July 10, 2024

Early on Tuesday morning last week, I enjoyed a lovely trail run in preparation for the Peachtree Road Race, held on Thursday, July 4th. Tuesday morning was deliciously cool and breezy, in contrast to what would be a hilly, humid, and hot Fourth of July in Atlanta. I enjoyed the solitude, and some much needed time to immerse myself in the Southern Appalachian woods. Wildflowers and wildlife were plentiful, and I was reminded of John Muir’s invocation:

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. ~ John Muir

In contrast, on Thursday morning I ran from Buckhead down to Piedmont Park with 55,000 of my fellow sojourners. Two days, and two very different experiences, yet both involved running, and both provided opportunities to be fully present to the moment at hand; as Mary Oliver has said so well:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

And so I am doing just that now, with each of you. As I ran past the Shepherd Center on Thursday, a facility devoted to brain and spinal cord injury, I paused to greet the patients lining Peachtree Road. Most were in wheelchairs or on stretchers. Like many, I’ve had family, friends, and patients who were treated there. The patients come out to cheer on the runners—imagine that—and give us “high fives” as we pass by. We should be cheering them on in fact, and I try to connect with some as I walk up the hill.

The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott once wrote “O God, may I be alive when I die.” As I ran by the incredible Shepherd Center, and the heroes who were lining Peachtree there, a woman in a wheelchair looked at me, smiled, and said, “Be in this moment.”

Exactly, and as Wendell Berry wrote so very well:

The question before me, now that I

am old, is not how to be dead,

which I know from enough practice,

but how to be alive, as these worn

hills still tell, and some paintings

of Paul Cezanne, and this mere

singing wren, who thinks he’s alive

forever, this instant, and may be.

~ Sabbaths, VIII

And the Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge once wrote:

“The best things in life have no lasting forms. When you move on, don’t think too much. Look around you and up, into the sky–towards the sun, the moon, the stars–and listen to the surroundings: the rain falling, your foot rising from the wet moss and the silence. Ask yourself: where am I right now? Thanks. I am here.” 

~ Erling Kagge, Philosophy for Polar Explorers.

 ​ At the Cathedral I greeted my friend and colleague Juan Sandoval, Hispanic missioner for the Diocese with whom I served our Cathedral Hispanic congregation for many years. Like my experience on the trails Tuesday morning, it’s a moment of being fully present, of “I am here.” I have no idea who took the photo, which was posted to the Cathedral website.

One might say these two days—one in the mountains and one on Peachtree—while different, had much in common. I think the most important theme on both days was being in “relationship” to me—my own experience of being “fully alive,” and to others. Likewise, there are many “trails” at Holy Family, both literally and metaphorically. And these trails offer opportunities for learning, growth, and being in relationship to oneself, to others, and to God.

We are so very fortunate at Holy Family for opportunities to serve, learn, and grow. One can join the choir, or the parish life committee, or the intrepid grounds crew…or one can make the decision to attend one of the exciting Adult Education opportunities available both now, and upcoming this fall! Here’s more about those options, with more to come:

Adult Education: Join us June 30 at 9:15 AM at the Sunday morning Adult Education group for week 5 of an 8-week study of First Isaiah. We will use materials created by Yale Bible Study (yalebiblestudy.org). Each session will consist of a brief video presented by Dr. John J. Collins (Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School) and Dr. Joel S. Baden (Professor of the Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale) followed by group discussion. This study addresses “the prophet and his prophecies, the text and its time”.  Isaiah “embodies the notion of speaking truth to power”. In Session 1 we will address the “Historical Context”. Later sessions will include Isaiah’s call, Immanuel, Messianic Prophecy, Demand for Justice as well as other topics. All course materials are available at no charge at www.yalebiblestudy.org. You may download the study guide from the website.

If you’ve never attended Adult Education before, now is the time to join us. If you’re a regular, we look forward to seeing you again. Questions? Contact Kathleen Allen-Leonard.

And, from Tammy Kirk, this could be the study for you if you are interested in a long-term Bible study which:

  • encourages personal transformation through biblically-based study
  • is focused on living faithfully within the Christian community
  • develops meaningful relationships through sharing in group discussion

Disciple is a time-tested program (with study manual) which consists of daily Bible readings done at home and weekly meetings (roughly 2 hours for 30-34 weeks). The group meeting includes a short video presentation given by leading Bible scholars, followed by guided discussion and prayer. Days and times will be agreed upon once the group has been established. For more information or to sign up, contact Tammy Kirk at jtmlkirk@aol.com

Education for Ministry (EfM):  A total of 12 members of Holy Family participated in the Education for Ministry program for the 2023-2024 academic year, which was just completed. Next year, we can accommodate four new participants in the program, sponsored by The School of Theology at the University of the South. Sessions will begin in early September and run for 36 weeks. The group consists of 6 to 12 participants, plus the mentors. Usually, the participants meet face-to-face for about 2.5 hours a week. The group utilized Zoom for over a year due to the Coronavirus pandemic and still uses it when someone needs to be absent for a session.

Every baptized person is called to ministry. The EfM program provides people from all walks of life with the education “to be” Christians and to carry out their ministries. All Christians need a Christian education which supports their faith and which prepares them to express that faith in day-to-day activities. EfM is a worldwide program developed by the School of Theology at Sewanee. It holds before us that the foundation from bringing Christ to the world lies in a church empowered by an active, theologically articulate laity. Thousands of persons have completed the four-year program. Participants enroll one year at a time, can transfer almost anywhere in the U.S.A. and in many foreign countries, and can obtain 18 Continuing Educations Units per year by participating.

You don’t have to be an Episcopalian to take part in the program, either. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be a Christian. If you have any interest in EfM, just ask any of the current or former participants or Byron Tindall or Jeannine Krenson, the mentors. The current participants include Connie Moore, Gordon Stefaniuk, Jim Reid, Martha Power, Rosemary Lovelace, Susan Stefaniuk, Loran Davis, and Bill Zercher. You can also check the Sewanee website. The cost is $325 per year, and there is some scholarship help available. Each participant has to furnish her or his own text books.

Contact Byron via email Byron Tindall at bctindall@hotmail.com or 678-493-6609 or Jeannine via email at jeanninekrenson@gmail.com or 706-299-7949. Currently, the sessions are held Monday mornings from 9:30 to 11:30 or noon. Each of these opportunities at Holy Family offers chances to “pay attention,” and to be present…to say “I am here.” And these are invitations to relationships that allow for growth, transformation, and deepening our theological awareness. They are guideposts on the trails of your choosing, available to all, and limited only by our imagination. Join us, won’t you, and find a trail on which you feel more fully alive, as I believe God intended. Just look for the signposts, and tell us about it!

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and see you in church!

Blessings, Bill+

July 7, 2024

7th Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 9 Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 6:1-13

Lord, Have Mercy on the Frozen Man

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting with us today please let us know.

In the Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus on what has been a long journey. It is about to get longer. We recall that during his exile of 40 days in the wilderness, and our own Lenten journey, Jesus was tempted by Satan, forced to face his own demons, by virtue of the very power he, and Satan, knew he possessed. When we encounter him in today’s reading he has journeyed to Nazareth, where he is teaching in the synagogue. 

And not just teaching, but teaching with authority, to the astonishment of the people there, who are suspicious of this hometown boy whom they knew as a carpenter, son, and sibling. They question the authority of one whom they knew before he became the prophet standing before them. So, today we continue our journey in Mark’s Gospel, in the long, green season of Pentecost and Jesus, has returned to his hometown of Nazareth, where his reception is less than enthusiastic. In a social system where status was understood as fixed (i.e., your status at birth defined who you would always be) and honor/shame considerations were important, did they simply regard it as impossible for Jesus to amount to anything? The people of Nazareth indicate this negative perception when they identify Jesus as a “carpenter” (i.e., a low-status manual laborer) and as the “son of Mary” (i.e., hinting at a questionable fatherhood). Because people think they know who Jesus is, they end up asking disdainfully, “Who does he think he is? The identity of Jesus is a consistent issue in Mark. In the gospel, we hear the opinions of rulers, religious authorities, crowds, disciples, and family members. For the author of Mark, the important question keeps coming around to “who do you — the reader — say that Jesus is?” And if you do honor Jesus as a prophet (or more than a prophet), who does that make you? Does it mean new allegiances that supersede traditional country and family values? As we answer those questions, Mark is leading us into a confession of faith.

As a former seminary professor, I can tell you that authority and astonishment are not easily achieved in the classroom. The root of the word authority comes from the same Latin root as our word “author,” and this is instructive, because an authority is, in the best sense of the word, someone who creates; one, that is, in relation to whom one finds a life-giving flourishing…a kind of increase in relation to which one feels enlivened. Or, as Irenaeus put it, God fully glorified is a human being fully alive.” Jesus has that kind of authority—to help us become fully alive—in contrast to an authority which comes by virtue of an office or some kind of rank, such as a political post, or judgeship, or, Lord help me, that of a priest or rabbi. Indeed, the people were amazed by Jesus in part because he was not a member of the Sanhedrin—he held no formal authority of any kind. His authority came from within, and it was a gift from God—and so is our authority…which shares the etymology with the word “authentic” as well. In a real sense in this passage Jesus comes into his own –he comes home—in terms of his vocation as a teacher and healer. Howard Thurman has said “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs most is people who have come alive.”Perhaps as much as anything this passage is about Jesus coming alive that day, in new ways, and inviting us to do likewise.

I find myself curious, though, about the relationship between his authority—this excellence as a teacher as exhibited by Jesus—and the journey he had been on. I find myself wondering if there might be some connection between his exile in the wilderness, for example, and the suffering he encountered there, and his ability to teach with authority. Moreover, he is not just a teacher in this Gospel reading, he is one who casts out demons—a theme in much of Mark’s Gospel. He is in this sense a wounded healer who struggled with his own demons. Now, I don’t know about you, but discussions of demons don’t occur much in my line of work as a professor who often taught clinical courses, and as a psychotherapist. And I have no idea what Paul is referring to in the Epistle today about the “7th heaven.” In the circles I run in, we are so thoroughly imbued with Western scientific rationalism that talk of demon possession and mystical references to heaven simply don’t occur in polite company. We talk instead of mental illness, and “diagnostic” categories, and neurological substrates contributing to neuro-plasticity, and so on. Is this a more appropriate way of looking at the encounters Jesus had in the synagogue—rejected as a prophet in his hometown—and in numerous encounters with unclean spirits? Were these souls suffering from what we would call a mental illness? I do not know. But I find myself curious about these encounters nonetheless. And what kind of journey had these possessed souls been on? We don’t hear from them at all. In none of the passages about demon possession do any of them speak in these passages, just as many of our homeless mentally ill persons are marginalized, and have no voice. Were we to talk with any one of these individuals, I imagine they were sojourners too…and clearly suffering. Today’s text describes the disciples, now empowered by Jesus, “casting out many demons and healing many who were sick. How did these souls find themselves there on this day? Were they there in the temple, ignored, day after day? Did they once have a family, a job, and a home? Or, were they rather life-long homeless persons whose life had taken a turn for the worse—like a veteran with PTSD, or those dual diagnosis souls compromised by mental illness and addicted in some way? Did these souls even want the kind of transformation Jesus offered? I see people in my clinical office who are ambivalent about the very changes in relation to which they are seeking help. And I get it. Change is hard, and sometimes scary.

Whatever we might say about these references to demon possession, I think we are safe to say they were a form of evil… that is to say, the spirits in those who are suffering are called “unclean” because, whatever the affliction, and however we understand it, it caused a separation from God, and others, and from the worship that was going on around them. It was a form of deprivation, of loss, of being cut off from the ability to be his true self and from full relationship with others, in community. I don’t mean to suggest that they are themselves evil, but that, for whatever reasons, their spirits had become frozen and hard…and perhaps those who questioned Jesus that day in Nazareth had become hardened too. And aren’t we seeing more of this in our time as well? Are we not somewhat jaded, and suspicious of authority? Perhaps those who are “possessed” have in some sense shut down; something alive in them has “gone away.” And this certainly happens in mental illness, including more serious, chronic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia—for which, by the way, there was no “diagnosis” back then—but also in cases of depression, and anxiety, and alcohol and drug addiction.  Gerald May, a colleague whose work, like mine, lived in the interdisciplinary spaces where listening to stories is essential, has said that “God’s grace through community involves something far greater than other people’s support and perspective. The power of grace is nowhere as mystical or brilliant as in communities of faith. Its power includes not just love that comes from people and through people, but love that pours forth among people, as if through the very spaces between one person and the next. Just to be in such an atmosphere is to be bathed in healing power.” How might the power of stories, and of communities of grace where those stories can be told, teach us about healing, and wholeness in our little corner of God’s creation? And it is precisely Irenaeus’ experience of being fully alive, manifest in each of us, which is threatened by evil. And this evil, however it was described back then, was a particular form of bondage; a binding, choking, life-suffocating bondage. I suspect that– whatever form evil takes– it has its own peculiar manifestation for each of us. The end result, however, is always the same: it threatens to separate us from the Creator, and from relationships with others whom God created to share this journey with us. And so our experience of life, though potentially one full of vitality and wonder, is, instead one of being in bondage. And isn’t this what Satan used to threaten Jesus in the Wilderness? “Use the power you know you have,” Satan told Jesus, “in order to have authority and control over all others, and to have everything you need”? Had Jesus consented to this, I suspect the end result have been the end of his true and fully- alive authority, based on authentic relationship with God, and come to that, with us.

It is Jesus’ own experience of suffering that allows him to act with compassion in the reading for today… compassion, from the Latin com-passio, to “suffer with,” means that one takes action in response to the encounter with suffering. Jesus encountered his own demons, faced them down, and by virtue of that suffering reached out to others, and healed their broken spirit. Most often what threatens to cut us off from God, and self, and other is the experience of our own finitude and vulnerability…those real human limitations our awareness of which put us most at risk for idolatry and bondage, to use these old-fashioned words, when we seek to secure our souls in ways destined to fail. Alternatively, we can experience the possibility of a summons, an invocation, a claim or call to commitment and relationship. It’s as if Jesus is saying to us “Remember me? Something has occurred between us… I know who you are…you are one who comes to take me to church… you are the one who worked at the food pantry… who helped build the Habitat House….you participated in Serve Pickens…you called me when I had not been around and you missed me… you cared for me when I was sick… you saw my face in the face of the stranger…you had compassion.”

Some time back the singer /songwriter James Taylor wrote a clever tune in response to the discovery of the very well-preserved, 5,000-year-old body of a hunter in found it the Tyrolean Alps. I’ve followed this story with interest since this man emerged from a glacier in 1991. The most recent article I saw was in National Geographic, and based on additional research we now have a rollicking good murder mystery to add to this narrative. But I digress… The refrain of Taylor’s song is “Lord, have mercy on the frozen man.” Yes, “Lord have mercy indeed,” because when faced with our demons, each of us—men and women alike—can become frozen in spirit. We face one of the vulnerabilities of being human—namely, that in reality authority and idolatry are intimately related. We must choose carefully, dear ones, when seeking to claim power and authority before gaining humility, and before wresting with the shadow side of who we are.

This is the gift Jesus offers. The Gospels imply that anyone who casts out demons cannot be a stranger to them. In today’s Gospel vignette, C.S. Lewis suggests, we see Jesus clearing out the emptiness and offering instead, a relationship with God. Jesus hears our suffering, and suffers with us, and offers the compassion of relationship and redemptive healing. And this takes place in community. Anything that would rob us of being fully alive, in life-giving ways, limits our ability to fully glorify God. “Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” And so we recall the Collect for today… Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. As Wendell Berry has written; The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but how to be alive, as these worn hills still tell, and some paintings of Paul Cezanne, and this mere singing wren, who thinks he’s alive forever, this instant, and may be. How to be alive, forever, this instant, in Christ…now that’s a casting out of demons I can understand, and for which I pray. Amen. 

July 3, 2024

Greetings everyone, and grace and peace to each of you as we celebrate the Fourth of July this week, and we journey together in this long green season of Pentecost.

As many of you know, our denomination held its 81st General Convention in Louisville over the past two weeks. Here’s a summary from the Episcopal News Service:

Episcopal News Service – The official news service of the Episcopal Church.

As you know, our own Bishop +Rob was among 5 candidates on the slate for Presiding Bishop. Bishop +Sean Rowe was elected on the first ballot. Here are his remarks to the Deputies gathered at the convention:

Bishop Rowe’s Remarks to Deputies – The Living Church

And here is a compelling quote from his speech:

“Our ministry together in the next nine years comes at a critical time for the Episcopal Church. It is not too strong to say that we’re facing an existential crisis. Not because the church is dying, or because we have lost our belief in the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. But because as the world around us changes, and continues to change — it changes all the time — and God is calling us more deeply into the unknown…I sometimes think of this moment in the Episcopal Church’s history in terms of the history of my own region of the United States, where I grew up and where I continue to serve. I am from the Rust Belt, and in the economic unraveling that has befallen our communities in the last 50 years, I have been around to see things I love go away.

My grandfathers were steel workers, and nearly my entire family worked in industry. In the space of a few years in the mid-1980s, when I was in elementary school, I watched everything I had known evaporate. The Westinghouse plant closed in my area, and my fourth-grade friends moved to Indiana when their parents were offered a transfer instead of a layoff. In 1987, Sharon Steel, a major local employer, closed when a corporate raider gained control, and thousands of people lost their jobs.

People in our region are resilient, but we spent years resisting the change that was forced on us, wishing things would go back to being the way they had been. In the partnership between the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania and the Diocese of Western New York, we have spent the last five years bucking that trend, that cultural resistance to change in what we call an experiment for the sake of the gospel. It is not always easy, but I believe that the kind of collaboration and experimentation we are up to can help us ensure the strong and effective witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to bring the Episcopal Church into the future to which God is calling us…This imperative to change doesn’t just reside in the Rust Belt. If we are honest with each other and ourselves, we know that we cannot continue to be the Episcopal Church in the same way, no matter where we live.”

Here is more from another ECUSA news source: Home – The Living Church

This editorial excerpt is relevant both to the deliberations in Louisville, and to us at Holy Family during our search process:

“The small boat of the Episcopal Church feels exposed on the windswept sea on the eve of our 81st General Convention. We are in a period of profound unsteadiness. Recent moves to consolidate dioceses are resourceful decisions, but they also make the reality of decline more vivid. Despite many creative projects, our numbers continue to fall sharply. We are closing more churches than we can plant. Zoom church was not the cure-all it may have seemed three years ago, and it’s harder to make our message known in a time of such shrill polarization, within and outside the church.”

Of course, we are not alone in this. Our friends in other mainline Protestant denominations are experiencing similar challenges. I taught at Columbia Seminary (a PCUSA free-standing seminary) for many years, and know first-hand how our PCUSA friends are struggling in ways similar to ours. Our United Methodist cousins in the Anglican tradition (John and Charles Wesley were Anglican priests) have experienced a split over LGBTQ+ issues, losing many congregations, and so on. For those of you who are interested, here’s a deeper dive into some of these trends: Reports – Religious Workforce Project

Trends in the First Two Decades of the 21st Century and Implications for the Future Congregational Trends Impacting the Religious Workforce Declining Church Attendance Fewer New Adherents Aging Church Membership Congregational Trends Become Congregational Challenges Increasing Numbers of Smaller Churches among Protestants Church Finances and Personnel Spending Congregational Challenges Lead to Workforce Changes Churches with religiousworkforce.com

We are called to remain hopeful, resilient, and creative. Let’s commit to staying the course, doing all that we can in our beloved corner of Creation, and work together for the common good. I am so proud of you all, and grateful for your ministries among us. Bishop +Rowe quoted Thomas Merton in his address to the Deputies gathered last week:

“In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.”

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I’ll see you in church!

Blessings, and Happy Fourth of July! Bill+

June 30,2024

6th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 8 – Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day 

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 5:21-43 

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” He went with him. 

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” 

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. 

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning…and welcome to Holy Family on this 6th Sunday after Pentecost, the long green season of Ordinary Time. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting us this morning, please do let us know so we can get to know you, and give you a proper Holy Family welcome!

Today we hear two stories about healing, the story of Jairus, and the story of the woman who touched Jesus’ robe. They suggest, among other things, that Jesus’ authority was something beyond the established authority of the state or some other institution. Rather, it was an authority that came from God and as such, it was an “aura of love” and an “emanation of the spirit” that drew people to Jesus. In all the stories of healing in scripture, Jesus never sought out people to heal. The initiative lay with those seeking healing and reconciliation. And here is where this story connects with ours. How often do we ask for what we need in the way of healing? How often are we even aware that we need it?  

Jesus’ life grants life-changing healing. It is a healing authority that crosses boundaries, both ethnic and gender. Jesus chooses not to leave people in the conditions in which he finds them. How about us? Can our small community alter the conditions of people’s lives? Can we, too, bring healing into troubled circumstances? Must our efforts not also cross boundaries — whether they are related to ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, politics or any other boundaries that divide our society — and advocate life-giving meaning and change? Ask anyone from Parish Life, Outreach, the DOK, the intrepid Grounds Crew, and on and on, and the answer is yes! May God grant us the courage to continue to do so! 

We wonder what might have happened if Jairus had listened to his self-doubt instead of taking action? What if the influence of the status quo—and we recall here that he was an elder in the local temple—had triumphed in his heart, and he had backed off from asking this unconventional holy man named Jesus into his home? These questions are not, my brothers and sisters, philosophical or rhetorical. One of my seminary professors once told us: “Always remember that many—if not on some days most—of the people you face on Sunday morning almost decided not to come.” We have to show up—we have to “be there,” to get what Jesus has to give. Sometimes it means learning things about ourselves we’d rather not know. The story of Jairus’ daughter is not about some sort of cosmic quid pro quo in which if we have enough faith, then our child will not die, or we will not die, or bad things will not happen to us, or we will acquire riches beyond imagination…and I have heard all of these preached. This story, and others like it, has been used as a way of saying that life is a theological contest, where everything depends on you, on whether you have enough faith, or the right sort of faith, to win the prize of Jesus doing something good for you and yours. The seductive attraction of this is that it appeals to our desire to have all the answers… for the absence of ambiguity… for everything to fit together. Sometimes things happen for no reason whatsoever, and that’s when our faith comes alive. This thinking also appeals to our childlike desire for omnipotence: that everything that happens somehow happens because of me…if I’d only had enough faith this bad thing would not have happened, or because I had so much faith I am blessed with riches…and so on. The question is what kind of a story do we find in today’s Gospel? Is it a miracle? Or a story primarily about the healing power of relationship? Or, is it perhaps both?

I do enjoy these stories because they, too, invite us into relationship with Jesus. I confess that the science-loving part of me does not know what, exactly, happened here. But the most significant part for me is where Jesus takes the girl’s hand and says, “Talitha cum”—”Little girl, get up”—and suddenly we ourselves are the little girl. Little girl; old girl; old boy; old boys and girls with high blood pressure and arthritis, and lower back pain, who are themselves at times caring for aging parents…who have recently lost someone they loved… who are having challenges at work, or with their children…and on and on; all the ways we human beings are vulnerable to those places life may take us. Those who believe; and those who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything; and those who would give almost anything to believe if only they could; you happy ones, and you who can hardly remember what it was like once to be happy; You who know where you’re going and how to get there and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere. “Get up,” he says, all of you—all of you!—and the power that is in this invitation is the power to give life not just to those who may or may not be dead, like the child in today’s text, but to those who are only partly alive, which is to say to people like you and me who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things, including the miracle of what Mary Oliver called “your one wild and precious life.” Can we ask Jesus to act in the name of love by healing and reconciling all that is ostensibly un-loveable in each one of us? Jesus made wholeness his priority and as such, sought to bring together those who were divided, separated, or left out of the whole. He gathered together what was divided and confronted systems that diminished, marginalized, or excluded human persons. He challenged others not by argument, but out of a deep center of love. It is a life-giving power at the heart of this story about Jairus and the daughter he loved, and the woman who reached out to him, that I believe is at the heart of all our stories—the power of new life, new hope, new being; that whether we know it or not keeps us coming to places like this sacred space, year after year in search of it. It’s about how faith itself has the capacity to make the woman whole; faith itself is healing. And this is certainly not about what here in America we know by the name of the Prosperity Gospel. That’s a heresy that makes God into a used-car salesman, selling health and wealth and a ticket into heaven in return for the payment of our belief. What I mean is something more mysterious, harder to quantify. The theologian James Alison—who spoke at the Cathedral some years ago–says that we often misunderstand faith. That we make faith about frantically following rules, about creating borders, about calling out people who are doing the wrong things, who are believing the wrong things, about feeling guilty. But faith, Allison says, is actually about relaxing. Faith is about being with God, being with someone whom we trust, with someone who knows us absolutely and, as Mr. Rogers used to say, likes us just the way that we are. That sounds like healing to me. Your faith has made you well. In this Gospel text we see a man of power and wealth who is made to wait for an impoverished woman. A woman, what’s more, whose medical condition makes her ritually unclean by virtue of the cultural standards of her time. What is being interrupted here – by Jesus, by the woman to whom he gives his full attention – is not just Jesus’ journey to Jairus’ house. What is being interrupted is patriarchy; it is economic privilege; it is a societal system that values some human beings more than others. In this moment, Jesus and the woman embody what Jesus will say elsewhere: The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. And, Jesus says to Jairus, Be not afraid. Believe. So, this is a short story interrupted no fewer than six times. Each interruption takes us further into possibility, into faith, into compassion, into love. Each interruption takes us into resurrection, and this is where science may help us…it happens every day.

Some of you may have seen the Disney film “Encanto,” a favorite of our grandchildren. When Disney decided to nominate a song from the movie for the Oscars, it submitted “Dos Oruguitas.” It is the first Oscar-nominated song written entirely in Spanish. Dos Oruguitas translates into “Two (Little) Caterpillars.” The song is performed beautifully by the Colombian singer Sebastian Yatra. The song describes two caterpillars in love. They rejoice in their togetherness, holding each other, staying together constantly through good and bad weather. But somehow they know that, very soon, they will need to let go. It will be time to turn into larvae and re-emerge some time later, each as a butterfly. There is nothing the caterpillars can do to stop the inevitable. The song is gorgeous, and the images it evokes are emotional beyond words. Scientists have long been astonished by the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies. Milton Packer, MD, is currently distinguished scholar in cardiovascular science at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and visiting professor at Imperial College in London. Packer is an internationally recognized clinical investigator who has made seminal contributions to the field of heart failure. After the loss of his wife, he wrote a lovely essay about Encanto, and the science behind the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly—a resurrection narrative. The caterpillar eats voraciously during its entire lifespan, presumably to accumulate sufficient nutrients for the coming transition. When the time is right, the caterpillar spins itself into a silk coverlet (a cocoon) and digests itself. During the larval phase, the release of enzymes kills the caterpillar and destroys all its organs, turning it into a mushy soup, with nothing left of its former self. If one opens a larva, there is no sign of the original caterpillar; it is gone — except for a few cells (known poetically as “imaginal cells”) that survive.

Then, by some miraculous sequence of events, a new set of instructions takes hold, and the amino acids in the larval soup are rearranged, carefully and meticulously, into an entirely new organism. The imaginal cells emerge, armed with the genetic instructions for the transformation. Initially, the caterpillar’s immune system rejects the imaginal cells, but they continue to multiply with abundance. Finally, the cells begin to clump together, forming the organs of an entirely new organism with completely different anatomical features, with long legs and wings. The fact that the caterpillar’s immune system attacks the new cells of the butterfly demonstrates that — biologically — the two insect forms are entirely distinct life forms. So essentially, the caterpillar dies and is resurrected. Dr. Packer writes that when he cares for patients who have died, “Perhaps grounded by religion or some personal philosophical perspective, some relatives or friends would say, “We will see her/him again soon.” They proposed there would be some future meeting between those who loved each other deeply during this lifetime, perhaps in a spiritual sense or even in some alternate physical world. When these predictions were made, I always agreed with them. But I did not believe them. I was trained to believe that death had absolute finality. There was no scientific basis for resurrection. There was no way a living form could die, dissolve away, and be reassembled into another creature… Yet, it happens every day. Caterpillars die and are resurrected as butterflies, using the same juices as the original life form.”

Well, make of this what you will, but consider this truth from today’s Gospel: Jesus is ready, willing and able to heal the body, mind, and spirit of anybody – regardless of their station in life, their religious affiliation, their economic status, their popularity, their perceived flaws – doesn’t matter. The common ingredient in both these stories is faith! Jesus says “Don’t be afraid; just believe…your faith has healed you.” As a priest and pastoral counselor I can say this…some of the “whole-iest” people I have known have been terminally ill, or facing what seemed insurmountable challenges. So let us follow in the footsteps of Jairus. Let us go forth with courage—with vitality and wonder—into the unknown new creation made possible by our saying “no” to a narrative of scarcity and anxiety, and “yes’ to the world to which this Gospel text points. It is a Resurrection world, in which there is meaning and hope in each of our lives and, yes, in each of our deaths, both small and large. God promises that God’s word of love will be the last, best, and strongest word. God promises that God will make all of creation new, and that we will be a part of that new creation. Amen. 

June 26, 2024

Grace and peace to each of you wherever you may be this week. As I write, I’m looking forward to gathering this afternoon with our vestry, nominating committee, and Canon Sally Ulrey from the Diocese of Atlanta.

On the agenda will be a review and discussion of the interpreted results from the Congregational Assessment Tool (CAT) survey. The nominating committee will use these results to create the Parish Profile, and the vestry will utilize the CAT results for long-range strategic planning purposes. This is a key moment on our journey toward calling our new rector. I am so very proud of the good work you are all doing in this season.

Thank you, to each of you who have contributed to this survey, and in all the ways you serve Holy Family…including our intrepid Grounds Crew working in the summer heat and humidity; and our Flower Guild, Choir, Outreach, Hospitality, Worship, and Parish Life committees, and on and on, all the many ways you give so much to our beloved parish. I’ve been thinking lately about all those who came before us at Holy Family, with its rich history of both trials and moments of uncertainty, as well as resilience, grace, and a strong and steadfast spirit. I am so grateful for our Holy Family, and I am hopeful that the good work we have been called to do in this moment will bring us into a hopeful future.

Jesus encouraged us to become like little children, and regardless of our vision for the “kingdom,” (I prefer “kin-dom”) our willingness to do this finds encouragement from other sources as well. This is a perspective we can cultivate. Poets can help us remember the importance of our deepest, core values as Christians, Episcopalians, and as the ministers—and we are all ministers of the church—at our beloved parish. Our willingness to have the fresh eyes of children can be profoundly important during times of change.

RS Thomas was a Welsh, Anglican priest who, while highly educated, served rural congregations his entire life. His poem “Luminary” reveals a deep, abiding faithfulness amid the vicissitudes of parish life in the sometimes harsh Welsh countryside, and a childlike commitment to remember what is most important:

My luminary,

my morning and evening

star. My light at noon

when there is no sun

and the sky lowers. My balance

of joy in a world

that has gone off joy’s

standard. Yours the face

that young I recognised

as though I had known you

of old. Come, my eyes

said, out into the morning

of a world whose dew

waits for your footprint.

Before a green altar

with the thrush for priest

I took those gossamer

vows that neither the Church

could stale nor the Machine

tarnish, that with the years

have grown hard as flint,

lighter than platinum

on our ringless fingers.

Thomas is asking us to keep our eyes on the prize—to honor our commitments to those vows that can guide and sustain us, especially during times of transition and uncertainty.

Shoshin (Japanese: 初心) is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning “beginner’s mind.” This, too, is a reminder to have a childlike faithfulness. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions during seasons of change, just as a beginner would. The term is especially used in the study of Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts and was popularized in Japan by Shunryū Suzuki’s 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind….The practice of shoshin acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking of oneself as an expert. This includes the Einstellung effect, where a person becomes so accustomed to a certain way of doing things that they do not consider or acknowledge new ideas or approaches. The word shoshin is a combination of sho (Japanese: 初), meaning “beginner” or “initial”, and shin (Japanese: 心), meaning “mind”. So often in the church, we hear ourselves say “We’ve always done it this way,” when in fact being open to new opportunities may allow us to co-participate in the movement of the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom, leading us to new possibilities.

This lovely poem by William Stafford is a reminder to us to remember where we have come from, and be open to where God may be leading us:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford 

Let’s covenant to remember and honor our “ancestors” at Holy Family, and in the church, as we move forward. No matter the challenges we and the church may be facing, let’s remember the thread of our faith, and adopt a “beginner’s mind” as we trust the process; 

5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, wea have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained accessb to this grace in which we stand; and wec boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church! Bill+

June 23, 2024

5th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 7 Year B – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving ­kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Mark 4:35-41

When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family as wecontinue our journey into the season after Pentecost. It is a journey of trust, and of the challenges of being faithful. I was reminded this week by an old, dear friend of the words of TS Eliot, from Little Gidding: We shall not cease from exploration…And the end of all our exploring…Will be to arrive where we started …And know the place for the first time. These are such lovely, even hauntingly beautiful lines, and they remind us, dear one’s, that some journeys are less Odyssean than Abrahamic. Odysseus wanted nothing more than to return home to Ithaca, and Penelope, and all that he knew. Sarah and Abraham, on a journey of faith ending we know not where, arrived at a place they called home, and knew that place for the first time.

Today’s Gospel story might be seen as primarily about authority, or faith, or grace, or healing. It is, of course, about all of these. And as I thought about this story over the course of this past week, I began to place it in the context of our observance of Juneteenth, and I found myself wondering whether, in this age of polarization, systemic racism, and conflict, we have made much progress. On my more difficult days I identify with the disciples in the boat who are frightened, and feeling that things are out of control. I wonder if this is not the nature of many of our journeys. And I wonder when to trust God’s provenance, and let go of my need to control things I cannot control—a central theme of any 12-step process. Today’s Gospel prompts in me some very human questions about fear, and control, and trusting God. When do we allow our fears to inform and guide us to calmer seas, and when do we face our fears and proceed on the journey despite them?

A number of years ago I joined my sons on a trip to climb Mt. Baker, in the Northern Cascades. We spent several days on the mountain, training in glacier and crevasse techniques, preparing to summit this lovely jewel of the Cascades. On the day of our summit attempt, we arose at 2am, put on our crampons and roped in together, and began climbing up the glacier through the night. We came within 500 feet before encountering storms we saw moving in off the Pacific, and, after consulting with our wise guide, we made the group decision to return to camp. I was so disappointed, and told my sons as much the next day. Our older son, a gifted and experienced climber, said “Dad, the first rule of mountaineering is that you never intentionally climb into a storm. We made the right call.” His wise younger brother nodded his agreement. Besides, he said, just look around.” And he was right. I had almost allowed my desire for the mountain top to blind me to the moment at hand. Mt. Baker, high above us, glistened in the sunlight and seemed alive after the storm—and indeed it was alive—and the Roosevelt-Deming glacier lay stretched out below us, glimmering like a sea of diamonds in the clear mountain air. The meadows spread around us fulsome with wildflowers, and marmots called from their mounds, alert sentinels in this glorious mountain aerie. For a while we were silent, listening only to the wind, and I was able to be fully present with my two sons. What I most needed was right there all along…connection, love, a small taste of heaven. And in order to see it, I needed to give up my over-functioning agenda. I needed to “deny myself” in order to find myself, and to be present with my sons.

The disciples were of course sailing into a storm, rather than climbing into one, and it would not be the last time. They must have thought “this is not exactly what I signed up for on this trip,” and, “what was I thinking?” When Jesus told them that he was to be rejected, abused, and even murdered, Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter could not imagine such a thing happening to a Messiah. Perhaps he envisioned the great and powerful things that Jesus would do when his “Messiah-ship” came to its fruition. Perhaps he imagined himself standing beside Jesus as a trusted assistant, sharing the glory. Surely, suffering was not a part of Peter’s dream for Jesus, or for himself or the others. And that humanity is, I suspect, one of the reasons we are drawn to Peter throughout the Gospel accounts. We can easily see ourselves acting likewise. We know that taking up one’s cross is no easy task. They were all weary, and afraid, and uncertain. Jesus asks that we become disciples too, and we have his promise that nothing can separate us from God’s love. I was focusing too much on myself and my agenda atop Mt. Baker. Perhaps the best way to “deny ourselves” as a form of spiritual discipline, is by getting ourselves off our hands, doing the work we have to do, handling our tasks joyfully so that when we are called to do God’s work our issues do not get in the way.

I think we made the right decision that day on Mt. Baker in returning to camp. But, I wonder, when is God calling us to proceed in the face of uncertainty, and risk, and possible danger? How do we know when to climb into the storm? In 1986-87 I was doing a chaplaincy internship at Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory, now CHOA, and Vicky and I were trying to decide what to do next. I had been accepted to law school, and into a doctoral program in psychology and religion, and I hoped the year of chaplaincy training would help me decide. I was as confused as these choices might suggest. I had worked in a psychiatric hospital with children and adolescents, where Vicky and I met, before heading to Vanderbilt Divinity School, where I continued to study psychology and ethics, took a few courses at Vanderbilt law school, got my Master of Divinity degree, and pondered next steps. In late December of 1986 a small group of civil rights activists marched in Cumming, Georgia, to protest a long history of racist housing, economic, and educational practices in Forsyth County, and they were assaulted with rocks, bottles, and racial epithets. On January 25, upwards of 20,000 marchers filed into downtown Cumming in support of the first marchers, and I was among them. At one point we slowed to a standstill, and through the helmeted National Guard troops I saw a group of young white men, screaming at us words I cannot repeat here, and throwing rocks and bottles over the phalanx of troops.   

They were looking at me and my colleagues, waving their Confederate flags—the flag of my own ancestors…one of whom was wounded at the Battle of Atlanta—and their faces were filled with rage. I remember feeling both scared, and a bit self-righteous, and I began to say things, in my heart, about them, that were just as uncharitable as those things they were saying to and about me. You can use your imagination here. And then I realized what I was doing. I was relegating these young men to the status of the “other”—just as they were doing to me—and I was engaging in the very behavior we were marching to protest…the very hatred and injustice that resulted in the Juneteenth narrative. If I called them “white trash”—and worse—was I not in fact committing in my heart the same injustices we sought to end by marching through the snow on that cold January day? I was. And this was hard for me to hear, even if I was the one saying it… maybe especially because I was saying it…to myself. And this revelatory self-reflection, this confession of things done and left undone, could not have happened had I not chosen to show up authentically on a stormy sea of epic proportions. I had to ask God’s forgiveness for this. I needed some healing, and I had to ask for it. I needed to ask Jesus to calm the sea of brokenness born of fear, just as the disciples in today’s Gospel.

Compassion means to do “Hesed”—love and justice—in relation to the suffering we encounter. It means to take action: and faith-in-action is the key here. This is different from “belief,” which is an act of intelligent assent only. “Faith”, however, is a verb—an act of the whole person. It is an attitude of wide-open, expectant trust that moves toward action. This is the same kind of both/and faith that impelled Jesus to calm the storm that day, and also to proceed into Jerusalem knowing full well what the outcome would be. I recall once in college, while on a track and field trip, the conditions were, frankly, awful. The track was old and poorly maintained. The infield, where field events would take place, was overgrown with tall grass, and pitted with rocks. We voiced our complaints to our coach whose true vocation was that of a classics professor at our college. He paused, and told us the story of runners from Crete who visited the island of Rhodes for competition. In similar fashion, they complained of the conditions of the playing field. Laconically, the Coach from Crete said, “Hic Rhodos, hic salta.” Translated, this simply means, “Now you are in Rhodes, you will do your jumping here.” Put another way, the writer Frederick Buechner has said that the grace of God means something like this: “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party would not have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and difficult things will happen. Do not be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can by yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.”

Both of these desires occur in what my colleague Walter Brueggemann has called a “narrative of scarcity”…in which the past is barren of miracles and the only way to get anywhere is to invent and reinvent yourself and scramble for whatever you can get. A past without gifts and a future without hope give us a present as an arena for anxiety— anxiety endlessly stirred by those who generate the theology of scarcity. This anxiety paralyzes us so that we cannot act, and we do not reach out for the gift of grace that is ours. Let us go forth with courage my friends—with vitality and wonder—into the unknown new creation made possible by our saying “no” to a narrative of scarcity and anxiety, and “yes’ to the world to which the Gospel text points. It is a Resurrection world, in which there is meaning and hope in each of our lives and, yes, in each of our deaths, both small and large. On both that day on Mt. Baker, and in Forsyth County, I had to die a little to myself. I had to give up a self-righteous need to be “right,” and make a choice to be in relationship. I needed to be curious about what form that might take, but I was clear that name-calling and stereotyping was no longer an option, even if I believed I was on the right side of an issue. God promises that God’s word of love will be the last, best, and strongest word. God promises that God will make all of creation new, and that we will be a part of that new creation. Dr. King said that the moral arc of the universe is long, and bends toward justice. I hope that is true. In one of my favorite of his poems, a poem ultimately about resurrection, Wendell Berry says:

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end. In time’s maze

over fall fields, we name names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

What we need for our long Pentecost journey is here, and when we find that place in ourselves of peace, and pay attention to this moment of grace, no matter the storm, we arrive back home, and know that place for the first time. What we need is here. Amen.

June 19, 2024

Juneteenth, which we observe today, is a day of remembering and rejoicing. On June 19, 1865 after the Emancipation Proclamation was effective on January 1, 1963, enslaved persons in Texas finally heard the news! Declaring Juneteenth a national holiday does not, of course, solve our issues, but it can help us to “re-member” and live into the hope it represents. 

The sacred lifework of racial healing is far from done and requires courage to foolishly live in the way of real Love that transforms, heals, reconciles, and brings peace. We are God’s partners and the time is now. Upon receiving the National Medal of Honor, Congressman John Lewis said “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s, and find a way to get in the way…To find a way to get into trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.” ~John Lewis

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

As the historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us:

“On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army, but it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico. 

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed there. On June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:  

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” 

The order went on: “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

While the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishing enslavement except as punishment for a crime had passed through Congress on January 31, 1865, and Lincoln had signed it on February 1, the states were still in the process of ratifying it. 

So Granger’s order referred not to the Thirteenth Amendment, but to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought for the United States and worked in the fields to grow cotton the government could sell. Those unable to leave their homes had hidden U.S. soldiers, while those who could leave indicated their hatred of the Confederacy and enslavement with their feet. They had demonstrated their equality and their importance to the postwar United States. 

The next year, after the Thirteenth Amendment had been added to the Constitution, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing the coming of their freedom. By the following year, the federal government encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, eager to explain to Black citizens the voting rights that had been put in place by the Military Reconstruction Act in early March 1867, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation.

But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled. 

In summer 1865, as white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in the fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.

In 1865, Congress refused to readmit the Southern states under the Black Codes, and in 1866, congressmen wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 

That was the whole ball game. The federal government had declared that a state could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.

The addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868 remade the United States. But those determined to preserve a world that discriminated between Americans according to race, gender, ability, and so on, continued to find workarounds. “ (Heather Cox Richardson ~ Letters from an American)

Among those who worked tirelessly for justice was Rev. Dr. James Lawson, whom we lost last week. A faculty member at my alma mater of Vanderbilt Divinity School, Lawson was a mentor to John Lewis and Dr. King. As we mourn the immense loss of Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., we reflect on his life and legacy with deep gratitude.

May his vision of a world filled with nonviolence be a constant guide: James Lawson Institute | Vanderbilt University

Friends, in our Collect for Purity we pray: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid…cleanse the thoughts of our hearts that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord…Amen.”

This is such a lovely prayer, in part because we know that secrets have the power to transmit grief, pain, and perpetuate toxic patterns in ourselves, families, and community. It’s a prayer about deeper self and other awareness, revealing our personal and cultural “shadow sides,” which, unless brought into the light, can control our actions in ways that are problematic precisely because of our unwillingness to name them. Racism remains too often in the shadows, and we need reminders of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments which are, after all, liberating for everyone.

(John Lewis ~ Nashville Tennessee)

And so we remember and honor those who have gone before us, and fellow members of the human family who live today, enslaved by one another or by injustice in systems that would keep them in bondage.

Thanking God for and deeply encouraged by all who commit to the life work of eradicating racism, and grateful for prayers like this one:

O God of liberty and justice: we live in a nation in which the institution of human bondage was once a legal and accepted practice. We give thanks for those who worked and fought, at great personal sacrifice, to bring about an end to that cruel and oppressive system in our own land, and we pray that governments and authorities everywhere in the world might be led to make a quick end to the enslavement of any human being, throughout the Earth. Amen.

~ Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, Commission on Racism and Diversity

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

June 16, 2024

4th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B Proper 6 – Father’s DayBill Harkins

Mark 4:26-34

4:26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,

4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

4:29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

4:30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?

4:31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;

4:32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

4:33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;

4:34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. If you are visiting with us this morning, we welcome you and hope you will let us know who you are. Regardless, we are so glad you are here today! And Happy Father’s Day to those for whom this applies in any way—those of you who have mentored, parented, and been paternal in any way, in so doing, caring for others along the way. Thank you to each of you!

Some of you may have heard me tell stories about my paternal grandfather, whose hardware store in middle Georgia was a magical place for me growing up. In my mind’s eye I can see myself as a young boy, following along behind him as he assisted his customers with grace, and humor, and care. On this Father’s Day I remember with deep gratitude his presence in my life, and his quiet, graceful presence. Whatever needed building, or replacing, or repairing, I believed he had the answer, and it could be found somewhere in the mysterious recesses of his store. It was filled from floor to ceiling with anything needed to supply the county seat of an area of Georgia still deeply agricultural in orientation. It smelled like mystery in there, a wonderful combination of leather, cottonseed oil, hot coffee, and fresh apples on an early fall day, or peaches in summertime, which could also be purchased in season near the cash register.  

My favorite spot in the store was atop his roll-top desk, where I could survey the entire store, and go largely unnoticed. From this vantage point, often armed with a small bottled coke from the cooler and a comic book, I could pass away an entire summer afternoon. Motes of dust rose in beams of sunlight as they moved across the store, marking time in a timeless, magical world that exists only in my memory now. I remember the way my grandfather treated his customers with dignity, and respect, many of whom were local farmers—black and white alike—who brought their stories and their business. In the Jim Crow south of those days, he practiced business by casting a wide net of compassion. After we anonymously delivered a bag of groceries on a cold December day near Christmas to what I suspect now was a poor sharecropper’s family, he said “A random act of kindness is always a good thing, and you never know where it might lead.” He never spoke of it again, but the lesson did not fall on barren soil. I suppose this was his way of both doing good business and living out his life in a small town where, one way or another, we were all connected.

One of the items he sold in his store was a disc harrow, a large cylindrical blade designed to dig into and turn over the soil in late winter. To “harrow” the soil is to prepare it for planting, new growth, and eventual harvest. Indeed, the Latin root of our word “harrow” is “harve,” from which we also get our word “harvest.” In this sense, then, our normally culturally pejorative word “harrowing”—meaning to vex or distress—can also mean to prepare the soil for harvest.  I never talked with my grandfather about the parable in the Gospel text for today, in which there is no mention of harrowing the soil. I do know that he appreciated good stories—they were always in the air one breathed at his store, if one took care to listen—and he would have acknowledged that a good story can often reverse our expectations, and reorient our ways of looking at the world. Today’s Gospel mustard seed parable does just that, by, well, harrowing our souls, and Jesus, who takes special care to tell us to listen, wants us to pay attention not only to the story, but to the power it has to transform our lives. He wants to pull us out of our entrenched patterns of relationship and ways of being in the world—to dislocate us in ways that may be harrowing in the more culturally familiar sense of that word. A parable doesn’t inform, so much as transform those who really listen. This can be distressing.

So, what do we make of a sower of seeds who indiscriminately spreads seed everywhere? How do we learn from this and similar agricultural parables, including the parable of the mustard seed? All the best agricultural practices aside, one wonders at the wisdom of throwing seeds on paths where birds eat them, or on rocky ground where they likely will not grow, or among thorns that may well choke them. Whether one is a farmer, or businessperson, or new-church development expert, one may hesitate at the potential waste of precious resources and lack of planning. What happened to harrowing the soil? Where are the demographic studies, branding and marketing strategies, maximizing of available capital, and so on? Why not simply find the best soil, and plant there, and support the local economy by buying a new disc harrow at J.W. Harkins and Son’s, while you’re at it!

Well, as is often the case, Jesus turns these expectations upside down. Mark tells us we do not know how it grows, but it does. No one can anticipate what the harvest might be at the time seeds are sewn and scattered on the ground. Even the sower does not know how it happens. But when the grain is ready, it is harvested. We see that things happen, but we don’t know how, we simply trust that they do. Jesus tells these parables not for explanation but for exploration. Not for answers but so as to engage the imagination. Not for certainties about faith but for discoveries about how faith works. In this regard, Jesus asks us to talk in parables, too. Because something happens in telling parables that cannot occur in just listening to them. Figuring out a parable to tell is a different experience than securing its purpose.

Perhaps in this story, parabolic and paradoxical as it is, the sower throws the seed anywhere, everywhere, to suggest that anywhere and everywhere are ultimately the provinces of God’s compassionate, grace-filled, redemptive activity. Even in the rocky, barren, broken places we may find God. When I was a first-year student at Vanderbilt Divinity School I began visiting an inmate named Phil Workman who was on Unit VI at the Tennessee State Prison, also known as death row. Even back in 1982, I suspected that some form of pastoral counseling focus would engage my life’s work. So, in addition to visiting Phil, I spent part of one summer helping in the Chaplain’s office where, along with other mental health professionals, we worked with prisoners who were approaching parole. We gave them a simple battery of tests such as a vocational inventory, a simple intelligence survey, and a modified form of the Myers-Briggs. Later, we scheduled appointments with those interested—and not all of them were—to go over the results and offer suggestions about next steps. We had no way of knowing what, if any, difference our efforts would make. You might say we were spreading seed on many kinds of soil, and not doing much in the way of harrowing it in preparation. It was a pilot program whose funding ran out, and it was not repeated. That summer eventually got lost in those frantic years of education, parenting our two sons, and vocational formation. I soon forgot about our efforts, but I did not forget about Phil, whom I continued to visit long after we returned to Atlanta.

One Saturday in the mid-nineties, during a visit to Nashville, I went to visit Phil, a visit always punctuated by a thorough search by the guards. While waiting to be searched, a middle-aged man in a coat and tie came into the holding area and sat down across from me. He was looking at me intently, and finally said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I confessed that I did not. He went on to explain that he had been an inmate at the prison in the early 80’s, and among those whom we interviewed that summer some 15 years earlier. “Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked. Again, I said that I did not. “You encouraged me to finish my GED in the year before I left this place,” he said, “and I’d heard that before. It was what you said next that made me sit up and listen.” Now he really had my attention. “What was that?” I asked. “You told me I scored well on my aptitude test. You said I should finish my GED, and when I got out, I could consider going to college. You told me I was smart. I know it may sound strange to you, sir, he said, but I was a 25-year-old headed nowhere, and not once in my life had the words “smart” and “college” been used in the same sentence referring to me. Nobody ever encouraged me to do anything.” “So, what brings you here today?” I asked. “By the time I left here in 1984 I had my GED. I realized I enjoyed learning. I went to Nashville Tech, then TSU, and I got my degree in accounting. Now, I’m a CPA. I volunteer here one Saturday a month, teaching a literacy course and helping inmates work on their finances.” About this time the guards came to take me back to Unit VI, and we parted ways once again. I have thought about this encounter many times in the years since, and while I know his story is very likely an exceptional one—perhaps our efforts most often fall in rocky places, or among thorns—I remembered it again this week in light of today’s Gospel. Perhaps today’s Gospel is not so much about good soil, but rather about God as the good sower; about, that is to say, what God is really like. It is a parable about the abundance of a God not so much concerned with harrowing the soil as with harvesting—and harvesting abundantly. Like the inmate who became a CPA and a prison volunteer, some of the seed sown in today’s parable brought forth an unexpectedly abundant result, against all odds. God is not concerned so much with cautious agricultural strategy as with spreading seed as if all soil is potentially good soil. Begging the question, dear one’s, is there anywhere, really, God’s abundance might not potentially be found…and others might be blessed, you might say, by bearing witness to this blessing, and so often this is how it happens. It makes a difference—this spreading of Gospel seeds—sometimes in ways we cannot imagine and least expect, in a harvest shocking in abundance. “Practice resurrection,” the poet Wendell Berry says to us all. “Say that your main crop is the forest you did not plant, and that you will not live to harvest.” We are called to spread seeds of hope, and grace, and to trust that our God is a God of abundance. In a way, being up here this morning reminds me of the view from my grandfather’s roll-top desk, with so much abundance, so many stories, and so much hope. From up here, I see so many faithful seed sowers, and so much abundant possibility. Thanks be to God! Amen.

June 12, 2024

Yellowstone Musings – Deep time

Psalm 77

77:17 The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side. 77:18 The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightning’s lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook. 77:19 Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen. 77:20 You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Vicky and I recently hosted our older son and his family, visiting from Montana where they have lived for several years. We delight in having our twin 7-year-old grandchildren, born in Montana, here in the Southern Appalachians, a biome quite different from theirs! They refer to our home as being in the “forest” and are fascinated with the profusion of green this time of year. We also enjoy visiting Montana, which we have come to love.

A while back, we visited Yellowstone Park, and our journey from Billings to Yellowstone took us into the Beartooth Mountains by way of the eponymous highway, a spectacular drive. The Beartooth Mountains are composed of Precambrian and metamorphic rocks, dated at approximately 4 billion years old. Expansive plateaus are found at altitudes in excess of 12,000 feet. With miles of alpine meadows where no meadows should be—a lovely plateau atop a mountain range—one begins to sense that the normal “rules” of geology don’t apply here. The Beartooth have over 300 lakes and waterfalls. Winters are severe with heavy snow and incessant winds. This year, the Beartooth highway was still closed as recently as last week, due to heavy snows last winter.

Among my favorite places in the Beartooth Mountains is Clay Butte. A short trail run to the Butte and one finds oneself on an ancient sea floor at 12,000 feet, surrounded by fields of alpine flowers. Marine fossils are plentiful. Prior to the wrinkling of the earth’s crust, the entire Rocky Mountain region was below sea level. This Late Cretaceous seaway extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. The uplift of the crust slowly pushed this seaway up and out of the western interior. Never again has the Rocky Mountain region been invaded by marine waters.

John McPhee, the wonderful and prolific author, has said of Yellowstone that, according to plate tectonic theory, it should not exist; 

“Geologists have come to believe that in a deep geophysical sense it is not Yellowstone that is moving…the great heat that has expressed itself in so many ways on the topographic surface of the modern park derives from a mantle far below the hull of North America. They believe that as North America slides over this fixed locus of thermal energy the rising heat is so intense that it penetrates the plate. The geologic term for such a place is a ‘hot spot.’”[1]

After our sojourn on the Yellowstone trails, I awoke that night to a clear sky, and the glorious Milky Way spinning above us, even as the ground we were on, however, imperceptibly (much of Yellowstone is in an ancient volcanic caldera) moved beneath us. 

Deep Time above and below; I was reminded of the psalmist, who wrote of things often unseen, assumed to be fixed, but nevertheless in motion, wonderfully, miraculously alive. I delight in this as suggestive of God’s ongoing participation in Creation. As Teilhard de Chardin has written;

“By means of all created things, without exception, the Divine penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.”

Or, consider this poem by Mary Oliver:

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,

are not living. I say,

you live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they

are afraid of being left behind: I have said, hurry, hurry!

and they have said: Thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no

argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,

but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside

the harbor. I am holding in my hand

small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.

Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

 (Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early, 2004)

Recently, NASA scientists reported the creation of key DNA components in a laboratory experiment that simulated the space environment. Together, these findings suggest that life’s building blocks were concocted in space and blended into the material that formed Earth and its siblings. As Joni Mitchell famously wrote, “We are stardust, we are golden…billion year old carbon.” Writing in the New York Times, Ray Jayawardhana said that our very “cosmic selves” are the stuff of Deep Time, just as is the geology of the Beartooth Mountains in Montana.

“Tell me a story,” wrote Robert Penn Warren, “Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. The name of the story will be Time, but you must not pronounce its name. Tell me a story of deep delight.”

We are, each of us, part of God’s Divine narrative, and thus, we belong to a story infinitely mysterious, sacred, and unfolding with love. For Teilhard, “love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” Love is both human and divine. Divine love is the energy that brought the universe into being and binds it together. Human love is whatever energy we use to help divine love achieve its purpose. . .

I pray blessings upon each of you in this long, green season of Pentecost. I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

June 9, 2024

3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you, and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here this morning. In the reading for today from the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus asks the crowd “Who are my mother and my brothers”? This is among a variation on a theme of texts in which Jesus asks questions such as “Who do you say that I am?” and, “Who are my brothers and sisters?” They are questions that have significance for each of us, too. I love these similar gospel readings for a number of reasons. For one, they often show Jesus in a paradoxical light; he is alone, praying, yet with the disciples around him; he is accused of being “out of his mind,” yet he is clear, non-anxious, and resolute; he is curious about what others are saying, yet he shows an awareness of his journey as part of something much larger than can be encompassed by the events and opinions swirling around him—in short, he is being an effective leader. He wonders what others call him, even as he knows that in terms of his earthly fate, it does not matter. Indeed, this awareness of his fate—that he would undergo great suffering—suggests an awareness of the larger divine narrative and his role in it, and is directly tied to the passion narrative. Paradoxes often contain important truths, however, and this is no exception. 

I’m also drawn to these passages because of the questions themselves. Ever notice how we respond to simple, honest, straightforward questions? They have a certain power because they generally reveal something about both the one asking the question, and the one of whom an answer is expected. One reason Jesus asks these questions is so the disciples can learn something about themselves, and so we can we learn about ourselves, and about our relationship with God. Isn’t this the beauty of questions, whether in the scientific method, or psychotherapy, or a good mystery novel? In fact, this was in part the source of Sigmund Freud’s genius. He discovered that paying attention to the ways in which his patients answered the question “Who do you say that I am” was the most powerful clinical tool at his disposal. They often made him out to be someone he was not; someone from the past, in relation to whom healing was needed, or someone they wished he might be; perhaps someone with whom they were angry, or in relation to whom they had experienced some pain. Sometimes they were actually projecting aspects of themselves onto him. Working through this “transference” as Freud called it, is the heart of the therapeutic journey. And the more clear his patients became about who Freud really was, a caring, wise, somewhat strange Viennese psychiatrist who smoked smelly cigars and was just trying to do the best he could, the more they came to accurately know themselves, and this is where the healing began…for it is ultimately self-knowledge in the context of relationships that heals. We inevitably discover possibilities in relationships, and our lives, where previously we had seen none, and we learn something about who we are, too.  

We are all creatures of narrative and naming, and good writers know this too. This is how meaning is found…in our stories of naming, and relationship, just like today’s Gospel. In one of my favorite of Cs Lewis’ books, he has a character say, “When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years…till that can be dug out of us… till we have faces…how can God meet us face to face.” This is what Jesus wants from the disciples and from us: he wants to be in relationship, he wants us to have “faces” and in order to do this, we have to come to terms both with who we are, and who he is. This is an ongoing, daily, life-long task. In response to the first question in today’s Gospel reading….who are my sisters and brother… several possibilities are explored. Our human family, for any of its virtues, is ultimately just too small, too closely circumscribed. As a priest and therapist, I spend much of my time helping people understand their family stories, and how they were shaped by them. When someone steps up and answers Jesus’ call to follow him, the church washes that person in baptismal water, and it is as if the person gets a new name—a new identity that takes precedence over even that person’s family name. The chief act of Christian worship isn’t some mysterious, dark, esoteric rite. It’s a family meal with everyone around the table, the Sunday dinner that we call Holy Communion; family as God intended family to be.

In a world of grandparents without grandchildren close by, and single-parent families, and grandchildren growing up without grandparents, and marriages often under stress, we need a bigger family than the one we were born into. As John the Baptizer said, “God is going to have a family, even if God has to raise a people out of the rocks in this river. To become a Christian, to have your life taken over by Jesus, is to be joined into a family, a people convened by “water and the Spirit,”[ix] a family bigger and better than your biological family, a worldwide, barrier-breaking family that goes by the name, “Body of Christ.”

A sense of curiosity and wonder is essential, too, for learning about ourselves, and one another, in the context of our life’s narrative. One wonders what the answers would be if Jesus asked these question today. For many, the crowds described by the disciples would feel right at home, what with their rather benign view of Jesus. Walter Brueggemann, a colleague of mine at Columbia Seminary, has said that the gospel today is “a truth widely held…but widely reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.” Moreover, Brueggemann suggests, the gospel is for many an old habit, neither valued nor questioned—not really fully alive. And more than that, our sometimes too technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, and takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes and forms. How often do we answer Jesus’ questions and keep the gospel alive in our daily lives? Perhaps these are questions we should seek to answer each day.

One of my roles at Columbia Seminary was as a faculty advisor to students. We had a remarkable diversity of students in those days, including physicians and business/persons, former attorneys, retirees, and students just out of college. One of my advisees was an engineer by training, who after 25 years with an aerospace corporation decided to go to seminary. He was accustomed to going by the book, following the engineering manual, and struggled at times with the fact that there was no extant manual for every act of pastoral care ministry. After his first hospital visit I found him outside my office, visibly shaken Once settled inside, he said “Bill, I want a book that will tell me exactly how to respond to what I saw in the hospital this morning,” “Jim,” I said, “there is no such book, and even if there were, I would burn it. You’ve got to find a way to be present, to show up, and listen to the story as it unfolds, and let your heart, and God, and the other person in the room, guide your actions.” The questions such as, ”Who are my sisters and brothers?” require that we respond in exactly this way, out of our Baptismal Covenant; you remember, the part where we promise to proclaim by word and example the “Good News of God in Christ” and respect the dignity of every human being.

“But who do you say that I am?” and “Who are my sisters and brothers?” Jesus asks, and these are the essential question, aren’t they? Because they require that we get to know ourselves and that we be creative, and have courage in relation to our images of Jesus. Sallie McFague, one of my seminary professors, taught us that the images we use for God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, very much inform how we respond to the question of who we say they are. I believe that what Jesus is doing in this passage is calling us to be in relationship. I am reminded of a wonderful story told by Garrison Keillor in which he recalls a game he played with his favorite aunt Lois. Keillor writes: “My favorite game was strangers,” he said…”pretending that we didn’t know each other. I’d get up and walk to the back of the bus and turn around and come back to the seat and say, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ And she said, “No, I don’t mind,” and I’d sit. And she’d say: “A very pleasant day isn’t it?”

We didn’t really speak this way in our family, but she and I were strangers, and so we could talk as we pleased.

“Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?”

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, I’m going to New York City. I’m in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died, and I’m going back to Broadway now on the evening plane. Then next week I go to Paris, France, where I currently reside on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps you’ve read about me?”

“No, I never heard of you in my life, but I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person.”

“Oh, she was pretty old. She was all right, I guess.”

“Are you very close to your family, then?”

“No, not really… I’m adopted, you see. My real parents were Broadway actors—they sent me out to the farm thinking I’d get more to eat, but I don’t think that people out here understand people like me.” She looked away from me. She looked out the window a long time. I’d hurt her feelings. Minutes passed. But I didn’t know her. Then I said, “Talk to me. Please.” She said, “Sir, if you bother me anymore I’ll have the driver throw you off this bus.”

“Say that you know me. Please”… “And when I couldn’t bear it one more second, she touched me and smiled, and I was able to be myself again.”

Who do you say that I am? Who is my family? Who is my mother, and my sisters and brothers? In asking, Jesus is saying…tell me that you know me. Please, say that you know me. He invites us into relationship, and in answering the question, we encounter the possibility of change, and growth, and transformation. And this requires that we die to our old selves- our “transferences” and projections and illusions– and each day take up this cross. For my former engineer student Jim this meant dying to his old engineer self. Change makes us vulnerable, but it is precisely our vulnerability that can be the occasion for growth in relation to God. Growth and life paradoxically require death; transformation requires vulnerability. Knowing God requires being fully alive, even as we die to our former selves. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like Easter…And so we pray in our ordination and Easter services:

Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen