Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 7, Year A
June 21, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
We got married.  We bought a small house.  We started new jobs.  And then, we got a puppy – our first child.  We named her Grace.  She was a lumpy, chunky Black Labrador Retriever, and we spoiled her rotten.  She climbed into our laps, onto our couches, and she commanded much of our attention and love. 
 
We got all of the stuff: matching collar and leash, sizeable food and water bowls, and a plethora of toys.  We tried to keep her interested in her things, but Grace loved to chew our things too: fringes of rugs, chair legs, and socks left on the floor.  But nothing even came close to her obsession with the tennis ball.  She learned to fetch at ten weeks old.  Soon thereafter, she learned to swim and fetch the ball in the water.  Twice a day we took her for a walk, a swim and a long game of fetch.  We could not wear her out.  She had boundless energy.  I threw until my arm was sore.  She never stopped.
 
When we returned home and left her in the back yard to dry off, she would toss the ball at the door, bark, and beg for more.  When we hid the ball, she found where we hid it, stood near it, and barked.  Once, when throwing the ball in the water, Grace cut the pad of her foot on an oyster shell.  Bleeding profusely all over our friend’s dock, she rolled the ball to us, begging to keep playing.  Her natural retrieving instincts, her persistence, and her commitment to the ball were amazing.  Even in her advanced age with arthritis and all that came with it, Grace never gave up her drive.  You have to admire that spirit, even if it was annoying.
 
When I read the gospel for today, and consider the singlemindedness Jesus commands, I think about Grace’ dogged determination.  In the passage, we find Jesus giving his disciples instruction and warnings about all of the things that will stand in the way of following the Way of Love.  In their context, they faced threats from both the dominant religious establishment and the occupation authorities just trying to keep good order.  In shocking and attention getting imagery, Jesus outlines the potential costs of discipleship.  What he asks for is wholehearted commitment, even when it is uncomfortable, unexpected, or unsettling.  This is his way of telling his followers to keep the main thing the main thing, no matter what.  To stretch the metaphor, we are to keep our eye on the ball at all times.
 
This is not gentle Jesus, meek, and mild.  This not a savior who will make peace at the cost of doing God’s will.  This is not the Jesus we might like to style after our own desires and preferences.  This is the Jesus who comes to comfort the afflicted, yes, but who also comes to afflict the comfortable.  And this begs the question for us would be followers, where do we need to be challenged, confronted, and changed.
 
Not only do I think about my single-minded black lab today, but I consider the deep spiritual reflection of the modern author Annie Dillard from her classic collections of essays called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Though it was written in the 70’s it still stands up well.  In one essay she reflects on our mission saying:
 
    “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely  invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children  playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

So, what are we do?  We are to follow Jesus, with dogged determination.  That sounds simplistic, but if we read into his Word today, this is the way forward.  First, we do not knuckle under to, or make friends with, oppression of coercion.  And while we have international and national concerns, the place where we have the most and most effective influence is local and immediate.  The change Jesus urges in us starts at home in our own hearts and minds.
 
If you are like me, the events of the past several months have had immense impact on our world view, challenging our values and assumptions.  It is not up to me or anyone else to take a moral inventory of everyone else, but I do know that being a person of love, forgiveness, and healing is deeply complicated in considering matters of public safety, racial equity, and living at peace with all people.
 
The real kicker in this challenging passage comes at the end.  “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  This draws us into what is most essential and is most assuredly the center of God’s truth: we are in this together.  That has been said about the virus and the challenges it has posed, but it is also true when it comes to matters of justice, equity, and inclusion.
 
There is a toxic nature to what we experience as “cancel culture” is where conversation is overcome by shouting and righteous indignation is overcome by rage.  In living out the truth of togetherness, we are bound to be in conflict.  But that is only a stuck place and not a stopping place.
 
No matter what narrative gets perpetrated from the polar extremes, there are plenty of people of good will who want to find our way forward together, not as one race or another, but as the human race, children of God, and aspiring disciples.  We will not always get it right, but we will always have the embrace of a risen Christ to show us sacrificial love in person.  People of God have the faith and the mandate to stand for better, and wrestle with the complexities of life in communion.
 
If today’s gospel disturbs us, perhaps that is the point.  It stands as a stark challenge the disciples then and for us here and now.  Now, as much as ever, the world needs the Church’s witness.  It needs our language of reconciliation.  It needs our focus on love as the highest and best of all.  It needs our affirmation of God’s steadfastlove that will never move away from pain or struggle.  Never.  Ever.  And that is Good News.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Trinity Sunday
June 7, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Who are your people? 
 
That is an old game we play throughout the South to find out that, basically, we are all related -- or if not, to discover that we know someone who is related to someone related to us.  The game is particularly popular in Virginia.  I enjoy the game. 
 
My first name is John.  The family gets it from John Marshall, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court.  He is my fifth great grandfather.  My middle name is Taliaferro, spelled like it is should be talia-pharoah.  That is an old Virginia name, going back to Williamsburg and all that.  On the Thomas side, we have lots of ancestors who were around in the mid 1700s in America.  We still have a small family farm, 20 miles northeast of Richmond called Chestnut Grove where a modest house was built in 1759.  The land came from a grant from the British Crown.
 
Both sides of the family have well researched genealogies and we have a fascinating heritage.  We also have a problematic heritage.  Marshall was the great legal architect of judicial review.  He spoke out against slavery, but he owned slaves for most of his life.  Chestnut Grove had slaves too.  We know this because there are family references an old slave burying ground on the property, but we have no idea where it is because there were no permanent markers or fences. 
 
To be able to know about my family, and to be able to know about my family’s history and connection to the early republic is it own brand of privilege.  In contrast, relatives of African slaves who served some of my relatives were bought and sold as property.  They are not afforded the opportunity to trace their lineage as they were given names of their master’s choosing.  They were split up as a matter of convenience and economy.  There are plenty of African American Taliaferros and Marshalls.  In fact, the African American educator and activist, Booker T. Washington, and I share the same middle name.
 
I believe it important to acknowledge and explore the whole of history.  As a baptized Christian and priest, I believe that confession and contrition are essential elements of living my faith.  I cannot go back and fix what was done, but I can speak, act, and work to see that the sin of racism is not perpetuated.
 
George Floyd’s televised death brings so much pain to the surface.  While there is always more to every story, what we witnessed is horrific and provides yet one more example injustice and inequality for black Americans.  So many of the protestors have insisted that we say the name: George Floyd.  We do this to acknowledge his humanity, to see him as one with a family, and to appreciate the personal tragedy.
 
I learned something about the significance of the name George this week.  The wealthy white American engineer and industrialist, named George Pullman, invented the railroad sleeper car.  What became known as the Pullman car made it possible and comfortable for wealthy whites to travel across the country to expand business and social connections.
 
To serve as stewards, servers, and cleaners of his train cars, Pullman hired newly freed slaves, paying them very low wages and requiring them to work long hours with no real breaks.  Passengers on Pullman trains were told that whatever they needed, all they had to do was ask George to assist them.  Every black man working on the train was called George.  They were seen as interchangeable. Passengers did not need to learn their names or tell them apart, because, simply, George was there to serve.  Their struggle was chronicled in a 2002 movie called 10,000 Black Men Named George.
 
To speak the names of black men and women who have suffered oppression and injustice is just one part of the work that needs to be done.  To acknowledge one’s name connects us to our unique identity as children of God.  When we welcome new Christians we speak their name, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  And we make the sign of the cross on their forehead, saying their name and saying “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” 
 
That Trinitarian formula is as ancient as the rite itself.  And as today is so designated as Trinity Sunday, it is most poignant to reflect on what that means.  While it may be mysterious and befuddling to explain, the doctrine of the trinity holds that the three persons of the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are coequal and coeternal.  How all of them are related, and how they interact as one in three, and three in one, is the stuff of volumes of theology.  It is no wonder that rectors of parishes with associates or seminarians ask them to preach on this day.
 
What interests me in this time and place today is that the different expressions of the divine are all called “persons.”  The Creator, the Redeemer, and Holy Spirit are all persons of the One God.  The takeaway here is that our belonging in God is personal.  We do not have a removed sky god with little demi gods as earthly agents.  We belong to One who relates and acts personally.  When Jesus is about to ascend to heaven, he tells them to make disciples of all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  He says all nations - not just you and your people - but all of God’s people - of all sorts, types, conditions, and colors.  It’s personal.
 
According to our baptism, our faith, and Jesus’ command, our people are all people.  It is nice to know to whom we are related in the vastness of the family tree.  It helps us connect and understand.  Nevertheless, we also ought to tell our story whole.  We may have a family tree, but we dwell in a family forest.  We are all connected and we are all created through God’s love.
 
Who are my people?
Emory, Fran, Janice, Sam, Emily, Emory Junior, Laura, Julia, and Marshall. 
 
But really, who are my people?  All of us: black and white, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, protestors and police officers.  We are each other’s people, gathered in the persons of God.  As we seek to love and serve God, we must ground ourselves in honoring, respecting, and upholding the dignity of every human being.  Every. Single. One.  That is our faith.  And it is personal.  Amen.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
The Day of Pentecost
May 31, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
The parish I once served in Atlanta, Georgia was very large.  We held four services each Sunday.  The early one was Rite One Eucharist, a favorite of those who favored Elizabethan language and a particularly penitential tone.  The next service was a family friendly Eucharist, with creative children’s sermons and lots of action.  The next service was Rite II Choral Eucharist with traditional anthems and an immense and professionally trained choir.  The last service was done completely in Spanish as we had a Spanish priest on staff and a substantial Hispanic population.  We were a wildly diverse crossroads kind of parish: black and white, gay and straight, homeless and well to do, day laborers, Fortune 500 executives, and some local civic and educational leaders.  While the whole operation was a bit chaotic, and hard to manage, the place gave me a wide view the amazing diversity in the unity of common worship.
 
When the Spanish priest, Isaias Rodriguez, went on vacation, he asked me to lead services for a few weeks.  I resisted because I speak absolutely no Spanish.  He told me that did not matter.  He would tape the liturgy and give it to me to listen and learn.  He was such a great guy, and that congregation was so faithful, how could I say no? To help me, he assigned a 12 year-old young woman to be my guide and interpreter when needed.
 
From what I could tell, it went pretty well.  I got stuck a few times, but they all chimed in to keep me going.  I knew enough of the rhythm of the liturgy to understand what I was saying, mostly.  When I preached, I would speak a few lines, and my interpreter would summarize in Spanish.  Afterward, they all greeted me warmly and spoke to me in Spanish, assuming that I understood.  I nodded and smiled.  It seemed to work.
 
The best part of the whole thing was the luncheon we shared after worship.  It was well into the afternoon and we were all starving.  We had tamales and tacos, carefully crafted mole and green chili sauces, fresh salads, and fruit juices.  Our young children were folded into the community, and we made lots of friends sharing only the common language of faith.  That was plenty enough.
 
I remember that experience especially on Pentecost, this day when we hear the wildness of the Holy Spirit coming among the gathered disciples and many others.  And there is this holy chaos of people speaking in their own languages, yet in that space they all understand one another.  This is a crucial event in the formation of the Church, but even more so for us to hear and remember right now, in our current situation.
 
Peter, who is normally clueless, steps up to make sense of the event.  He reminds them of an old prophecy from the time of Joel.  He remembers an ancient teaching that the Spirit will be set free and poured out.  Young people will prophesy and see visions. Old folks will dream dreams and everyone who calls upon the name of the God shall be saved.  That is what is happening.  The great diversity of those present experience the power and presence of God, and it is the gift that keeps on giving.  It drives them to be united across differences.  Some call this the birthday of the Church.
 
People of God, we need some Pentecost right now.  I am not talking about speaking in tongues or calling down fire, though that would be interesting.  What we need is a fresh vision, a more righteous dream, and the salvation that comers from coming together in the name of God.
 
We need this because what we are doing, and who we are becoming, is not working.  With each passing day, the only constant seems to be further and deeper division.   The controlling cultural and political narrative focuses on blaming others, suspecting the worst, and stoking fear of whoever the other is.  Those who perpetuate such a narrative are not leaders, they are combatants, and we need no more of that.
 
Even though we are restricted in body, we are not limited in Spirit.  To claim God’s healing and restoration we need to travel in our minds to wide variety of places and spaces all of God’s people inhabit.  We need to understand -- more than we need to be understood.  We need to develop a new language that does not distinguish between an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’  We need to pull ourselves up to the table of our common humanity to come together.
 
As Mark Twain said way back in 1869, such “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
 
To care for each other, to belong to one another, to honor the dignity of every human is not weak or fragile; it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Freedom is not doing what we please.  Freedom is becoming one in Christ Jesus.  That is the Truth that sets us free.
 
We will not realize the vision, the dream, or the salvation we seek in accepting the world as it is right now.  We will not undo what has taken years to instill and establish without challenging our very own well-worn assumptions, starting the change we seek in our own hearts and minds.  Whatever we have to do receive and act in the Spirit that is God is worth whatever it takes. The Church is not closed.  With Holy Spirit power, the Church is deployed.  And our world needs the Church’s reconciling dream vision and mission more than ever, so “then, everyone who calls on the Lord shall be saved.”