​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter VII, Year A
May 24, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
The scene opens with a misty, wooded landscape.  There is a castle in the background.  From a distance, there is a lone horseman riding through the fog and we can hear the clip clop of hoofs the rocky road.  The figure emerges with chain mail armor, a steel helmet, and a royal tunic.  But then, the scene broadens and the knight figure is, simply skipping along as if he is riding a horse.  There is a scruffy attendant behind him clapping coconuts together to make the clopping horse trot sound.
 
If you have a certain sense of humor, you recognize this as the opening scene of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and what follows is a hilarious spoof of the whole story of Arthur gathering his knights to Camelot.  But first, he has to explain to one knight where in the world he found the coconuts, as England is hardly a tropical region.  The whole plot digresses from there, and the film is the stuff of comic legend.
 
I have to admit that this troupe of comedians, known collectively as Monty Python, are comic heroes of mine.  Their keen sense of irony and their farcical look at historic events have, forever changed how I think of certain events.  Their follow up film called Life of Brian is genius, if not very close to heretical.  In that story, Brian is born in a stable next door to Jesus and spends the rest of his life being confused with Jesus as people mistakenly follow him, supposing him to be the Messiah.  It is an amazing critique of blind faith and the irony of religious followers trying to exclude other religious followers as not following the true way to whatever they perceive salvation to be.
 
Naturally, when the film premiered, fundamentalist religious groups decried it as blasphemous, which is, of course, the whole point.  Those protesting the film’s content only bolster its point of view.  Thus, the joke is on all of us. 
 
My particular take is, and has always been, that if we cannot laugh at ourselves, life becomes way too serious, and we are lost to way too stuffy piety.  This is not to say that the tensions of good and evil, sin and salvation, or judgment and grace, are not real and serious business.  But somewhere in all of that we have to take into account that all of our religious understanding and interpretation is mediated through the limited cloud of human knowing and being.  We can count on the Holy Spirit for guidance and revelation, but we do well to be careful in proclaiming that we know absolutely anything beyond the basic fact that God creates us, Jesus loves us, and all of life is about living with, and discerning, how these facts lead us in becoming closer to being One with in God.
 
Of course there is much more to living a life of faith, but we have to approach the whole exercise with what some call a low anthropology.  That is, we ought to accept that we are limited, culturally conditioned, subjective, and woefully self-centered.  As Mark Twain once said: God created people in his image, and people have been returning the favor ever since.  God is not of our creation, possession, and does not work at our direction, much as we would like that to be.
 
In this week’s Gospel, we meet with Jesus and his disciples for another farewell sounding monologue.  In John’s telling, we overhear Jesus’ prayer for the world beyond where he stands in time and space.  Thursday was the feast of the Ascension.  In the Catholic tradition, it is a holy day of obligation.  Nevertheless, you cannot find Ascension Day cards at the CVS, and nobody goes home to celebrate that with the family.  The significance of that day, when we remember Jesus being taken into heaven, is not about some magical jump into the sky.  It is not about where heaven is and how Jesus gets there.  It is about affirming that Jesus moves beyond time and space, and is not limited to being with a very few first century people.  Jesus continues to live among us and reveal God to us, not matter where we are and when we live.  This is an important reality.  Or, as one brilliant humorist summarizes: Now, like many of us, Jesus is working from home.
 
Jesus closes his prayer asking God to be with them, meaning us, so that “we may be one” as He and God are one.  The Holy Spirit is part of that one too, but that is a matter for next week’s proclamation.  I have to admit that that statement is a bit haunting.  God in Christ prays, desires, and insists that we be one, one with God and one with one another.  So far as I can tell, that is not the case.
 
This is not where I insert the Universalist interpretation that all religions point to the same God and that we are all about the same thing.  That is not the case.  The God of Jesus comes to us as generous, creative, and sacrificial love.  You don’t get that in any other narrative across the pantheon of religions.  At the same time, we are not the be all and end all of religious experience and influence.  Our faith needs to be broad enough to trust God’s work in the hearts and minds of others.  Our best mode of living God’s love is to promote what we have been given, rather than condemning others through some sort of holy exclusion policy.
 
Even among those who call themselves Christian, we are not one.  The world is full of denominational divisions, great schisms, and doctrinal lines in the sand.  Wherever two or three are gathered together, someone has a different experience, opinion, or preference.  This yields the old joke that on a tour of heaven, you have to walk by the Catholic, Episcopalian, and Baptist rooms quietly, because each group is sure they are the only ones there.
 
If we hear Jesus prayer for us to be one as a command, an order, or God’s sovereign law, we are in big trouble.  But let’s remember that this is Jesus message, not his blueprint.  He is telling us that despite everything we do to divide, judge, include, exclude, and proclaim pure piety, we are all gathered into one anyway.  In the vast span of life eternal, we are all brought together and we all are together in God, of God, and for God.  This is of great comfort in a week where our parish and community has experienced deep loss.  This is of great comfort in this time when we are feeling isolated, weary of cancellations, and frustrated with how many of God’s people are acting out.  This time is not the only time.  Our lives are not the only lives.  Our world is not ours, exclusively.  As the Psalm 24 affirms: “the whole earth is God’s, and all of its fullness therein.”
 
We may not be united and of one mind on just about anything, but that will never separate us from being one in God.  And here is where the tragedy of our petty division becomes the great comedy all time.  Whatever heaven is, and however we are gathered in, I cannot imagine that it is not full of holy laughter as we come to see the fullness of all, the love of all, and the oneness of all that is or ever will be.
 
We may not have all of the answers.  We may not have all wisdom and knowledge.  We are definitely fallible and foolish.  But in Jesus, we have a clue as to who to follow, who to thank, and who to believe.  It is the comedian who is most free to speak the truth.  As Mark Twain said,  “I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”  So, on we go, rejoicing.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter VI, Year A
May 17, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
It was in a time before Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and binge-watching television on demand.  Remember, we had favorite shows then too, but we had to watch them a specific time and day of the week and, then, only one episode per week.  Networks wrestled and competed for sweet spots in prime time.   There was art and science to what shows played on which networks and when.
 
When I was in college, Thursday nights were the night to watch, and we did whatever we had to do to reserve the television and get a prime seat in the dormitory common room.  Without fail, my friend group gathered at 10 pm for our favorite show: Hill Street Blues.  It was an hour-long series set in major metropolitan police precinct, following the lives, adventures, and exploits of police officers, detectives, prosecutors, and public defenders.  It was a brilliant mix of crime show, legal thriller, and nighttime soap opera.  The characters were deep and compelling, the writing was wry and clever, and we could not miss it even if we had a test or paper due the next day.
 
Hill Street Blues always opened with early morning roll call in the precinct.  Over coffee and donuts, all of the characters gathered for their daily assignments and updates on ongoing investigations.  In rapid succession, alliances were formed, tensions were revealed, and the chaos of crime and punishment was organized.  Leading the meeting is Desk Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, a veteran cop, clever communicator, and well-respected father figure.  After the rundown of purse snatchings, narcotics investigations, and murder suspects, the Sergeant ends the meeting, somehow, commanding absolute silence from a room full of side conversations.  He stares them all down and says “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”  It is cautionary, heartfelt, and absolutely the same, every week. 
 
The Sergeant’s admonition has resonated through my own life, long after its show has ceased to be.  When heading off on a new adventure, sending a child to camp, or handing over the car keys, those words have spilled from my own consciousness.  “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”
 
It is such a loaded phrase.  Hey: pay attention, if only to this.  Let’s: we are in this life together.  Be careful: be attentive, cautious in our actions, and full of care for self and others.  Out there:  It is a big wide world, full of woe and wonder.  We cannot always control that.   Nowadays when we pick up our mask and gloves, put the hand sanitizer in the car, and head out into the vectored world, I think it often, even if I do not say it.  Hey, let’s be careful out there.
 
As we meet Jesus this week, we are in there with the disciples, and Jesus is telling them what will happen when he is no longer among them physically.  They are scared and unsure and perplexed.  As with the previous passage, Jesus brings them back to the main thing: when you love one another, you are loving me and you are with me.  He has to repeat this in many ways for them to hear it, and he does. 
 
The gospel writer’s Greek does linguistic backflips to fuse action with being.  Now I am no great student of philosophy, but this loving as more than an action – this loving as a way of being is a pretty sophisticated thought.  I read lots of philosophy in my theological studies and could not make sense of much of it.  I find more cogent philosophy in songwriting and storytelling than in Immanuel Kant or Martin Heidegger.  Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and the Avett Brothers bring it home more effectively.  But that is another sermon.
 
Thankfully, Jesus adds the next bit to get us out of our heads and into the mind of God.  He says that God will send the Advocate (also known as the Holy Spirit) to be with us forever.  The Spirit will move in and among us and help us connect our actions to our very being in God.  This is a big thought, a big idea, and a radically new thing.  Jesus is saying that God has got our back, there is no space between us and God, and it is all about God’s movement among us.  All we need do is accept this, and live in it.
 
And while we consider Jesus final words to his disciples, at the end of the entire Bible, in the last chapter of Revelation, the writer says this: “Amen. Come Lord Jesus!  The grace of the Lord Jesus is with all of you. Amen.”  This is an outstanding, mic dropping statement of all pertinent philosophy and theology wrapped into 16 words.  It is all there: God’s radical presence, hope for the future, and grace – like mamma’s love, gravy on the biscuit, or grits with your eggs – grace is unearned and unmerited, but always abundant.  If there is any signpost pointing to the Spirit among us, it is grace.
 
While we are unsure of how we will gather again, while we are unable to sing together, praise together, and share God’s communion.  We are not orphaned or left out in the cold.  The Spirit is moving in and among us just as surely as the wind blows and grace abounds.  Know that.  Believe that.  Rest assured in belonging with God.
 
I guess the reason Sergeant Esterhaus’s words have resonated in my mind and echoed in my heart for many years is that they ring with a holy tone.  Their sentiment is the same is that of Jesus and of Revelation.   It is Sunday morning roll call for all of all saints.  Can you hear Jesus, commanding silence from all of the world’s noise, telling us we have his love, the Spirit’s presence, and God’s enduring grace always?  He is staring into all of our beloved faces
saying, “Hey, Let’s be care-full out there.” Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter V, Year A
May 10, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
“Be careful in Between.” 
 
We used to say that to one another when making the car journey from Athens, Georgia, where I grew up and the big city of Atlanta, 66 miles away.  Before the Olympics and the great push to have a four-lane highway to Atlanta, we drove there on US 78: a two-lane road winding through the red clay foothills of North Georgia.  Exactly half way between Athens and Atlanta was a little crossroads town called Between – that is how it got its name, from being between Athens and Atlanta.  As far as we know, the town’s only purpose for being was to have one police car, stopping all passers through that violated the sudden 25 mile per hour speed limit.  It was a really nice and shiny police car.  They must have done well.
 
If you told people you were going to Atlanta, inevitably, they would say, “Be careful in Between.”  Even after the four lane went in and we drove four miles north of Between on the new road, people kept saying it.  “Be careful in Between,” became a mantra for watching out for speed traps, and eventually, for just being careful on the journey from home to the big city.
 
It is funny how expressions develop and take on new meaning.  That one is time bound and localized, but it sticks with me because of its deeper meaning.  “Be careful in Between” is good advice even without the original intent of avoiding a speed trap.  Between places are places of transition and change, places of risk and unknowing, places bttween the safety of home and the destination of new promise.  It is good to be careful when we stand at the edges of experience.
 
Normally, we mark transitions with ceremony and rites of passage.  I cannot help but grieve for those who are supposed to graduate this weekend.  All of the ceremony has a purpose of marking the moment, so that the student does not hover in between high school or college and whatever is next.  Even in quarantine, there are virtual attempts at commencements.  John Krasinsky, the actor and comedian who does the “Some Good News” webcast each week, even hosted an on-line prom with some really great musical talent.  People need to mark the substantial moments of life and we are having to get creative in the face of restrictive gathering.
 
Of course, today is Mother’s Day.  It is not a church feast day, but it is a cultural one.  It can be a day of great appreciation for some, and a day of sadness or longing for others.  Nevertheless, we mark this day in light of the reality that all of us were born and became in this world through the labor and love of others.  For sure, birth is one of those between places where pain and worry and joy and new life all come together.
 
The Gospel we read today is really evocative, mostly because it is so often read at another between place.  This is a go to lesson for funerals, and it is spoken when the earth is freshly dug and we are making the transition from loving someone in this world and lifting them up to be loved on the other side of eternity.  That space blends a mix of gratitude and grief.  The words are of comfort and assurance.  They bridge across betweenness.
 
The story takes place as Jesus is in Jerusalem and his arrest and trial and crucifixion is eminent.  The disciples are well aware of the risks that await their friend and they wonder why he has to go toward such a confrontation.  Jesus prepares them, not by saying he will avoid pain, but in showing them how his love will abide with them, and remain in them, as they love like he does.  He tells them not to let their “hearts be troubled.”  He tells them “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  That is present tense.  It is not conditional or dependent on the disciples’ action.  It is not subject to whatever human machinations there are that work against him.  “From now on” he says, “you know God” because “you have seen God.”
 
In meeting with our diocesan clergy and bishops this week, it became clearer than ever that we are far from being able to gather as have traditionally.  I will admit that this realty hit me hard.  Like many of you, I may have been magically hopeful that somehow, this pandemic would blow over with a change in seasons, or that in flattening the curve, we would be able to return to gathering and going out in groups.  It is difficult to see conspiracy theorists are having a field day, and individualists claiming violations of personal freedom.  Sniping and accusing are not of love, and do not help.   People of faith have an important role to play in our response, our calm, and our commitment to using our God given reason to work together.  We can produce targeted volumes of testing.  We can develop therapeutics.  We can create a vaccine.  That is our greatest hope and opportunity to serve all persons, loving them as we love ourselves. That is where our prayer, our energy, and our work can come together.
 
“Be careful in Betweeen”
 
That phrase rings more true than ever in my heart and soul.  When things are uncertain and unknown, faith can erode and humanity can be lured into the madness of power grabbing and self-service.  Jesus brings his disciples together to see the power of love as the long view: the long game of life eternal.  He does not leave them wondering where God is for them.  He shows them in person.  He creates and inhabits a future for all of us, together.
 
When I spent a year as the Interim Rector at Grace Church, Kilmarnock, I was put in mind that there is no such thing as interim ministry.  The people of that parish continued to be church even in the uncertain space of future leadership.  I am grateful that Neal Goldsborough had the same view of ministry here in Emmanuel Church.  You kept on keeping on, praising God, doing the work of the Church, and loving one another.  You were careful in the in between space to keep the Jesus at the center of life.
 
If recording sermons, Zoom meetings and prayers, planned and distanced outreach is how we have to do it, that is what we will do, keeping Jesus at the center of life.  We will need to be creative and intentional.  Being joyful and maintaining a sense of humor is helpful in this space too.  Maybe God is birthing new ways of us being Church.   Even if things are different, we are not in between people.  We are God’s beloved family, now and always.  Amen.
 
Incidentally, the newer and faster four lane from Athens to Atlanta takes a more direct route.  And there is a stoplight at the halfway point.  That place is a little town called Bethlehem.  I am not making this up…

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter IV, Year A
May 3, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
I have always been interested in livestock.  Maybe it is because my grandfather Thomas tended a herd of cows on the family farm, and I always wanted one as a pet.  Even now, I am drawn to the pastoral setting of fields and beasts.  Fortunately, I have a gorgeous, agrarian drive from home to just about everywhere I go.  I have been known to stop and take pictures of cows, horses, sheep, goats, donkeys, llamas or whatever I see, and bring them home for show and tell.  They always seem to look so thoughtful and practical, pointing onto the wind, lying down before a big rainstorm, or finding shade and grass even at the extreme edges of captivity.
 
During part of a college summer I spent in England, a friend and I hiked from town to town in the Lake District, and all of the trails meandered through farmer’s fields where there were thousands of sheep on seemingly endless hillsides.  That is the setting that launched William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and the other Romantic poets into ecstatic, nature fueled reverie.  Thinking about it makes me use words like ecstatic and reverie.
 
Even then I took lots of animal pictures.  English sheep are so well fed, and moppy looking in the dank gray drizzle that settles on just about everything.  Even though there are legions of them and regular thru hikers in their fields, it is not that easy to get a good close up.  In the days before digital pictures, I wasted lots of rolls of film catching sheep’s backsides as they ran out of the frame, and out of my way.
 
There were shepherds of a sort.  They were not the young angelic looking ones we see in the nativity scenes from the Bible, rather, they tended to be old, crusty men in layers of woolies and thick soled wellington boots.  We would see them in the pubs at night, nursing pints of bitters, and looking at us as suspiciously as their sheep did.  Each one of them had lots and lots of sheep, and they wandered the perimeters of the rock walled fields keeping out the odd fox or feral dog. 
 
What was so interesting to us was how the sheep followed, just the one person.  They could tell that particular caretaking person’s voice, their whistle, or even their grunts.  Centuries of collective instinct, passed from ewe to lamb in whatever sheep school there is, must have taught them to stay close to the one who looks out for them.
 
Today is known far and wide as Good Shepherd Sunday.  For this preacher and Christ follower, it is a sentimental favorite.  It is the Sunday we sing The King of Love my Shepherd is and we recite the ever-popular 23rd Psalm.  The scriptures we read have inspired really great ‘Jesus as the Good Shepherd’ art too.  Google “good shepherd art,” and you will get thousands of examples.
 
We love this image because it is peaceful, comforting, and pastoral in all senses of that word.  Even before Jesus, we have lots of Old Testament shepherd characters and stories.  King David started out as a lone shepherd.  All of the patriarchs and matriarchs maintained flocks of sheep for food, clothing, and used them as practical vehicles of wealth and prosperity.  Caring for the flock was a matter of life and death necessity for most of those old biblical folks.
 
Like the poets, we can get caught up in romantic notions of these beasts, and derive comfort from the protective care that Jesus, the “great Shepherd of the sheep” provides.  As most of us have moved away from such agrarian roots, we do suffer a sort of ‘nature deficit disorder’ in our full understanding of the image.  To reify and recapture the breadth of this metaphorical meaning requires a little sheepolgy.  This Sunday, annually, provides an opportunity for that too.
 
While we are apt to get the shepherd role for Jesus, we are not as apt to understand the corollary, that is, that we are sheep.  And here is where a deep dive into sheepology is helpful, if not humbling.  There is a reason that sheep have learned to follow the shepherd and to listen for the shepherd’s voice and guidance.  It is this: they are not naturally smart.  Apart from being particularly smelly and overwhelmed with matted fur, sheep do not have much in the way of defensive capability.  They have no claws, no fangs, or particularly frightening roar.  Their panicked and cacophonous bleating only serves to tell a predator exactly where they are.
 
About the best they can do for defense is to run away and clump up together so the predator can pick out the slowest or fattest one and leave the rest alone.  In extreme danger, sheep tend to scatter, and that leads to no good.  Sheep have been known to run off cliffs or fall into deep ravines.  I will let you do you own interpretation of sheep and the parallels to human nature.  It is not such a flattering exercise.
 
Even so, the best defense is a good offense.  If they stay close to the one willing to risk life and limb to protect them, if they go where that more enlightened mind leads, and if the way they do so, is to recognize that caretaker’s voice, then they have the best opportunity for peace and safety.  Here again, I will let you draw your own conclusions about this image and our current state of our own health and safety, but the best nugget of the day is that deep and insightful listening for God’s voice the best instinct. 
 
With all the talk of vectors, droplets, and risk factors, the one phrase that gets me in all of this is so called “herd immunity.”  That one takes us to the elemental level of the beasts that we are, or could be, if we scatter in all directions and do not take care of each other.  There has to be some balance between reckless freedom and cowering fear.  It comes from accepting our sheepness and knowing the limitations of going all of this alone.
 
The gospel does not advocate herd immunity, but H-E-A-R-D immunity: heard immunity.  That kind of peace and safety comes from listening to the most basic tenet of our baptism: seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Hearing that call is practicing H-E-A-R-D immunity.
 
There are immense challenges and there will be plenty more as our economy shifts and whole swaths of our fellow humans will need basic, living resources.  We can be about each other and seek creative solutions.  That is the voice need to hear.  That is the direction we need to follow.  Blame, shame, and acrimony, will not serve any good purpose.  Seeking just, mutual, and loving care and concern will lift us all, and brings us safely home.
 
In those great hymnic words:
 
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed
But yet in love he sought me,
And on his shoulder gently laid,
And home, rejoicing, brought me.
 
When we hear the voice that sings that song, we are practicing heard immunity
 
Amen.