June 30, 2021
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Do not fear, only believe. June 27, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart
Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Mark 5:21-43
We buried Isabelle Kaye this past Tuesday in the Memorial Garden. Our oldest parishioner, she was 101 at the time of her death. I enjoyed visiting with her: she was always so alive and always so ready to die. For the past few years she would smile at me and say, “I don’t know why I’m still here. I’m ready to go at any time.” She had no fear of death. And in that respect she reminded me of many people I have known over the years. Shortly after I was ordained, when I was serving a church in Rhode Island, I used to visit a woman who had cancer that had spread throughout her body. She was often in physical pain, but spiritually she was vibrant. I have no idea if she derived any benefit from my visits: I loved seeing her for purely selfish reasons because she was so radiant and so inspiring to be around. She knew she was dying, of course, and was completely at peace with it. And then there was my friend Phil from Massachusetts. He had heart problems and was on dialysis, and all the treatments were brutal on him and his family. So he decided it was time to stop. He called me the morning he discontinued dialysis. The doctors said he had just a few days to live, so he wanted to tell me that he loved me and that he would see me in the kingdom. After we talked, he went and got his hair cut, because he was Phil and he didn’t want to die looking scruffy. And then he hung out with his kids. Within 48 hours he fell into a coma and passed away. His daughter told me his death was beautiful — and free from fear. I could tell many such stories, stories of people for whom death held no terror, people who knew that we are created for life, life that physical death will not stop.
With that in mind, hear again these words from the book of Wisdom today: God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist. And even more: God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity. The author of this obviously knows people die, but he or she does not view death as our ultimate reality. God is eternal, and we who are created in the image of God are built to enjoy eternal life as well. And of course the resurrection of Jesus just affirms this great truth. Life in this world is precious and to be cherished, but it is only part of our journey. And grasping that — really understanding it — is key to living abundantly. Otherwise, we can too easily fall into fear. And just as I have witnessed people dying without fear, I have seen others who are terribly afraid to die, and their fear has darkened everything.
And even when we don’t fear our own physical death, or at least don’t think about it much, there are other deaths that can terrify us. There is, for example, the fear of failure, and the deadly blow that can give to our egos. Some people are morbidly afraid of getting sick. Others are frightened at the prospect of growing old and losing their independence. Many people fear any loss of control. As much as we try to control everything, so much of life is out of our control, including when we die. And, of course, there is the fear of losing those we love. We see that happening in our Gospel today. Jairus has a 12-year-old daughter who is gravely ill, and he is clearly devastated. There are many ways the fear of death can constrain us and even cripple us.
But Christ has come to lift that burden from us. The Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus took on flesh and blood to free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death (Heb. 2:15). But how does that happen? When Jesus tells Jairus, Do not fear, only believe, that may well be an impossible command for Jairus in that moment. But it does convey something important to us. The opposite of faith is not doubt: a person can have faith even if she is filled with uncertainty. The opposite of faith is fear. Conversely, the antidote to fear is using our faith and practicing trust.
So rather than just exhort you not to be afraid of death in its various forms, which would be useless and unhelpful, I will encourage you to practice trusting God in a very specific way: by actually facing your fears directly and naming them. Christ can set us free from them, but for that to happen we need to see them and own them. That has been a powerful lesson in my own life. I used to have a paralyzing fear of failure. I was terrified of taking risks, terrified of making mistakes. I could not beat that on my own, but with the encouragement of wise mentors, I learned to look at my fear and really see it for what it was. I was afraid of failure because I was afraid that this fake facade of perfection I desperately tried to create would be shattered, that people would see how imperfect and flawed I really am, that they would laugh at me or despise me, and that my ego would be crushed, and it would all feel like death. And failure is a kind of death to our false self. I would look at all of this with Christ, admit all of it in prayer. It felt awful, but a funny thing happened: over time, the fear just went away. I didn’t conquer it — I couldn’t — Christ just took it. And I feel so much more alive as a result. I can take risks and make mistakes, which I do frequently. I can look like a fool because sometimes I am a fool. That old fear occasionally tries to return, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It has no power over me. I have seen for myself that God’s unconditional love is stronger than any death, and so I am free to live.
So I pass along to you what others have given to me. When we are afraid to die in one way or another, then we cannot be fully alive. We do not have to overcome such fear on our own: Christ can set us free from it. So be honest and be real: share your fear with him, see the full extent of it with him. Ask him to save you from it. The Holy Spirit will do the rest. All of us can experience for ourselves that God’s love is greater than death and can conquer any fear.
Monday, June 21, 2021
Raging storms. June 20, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
Mark 4:35-41
For more than a year when we were not able to gather together we learned like never before that the Church is not a building, it’s people - God’s people united in the Spirit by faith and love. Which meant that even though we could be with each other in person, the Church still existed and carried on because we, the people, were still the Church. Even so, it’s a blessing that we are now entering into a time of transition back to being the Church in our church buildings. And as we go back inside to familiar places and spaces I’m wondering how many of us really know the names of the parts of the church that we’ve so dearly missed? So let’s have a pop quiz!
First, what do you call the little area before you enter the main worship space of the church? Answer: The narthex. What about the side areas of seating in the main church that are to the right and left of our altar? Those spaces are called the transepts. Now what about the main worship space? The place where most people sit? What is that called? Most people refer to it as the sanctuary, but technically that is incorrect. Incorrect, that is if you are in a Catholic or Episcopal church building. Granted, many Protestant churches do call the entire worship space the sanctuary. But in our church, the sanctuary is actually the space surrounding the altar distinguished by the altar rail. So what is the main body of the church called? The nave, which comes from the Latin word navis, meaning ship. That term “nave” harkens back to early Christianity when a key symbol for the Church was a ship with a cross as its mast. And as that symbol took hold and actual buildings were built so that the Church could gather it’s no coincidence that many church building ceilings were constructed to look like the bottom of a boat. For the Church, God’s people, was likened to a ship, sailing in a vast sea encountering stormy waters, much like our story from the gospel of Mark.
Jesus and the disciples are sailing across the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. The wind is fierce. The waves are high. The boat is taking on water and sinking. All seems lost. Now we may have never sailed across the Sea of Galilee during a storm, but we’ve all been in that boat. Because this is not just a story about bad weather and a boat trip. It’s a story about faith. It’s a story about fear. It’s a story about life.
Sometimes the sea of life can be mighty rough and threatening. We all know what that is like. Each of us could tell a storm story or two - or three or more. Because storms begin in all kinds of ways and take on all kinds of forms. Some begin with unwelcomed news. Others, the result of a careless mistake. Still others arise from great loss. There are storms of suffering. Storms of regret. Storms of violence. Storms of injustice. And we have all just experienced the intensity of the storm of Covid-19 and that one isn’t completely over yet. But no matter the storm, what they all have in common is that they are about changing conditions. And the forces that those changing conditions release become greater than anything we can control. Buffeted by winds of change and waters of chaos, we can be pushed to our limits and feel as if we are sinking into the deep.
“Do you not care that we are perishing?” shout the disciples. We’ve probably all echoed those words in some form or another. “Do something. Fix it. Make it better.” During a storm it can seem as if Jesus is absent or, at least passive. In the Sea of Galilee storm, Jesus is there, but he’s sleeping peacefully while the poor disciples are awake with panic. They have lost hope and their cry reveals that they think they know how this storm story will end - with their deaths.
But do they really know? Once roused, Jesus speaks to the storm, "Peace! Be still!" But I wonder which storm he is truly addressing. The one taking place outside of the boat or the one within - the storm raging in the hearts and minds and souls of the disciples. Because I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ primary concern here isn’t about the weather. Once the easy task of calming the wind and the waves is accomplished, Jesus turns his attention to what truly matters. The interior storms we experience that have the power to blow us off course, beat against our faith, and threaten to drown us. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
“Peace! Be still!” is Jesus’ ongoing invitation to let go of our fear and to embrace our faith. To trust God in the midst of changing conditions. To know peace and stillness no matter the outward circumstances of our lives. To be calmed by the love of God that is stronger and deeper than any waters that may beat against us. Because storms happen - changing conditions are a natural part of life. They simply can’t be avoided. And faith does not save us from experiencing storm events. Rather, faith helps us in getting through them by enabling us to see and know in the deepest parts of ourselves that Jesus is with us even - or especially - in the storm. And because that is so, in the end, all will be well.
Now on most days I believe that with all of my heart - and I hope you do too. But there are some days, when we are in the midst of the storm, that the invitation to know God’s peace and stillness gets lost in the wind. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Jesus asks. Well, if you really want to know, Jesus, it’s because we’ve human. We will always struggle, to some degree, with our fears and our faith. And that is why God ordained that we do not go this alone. Remember we are the Church, God’s people united with one another in the Spirit by faith and by love. It is together that we navigate stormy seas - in the same boat, in the same nave. When some of us are overcome by fear others keep the faith. The faith that Christ is with us in all of our storms and that one day we will all be brought into safe harbor.
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Monday, June 14, 2021
The kingdom of God is alive and unstoppable. June 13, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart.
Mark 4:26-34
So what do you think makes someone a Christian? Is a Christian someone who believes the right things about Jesus? Or someone who has been baptized, goes to church weekly, and puts money in the plate? Or is a Christian someone who gives away their money to the poor and lives a life of simple service to others? Is it someone who prays faithfully every day? Or maybe a person who is kind and loving to everyone? Or someone who advocates for social justice and peace in our world? Would a Christian even bother trying to figure out what makes someone a Christian? Maybe a real Christian wouldn’t foist such a question on an unsuspecting congregation first thing in the morning.
So let me re-frame the question: what lies at the center of Jesus’s teaching? In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the answer to that is actually pretty straightforward: the core message Jesus proclaims is the kingdom of God. He begins his ministry by saying that the kingdom is near. He continually shows people what life in the kingdom looks like. He constantly tells parables about the kingdom. Now for some reason we have tended to interpret it as a future reality, as something that happens after we die. But Jesus teaches that the kingdom is near. And as we hear in the parables today, that kingdom is not only near; it is vibrant and ever-expanding. Jesus says the seeds of the kingdom are being sown all the time and are growing all the time. And we don’t create the seeds, nor do we make them grow. Listen to the Gospel: The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. And dear God, does it grow, like a tiny mustard seed that becomes the greatest of shrubs. The kingdom of God is alive and unstoppable. Every second new seeds are being sown, every second old seeds are bearing fruit simply because God desires it.
And it is not just happening somewhere out there. The kingdom of God, Jesus teaches, is within us, within each one of us. It is a state of being where love is the key to everything, where beauty is everywhere, and where death is just a gateway to greater life. If we want to define what makes someone a Christian, we could simply say that a Christian is anyone who lives in the kingdom that Christ reveals.
And to live in that kingdom, we don’t need to go anywhere, we don’t need to achieve moral perfection. We just need to open our eyes. The kingdom of God is within us and all around us. It just is. Your heart is beating right now because God loves you; every breath you take is a sign of the kingdom. Each moment there is opportunity to experience love and share love: when we walk the dog, when we argue with our spouse, when we sit on the porch, when we lie in bed with the flu, when we watch a loved one die: each moment the kingdom is there. Like so many people in the Gospel stories, we are often just too blind or too stubborn to see it. We can be like those people in Plato’s famous allegory who live in a cave and see only dim shadows reflected on the walls. If we would just turn around and face the entrance to the cave, we would see blue skies and green trees, we would feel the warmth of the sun and the cool evening breeze. Our entire view of reality would change — if we would only turn around (i.e., repent) and open our eyes.
Blindness is the great scourge of the New Testament, but there is nothing that prevents us from opening our eyes. If we want to see signs of the kingdom, we will, because the signs are everywhere. Last week, when I gave people the Body of Christ for the first time in over a year, I thought, “This is the kingdom of God.” But that moment of communion with Christ and each other just highlighted what is true every moment. The other day we got a package delivered to us that was actually addressed to someone else on a different street. So I took the package to that house, and this couple opened the door, trying to thank me while holding back their very loud and very large dog, and I thought, “This is the kingdom of God.” I didn’t know those people at all, but I knew I was one with them. It wasn’t a great epiphany or a moment of euphoria, just a reminder that every second seeds are being sown, every second the harvest is plentiful. Right now, the person sitting next to you is filled with the Holy Spirit. Right now, this place is radiant with God’s love.
Life, of course, is challenging, and it can be easy to retreat into our caves. We might be tempted to tell ourselves that our situation is just too difficult or too painful to get even a glimpse of God’s kingdom. But I will gently remind you that the Apostle Paul saw that kingdom when he was shipwrecked, beaten and imprisoned. Francis of Assisi saw the kingdom amidst poverty and leprosy. Etty Hillesum saw the kingdom in Auschwitz. I could go on and on with similar examples. In our brokenness, we humans can certainly obscure our vision of the kingdom, but we can never erase it. As Jesus teaches, the kingdom of God is unstoppable. And it is our joy as Christians, the very thing that marks us as Christians, to live in that kingdom every day of our lives.
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Monday, June 7, 2021
Enlarging the circle of family. June 6, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
Mark 3:20-35
Family. We all have one. Some are loving, some are odd, some are dysfunctional, some are abusive, and some are a combination of all those things and more. If nothing else, families are complicated. And as we find ourselves right in between our cultural celebration of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all the sentimental ideals that those holidays promote, the gospel of Mark provides us with a glimpse of a particular family and their dynamics - Jesus’ family, often referred to as the Holy Family. Now with such a title, who could blame us for assuming that Jesus’ family would be wholly perfect - always serene, supportive, understanding, and patient. But if that’s what we think we would be mistaken.
After going about healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching the gospel, Jesus comes home. But the reception is not warm. He is not behaving in the way many would expect. People are talking. Rumors are flying. “That Jesus,” they say, “he’s out of his mind.” And his family is concerned. But they aren’t the only ones. Religious authorities from Jerusalem are also up in arms about Jesus claiming that what he is doing comes straight from the devil himself.
So his family comes to restrain him. Maybe thinking that they will save him? Maybe they are just trying to salvage the family reputation? Who knows. Nonetheless, they go and call for him. And word is passed to Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” But Jesus doesn’t go to them. Instead he stays and asks, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then looking at those around him, he answers his own question, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”
Ouch! That must have stung - at least for his mother and blood siblings. But for those beyond that small, closed group it probably sounded like very good news. Outsiders are now in. It’s not that Jesus is rejecting his own family of origin, he’s broadening it. Enlarging the circle of who family is. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother,” he says. Without shutting anyone out Jesus expands who belongs, who matters, who is connected. And in doing so he pushes the boundaries so far out that everyone’s expectations about how things should be are shattered.
That is really at the heart of all this
turmoil. Family, friends, and authorities, they all have their own ideas about
where lines should be drawn. What’s right and what’s wrong, what’s acceptable
and what’s not. When it comes to Jesus the expectations are along the lines of
traditional son, good hometown boy, obedient Jew. But Jesus is not having it.
That’s not why Jesus came. He’s not here to fulfill anyone’s vision of how he
should be - not theirs, not even ours. Rather he comes to give us a new
vision, God’s vision of life as we were created to live it.
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Now some may hear this as a way to earn entrance into Jesus’ family. As in, if I do the right things, the things that are deemed the will of God then, when I do them, I will be accepted, I will belong, I will have value. But nothing could be further from the truth. We don’t earn our way into God’s good graces no matter how good we are. God’s grace, God’s love, God’s acceptance is generous and it is free. Which explains why Jesus calls those around him his family, his brothers and mother. They aren’t doing anything special to earn that status. All they’re doing is sitting with Jesus and being present to love.
Because it always comes down to love. That’s the will of God - love - encountering it, recognizing it, sharing it. God is the source of all love - everything and everyone begins from there. But Jesus’ call to do the will of God is not just to feel the love and remain seated. Because if that’s all we do we miss out. In order to experience God’s love most fully and connect with that love most deeply we must give it away. For as we love in ways that enable others to know and feel that they too are loved, everyone wins. We all thrive. No one is left out. Together we are family. Connected in love. That is God’s vision for us all.
God’s love makes us all more. It expands who we are. Although sometimes that expanding can make us uncomfortable. It certainly made Jesus’ family, friends, and religious authorities uncomfortable - and, really, we are no different than they are. Because God’s love is so vast, so broad, so all encompassing, of course our limits will bump up against the limitless love of God and push us. So the next time you are feeling uncomfortable because something or someone seems a bit out of bounds, before you dismiss it out of hand, consider it as an opportunity to get curious about how you might expand your generosity of being. How might the situation be calling you to be more gracious, more forgiving, more understanding? Is your circle of care growing? Is your family getting bigger? That’s what doing God’s will is all about.
Jesus’ family is an open one. And because that is so, because we are all included it means that, guaranteed, it will be complicated. Even the holiest of families has its challenges.But Jesus will have it no other way. Regardless of the state of your earthly family, God’s family is where all of us belong, all of us matter, all of us are truly loved.
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