Author: Rosemary Lovelace

Fourth Sunday of Easter – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: John 10:22-30

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all. Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this 4^th Sunday of Easter and, of course, today we also celebrate Mother’s Day. The texts for today are full of rich images of green pastures, sheep and their shepherds, and deep, still waters. They are comforting images, for the most part. Sheepfolds, for example which form the context for this section of John’s Gospel, were located just inside or barely outside the village. Each evening all the sheep of the village would be herded into the common area, and their shepherds would take turns guarding the gate. When night fell and all was quiet and secure, the shepherd would lie down to rest at the opening of the sheepfold, becoming, as it were, the human gate for the sheep. Getting to the sheep required getting past the Shepherd. For all its limitations the metaphor of the Good Shepherd works in this sense. For like the shepherd, parents, grandparents, godparents, teachers, mentors, priests, and friends have “tended” us. Indeed, the word tend comes from the same Latin root—attendere—that gives us the word attend, and it means to pay attention, to care for, to minister, to “stretch out.” Think for a moment of those along the way who have “stretched out”—a wonderful term—to and for you. We all have such people in our lives. They have loved and taught and led and comforted and mentored us. They have tended to us by paying attention to us, by implication telling us that we matter. They have sought to prepare us for life. They demonstrated what Carl Jung would call maternal or feminine archetypes, though not all of them have been our biological mothers. And since this Sunday is also Mother’s Day, which we use as occasion to give thanks to God for all the women in our church, all those who have mothered and parented us. Understood metaphorically, not all of them have even been women. But all of them have provided for us what my colleagues in my clinical work call a “holding environment” out of which our true selves—the Divine spark given to each of us—can emerge. And in this safe context—not unlike a sheepfold—we internalize this care in such a way as to make it part of our narrative—our story. Teachers and professors, friends, coaches, colleagues …my maternal grandmother, my wife and sons, all have shepherded me, and all have helped me see the compassion and love at the heart of faith. In this context of care we discover, as Gerard Manley Hopkins said, our true voice “acting in God’s eye who in God’s eye we are.”

This is a life-long journey, one we share with the people of Israel who, after all, struggled for a home that they were always trying to find and get to, hold onto or get back to. They struggled for peace, for food, and for their faith in God. Psalm 23 was a cherished hymn for the Hebrews precisely because of the highs and lows of Israel’s history, their insatiable thirst on long desert journey’s, and their frequent rush down more manageable paths towards more manageable gods, which always led them into unmanageable trouble and lamentation. Then they would return to worship, and the story—the narrative—of their true selves as a people, would be told and retold. In a sense then, context is everything in relation both to the 23^rd Psalm and the Gospel text for today. Many people I see in my clinical practice have no trouble finding green pastures. The problem is that next the pasture over so often seems so much greener, and they are scared of missing it. We are drawn to overflowing waters in our culture of abundance, yet we so often wander thirsty, as one country music writer put it, in all this rain. It is not surprising that so many of the psalms describe the disruptive experience of being lost and found, judged and forgiven, sent away, and brought back. It is all part of the pathos of a people who got scared and lost their way, and the high drama of a God who searches to find his lost sheep.

And we get so scared, do we not, when we are afraid there will not be “enough,” even when we aren’t quite sure what enough would look like, or even what it is we are afraid we will not have enough of. Each of us has been scared. Perhaps it took the form of an illness, a call from the Drs office or a loved one, a plummeting stock market, or a call from the police late at night. Perhaps it was a letter on the kitchen counter that said, “I’m not coming back,” or a pink slip one Friday afternoon. The shadow of the valley, like the Good Friday losses of our lives, can take infinite forms. I bear witness to them in my clinical practice, and in my own life, just as you have done so in yours. In his book “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life,” David Brooks says that he has observed two kinds of people, and for both types, as he writes, for the first type…:

…Life had thrown them into the valley, as it throws most of us into the valley at one point or another. They were suffering and adrift…Some people are broken by this kind of pain and grief. They seem to get smaller and more afraid, and never recover. They get angry, resentful and tribal….But other people are broken open. The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that suffering upends the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. The basement of your soul is much deeper than you knew. Some people look into the hidden depths of themselves and they realize that success won’t fill those spaces. Only a spiritual life and unconditional love from family and friends will do. They realize how lucky they are. They are down in the valley, but their health is O.K.; they’re not financially destroyed; they’re about to be dragged on an adventure that will leave them transformed.

In the Gospel for today we have a description not only of how Jesus relates to us, but how we are to relate to one another. In coming to one another Jesus is to be the way: In this same passage from John, Jesus says I have come to the sheep that they might have life and have it more abundantly. We are called to be in relation to one another as Jesus is in relation to us. This is how those who cared for us remain with us: we hold their voices inside us, and we remember that we have been seen, that others have “stretched out” for us. The shepherd could lead because the sheep could hear his voice, could see him moving steadily ahead of them, and they trusted him. Ultimately, of course, we are all called to be Shepherds, all called to create together a safe sheepfold—or holding environment—within which we are nurtured, sustained, and nourished. As David Brooks writes:

Joy involves the transcendence of self. When you’re on the second mountain, you realize we aim too low. We compete to get near a little sunlamp, but if we lived differently, we could feel the glow of real sunshine. On the second mountain you see that happiness is good, but joy is better.

Each semester for many years of teaching at Columbia and in the doctoral program we shared with Emory and ITC, we covered topics such as addiction, mental illness, psychology and religion, and family systems theory. Through each module the abiding image was that of the pastoral caregiver as a shepherd, and of staying in relationship in the service of a transcendence of self in commitment to the common good. We studied, and learned together, in order to remember that it is more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right, and we can love completely without complete understanding. As Richard Rohr has said so well;

There is no other form for the Christian life except a common one. Until and unless Christ is experienced as a living relationship between people, the Gospel remains largely an abstraction. Until Christ is passed on personally through faithfulness and forgiveness, through concrete bonds of union, I doubt whether he is passed on by words, sermons, institutions, or ideas.

This past week we observed the Feast Day of Julian of Norwich, whom our weekly women’s spirituality class has also been reading. She too, was a shepherd of a kind, helping us to re-imagine our images of God, just as one of my primary images of God is informed by my own maternal grandmother. To Julian of Norwich, feminine depictions of God were not radical, subversive, or rebellious. They were obvious, inevitable, and clear. She didn’t feel the need to defend her words, she simply wrote what was revealed to her in the visions: God has masculine qualities and God has feminine qualities. Both are important, and this is a non-dualistic opening of our relationship to the Living God.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for most of us. We are constantly filtering our theology through what we consider to be permissible. Unlike Dame Julian, we tend to defer to precedent rather than follow the nudging’s of our own souls. We sometimes trust those in authority more than we trust ourselves if, indeed, we are even given the opportunity to explore these narratives. But the witness of Julian of Norwich asks us to be brave; to dig deep within and experience God in our guts, not just in our churches; to engage our spiritual imaginations in the pursuit of a salvation that sets us free today—not just after we are gone from this world.

Engaging with the feminine face of God does not mean discarding the masculine one. Not only is there room for both in our spiritual imaginations but Julian of Norwich would argue that there’s room for both at the same time. Dame Julian approached gender binaries playfully, with a refreshing absence of precision. She repeatedly wrote things like “Jesus births,” “he mothers,” and “Jesus as both Son and Mother.” Amid our own discomfort and hesitancies, Julian of Norwich offers an ease, a gentle reassurance, that God is much larger than our finite brains can comprehend. This God we know and love—this God we have experienced—is big enough to hold it all. The question is, can we put aside our fears and prejudices and get on board with that? Can we allow Julian, and other good shepherds, to encourage us to use our imaginations to become, in the process, more fully alive.

Yes, bearing witness, stretching out, attending, feeding, sustaining, healing, guiding, making our voices be heard. These are the tasks to which we are called in community. As the Apostle John has written, we are children of God, made in God’s image, growing as we move on in faith. We do not know what wonders God has in store for us, but we do know we are called to listen, to hear God’s voice and follow God’s lead. So let us now come to the Table of Grace with hopeful hearts as we live into the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let all the people of God say, AMEN. 

Third Sunday of Easter – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in

the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him

in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

The Gospel: John 21:1-19

Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing…This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead…Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all. Amen. 

Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this 3^rd Sunday of Easter! I’m so glad you are joining us today. In this chapter of our lives at Holy Family, I find myself empathizing with the Disciples in ways perhaps new for me. Maybe you do so as well. We know they have been scared, and in the reading for today, they don’t recognize Jesus at first when he appears. Begging the question, when we are in a season of uncertainty and transition, can we recognize Christ in the face of the other, our sisters and brothers, and can we remain relatively non-anxious enough to lead with wisdom, and resilience, even when we may disagree with one another? And, let’s remember we have only recently emerged from an unprecedented time of social distancing and quarantine, and we’ve all been on a post-pandemic journey of sorts. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, we had our own mini version of a pandemic here at Holy Family and I am so very proud of how we responded. I’m so glad to have been on this journey with you all, and I am grateful for those serving on our vestry and search committees. I am aware that my time among you is ending. About this time last year, I was walking out to the car with Andy Edwards after services. Now, Andy and Melinda were here many years ago, back when I was a Postulant at Holy Family, over 20 years ago, and he said “Well, your priesthood has come full circle from here to the Cathedral, and now back again.” And so it has. My first thought was one of deep gratitude for this parish, and for all it has meant to me and my family. Truth told we are, many of us, in a new role at Holy Family, and I am only one among many here asked to step up in this season. As our beloved Katharine Armentrout said so well last year, lay leadership will be—for many reasons, increasingly important in the coming chapter. We’re not alone in this. As I said many times over the past year, in many contexts of our denomination, and our sister denominations in mainline Protestantism, a new mission statement in “Lay Led…Clergy Supported”. My friend and running buddy, the Bishop of New Hampshire, has told me that 80% of their parishes can no longer afford a full-time priest. We will each have to discover in ourselves opportunities for leadership, and this may mean facing fears, uncertainty, and leaving our comfort zone to be an integral part of the Body of Christ. We each have an opportunity to grow in new ways. When I decided to retire from full time teaching and focus on clinical practice, and Vicky and I made the decision to move to Jasper, I did not know what lay ahead, and I certainly did not anticipate becoming the interim here. Like the disciples in the Gospel for today, we are each walking, talking with one another about what has happened, finding some meaning in what we’ve been through, and trusting that God is listening to us and bearing witness to our concerns and fears. Carl Jung once said that the soul rejoices in saying out loud what we feel inside, just as our Psalms of both joy and lament teach us to do, even when it is hard to do so. As the disciples experienced in this Gospel, Jesus is available to hear both, and we are called to do likewise.

Jesus invited the disciples tell about their anxieties and pains; he let them grieve and mourn. Jesus listened to them, as they poured out their fear, uncertainty, sadness and grief. Jesus patiently guided the disciples “from hopelessness and sadness to celebration, to hope, to relationship restored and renewed; in short, to resurrection.”  I suspect the disciples felt much the same as we do now, a kind of “not knowing” with the sense of dislocation that sometime attends it. They were fishing for literal fish, yes, but also for answers about what would happen after the resurrection.

The author Rachel Naomi Remen has suggested that “The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else,” she says. And when we tell each other stories of hope and resilience, they tell us about who we are, what is possible for us, what and who we might call upon. They also remind us that we’re not alone with whatever faces us and that there are resources available to us. But we must each be committed to hope, compassion, and grace. As Goethe said, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth…the moment one definitely commits oneself, the Providence moves too.” The Disciples believe Jesus to be a stranger, and their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread, and in the boat and on the shore of Tiberius. In this text and related passages, this is a common theme. What does it mean to really see? How often do we miss what is right in front of us and how often do we miss the face of Christ in the stranger whom we encounter on the road? In the Gospel story for today we have a signpost of sort through uncertainty in this sea of transition at Holy Family. Indeed, this Gospel text was read at my own ordination at the Cathedral of St. Philip many years ago and, truth told, I was scared when I heard these words: “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”

Last summer a friend and I were hiking and trail running high in the mountains of Northern Colorado, and at certain points above the tree line where the trails can become diffuse, cairns, towers of rock guiding the way, were so very helpful. “Inuksuk”—or little people—as the Inuit tribes call these signposts, can be like lighthouses on a distant shore, guiding us along. Jesus is just such a guide in the Gospel for today, and as such he helps the disciples move from grief and loss and despair to hope, and to compassion.

A year ago, in this parish hall, our consultant gave us a list of things we must do together as we seek our new rector—and this list included coming to terms with our history; acknowledging the past; being honest about the DNA in that past… and dealing with both grief—letting go—and moving forward together…holding on; beginning to discover a new identity; allowing for and empowering new leaders among us; strengthening relationships and enriching hospitality; asking ourselves where we have been, and where we are going, and what kind of leadership is needed in this new chapter…and we are called to love one another with grace, and compassion. And with love. These goals continue to be salient. And leadership requires transparency, facing our fears and old narratives with courage, and having agency amid uncertainty. If we trust God, and if we do not give in to fear or lethargy which keep us stuck in old patterns, we may discover who, and whose we are.

In the spring of 1977, I lamented the end of my tenure as a collegiate 400-meter runner and thus, my running career. Or so I thought. Mark, a wonderful distance runner at Rhodes, would not hear about it. “We are running Peachtree together, and I will be your coach,” he said. “In your dreams,” I responded. To which he said, “Exactly…and my dreams are about to become reality.” And so, they did. Mark trained with me, and together we ran Peachtree in 1977, starting at the old Sears building in Buckhead, and finishing downtown in the fountains at Central City (now Woodruff) Park. We continued to run Peachtree each year, and Mark helped me train for the first of my 12 marathons, the most recent of which was on the Biltmore Trails in Asheville. In February of 1992, a malignant lymph node was removed from under Mark’s left arm. In April of that year, having qualified in Memphis the December before with a 2:38:00 marathon, Mark ran his final Boston Marathon. He had been waiting faithfully at the finish line for an hour when I finally arrived on Boylston Street in Copley Square. My friend had developed melanoma, and despite entering an aggressive treatment protocol at the National Institutes of Health, by late December of 1992, just before New Year’s, he died in his beloved Memphis. Calvary Episcopal Church was filled for his funeral, including runners from all over the south. He was a wonderful scholar athlete, who lost no intensity in his transition from gridiron running back to harrier, a history we shared. Mark was a courageous, beautiful, and fiercely competitive runner. And he was my dear friend. In early December of 1992, in a final conversation at one of our favorite places, Jagger’s Pizza in Emory Village, Mark asked me to keep running Peachtree for both of us. And so, I have. God willing, this year will be my 49^th consecutive Peachtree Road Race. I run mostly trail races these days, and delight in running with my friends, and with my sons. Each run is a new adventure in what the wonderful poet Mary Oliver referred to as “this one wild and precious life.” Donald Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst, and pediatrician, believed that imagination and passion contribute to a sense of aliveness—both mental and physical. “O God,” he once wrote, “my prayer is that I will be fully alive when I die.” For me, and for many whom I love, running is one way of being fully alive. As an Episcopal priest, professor, and pastoral counselor, it is my deep hope that we each find ways to flourish in this way, as I believe God intended. My friend said to me “Bill, I have had so much love.” I said “Yes, there are many who love you, and I am among them.” “That may be, “he replied, “but what I mean is that there are so many whom I have loved. I have so much gratitude for the love God has enabled me to give away.” Dear ones, we are given by God the freedom to love—and this requires release from any fears and the bondage of unnamed grief and old narratives that would keep us in bondage to fear, and the need to be in control amid uncertainty, and prevent us from leading with love. It requires the peace of God, breathed on the disciples and each of us. We are rightly suspicious when we are called only to joy. Yes, and even amidst our struggle with various forms of loss and uncertainty, we can find life-giving possibilities, in conversation with each other, widening the circle of care, and guided by love. And remember, as Jesus taught us, that wholeness includes all our wounds, just as it included all his. It includes all our vulnerabilities and fears, including fears of repeating the past. This is the way we connect to one another. Our shared humanity allows us to be available to one another with transparency and true courage. In sharing his wounds, and in the breaking of the bread, Jesus was known to the disciples, and to us. This led to abundance, rather than scarcity. Let’s go and do likewise no matter what the future may bring. Amen.

Second Sunday of Easter – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained…”

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe”. What powerful, mysterious words these are; made all the more remarkable when we think about Jesus’ disciples who, after Jesus was betrayed, scattered, afraid for their own lives. They watched the events unfold, but always from a distance, blending into the crowd of spectators. And even as they learn that crucifixion hadn’t been the end of it, in the Gospel lesson for today we find them behind locked doors, hiding together in fear in the upper room. No doubt the words of the women at the tomb were ringing in their ears, only worsening their isolation and fear: “They have taken away our Lord and we do not know where they have taken him.” Suddenly Jesus appears, and speaks those remarkable words; “Peace be with you”. And he breathes upon them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” But where was Thomas? Perhaps he needed to be alone. Maybe he went to that place we all go, in the midst of deep grief, where we may believe that nothing or no one can reach us, even if it is not true.  It’s easy to be drawn to Thomas because he seems so human. After all, it was Thomas who asked Jesus how they could know the way. Jesus replied “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. But Thomas needed proof. There was an uncompromising honesty about him. He would never respond to the anxiety of his own doubts by pretending they did not exist.

In today’s Gospel text, I think Jesus is reminding Thomas, and by extension all of us, that it is relationship that heals. He reaches out to Thomas in his isolation and doubt and offers the hand of friendship and reconciliation.  It is not our doubts, my friends, that is the enemy. Rather, it is responding to that doubt by cutting ourselves off from others, from relationships that can heal us and sustain us—which is most risky. And we are most likely to do this when, like the disciples, we are scared, sad, angry, and lost, and we hide ourselves behind closed doors. And often what locks us in are our fears, insecurities, illnesses, compulsions or addictions, past hurts we have experienced and the hurts we have caused. And I wonder if we have more of this separation and disconnection these days. The social scientist Brene’ Brown has said that faith communities who hope to be safe containers for beloved community, must create safe spaces for honest, authentic transparency in relation to those things that would keep us in the bondage of disconnection borne of shame. Jesus gives us an alternative to being cut off from ourselves, and others, and from God. And I have seen this kind of community in action in chapters of the Community of Hope lay pastoral care efforts, which we are working on establishing here at Holy Family, and elsewhere too!

Some time ago, I attended the “birthday” of a friend who was celebrating his 9^th year of sobriety. I first met him in 1978 when we worked together on the adolescent psychiatric unit at Peachford Hospital, and we became friends. Just out of college, searching for direction and purpose, I learned so much from my colleagues, and the patients and families with whom we worked.  My life and that of my friend took different paths, but we kept in touch. I knew he had struggled with alcohol, but until I heard his story, I did not realize the depth of his addiction. And so, on a cold and rainy night some 35 years after we met, I drove up to Cherokee County as he picked up his 9-year chip. I walked into a room filled to capacity—maybe 70-80 souls, a good number of whom were members of a local motorcycle group in recovery. They eyed me, dressed like the professor I had been all day long, and I them, dressed like, well, a motorcycle gang. Finally, one of them came up to me, shook my hand, smiled, and said welcome, we are glad you are here. Let’s find you a seat.” That night, I heard the testimony of those who knew and loved my friend, and stories of life—his and theirs—before and after sobriety. I was deeply moved by the openness, shared vulnerability, and honesty in the room. I heard my friend tell the moving story of how drinking almost killed him, and how he had said to those gathered in that very room, some nine years earlier, “I am lost. Tell me what to do; and if you tell me, I will do it.” And then he said, through tears of one who has come back from the edge of the abyss, “You saved my life, you know… I asked, and you gave, and you told me to work each step, and that you would be there with me each step of the way. And you were. I was among the living dead, and I slowly came back to life. I am here tonight, standing up here talking to you, because you people saved my life.” And this story was indeed a perfect example of a man whose life had in many ways ended…who was no longer fully alive, and who had come back to life. And so it was that those gathered that night were “practicing resurrection” as Wendell Berry asks us to do, and as the life of Jesus embodies…that Paschal Mystery available in each, sacred moment of our lives. And you see, dear one’s, those souls had chosen not to remain trapped behind the locked doors of their addictions—a living death cut off from relationship. They had chosen to be in the community, out in the open. And to do this, they had to face with brutal honesty—a searching, fearless, and unrelenting moral inventory— the truth of what had kept them imprisoned. I found myself moved and inspired by this connection of relationships, and I understood my friend better too…and I understood the power of the Paschal Mystery of Easter a bit more clearly: that in the phrase “one day at a time” we see the truth of that new life. It was as if we placed our hands in the wounded brokenness of my friend’s soul, and we believed. In Christ, darkness and death has been overcome—is overcome—one day, one moment at a time, here and now. And, we overcome not just any darkness, but the darkness that finds us hidden from ourselves and from relationship with others…the infinite Good Friday deaths of the bondage of addiction, our shadow selves wanted only to be made whole again. Life is a journey, Thomas’ journey and ours. And it is seldom a straight line. In his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry has his protagonist say:

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line – starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led – make of that what you will.”  

Jesus felt the deep pain of suffering—his and ours—and through his resulting scars and resurrection, we too can find redemption. We can feel hope, and renewal. Jesus wanted the disciples to see his wounds so that they could understand the resurrection hope those scars represented. To be vulnerable and to tell the bold truth about our lives, including our scars—is uncomfortable and risky, but it is the antidote to the prison of shame and the isolation it breeds. The Good News is that, like Thomas and his brothers and sisters, we too are called to move from times of doubt to moments of grace. And if we have been honest in our doubt, despite the vulnerability of being lost, our decisions of faith will be more honest and clearer and committed as we move along our journeys. To give of ourselves, we must know ourselves—that’s the fearless moral inventory. Yes, “Practice Resurrection,” that wonderful writer Wendell Berry says to us, and every time we choose to do this, the grace-filled Easter story continues. The Nashville alt-country singer songwriter Jason Isbell, whose work I enjoy, has been on his journey in recovery now for several years. In a recent song, his lyrics remind me of Jesus after the resurrection, promising Mary Magdalene, the disciples, and Thomas too, that no matter what, he will never leave us. When I hear these words, I imagine Jesus saying that no matter the doors behind which we may be hiding, he will find us:

I love you like the morning loves the afternoon

Like the prairies love the plains

If you leave me now, I’ll just come running after you

I’ll be the wind behind the rain

When I got home that night, I sent my old friend a message thanking him for the gift of his story, and for inviting me into that sacred space. He sent a text message that read: “Life; Chaos; Recovery; Gratitude.” And I realized that is almost like…I would say it is exactly like the Holy Spirit had been breathed upon us in that locked room, the doors of which had been flung open by the grace of my friend’s story. And when that happens, because we have asked for it, we can co-participate in the compassionate beloved community of God, one day at a time. Amen

Easter Sunday – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself…

Birds flying high, you know how I feel

Sun in the sky, you know how I feel

Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how I feel

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life for me, yeah

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life for me, oohAnd I’m feeling good

Good morning, and welcome to this glorious day of the Resurrection! In the Gospel reading for today, we heard one of two Resurrection stories within scripture. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the images are quite similar. In the Gospel of John, the story is in some ways quite different, though the theology they share—the central message of these Gospel texts—is essentially the same; we, too, have been raised with Christ. I want to say a word this morning about both versions and the implications of each for our lives together.

In the Gospel of Luke, we hear what the women at the tomb learn at about this time of day—Jesus is already gone. And since we, too, have been raised with Christ, the question then becomes whether we will miss our resurrection; for it is at the tomb that we discover the truth about ourselves, questions that have occupied our thoughts this season of Lent. At the sight of the empty tomb, we find all these questions coming together as one. To become what we practice, as Jesus teaches on Ash Wednesday, is to become new.     

To recognize the prophetic nature of what it means to follow the prophet Jesus, as we discover at the Transfiguration, is to begin to act differently. To understand, as the farmer did about the fig tree, that life is about slow, untimely and unlikely growth—and not about perfection—is to think in new ways about the nature of our spiritual lives and the potential for redemption in each moment. To love those who are sometimes unlovable, in reckless ways, as does the prodigal parent, is to travel through life with life-giving insight.

Like the women who go to the sepulcher on Easter morning to bless the body, because their lives had been changed, we have been preparing together for six weeks, in various ways, to answer this last, momentous question: Will we ourselves, touched by Jesus, now rise and live life differently? And what is the essence of that difference? It is living into the Christian life as a journey of transformation. Hence, Jesus’ question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Like the women who went to the tomb expecting to find the grave blocked, we must not allow our fear of grieving our losses blind us to the possibilities, and to silence our hearts. The resurrection to which Easter calls us—our own—asks of us that we prepare to find God where God is by opening ourselves to the world around us with a listening ear, a compassionate heart, a spirit of wonder. This means that we must prepare to be surprised by God in strange places—sometimes in ways that make us uncomfortable. We must allow others to open our hearts to things we do not want to hear. It presumes that we will reach out to the other—stranger though they may be—and seek out Christ in the face of the stranger, especially those relegated to the margins.

Lent is not, therefore, my sisters and brothers, a series of behaviors, but rather a series of questions. Easter is not simply a day of celebration, but a day of decision. In the Resurrection story from the Gospel of John, we see this emphasis on decision borne out in a remarkable way. Faitful, steadfast, resilient Mary Magdalene wants Jesus back as she remembers him, which is so human of course; failing that, she wants his body in a definite place, she wants a grave she can tend. Jesus appears to her in what Rowan Williams, our former Archbishop of Canterbury, calls one of the most moving moments of the whole Bible—and her first instinct is to think yes, he is back as she remembers, yes, she has hold of him after all. He has not disappeared; he has not been taken away to an unknown destination. But Jesus warns Mary: he is being taken away to a destination more unknown than she could imagine. “Do not cling to me,” he tells her. From now on, there will be no truthful way of speaking or thinking of him except as the one who lives alongside the source of all things. These simple words already contain all the mysteries we celebrate when we say the creeds, and when we break the bread of Holy Communion.

Resurrection is not so much a matter of believing things about Jesus as about believing in Jesus. Believing, in this sense, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but giving one’s heart at a much deeper level. It involves a transformation from having heard about Jesus with the hearing of one’s ear to being in relationship to the spirit of the Living Christ. For ultimately, Resurrection means that Jesus is not a figure of the past: hence the Gospel texts say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” and “Do not cling to me.” Rather, Jesus is with us, among us, is us, in the form of the church that is the resurrected Body of Christ. This means we cannot have Jesus just on our terms. After the resurrection, with its demonstration that Jesus’ life is as indestructible as God’s life, we simply cannot go back to the Jesus who is humanly familiar, as Mary had wished. And clearly, we can’t have Jesus as a warm memory, a dearly departed whose grave we can visit. Easter asks us to consider where and how we might want to cling, what we are unwilling to grieve, and where we might want to turn away from the journey, what we might be refusing to hear or to see. The Gaelic say that there are ‘thin places’ between heaven and earth. Perhaps it is so that the very young and the very old or the very ill among us recognize this best of all. If we have walked alongside those who are dying, we have watched and listened as visions are experienced and conversations are held with others who have long since died, as though they were gathering right there themselves. Those of us who are still so very bound to this earth cannot see or hear them, but we find ourselves convinced that there is something more in the room than what we can possibly comprehend. And spend time with children, and one soon realizes they notice things we sometimes miss, often, the sacred in the mundane. As the poet David Whyte has written:

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the

conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterablythemselves.

Everything is waiting for you

And yes, there are other times and places, too, when we sense the ‘holy’ in extraordinary ways. When I’m cooking, I feel the presence of my grandmother, who taught me to cook. Every year at the Peachtree Road Race I feel my dear friend Mark, who died of melanoma at age 39 and encouraged me to keep running for us both, running alongside me. Occasionally, running on the trails, I feel the presence of our beloved dog Sadie, whom we lost two years ago, and who loved to run…and on and on, the mystery of those thin spaces in our lives, just as Mary experienced in the garden. Could there have been a place more ‘thin,’ than that first Easter Day when the women made their way to the tomb to find it empty? Although they could hardly believe it and no doubt struggled to find words for it, mustn’t they have known that they were standing in a ‘thin place’ when they were reminded that it was foolish to look for the living among the dead? It is no surprise, of course, that Peter and the other apostles could not take in what the women hurried back to share, even as we shook our heads so long ago to hear the youngest among us point to something so wondrous. And yet, one must believe that they knew there was something more afoot as in Luke’s account, Peter ran to the tomb himself and left somehow changed – amazed at what he had seen.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.

And so I wonder now, on this Easter Day as we gather in song and praise surrounded by the fragrance of spring and the sounds of beloved hymns, how it is that we will experience these places, our lives now, as ‘thin.’ I wonder how and where heaven will meet earth this year. It is all a mystery, of course. The sort of mystery that words perhaps cannot quite capture. And yet we seek to speak to them still. Like the women at the tomb to so long ago, we, too, have been captured by this mystery and though our words may stumble, how can we not speak of it? And in the speaking? By God’s own doing, perhaps others will find themselves in a ‘thin place’ as well. Oh yes, maybe through our words, heaven will be brought just a little bit closer to earth. Indeed, maybe in the telling, others will sense the presence of the Risen Christ as well. It is so that birth and death, living and dying is fraught with mystery. And how much more mysterious is that which we are called to proclaim on Easter! For you, what words, what stories best capture and convey this mystery? This Gospel text is filled, dear one’s, with abundance from the smallest of things, miraculous transformations, and images of choices that ask of us nothing less than that we exercise our responsibility to choose God’s way—the pearl of great price—which may take us on our own distinctively sacred pilgrimage. Look around you, friends, at the purple coneflower on the trail, the raven tending her nest, the homeless man on the corner, the light in the eyes of your loved ones. Look at your grandmother’s quilts, waving in the breezes of your memory, and use your imagination—that God-given, sacred, imagination, which is the power to creatively engage this world in faith, and considering the Good News. Then pay attention to the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, here, now, and your place in it, the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field. “The Incarnate word is with us,” Wendell Berry wrote, “is still speaking is present, always, yet leaves no sign, but everything that is.”  And ultimately, dear ones, this means that we are the Body of Christ. The incarnation did not end after 33 years. The word did not just momentarily become flesh and dwell among us—it became flesh and continues to dwell among us.

I want to invite us all, in this coming Eastertide and on into Pentecost, to be a good friend to others. As Joan Chittister remindws us, “Mary Magdalene is the woman whom scripture calls by name in a time when women were seldom named in public documents at all. She is, in fact, named fourteen times—more than any other woman in the New Testament except Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, herself. She is clearly a very important, and apparently a very wealthy woman. Most of all, she understood who Jesus was long before anyone else did and she supported him in his wild, free ranging, revolutionary approach to life and state and synagogue. She was, it seems, the leader of a group of women who “supported Jesus out of their own resources.” And she never left his side for the rest of his life. She was there at the beginning of the ministry. And she was there at the end. She was there when they were following him in cheering throngs. And she was there when they were taking his entire life, dashing it against the stone of synagogue and state, turning on him, jeering at him, shouting for his death, standing by while soldiers poked and prodded him to ignominy. She tended his grave and shouted his dying glory and clung to his soul. She knew him and she did not flinch from the knowing. The “Magdalene factor” as Chittester calls it, especially in friendship, is the ability to know everything there is to know about a person, to celebrate their fortunes, to weather their straits, to chance their enemies, to accompany them in their pain and to be faithful to the end, whatever its glory, whatever its grief. The Magdalene factor is intimacy, that unshakeable immersion in the life of the other to the peak of ecstasy, to the depths of hell. Let’s be that kind of friend, here, to one another, and to those we meet in our work as the Body of Christ in the world…“Practice Resurrection,” our wonderful poet Wendell Berry says. And in the words of Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet withwhich He is to go about doing good in the world. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now. Alleluia, Amen.”

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day

Almighty and ever living God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

IN the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all…Amen. Grace to you and peace, and greetings on this Palm Sunday. If you are visiting us on this lovely Palm Sunday morning, I bid you welcome. We are glad you are here. As my time among you comes to a close, I am so very grateful for this season among you all. It has been a rich and lovely year, and I will miss you all when I take my leave. As I ran on the trails yesterday, I recalled so many moments for which I am grateful, from a wedding in Espanol, to so many wonderful healing services, and all the richness of our liturgical year, now come full circle. There are many reasons for us to celebrate and give thanks for the past year. And as the poet Szymborska has said of what it means to have a soul, what it means, that is, to be human: Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined.  And this is the essence of Palm Sunday too isn’t it…the journey from a parade to sorrow. There have also been several funerals this past year, including the service for Palmer Temple, my dear friend, mentor, and colleague. And in our tradition, these services are outward and visible signs of Resurrection. We are, after all, Easter people. There is rejoicing, and yet it is so very hard when we lose someone dear to us. And, as I told my students for many years, much pastoral care takes place in Holy Saturday time and space, where we hold in tension the losses and transitions of the infinite Good Friday experiences of our lives and the hope and promise of Easter. And Palm Sunday and the journey to Jerusalem prepare us for the narrative of the Triduum. We must be prepared to sit in the uncertainty and ambiguity of Holy Saturday, to be there, to be present to all that is calls forth in us. And we cannot do this by skipping from Palm Sunday to Easter. The journey to Easter begins here, and now. What we need is here. And we have Mary Magdalene as one among our guides. All four gospels bear witness to Mary Magdalene as the premier witness to the resurrection – alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. . . All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. As Cynthia Bourgeault as said, “she does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses.” But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if the role of Magdalene was acknowledged? What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely, this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?”

Some have used the term “glittering sadness” to describe Palm Sunday. There is such unbearable beauty, and such pain, today. Jesus is hailed as king, and winds up as a slave; he will empty himself, accepting torture and execution at the hands of humans with total forgiveness. He will love us to the end. As the hymn says: See, from his head, his hands, his feet; sorrow and love flow mingled down…Sitting with my student and his family at Columbia Presbyterian last week, I understood in a new way how sorrow and love flow mingled down.  Palm Sunday reveals the passion, the sorrow and the love intermingled at the heart of all our lives. It forces us to choose how we will arrive at the cross: bearing that pain together, or using it to separate ourselves from others. Richard Rohr has suggested that the road to Jerusalem leads to a “bright sadness.”There is darkness, he says, but as we go through Holy Week there is now a changed capacity to hold it with less anxiety. It is what John of the Cross called “luminous darkness,” and it explains the simultaneous coexistence of deep suffering and intense joy that we see in the saints, which is hard for most of us to imagine. Palm Sunday helps us learn that after we take this journey, now we are just here, and here is enough. Such “hereness,” however, has its own heft, authority, and influence. As a result of this journey, one’s growing sense of infinity and spaciousness is no longer found just “out there” but most especially “in here,” in our heart, because Christ has become a part of who we are, too. The inner and the outer become one. As St. Augustine put it in his Confessions: You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.

The great poet W.H. Auden was asked once why he was a Christian, since all religions share similar ethical values. And Auden said, “Because nothing in the figure of Buddha or Confucius fills me with the overwhelming desire to scream, “’crucify him’.”  The desire to crucify is the way of the crowd. A crowd has the power to make people feel less alone in the face of death. This is why crowds are always at the heart of the violence done by religions and rulers. It is the shadow side of each of us.

Sigmund Freud knew how very seductive the mentality of the group, or the crowd can be: it makes and shapes our worldly identities, often through violence, casting-out and separation—relegating people to the status of the “other.” It lets us say, as Jesus’ own disciples will soon say: “That man? I don’t know him; he’s not one of us.” The crowd helps frightened, isolated individuals identify with the power of Caesar, the power of the temple, the nation, the tribe….the power, as my colleague Walter Brueggemann has said, of empire. The crowd allows prideful humans even to attempt to take the place of God: deciding who to judge, who to punish, who to scapegoat, who to cast out, who to punish out of a need for retribution. And so often we go to the cross, isolated in our pain. But we do not have to walk to the cross alone, we do not have to suffer alone, and this is what Palm Sunday is about. Look, Jesus says: this is how you do it. And so, in this glittering, bright sadness, we take up our cross, and follow him. I invite us all into a journey rich in story, ours, and His. Holy Week is a week of stories. It is a week during which we walk – liturgically, spiritually, communally, personally – on the road to Jerusalem, and on through the last days of Jesus. From the triumphal palm-laid path into Jerusalem we observe today, to the moon-lit agony of Gethsemane, to the sharp betrayal of friends, to the poignant washing of feet, to the arrest and execution of a beloved teacher and leader, this story needs no embellishment. It is an invitation to us. And so I invite you to do as Mary Oliver suggests, to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it. And as Wendell Berry says, “We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.” Amen.

Fifth Sunday in Lent – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day – Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The Gospel: John 12:1-8  Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all…Amen. Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this Fifth Sunday in Lent as we near the end of our 40-day sojourn toward Easter. Thank you for being here today, and if you’re visiting us, welcome!

One day in early summer, many years ago, I was home from college and visiting my grandparents at their small farm in North Georgia. Their small house was perched on a hill beneath a lovely grove of ancient oak trees, with an open field off the front porch, and gardens to either side. My grandfather hung a hammock between two of the oak trees, and it was among my favorite places. On this day I recall dozing in the hammock after lunch, afloat on a sea of summer breezes and dappled oak leaf shadows, and smells from the garden, sung to sleep by the birds that my grandparents faithfully fed. As I awoke, the first image I saw was my grandmother’s handmade quilts, 5 or 6 of them, hanging on the clothesline nearby, airing out in the dear, sweet summer freshness of the country air. Although I had grown up with her lovingly crafted quilts, had slept beneath them on long winter nights, it was as if in that instant I saw them for the first time. Created from scraps of old ties, shirts, patches on patches on pants, and even the occasional vivid scrap of discarded dishcloth, they were ablaze with color and design, and appeared on fire in the summer morning sun, reflecting back a light that seemed to generate from each individual design, each carefully chosen, yet lovingly random addition to the whole cloth. These works of art, and I now realize that is what they are, were created of the ordinary bits and pieces of their lives—everyday scraps of common experience—and woven into a delightful, Incarnational narrative, a tapestry of care, and love.

Like the Gospel text for today, those quilts, even now as I hold them in my mind’s eye, remind me of the abundance of God’s love, into which we live during this season of Lent. Before that summer day I had never noticed—never really seen—those quilts for what they were, the carefully, compassionately crafted and redeemed tapestries of my grandmother’s love of life, and her love for us, a reflection of her ability to create outward and visible signs of her imaginative gifts and graces to warm us, and delight us. So it is with Mary in today’s Gospel. Every time she appears in each of the gospels, her compassion opens Jesus’ heart, and the texts are informed by her gracious abundance. I am the father of two sons of whom I am so very proud, and now four grandchildren, two of whom are girls. I am so grateful for the men who have mentored, guided, and shaped me; teachers and professors, football and track coaches, priests and colleagues who served as guides on the journey. But I have also been profoundly formed by the lavish, abundant love of maternal compassion, the cardinal virtue of pastoral care, by women like my grandmother who have loved and cared for me. Compassion, the Latin root of which means “womb-ish” or “womb-like,” is a powerful image in today’s Gospel text. And I believe that God’s abundant love is like the nurture and care of the womb, where we are sustained and nourished, and from which loving embrace we are given life. So, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, with whom she shares a home, embodies that generous, extravagant compassion in this story. We know that on at least two occasions, Jesus comes here for dinner, including today’s story. The Last supper will ultimately be held here, too. And Jesus appears on Easter to the disciples in Mary’s home. There is no other place in which Jesus appears as often as he does in this sacred space.     

But even more remarkable is the complexity of the relationship he shares with Mary, how he so clearly cares for her, and in relation to whose actions he finds meaning and solace. She sits at his feet among the men to be near him, and to learn from him. Her sister Martha complains Mary is neglecting the work of serving food and drink to their guests. Jesus defends her, saying she has chosen the good portion and it will not be taken away from her. Nor, it seems, will she be taken away from him. When her brother Lazarus is desperately ill, Jesus, hears the news from his disciples, and takes the time to journey to their home. Lazarus dies before he arrives. Martha goes to him in the road with words of regret, even reproach, but also, resignation. Mary, though, runs to him and falls at his feet, bathed in tears, her sobs breaking his heart. And he, too, weeps – his tears brought forth by her compassion. His heart wells up in response to Mary, and for her, he rushes to Lazarus’ grave, calling him with such spiritual power to “Come Out,” that Lazarus does just that. Now we read the tale of Jesus’ arrival at their home six days before Passover. He will be their guest for a week. They throw a feast in his honor. Lazarus is there, resurrected just days earlier. Mary brings out a jar of costly perfume, made with pure nard, we are told, and anoints his head, his hair, and then, using her own hair, his feet. All in the room are joined in an embrace of fragrance. And, we hear that Judas is angry and, as he says, the extravagance of the gesture bothers him. He declares the perfume could have been sold for a large sum and used to feed the poor.

Jesus protects and defends her. “Leave her alone!,” Jesus says to Judas; “You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me.”

There is no one else in the gospels for whom Jesus feels so tender, is so responsive, speaks so protectively, and with whom he chooses to be a frequent guest. We know the most astonishing of his miracles, the raising of Lazarus, for which miracle John says the authorities chose to kill him, was done for love of her. And according to Luke, Jesus declared she would be remembered always, for doing a beautiful thing for him, for anointing his hair and feet with her perfume. In today’s gospel, we are treated to two different ways of being in the world; two examples of how one might confront scarcity. And as is so often true of the Bible, it contains wisdom for the ages. We humans are consistent down through history, and we see this in both the Pharisees – and eventually, the Roman authorities – who feel their fiefdoms threatened, and in the face of loss of control they choose to tighten their grip. God save us from those things we choose to do based on our need to control, especially when we are afraid. And, of course, women are so often victims of this. By plotting to kill Jesus, they hope to stop their sense of helplessness in its very tracks by asserting what control they can. Mary, on the other hand, has a different approach. We don’t know exactly what she is feeling when she slips from the table and kneels at Jesus’ feet with a pound of expensive perfumed oil. However, her silence says all that is needed. In gratitude for her brother’s life, in grief for her friend’s life, perhaps in fear for what might happen in the near future, she is silent. So, instead of speaking, she lavishes Jesus with an absurdly abundant gift: perfume that would cost as much as a year’s total wages. This is a profound gesture of abundance. John tells us that the whole room filled with fragrance as Mary anointed Jesus. In this little story, we see that there are at least two ways of dealing with ours fears born of scarcity: we can seek control in ways that ultimately keep us in bondage, or we can give all we’ve got.

I confess that in some ways I understand Judas and his theology of scarcity. Many of us have probably been here before. We have found ourselves uncomfortable in the face of generosity, and criticized it in order to limit its power. We’ve also probably stood alongside Mary. We have allowed ourselves to give to our heart’s content – to lavish our love on someone or something else – only to have our motives questioned. When this happens, we can become afraid to risk it happening again. Sometimes our culture – and perhaps our human nature – pressures us to only take measured risks, and of course, in many ways this is wise. But God calls us to love without counting the cost. As George Herbert, poet and priest, has said:

“Lord I have invited all,

And I shall

Still invite, still call to thee:

For it seems but just and right

In my sight,…

Where there is all, there all should be.”

It could be a brave new Lenten discipline to engage the final days of this season as Mary would: to love generously, because we can; to give life our impulse to give abundantly, just as God gives abundantly. This Gospel text is in fact, my friends, Jesus’ anointing and preparation for death, the anointing for his burial.  So here in this moment John is giving us a glimpse into what our relationship towards gratitude might be as informed by the faith of Mary. I am so very grateful for the example of my grandmother, whose quilts were outward and visible signs of her abiding love for her family. They covered us in times of joy and sadness, and the love they represented lives on in my heart—and I am sharing that with all of you, right now. It helps me to understand the extravagance of Mary’s love for Jesus and, in turn, his love for us all. In her quiet and devoted imaginative quilting, my grandmother pointed to something larger than herself, just as Mary, in anointing Jesus, draws our attention to the one whom she anoints. I am so grateful for Mary’s example too, for the gift of her extravagant and life-giving example of compassion, and generosity. She reminds us that Jesus is God’s gift to each of us, right here, right now. It seems, dear one’s, that in so many ways we are in a time of perceived scarcity and fear, and surrounded by the behavior to which these give birth. And yet, Mary’s gestures here, and throughout scripture, gathered together like the redeemed and resurrected scraps of fabric in my grandmother’s quilts, are an invitation to go and do likewise. I think back across the years to that summer morning, and I know that my Grandmother’s love lives in my heart and continues to expand like the universe we inhabit, God’s gift to us all. Just as our Eucharistic table is a place of grace, and compassion where even Judas would be welcome—and remember that he, too, stayed for dinner —we find extravagant gifts of compassion and grace. Mary does not say a word in this text beyond her actions, which speak volumes. Her gift is the anointing of Jesus, and this says so much more than any words could. As another Mary, another of my maternal teachers and mentors has said so well:

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

Into the world of the invisible,

The inscrutable, and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

On a day of no wind,

Bathed in light

Like the wanderer who has come home at last

And kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things;

Every motion; even words. Amen.

Fourth Sunday in Lent – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 …..

The holy Gospel…according to Luke… Glory to you, Lord Christ.] All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons…

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Grace and peace to you all and welcome to Holy Family on this Fourth Sunday of Lent. The story of the prodigal son is one we know well. It may be one of the best-known stories in the world. But ask “On what occasion did Jesus tell that story?” and it is unlikely many will know. While context isn’t always everything here, it is important. This is especially true of the context of Jesus’ parables. For as John Dominic Crossan has said, parables show the “fault lines” beneath the comfortable surfaces of the worlds we make for ourselves. Parables can be unsettling experiences challenging the reconciliations with which we have become comfortable—the ones, typically, we have created—and replaces them with a deeper level of reconciliation, a reconciliation which is contextually situated at the level of the Incarnation. Among my beloved professors at Vanderbilt Divinity School was Sallie McFague, who lovingly steered me away from law school and toward doctoral work in psychology and religion. She was tough, a New England kind of toughness leavened with compassion, and she taught us that a parable is an extended metaphor. A parable is not an allegory, where the meaning is extrinsic to the story, nor is it an example story where, as in the story of the Good Samaritan, the total meaning is within the story. Rather, as an extended metaphor, the meaning is found only within the story itself although it is not exhausted by that story. While a parable is an aesthetic whole and hence demands rapt attention to the narrative and its configurations, it is also open-ended, expanding ordinary meaning so that from a careful analysis of the parable we learn a new thing, are shocked into a new awareness, often about ourselves! How the new insight occurs is, of course, the heart of the matter; it is enough to say at this point that the two dimensions—the ordinary and the extraordinary—are related intricately within the confines of the parable so that such “God-talk” as we have in the Prodigal Son is an existential, worldly, sensuous story of human life.

This parable is a dangerous story for several reasons. One danger is that it is so powerful and clear that it can take on a life of its own. It runs the risk of becoming mythic in nature. Myths are designed to do just the opposite of parables. They are designed to make us comfortable with that which is familiar. Yet Luke was quite careful in providing a definite setting for the story. It’s in a context which discloses a deeper, richer meaning in an already powerful parable. Luke establishes the setting in a single, clear sentence; “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”  Jesus responds with a defense of table fellowship with outcasts, and this time his strategy is to tell a story. His narrative grabs us because it is stories like this that are the everyday stuff of our lives. Such stories are sacred because they are how we come to understand who we are in relation to ourselves, others, and God. As familiar as it is, this parable is full of surprises. And the essence of these surprises is nothing less than a metaphysic of joy. The first surprise is that that the younger son, realizing that he is no farmer, dares to ask his father for his inheritance “pre-posthumously!” This is a dis-honorable request in most any culture, including ours. The second surprise is that the eldest son says nothing. We are surprised that the father goes along with the request. Indeed, the family therapist in me is wondering about and imagining the breakfast table conversation between Mom and Dad; wondering if Dad is “enabling” this kid in such a way as to almost guarantee his failure, not to mention going against the “rules” of the Jewish culture of the day. Call me a Pharisee if you like, but this is not a decision to be entered into unadvisedly. What would you have done with this request?

Another surprise is that the younger son decides to turn the property into liquid capital, probably incurring a capital gains tax in the process—and he blows the entire proceeds. A risky investment here, some big spending there, and a little riotous living thrown in, and our protagonist is then reduced to slopping hogs and missing home. This is a form of exile not to be envied. We are surprised when he comes back home. Give him credit for courage and humility, because he has a plan to enter a new relationship with his family as a salaried worker. And his father welcomes him back. He gives his son multiple signs of full reconciliation in the form of a robe, a ring, and sandals– marking the young son as family. We are surprised when the father ensures reconciliation not only in relation to the son, but with the whole village. He does this by celebrating in a radically immanent table fellowship, a huge party with a roasted, fatted calf as the symbolic and literal centerpiece of the celebration. And all are welcome at that table!

The elder son’s bitter reaction upon returning from the field and discovering the party is one of surprise—his surprise at this fathers’ response—when he says, “All these years I slaved for you and never disobeyed one of your commandments.” We can identify with him, can’t we? And this is the parabolic sting of the story. All religions provide some means by which the sinner can return and make restitution, but to come back to a party? That, indeed, is an Incarnational surprise. And all were welcome. What kind of religion can this be? And as Fred Craddock has asked, “Who in the church today would have attended that party?” When we hear Jesus’ defense of his inclusive table fellowship against the charges of the scribes and Pharisees, we find another surprise. In the portraits of the prodigal son and the compassionate father, the tax collectors and sinners hear a confirmation of the reconciliation they have already found in Jesus’ ministry to them. The scribes and Pharisees are invited to contemplate an image of themselves in the figure of the eldest son, who has completely misread his filial relationship as one of slavery—an alternative view to their own sense of relationship. One of the things I love about this parable is its non-binary nature. It’s a developmental achievement to move from living in an either/or, all or nothing world to one that is both/and. This requires giving up control and living in a world that is more ambiguous and messier at times. And this allows us to see reconciliation with others whom we would relegate to the margins…persons with whom we may disagree or even don’t like very much. Reconciliation becomes more than agreeing to disagree. It means acknowledging one’s own vulnerability in ways perhaps uncomfortable at times, especially when our need to be right exceeds being in relationship.

Reconciliation in this parable means to be given more than one deserves, especially by God, who flings wide the gates of generosity. Indeed, our whole notion of karma, and quid pro quo—of reaping exactly what we sow—is thrown open to question. In relation to the God of Incarnation whom Jesus proclaims—and embodies—we can fall from justice; we can fall from faith; we can fall from righteousness; but we cannot fall from grace. This is the context of Luke’s parable, and all our acts of compassion, and of our experience of joy at the open table. Like the prodigal father in this parable…for he, too, had been on a journey, I have two sons and for me, this story is a symbol for all the promises, which were made to me and the energy and care which nourished and created me as a human being, and which I now extend to my sons, and to their families.  It has ultimately to do with a sense of the basic trustworthiness of the world and the consequent freedom to commit ourselves to action. We can become through the story a receiver and a maker of promises; this gives a unity of past, present, and future for us, and hence gives him us, too, a “story,” identity. As a student of psychology, I know that our basic attachments, especially early on, speak to the depth of each person’s biography and lie at the heart of all our stories. In the depths of this story lies a keen sense of the holy and the sacred: the basic solicitude of life, which makes graceful freedom possible.

Yes, this parable is dangerous because the context of it is radical table fellowship; the intentional, ritual pattern of eating and drinking and telling stories with sinners. In this case, “sin” means a refusal to grow, and a willingness to be kept in bondage to old narratives—of fear, of needing to be right, and of power and control, of relegating people to the status of the “other” based on gender, sexual orientation, politics, and on and on. The teller of the parable of the Prodigal Son beheld a vision of reality that demanded a breakthrough beyond one-dimensional, univocal language—it demanded metaphor, for such is always the route out of established meaning to new meaning; and metaphor in turn became the proper vehicle for the expression and communication of what they beheld—it is the language for “a body that thinks.” It’s an invitation to go deeper than what we see on social media, which is perhaps the best example of refusal to grow, or the assumptions we make about others based on our fears and former narratives. Jesus was killed for this reason—he showed another way to an Empire bent on exclusion rather than embrace. We are called to remember this, and to weave the meaning of this parable into the tapestry of our own lives. Reconciliation is finally about table fellowship, where we are all at home in relation to the God who, like the father in the parable, waits for us to come home, to celebrate in joy. After all, we are all just walking one another home. Amen.

Third Sunday in Lent – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them–do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday of Lent. Today’s Gospel reading includes the parable of the barren fig tree, an evocative illustration of being stuck in a pattern of unfruitfulness—or what Henry David Thoreau called a state of “quiet desperation.” I imagine that for each of us the conditions that might lead to depleted and unproductive soil are uniquely ours, yet with common features to our stories. Perhaps it is the soil of unhealthy family dynamics, or unresolved grief, or anger, which leads at times to bitterness. Perhaps we have deep questions about why God allows bad things to happen. It is quite human to ask, as did those in our Gospel reading for today, if these events are somehow punishment for something we have done or left undone. Jesus responds to their question with a parable, and the metaphor from today’s Gospel, with its evocative image of a withering and unproductive fig tree, suggests a person disconnected from his or her own soul and from the wholeness that the Light of Christ can restore. It is a Lenten text, appropriate to this season of discernment. I don’t believe ours is a vindictive God, and I do believe that because we have free will sometimes our choices cut us off from life-giving and generative possibilities. Perhaps Lent is a season for digging around our roots, asking for forgiveness when that is what is needed, and hoping we can bear fruit in the coming season. I believe this is true. And God waits for us in that new season.

In this lovely parable, it is not until the vineyard owner expresses his discontent with the situation that the gardener is motivated to change. The owner desired that the tree flourish and grow, but the gardener seemed content to let this state of horticultural lassitude go on for another year. Understood theologically, there are times when our confession—saying out loud what has remained unsaid—can be the occasion for grace, reminding us that we are to care for and nurture the soil of our souls, and that our lives are to be lived as fully as possible. God fully glorified, Irenaeus said, is a human being fully alive. The season of Lent calls us to self-examination and repentance. Indeed, the word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to lengthen,” or, put differently, to “spring forth,” as in that season when the light of day gradually grows longer.

Today’s Gospel brings this home to us in an urgent way. I wonder if you have a memory of a time or event in your life that demonstrates this parable for you…a time perhaps when you were rooted in unyielding soil, cut off from the rich ground of your own soul and from the life giving light of Christ… a memory perhaps of a lost and squandered opportunity, or a season of living in darkness. One example that comes to mind in my own life takes me back all the way to high school, a time of life when for most, if not all of us, life is marked by the intensity of every kind of emotion and experience, a memory I shared at our Men’s Retreat last fall.

In the mid-summer before my senior year in high school a new student arrived in our neighborhood. He was from Southern California, and he fit the stereotype perfectly. With blond surfer good looks and an easy manner, he quickly stole the hearts of the girls at school and was the envy of all the guys—though we would not admit it. In the Sandy Springs community of the early 70’s, in many ways a small town really, he was rather exotic. Along with my football teammates, I simply chose to ignore him. Until, that is, he decided to go out for football. When the coach, in a moment of grace, granted him permission to join the team, we were filled with righteous indignation. After all, he had not suffered through years of two-a-day practices in the August Georgia heat or cut his teeth on Gray-Y football on the dirt fields of Chastain Park as had most of us. He was a stranger among us, in this our senior year, and my little band of brothers would not let him in. We considered it unfair for the coach to let this latecomer onto the team, not this team, and not this year. This was our year. And we were a good team. And so, the cadre closed its ranks. He seemed to take this with the same good-natured equanimity with which, outwardly, he took everything else. He quickly made friends with others at school who, according to the proscribed rules of our football fiefdom, were also social outcasts. He seemed to get along with every strata of our stratified universe at a time and place when this was very hard to do. In my own way I was testing these boundaries as well, writing for the school paper and joining the drama club—things football players did not do. But he was transcending boundaries as if he lived in a different universe altogether. Secretly, I admired him.

Truth be told, however, I was also jealous of him, and when the coach let him join the team my envy only increased, because we happened to play the same position. And he was very good; lightning fast with good hands, he was ideal for the position of slot-back and flanker in our power-I option offense (I am dating myself here, to be sure). Thankfully, this scheme also called for multiple substitutions and combinations, so we both got a lot of playing time over the course of a very good season. Yes, I secretly admired him, and I learned from him. But I would not let him in. When track season began, he replaced a dear friend on the sprint medley relay team, of which I was also a member, and largely due to his contributions, we finished third in the state, setting a new school record in the process. In practice I refused to let him beat me on the track, harboring a secret fear that he was faster than me. And perhaps that was true.

One afternoon that spring, just a couple of months before graduation, I found him sitting alone in the locker room, located off to one side of the gym. He was crying. Letting the blinders of my own jealousy momentarily fall away, I sat down on the bench across from him and asked him what was wrong. He was quiet for what seemed a long time, and then, slowly, his story unfolded. His father was a prominent misogynistic physician in southern California who left his family after several affairs. My teammate moved with his mother and younger sister into a religious commune that we might refer to as a cult. His mother’s mental health deteriorated after his parents divorced, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Atlanta. With his mother now in a state hospital in California, and his father involved in yet another relationship, his life was in chaos. He worried about his younger sister, who was becoming involved with drugs and alcohol, and he felt he needed to stay close to her rather than go to college back in California. He wanted desperately to go home. He told me all this as we sat in the late afternoon sunlight of the gym, with motes of dust glinting and floating in vertical shafts in the sunlit air, and only the distant sounds of bouncing basketballs breaking the silence. I sat there and stewed in the juices of my own blinding self-righteous envy, and I realized that his good looks and easy-going manner had masked his pain, and that all of us who might have been his friends—had been instead the gatekeepers to his emotional prison and loneliness. I felt deeply ashamed. I tried over the last weeks of school to befriend him, but really, it was too late. Soon the forces of time and destiny swept us up in a river of change, and after graduation I never saw or heard from him again.

I often wonder what became of him, but I do not know. I heard that he did find his way back to college in California, but a note I sent to him was returned unopened. I did know that I needed to repent, and that summer I made my way to Holy Innocents’ church—I had grown up Presbyterian—and I began a series of conversations with the Rector, slowly leading me eventually to the Episcopal Church, and ultimately, to be standing here with all of you. I needed to acknowledge my envy, a form of idolatry that had kept me from the life-giving possibilities of relationship. Yes, I had been guilty of wastefulness in relationship, of envy, of detachment from the fertile and life-giving soil of the Good News.

Yet, unproductive and toxic guilt, so common in our culture of gratuitous public confession, is at times its own form of idolatry, is finally not the appropriate response to this recognition. Confession in the Episcopal tradition occurs in community, as was true in this sacred space this morning, and in the context of worship, and in response to the life-giving light of the Gospel. It is not about publicly bearing one’s soul for the sake of relieving us of toxic guilt. It is not as if God is engineering punishment for any of the things any of us leave undone or are guilty of having done knowing full well that we should have done otherwise. Would God have sent Jesus to teach, and heal, and restore unworthy souls to wholeness if this were the case? Admitting my blame and culpability in the case of my erstwhile teammate those many years ago was not going to protect me from bad things…this is not how God works. What is our operative theology of crisis and loss, of repentance, of forgiveness? People do this not to interfere with the “will of God,” but rather because it is in keeping with the example of Jesus, who healed the leper, made straight the limbs of the paralytic, gave sight to the blind, exorcised the demons. Were these ailments punishments from a God angry about misdeeds? They were not. God does not micromanage our lives such that we are the reasons for catastrophes that occur by virtue of our having displeased God. Jesus did not tell those who fell at his feet in pain to go suffer a few years longer to pay for their sins. But he does ask us to repent. In the Gospel for today we hear the clear message that if Israel does not turn from its idolatry, does not turn from seeing its vocation in terms of privilege and worldly preeminence, the idols it worships will exact a high price. So it is for us. What I learned, and am still learning, from my experience with my high school teammate is that my envy—pure old-fashioned jealousy, caused me to deny the abundance of God that might have allowed the relationship to flourish, bloom, and grow. I was like the fig tree that did not bear fruit. And, to continue the metaphor, I have often found myself wishing for just another year, just a bit more time to get to know him and to respond to his story with compassion, without being blinded by my operative theology of scarcity—my belief that there was simply not enough love to go around. But it was not to be. Rather, my repentance, and the recognition of my own fears borne of envy, and the vulnerability that it opened like a deep wound in my soul, had something to teach me. It is teaching me still. Jesus says that terrible things sometimes happen. “I am not going to focus on Herod,” he says in the Gospel last week, “and I am not going to worry about Pilate.”  Bad things happen sometimes, and it is not our fault. As Kate Bowler at Duke says so well, “no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude… When they don’t know what else to say, people say “Everything happens for a reason…The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason…I was immediately worn out,” she laments, by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.” In this parable, Jesus asks that we attend to what we are feeling when we look in the mirror and see someone whom we do not like, whose life is not bearing fruit. We are asked to be careful about our projections, especially when we make assumptions about people who do not share our views, or whose family constellations are different from ours. Regardless of the form our sin is taking, it is keeping us from flourishing and bearing fruit. Attend to that, and to the fact that we are bumping up against our own limitations and humanness. Let it be the occasion for choosing life. Let our confession be the turning over of the soil of our souls, in preparation for planting the life-giving seeds of repentance. If we name what we see, we may be afraid, but this can be life-giving. We may be afraid, but God is still the God of compassion, and our fear is not the final answer. We may be afraid, but Lent is a time for turning toward the light, connecting with the deep and rich soil of the Good News, and allowing our very souls to, well, lengthen, grow, and flourish. Let’s remember the miracles of the burning bush, and of the miracle of photosynthesis in which trees eat sunlight, and carbon dioxide, and give us in turn the very air we breathe. As Welsh poet and priest reminds us in a timely Lenten poem, these moments of deeper self-awareness may be a gift.

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the

pearl of great price, the one field that had

treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

~ R.S. Thomas

We may be afraid, and we may be in a hurry to move on, but the harrowing of our souls that occurs through the recognition of our own fear and vulnerability, and when appropriate, our need to repent and apologize, can become the source of new growth, new relationships, and new life in Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.