on hyperbole, there is in it some truth, too. Most of us have probably seen what a mustard seed looks like: It is small— smaller than a pepper corn. When sown, it takes off and grows prodigiously. A field full of mustard is quite lovely to see. Waving, golden flowers carpet acres and acres… I walked by many a field alongside the Way of Saint James in France. However, if a mustard crop is not what you want, mustard seeds are problematic, at best. Mustard grows with the proclivity and tenacity of dandelions. Unless it is isolated by acres and acres, the mustard shrub can be difficult to eradicate. Rather than focus on the quantity of mustard shrubs, though, the parable emphasises the grandeur of the shrub that emerges from the tiny seed. When the tiny mustard seed is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

But, how does the kingdom of God relate to the mustard seed?

And what does it mean for us to be part of the coming of the kingdom?

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Though early on in the Gospel of Mark, the writer already stresses the importance of the coming of the kingdom. The hearers of the gospel lived in anticipation of the immanent end of time, and thus, parables about the end times, were sources of hope that God would come. It is hard for us, now nearly twenty-one centuries later, to capture the uncertainty of the early Christian community as it contemplated the immediacy of the coming of the kingdom. It is perhaps less hard for us to imagine the fragility of the early Christian community as we struggle today to maintain the relevance of the church in our society, a relevance that sometimes seems to decrease with each passing year.

And so we need to step back, and consider for a moment what these two parables could mean for that early community, and then put the teaching of the parable into a context we can understand.

The first parable we have heard implies that the growth of the kingdom will be neither obvious nor controllable. The vocation of those who hear the parable lies in tending to the sowing, rather than provoking the growing which will happen by itself. Rather, one must know when the time comes to harvest and what actions one must take.

The second of these parables is meant to instill courage and hope in the small band of Jesus’ followers as they struggle against the political norms of the day. After all, how could such a small group take on Rome? Yet the writer of the gospel is certain that the Christian community will grow in size and strength, just as that tiny little mustard seed grew.

If the community has patience and hope, it will grow. Its growth will not happen right away, nor will it be triumphant right away. Even this early in the gospel, it would appear as though Jesus’ mission is doomed to failure. Jesus has already suffered the double rejection by the words of the Pharisees, and then his own family. Yet this parable seeks to reassure us that the seed is being sown and the harvest will come in abundance and might.

Key to both of these parables is the capacity for patience and hope. Patience — the being present with, the accompanying someone or something despite any difficulties….

Hope — the awaiting someone or something not readily seen or present, the belief in the coming of right relationships and God’s goodness in our time, and at the end time.

To borrow from the image in the gospel of Mark, it seems to me that each one of us is a mustard seed — seemingly small and sometimes insignificant alone, but once nurtured by the unseen Spirit of God, nurtured in the community we become strong. Each one of us is called to be an icon of patience and hope as exemplified by the tiny mustard seed.

It is difficult sometimes to be that bearer of hope — hope which is based in our faith in the risen Christ. It is difficult sometimes to be that bearer of hope when so much of our daily life seems to contradict it. It is difficult sometimes to be that bearer of hope when we seem so small — we, as an individual; we, as a parish, we, as a denomination. But we cannot give up. That is where patience that comes from trusting in God comes into play.

The patience that comes from trusting in God enables us to live in sincere hope, despite sorrows and trials, suffering and pain. Sometimes we must wait patiently, but that does not mean that we wait passively. In our waiting, we are still called to be a bearer of hope, an icon of hope, a mustard seed of hope. Our hope can become as great as the shrub in the parable of Mark. Our hope can become the place where diversity can find a haven. Our hope collectively can help bring about God’s kingdom and God’s relationship to a broken world. Indeed we have prayed this morning that God will keep the church — God’s household — in God’s steadfast faith and love, that through God’s grace we may proclaim God’s truth with boldness, and minister God’s justice with compassion. It is through each one of us proclaiming the truth of God’s love, and ministering God’s justice with compassion that we can bring about God’s kingdom bit by bit. The church is all of us. And so each one of us has a part in bringing about the kingdom.

What does bringing about the kingdom mean for you? How does your deepest passion meet the world’s deepest needs? How, in your daily life, do you live out the five baptismal vows of proclamation, prayer, community, service and respect? And how do you make the connection between your life here within these walls and the rest of the week? Each one of us has different answers to these questions, questions that first of all we must dare to ask without being afraid.

We cannot bring about the kingdom all alone, as lone rangers. No, we need to come together as a community to receive the sustenance that helps us to grow. That food is the eucharist, the gift of God which gives us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, and the kingdom of God. Fortified by the eucharist, we are then able to be bearers of hope to the world.

So, come and partake so that we together will be the mustard seed that grows into a tree of hope.

Trinity Sunday sermon

Howard Anderson, formerly in charge of Cathedral College (the College of Preachers) in Washington, D.C., years ago gave this example of talking about the Trinity. Since the tree he uses is one we find here, I thought you might appreciate it:

‘My first confirmation class years ago had young man who loved biology. He had been studying aspen (we call them popples in Minnesota) and said something like this. “The popple root system is very wide and deep. The individual saplings grow out from it, and are fully a tree, yet interdependent upon the deep and wide root system. If you cut down a tree, another sprouts. So I think that the creator God is that deep and wide root system and when Jesus grew up as fully a human, and was cut down in the crucifixion, the resurrected Christ was like the sapling that grew up again out of the roots. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is yet another ‘sapling’ which grows out of the complex root system, part of the deep and wide roots, and maybe part of the tree cut down, like Jesus, but fully a part of the whole root system.”’ Then Anderson wrote: ‘How’s that for a 9th grader?’

How would you put the Trinity, the mystery that lies at the heart of our faith, into words or imagery?

Some preachers on this Sunday engage the congregation in the following exercise: they read the Nicene Creed, phrase by phrase. If people believe what is said in a particular phrase, they stand. If they have a hard time understanding the ideas in the phrase or don’t believe it, they sit down. The total effect is of a congregation looking like a jack-in-the-box, rarely all standing or sitting at one time. One sees how different people respond to different parts of the creed. (I did this exercise last year during a continuing education session with the clergy of the Anglican Church in El Salvador and the only person other than I who was standing and sitting was the bishop. The others were a bit too intimidated, I think.)

In my early years at Saint Mary’s, we held a Lenten series on the creeds, those prayers that articulate the Christian faith we profess. Some of what we discussed was met with a bit of resistance and even fear. How could we possibly question what is in the creeds? Wasn’t that wrong? But it is precisely that questioning about our complex faith that led to the creeds as the early church tried to nail down what it was about this God, the three-in-one and one-in-three that even on the clearest of days cannot be fully understood because its essence is mystery.

So I return to my first question: into what words would you describe your faith? If I were to sit down right now and leave you with a piece of paper and pencil, could you put into words what you believe, what draws you to this place at this time?

Other people in inquirers’ classes and the like have put down their thoughts and I collected their professions of faith. Here is a small sampling. Let the words wash over you and see if they reflect any of what you understand about the Trinity.

I believe in God the creator and sustainer.
I believe in Jesus who was crucified, was dead and who was raised from the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, our advocate and enabler.

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We believe in God, the Holy Being and Unseen Spirit
whose presence is felt in all good things around us.
There is no sin too big that cannot be forgiven by God.
We believe there is a piece of God in all of us.

We believe in Jesus, our Teacher and Rabbi
a prophet, messenger and the Lord,
our leader who shows us The Way.
We believe that He loves us with a selfless love,
He died for us and the sins of the world.
He performed many miracles and always puts His people first.
We believe that Jesus lives in each one of us
to spread the word of God’s love in the world.
We believe in the Holy Spirit who is
a gift of the Resurrection of Jesus
and part of the mystery of the Trinity.

We believe that the Holy Spirit lives inside us
to guide us to The Truth.
We believe that the Church is God’s gift to us:
A sanctuary – a safe place from the world
A Holy place where we can pray
and express what we believe.
A place to find forgiveness and hope.
A place to know Jesus.
We believe that the Church is God’s house,
our home, our community.
now and forever. Amen.

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We believe in God the Holy Trinity,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Originator, Saviour, Comforter,
each distinctive,
yet all being of one presence.

We believe in the Father, the beginning,
who brought into being
all that we know and do not yet know.

We believe in Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Saviour,
who came down to be one with us,
sacrificed himself that we may ever be forgiven,
and rose again giving us hope.
The Word of God,
he it is who loves us, teaches us,
and is always our unfailing friend.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
sustainer in our Christian life,
who inspires us now as in ages past.

We believe in one church,
and work for its unity.
We believe in one faith,
perceived in varied ways.

We look for the life of the world to come,
whilst acting responsibly with this world,
and the life upon it. (1)

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Sometimes rather than explain the theology behind something it is better to respond to it with our heart, mind, and soul, as the above people have. So, again, I ask, how would you put into words or music or imagery the mystery of the Trinity?

For the ninth grader, the image of the popple tree worked. For me, the trillium that will soon appear in the woods, whose needlepoint image I see every Sunday at the kneeler in front of me and whose photo is on the front of the bulletin, reminds me of the three-in-one and one-in-three. For someone else, expressing the creed might come in singing the Credo from William Byrd’s Mass in Four Parts or Saint Patrick’s Breastplate (hymn 370).

Frederick Buechner explains the Trinity another way: ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.… If the love of God as both Three and One seems farfetched and obfuscating, look in the mirror someday. (2)

Because when we boil all theological language down, we arrive at the realisation that all of these words are our way of expressing that the God we worship, adore and love is a God of relationships. In God’s coming to us, we find that God is presence, wisdom and power. God is present in all of our relationships; God has the capacity to relate to everyone. God is the related one — within Godself as the three in one and the one in three. The Trinity is a mystery of relationship that is visible, invisible and sensed. The Trinity is God’s mystery of relationship with us. As we have heard all of Eastertide, God abides in us and we in God, just as Jesus abides in God and we in him. So maybe another image for all this is the Mobius strip!

I always return to Meister Eckhart’s image of the Trinity: ‘When God laughs at the soul, and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten. To speak in hyperbole, when the Father laughs to the Son, and the Son laughs back to the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love gives the persons of the Trinity of which the Holy Spirit is one.’

At this church named, ‘Trinity,’ whose feast day it is today, take all these images, find your own and know that even as the Trinity is a mystery, it is also the expression of God’s infinite love for us.

END NOTES
(1) From various blogs, including telling-secrets.blogspot.com, and revjph.blogspot.com
(2) Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1973, 1993), 114.

Work Day

On Saturday 6 June over a dozen people contributed their morning to painting, weeding, planting seeds, clipping, pruning, cleaning out refrigerators and more.




Strum that gitarrh.


Mother and son at work in the Memorial Garden.





One of many doors needing painting. By the end of the morning all the front doors were repainted.


Poignant....


Our fearless leaders at play and work.


Almost done!

There are more photos (by Wendy) over at the Facebook page. If you are not yet a member of the group, ask to join and Lee will clear you.

Many, many, many thanks for all who contributed their time and talent this morning!!! There still is more weeding (after all, that task is endless) so any time you have a little bit of time, feel free to drop by and do some holy weeding.

Women of Trinity's annual auction

On Monday 1 June, the Women of Trinity met at the rectory for their annual auction. After supper, Elizabeth acted as auctioneer, rousing the gathering to spend, spend, spend!


It is possible to cram fifteen people into the living room and most seemed comfortable on the Victorian furniture.


Here is Elizabeth in action.


Jean won this little pottery dog to take home.

At posting time, results of the auction are unknown.

Feast of the Pentecost

[candles representing the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit before the liturgy]

Two threads always leap out from the readings for me on the Feast of Pentecost: language and its diversity, and the Holy Spirit, its representation and the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit.

The reading from the second chapter of the Book of Acts, typically read on the Feast of Pentecost, always lets the imagination run wild with its colourful description of languages and peoples. The lucky reader who manages to get through this list of names — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamhylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene, Rome, Jews, Cretans and finally Arabs — deserves a prize for tackling the unfamiliar. And yet that is how it must have seemed on that fiftieth morning after Easter, an out-of-control situation with the unfamiliar.

As a lover of language, and one who has been graced with the ability to listen and communicate in two other modern languages, I delight in this annual reminder of the complexity of human communication. My mind still remains amazed that humankind has found so many diverse ways to communicate. According to Wikkipeadia, not the most scientific source, there are 898 languages in the world.

Experiencing this diversity even on a small scale, such as I did three years ago about this time at a hostel in southern France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, was wondrous. Thirty-two tired pilgrims came together for dinner. The host of the evening, a Basque, alternately sang Basque songs for us and led us in song. Part of the evening also consisted in having people from different countries sing a song from their land… in English, French, German. It was a bit crazy at times, for some a bit of a shock after the solitude of the quiet day of solitary walking. But the activity underlined our diversity, at the same time that we engaged in a universal human (and creaturely) activity — eating.

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Isn’t it surprising that Christian iconography has depicted the Holy Spirit — that energising force that first created the world at the time of first beginnings and then at second beginnings turned the world upside-down — as a dove? This Spirit that sighs too deep for words, this Spirit that is the truth that guides us into all truth, this Spirit that endows us with manifold gifts is cast as something so gentle as a dove. Yet this icon is readily recognised right off as the Holy Spirit.

On the same segment of our pilgrimage walk, on a day when we could find no church that offered a mass because there are so few Catholic priests, we stopped at a little church along the way. Many churches in France have their doors open, a lovely gesture of hospitality.

This church was very simple with relatively little adornment. What was so remarkable about it was its painting of the Holy Spirit in dove form over the altar. The dove, flying surrounded by clouds, in a blue, starry sky evoked peacefulness. Indeed, a pilgrim, who had passed through the church’s doors earlier on in the day, wrote in the little book that many churches have for pilgrims to note their prayers, how steadying it was to see the Spirit flying over the altar in the church. Its pictorial evocation underlined the Spirit that imbued that holy space. One could feel that this was a church that was loved and where God was loved.

Maybe iconographers instinctively knew that the Spirit needed to be depicted in calming imagery, rather than tongues of fire because of the sheer power and force of the Spirit when it is unleashed on the church and Jesus’ followers. The Spirit is still very active in our lives, lo these millennia later.

It is dangerous to ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit but those gifts have already been given to us through baptism. And what are the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Strength, knowledge, piety, awe and wonder, counsel, understanding, and wisdom. They are represented by the seven candles burning by the font. Think of which gifts are your strongest today and which ones you would like to encourage. And then, as you return from communion, you are invited to light a candle.

Sharing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit — all the varieties and differences of gifts — ties everyone together in the work of God. Sharing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit unites us in the call to be children of the beatitudes, to imagine a life and community and actions filled with the spirit of Jesus with his simplicity, his humility, his prophetic courage, the will to serve and the witness he shared of his unique and intimate relationship with God.

All of us have been given individual and specific gifts. They are for us to use and decide whether we use them in a private or corporate way. Does the artist paint for the sheer enjoyment of it all, or does he or she design works that can bring healing to people? I think of the architects who designed the memorial at Oklahoma or the then-young Maya Ying Lin who created the Viet Nam memorial. Their talent could have been a private matter; they chose, instead, to create something for a greater cause.

In what way is the gift given each one of us used to serve the common good? For, as Paul says, the ‘manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.’ How does the Spirit work in us for the rest?

Can we truly believe that everyone has a gift to share? Don Helder Camara said, perhaps speaking of monetary wealth, ‘None are so poor that they cannot give, none are so rich that they cannot receive,’ but surely his wisdom also applies to the gifts each one of us has received. Some of us think we don’t have much to give but the Holy Spirit surprises us into recognizing that we do have something to offer.

The Holy Spirit also helps us discern what those gifts might be. That process of discernment is life-long. What gifts you have today may be different tomorrow. It can change. The discernment can only take place if one’s heart is open, though. The Holy Spirit helps you keep your heart open.

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This morning, the feast on which we celebrate the power of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the priest will not be the only person invoking out loud the descent of the Holy Spirit. Together, as a congregation, with one voice, we will say the epiclesis as printed in the bulletin. Let the power of those words said in your own voice fill you. Receive the Holy Spirit and feel the Spirit entering into your soul.

Let your soul be open — as a person with open hands, palms up, as the celebrant’s outstretched arms — to receive the Holy Spirit and whatever gift comes with the Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit descend upon you and fill you. Do not be afraid, because if you are, the Holy Spirit cannot do anything in you. Trust. Feel God’s presence indwelling in you, helping you remember Christ’s teachings. Know that receiving the Holy Spirit, while life-changing and potentially chaotic, while turning your life upside-down and bringing new languages of heart to you, enables you to do far more than ever thought possible. As you receive that Spirit, give thanks for the Spirit working in us who is infinitely more powerful than we can possibly imagine.


Candles at the end of the service