​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 12, Year A
July 26, 2020
 
In the world of being a modern digital family, we have shared accounts.  We have a family Netflix account to watch movies and documentaries.  We have a family Amazon Prime account to buy books and watch more movies.  We have a family Audible account to listen to, and share audio books.  As are a multi-generational collective, it is fascinating to review our watch, read, and listen list.
 
Some of the newer titles are about race and contemporary politics, but throughout what I refer to as “Corona Time,” the Thomas collective has been circling back on some old favorites.    
I cannot help but notice that we are trending toward classic narrative, uplifting stories of discovery and becoming, and some things that just make us laugh. 
 
The Harry Potter books and movies have been getting some new listens and watches.  That is a commitment as there are 7 books and 8 movies.  While they are wild and fantastical, they are not all that complicated.  Young Harry and his friends come of age throughout the series, finding their own voices, gifts, and foibles in a classic fight of good versus evil. 
 
Another of our categories I would call: inspiring biography and history.  Through the stories of real people, from folk musician James Taylor, to Alexander Hamilton (the Musical), we engage with the chances and changes of fate and history, complete with confessed flaws and unexpected greatness.
 
The last category, I will just call Pixar.  This is a collective of animated stories about bugs in A Bug’s Life, loveable monsters in Monsters Inc. and Monsters University, and all of the characters of a young girl’s psyche in Inside Out.  Here again, these stories are not complicated, but they are clever takes on realizing who we are, how we grow, and what we can do when we work together.
 
This romp through our watch and listen list is pretty typical as I have tracked the many popular watches and trends in streaming media.  With more time at home, and less time out and about, we are connecting with more narrative style stories than ever.  While there are plenty of tell all books and political polemics to be consumed out there, people are being drawn back to classic telling and retelling of coming of age stories, surprising success stories, and tales of discovering great joy and abundant life.  When art does not exactly imitate life, we seek for art to inspire and reinvigorate life with hope and promise.  A good story, well told, is good for the soul.
 
As we encounter Jesus in today’s gospel, we experience a rapid-fire set of parables (stories) about the Kingdom of Heaven.  Matthew’s gospel is set up most like storytelling of all the gospels.  When we think about this Kingdom of Heaven, we might expect fantastic, regal, and celestial special effects.  We might think of a lavishly decorated place full of everything we want.  We might look for a realm of conquering victory, good crushing evil, and some sort vindication of all that is holy and righteous and good. Instead we hear of a little mustard seed, yeast leavening flour, a treasure found in a field, a pearl picked out as precious, and a huge net full of fish.
 
When Jesus asks his people “Have you understood this?”  Matthew reports that they answered “Yes.”  I bet it sounded more like “Uh, yes?  They had to be a little disappointed in the imagery.  They had to be a little more expectant of something more fantastic, and grander when talking about the glorious “Kingdom of Heaven.”  I suspect this because that may be our reaction as well.  The metaphors are, at best, mixed.  Nevertheless, there they are.
 
In context, we have a group of people following this amazing rabbi, prophet, and healer.  They believe he is purely of God.  They have seen him be and do what no mere human would be or could do.  But they are also people who are occupied, oppressed, poor, and seemingly powerless.  Again, and again, they ask when the big campaign, takeover, and divine reckoning will take place.  They seek to be on the side of Jesus partially because they seek to be on God’s winning team.  Instead, Jesus tells them about seeds, yeast, treasures and fish.
 
In wholeness of its telling, God’s story is not about conquest, victory, and domination.  Those are earthly takes on power and prestige.  Instead, God’s story is about the gentle and insistent force of love wearing down hatred, bitterness, and division.  God’s story is about divine forgiveness and God’s work of changing what is ordinary into that which is extraordinary, even with the most basic elements.
 
The popular theologian, Richard Rohr, puts it this way: “Sometimes, God comes to you disguised as your life.”  If we are seeking something fantastic, it is most likely to start out as something small.  A seed is a remarkable thing, really.  It is a bundle of energy and design that draws energy from water, soil, and sun, all working in concert to make something new and regenerative and quite spectacular.  I see many sunflowers these days and wonder how on earth they became so grand, starting with a tiny little thing we eat in salads.
 
These days, we face big and daunting challenges.  There is a pandemic race to combine science, ingenuity, and hard work to find good medicine and vaccines.  There are standards of public health and safety all of us need to tend and enable.  There are problems of racial and economic inequity demanding thoughtful and active engagement.  And there are our children, parents, and teachers facing the impossible realities of beginning a school year.  My biggest worry was what to wear on the first day.  Their situation is really tough.
 
We are tempted to throw up our hands, declare everything too complicated, too polarizing, and too impossible to address.  But the Gospel story, and all of the other great stories we come back to over and over, do not end in futility and despair.  Instead, they tell us of the simple power of goodness applied liberally and regularly.  They show us love extending us beyond what may be easy or comfortable, beginning with small, but great things. 
 
This is the story that is our destiny.  This is the story that remains as the truth of what is to be.  While we have a role in it, the story is not about us.  The story is about God.  It about finding greatness in the common and ordinary matter of life.  It is about coming of age, the power of working together, and the embedded giftedness in all creation.
 
Why do we come back to this story again and again even in dark times? Because it is true, because it is great, and because God is continuing to tell it in and through us.  Amen.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 11, Year A
July 19, 2020
 
I was taking a college calculus test when the pain really started.  At first, I thought I was just anxious, but then I started sweating and having severe stomach pain.  It was my last class before Spring Break, so when I finished, I caught up with a friend who was my ride home.  It was a miserable journey as the pain got worse and the fever and chills started.  When I arrived at home, I greeted my parents, and went straight to bed.  My sleep was more than fitful, and by morning we all agreed something was really wrong.  We called my doctor and he said to go straight to the emergency room, which we did.
 
There began a medical mystery tour began with blood work, x-rays, and scans.  They ruled out stomach flu and food poisoning, and all kinds of scary diseases, but the pain continued to worsen and the fevers kept spiking.  I knew that something was really wrong and it was not getting better.  Finally, one of the scans revealed excess fluid in my belly so, they decided to do exploratory surgery and find the cause.  My parents were worried.  I was worried.  It became clear that I would not have any kind of quality Spring Break.
 
Fast forward several hours.  I came to in the recovery room, and the doctor asked me how I felt.  I was in pain from the incision, but I told him that whatever it was, I could tell he got it.  You know you must be pretty sick when you wake up from surgery feeling better than you did when you went in.  As it turns out, I had a complicated case of appendicitis.  There had been a rupture and I was septic.  In the days before powerful antibiotics, I would have died.
 
It took a month to recover and I lost a total of 45 pounds.  I could not stand up straight or lift anything heavy.  I still bear a large scar as a reminder of that harrowing experience.  That same general surgeon operated on my father’s neck a few years ago, and he remembered my vexing case some 30 years later.
 
I am still amazed at how I knew and could tell immediately that the surgery had worked.  It was a powerful lesson in healing that I have encountered a number of different times in different ways throughout my life.  When a broken relationship was mended, my whole being felt better.  When I told the truth and took responsibility for my own shortcomings, I was able to forgive more easily.  Jesus told his disciples that in naming the splinter in someone else’s eye, we often miss the log in our own.  As such, we are all a work in progress, striving at times, and failing miserably at others.  In hurting and healing, I have come to believe that we are not the sum of the worst we have been or the worst we have done.
 
This is particularly poignant in the current state of our seemingly ruthless cancel culture.  Cancel culture describes a form of boycott in which an individual (usually a celebrity or public figure) who has acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner is shamed and shunned.  While some who need to be called to account, and telling the truth is important, cancel culture leaves no room for repentance, contrition, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  And it seems that just about every corporate or public entity these days is scrambling to make a public statement, declaring what will and will not be tolerated, and offering whatever amends to get ahead of the cancel culture curve.
 
Given the context, this week’s gospel parable of the wheat and the weeds is timely and poignant.  This is another of Jesus’s agrarian metaphors in which the wheat field has been infiltrated by one who sows weeds in order to ruin the crop.  He calls the perpetrator the evil one and the devil, who is meant to be the personification of divisive sin and destruction.
 
In the story, the workers ask the farmer if they should go out and pluck up all the weeds, but the wise farmer tells them not to do so as in plucking up weeds, they might pluck up the wheat.  Instead, he tells them to wait until the harvest when wheat and weeds can be separated.
 
Time and time again, this week’s parable, like last week’s parable, has been leveraged as commentary on the difference between the true believer and those who do not measure up.  The history of the Church is littered with groups and sects who claim righteous purity and choose to isolate themselves from those they judge as weeds.  The seeds of cancel culture are not new to the scene.  Inevitably, those who set themselves up as more righteous fail, finding that human sin follows them wherever they go.  Mega pastors, televangelists, and politicians seem to be some of the most vulnerable as they tend to be the most strident in their condemnations.
 
Once again, it is important to remember that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is about God, and not the righteousness of human works.  While the description of the end of days and the separation of the wheat and the weeds can sound final and foreboding, perhaps there is more comfort there than we might first expect.
 
In the end, at the time of the harvest, Jesus says the angels will come and collect all causes of sin and evil doing and throw it in the fire.  Given the fact that we are all that work in progress, and that we are not either purely great or completely rotten, God knows our flawed raw material.  And if a surgeon can remove causes of pain and disease, surely God Almighty can, and will, weed out that which separates us from God and one another.
 
While cancel culture and the short-lived mercy of humanity might lead us to believe that we are in our we are out, we are good or we are bad, that we are wheat or we are weeds, the economy of God is broader and more encompassing.  This is the God who lets the whole crop grow together.  This is the God who sends Jesus to show us a wide, deep, and forgiving love.  This is our God who promises never to leave us or forsake us, even when we are at our worst.
 
The big take away is that we might go a bit easier on ourselves and on one another.  We might consider that we are not the judge, jury, or arbiter of who and what is worthy of love.  And if we can summon a small measure of the love God has for us and convert that into our own ways of seeing, doing, and being, we will know in that knowing place that we will be healed, and there is hope for all to shine like the sun.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 10, Year A
July 12, 2020
 
Now is the time I started thinking about in the early spring.  It is the time when what has been planted comes to fruition. It is the time when tomato plants are heavy with fruit.  It is the time when sweet corn is available and abundant.  It is the time when peaches and blueberries and strawberries are plump and ripe.  Our farmer’s market has just about everything that is fresh and just about everything else that can be made with what is fresh.  I could go broke there each week.
 
On my day off last week, I journeyed over to the farm where my grandparents once lived.  My grandfather was a part-time farmer and, in his retirement, a massive vegetable gardener.  There are still vestiges grape vines, fruit trees, and a big open space where row after row was tilled and planted.  The old house there has a basement kitchen that was set up just for canning and freezing.  These were people of the land and children of the depression.
 
I guess I come by my obsession with all things grown naturally.  I have started off with a modest container garden, but it will not be enough.  There is nothing like picking a ripe cherry tomato off the vine and popping it in my mouth for an instant snack.  And yes, I am that guy who asks farmers for dented and overripe tomatoes so I can make and jar sauce with my specially designed tomato squeezer machine.
 
As a person of faith, the matters and mechanics of growing things is a lively part of my consciousness.  Paying attention to the rhythms of the natural world helps make sense of life and its vicissitudes.  Seasons and soil, seeds and sowers fuel my understanding of how God works even in high minded ideals of mission and ministry.
 
Even today’s mid-summer gospel arrives in a moment where it is likely to capture this seasonal moment.  Jesus uses gardening parables over and over to speak to his mostly agrarian followers.  The parable of the sower is an old chestnut as it tells of a sower that spreads seeds liberally.  Some fall on a path, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, and finally, some on good soil.  The common interpretation might be for us to shape up, and get right, so that the Word of God, which is the seed, will bear fruit in us.  And we must root out being shallow, or rocky, or thorny.  But that takes us only so far, and to my agricultural sensibilities, misses the point.  The parable is not about us, it is about God.  Sometimes, we get so focused on us that we get lost in process.
 
What Jesus tells us, and what we need to hear, is that God is lavish, abundant, creative, and prodigious.  The Word of God is flung all over, not just where it will bear fruit.  The Way of God, the nature of God, and the promise of God is that God’s can always use our participation, but God does not depend on our goodness or perfection. 
 
Consider where this story begins.  Jesus is surrounded by a crowd, so much so, that he has to get into a boat and speak to them as they stand on the beach.  This is in Galilee.  It is a minor little place where people make their way fishing, foraging, and farming.  These are not the educated elites.  They are mostly illiterate.  They are under the thumb of Roman occupation. They are unarmed, heavily taxed, and being kept in their place.  If the spread of the Gospel depended on them, their abilities, and their resources, we would have much of a story to tell.  But as we know, the Word spread, from person to person and community to community. That is the sign of God’s provision, not humanity’s innate cleverness.
 
And that is the point.  With wild generosity, God will take whatever there is and grow it.  As the twentieth century preacher, Vance Havner reminds us: “God uses broken things.  It takes broken soil to produce a crop. Broken clouds to give rain, broken grains to give bread, and broken bread to give strength.”
 
There is a lot broken in our world, now as ever.  With so much cancelled, on hold, or uncertain we are having a hard time gauging and marking time.  Now is the time I usually get excited for college football to start.  Now is the time when I am used to seeing extended family and going on a vacation or adventure.  Now is the time when kids are supposed to be at camp, schools are beginning to prepare for the upcoming year, and our parish should be preparing for our annual Shrine Mont retreat.  There is grief in not being able to look forward with any expectation or certainty.  It is good to claim that, even if it is hard.
 
But, and this is a substantial but, God’s abundance is not on hold.  God’s love is still as prodigal and prolific as ever.  We may have to focus on the simpler and smaller things.  We may have to shorten our horizon of looking forward and anticipating new life.  We may have to pray with more silence, we may have to seek a little deeper, and we may have to listen a little longer for the voice of creation moving in us.
 
If all else fails, eat a ripe peach, slice a bright red water melon, smell the freshly mown grass, and listen for the birds coming alive each morning.  This is not whistling in the dark, it is choosing to find the light even it has to shine through the cracks of our own brokenness.
 
I found great solace this week in reading Mary Oliver’s poetry.  Her way with words is yet another sign of creative power.  In particular, I was drawn to her poem, I Worried, and I close this with her holy words.
 
I Worried
 
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
 
Amen.

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.”

​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…