St Paul's Tidings

It’s all connected:  Beech Tree, Ohio River, St. Paul’s, Carriage House, Shepherd’s Kitchen  and even Eucharist. It’s all connected.  These are continuous threads running through your own history and your future.  These are continuous themes running through your life as the people of God here, now, even today.

Holy Scripture is the sacred story of a people.  It’s anchored, even mired, in times and places long ago.  Human people were inspired to share their human story, ask their question, try to find meaning in life in relationship with the great I AM.  Yet, by holding our Scripture to be the inspired word of God, we hold that it still bears within it the very breath of God, mysteriously, continually renewed.  Symbols and metaphors bring to life the character and nature of God.  Trees were important enough to bookend the beginning and the end.  Remember there were two trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life.  The Psalm we read today, the very first one, says “They”–those who walk in God’s counsel and delight in God’s law—“are like trees planted by streams of water.”  Sounds like y’all to me!

We have our own sacred scripture, too.  The stories of our lives are holy things.  We shape in our own language, with the assumptions and details of our time and place, our questions, our quest to find meaning in life in relationship with the same great I AM.  The poem Sheila Pyle wrote does exactly that.  And so, it took the place today of our Old Testament Reading.

We sat in the Carriage House and told stories about life under the branches of the tree

Telling tree stories

back in January just like at wakes when someone dies.  People were chit-chatting, looking at the photographs and then, someone would say, “I remember….”  The room would get very quiet to listen.  Holy moments of remembering.

When the tree came down an important symbol of your spiritual life came down with it.  The tree was a symbol of how you understood God in your corporate life, your family life.  Congregations often have an image or metaphor that’s central to their expression of Christian life.  For y’all, I believe it was the tree.  Life went on after the hurricane; but, the weight of the loss remained and was pushed underground and buried, looking for moments to be released.  These moments were like mini geysers out at Yellowstone National Park that burst like unscheduled fountains—signs of energy below the surface.

There are rolling cycles through our Scripture—cycles of building, losing and waiting.  The waiting is a time for healing, if we let it be so.  With healing, building begins again.

Yes, I know the Carriage House was rebuilt from capital campaign contributions and insurance money.  The Carriage House is bricks and mortar.  The real rebuilding is in the family’s life.  The real rebuilding is in the relationship with God that is shared within and without those particular bricks and mortar.  It’s called resurrection-new life from death.

It’s Shepherd’s Kitchen that makes possible the resurrection of life under the Beech Tree.  It’s Shepherd’s Kitchen that makes possible the resurrection of life under the Beech Tree.

Cross carved from heart of tree

The reminder will be the wooden cross carved from the heart of the tree on the wall.

That cross on the wall needs to be more than a decoration.  Folks, Shepherd’s Kitchen is the best thing you have going for the future of this congregation!  The door into the next cycle of life in this congregation is the door of ministry and service offered by Shepherd’s Kitchen.

Churches often have a double set of doors.  One leads into the entryway or narthex; and, then a second one leads into the worship space or nave.  Nowadays, a pre-first door often comes somewhere else.  People enter with someone else through another door before they’re willing to go into the church doors.  They test community outside of worship.  Shepherd’s Kitchen can be the door for people to find the food they’re looking for whether it’s hot food to fill empty stomachs or spiritual food to fill the God-shaped hole in their hearts.  Shepherd’s Kitchen is community being fed and community serving.

Life under the great Beech Tree was holy and good for St. Paul’s.

• God’s love and providence were known in the shelter and refuge of its branches.
• God’s healing has come and is still coming with time, intention, prayer, and is at hand to reconcile the loss.
• God’s patience and mercy has been in the waiting.

A new, young tree-a Tri-color Beech-was planted this week in remembrance of the great one.

The waiting time is over.  The time for building a new life is NOW!  Shepherd’s Kitchen is poised to carry on where the tree left off. New life will happen by allowing people to try on this community with no commitment.  It’ll happen by inviting, welcoming and enfolding volunteers with the same hospitality as you do guests.  This is the Way to Christian community in this place, here and now.

It’s all connected.  The plate of a hot supper meal is passed from one hand to another.  A piece of blessed bread is passed from one hand to another.

We pass that blessed bread because someone who died on a tree said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”   Putting our hands out for the Body of Christ is eating from the tree of life.  Bread of life from the Tree of Life.

Blessing the new Tri-color Beech Tree

You had a great life under the Beech Tree.  The hurricane came and it fell into the Carriage House.  You received insurance money to rebuild.  That’s the parish story I’ve heard over and over from young and old.  Let the story continue.  With the rebuilt Carriage House, parish life grew in the embrace of Shepherd’s Kitchen where volunteers and guests alike are fed.  May that be St. Paul’s resurrection story to be shared with your children’s children.  This is your life.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

“A leper came to him, begging him, and kneeling, he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can  make me clean.’  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him,…” (Mk 1:40-41a,

What Jesus did was a pretty radical thing for his time.  To touch an unclean person was to make one’s entire person unclean and required separation from the religious community until the required remedies were invoked.   Jesus choose to take that separation upon himself.

Touch is one of the biological mechanisms that helps us form and sustain close bonds with other human beings, bonds essential for our survival.  It’s long been known that touch is essential to the flourishing of newborns.  But, it’s gotten complicated with fear of harassment and influenza.  And yet, touch is built in to our liturgy.  The time after the prayers and before the offertory known as The Peace builds in an invitation to shake hands or share a brief hug or pat on the back.  To insiders, it’s easy.  To the visitor, it’s immensely complicated. Let compassion and sensitivity rule the moment!

These days, to talk about or suggest touching another person is a topic fraught with land mines.  Yet, touch is often a necessary part of healing ministry whether of the physician or health care provider.  The orders of our faith are passed on through the laying on of hands from bishop to confirmand or ordinand.  Oils of baptism and of healing are shared by making the sign of the cross on one’s forehead with an oiled thumb.  The same action places ashes on our foreheads as a reminder of our dustiness.  To touch is to break down boundaries and barriers.  To touch is to both deny and to abandon the safety of personal space.  To touch both allows and accepts vulnerability.   Following the pattern Jesus set for us, touch in these traditional, appropriate ways transmits the intimate grace of God.

“Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose.  Be made clean!’  Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.”

Jesus’ touch allowed grace-full compassion to transform the leper’s disease into wholeness overflowing.  Anyway, to be clean, to be outwardly unafflicted and whole made one eligible to be restored to the fellowship of the community.  Healing, wholeness, even our very salvation are intimately woven together, as close as Jesus’ touch to the leper.

O God of peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength.  By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may know your touch of your hand; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

An excerpt from Sunday’s sermon, knowing full well that some folks would have no idea what I was talking about…

For the second week in a row, we hear about outside voices—voices that cry out in the
wilderness—Isaiah and John the Baptist. Somehow word had gotten around to Jerusalem from the desert, about this guy, John.  The priests and Levites, the religious professionals of their time shall we say, were understandably pretty interested.  What was this wilderness man was doing in the Jordan?   …John’s baptism was change.  His was repentance and cleansing facing a new day of the Lord’s coming.  “The earth is bringing forth its shoots!” (Isa 61:11)

Interesting thing about John…he’s really clear about who he isn’t.  He isn’t the Messiah.  He isn’t Elijah.  He isn’t a prophet.

He’s clear about who he is.  He’s the bearer of a message.  He’s a man with mouth
and vocal cords and lungs for air to bring forth the sounds.  He shouts.  And, last week we heard that he not only shouts but he presents himself as if he were the wilderness itself in camel hair and leather.  Eccentric, maybe.  Clear about his identity and mission, absolutely.

So, imagine with me if you can, how he might present himself today?  What if he had in his pocket a smart phone?  What if he had a laptop back in his tent with a satellite connection to the internet and a solar battery?  What if he had a Facebook page?  These are the tools of social movement today and Christianity is a social movement, in many ways.

Imagine his FB page…a profile picture in the corner.  Camel hair, leather belt, walking stick, sand dune in the background.  I let you imagine the expression on his face.  Maybe since he says he’s a voice, it’s just a picture of the wilderness.  A row of little pictures across the top of the various baptisms in the Jordan.  Above that, John, son of Zechariah, in bold letters. The info lines underneath might read:   Messenger.  Born on June 24. Lives in the wilderness.  Born in Ein Kerem.  His friend count is growing larger every day.  Weekly event notices go out.  Sermons are available on his blog he calls “A Voice Crying Out.”   Perhaps he even has a Twitter account:  meet @ Jordan Rvr 1 hr!  Come as u r!  After his morning prayers, he sends out a daily inspirational message about the signs and wonders he sees as evidence that the Lord is about to break into their world with something so new it will be as if a new world had been created!  And, he is bowed down in awe with the message of his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth.  What do you think his status postings would be?  What would you write on his wall?  I leave those things for you to imagine.

It’s the internet and social media that are changing our world—just like the automobile, radio, television, telephone, and the computer have.  The pace though has picked up.  It’s sometimes overwhelming.  Sometimes people feel left behind.  Some are energized.  The challenge is to see new media as additional ways to engage more people rather than unintentionally becoming exclusive.

An excerpt from my sermon on Nov 20…

Stories shape our souls.
We can use our sacred stories as signposts for hope and benchmarks for faithfulness and reminders of the nature of God, the meaning of Jesus and the hope of the Spirit.  We can use our sacred stories by holding them alongside our own stories.

We’re at a point in our interim journey where I, the temporary shepherd, am getting questions about the search.  I can’t answer them.  All I can do is point the way to the  search committee.  It’s like a long trip and the kids/sheep are starting to ask “are we there, yet?  When will we get there?”  All I can say is in God’s time.  In the meantime, we can tell our stories.

There’s an important story to be told in St. Paul’s life that I’ve only heard at the most surface level.  It usually goes something like “there was this huge tree and a hurricane came and it crashed in the carriage house and we got more insurance money.”  I know there’s more, lots more.  I’m calling for a parish project this winter to tell the the stories of the Beech Tree that Hurricane Ike took out.  What’s the rest of the story?  What came before?  Most importantly, how does it connect to God’s story?  It does!  Deeply.
Its story is crying to be told.   I also know the Holy Spirit is crying to bring
that story to new life.  That tree is a presence that haunts this property.   Believe me, that tree and its dying continues  to shape souls even if, like me, you’ve never seen it.  I don’t know what shape the project will take.   I’m calling for a group of parishioners to brainstorm.   I hope it includes art or music or drama in some way.
It will include sacred story sharing.  That tree was a great joy so I’m hoping we can have some fun through the great dark days of winter while the search committee is at their work.

Our sacred stories begin in a garden with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the center.  At the end of our canon of scripture is the tree of life in the New Jerusalem.  “…And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Rev 22:2b)  Amen.

This morning we began to read the oldest letter in the New Testament with our second reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians.  Actually, it’s our oldest New Testament text, period and is dated to about 20 years after Jesus’ death.  That makes it about 20 years before the gospel of Mark.

Thessalonica exists today on the Eastern shore of Greece and easy to find in an atlas or with Google maps.  It’s also easy to see how  it would have been an important center of trade with access to primary roads and the Aegean sea.   When Paul visited, it was well established, the virtual capital of the province of Macedonia.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke records that Paul visited, preached on three Sabbaths and founded the second Christian community there.  He didn’t have a very good experience according to Acts 17.  His preaching had mixed reviews.  He started out in the synagogues. “Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women”.  Jews became jealous and set the city in an uproar.  They were dragged before the city authorities shouting, ‘These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also….They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus’” (Acts 17:4-9).  But, Paul was a Roman citizen and Thessalonica was a Roman city so he had certain privileges. He was let go before the authorities got themselves in trouble. Paul’s message of Jesus Christ is turning the world upside down, challenging the status quo, yet, he spends enough time with the new converts to develop some affection for the ekklesia or assembly of the Thessalonians.  Scholars estimate that the group of maybe 40 believers came together to hear his letter.  They probably met in someone’s home.

While we are a few more than 40, we are still gathered in this House of God.  I invite you to close your eyes and listen with your imagination as perhaps one of those women converts shares  a letter from Paul and Silvanus and Timothy…

… to the church of the New Albanians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:  Grace to you and peace.

We always thank God for all of you when we mention you constantly in our prayers.  This is because we remember your work that comes from faith, your effort that comes from  ove, and your perseverance that comes from hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father.  So active is your faith, your hope and your love.  Brothers and
sisters, you are loved by God, and we know he has chosen you.  You became imitators of us in your love for each other, in your compassion for the needy in your community, in your passion for sharing the message you accepted that came from the Holy Spirit.  Even when Jesus’ challenging message caused you suffering because his ways are not the world’s ways, you were joyful.  As a result you became an example to all the believers in Indiana and Kentucky.  The message about the Lord rang out from you.  The news about your faithfulness to God has spread so that we don’t even need to mention it.  The people around report how you turned to God from idols and the idols of today are subtle and
insidious.  But you are serving the true and living God.  And in all things, you are looking for the face of Jesus in your neighbor and striving to be Christ in your love for them, until God’s kingdom comes….[i]  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.  Amen.

We’ve had three funerals at St. Paul’s since I arrived.  People say no denomination buries people better than the Episcopal Church. They’ve been a privilege for me to officiate
and celebrate.

Intentionally invoking the memory of Marilyn Cannon, please pre-plan your funeral service.  Baptized Christians are properly buried from the church (BCP, 468).  So many people have arrangements with funeral homes, medical directives and estate plans, but, forget the service.  We have a form and I’d be pleased to sit down and answer any questions.  So, gift #1 is what you can leave for your loved ones, a pre-planned funeral service along with all the rest of the end-of-life planning.

Like all liturgy, our burial rites are works of the people.  The liturgy is an Easter celebration with roles for lay people just like on Sunday.  Sometimes family members want to take part by reading scripture, sharing some reflections or presenting music; sometimes they don’t.  Lectors, lay Eucharistic ministers, and ushers all may have vital ministries of hospitality at a funeral service.  Choir members can lend their voices to congregational singing and make a huge difference in the service.  A crucifer is almost always  appropriate.  St. Paul’s has a group to provide a reception afterwards when the family wants which is wonderful.  It would be equally wonderful to have a list of lectors, ushers, chalice bearers, etc who are willing to serve when we have a funeral.  There’s often very little planning time.  So, gift #2 is the worship ministry provided by the congregation to the family. (Such a list would be a great gift for me to leave in the desk for your new Rector, too!)  Let me know if you’d be willing to be on call for funerals.

These three funerals I’ve officiated have been for long, long-time parishioners.  Many of their family members are still in the local area.  They’ve freely told me they were baptized or confirmed at St. Paul’s.  Most aren’t worshiping anywhere.  Some have just fallen out of
the habit.  Some have old hurts.  Call them.  Invite them to talk.  Invite them back into life at St. Paul’s. In baptism we become members (think arms, ears, and knees instead of an exclusive club) of Christ’s Body.  Let’s re-member our brothers and sisters into our lives and let reconciliation of the Body be gift #3.

1.  End-of-life planning to include funeral service plans,
2.  Full participation in funeral liturgy as an act of hospitality to a family, and
3.  Re-membering our brothers and sisters in Christ

These three gifts came to my mind after this third funeral.  Let us go forth bearing these gifts of love to our closest neighbors.

This has been a week for questions of faith and doubt.  The phrase ‘backed by the full faith and trust of the US government’ has a new meaning.  There’s doubt that our government can fulfill its financial obligations.  This comes after weeks where some were trying to hold onto faith that congress would work together…somehow…for the common good of the citizens of this country.  Others doubted all along that any agreement of any type would be reaching before the Aug 2 deadline.  All around anxiety, just another word for fear, maybe a bit more subtle, a bit more justifiable, is pulling people down like those waves around Peter’s legs.  I don’t think it’s a far leap to say we’ve been battling a headwind, far from the
shore, battered by waves.

“Dear God, be good to me.  The sea is so wide and my boat is so small” is the Breton Fisherman’s prayer.  Any boat is going to seem small on the sea in a storm.

Today’s gospel reading is a continuation of last week’s.  To refresh memories, it was the passage known as the Feeding of the 5000 (Matt 14:13-21).  Jesus is having a pretty lousy day.  He’s gotten the news that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been beheaded.  He tries to go off in a boat by himself for a while to grieve and pray.  He manages to get away for some time but, as soon as he comes ashore, he’s met by a crowd needing his special words and his special touch.  No rest for him.  Come evening, his disciples want Jesus to send the crowd all away.  No food, no money, make them go away.  Jesus has to go back into action and demonstrate how it’s done.  Take, bless, break, and share.  Those twelve baskets of leftovers are finally gathered up and then we’re at the place where our reading began today (Matt 14:22-33).

This time, Jesus sends his disciples away.  Get in the boat.  Go away.  I’ll meet up with you later after everybody leaves, he says.  I imagine he’s had enough.  But he doesn’t leave to  meet them immediately.  He goes the other way, up the mountain to pray.  He makes
time.  He sets aside his disciples to meet his own needs to be with his God, the one he calls Abba.  The human Jesus, the one who feels grief, compassion, frustration, anger (not one we like to mention to much but I believe he’s got to be angry at the powers-that-be that leave so many people hungry), the human Jesus goes up to the mountain to pray.  I believe that in that prayer was also gratitude for and joy in the Presence he had faith in when he had nothing but five loaves and two fish in his hands.  I believe he rested in the gratitude  and joy and peace that are the mark of God.  He emerges from the mountain at the darkest time of night, the watch just before morning breaks, and he sets out to catch up with his disciples.

The thing is, the disciples as a group in the boat are now pretty much facing the same kinds of things Jesus just faced.  They’re facing waves of stormy sea where he faced of waves of sick from the crowds.  The winds are working against their boat like they were arguing against Jesus when they had few resources to feed the many.   On the dark and stormy sea is the last place they’d expect to meet Jesus much less God.  He’s walking toward them.

Where Jesus went to meet God, God in the person of Jesus went to meet the disciples.  He met them in the dark, in the storm and in their fear.  The words he speaks are the clue words for a message from God.  “But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’” (Matt 14:27)

1. Don’t be afraid.  It’s what divine messengers always say.
2. It is I.  More, literally it reads: I, I am.  The being that is the ground of all being speaks to their hearts.

Peter goes off and has to push the limits on things.  Peter’s as human as Jesus and as human as the rest of us.  And Jesus meets him right there in his uncertain faith and certain doubts.  We can take some of the heart Jesus is offering that uncertain faith and certain
doubt are not barriers to the extended hand of God reaching out for us.  Fear is the  barrier.

It’s the rest of them in the boat that offer hope for us, too.  I think that’s the place we find
ourselves.  We’re thrown together with others just as human and anxious as we are facing headwinds of all sorts of problems that seem to push against any progress in life.  The seas are stormy all around and sometimes it seems like waves just keep crashing.  If our spot in the boat is a bit smoother, we’re watching someone else just trying to hang on for dear life.  If we’re not crying out for ourselves, we cry out for someone else.  We may not be totally certain about God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit; we may hold doubts.   The issue is how tightly we hold to fear.

The Episcopal/Anglican word for the part of the church from the steps back is called the nave like in naval or a boat.  The ribs you find holding the ceiling are literally to remind us of the hull of a boat.  In this ship we are gathered into a community to worship.

When Peter and Jesus stepped into the boat, joining and re-joining the rest the winds ceased.  The seas calmed.   They worshipped.  They prayed.  They gave thanks. They found joy and peace in the presence of God they’d just witnessed.  And that peace came to
them.  Let us do the same.  Our boat may seem small and the sea of life wide and story.  God be good to us.  But even more than be good to us, God be with us.  Take heart; fear not!  God is with us.  And so, let us do the same as those storm-tossed disciples did on that night.  Let us worship the God in Christ in the unity of the Spirit, here with us.  Amen.

From this morning’s sermon:

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:29-30, NRSV)

The simplest meaning of yoke is attachment.  A common image is the wooden beam across an animals shoulders yoking one to another.  Try to imagine if we were each attached individually to Jesus that would mean that those with shelter and the homeless would be attached to him.  The laborers and unemployed would be attached to him as would be the employers, the haves and the have-nots.  The sick would be attached; those of a different political view would be attached; even, those we call our enemies. There’d be this vast set of yokes all reaching out from Jesus at the center-a wheel with many spokes of yokes

“Learn from me,” he says.  And as he totally gave of himself, imagine that as he empties himself for the least of these, he breathes his spirit into the wheel leaving everyone to be attached to each other in his spirit. A wheel with center and spokes of yokes becomes a vast interdependent network.  Through that network, needs are met, music is heard, and the realm of God has come near.  It would be so vast that no one would fall through.

On this Independence Day weekend, may we find our greatest freedom and our greatest well-being in our interdependence upon each other, through the yoke of Christ, even those we consider our enemies.

Excerpted from this morning’s sermon…

…In our gospel reading from John, we have one of the verses that’s been used to provoke division and exclusivity between Christians and other faith traditions.  “I am the way, the  truth, and the life.  No one comes unto the Father except by me.”  (John 14:6)  To this I have two things to say.  One, the ‘I am’ sayings, (bread, vine, light, shepherd, and so on) as I understand them, are all in symbolic language of the I AM, the I AM in all capitals that spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush.  I AM is the name of God.  God is way or path or road; God is Truth; God is life.  Secondly, the ‘except by me’ is referring to the Word who was with God and the Word who was God.  This is the particular adult child born of Mary. This is more than the particular adult child born of Mary.  To John, the Jesus who became flesh and dwelt among us carried the heart of God that existed before.  This is an expansiveness that I cannot limit to a single individual because it existed long before.  I believe it’s symbolic language never meant to be taken literally, never meant to divide, marginalize or hold one faith tradition striving for God’s way, truth, and life over another.

You have a photograph on your service leaflet.  This is a stairway, dated to the Roman Empire, to Jesus’ day.   It goes from just outside the Old Jerusalem wall, almost directly opposite the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane.  To retrace his last few days, as pilgrims are want to do, it’s the only reasonable way from Last Supper to Gethsemane.  I propose
that these stones, rather than the stones of any building or temple, are the Way, the Truth and the Life.  They led to prayer, to discerning the will and passion of God, to living that will and passion whole-heartedly, fearlessly.

Imagine the silent witness of these stones.  We can claim the heritage of the Jesus who walked these stones.  We can claim faith in the Jesus that walked these steps and say he did great things for us.  But even more, we can strive for the faith of Jesus.  We can walk these stones ourselves, dying to our fears of change and the unknown, living to God,
and becoming part of the fear-conquering, expansive, transforming witness to the heart of God through Christ.  To this, even stones can sing.  Amen.

The Daily Office readings for this morning (Yr 1, 3 Easter, Friday) were the first part
of Psalm 105, part of the 6^th chapter of Daniel, the 2^nd letter of John (very short), and healing stories from Luke 5.

We give you thanks, O God, and call upon your Name;
we make known your deeds among the peoples.

We sing to you; we sing your praise and speak of all your marvelous works…

We search for you and your strength; we continue to seek your face.
(Psalm 105: 1-2, 4 St. Helena Psalter)

To make known and to speak of God’s deeds and works one has to know what they are.  They’re not just what others says or perhaps what our Scripture as canonically certified as
trustworthy.  They’re a great place to start though for finding the patterns of how God works.  But God didn’t stop working; deeds and marvelous works have continued and are continuing to be done all around us, even through us. In Daniel, there’s a edict from the king to worship the king and no one else which Daniel refuses to obey.  He was the best at what he did and the king was pleased.  Those who instigate the edict were jealous. Despite his success in his day job, Daniel was faithful in prayer to his God—the one who’d saved him from the furnace of blazing fire.  John’s letter is a reminder to ‘the elect lady and her children’ to walk in the commandment of love.  There’s this little practical admonition not to receive or welcome anyone who does not bring the teachings of Christ.  Always makes me wonder what word had gotten around to John that he had to issue that reminder?  Luke’s stories were of Jesus healing the man with leprosy and then the wild one about the guy being lowered through the roof.  People aren’t upset about the roof being torn open (hope it didn’t rain) but about Jesus’ claim to forgive sins. Every one of these is a glimpse into the activity of God and clues into the practical side of living as the people of God called into ministry  together.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be asking variations on four questions as an intentional
practice of the practical side of living together as the people of God called into ministry together.  The first two questions are what’s working well and what isn’t working so well.  We need to identify that stuff while it’s fresh on our minds. The purpose is just to identify those things, get them recorded, and then go on to the most important question—the God question.  It takes many forms.  Where is God in whatever we’re doing?  Where have we experienced Christ?  Where have we met Jesus?  Where do we see the footprints of the  Holy Spirit?  These are the real questions that we must practice answering.  They are at the heart of our lives as Christians, and most notably for St. Paul’s, for your discernment during this interim time.  So, I’m asking, the Search Consultant will be asking, and your Search Committee will be discerning most closely, where is God and to what future is
God calling?  The last question I’ll ask is again, practical.  What do you need for the nurture of your spirit so that you may continue in the ministry God is calling you?  These are hard questions that we don’t often ask and discuss as openly as we might in parish life.  Let’s practice to the end that we might join the psalmist in the verse I skipped earlier:
“We glory in your holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek you rejoice.”                -Mary

Ps.  As I finished, there was a bright green inch worm inching along the top of my computer!