Tag: books

Doubt and Faith

Background: This past weekend (April 6-7) was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. The lectionary Gospel reading was John 20:19-31, which is popularly referred to as the “Doubting Thomas” story. I also preached on this passage last year and wanted to make sure to take it in a new direction. I am grateful especially to Debie Thomas and her book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which is quoted and referred to.

“Doubt and Faith“

It’s today’s reading where our friend Thomas earns the nickname that history and culture gave him: “Doubting Thomas.” And we are told not to be a Doubting Thomas.

I want to discuss whether doubt is a bad thing and whether in Thomas’s shoes, any of us might not do the same thing.

This is not the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel. The first story he is a part of is the raising of Lazarus.

Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus that their brother Lazarus is sick, hoping that Jesus will come to heal him. Jesus famously waits a couple days before going to see them. And when he’s ready, he says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

They know there are people in Judea who already want to stone and kill Jesus. Going back to Judea is exactly what they don’t want to do. They try to hash out whether this is a good idea and Jesus says, “Lazarus is dead, let us go to him.”

This is where Thomas pipes up and says to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

If Lazarus is dead, and Jesus is walking straight into the storm and facing death head on, Thomas says, alright gang, let’s go die with him.

And off they go. Thomas has no fear and no problem going to die with and for Jesus.

Fast forward through John’s Gospel: there is the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, then his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. Now the disciples are caught up in uncertainty, grief, and the lost feeling of what was going to happen now.

The story of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus there that we just heard last weekend on Easter, has just happened. It is evening on that same day, the first day of the week, and the disciples are locked in a room fearing the same fate that Jesus met might be waiting for them at the hands of the Jews.

Jesus appears to the disciples. This incredible experience. But Thomas isn’t there. He gets back after the fact. And the disciples all tell him, “We’ve seen the Lord,” he was here with us.

Thomas says, unless I see it for myself, unless I see HIM for myself, I will not believe.


Author Debie Thomas was born in India. Her father was a Christian minister there and their culture has a special relationship with the apostle Thomas.
In her new book, “A Faith of Many Rooms,” which we’ll have a few small groups reading and discussing, she has this to say about Thomas and his doubt:

“Cautious. Skeptical. Stubborn. Daring.”

“A man who yearned for a living encounter with Jesus—an encounter of his own, unmediated by the claims and assumptions of others. A man who wouldn’t settle for hand-me-down religion but demanded a firsthand experience of God to anchor and enliven his faith. To me, this speaks not only to Thomas’s integrity but to his hunger. His desire. His investment. He wasn’t spiritually passive. He didn’t want the outer trappings of religion if he couldn’t know its fiery core. He was alive with his longing.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to just accept something that people tell me without finding out for myself. This didn’t make for an easy job for my parents. They came home once when I was 9 or 10 years old, to find me stuck in the mud in the middle of the creek behind our house at low tide. I didn’t think I would get stuck, despite people warning me. My mom’s boots are still at the bottom of the creek there.

Another time, my mom had to come extract me from the clay they dredged out of Town Creek in Oxford, which I walked into–waist-deep to see how far I could get.

As a teenager spelunking in John Brown’s Cave in Harpers Ferry, in the pitch black with headlamps, a friend and I climbed up a wall about 20 feet to see what it was like. It took a minor miracle for us to make our way back down.

My Mom’s boots are still under the water in that creek.


I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was baptized and confirmed at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, I attended St. James Episcopal School in Hagerstown for a time. As I got older, I kept at the periphery of church, I appreciated the teachings, I liked what this Jesus guy was all about, but I couldn’t make the leap from interested to invested.

I think I have always been Thomas when it comes to faith. I needed my own experience.

How does that happen? How do we find that kind of experience?

Let’s look at something that happens right after Thomas says he won’t believe unless he sees for himself.

After Thomas says he’s not on board, John writes: “A week later… his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them.”

A week has gone by, and Thomas is still there.

What does that tell us about Thomas? Even though he wasn’t ready to believe, even though he didn’t have the experience that the others had, he didn’t quit. He didn’t hang it up. He kept showing up. He was willing to give it time when he himself wasn’t feeling it.

What does it say about the disciples? They didn’t shun him. They didn’t ostracize him. They stood by their experience, they trusted Jesus, and they loved Thomas. They were willing to let things work themselves out.

Life goes on. The disciples stay together. Thomas keeps working through things. And a week later, Jesus comes back and gives Thomas the exact thing he asked for.

What do we learn about Jesus? He gives Thomas the experience that he needs to believe. He meets Thomas where he was and gives him his hands and shows him his side and says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, man of his word, says, “My Lord and my God.” He believes.

What does that mean for Thomas? What does it mean for us to believe?

Here’s the thing about belief when it comes to faith. It sounds nice, it sounds reassuring: if you believe, you’re all set. If you believe, you’ll have eternal life. So how do we as Christians today show our belief? We go to church, meaning worship services. We take Communion. Maybe we wear a cross around our necks. If we’re on social media and someone says, “bet you won’t post the Lord’s Prayer,” we say, oh yeah, watch this… and post it… Hhhmm… that’ll show them.

I subscribe to the idea that if you want to know what someone believes, watch their actions. I think that’s what Jesus was and is banking on as well. If you want to know what the disciples did after their encounters with the risen Christ, go take a look in the Book of Acts. They risked their lives, they met in houses and walked and sailed hundreds of miles to win new followers of Christ. If that was a part of belonging to a church today, I think we’d all be in a bit of trouble.

One person whose journey isn’t outlined specifically in Acts is Thomas’s. Scholarship points to the idea that Thomas is who took Christianity to India. They have statues of him and monasteries and they hold that their Christian roots go all the way back to one of Jesus’s first disciples. A lot further than our roots in the United States go.


Debie Thomas outlines different stories that are associated with the apostle Thomas in India: the pared down version goes like this.

Thomas sailed to Kerala in 52 CE, so about 20 years after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension–20 years after Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ. He wanted to preach to the Jewish colonies that were settled near Cochin.

He was very successful, converting both Jews and Brahmins and he followed the coastline south, winning hundreds of new followers and believers of Jesus and establishing seven churches along the waterways of Kerala. He crossed over the land to the east coast near Madras.

He was so successful as a preacher and a community builder that he made the devout Brahmins in the region jealous and angry and they speared him to death in 72 CE.

For 20 years, Thomas worked with the other disciples around Jerusalem and the Middle East spreading the good news of Jesus. And for the next 20 years after that, he went to strange lands where he didn’t speak the language, where he was an outsider, where it was Thomas and the Holy Spirit and the communities of believers he helped build. Right up until the religious authorities killed him for it.

The apostle Thomas’s actions show how deeply he believed.

Debie Thomas asks this question: “What if doubt itself can be a testimony?”

She says, “If nothing else, Thomas assures me that the business of the good news–of accepting it, of living it out, and of sharing it with the world–is tough. It’s okay to waver. It’s okay to take our time. It’s okay to probe, prod, and insist on more… I need Thomas–doubter and disciple, agnostic and apostle–to show me what faith truly is.”

His doubt is honest. It is heartfelt. It is a part of who he was and part of the process of who he was becoming. Maybe you can see yourself in Thomas. Maybe doubt and questions are a part of your faith journey. They are still a part of mine. God can use our doubt as a starting point or to lead us further down the path he has laid out for us. As long as we don’t give up.

I wonder about Thomas and what his style of evangelism would have been. I picture him having a meal with a group of people who are eagerly listening to what he has to say. Except for one person sitting at the end of the table who has a raised eyebrow, shaking his or her head. Slow to accept, skeptical to believe.

I see Thomas smile, laugh a little, and say, “You’ve got doubts, huh? Me, too. Let me tell you a story about doubts and how they can be a part of faith.”

Time to Follow

Background: This is a homily given in response to a reading from Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 1:14-20, where John the Baptist is arrested, Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming the word, and calls his first disciples to follow him.

How many people have a favorite character—movies, books, TV? Anyone want to name them? And how many of you can tell me his/her first lines, the first thing they say in the story?

My favorite character of all time in any media is Chris Stevens, the radio DJ from the 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” His first words, he is on air, and he relates a coming-of-age story of breaking into a house and while he is stealing a gold-leaf pen and a silver humidor, he finds a copy of the Complete Works of Walt Whitman and it changes his life. If you watched the show, that’s a solid indication of his whole character.

In Mark’s Gospel, these are the first words Jesus says in the story, “The time has come (or the time is fulfilled), and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Hard to have first words that are more indicative of who someone is. There is the key, there is the game plan, spelled out in front of us.

It sounds very similar to what John the Baptist was saying, right? Jesus is continuing where John left off, after John was arrested. Jesus’s ministry begins as John’s ends. But there is a nuanced difference in their messages. John was saying, “repent, and wait for the one who is to come.” Jesus says, “the time has come, repent,” and then “follow me.”

We’ve got just six verses here, but there is a lot going on. Let’s dig in a bit. First, let’s look at TIME.

The word Mark uses for “time” as Jesus talks is the Greek word, “kairos,” which means something special is going on, not the word “chronos,” which describes sequential time, the way we tend to think about it.

This is how rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author Amy-Jill Levine puts it in her book “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News”—

“Kairos time is on God’s watch; it’s not a minute-by-minute concern but a recognition something special is happening. When I look at my watch, I can do more than determine how much time I have to finish a project. I can think about God’s time: what should I have done that I failed to do? What can I do to make every moment more meaningful?”

Fr. Bill Ortt (our recently retired rector and mentor) talks about chronos as minutes and kairos as moments. I’ve always appreciated that as a kind of short-hand way to remember the difference. And I love that kairos is among Jesus’s first words here. JESUS is moving us from MINUTES into MOMENTS. He’s clueing us in that something special is taking place, that this is something we want to pay attention to. And as he begins to call his first disciples, it’s something that they want to sign on for.


Let’s remember that we are in Epiphany, a season all about the manifestation of Christ to the people of the world. If you look up definitions of the word epiphany with a lower case “e,” Merriam Webster gives you: 1) “a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something,” or  2) “an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple or striking.”

Epiphany.

I’ve come across a book that has me thinking more about how this whole opening chapter of Mark works. We know that Mark is:

  • the shortest of the Gospels,
  • the earliest of the four Gospels,
  • that Mark doesn’t add superfluous details, he tells the story straight,
  • and that if he had a copy editor in today’s world, they’d have the red pen all over the word “immediately” or “straightway” for how many times he uses it.

For the record, Mark uses “immediately” more than 40 times, more often than the rest of the New Testament combined. He is stressing the the urgency of what is happening.

Mark’s Gospel is also referred to by many scholars as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” Mark goes through Jesus’s teaching and healing, his ministry, and gets us to the point: his arrest, crucifixion, suffering, death, and empty tomb. We’re told that’s the meat of the story for Mark.


Saying that, in a book called “Mark As Story,” by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, they turn that idea around. They look at the opening of Mark’s Gospel and say what is happening here is the arrival of God’s rule.

“The arrival of God’s rule—the heavens opening, the defeat of Satan in the desert, and the announcement by Jesus—is the key watershed event in the narrative (storytelling) world. Mark, then, may be described as “the arrival of the rule of God with an extended denouement (fancy literary word meaning the final outcome, when everything comes together and is made clear)—that is, all events in the story are manifestations and consequences of God’s activity in establishing God’s reign.”

Mark’s whole Gospel is a series of epiphanies, or an ephipany working itself out, clarifying itself over the story. Jesus’s incarnation is the Epiphany. And Mark is rushing us headlong into this realization.

The world Jesus has come into, has come to change, has come to save, is moving in the wrong direction. The priorities are wrong, morality is wrong, the actions of those in power are wrong, even the sense of time needs help, and he’s got to set things in proper order. There is work to be done… immediately.

So right away, Jesus spells out what has to happen: “The time has come and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news.”

For our way of thinking today, one of the most problematic, confusing words and phrases in the Gospels is “the kingdom of God.” When you hear the word “kingdom,” what do you picture? A place. Somewhere to go. Kingdom of God? Sweet, let’s go! How do we get there? Who’s driving?

The way it was meant is better said as the reign of God. The king-ship of God. My other favorite Fr. Bill-ism is, “the kingdom of God is RELATIONAL, not locational.” It’s a way of being, a way of relating, not a place to go.

Let’s think about Jesus’s words that way, “The reign of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” What that reign looks like, Jesus is going to show them. How compelling is it? Compelling enough to get fishermen to walk away from their livelihood, their families, and everything they know when Jesus walks by and says, “Follow me.”

“Follow me” is the a-ha moment, the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of who Jesus is for his first followers. Jesus’s presence and his invitation or command are all the epiphany they need. And the rest of the story will break it wide open.

If we move our attention to the beginning of the narrative instead of racing our way to the passion, what does that do for the story? Here’s what our friends in “Mark As Story” say:

“This shift in focus to the beginning of the narrative does not diminish the power and climactic force of the execution of Jesus—an event that reveals more fully the nature of God’s reign and seals a covenant with all who would embrace God’s rule… the shift does place the entire narrative firmly in the broader framework of God’s activity in establishing God’s rule over all of life.”

Here’s Jesus at the beginning: It’s time. God’s reign, not the world’s, not Caesar’s. It’s here. Stop what you are doing, you are going the wrong way. Turn around. Believe in this good news. Want to see for yourself? Want to be a part of it? Follow me.

“Stars and Sea at Night,” by Bill Jacklin RA (monoprint), Royal Academy of Arts exhibition

Everything that happens in the story from there shows us manifestations and consequences of what it looks like, of what happens, in establishing God’s reign.

Mark’s story itself is an epiphany for those who first heard it and for us. He means for it, in itself, the telling of it and the hearing of it, to be a transformational experience, showing us, calling us to be a part of establishing God’s reign, in our own lives, and those of others.

Jesus’s call to “follow me” wasn’t just for the first disciples. It’s for us.

Will we?

Sounds like a good way to spend our time. Kairos time. God’s time.

The time has come.

Amen.

Epiphany: Some Attention Required

Context: This was a homily shared with the weekly Wednesday morning Healing Service at Christ Church Easton, tying together the two first Gospel readings of the season of Epiphany.

Let’s talk about Epiphany. The word comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which means “appearance” or “manifestation.” This is an event and a season dedicated to the manifestation of Christ to the peoples of the world.

January 6, this past Saturday, was “The Epiphany,” and that’s where the magi, or wise men, come on the scene. It was revealed to them, a group of Gentiles from Persia, who had nothing to do with Judaism, that Jesus was a sign: they observed his star at its rising and came to pay him homage. When they got there, they were overwhelmed with joy. When they saw him, they knelt down and paid him homage. They knew this child to be a manifestation of Christ and they had to act on it.

All definitions of the word “Epiphany” start with that very specific occurrence, the revelation of Jesus to the magi, celebrated on January 6. But just like any word over time, meanings change, they expand. If you look up epiphany in Webster’s dictionary, you find, in the second and third meanings:

1 capitalized :January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ

2 : an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being

3 a(1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking

You’ll sometimes hear people relate having an epiphany to having an “a-ha moment,” where all of a sudden, something makes sense in a way that it hadn’t before. But not in an, “Oooo… I finally remembered where I left my keys!” kind of way. There has to be more at stake. Something bigger has to click into place… you know, “a manifestation or perecption of the essential nature or meaning of something.”

I wonder, as we move through the season of Epiphany, which goes until Ash Wednesday (February 14 this year) when Lent begins, if we keep our hearts and minds open, if we are mindful of the season, what we might find?

It’s a Jesuit practice to keep a “Daily Examen” that looks back at each day for where the presence or touch of God met them that day. What a great idea–I wonder if in doing something similar, we can prime the pump for epiphanies with some awareness and reflection as we go.

If we are open to epiphanies, are they more likely to happen? The Magi looked to the stars for their sign–what if they’d been staring at the ground?

The fact that you are standing in a church at a healing service says that you might already have an awareness of who Jesus was and is. What if during this season, we tune in for moments, for instances, of his presence in our world today?

With the season of Epiphany and these manifestations of Jesus to the people, I want to use that lens to look at Jesus’s baptism (Mark 1:4-11), today’s reading.

This is four lines into Mark’s Gospel and we meet John the Baptist, a strange, but charismatic and influential leader who says, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John has already had his epiphany, his realization of Christ manifesting his presence to the people of the world. Mark communicates John’s epiphany to his readers.

Now listen to Jesus’s actual baptism:

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God is making sure Jesus doesn’t miss out on who he is and the writer of Mark is making sure his readers, including us, don’t miss what is going on, or who Jesus is, and what God thinks about him.


Amy-Jill Levine is both a rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author of a number of books on Jesus. In her book, “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News,” she says this about the dove descending:

“It seems to me historically plausible that as Jesus rose from the water, he saw a dove and interpreted it as a divine message. This approach means being open to the natural world. It means heavenly signs can be as ordinary as a pigeon strutting on the sidewalk. It means that all signs require interpretation.”

Coming up from the water, Jesus looked up and saw a dove. It was a clear sign to him, but he had to connect it. God can send us signs, epiphanies all day long, but some of them may require us to pay attention.

I can remember as kids, especially around Christmas time, we would see TV ads for some of the toys that we really wanted. And the ads would show other kids playing with these cool toys, and one of the last things the narrator said in the commercial—perhaps predicting the reality of some of today’s pharmaceutical fine print—was: “SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.” You put it together. And sure enough, come Christmas morning, whatever we were lucky enough to get, there was some… assembly… required. To get it to look like the commercials, we had to put it together.

“Some assembly required” was a 1980s phrase. In the 1970s, they just said straight up, “Assembly required,” no punches pulled.

Epiphanies are not quite that far afield. If they require a decoder ring, printed instructions, and an Allen wrench, that’s not in the realm of an epiphany—a sudden realization or perception. For an epiphany, God puts it together, it’s all ready to go, he’s done the assembly and he’s handing it to us. But we still have to look, we still have to see it, and take it. We have to pay attention.

What about the voice? This is what Amy-Jill Levine says:

“For Mark, the voice speaks directly to Jesus: it is personal, even intimate: You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well-pleased. The voice confirms Jesus’s mission. Mark here also unites Jesus with the audience of the Gospel: WE, like Jesus, hear the voice from heaven. WE know what the other people coming to John that day do not.”

God’s voice was a sign for Jesus. Mark’s Gospel and his telling the story, is a sign for us. God’s done the work, he’s put it together, Mark makes sure we don’t miss it.

This season, we are going to read about and talk about epiphanies, manifestations of Christ to the people of the world. Will we also experience epiphanies ourselves?

If we do, they might be “some attention required.”

Colored woodcut by Dr. P. Solomon Raj, a famed artist, author, professor and theologian from India.


Featured art at the top: “The Journey of the Magi” by Ralph Hulett.

The wonder of being here

Sometimes I’m drawn forward and sometimes I am turned to circle back, usually so I can pick something up I need to go forward. That’s an eyebrow-raising, quizzical-look statement, I know. Let’s try this:

This past weekend, I went for a run–my first run since early April. It was slow, but it didn’t matter–the smile on my face running through John Ford Park, saying good morning to folks I encountered, feeling air in my lungs and my feet in motion, even if stumbling slowly, was something I have been missing.

Running, skateboarding, and writing are three life-giving activities I discovered in my early teens that sustain and stoke me in my early 50s. There is a thread that connects them.


I’ve been reading Mark Nepo’s book, “Drinking from the River of Light: the Life of Expression,” which I take in small bites, so I can savor it and let is wash over me. Nepo circled me back to one of my favorite writers, poet William Stafford, by sharing and talking about Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is”–

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.“

Nepo writes, “To discover the thread that goes through everything is the main reason to listen, express, and write… I began to realize that listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” Then he invites us to think about, write about, and try to discern what that thread is for us, individually. What is the constant that is with you, through joy, pain, sadness, lows, highs, that makes you, you?

As I sat there, coffee, sunlight, and summer-breeze-fueled, scratching out a few notes, the thing that hit me was: a sense of wonder. That’s the thread. From marveling at honeysuckle and marsh grasses in the neighborhood as a kid, to Morning Glories and Great Blue Herons as an adult, a childlike sense of wonder has underpinned it all.

Nepo is a writer I’ve just found. He circled me back to Stafford and a poem I’ve been reading for years–something I needed to pick back up to move forward with new eyes.

Running, skateboarding, and writing have been wonder-stokers for me all along. Somehow they have distilled over time to where the wonder is there now as soon as I step on a board, pick up a pen, or put running shoe to pavement.


Yesterday morning, Landy Cook and I met at the Oxford Conservation Park to start the week off with a sunrise longboarding adventure. The sun was smiling with us and lent its rays to every moment and every photo. It was a morning to catch up, to laugh, to skate, to enjoy the moments, to breathe in the day. It’s a place we skate frequently, it’s not new scenery, but every morning is its own, there is always something new or different to catch, to appreciate, to be grateful for.

For me, part of those experiences, those moments, of being given a gift, is wanting to communicate it, to share it, maybe if I am lucky to wake something up for someone else, to connect in some way.

Nepo says it: “listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” That’s what writing brings to my aesthetic and Spirit-filled table. Even rolling on a skateboard, I make sure to have a pocket notebook and pen to try to catch something of the wonder of the experience.


A couple weeks ago I was sent back to another favorite writer, John O’Donohue. Last summer we led a small group discussing his book, “Anam Cara.” A friend from church continues to read and reflect on it regularly and he wanted to pass along a copy to someone who is going through profound loss, hoping it might give them something to latch onto–perspective, compassion, care, connection, hope.

The class last summer was right around this time of year and a memory, a quote from “Anam Cara” circled its way back in front of me. It’s a thought that struck me as something Holly has been working through after coming back from a 12-day mission trip to Amazon river villages in Peru, where the life of the villagers was deliberate, present, and connected to the days and nights, the land, and each other. O’Donohue wrote:

“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.”

The miracle, the wonder, of being here. That’s our connection to each other, other living souls, to God, to the living Universe; whether we are in Peru, the backyard, or skateboarding with the sunrise.

cataloging gratitude: half dirge, half disco

“Unabashed” is a word we might get to know better. It’s defined different places as “not embarrassed, disconcerted, or ashamed,” and “undisguised, unapologetic.” It’s a word that is tough to live into for thoughtful, humble people who are concerned how people might take what they think or feel. Unfortunately, the flipside is that there are plenty of thoughtless people for whom being unabashed comes easily.

I am grateful when I get reminders to pick up favorite books of my shelf and re-read them. Dorchester County Public Library gave me my most recent reminder when they promoted a program for Ross Gay’s book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” (really such a great title, without even reading the book).

DCPL is working with the National Endowment for the Arts #BigRead program for an event at the Dorchester Center for the Arts on Tuesday, July 18 at 6:00pm. Here’s the blurb for “Catalog” that they pulled from Google Books:

“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.”


A community orchard in Bloomington, Indiana, informs Gay’s take on gratitude, together with his experience gardening.

“…In this neck of the woods you have to prune
a peach tree if you don’t want the fruit to rot, if you don’t want
all that fragrant grandstanding to be for naught.”

He mourns the life cycle and necessary work to a tree in his poem “the opening” and continues:

“…This is how, every spring,
I promise the fruit will swell with sugar: by bringing in the air and light–
until, like the old-timers say, the tree is open enough
for a bird to fly through.”

And he talks about two cardinals and a blue jay flying through and a little grayish bird that sings a song “half dirge, half disco.” There is maybe one of the best and most memorable descriptions for a life fully felt and fully lived, “half dirge, half disco.”

I’m a fan of sunrises and sunsets. I will stop what I am doing, turn away from a conversation (though generally I am still listening) to take in those fleeting moments. The fact that they are only there for a few minutes is what makes them beautiful. You have to catch them as they happen–you can’t tell a sunset you’ll get back to it, or ask it to hold on. You’ve got to give it your full attention. Appreciate the whole scene and everything going on around it. Drink it in.


Life is that way. It is full of moments and if we want to live it to the fullest, we have to pay attention to all the moments we can.

In the title poem, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” Gay says:

“Thank you to the woman barefoot in a gaudy dress
for stopping her car in the middle of the road
and the tractor trailer behind her, and the van behind it,
whisking a turtle off the road.”

And I think of so many of my friends who do that and fill the social media feed with turtle rescue photos and every single one of them gives me a little hope for humanity. Even though after we stopped to move a turtle on the way to Hoopers Island a couple weeks ago, the truck going by didn’t much appreciate the effort. It’s all part of it.

I have so many lines and parts and images from Gay’s catalog underlined and tucked into my heart, I hardly know what to share. But I like this notion of community:

“we dreamt an orchard that way,
furrowing our brows,
and hauling our wheelbarrows,
and sweating through our shirts,
and less than a year later there was a party
at which trees were sunk into the well-fed earth”

Dreaming together, thinking together, cultivating together, working together, celebrating together. I just finished re-reading Gay’s catalog. If you want to get a different, deeper, more inclusive picture of what we can be grateful for, give it a read. DCPL can help you to that end. And maybe come out for the program at the Dorchester Center for the Arts–I have found that my appreciation and perspective for every book I have read and been moved by has deepened from discussing and sharing and listening to what others have taken from the same book.

In the meantime, I am going to pick back up Gay’s “Book of Delights,” his record of small joys that are so easy for us to overlook. And I’m going to continue to try to bring gratitude to each day, unabashedly, sharing as much as I can, one sunset, one moment, at a time.

No labels, just love: the woman at the well

“I want to love like Jesus”—that’s a goal that’s thrown around by both fans of Jesus and maybe even doubters. Most people agree that Jesus knew something about love. And that that was and is a good thing.

How many people can tell us more about what that kind of love looks like? Is it just a hopeful thing to say without any real substance behind it? Or are we willing to look closer as to what it might mean to love like Jesus.

John’s Gospel story about the woman at the well is a great model for what that kind of love looks like in action.

Throughout each of the Gospels, Jesus makes a point of reaching across cultural, social, and religious boundaries and barriers to include people who were cast out or left out.

True to that form, the woman at the well, per culture and circumstance, is someone Jesus should not have been talking to.

Going through Samaria, Jesus was in a region and among a people the Jewish people didn’t look kindly on.

It’s the middle of the day, incredibly hot, a time when no one would have been at the well. And here comes a woman to get water.

Bible scholar N.T. Wright spells it out:

“In that culture, many devout Jewish men would not have allowed themselves to be alone with a woman. If it was unavoidable that they should be, they certainly would not have entered into conversation with her. The risk, they would have thought, was too high to risk impurity, risk of gossip, risk ultimately of being drawn into immorality. And yet Jesus is talking to this woman.”

If her being a woman wasn’t bad enough, on top of that she is a Samaritan. The Jewish people and the Samaritans didn’t mix. The Jews wanted nothing to do with the Samaritans. And no way in the world would they have considered sharing food or drink with them, much less sharing a drinking vessel.

Jesus reaches out to the woman by asking for a drink. He puts himself out there. Asks for hospitality. He makes himself vulnerable.

And who does he do this to? A woman who is coming to the well in the middle of the day to avoid having to deal with people, someone who has a stigma on her, a shame.

Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories” makes the point perfectly:

“The Samaritan woman is the Other, the alien, the outsider, the heretic, the stranger. Jesus breaks all the boundaries he is not supposed to break to reach out to her.

What Jesus does when he enters into conversation with a Samaritan woman is radical and risky; it stuns his own disciples because it asks them to dream of a different kind of social and religious order. A different kind of kingdom.”

Maybe that’s a clue for us. Loving like Jesus asks us to envision a different kind of social order, a different kind of kingdom.

I picture this woman and the gossip about her, the things said to her, the looks, the scorn, the judgment. And here is Jesus, a Jewish teacher, and how does he talk to her? Without judgment, without shaming, without looking down on her, and at the same time fully engaging with her and fully seeing her for who she is.

John, as the writer, packs a lot into this story:

  • This conversation is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the Gospels.
  • In John’s Gospel, this woman at the well is the first person to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah.
  • She is the first believer in any of the Gospels to become an evangelist and bring her entire city to a saving experience of Jesus.

All this for a Samaritan woman. This encounter was a big deal to John for him to give it so much space and meaning, and it was a big deal to Jesus.

So how does Jesus go about revealing his identity to the woman? Does he prove himself by healing the sick? Does he feed 5,000 people? Does he raise anyone from the dead or turn water into wine? No. He has a conversation with her.

He offers her “living water,” which she doesn’t understand. But he sits with her, listens to her, speaks to her, and reveals who he is.

Cynthia Kittredge in her book, “Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John points out:

“That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice… Jesus does no sign here. There is no miracle.” He makes a claim which then takes a dialogue, a back and forth to make sense of.

“This is a type of dialogue in John’s Gospel which reflects a way individuals and people come to faith—through a process of effort and discussion.”

Jesus reveals himself with no miracles or signs, simply with conversation, insight, and presence. He hears her, he sees her, he doesn’t dismiss her—he shares with her.

How did the woman respond? She goes running off to her town and tells absolutely everyone there. And Jesus stuck around and confirmed her testimony for people. She went from scorned outsider to credible witness.

Jesus restores her and transforms her.

Is this what it looks like to love like Jesus? Is this something Jesus still offers us today?

Here’s where Debie Thomas asks questions that we need to ask:

“Just as he does for the Samaritan woman, Jesus invites us to see ourselves and each other through the eyes of love, not judgment. Can we, like Jesus, become soft landing places for people who are alone, carrying stories of humiliation too heavy to bear? Can we see and name the world’s brokenness without shaming? Can we tell the truth and honor each other’s dignity at the same time?”


In the six-plus years I have been at Christ Church Easton, being a part of small groups has been a revelation for me in witnessing what becoming this kind of soft landing place can do.

For several years we ran the Alpha Course after our Saturday evening service, and we had between 90 and 100 people who would meet in the Parish Hall for dinner. Our youth group and leaders were a part of that number as well. Our Parish Hall was packed with food, laughter, and new relationships forming. Everyone sat and ate together before breaking into small groups, and over the course of 11 weeks we also went on a weekend retreat together.

That program became a landing place for people in recovery. In many cases these were people who were getting clean through Narcotics Anonymous. And it was a huge leap of faith for them to walk through the door of a church. Repeatedly we heard, “I didn’t think a church would want someone like me here.” People named and worked through shame they carried. They shared stories of why they started using; of their low points, in some cases being in prison; and they shared hopes and dreams—things like being able to be present, to be a parent in the lives of their children.

They went deep when they shared. And that gave permission for everyone else to go deep with their own struggles and failures. We had a congregation of people come to know by name someone who they might have dismissed, labeled, and judged. Which would have been the congregation’s loss.

Middle schoolers in our youth group would find and sit with—both in church and at dinner—the friends they made, in some cases big dudes covered with tattoos, who came to absolutely love these kids. There were no labels, just love. There were no more outsiders or outcasts, just a community of people, a group of friends. It has a holy thing and a holy time.

It looked a lot like Jesus with the woman at the well.

Fr. Gregory Boyle in his book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” tells a story about a former gang member who lived near their church and who liked to hang out his window to talk to people on their way by. One day Boyle was walking by and the guy yelled out, “Hey G, I love you,” and waved him by like he was blessing him. Boyle thanked him, and the guy’s reply was, “Of course, you’re in my jurisdiction.”

Boyle uses the idea of “jurisdiction” to talk about the area of our love, and he talks about God’s jurisdiction, the area of His love, which is all-inclusive.

When thinking about how to love like Jesus, we need to expand our jurisdiction to be as inclusive, as expansive, as Jesus’s. In the story of the woman at the well, he gives us the example of what it looks like to expand our love and compassion to include someone who had been left out.

We don’t need miracles or signs to accomplish this—it is something any of us can do. And we do it with presence, vulnerability, empathy, dialogue, listening, and seeing.

I want to leave you with some of Fr. Gregory Boyle’s words about expanding the jurisdiction of our love:

“Close both eyes; see with (eyes of your heart). Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves quite unexpectantly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.

We’ve wandered into God’s own jurisdiction.”

That’s how we love like Jesus.

Amen.


* On Saturday, March 11, I preached at our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class (at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, MD) on John 4:5-42, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The text above is the sermon that I gave.

Sitting by the river

Solitude is a gift.

Silence is a gift.

Sunlight is a gift.

Sitting by the river with a strong breeze moving the water and blowing against one side of my face while the sun warms the other.

I woke up in a warm house, while it was still dark and made coffee. Made a to-go breakfast for my older daughter for her drive to work. I laughed with my younger daughter taking her to school.

Now I am sitting in the sun and the wind by the water praying, reading, writing, listening, smiling.

Behind me is a cemetery where my grandparents, family members, and friends rest peacefully. Memories and love dance between us and connect us.

The books in front of me are titled “Pilgrim” and “Gold.”

Talking to God, Rumi writes:

“Today you arrived beaming with laughter–
that swinging key that unlocks prison doors.

You are hope’s beating heart.
You are a doorway to the sun.
You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.
Beginning and end.

You greet need with generous hands.
You flood us with spirit,

ringing from the heart,
lifting thought.”

Reading this, he and I say it together. I like to think God smiles in the sunlight.

Across the cove the sun and the wind dress a weeping willow tree. Geese float tucked away from the tide.

When I am fully here, in this moment, with a full heart and an open mind, and time alone with God, what more can I ask for? I am not alone.

Thank you for this view.
Thank you for this day.
Thank you for this life.
Thank you for your love.

Amen.

* My practice/devotion for Lent this year is to write a “proem” (prayer-poem-prose) in the spirit of Brian Doyle each day of the season. I will share some of them. This is day #3.

Thank you for things that grow

Creator God, thank you for things that grow and change and bloom in their own time.

Thank you for patience so that we can wait with hope on your timing.

Thank you for giving us grateful hearts so that we can appreciate the impermanence, the fleeting moments–nothing remains in bloom and that makes each opening, each unfolding, each blossom special.

Thank you for making us able to grow, able to change, able to seek you, to seek beauty. Thank you for making us new creations in response to the shining of your light, your truth.

God, we thank you for helping us let go when it is time. Lord, I am not always good at this. Letting go hurts. I want to hold on to the blossoms, hold on to the people, hold on to the perfect moments–I want to stay in those wonderful experiences, found and lost in time, captured and forgotten in memory. Like Peter, I want to build dwellings to stay right there.

All around us, you show us that’s not how it works. You show us in your creation that everything has its time, its season. You show us the petals, the leaves dropping off, falling to the ground, coming apart, and going back into the dirt, back to dust.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

From dust to dust.
From dust to seed.
From seed to sprout.
From sprout to bud.
From bud to flower.

Thank you for the dust we are and the blossoms we can become.

Thank you for your love that helps us grow and bloom.

Thank you for things that grow and change and bloom in their own time.

In your time.

Thank you.

* My practice/devotion for Lent this year is to write a “proem” (prayer-poem-prose) in the spirit of Brian Doyle each day of the season. I will share some of them. This quick prayer on Ash Wednesday is the first.

A Salty Reminder

Life is a pendulum swinging between remembering and forgetting. Often I find myself on the forgetting end of the swing.

The poet Rita Dove described something that goes on in my mind in her poem “Lucille, Post-Operative Years”–

Most often she couldn’t
think–which is to say she thought of
everything, and at once–
…

Then, sudden as a wince,
she couldn’t remember a thing.
…

What bothered her: the gaps
between.

(Those are connected excerpts from three different stanzas)

I can have what feels like so much spinning around in my head that I can’t think of the name of the person standing in front of me, who I’ve known for years and I can tell you everything about them, but their name is missing. Or I can be talking along towards a point and have it fly out of my head and leave me looking for a direction to catch up to it.

Meanwhile I have memories from the first 20 years of my life that are crystal clear and in context like they just happened. Oh, but the gaps in between. The mind is a marvelous thing, particularly when it cooperates or shows us things we had forgotten we knew.

Sometimes I wonder if our collective memory works like that as well. There are things we forget that are critical to who we are or who we are called to be.

That’s where my mind has wandered with this weekend’s lectionary Gospel reading, Matthew 5:13-20 (quoting 13-16, “Salt and Light”)


“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

What if we forgot what it is to be salt and light? What if we lost what that means? Maybe being light in the darkness makes sense, but what is it to be salt?

I am going to stick with Debie Thomas, who I have quoted a good bit lately from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says when Jesus calls his listeners ‘salt of the earth’ he is saying something profound that is easy for our to miss in our time:

“First of all, he is telling us who we are. We are salt. We are not ‘supposed to be’ salt, or ‘encouraged to become’ salt, or promised that ‘if we become’ salt, God will love us more. The language Jesus uses is 100 percent descriptive. It’s a statement of our identity. We are the salt of the earth. We are that which enhances or embitters, soothes or irritates, melts or stings, preserves or ruins. For better or worse, we are the salt of the earth, and what we do with our saltiness matters.“

Salt by itself doesn’t do much. And too much of it can ruin things. But the right amount of salt (which was in Jesus’s time a precious commodity) can enhance and make things better. Salt’s value is in its being spread around, added to other things–but not in a way that dominates or takes over.

If we forget that we are salt of the earth and keep ourselves separate and distant or try to take things over, we are not being true to who we are called to be.

Thomas’s essay, “Salty” looks deeply at what is to be salt–something that was precious, something that “does its best work when it’s poured around”, something that doesn’t exist to preserve itself; a calling that is not meant “to make us proud; it’s meant to to humble and awe us.”

What an honor to be asked to help, to be of service. Thomas continues:

“Our vocation in these times and places is not to lose our saltiness. That’s the temptation–to retreat. To choose blandness over boldness and keep our love for Jesus an embarrassed secret… But that kind of salt, Jesus tells his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its essence… Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out with discretion so that God’s kingdom might be known on the earth–a kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth, flavor, and complexity.“

I’m really looking forward to discussing Thomas’s reflections on the life of Christ. We’ll see how salty and balanced we can become during our Lent small groups .


These are some of the books that are pouring ideas and prayers and sentences and questions and wonder and inspiration into my heart and mind at the moment.

Next weekend (February 11-12), I preach at Christ Church Easton. What that looks like walking around and how to process it is a different kind of thing. Barbara Brown Taylor in her book, “The Preaching Life,” points towards it:

“I do not want to pass on knowledge from the pulpit; I want to take part in an experience of God’s living word, and that calls for a different kind of research. It is time to tuck the text into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me. It is time to turn its words and images loose on the events of my everyday life and see how they mix. It is time to daydream, whittle, whistle, pray.”

The more often I tuck God’s Word into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me, the more it helps shape who I am and how I see the world. If I hope to take part in an experience of God’s living word, I need to remind myself that I am salt and light–my role is to enhance, sooth, melt, preserve, to add some flavor that might bring it into our world in a fresh way.

Back to Thomas:

“We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for the better. May your pouring out–and mine–be for the life of the world.”

To be a human being among human beings

Life has felt large and open and raw of late, where prayers, feelings, experiences and thoughts are all super charged.

There are plenty of reasons: Ava’s stereotactic neurosurgery is on Monday; Anna turns 21 on Tuesday and Ava turns 18 in mid-February; we’ve past the half-way point in our Romans Bible studies; seminary is stirring good things up and Kelsey Spiker and I just became postulants, the next designation in the path to ordination to the priesthood; even occasional preaching is a full-body experience; gearing up for Lent small groups; and the girls had their first ever snow skiing experiences, which was a trip with Holly and her kids as well as many teen and twenty-something friends.

Life has an open feeling, which is both filling and fulfilling and taxing and shaky sometimes.

Studying for a Saturday seminary day retreat, Rev. Susie Leight has us reading and thinking about the spirituality of the priesthood, which included excerpts from Barbara Brown Taylor’s “The Preaching Life” and Gordon W. Lathrop’s “The Pastor: A Spirituality.” Lathrop recalls an experience in a Swiss airport where he read a quote on a poster from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, written in French. Lathrop translated it literally to say:

“As a profound thirst: the desire to be a human being among human beings.”

A deep and profound desire to be a human being–someone who lives and feels, who is flawed and who needs others–among human beings. To be in community and to be allowed to be fully ourselves. This is what it is to be open, to be honest, to be vulnerable, which is not instantly a comfortable place to be.

Thursday we had a class discussing Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Life on Mars,” which is one of my favorite books. The discussion was about space and time, love, loss, grief, dancing, intimacy, language–it was flung like stars around the minds and hearts of those there. The last poem read was titled, “The Weather in Space”–

Is God being or pure force? The wind

Or what commands it? When our lives slow

And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls

In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm

Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing

After all we’re certain to lose, so alive–

Faces radiant with panic.

That is part of the challenge of being human, loss and fear are always in the mix with us. It’s a lot and sometimes we want to–I want to–shut the faucet off. But that’s not why we’re here. That’s not why I am here.

On Tuesday morning, I was thinking ahead to this weekend’s Gospel reading, which is Matthew 5:1-12, commonly known as the Beatitudes:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.“


I’ve been in a habit of looking to see if Debie Thomas has anything to say about a particular Bible passage in her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” And reading her take on the Beatitudes, it hit me that her book would make an incredible Lent study, looking at and discussing different aspects of Jesus’s life. Here is a bit of her take on the reading:

“What Jesus bears witness to in the Beatitudes is God’s unwavering proximity to pain, suffering, sorrow, and loss. God is nearest to those who are lowly, oppressed, unwanted and broken. God isn’t obsessed with the shiny and the impressive; God is too busy sticking close to what’s messy, chaotic, unruly, and unattractive.”

She goes further:

“I think what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes is that I have something to learn about discipleship that my privileged life circumstances will not teach me. Something to grasp about the beauty, glory, and freedom of the Christian life that I will never grasp until God becomes my all, my go-to, my starting and ending place. Something to recognize about the radical counter-intuitiveness of God’s priorities and promises. Something to notice about the obfuscating power of plenty to blind me to my own emptiness. Something to gain from the humility that says, ‘The people I think I am superior to have everything to teach me. Maybe it’s time to pay attention.'”

If I want to be a human being among human beings, I have to be open to, to learn from, to love, those whom God loves: everyone. More than that, if as followers of Christ, we look to do God’s work in the world, we have to be, we have to show, we have to act out in faith the love that God makes real here and now, especially to those who feel alienated or shut off from it.

In teaching the Beatitudes, Jesus is turning the world and what we think we know about it, on its head. This is something he does frequently in his teachings and his parables. We should ask why.

Next week we will discuss poet Joy Harjo’s book “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” In “Talking with the Sun,” she writes:

After dancing all night in a circle we realize that we are a
part of a larger sense of stars and planets dancing with us
overhead.
When the sun rises at the apex of the ceremony, we are
renewed.
There is no mistaking this connection, though Walmart
might be just down the road.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the
earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of
meaning.

To be a human being among human beings is also to be human in and as a part of God’s Creation. Which He asks us to be stewards of, to take care of.

Humans are vulnerable and rely on kindnesses. When I try to live with my heart open, I have a greater sense of, and gratitude for these kindnesses–kindnesses that can come from anywhere and anyone. Any one of us. Even me.