Jamie Parsley's Blog, page 17

Good News!

 

As many of you know, I had been struggling with my career as a poet for the last few years. For over 30 years, I worked hard, writing and publishing poems. Over those years, I published 13 books of poems and a collection of short stories. I have also served as an Associate Poet Laureate for the state of North Dakota and currently serve as Poet in Residence at Concordia College. I have won awards and been honored for my poetry. 

            However, following the death of my mother, my career seemed to stall. Suddenly, I found myself struggled to write. In the long, dark days of grief following her death, I somehow managed to chisel out a collection of poems in which I chronicled my grief. However, every publisher to whom I sent the book responded with silence. Not rejection. Just an echoing silence. I did not know how to respond to this silent rejection. I thought maybe I had lost my poetic voice and that whatever talent I had had simply dried up on the vine.

            Earlier this year, I finally decided to give up; o give up not only on the book which was met with silence, but also to give up on my career as a poet. I felt depleted and useless as a poet. And, I can say in all honesty, I mourned that realization. I mourned my career which had meant so much to me and was so much a part of who I was. In fact, as I went on vacation to Florida this year, I carried with me a somewhat heavy heart over this stark reality.

            As any of us who are Christians know full well, out of despair and frustration and brokenness and uselessness, God always finds a way for rebirth and renewal.

            I was back from vacation for a week when I received an email from the last publisher to whom I sent my manuscript with the subject line: “Acceptance Letter and Contract for “Salt” and an opening line which read:

 

Dear Jamie, Thank you for your excellent poetry submission: Salt. We would love to publish your book!

 

            Suddenly, I felt renewed. I felt as though the barren desert of my career had suddenly bloomed. More importantly, I felt a sense of wholeness that I had felt lacking for several years.

            This is what our journey is like when we follow Jesus. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by darkness and despair and the brokenness of our lives. But somehow the God of Jesus breathes a resurrected life in us and into the broken landscape in which we all sometimes find ourselves.

            Even now, in the midst of Lent, we are able to see glimpses of resurrection and renewed life. As we do so, I invite you all to the observation of a holy and meaningful Lent. I also invite to keep yourselves open to those beautiful, life-affirming moments in which God breaks through into the sometimes overwhelming cloud-filled moments.

I Lent

 

February 26, 2023

Gen. 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

 

+ One of my Lenten disciplines this year is to re-read the theologian who has probably influenced me more than any other.

 

Any of you who know me well have heard me talk about him  ad nauseum.

 

He is the great Scottish theologian and poet George MacDonald.

 

I first read MacDonald when I was in my mid-20s.

 

I happened to pick up a book about him at a Christian bookstore.

 

I was intrigued by the claim on the cover of the book that MacDonald was THE major influence in the life of C.S. Lewis.

 

So, I picked up the book, and I devoured it.

 

I then devoured almost everything MacDonald wrote.

 

MacDonald was really one of the first Christian theologians that I read who was unapolgetically a Christian universalist.

 

Meaning, of course, that he did not believe that anyone would suffer in hell for all eternity, that all would, in the end, be saved.

 

He actually was influenced in this belief by the great Anglican theologian F.D. Maurice (whose work I would later also devour).

 

Universalism is still such a controversial belief in the Church.

 

But in MacDonald’s day, and throughout history, Broad Church and Hugh Church Anglicans, as well as Anglo-Catholic Socialists and others embraced and expounded these beliefs.

 

None were quite as appealing as MacDonald.

 

MacDonald’s Universalism came from a reclaiming of the belief that God was truly our loving Parent.

 

And from that idea sprang all of MacDonald’s theology, including his Universalism.

 

God is our loving Parent.

 

And a loving Parent would never send a loved child off to a metaphysical hell for all eternity.

 

However, according to MacDonald, that does not mean that disobedient children, children who do bad things, get off scot-free.

 

There are consequences to our actions.

 

And worse yet, even good children sometimes have to suffer the effects of a comic evil that simply exists.

 

Bad things happen, MacDonald believed.

 

And we sometimes simply get caught in the path of bad things.

 

For us, those bad things are sometimes nameless things.

 

Things that we can’t really define.

 

Things that don’t seem to have names.

 

You know what I’m talking about.

 

When we’re dealing with emotions, when we’re dealing with heavy things in our lives, we don’t worry about labels and names of things.

 

But sometimes, when something is given a name, we find it’s easier to confront and deal with.

 

It’s easier to deal with depression, when we know it’s known as depression.

 

It’s easier to deal with anxiety, when we know it is known as anxiety.

 

It’s so much easier to fight our demons when we know the names of our demons.

 

But there are those things in life that don’t seem to have names.

 

An example is: the fact that we are growing old.

 

There are limitations that go along with growing older.

 

We find ourselves not being able to do things we did when we were younger.

 

There is nothing we can do about it.

 

It’s just a fact of life.

 

Or the fact that sometimes we get sick and it has nothing do to with anything we have done.

 

We can get treatment for our illness.

 

We can follow that treatment.

 

But we can’t rush the healing process.

 

It happens on its own.

 

So, for the moment, we simply must be sick.

 

Or, in the case of losing a loved one.

 

There’s no getting around this loss.

 

We can’t hide from this loss.

 

We can’t pretend we haven’t experienced this loss.

 

It’s just a reality in our lives.

 

And we must simply live with it—with all its pain, with all of its heartache, with all its frustrations.

 

In all of these things, we know they’re realities.

 

But we don’t have a name for all of these things.

 

But…there actually is.

 

One of my personal heroes (secondary to George MacDonald), someone I mention on a very regular basis, is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

 

Teilhard was a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest.

 

He was also a paleontologist.

 

In fact, he found the Peking Man, an important link in the Evolution of Humanity.

 

He was also a great philosopher.

 

And he coined a term to describe these unavoidable, somewhat unpleasant facts of our lives.

 

He called them “passive diminishments.”

 

According to Teilhard, these passive diminishments were simply the acceptance of suffering that we cannot change.

 

Robert Ellsberg describes Teilhard’s passive diminishments in this way:

 

Our spiritual character is formed as much by what we endure and what is taken from us as it is by our achievements, and our conscious choices.

So, in essence, is it accepting ill fortunes, whether disease, old age or accident, as part of our journey to holiness.

 

The great novelist Flannery O’Connor, who also was devoted to Teilhard and who suffered throughout most of her adult life with lupus, described passive diminishments as “those afflictions you can’t get rid of and have to bear.”

 

As we enter this Season of Lent, I think it’s a good thing to understand our passive diminishments and how we deal with them.

 

Do we accept these unavoidable moments of suffering in our lives?

 

Or do we fight them?

 

Or worse, do we try to avoid them?

 

The fact is passive diminishments are the boundaries of our lives.

 

They keep us within this human condition in which we live.

 

And I think acknowledging these diminishments in our lives draws us closer with Jesus.

 

 After all, no one knew more about passive diminishments than Jesus.

 

He too knew these limits in his very Body.

 

Being limited is just a reality for us.

 

But… it is not a time to despair.

 

Our limitations, especially when we place them alongside the limitations of  Christ endured, has more meaning than we can fully fathom at times.

 

Jesus shows us that in our limitations, we realize we can no longer feel separated from God, our truly loving Parent, by those limitations, those diminishments in our lives.

 

It is a moment in which we are, in fact, uniquely and wonderfully joined TO God in our shared limited existence.

 

And what we glimpse today in our scripture readings is, on one hand diminishment, and on the other hand, wholeness.

 

In our readings from the Hebrew Bible and from the Gospel, we get two stories with one common character.

 

In our reading from Genesis, we find Satan in the form of a serpent, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden.

 

In our Gospel, we have Satan yet again doing what he does best—tempting.

 

But this time he is tempting Jesus.

 

What we have here is essentially the same story, retold.

 

We have the tempter.

 

We have the tempted.

 

We have the temptations.

 

But we have two very different results.

 

In fact, we have exactly opposite results.

 

But ultimately these stories tell us this:

 

No matter how diminished we are, no matter how much we are at the whim of our passive diminishments in this life, somehow God renews us in the end.

 

When it comes to God, what seems like a failure—the fall of Adam and Eve—eventually becomes the greatest success of all—the refusal of God’s chosen One, Jesus, to be tempted.

 

And whatever is broken, is somehow always fixed and restored.

 

Still, we must deal with this issue of temptation.

 

It is the hinge event in both of the stories we hear this morning from scripture.

 

Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, once said that there are two roots to all sin—pride and the flesh.

 

If we look at what Satan offers both Adam and Jesus in today’s readings, we see that all the temptations can find their root mostly in the sin of pride.

 

Adam and Eve, as they partake of the fruit, have forgotten about God and have placed themselves first.

 

The eating of that fruit is all about them.

 

They have placed themselves before God in their own existence.

 

And that’s what pride really is.

 

It is the putting of ourselves before God.

 

It is the misguided belief that everything is all about us.

 

The world revolves around us.

 

The universe exists to serve us.

 

And the only humility we have is a false one.

 

When one allows one’s self to think along those lines, the fall that comes after it is a painful one.

 

When Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit, they are ashamed because they realize they are naked.

 

They realize they have nothing.

 

They realize that, by themselves and of themselves, they are nothing.

 

This realization is that it is not all about them, after all.

 

They have failed themselves and they have failed God in their pride.

 

But the amazing thing, if you notice, is that Adam and Eve still have not really learned their lesson.

 

They leave the Garden in shame, but there is still a certain level of pride there.

 

As they go, we don’t hear them wailing before God.

 

We don’t see them turning to God in sorrow for what they have done.

 

We don’t see them presenting themselves before God, broken and humbled, by what they have done.

 

They never ask God for forgiveness. Instead, they leave in shame, but they leave to continue on in their pride.

 

From this story, we see that Satan knows perfectly how to appeal to humans.

 

The doorway for Satan to enter into one’s life is through pride.

 

Of course, in scripture, we find that Satan’s downfall came through pride as well. Lucifer wanted to be like God.

 

And when he knew he couldn’t, he rebelled and fell.

 

We see him trying to use pride again in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

 

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he tries to appeal to Jesus’ pride.

 

He knows that Jesus knows he is exactly who is.

 

Satan knows that Jesus truly does have the power to reign and rule, that he has all the power in the world.

 

And Satan further knows that if he could harness that power for himself—for evil—then he will have that power as well.

 

Because Jesus was fully human, Satan knew that he could appeal to the pride all humans carry with them.

 

But Jesus, because he, in addition to being fully human, was also divine as well, refused to succumb to the sin of pride.

 

In fact, because Jesus, this divine Son of God, came to us, the ultimate sign of humility came among us.

 

So, these two stories speak in many ways to us, who are struggling in our own lives.

 

As we hear these stories, we no doubt find ourselves relating fully to Adam and Eve.

 

After all, like Adam and Eve, we find ourselves constantly tempted and constantly failing as they did.

 

And also like them, we find that when we fail, when we fall, we oftentimes don’t turn again to God, asking God’s forgiveness in our lives.

 

We almost never are able to be, like Jesus, able to resist the temptations of pride and sin, especially when we are in a vulnerable state.

 

Jesus, after forty days of fasting, was certainly in a vulnerable place to be tempted.

 

 As we all enter the forty days of fasting in this season of Lent, we too need to be on guard.

 

We too need to keep our eyes on God—who, in addition to being our God, is also our companion in this earthly adventure we are having.

 

Whatever failings Adam had were made right with Jesus. And, in the same way, whatever failings we make are ultimately made right in Jesus as well. Jesus has come among us to show us the right pathway. Jesus has come to us to lead us through our failings and our brokenness to a place in which we will succeed, in which we will be whole.

 

Jesus reminds us that, fail as we do, we are loved by God.

 

Always.

 

So, let us follow Jesus in the path of our lives, allowing him to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were forced to abandoned.

 

Because it is only when we have abandoned pride in our lives—when we have shed concern for ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and disciplined ourselves to the point in which we realize it is not all about us at all—only then will we discover that the temptations that come to us will have no effect on us.

 

Humility, which we should be cultivating and practicing during this season of Lent, should be what we are cultivating and practicing all the time in our lives.

 

Humility is the best safeguard against temptation.

 

Humility is the remedy to help us back on the road to piecing ourselves back together from our shattered brokenness.

 

So, as we move through the wasteland of Lent and throughout the rest of our lives, let us be firm and faithful in keeping the God of Jesus as the goal of our life.

 

Let us not let those temptations of pride rule in our life.

 

In these days of Lent, let us practice personal humility and spiritual fasting.

 

Let Jesus set the standard in our lives on our path toward God.

 

And let God raise us up from the places we have fallen in our journey.

 

And let us let God piece our brokenness back into a glorious wholeness.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, loving Parent, you know our limitations. You know we are fallible human beings, bound by our passive diminishments; give us strength to meet what we cannot avoid and let the Light of your presence guild us through the difficulties of this life; we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

 

 

Ash Wednesday

 

February 22, 2023

 

Joel  2.1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

 

 

+ Occasionally, people like to critique my sermons.

 

I usually don’t mind.

 

Though I also warn people who do so that they will be invited to give the sermon the next Sunday.

 

And to be prepared for a critique in return.

 

But one critique I received was one several years.

 

I had a parishioner tell me that they were not appreciative of me preaching to them about sin during Lent.

 

I responded to this person the only way I knew how to.

 

I said, “I preach about sin during Lent because  I am a sinner too, right?”

 

And that’s the truth.

 

But the fact is, we all are sinners.

 

Sin—falling short of what we are meant of what God created us to be—is something we all deal with.

 

It is a common experience in our lives.

 

And for, me, that’s what Ash Wednesday is all about.

 

This is our time to admit God and to one another,

 

“I am a sinner too.”

 

We’re all in this boat together.

 

It might be different for you as opposed to someone else who is here tonight.

 

But each of our dealing with our own sins, in our own ways.

 

That doesn’t mean we say that so we can then whip ourselves, or bash ourselves or be self-deprecating.

 

We say it as a simple acknowledgment of our humanity before God, our imperfection.

 

That is exactly what we do tonight and for these next 40 days.

 

During Lent, we will be hearing about sin.

 

We will be hearing about repentance.

 

We will be reminded of the fact that, yes, we have fallen short in our lives.

 

And tonight especially, we will be reminded that one day, each of here tonight will one day stop breathing and die.

 

We are reminded tonight in very harsh terms that we are, ultimately, dust.

 

And that we will, one day, return to dust.

 

Yup.

 

Unpleasant.

 

But…

 

…sometimes we need to be reminded of these things.

 

Because, let’s face it.

 

We spend most of our lives avoiding these things.

 

We spend a good portion of our lives avoiding hearing these things.

 

We go about for the most part with our fingers in our ears.

 

We go about pretending we are going to live forever.

 

We go about thinking we’re not really like everyone else.

 

We think: I’m just a little bit more special than everyone else.

 

Maybe…maybe…I’m the exception.

 

Of course we do that.

 

Because, for each of us, the mighty ME is the center of our universe.

 

We as individuals are the center of our own personal universe.

 

So, when we are confronted during Lent with the fact that, ultimately, the mighty ME is not the center of the universe, is not even the center of the universe of maybe the person who is closest to me, it can be sobering.

 

And there we go.

 

Lent is about sobering up.

 

It is about being sober.

 

About looking long and hard at the might ME and being realistic about ME.

 

And my relationship with the God who is, actually, the center of the universe and creation and everything that is.

 

It’s hard, I know, to come to that realization.

 

It’s hard to hear these things.

 

It’s hard to have hear the words we hear tonight as those ashes are placed on our foreheads,

 

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 

You are dust.

 

I am dust.

 

We are dust.

 

We are ashes.

 

And we are going to return to dust.

 

Yes.

 

It’s hard.

 

But…

 

Lent is also about moving forward.

 

It is about living our lives fully and completely within the limitations of the fact that are dust.

 

Our lives are like jazz to some extent.

 

For people who do not know jazz, they think it is just free-form music.

 

There are no limits to it.

 

But that’s not true.

 

There is a framework for jazz.

 

Very clearly defined boundaries.

 

But, within that framework there is freedom.

 

Our lives are like that as well.

 

Our mortality is the framework of our lives.

 

We have boundaries.

 

We have limits.

 

And I am going to talk about those limits during this season of Lent.

 

I am going to be talking throughout these forty days about a term one of my heroes coined. 

That hero, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit priest and paleontologist, talked about something like passive diminishments.

 

Passive diminishments, according to Chardin, are simply those sufferings in this life that we cannot avoid.

 

They are the limits in our lives—the hard boundaries of our existence that we cannot avoid.

 

I’m not going to go into them too deeply tonight.

 

But I will during the Sundays of this season.

 

Tonight, though I will say this:

 

Within those limits, within the boundaries of those passive diminishments, we have lots of freedom.

 

And we have the potential to do a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 

Lent is the time for us to stop doing the bad and start doing the good.

 

It is time for us to store up for ourselves treasure in heaven, as we hear Jesus tell us tonight in our Gospel reading.

 

It is time for work on improving ourselves.

 

And sometimes, to do that, we need to shed some things.

 

It is good to give up things for Lent.

 

The reality however is this:

 

Yes, we can give up sugar or caffeine or meat or tangible things that might not do us good.

 

But let me just say this about that.

 

If we give up something for Lent, let it be something that changes us for the better.

 

Let it be things that improve us.

 

Let us not only give up things in ourselves, but also things around us.

 

Yes, we can give up nagging, but maybe we should also give up those voices around us that nag.

 

Or maybe confront those voices that nag too much at us.

 

Yes, we can give up being controlling and trying to change things we can’t.

 

But we maybe also try hard to push back and speak out against those unreasonably controlling forces in our own lives.

 

Maybe Lent should be a time to give up not only anger in ourselves, but those angry voices around us.

 

Lent is a time to look at the big picture of our lives and ask: what is my legacy?

 

How am I going to be remembered?

 

Are people going to say of our legacies what we heard this evening from the prophet Joel?

 

“Do not make your heritage a mockery…”

 

Am I going to be known as the nag? As that angry, bitter person?

 

Am I going to be known as a controlling, manipulative person who always had to get my way?

 

Am I going to be known as a gossip, as a backbiter, as a person who professed my faith in a loving and accepting God on my lips, but certainly did not live it out in my life?

 

If so, then there is no better time than Lent to change our legacy.

 

That is our rallying cry during Lent as well.

 

Let us choose to be a good, compassionate, humble, love-filled follower of Jesus.

 

That is the legacy we should choose during this season, and from now on.

 

After all, we ARE ashes.

 

We are dust.

 

We are temporary.

 

We are not immortal.

 

We are bound by our passive diminishments.

 

But our legacies will outlive us.

 

In fact, in many ways, they are, outside of our salvation, ultimately, the most important thing about our future.

 

Let us live in to the legacy that will outlive us.

 

This is probably the best Lenten discipline we can do.

 

Most importantly, let this holy season of Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment.

Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in the goodness in our life.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”

“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time.

It is the day of salvation.

It is time for us to take full advantage of it.

4 Epiphany

Annual Meeting Sunday

January 29, 2022

Micah 5.1-8

 

+Today is, of course, our Annual Meeting Sunday.

 

And it’s the Sunday when I usually preach a sermon about the uniqueness of this place we call St. Stephen’s.

 

And I will do it again today.

 

We ARE, as you all know, a very unique place.

 

That’s an understatement.

 

There are not many church congregations like us.

 

Our uniqueness is not just in the fact that we honor Scripture and the saints and social justice and the worth and dignity of all human beings all at once.

 

Our uniqueness is the fact that we, unlike many Episcopal Churches, know who we are and what we are.

 

And we embrace our uniqueness.

 

We wear it proudly like a badge of honor.

 

Our uniqueness is not even the fact that we continue to grow and flourish despite the odds. 

This past year, we became home to 17 new members!

 

17 new people realized what an amazing place this parish is!

 

But there are other congregations like that in the Episcopal Church

 

Our uniqueness is just in who we are.

 

Our uniqueness is in the fact that we are not a highly polished church with matching pews.

 Our uniqueness is in the fact that when it seems the odds were against us, we find they have actually been with us.

 

We are a little church building, far off the beaten trek.

 

We are here, tucked away in the far corner of northeast Fargo, in the shadow of the much larger Messiah Lutheran.

 

If we brought one of those experts on church growth in, they would tell us this: sell this building, move into a storefront or into some more visible place with much better foot traffic; Etc. Etc. Otherwise, they’ll never find you. And you’ll never grow.

 

And, of course:  progressive congregations don’t grow!

 

I know that’s what they say, because I’ve heard it again and again.

 

I’ve read all same damn books they have!

 

But not us.

 

Not the rebels that make up St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

 

Not this Island of Misfit Toys that we are!

 

And yet, when I tell people about St. Stephen’s, when I tell them about the amazing growth and vitality here, when I tell them about the diversity and the unique blend of people and spiritual expressions we have here, they are amazed by it.

 

Inevitably, I am asked, again and again, what is the secret of St. Stephen’s success.

 

And what do I always answer?

 

The Holy Spirit.

 

Actually, it’s no secret at all.

 

And that is what it all comes down to.

 

It is our total and complete surrender to God’s Spirit, working in our midst that is our success.

 

Well, that, and the hard work we are compelled by the Spirit to do here and in the world.

 

That’s it, in a nutshell.

 

Isn’t it great that our reading for this Annual Meeting Sunday is that incredible passage from the book of Micah?

 

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

 

We love this scripture so much that we had pins made.

 

They adorn our doors as we enter.

 

We carry those pins with us.

 

And we read them often.

 

Why?

 

Because, we at St. Stephen’s know, THIS is what it’s all about.

 

What is it that God requires of us?

 

Does God require us to jump through hoops and perform great feats?

 

No.

 

God only requires of us three things.

 

Do Justice.

 

Love Kindness

 

Walk humbly with God.

 

That really sets the standard for us here at St. Stephen’s on this Annual Meeting Sunday in 2023.

 

This is what we are called to do here.

 

But for us, this scripture reading for today speaks loudly to us and what we do as Christians, as followers of Jesus, as members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

 

That is our mission as followers of Jesus.

 

How do we do that?

 

How do we do Justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God?

 

Because let me tell you from experience, it sounds easy.

 

But it is not.

 

It is not easy to do any of those things.

 

But how do I do that in my own life?

 

What does that mean to us—to us who are here, in this place, in these mismatched pews, who may be quietly judging this sermon with arms crossed?

 

It means that we are not to go about with blinders on regarding those with whom we live and work.

 

It means that we are surrounded by a whole range of people who need justice—people who are captive to their own prisons of depression and alcohol and drugs and conforming to society or whatever.

 

People who are captive to their grief or their pain or their own cemented views of what they feel the Church—or this congregation of St., Stephen’s—SHOULD be.

 

People who have been oppressed by abusive churches, and close-minded clergy and church people.

 

Let me tell you, despite what some people in this diocese say, there are people here in this diocese—gay and lesbian and transgender and queer people in this diocese—who are crying out for justice and reconciliation with a diocese that has historically been oppressive to them, that has demeaned them and treated them less than they are.

 

Our job in the face of all of this is to cry out again and again for justice

 

It does not mean buttoning our lips and trying to keep the status quo.

 

It sure as hell does not mean sacrificing justice for the sake of some kind of weak-kneed peace with those who deny such reconciliation.

 

It means to stand up.

 

It means to speak out.

 

It means to say, “No more of this!”

 

It is means to demand justice and reconciliation NOW, not in some sweet, vague future when things may or not be better.

 

What does it mean to love kindness?

 

It means that we are not to go about blind and not to ignore those who are blinded by their own selfishness and self-centeredness.

 

And that leads us to our last point.

 

What does it mean to walk humbly with God?

 

Well, let’s talk about what that is not.

 

I am still so amazed by how many people (especially in the Church, amazingly enough) are so caught up in themselves.

 

I really think self-centeredness  is a kind of blindness.

 

One of the greatest sins in the Church today is not all the things Bishops and church leaders say is dividing the Church.

 

The greatest sin in the Church today:

 

Hubris.

 

Self-centeredness.

 

Selfishness.

 

Bullying.

 

Hubris causes us to look so strongly at ourselves (and at a false projection of ourselves) that we see nothing else but ourselves.

 

By reaching out to others, by becoming aware of what others are dealing with, by helping others, we truly open our eyes and see beyond ourselves, it is then that we are truly walking humbly with God.

 

This to me is where the heart of all we do here at St. Stephen’s lies.

 

It is not in our blind faithfulness to the letter of scripture.

 

It is not in our incense and beautiful altar frontals and our stained glass windows and what hangs on our walls and our renovated sacristy.

 

(If you are caught up in those things, then there is blindness in that as well). 

 

It is not in our smugness that I—the great and wonderful singular me—somehow knows more than the priest or the Church or the Bishops or our elders.

 It is in our humility and the love of God that dwells within each of us.

 

It is the Spirit of the living God that is present with us, here, right now, in this church.

 

It is in the fact that even if this church building gets blown away, or even if we gloss ourselves up and match our pews and spit-shine our processional cross and preach sermons based squarely on the correct interpretation of scripture (whatever that might be) , we would still be who we are, no matter what.

 

We need to be aware that the poor and oppressed of our world—here and now—are not only those who are poor financially.

 

The poor and oppressed of our world are those who are morally, spiritually and emotionally poor.

 

The oppressed are still women and LGBTQ people in the Church and in the world, or simply those who don’t fit the social structures of our society.

 

They are the elderly and the lonely.

 

They are those who mourn deeply for those they love and miss who are no longer with us.

 

They are the criminals trying to reform their lives, and for those who are just leading quietly desperate lives in our very midst.

 

We, as Christians, as followers of Jesus, are to do justice, love kindness and to walk humbly with God.

 

We are called to speak out loudly for all those people who are on the margins of our lives both personally and collectively.

 

And often those poor oppressed people are the ones to whom we need to be proclaiming this radical message, even if those people might be our own very selves.

 

This is how we live out this reading from Micah in our own day.

 

I am talking about this holy moment and all moments in which we, anointed and filled with God’s Spirit, go out to share God’s good news by word and example.

 

This moment we have been given is holy.

 

And it is our job is to proclaim the holiness of this moment.

 

When we do so, we are making Micah’s calling a reality again and again.

 

This is what we are called to do on this Annual Meeting Sunday.

 

And always.

 

So, let us do these things.

 

Let us bring sight to the blind, and hope to those who are oppressed and hopeless.

 

Let us bring true hope in our deeds to those who are crying out (in various ways) for hope.  

 

And when we do, we will find the call of the prophet Micah being fulfilled in our very midst.

 

Let pray.

 

God of Justice, God of mercy, we seek here at St. Stephen’s to do what you call us to do and to walk humbly with you all of the days of our lives; bless us and bless the work of our hands and mouths and efforts to make your Reign present here on earth that we may proclaim to others your love and mercy in our midst: we ask this in the name of Jesus, our brother and our companion on the way. Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 years. A weird and difficult hallmark. It's not new an...

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The Requiem Eucharist for Jonathan Andrew Flom

The Requiem Eucharist for

Jonathan Andrew Flom

(October 21, 1965-January 10, 2023)

January 14, 2023

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

Fargo, ND

+ For those of you who know me know that I have been friends with Jonathan for more than 25 years.

Actually we became friends thorough my long, wonderful friendship with Leslie.

Again, most of you who know me know that Leslie and I have had a very long, sibling-like relationship from the moment we first met each other back when we were very young at Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral in Fargo, where we were both active, Leslie in the Choir and music ministry and me as Ministry Coordinator and Youth Leader.

Now, I guarantee you this: you can judge a lot by a man in how he reacts to his wife being very close friends with some weird asexual guy in a church.

And Jonathan passed that test with flying colors.

(not all guys do, let me tell you)

 And through these many years—years of great joys and terrible tragedy and deep sorrow in both of our lives—I have been very grateful for my friendship with my sister Leslie and her wonderful family.

And during that time, I have walked with Jonathan. From afar.

In fact, Leslie and I just talked on the phone the last Monday night about our careers and our families.

I asked about Jonathan and had all the information about his latest move back to Fayetteville.

Early the next morning, I was awakened by a text from Leslie at 3:00 a.m. telling me that Jonathan had died so suddenly earlier that morning

I was, like all of you, devasted.

And also like you, I don’t know why this happened.

I mean, I know how it happened.

Jonathan, like all of us, was fractured human being.

Like all of us, he was fighting his own demons.

And sometimes those individual fights we end up sucking those closest to us into our struggles as well.

But it still just frustrates me, as I know it does all of you.

It frustrates me that this incredible man who had just kindness and gentleness and graciousness struggled as he did and was in the prime of his life taken so quickly.

And there was nothing any of us could do, no matter how hard we tried.

Like you, I hoped for something else.

For something better for Jonathan.  

I don’t know if any of us knew exactly what that was.

But we just hoped it would be—just something other than what it was.

For me, the only answer I have to all of us this—and it isn’t much an answer—is that I’m am frustrated.

I feel frustration in it all.

None of this should have happened to someone like Jonathan.

None of this should have happened to Lauren or Jillian or Ben or Leslie or to Jonathan’s mother and father or brother or the rest of the family.

We shouldn’t be gathering here in this little church in some far=flung corner of Fargo, North Dakota on this cold afternoon to say good-bye to Jonathan.

I’m really frustrated that there wasn’t more time to just make things right.

But Jonathan would be the first to tell us that life’s not fair.

Nothing’s fair.

It’s just the way it is.

And we could leave it there.

But, for those of us who have faith—for us, even in the face of this gut-wrenching pain we feel today, even in the face of our frustration and sadness and numbness we know this…

This isn’t just the way it is.  

Despite everything, Jonathan was a person who made a difference in the world and in other people’s life.

Jonathan helped people.

He helped me.

I have shared this story many times over the years but here it is again:

Way back in February of 2002, I was diagnosed with cancer.

It was a terrible time in my life.

I did not see that diagnosis coming.

And it floored me.

Actually it pulled the floor from right out beneath me.

The day of surgery was actually a horrendous day.

I did not want to be dealing with this in my life.

But that day, as I sat there waiting for surgery, I was surrounded by people who loved and cared for me.

My parents were there. My bishop was there. My dear Ann Anderson (now Ann Schutz) was there. And Jonathan was there (Leslie had to work that day; she would’ve been there).

And Jonathan, with his medical knowledge and his natural compassion, made very clear to me that everything was going to be all right.

And you know?

It was!

Everything turned out all right.

And here I am, twenty-one years later.

I wish I could’ve said the same thing to Jonathan.

I wish I could’ve returned the favor.

I wish I could’ve told him that everything was going to be all right.

But that was not meant to be.

But I do believe, today, in my core of cores, with the faith I have in a loving God, and in the eternity that that God promises us, that for Jonathan, everything now is all right.

He is freed from all that he had to carry.

He is freed from those unhealed wounds, from all that pain, from all that suffering.

When Harold and Alita stopped by the church the other day, Harold gave me this slip of paper, that read,

“Now Johnny feels no anxiety or urge for alcohol.

He feels no pain and will never be depressed again.”

 

And it’s true!

And we can find comfort in the fact.

But, still, we will all feel that absence and loss in our life.

This world is a bit more empty today without Jonathan in it.

But, it is vital to remember this: our goodbye today is only a temporary goodbye.

We must cling to our memories of all that was good about Jonathan, all that was loving about Jonathan, all that we loved in Jonathan.

We can put his demons to rest to today.

But we can hold close all that was beautiful and wonderful about him.

All that we knew and loved about Jonathan is not gone for good.

It is not ashes.

Is not grief.

It is not loss.

Everything that Jonathan was to those who knew him and loved him and now miss him is not lost forever.

All we loved, all that was good and gracious in Jonathan—all that was fierce and strong and amazing and loving and caring and beautiful in him—all of that lives on.

It lives on his children.

It lives on with all of you who experienced the kindness and generosity and love of Jonathan in this life.

It lives on in those who were on the receiving end of his love and compassion.

And for those of us who have faith, faith in more than this world, we know that that love and compassion and beauty continues on somehow too.

I don’t claim to know how.

I don’t claim to know for certain what awaits us in the next world.

But I do cling to the words we find in scripture and in the Book of Common Prayer.

I do believe that all that is good and gracious and loving in Jonathan now dwells in a place of light and beauty and life unending.

And I do believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will see him again.

And that he will be whole and beautiful and as he was created by God to be.

In that glorious Light there will be no shadows, no darkness, no pain, no unhealed wounds.

He will be our ideal of him, in that day.

And on that day every tear will truly be wiped from your faces.

And it will be beautiful.

We will all miss him so much.

But I can tell you we will not forget him.

Jonathan Flom is not someone who will be easily forgotten.

He is not someone who passes quietly into the mists.

His presence lives on in us.

His strength, his dignity lives on in Jillian and Lauren and Ben and in everyone who knew him and loved him.

His strength and his compassion live on in those lives in those he helped and encouraged and led and was an example to. 

At the end of this service, we will all stand and I will lead us in something called the Commendation.

The commendation is an incredible piece of liturgy.

In those words, we will say those very powerful words:

All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia.

That alleluia in the face of death is a victorious alleluia.

This alleluia we sing and say today is an act of courage and victory and unending life in the face of death.

By it we can hear this:

Not even you, death, not even you will defeat me.

That is Jonathan’s voice.

That is what Jonathan is saying to all of us today.

Death does not have victory today.

This world and all its suffering and pain is not victorious today.

Death and this world have not defeated Jonathan Flom.

Even at the grave, he makes his song—and we with him:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

It is a victorious alleluia we make today with him.

Let us say our Alleluia today with confidence.

Let us face this day and the days to come with gratitude for this incredible person God let us know.

Let us be grateful.

Let us be sad, yes.

But let’s remind ourselves: death has not defeated him.

Or us.

Let us sing loudly.

Let us live boldly.

Let us stand up defiantly.

Let us embody courage

That is what Jonathan would want us to do today, and in the future.

Into paradise may the angels lead you, Jonathan.

At your coming may the martyrs receive you.

And may they bring you with joy and gladness into the holy city Jerusalem. Amen.

1 Epiphany

 

The Baptism of Our Lord

 

January 8, 2023

 

Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17

 

+ Let’s go back in time, shall we?

 

We’re going back all the way to…1995.

 

More specifically, this Sunday, and this day in 1995.

 

In 1995, January 8 fell on Sunday.

 

And that Sunday was also the First Sunday After Epiphany or the Celebration of the Baptism of Jesus.

 

That Sunday was a momentous Sunday for me.

 

The 25 year old Jamie.

 

25 year old grunged out Jamie who was probably wearing my Sunday best plaid flannel and sporting a goatee.

 

I was a bit of a searcher at the point in my life.

 

I had been a good Catholic boy in my teens, converting to Roman Catholicsm 10 years before in 1985.

 

But by the time I was in my late teens, the Church had changed, or I had changed, or we both had changed, and I no longer felt comfortable and at home there.

 

And so I began wandering.

 

My wanderings took me far and wide.

 

I explored Zen Buddhism, I became a Unitarian-Universalist, and then finally I became a plain old-fashioned  agnostic who still loved things Christian, just not the Church.

 

For some time before that cold January morning in 1995, I was craving something more.

 

I had tried to go back to the Roman Church, but we were both so different from each other.

 

I tried to go back to my parents’ Lutheran Church, but it didn’t quite challenge me enough.

 

It seemed too simple. It seemed to lack the mystery I was longing for.

 

I was friends at the time with my parents’ pastor, and around Christmas of 1994, I shared with her my frustration that I was just searching for something and was not able to find it.

 

It was she who said to me, “Have you tried to Episcopalians?”

 

Hmmm, I thought.

 

By this point in my life, I was a poet, I had published a book of poems when I was 22, and my second book would be published the following April.

 

And so I looked at the whole experience through the eyes of a poet.

 

T.S. Eliot was an Anglican, I rationalized. And Robert Lowell was an Episcopalian. Anne Sexton had been attending the Episcopal Church in the months before she died.

 

I loved the beauty and poetry of The Book of Common Prayer.

 

So, yes, I thought I would try it out.

 

So, I looked for a church to attend.

 

I perused the phone book (that’s what we did in those days of the infancy of the internet), and I came across a little Episcopal Church.

 

I talked my mother into going with me.

 

And so we went that morning.

 

And we came to a little red left-wing church in a far corner of Fargo.

 

St. Stephen’s.

 

St. Stephen’s in 1995 looked very differently than it does now.

 

The entrance was on the side, where the labyrinth is now.

 

There was no narthex at that time.

 

We arrived early.

 

No one else was here except for organist.

 

Who was James.

 

We sat in the back pew, along the wall.

 

Sandy came in and gave us bulletins.

 

And the Mass proceeded.

 

And suddenly…I felt at home for the first time in a long time.

 

It was everything I longed for.

 

It was the Eucharist, which of course I loved! And craved!

 

And with a woman priest nonetheless.

 

It was the Book of Common Prayer.

 

It was Anglican hymns.

 

It was mystery and beauty.

 

And it was also weirdly liberal and against the norm and eccentric.

 

And it was beautifully Anglican.

 

And that was it for me.

 

I never looked back.

 

And, all these years later, here I am.

 

I never would’ve thought on that cold morning in January 1995 that I would one day be the Rector of the first Episcopal Church I ever attended.

 

But, you know what?

 

That’s how life works sometimes.

 

That is what this crazy, bizarre journey of following Jesus is like sometimes.

 

All the paradoxical stuff, all the strange, bizarre things that don’t make sense suddenly, somehow making sense, is what this baptismal journey is like sometimes.

 

I think it’s especially great that the Sunday I first visited here was the feast of the Baptims of Jesus.

 

And today, we celebrate it again, as we do every year.

 

As I do on a very regular basis, I preach about baptism, and how important baptism if for us as followers of Jesus.

 

After all, everything we do as Christians should come from the joy and amazing beauty of that simple event—that baptism, in which we were washed in the waters of Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

 

As you all know, as you have heard me preach from this pulpit many, many times, probably to the point you start rolling your eyes, Baptism, for me anyway, is not a sweet little christening event for us as Christians.

 

It is not a quaint little service of dedication we do.

 

For us Episcopalians, it a radical event in our lives as Christians.

 

Just as the Eucharist is a truly radical event in our lives, over and over again.

 

It is the event from which everything we do and believe flows.

 

It was the day we were welcomed as loved children of God.

 

And it was the day we began following Jesus.

 

And when we look at the actual service of Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of that service drive home to us how important that event is.

 

For example, after the Baptism, when the priest traces a cross on the newly baptized person’s forehead, she or he says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.”

 

You have heard me preach how truly transformational those words are many times before.

 

And trust me, I will preach them again and again.

 

I will because they are probably the most important words we are ever going to hear in our lives.

 

That is not just some nice little sentiment.

 

Those words convey that something transformational and amazing has happened in the life of that person.

 

This is essential to our belief of what happens at baptism.

 

In baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own.

 

For ever.

 

It is a bond that can never be broken.

 

We can try to break it as we please.

 

We can struggle under that bond.

 

We can squirm and resist it.

 

We can try to escape it.

 

But the simple fact is this: we can’t.

 

For ever is for ever.

 

On this Sunday on which we commemorate Jesus’ own baptism—on this Sunday in which we remember the fact that Jesus led the way through those waters of baptism and showed us a glimpse of all that happens in this singular event, we should remember and think about what happened at own baptisms.

 

Yes, we might not remember the actual event.

 

But the great thing about baptism is that, our own individual baptismal event was, for the most part, just like everyone else’s.

 

In those waters, God spoke to us the words God spoke to Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

 

In those waters, the words we heard in our reading from Isaiah were affirmed in us as well.

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

Those words are our words.

 

Those words were spoken to us in those waters.

 

In those waters, we were all made equal.

 

In those waters, the same water washed all of us—no matter who are.

 

In those waters, there are no class distinctions, no hatred, or discrimination or homophobia or sexism or war or violence.

 

In those waters, we are all equal to one another and we are all equally loved.

 

In a few moments, we will stand and renew the vows we made at baptism.

 

When we are done, I will sprinkle you with water.

 

The sprinkling of water, like all our signs and actions that we do in this church, is not some strange practice a few of us AngloCatholic-minded people do.

 

That water that comes to us this morning is a stark reminder of those waters in which we were washed at Baptism—those waters that made us who we are, those waters in which we all stand on equal ground, with no distinctions between us.

 

Here at St. Stephen’s, all of our ministry—every time we seek to serve Christ and further the Kingdom of God in our midst—is a continuation of the celebration of baptism.

 

Sometimes we lose sight of that.

 

Sometimes we forget what it is that motivates us and charges us to do that wonderful work.

 

Sometimes we forget that our ministry as baptized people is a ministry to stand up and speak out against injustice.

 

Our ministry is to echo those words from Isaiah God spoke to us at the beginning of our ministries:

 

I have put my spirit upon [you];
   [you] will bring forth justice to the nations. 
   [You] will faithfully bring forth justice. 
[You] will not grow faint or be crushed
   until [you have] established justice in the earth;

 

The water of our baptism is a stark reminder to us of our call to the ministry of justice.

 

There is a reason the baptismal font in the narthex—the place we actually baptize—is always uncovered and always filled with fresh, blessed water.

 

Again, this is not some quaint, Anglo-Catholic tradition that spiky Fr. Jamie introduced here.

 

This is a very valid and real reminder that in that place, in those waters, we began to do the radical things we are called to us as Christians.

 

It is good for us to take that water and bless ourselves, and with it to be renewed for our call to justice.

 

It is good for us to be occasionally sprinkled with water as a reminder of what we must still do in this world

 

It is good to feel that cold water on our fingers and on our foreheads and on our faces as a reminder of our equality and our commitment to a God of love and justice. 

 

And, as you have heard me say so  many times, it is good to remember the date of our baptism and to celebrate that day, just as we would a birthday or a wedding anniversary.

 

Today, on this first Sunday in Epiphany, we start out on the right note.

 

We start out celebrating.

 

We start our commemorating the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan.

 

And by doing so, we commemorate our own baptism as well.

 

In our collect today, we prayed to God to “Grant that all who are baptized into [Jesus’] Name maybe keep the covenant that they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Saviour.”

 

That should be our prayer as well today and always.

 

We pray that we may keep this Baptismal covenant in which we seek to follow Jesus and serve all people equally and fully in his name, no matter who they are.

 

And we pray that we may boldly live out our covenant by all that we do as Christians in seeking out and helping others in love and compassion and justice.

 

May we always celebrate that wonderful baptismal event in our lives.

 

And may we each strive to live out that baptism in our radical ministry of love and service of God and of one another.

 

Amen.

 

Holy Name

 

January 1, 2023

 

Numbers 6.22-27, Psalm 8, Galatians 4.4-7 and Luke 2.15-21

 

 + Happy New Year, once again.

 I

 always sort of revel in the New Year.

 

I really kind of like this time.

 

I love getting up early on New Year’s Day and driving around town.

 

It is so quiet and so serene.

 

This getting up early on New Year’s Day is a fairly new tradition for me, especially ever since I became a teetotaler several years ago.

 

It’s nice waking up on New Year’s Day and not having a hangover, or, as my mother used to call it, the “bottle flu.”

 

There is always something so hopeful and wonderful about New Year’s Day.

 

But…I am going to share a story of a time when it wasn’t so wonderful and hopeful in my life.

 

Twenty-one years ago, as the new year of 2002 began, I faced a bleak new year.

 

I had just been laid off from a job I really enjoyed because, surprise of surprises, I had some issues with my superiors.

 

If you thought I was rebellious now, you should’ve seen me back in 2001.

 

It was an unpleasant situation, and two days after Christmas, they informed me that they were letting me go due to a “financial shortfall.” 

 

I knew the real reason., We all did.

 

But I limped toward the end of that year beaten down a bit.

 

I was still two years away from being ordained a priest, and the past year had been a particularly difficult one for me in ministry.

 

I was still transitioning from my pre-ministry life to the stark realities of what real ministry was like.

 

And, let’s just say, it was hard.

 

And it wasn’t always fun.

 

As that New Year dawned, I, for the first time in several years, had very serious doubts about whether I should be ordained or not.

 

 And I was, to put it bluntly, struggling.

 

I was definitely praying for an answer, but no clear answer came.

 

In fact, rather than a clear answer telling me I should definitely go forward, the new year brought me a bigger devastation than losing my job.

 

In February of 2002, I was diagnosed with cancer.

 

And I spent most of the rest of that year dealing with that.

 

It’s not the most pleasant story for us to hear on this New Year’s Day.

 

But…actually it kind of is.

 

The answers I received to the prayers I was praying on that bleak New Year’s Day in 2002 were answered.

 

They were just not answered in the ways I expected, or even wanted.

 

My zeal for being a priest was renewed.

 

I was healed.

 

I got well.

 

I pushed forward.

 

And look! I endured.

 

And when anyone asked me then, or even now, what got me through, I say:

 

The love of my parents, the support of my friends and the Holy Name of God.

 

In the midst of the stress and turmoil of it all, in those moments, when I couldn’t form a tangible prayer in my head, the prayer I prayed most was simply the Name of God.

 

Sometimes it was just, “God, help me” or “Please, God” or simply “God.”

 

If any of you have ever been anointed by me in the hospital or at any other time, you will have invariably heard me repeat a wonderful passage that we find in the Book of Common Prayer.

 

Which brings us to the importance of this day.

 

For us Episcopalians, is more than just New Year’s Day.

 

Today, we celebrated this beautiful Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. 

 

This feast used to be known at the Circumcision of Our Lord. 

 

We have kept the feast, but we’ve changed the name, probably for good reason. 

 

On the eighth day following Jesus’ birth, he, like all Jewish males born in his time, was brought to the temple, to be circumcised and named. 

 

His name, Jesus or Joshua, Yeshua in Hebrew, was a common name in his day.

 

There are two differing translations of the name: one is “God with us.”

 

The other is “God saves,” or more specifically “God saves us from our sins.”

 

Today is an important feast.

 

It’s a VERY important feast.

 

Because, that Name is important to us.

 

It’s important to those of who have been healed by it.

 

It’s important for those of us who have found that it is, at times, the only prayer we can pray.

 

Today’s feast also reminds us that we do truly have an intimate relationship with God.

 

God is no longer a nameless, distant deity.

 

God has a name.

 

The God who came to us in Jesus has a name. 

 

Names, after all, are important.

 

Our names are important to us.

 

They define us. 

 

We have been trained to respond when we hear our name called.

 

We, in effect, are our names.

 

Our names and ourselves are bound inexorably together. 

 

Our name is truly who we are.

 

The same can be said of God.

 

In the Old Testament God reveals the Divine Name as Yahweh.

 

Yahweh is such a sacred and holy word to Jewish people that it cannot even be repeated.

 

In a sense, the name Yahweh becomes so intertwined with Who God is that is becomes, for the Jews, almost like God. 

 

And I agree completely.

 

It is the Name God revealed to Aaron.

 

God said, “they shall put my name—Yahweh—on them and I will bless them.”

 

The message here to all of us is that to have a truly meaningful relationship with anyone—to truly know them—we need to know them by their name.

 

So, too, is this same idea used when we think about our own relationship with God and, in turn, God’s relationship with us.

 

God knows us by name and we know God by name.

 

This is important.

 

God is not simply some distant Being we vaguely comprehend.

 

God is close.

 

God is here, with us.

 

God knows us and we know God. 

 

We know each other by name.

 

This is why the name of Jesus is important to us.  

 

That is why we give the Name of Jesus a certain level of respect.

 

Like the Name that was revealed to Aaron, so has the Name of God’s own Son—this Messiah, this anointed One—has been revealed to us. 

 

And like the name Yahweh to the Jews, the Name of Jesus is holy and sacred to us Christians. 

 

Certainly even for us, the Name is a vital and important part of what we believe as Christians. 

 

The collect for today recalls that the name of Jesus is the “sign of our salvation.” 

 

Now, I don’t see that as a sweet, overly sentimental notion.

 

I see it as a very important part of who we are as Christians.

 

As most of you know, I take the Name of Jesus very seriously.

 

As an Anglo-Catholic, you’ll notice during our Mass on Sunday or Wednesday night, I bow my head every time the Name of Jesus is mentioned.  

 

Again, I don’t see that as an overly pious action.

 

I see it as a sign of respect for Jesus at a time when his Name is widely abused and misused.

 

And we’ve all done it.

 

We’ve all sworn, using the Name of Jesus in a disrespectful way.

 

We have not given the rightful respect to Jesus’ name in our lives, even when we know full well that a name is more than just a name.

 

A Name is, in a sense, one’s very essence. 

 

Certainly in the case of Jesus case, it is.

 

God is revealed to us in a unique and special way by Jesus.

 

In Jesus, we are able to have a truly deep and intimate relationship with God.

 

In Jesus we find “God with us.”

 

In Jesus, we find “God saving us.”

 

By this very name we have a special relationship with this God who has come among us

We belong to this God whose name we know.

In Jesus God has come to all of us.

In Jesus, God knows each of us by name.

We are special to our God.

We are, each of us, deeply loved and cared for by our God.

Certainly those of us who are Christian know this in a unique way.

When we were baptized, we, like Jesus eight days after his birth, were named.

At our baptism, we were signed as Christ’s own forever.

We were claimed by God by name.

By Baptism, our own names became holy names.

By Baptism, God came to know us by name and because of that, our names are sanctified.

We bear in us our own holy name before God.

So today—this day we celebrate not only God’s holy name but our own as well—and in the days to come, take to heart the fact that God’s name is holy and sacred. 

Be mindful of the words you use and be mindful of that name of Jesus in your life.

But also be mindful of your own holy name. 

When you hear your own name, remember that it is the name God knows you by and, as a result, it is truly holy.

In a sense our own names can be translated as “God with us.”

When we hear our names, let us hear “God saves us.”

And let us be reminded that God knows us better than anyone else—even our own selves.

Claim the holiness of your name and know that God in Jesus is calling you to your own fullness of life by name.

Amen.

 

 

 

Christmas

 

December 25, 2022

 

 

+ As you all know, in addition to being a priest, I am also a poet.

 

I don’t often talk about being poet.

 

It’s a very important part of my life.

 

It’s something I’ve been much longer than I’ve been a priest.

 

But it’s something I just don’t bring up very often at church.

 

But it is something, as I said, that is important to me.

 

And my life entire life is seen through the lens of poetry.

 

I see things poetically.

 

I know that sounds strange.

 

But I see things that maybe most people don’t.

 

Or more importantly, more specifically, I see things sing that maybe others don’t.

 

Which is why I love poetry, and why I have a special love for particular poets.

 

One of the particular poets I love is the great British poet Christina Rosetti.

 

We all know Rossetti in some capacity.

 

Many of the hymns we sing are hymns that were actually her poems set to music.

 

And one of the most famous is “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

 

I love that hymn so much.

 

I love the words of it.

 

I love the poetry of it.

 

And it’s a poem and hymn that reaches right down inside me and just grabs me.

 

Rossetti herself was actually a very devout Anglican.

 

She was, in fact, a very devout Anglo-Catholic.

 

She never married, never seemed to have shown a romantic interest in another person in her life, and lived a very secluded life in her family’s home.

 

She was sort of like a British, Anglo-Catholic version of Emily Dickinson.

 

She was also my mother’s favorite poet, which is also why I think I love her so dearly.

 

My mother loved the poetry of Christina Rossetti.

 

And when my mother died 5 years ago next month, I found myself unable to write for the first time in almost 30 years.

 

Many of you know about this struggle in my life.

 

It was awful.

 

My 13th book of poetry was published 2 day before my mother died.

 

At the time, I jokingly said, “ this is my lucky 13thbook.”

 

It was most definitely not.

 

And I have not been able to write in quite the same way as I did before my mother died.

 

There have been no books in 5 years, very little published, though I have finally been able to produce some work.

 

But when my mother died, when I couldn’t write poetry, I found myself reading Rossetti, and listening to music set to her poems.

 

In fact, in the weeks after my mother’s death, I listen to Tame Impala’s version of “In the Bleak Midwinter” over and over again.

 

And at this time of the year, as I struggle with Christmas and the holidays, I find myself clinging to another Rossetti poem,

 

Love Came Down at Christmas.

 

We know this best as a beloved Christmas hymn:

 

 

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

Love Incarnate, Love Divine,

Worship we our Jesus,

But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

 

 

Rossetti published this poem in 1885.

 

And it was an instant success.

 

In so many ways, it captures the beauty of Christ, as well as embodying a very simple, very Anglo-Catholic theology of the Incarnation.

 

For me, this poem captures perfectly this strange feeling I have experiencing this morning.

 

Yes, as much of a scrooge I am about Christmas, as much as I’m depressed at Christmas, I still somehow LOVE  Christmas Day mass

 

This morning— Christmas is here.

 

This morning, we celebrate the Love Rossetti sings about.

 

And we celebrate this Love that has come to us from our God.

 

We celebrate this Love that has come to us in our collective and personal darkness.

 

We celebrate the Love that has come to us in our despair and our fear and our nagging, exhausted grief, in our sadness and in our frustration.

 

And we celebrate this Love that been shown to us.  

 

When we think long and hard about this day, when we ponder it and let it take hold in our lives, what we realized happened on that day when Jesus was born was not just some mythical story.  

 

It was not just the birth of a child under dire circumstances, in some distant, exotic land.  

 

What happened on that day was a joining together—a joining of us and God.

 

God met us half-way.

 

God came to us in our darkness, in our blindness, in our fear—and cast a light that destroyed that darkness, that blindness, that fear.

 

God didn’t have to do what God did.  

 

God didn’t have to reach out to us and send down this love upon us.

 

But God did.

 

But by doing so, God showed us a remarkable intimacy.

 

After, God is a God of love.

 

We are loved by God, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

 

We are accepted by God, even when don’t feel accepted by anyone.

 

We are—each of us—important to God.

 

We are, each of us, broken and imperfect as we may be some times, very important to God.

 

Each of us.

 

And because we are, we must love others.

 

We must embody and give birth to this Divine Love from God so others can know this amazing love as well.

 

Knowing this amazing love of God changes everything.

 

When we realize that God knows us as individuals.

 

That God loves us and accepts each of us for who we are, we are joyful.

 

We are hopeful of our future with that God.

 

And we want to share this love and this God with others.

 

That is what we are celebrating this morning.

 

Our hope and joy is in a God who comes and accepts us and loves us for who we are and what we are—a God who understands what it means to live this sometimes frightening uncertain life we live.

 

This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful morning.

 

This is why we are feeling within us a strange sense of longing.

 

Let the hope we feel today as God our Savior draws close to us stay with us now and always.

 

Let the joy we feel today as God our Friend comes to us in love be the motivating force in how we live our lives throughout this coming year.

 

God is here.

 

God is in our midst today.

 

God is so near, our very bodies and souls are rejoicing.

 

And God loves us.

 

 Love came down at Christmas,

love, all lovely, love divine;

love was born at Christmas:

star and angels gave the sign.

 

That is what we are experiencing this day.

 

Love came down.

 

Love became flesh and blood.

 

Love became human in Jesus.

 

And in the face of that realization, we are rejoicing today.

 

We are rejoicing in that love personified.

 

We are rejoicing in each other.  

 

We are rejoicing in the glorious beauty of this one holy moment in time.