July 11, 2021
(can be printed)
Monday, July 12, 2021
Monday, July 5, 2021
Perfect in weakness. July 4, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13
Don’t you hate it when God doesn’t answer your prayer the way you want him to? I know I do. It’s hard to pray for something - especially when you believe you are praying for something that really lines up with what you think is God’s will for healing and wholeness and goodness for all - and God’s answer isn’t the one you want. The apostle Paul shares his own experience of this in our reading from 2 Corinthians. We don’t know what, but something is going on in Paul’s life that he labels as a torment. So being Paul, he naturally prays about it. Three times he asks God to take it away, this “thorn in his flesh.” But God doesn’t do it. Instead God answers with this, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. Which is a fancy way of saying “No. You’re not going to get the answer you want. You’re going to have to live with the situation. But you are going to be ok. And not just ok, but better than ok because your weakness opens you up to my strength.”
That’s difficult to hear. For one thing, who likes to hear the word “No”? But even more than that, what’s particularly challenging is how God’s message contradicts our culture. I mean today is Independence Day. A day we celebrate the anniversary of our country’s Declaration of Independence from England. But along with that we also celebrate the value and virtue we put into being independent as people. People of strength and power and self-sufficiency. Yet if we only go through life in that type of mode, feeling that we can pretty well handle anything life throws at us, then that doesn’t leave much room for God.
We see this very dynamic at play in our reading from the gospel of Mark. The people of Nazareth believe that they’ve got things pretty well figured out. Jesus returns to his hometown and preaches, and the people think, “Wait a minute. We know Jesus. He’s the local carpenter. And we know his family. Who does he think he is? Where does he get off thinking that he’s better than us?” The people of Nazareth are so full of themselves that they leave no room for God. They are so confident of their own strength that they can’t turn to God’s strength. So, the gospel says, Jesus is not able to do any deeds of power there - except for healing a few sick people who are sick enough to recognize their need for God’s healing power. Only those who are able to admit their weakness are able to share in Jesus’ gift of God’s strength.
It’s quite a paradox. It’s not our strength, successes, and accomplishments that bring us close to God. Instead, it’s our weakness, our failures, and our brokenness that opens up space in our lives for God’s grace and power to flow. The apostle Paul puts it this way, “...for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” One way this truth is poetically manifested is in a Japanese mending process known as Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold. A Kintsugi artisan takes, let’s say, a broken bowl and glues the pieces back together, but instead of hiding the chips and cracks they are highlighted in gold. The result is stunning. The bowl is not simply returned back to its original condition. Rather, it is transformed into something that is stronger and more beautiful than before.
And this is not just possible for pottery ware. “Our wounds are our trophies!” reflects the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich. And those wounds are “holes in our souls” - the very places where [God’s] Light and Life can break through. I’m sure we’ve all seen it. A recovering alcoholic supports another alcoholic in their healing process. Someone who experiences loss is present to another in their pain. Upon experiencing injustice, a person’s life becomes devoted to social change that impacts many. Lives that had been weak and broken are transformed into something even more beautiful by God’s strength.
Just recently, one of my colleagues, the Rev. Randy Haycock, rector at St. Luke’s Simeon (which is on route 53 as you are heading out toward Monticello), died after a year or so of living with pancreatic cancer. Now even before his diagnosis, Randy had a gentle spirit about him. But the hole in his soul that cancer created enabled even more of God’s light and life to shine through. It was last month, on June 6th, that Randy preached his last sermon. It was recorded for his parish and on the video there was no hiding how physically weak and thin Randy had become. Yet, with every reason to despair, he preached the good news. While acknowledging his own experience of crying “out of the depths,” he tenderly witnessed with his words, yes, but even more powerfully with his whole being, to God’s great hope and love. Three days later Randy died in that hope and love. God’s grace was sufficient. And power was made perfect in weakness.
We may not always get the answer that we are praying for, but whatever answer God does give us it is filled with grace. A grace that can and will carry us through. For no matter who we are nor how we present ourselves to the outside world, all of us are dealing with some kind of “thorn in our flesh,” parts of us that are weak, vulnerable or broken in one way or another. One aspect of the journey of following Christ involves the lifetime process of recognizing those parts in us and then surrendering them to God. And as we do grace will abound. For it is through our weakness that we open up space for God’s strength in our lives - and that is how we become truly strong. My grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect in weakness.
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.
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