​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent II
February 28, 2021
 
Names are important things.  Think about how you got yours.  Likely, your name has meaning and connection to family, close friends, or some other major significance.  The people who named you thought long and hard for sure.  Nowadays, there are books and websites and all kinds of surveys about what names are most popular and, even, which names for people make them more likely to get noticed or become successful.
 
There is a story in my wife’s family that she, being the youngest of six kids, got named by her oldest brother.  No kidding.  Apparently, he had the chicken pox and the deal was that if he stayed away from her, he could choose her name.  As the story goes, he chose Janice, but being a good Catholic family, she had to have some form of Mary in there, thus, she is Janice Marie. 
 
That is such a great story, and far more interesting than my super protestant one as I was named for John Marshall, a notable relative who was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  But he had ten children so there are lots and lots of Johns out there.  My mother liked Feilding and Garland, but I can thank my father for nixing those choices.
 
When we have a baptism, we are deliberate in naming the candidate being brought into the faith.  We say their name, and not their surname as that indicates their earthly family.  Their first or given name is what matters in that ritual, because the family the person is joining is the family of God, so we call that their Christian name. 
 
As we look over our biblical passages for the day, there are lots of names in there.  Bible names almost always have deep meaning.  Adam, for instance, means, literally, first man.  Eve comes from the Hebrew word for breath and is indicates that she is one who gives life. 
 
When we meet Abram and Sirai in Genesis, God gives them new names indicating their role and function in initiating a forever covenant of love between God and all humanity.  Abram becomes Abraham which means father of many nations.  Sirai becomes Sarah, which means princess.  And given that she will birth a son at 99 years old, that is an apt title.  Not only does this give a clue as to their role in the story, it helps all those generations of storytellers keep it straight.
 
Much later, as he is reviewing God’s great love for all, St. Paul harkens back to that ancient naming story to talk about faith.  As he encourages the Romans to hold fast to their belief, he points to their common ancestor, father of many nations, to connect them to something really large and important for their identity.  Not only is Abraham a great patriarch, he is one who listened to God, and believed in God, sending him on a journey to a new land and a new way of being.  It all started with a promise and a new name.
 
When left his fishing boat to follow Jesus, he was called Simon.  Later in the story, Jesus quizzes his followers about who people say that he is.  Some say he is a giant like the fathers and mothers of old, like an Abraham or a Moses.  Others say he is like one of the marquee prophets like Elijah or Isaiah.  That is some pretty holy company.  But Simon says no, Jesus is the Messiah, the promised savior and deliverer that God’s people have longed for.  Seeing as they had been occupied, oppressed, and put down over and over, the Messiah was an almost unimaginable hope and grace bringer.  To call Jesus Messiah was to hope against hope that he, right there with them, is God in human form.
 
That rung the bell.  Immediately, Jesus gives Simon a new name, a great name, Petrus, the rock, Peter.  He will be the cornerstone of building a new thing we know as the church.  But good old Peter, who is so painfully human, misses the point so often that we could think of him as rock headed, dense, and hard to move too.
 
With that affirmation behind them, all they seek now is the plan.  What will it be Jesus?  Will we ride into Jerusalem, take out the Romans and set the chief priests straight?  What kind of army will we need?  Are you going to bring down all of the God powers of thunder, fire, and show them once and for all what real power is?  They are kind of giddy with anticipation.
 
But then we get to today’s announcement.  Jesus tells them that the way he will go is the way of suffering and death.  He points them to the cross, which is far from the brassy and adorned icon we hold up as a sign of our faith.  For them, the cross is an instrument of torture, shame, and defeat.  When Peter hears that, it makes no sense.  That is not victory.  That is not a plan.  That is suicidal.  Peter takes him aside and lets him know that this is no way to gain followers.  But Jesus calls him another name, a searing and harsh name: Satan, telling him that his mind is way to set on earthly things, and not heavenly ones.  Then, in terms they cannot understand on their side of the cross, he explains that they (we) all have to take up the cross and suffer too.
 
That is the hard news.  And it is not something that even centuries of theology can unravel sensibly.  It is the great paradox of following Jesus.  All the world shows and tells us is that success is all about winning, about coming out on top, about making ourselves happy and fulfilled on our terms.
 
But, then, there is good news here, if we stick with it.  Like Adam, Abraham, Moses and all those prophets, we are just human.  We flop and fail and flounder even when we try as we might to look like we are winners.  We miss the point again and again.  God knows that.  He does not ask us to be perfect, he shows us that we are being perfected in a life much larger than the one we know.  In his harsh and perplexing way, Jesus tells us that he, that God, has this.  God knows what God is doing.
 
We do church to remember that what we see is not all there is.  We tell the stories to remember that even when life is hard and does not make sense, God is still God.  What the cross shows us is that there is nothing so horrible, so difficult, so shameful, that God cannot redeem even that.   And in case we forget, God has a name for all God is, and all God does: the only thing that matters.  Love.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent I
February 21, 2021
 
Some close family friends recently birthed a beautiful baby boy.  Being thoroughly hip parents, their nursery is lovely, painted in neutral hues of blue and gray.  It is a far cry from the days of loud, primary colors when we figured that because children saw primary colors best, we used them everywhere, only to need a paint job when the child was old enough not to want to be a baby any more.  There is, however, one ubiquitous feature that seems to have spanned all of decorative evolution.  Right there in the hip nursery is a happy painting of the ark, complete with a rainbow, the animals, and a tiny self-satisfied looking Noah.
 
The story does make for some great children’s art, and provides an object lesson for thinking of animals, naming animals, and making their animal sounds.  Googling Noah’s ark books yields 18 million results, though I am sure there repeats in there.  Nevertheless, we have a curious relationship with this story.  If we dig even a little, telling that story is problematic.  As it goes, the people God created back in chapter 1 grew wicked, and now in chapter 9, God finds one righteous guy, Noah, and tells him to gather his family and two of each animal, build an immense ark our of gopher wood, and get ready for the rain.  Even the young children know this one.  They ark floats them to safety, and after forty days (which is Bible speak for a long time), they come to rest on dry land.  And now, cue the primary colors.  God sets a rainbow in the sky to serve as sign that God will never again send a flood.  The promise extends to all living creatures.  It is a reboot for creation.
 
What gets glossed over in the story is bound to raise questions as children age.  What about the people who perished?  Why would God send destructive weather to destroy God’s good creation?  This is an apt question for Texans this week, for sure.  And that rainbow, that bright sign that is set up as a sign of love and promise, well, is that not a warning too?
 
Here, we have to pull back a bit and see what the authors of this tale are telling us.  The original hearers were more than aware that in many cultures and religions that they encountered, there were epic tales of floods and other natural disasters.  These tales personified angry gods, fighting with each other, and exacting punishment to demand greater obedience and sacrifice.  It is all pretty grim stuff.
 
The authors of the Noah story were not literalists or fundamentalists.  They were story tellers.  They spin their narratives in concert with other stories in their library, connecting symbols of creation and redemption in loaded language.  Back in the beginning, God creates all that is out of the watery void of chaos.  Of course, anyone familiar with birthing babies knows that all of us emerge from the watery womb to breathe new life.   Look ahead, and we see the Israelites are delivered into freedom through the waters of the Red Sea.  They will be in the wilderness for 40 (there’s that number again) 40 years, and will be given a Promised Land.  Thus, the flood story takes a horror tale and turns it up on end.  It is not about fear.  It is about love and redemption, about one God, not many, a God who is creative, not destructive.  And that bow, the word is the one also used for an archer’s bow.  And as it appears, it is pointed away from the earth, thus the symbol of a weapon is transformed into a sign of peace.
 
As any student of children’s literature will tell you, stories work on many levels.  Their appeal is their universality.  They tell deep truth with creative artistry.  Not everything has to be literal to be true.  This is what all good artists know and practice. 
 
Consider Van Gough’s Starry Night painting.  It captures movement, feeling, and color in a way that a flat photograph or simple drawing never could.  Recently, I was forwarded a video of a number van Gough’s paintings set to music.  It is sublime and reminded me of the power that art has to capture thought, feeling, emotion, and deep truth.  That is one of the reasons to love poetry as it uses and economy of words to paint connective images in the mind.
 
With the rainbow story as a backdrop canvas, we move to another beginning story with Jesus in today’s Gospel.  Mark does not tell the Christmas story, rather, he begins with Jesus being baptized.  And as he comes out of the water -- you see where this is going – he hears God saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  It is said for Jesus to hear and Mark helps us eavesdrop.  With the strength of that affirmation, Jesus goes to the wilderness for, you guessed it, forty days.  Ding, ding, ding, the stories are connected.  God is about delivering Jesus through danger, discomfort, and potential tragedy, to be new life.  In the very next sentence, Jesus shows up in Galilee to begin his saving work, announcing: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
 
Jesus is off and running, and Mark will tell his story at a breakneck pace, using evocative language and familiar phrases, drawing on every connection he can make to the bigger story of God with God’s people.  Jesus’ story, while connected, is not just another story.  Jesus speaks in the present tense, rather than the past tense of fable.  The plan of new creation and redemption already embedded, but the truth to which all of the biblical stories point, becomes human, God among us.  We will follow this one, carefully.
 
It must be noted that Noah was a great guy, but he turned out to be a drunkard and wildly imperfect.  The Israelites, while lively and committed, can be weak kneed and downright self-absorbed, falling down and getting up before God over and over.  If God were to be destructive and vengeful, the story would tell of thousands of floods and arks.  Jesus knows this.  Jesus confronts this.  And still, he invites us, all of us, to turn around, see that God is not distant and removed, but very near, so we can believe the good news.
 
We are off and running in the season of Lent.  As I have said and written before, we do this season to make space for God to grow us in love.  For forty days, (forty, again!) we take on some discomfort, some deprivation, or some new discipline, not to become better or get more holy, but to live into the story, to be brought through whatever watery chaos may be drowning us, and plant our feet on solid ground. 
 
In beautiful summary, the Psalmist says:
 

I waited patiently upon the LORD; *
he stooped to me and heard my cry.
​
He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; *
he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure.

He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God; *
many shall see, and stand in awe,
and put their trust in the LORD.
 
And you guessed it, that is Psalm… 40.  Go figure.  Amen.

​I come from a divided household.  When I was growing up, both of my Episcopalian parents took us to Ash Wednesday services.  We went to the early service with the bribe of a big greasy breakfast to follow at the Chase Café near our church.  So much for fasting, I guess, but after all, we were growing boys.
 
The divide was not in attending the service, but the tension arose right in the middle of the service.  When it was time to come forward for ashes to be imposed on our foreheads, my dad went up, and my mom did not.  Inevitably, we would ask why the divide?  My mom said that it was not her tradition.  My dad responded that we needed all the signs of humility we could get.  Growing up Presbyterian, he subscribed to the theory that people were, by nature, a damned mess.
 
If we pressed it further, mom would refer to the gospel lesson where it talks about not practicing our piety before others, not looking dismal, and washing your face.  It was a fair point and that has always been an ironic twist in the day’s lessons.  My dad came back with the belief that the ashes were not to show off to others, but for us to remember that we aren’t the center of the universe.  Neither could convince the other.  For familial compromise, I got the ashes, and then washed them off before I went to school.  In the end, that made it easier not to have to explain the whole thing to my mostly Baptist friends.
 
This year, we are not imposing ashes on foreheads.  These times call for creativity, but I am sure God understands.  Churches all over are being changing their practices like we are.  Some places are going back to an old tradition of sprinkling ashes on people’s heads to avoid direct contact.  That could get messy, but it is not a bad idea as that was done at one point in the Church’s history.  Our compromise is this: as you depart today, you will receive a bag in which we have imposed ashes on a card for you to take home and keep throughout Lent.  The bag has other resources as well. 
 
The ashes we use are made from burning the palms from the last Palm Sunday.  In doing a little research, I wondered about this practice.  As it happens, this is practical as well as symbolic.  Palm ashes are fine, very black, and free of much of the acid found in wood ash.  Thus, to get the best ashes, you can make your own, or buy them on the internet, which has made a market for just about everything.
 
As it has been really cold, and we heat with a wood stove as much as possible, we have plenty of ashes around our house, but apparently, those ashes with their high acid content, if mixed with water, form lye, and that is a powerful cleaning agent.  If we used wood ashes, we could, literally burn people’s foreheads.  While that is not a bad image, it might not be the best practice.
 
What we do know about ashes is that they are what is left over when all of the energy in matter has been converted to heat and light.  That science is also good theology.  When it comes down to it, we are at our best when we radiate the warmth of God’s love and show the light of Christ in our lives.  That is the critical energy of holiness.  That is what we are created to be for the world.  Thus, when time takes, all that is left of us will be ashen dust.  That is a sign.  What matters most is what we radiate in the fleeting life we given.
 
For a time, we put away the Alleluias, and we make our worship simple and unadorned.  We do this to make space, because sometimes, in our rush to be on our way somewhere, we forget to be still, and give some space to God growing us in love.  We may be a mess, but we are God’s mess, and if Easter will show us anything, it will be that there is nothing so dark, so rotten, so not right about us, that God cannot redeem it.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Last Epiphany
February 14, 2021
 
 
"We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground, so we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop through the desert, and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there's hope on the road up ahead.”
 
Those are powerful and poetic words.  They call us to common humanity.  They echo the words of Martin Luther King Junior’s “I have a dream” speech, which draws heavily on Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery and toward the Promised Land.  They echo John’s Gospel prologue as he draws on the Creation story, where it says: “the light shines in darkness and the did not overcome it.” (John 1:5).  Then the words look to a future in hope: a strong evocation of love and life overcoming death and despair.  Those are powerful and poetic words and as we know, words have power.
 
These powerful and poetic words are not those of a prayer, though they could be.  These powerful and poetic words are not those of a preacher, though they could be.  If you were among the 96.4 million viewers of the Super Bowl last Sunday, you may recognize them from an advertisement featuring Bruce Springsteen, the iconic singer, songwriter, and musician.  Jeep paid 5.5 million dollars for the two-minute ad, entitled “Meet in the Middle.  It did not seem to be about convincing us to purchase a particular automobile, beyond linking the brand to a warm and conciliatory cool factor. 
 
As the game was not close and the half-time show was particularly odd, this ad has been among the most talked about and criticized, non-football aspects of this yearly spectacle.  It was big news because the 71-year-old Springsteen never, ever, not even in his starving artist Jersey Shore bar band days, has endorsed anything.  This prompted cries of Bruce being a sell-out.  It is not clear how much, or even if Springsteen got paid.  With a net worth of half a billion dollars, he has no need for money, no need advance his career, and no need to make some sort of comeback.  His energy is legendary and he has never gone away.  The impetus to do this ad comes from something else.
 
The visual images for “Meet in the Middle” are set in the geographical dead center of the lower 48 states, somewhere in Kansa.  On that site, there is a small, clearly Christian chapel with a cross hanging on the backdrop of the stars and stripes.  Without enumerating all of the arguments, the ad inflamed folks who have now lit up the internet with critical dismissal of the message, the medium, and the man.  Extreme opinionates do not cotton to calls for middle ground, as they water down their particular point of view, cultural agenda, and their intense moral and political fervor.  Critics have run the whole thing down crying “follow the money,” insinuating that the message is all about sales.   Of course, those self-styled purists will not own the fact that their one-sided fervor, with its visceral outrage and mistrust of all others, is great for their own causal attention and fundraising.  “Follow the money,” indeed.
 
As a person of faith, one who has grown up with the Boss’s music in the background, and even, seen the Springsteen live, I choose not to share in the cynicism.  Sure, I get it, the advertising space can be manipulative in attempted culture shaping, but not all messages are bad simply because of the form in which they are delivered.  Advertisements can be effective mirrors, messengers, and thought provokers.  The Jeep ad with Bruce Springsteen has a brilliant text.  True enough, the images may not speak to everyone, but they speak to some.  And in these times, any message of unity, light, and hope is a step in the right direction.  There is gospel in those good words, and we lose out if we throw away the message because the envelope is not to our liking.
 
Today’s gospel is an old chestnut of the Church’s proclamation. If you come to church any kind of often, you have heard this story of the Transfiguration.  It is fantastical as Jesus goes up the mountain with three of the disciples and suddenly, turns brighter than Clorox white, then he is joined by Moses and Elijah, and Peter.  It turns comical as good old lunkhead, Peter, asks if he should build them some little huts so they can all hang out.  As is often the case, he gets it all wrong.  This is not a stopping place; this is a furthering place.  The transfiguration is not just for them, it is for Jesus too.  The thundering voice of God says: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  It is an echo from Jesus’ baptism.  It is a sign pointing forward, and lighting the way.
 
Instead of hanging out in all of the glory, Jesus lights out, heading back into a contentious world that does not understand his Way.  From this point on, Jesus is going to Jerusalem.  This is the journey we make with him in the Lenten season that begins on Wednesday.  We will see that Jesus is not hailed, he is reviled and suspected.  His Way is that of subversive love, superseding petty religious regulations, putting people before power, and forgiveness instead of fighting.  The mission is not perfected in a mountain top moment.  The mission is perfected in one encounter after another, leading to the cross where an instrument of torture that transfigures into a sign of resurrection life.  But that is jumping way ahead.  To get there requires a journey.  And it will not be easily experienced or understood as it unfolds.
 
This takes us back to Springsteen, and his encouragement for folks in this time and place to do the hard work of seeking hope on the road ahead.  Does he speak everyone’s language?  Hardly.  Does the post production work of focus group minded marketers say it all, and do it all, for every person, or even, every American?  Obviously, not.  There is no one shot deal in the work of transformation.  Martin Luther King, Jr. did not eradicate racism.  Mother Theresa did not bring about world peac.  But they set us on a path and gave us language and examples to follow.  Neither of those giants were perfect.  And while he is hardly in their league, Springsteen is not going to be perfect either. 
 
And yet, as a performer, he knows the of substantial stage that two minutes provides.  From his long and successful songwriting career, he also knows that well-crafted words stick to human consciousness, shape human thought and action, and help being about positive change.  We can throw away the letter because of the envelope, or we can accept it as a passionate offering, continuing in the ongoing struggle to move us beyond petty and cynical bickering.
 
If we are to come together as God intends, it will require a journey like that of Jesus going to the cross.  The work will be contentious at times, and sublime at others.  It will ask us to mine our souls for generosity and sacrifice.  It will push us to cast off the old ways in which we have missed the mark, and urge us to see, be, and believe differently. 
 
"We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground, so we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop through the desert, and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there's hope on the road up ahead.”
 
Those are some gospel words.  Let’s take them where we can get them, and leave the rest behind.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Second Sunday of Epiphany
January 17, 2021
 
 
As a high school Theology teacher, one of my favorite lessons was when I announced that I was going to argue, forcefully, for the existence of God.  Given that these were thoroughgoing adolescents, that brought on a big eye roll.  Any authority figure was suspicious, and they were pretty convinced that they know everything already.  Announcing that I would argue anything forcefully was like ringing the bell for a wrestling match.
 
I started with big words.  That always bolsters one’s point.  The Cosmological, Ontological, and Teleological arguments for the existence of God are the old chestnuts of apologetics.  Really, they are simple mind games.  The first argument is that everything has a cause.  Nothing comes into being from nothing, therefore, God is the first and prime cause of all.  Of course, they asked “Well, Rev., then what caused God?”  Time for the next argument.  This one is based on the concept of being.  Nothing we can imagine, fashion, or create does not come from something else.  So far as we know, matter is finite.  Thus, if we can conceive of God, God must exist.  That one makes your hear hurt.  Finally, there is the argument of intelligent design.  This one proposes that everything from atoms, to molecules, to systems and life is so complex, so functional, and so intricate, that there everything must come from a Master Designer.  “Well Rev,” they would say, if you put an infinite number of monkeys in an infinite number of rooms and give all of them a typewriter, eventually one of them will write the complete works of Shakespeare.”  They argued that we are just the product of billions of years of evolution.  Even when the odds are millions and millions to one, somebody wins the lottery.
 
The problem with all of these arguments is that they are not sufficient as proof.  We cannot get to God playing intellectual and philosophical ping pong.  The best way I knew to break that log jam was to ask a simple question.  Does your mother love you?  Even the most argumentative say “yes.”  Then I challenged them: prove it.  There followed lots and lots of stories of love in action and specific experiences.  As the students shared story after story, they became more and more intimate and really touching.  They talked until the bell rang.  As they left, I handed them a slip of paper that said “Like proving somebody loves you, we cannot prove God’s love either.  All we can do is tell stories.”
 
I ripped that off from the poet, W.H Auden.  I did not think that lesson up because I am wise or smart.  I just wanted to clear the air that I was not in the proving business and theology cannot prove a damned thing… or a blessed one either. The Theology lesson was inspired by a legendary school chaplain’s memoir I once read, and it stuck to me.  His story impacted my story.   I used some of this thoughts and added a few of mine.  Wisdom is inherited more than it is the stuff of creative originality.
 
Listening for wisdom is one of the chief reasons we come to church.  In church, we tell stories.  The lessons, the sermon, and, even, the Eucharist are all stories.  God’s story is the root of our songs and prayers too.  When brothers, John and Charles Wesley began their outreach ministry among illiterate coal miners in England, they wrote hymns that told stories – hundreds of them.  They knew folks could remember song lyrics and they leveraged that fact to give God voice in people’s lives.  My daughter texted me this week that she remembered a corny old song we used to sing, and that earworm has been with me ever since.  Hymns can do that too.  When the great theologian, Paul Tillich, was asked to explain why one should believe in God, he sang the words: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
 
When Phillip met Jesus of Nazareth, he had an experience of meeting God face to face.  He could not prove it, but he told his story to his friend, Nathaniel.  Nathaniel played the recalcitrant teenager, and asked what good could come of Nazareth.  Nazareth was, after, a one donkey town, a long way from the big city of Jerusalem with its Temple and learned religious folks.  Phillip simply said “Come and see.”  Nathaniel did, and saw what Phillip saw.  He went from sitting under a fig tree to following Jesus for the rest of his life. He saw and experienced greater things, for sure.  And though some folks came along later and wrote the story down, he and his friends were the ones told it, over and over, to anyone that would listen.  We have the gospels because of folks like Nathaniel.  We have a church because of folks like Nathaniel.   They were not intellectuals.  They were not all that wise.  They missed the meaning of things with comic regularity.  But they knew what they experienced and they invited folks to come and see what they saw.
 
One of my preaching mentors once said that the Church is always one generation away from extinction.  He said that to tell me that preaching is not about proving faith, it is about showing faith and telling of faith.  On the pulpit from which he preached for many years, he affixed a bronze plaque that says “So what.”  We remember stories like we remember song lyrics. 
 
John, the gospeler is a particular kind of story teller.  He drops in images and connections form one story to another.  That whole bit about angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man is ripped straight out of the story of God coming to Jacob in a dream.  Jacob was a complete ne’er do well, but the whole nation of Israel grew out of him, his telling of his dream story, and his determination to do what God asked him to do.  There are lots of songs about that too.  John is not so much trying to prove something in his gospel as he is about connecting God’s story to our story.  We can identify with Nathaniel.  He is not credentialed.  He is not powerful or wealthy by the world’s accounting.  He never wrote anything so far as we know.  Most likely, he could not even read.  And yet, the power of his story and where it leads has urged us on ever since.  This is where we get the phrase “Faith is caught, not taught.”
 
While there are enough books of theology to fill a thousand libraries, that is not how we come to practice our faith.  The most valuable, most compelling, and most impactful aspect of believing is experience.  The plot of every story goes like this: everything was going on a normal, and then, something happened.  Our whole mission as Church is that Jesus happened, and that has made all the difference.  We are not destined to live for self alone, we are loved beyond measure, and we are welcomed into community live in that story, over and over, so we might believe it.
 
Today, we celebrate Frances Young’s 100th birthday.  We have a drive through birthday party at 10 am today.  Come if you are able and give her a honk and wave.  She was baptized right here at Emmanuel in 1921, and she has lived her faith, telling Jesus’ story in Sunday School here, and as far away as Japan, among people who had never heard of Jesus.  Even so, she calls Emmanuel her spiritual home.  She came here as an infant, and as she grew up, she saw Jesus through this loving community.  Just ask her, she will tell you all about it.   What a life.  What a witness.  She has a great story, and so do we.  Amen

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Second Sunday of Christmas, Year B
January 10, 2021
 
Driving into work on Wednesday, I listened to the goings on in to the day’s news from Washington DC on my car radio.  Having gone to Seminary in the DC metro area, and later, living there for nine years, and serving a parish in the District, I have seen lots of protests, vigils, Inaugurations, and marches come and go. Our family participated in a few of them in our role as concerned and engaged American citizens.  Doing so was a good civics lesson for our children, and a positive perk of living in DC despite dealing with hopelessly lost tourists, hordes of school children on class trips, and regularly gridlocked traffic.
 
What I heard from the folks who were interviewed on Wednesday did not sound like any protesters I ever encountered.  They were impassioned beyond all reason, calling for revolution, and spoke of heading into battle.  I feared for those I know and love who still live and work there.  I wish that what I heard later in the day, about the storming of the Capitol building and the ensuing violence and destruction was altogether surprising, but it was not.  This is not to say that I have great skill in divining the future, all that rage just was rising way beyond what we saw in the worst of what happened over the summer.  These folks were not against something they saw as unjust, many were all in for violent overthrow.  The closeness of the election, aided by dysfunctional leadership stoked visceral anger, blame, and hatred.  All of this proved to be a toxic cocktail on Wednesday as due process, and respect for the rule of law was overrun, literally.
 
We must say, without political bias, that what happened was an epic human failure.  The various actors in the drama are not to be excused, justified, or proclaimed innocent as if such effrontery was, somehow, acceptable or necessary.  Seditious attempts, destruction, injuries, and loss of life were tragic and avoidable.  Before the dust settled, more blame, more baseless conspiracy theories, and more incendiary rhetoric continued to rise from the smoking crime scene.  Human sin had a field day.
 
We all play a part in human sin as none of us are holy, righteous, and blameless in our own fervent passions.  We can go too far, objectify others, and look past the worth and value of those we label as “them.”  We dare not go as far as some did on Wednesday, but we are not pure victors over the powers of darkness.  At times, we all struggle to be children of light.  Peace is not the absence of conflict.  It is the condition under which respectful conversation can continue.  Such peace perilously fragile right now. 
 
Piling on to the election angst, we are weary from months of lonely isolation, record breaking COVID infections, an erratic response, and death on a scale of almost 2 9/11s per day.  Tempers are short, anger is palpable, and hope seems elusive.  Perhaps, we reached an inflection point on Wednesday.  It feels like we hit bottom.  Perhaps, most if not all of us, will, finally say: “enough!” Perhaps most if not all of us we will refuse abide and allow manipulative provocation of hatred in all forms.  I pray this will be so, not just in the shock phase of the event, but in living into a new way forward.  Healing is needed and necessary.
 
In case it got lost in the headlines, Wednesday was also the Feast of the Epiphany.  This is not a footnote to the day, rather, it is an appropriate lens through which to look at what happened.  The Epiphany story has plenty of light in it.  The wise men come from the far east, following a star, believing that it leads them to even greater light.  Upon seeing Jesus, they are overwhelmed with joy.  Their wildest hopes of seeing God joined with humanity are realized.  We tend to use this lesson to encourage ourselves to look for God busting into our lives in unexpected places.  As Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson said in a recent meditation: “the word EPIPHANY comes from the Greek and means, loosely translated, "Dang - didn't see THAT coming in a million years!"  We need to be reminded that Epiphany is not a one and done event from ancient history, it is the experiential affirmation that God is still working, even now.  When we are on the lookout for God moving, we see some amazing things.
 
At the same time, the Epiphany story tells of darkness lurking in the all too human will to power.  Before they find Bethlehem, the wise men find King Herod in Jerusalem.  When they inquire as to the birth of the new born King, Herod freaks out.  This is assault on his hold on power.  He asks the wise men to report back as to where they find this King, so he can pay him homage.  They agreed and departed, though certainly as wise men, they perceived the beady eyes and wringing hands of Herod’s duplicitous ambition.  After they saw Jesus, partied a bit, gave him gifts, and departed.  Being wise and discerning men, they heeded their dream’s warning about the despotic Herod, and returned home by another road.
 
Even though we are very near the beginning of Jesus’ story, tensions between the will to power and the contrasting Divine will to love begin to rear their ugly head.  This will play out as those wielding privileges of status and high office clash with Jesus as he reveals their hypocrisy, loves those they hate, and points to God’s ultimate Kingdom, Power, and Glory.  Jesus story takes us all the way to the cross: a shameful symbol that is transformed.  Not to spoil the ending, but God wins.  God always will, though it may be hard to see or believe in the moment.
 
Our present darkness is not radically new or different in long story of humanity.  When the will to power denies the worth and dignity of every human being, we see darkness swallowing life.  We are not without guidance and we do have hope.  If we are to grow through human tragedy, we are to surrender all pretense that we are in charge, seek God’s way, and find a new Way.
 
A lesson we can take from the wise men is that when those with great power, specifically political power, ask us to act in any hate fueled, unethical, or immoral way, disobey. Turn around, and walk in the other direction.
 
The unwanted but much needed Epiphany of Wednesday seems clear.  Hate, in all forms, destroys everything in its path.  Hate is not an acceptable tactic.  Hate is not acceptable as rhetoric.  Hate is antithetical to the God’s love.  God is speaking. To us.  Now.  Can we listen?
 
 
St. Paul gives good direction for troubling times, saying that peace, patience, gentleness, and self-control are signs of God at work in us.  If we are looking for guidance, the right people and path to follow, and join in the goodness of God, these are the qualities to seek.  The wise men of old followed the light, found the Savior, and left Herod to his own devices.  Now, with peace, patience, gentleness and self-control as our guideposts, with light of love guiding our way, let us walk each other home by another way. Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
Second Sunday of Christmas, Year B, January 3, 2021
 
Trust your gut.  That may sound basic and cliché, but it is among the soundest advice I have ever received.  There is something inside of us that is intuitive.  There is something inside of us that guides us to see beyond the surface of things, to set aside mere self-centered things, and listen for the rhythm of what is good.  That something comes when we are listening for the Word of love, for the Way of God, or the Wisdom that some just call our Higher Power.  Trust your gut, but be sure to be plugged into the right power source.  This gives us a better shot at deep listening, holy hearing, and faithful participation in God’s will.
 
“An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him… When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead… And after being warned in a dream. [not to go to Judea] he went away to the district of Galilee [to Nazareth].”  That is three important and revelatory dreams in just one short Gospel passage.
 
To be sure, Joseph is an enigmatic character in the Jesus story.  Luke and Matthew talk about Joseph and what he does, but unlike John the Baptist, the shepherds, the wise men, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, we never hear him say or proclaim anything.  He is a bit player in the Christmas pageant who has no lines. 
 
Let’s reflect on his predicament.  His fiancé comes to him with a wild story about meeting and angel and being told that she is with child though a decidedly unheard-of method of conception.  It is a tough story to believe.  He knows that the child cannot be his for obvious reasons.  In that day, a bona fide marriage happened when the two families came together, the bride was given from her family to the groom’s family, and the covenant between them was sealed in a ritual ceremony.  Then, there was a feast, sometimes lasting days on end, and finally, the couple retired together, alone at last.  Up to that point, they did not share much if any time together.  In many cases, they hardly knew each other.
As everyone knew the traditions, and as Mary began to show her expectant child, Joseph faced all kinds of shame and ridicule.  By law, he could break the deal, and send her away.  In Matthew’s telling, Joseph resolves to send her away quietly, and help her avoid public disgrace, though we are not sure how that could happen.   At the last minute, God comes to him in a dream, yes, a dream before the dreams Luke tells us about today (that makes four!), and tells him that the child is of God, shall be named Jesus, and will be the Savior of the world.  We hear nothing about what Joseph said, all we know is what he did.  He just hung in there, stuck with Mary, and believed God.  To be sure, there would be gossip, sideways looks, and all kinds of ridicule. 
It is phenomenal and intriguing that all of holy history, the mysterious and precarious birth of Jesus, and the faith fueled commitment of a precarious marriage commitment intertwine to change to world.  A couple of poor, vulnerable, and relatively powerless people, align with God’s power and what happens changes the world forever.  All of this comes about, comes from serious, gut trusting faith in action.
It is hard for me to believe that a dream could inspire such bravery and faith.  My recurring dreams are like the one where I have to take the SAT all over again and I arrive without my number two pencils.  Or the one where I have to take a final exam in Organic Chemistry and I have never been to the class.  I am not alone in having wacky dreams wherein the subconscious goes to work when all rationality is unconscious.  It is pretty obvious to us what such things mean as more often than not, those kinds of dreams expose our worries and insecurities.
The gospelers are not talking about those kinds of dreams, but it is the best language they have for mystic encounters with God.  What that are trying to tell us is that when we listen for God, when we seek what God desires with and for us, when we are thoughtful and prayerful, God can and will lead us.  Some call this God speaking to them.  Many of us doubt that God can or will speak to us.  But this is not the season of rationalization or logical explanation. 
As we consider the people of this world, and throughout history, who have followed God’s leading, generally, their actions are not self-serving.  Standing for love, justice, and kindness, caring for the lost, lonely, and those who are poor in all kinds of ways takes guts.  Doing so risks personal comfort, requires all kinds of time and energy, and can compromise one’s status and standing in the eyes of a material world.  On the surface, following Jesus makes little sense, but as we do, we fill our empty places, and find unexpected joy. 
As we believe into to the whole of God’s story, from Genesis to Revelation, and in the person and work of Jesus, we join with a company of unlikely folks who hear the rhythm of holy happenings as we watch and listen for that which God urges, wills, and creates.
This whole Christmas thing is not based on evidentiary propositions of assured outcomes.  God choosing to come among us all comes through the ordinary us, choosing to welcome God’s working in our unlikely, vulnerable, and relatively powerless lives.  Self-will is always something to check and filter when listening for God.  It is good to seek God’s will with others who walk with us in faith.
We can trust our gut as we see God acting, God speaking, and God moving as we go toward knowing in our knowing place what God desires.  Listen.  Hear.  The reason we do church is to plug into God’s power source: remembering the stories of how God comes to humans like us, believing that God will use us for good, and following the Way of Jesus.  As we do, we might lose the self we thought we were, but then, we will find the abundant life that God dreams for all creation.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
First Sunday of Christmas, Year B
December 27, 2020
 
Christmas Day has happened.  Even if different that most years, we did what we could to be merry and bright.  Our soggy Christmas Eve came off beautifully!  Thank goodness for the technology that helps connect us, and the warmth of homes that surround us.
 
As a kid, I remember the days after Christmas to be a letdown.  I was not alone in that.  Even though the Church tells us that the Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and extends for 12 days until Epiphany, I was pretty much burned out on all the carols and decorations.  The Sunday after Christmas was sounded like a retread of the Christmas service presided over by the least senior clergy person who struggled to keep our enthusiasm going.  As I am the only one priest at Emmanuel here, you get me.
 
I have been reading about Christmases past, Christmases in history when times were difficult.  In tough times, the depression, war, plagues and pandemics dampened much of the season’s joy and left folks with little feeling of celebration.  Nevertheless, the message of the season prevailed.   As John’s gospel proclaims: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  Notice the words did not overcome it … it does not say might not or may not … its says did not.  In becoming one of us, God announces that God lives and moves among us and in us.
 
In my reflections of past struggles, I was intrigued by stories of British frontline soldiers in World War I.  The battle lines and trenches were desolate, muddy, and freezing on Christmas Day in 1914.  The way they waged that war involved agonizing waiting and static vigilance, punctuated by brutal and deadly episodes of shooting and shelling.  Not much ground was traded.  Not much was accomplished for the cost thousands of lives.  The troops saw futility, but their leaders persisted in holding the line.
 
As relief organizations attempted to boost morale and send support, boxes of chocolates and cigarettes flowed toward the front lines.  The troops begged their superiors to negotiate a temporary ceasefire, to give them a break, to give them rest, and give them something to celebrate in the darkness and drear of what was known as no man’s land.  Their requests were met with orders to stay the course.  Any let down could result in giving the enemy an advantage. 
 
When Christmas Day came, the soldiers were packed into their positions.  With no announcement or organization, some of them began to sing.  “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.”  Soon the whole regiment joined in and sang with heart and soul.  And to their surprise, a few hundred yards away, they began to hear singing on the other side:  Stille nacht, heilige nacht.”  In what sounded to them a beautiful harmony, the singing swelled, orders to shoot and kill were set aside.
 
Slowly, faces rose above the trench lines on both sides.  Rifles were set aside in favor of song.  This was how the peaceful Word of God overcomes the destructive orders of men.  They rose out of their cramped and muddy holes, standing tall and looked into the faces of their enemies.  They moved closer to one another, exchanged greetings, shook hands, and shared cigarettes and chocolate (the German chocolates being highly prized).  Someone produced a soccer ball and a game broke out, and for a time, they were just boys playing their game and seeing each other as fellow humans: children of God.
 
As evening fell, they returned to their assignments.  Fearing reprisals from their commanding officers, they took up their positions once again.  The games were over and the war was on again.  If it had been left up to those soldiers, they would have all gone home, but tragically, the principalities and powers this world had other plans. 
 
This moment of grace lives on in the remembering and telling of this story.  It stands in stark contrast of the way of God’s love over against the sort lived mercy of men.  The Prince of Peace broke through the lines that divided them, and granted them a vision of Christmas: the insistent promise that light overcomes darkness.
 
If we are feeling a little blue, that is part of the longing for hope, and hope is never lost so long as the Word of God is heard, embodied, and welcomed in our daily intentions.  We have a ways to go in navigating our current struggles.  The meaning of the Light is that we will rise out of the cramped spaces of our isolation.  The Word of God is a living thing: sharp and clarifying.  Christmas happens as we welcome that Word, the Christ Child, the person and work of Jesus.  He shows that resurrection happens again and again.
 
My friends, Christmas is happening too.  It is happening not for a day or a season, it is happening as we know and love God as a living presence in and among us.  Christmas is not a tale or legend of long ago.  It is an ongoing and continuing action.  Love is a verb not a feeling. 
 
Today, as much as ever, we need our Savior.  In Christ, we have a fighting chance to overcome the selfish urge to win at all cost, to serve beyond ourselves, and to scatter hope and peace generously and liberally. 
 
Christmas Day has happened, but Christmas must keep happening as the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth.  Hang in there.  Hope is alive, healing happens, and love always wins.  Amen.