Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Bear with Me

Homily by The Rev. Marcia McRae
St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 18 June 2017, Pentecost 2, Proper 6
Year A RCL: Genesis 18:1-15; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8

Notice the sense of urgency1 & specific details we hear in our Gospel today &
in our lesson from Genesis.

Notice how Paul's words pouring out to the Church in Rome & to us
complement the hope & trust we hear
in Genesis & in Matthew.

Remember: what we hear in Matthew is before Jesus' death & resurrection. After his resurrection, Jesus broadens the scope of ministry for the disciples / for us to share the Good News of God's Love with all people.

Today we hear hope & trust as Matthew tells of Jesus' positive impact & the huge workload he shares with the disciples / us.
Paul tells us of hope & peace we have through the power of God's love, which we have through the Holy Spirit.
“Hope is not wishful thinking,...
[it is] certainty about the future [and] is grounded in God’s faithfulness to keep [God's] promises,” as one writer says.2

How do we live in hope & not wishful thinking?
Notice how Abraham & Sarah respond to words of hope for promised joy of Abe becoming a father by Sarah. [It is interesting to have this lesson on Father's Day.]

I wonder why we hear laughter so soon after our encountering God's playfulness on Pentecost. Maybe this is God's way to drive home a point:
We need more laughter.
With laughter, we bear up better under the stress of life's demands.

We hear Sarah laugh & then lie, denying she laughed. We sometimes respond to unexpected news by laughing. In Chapter 17 Abe laughs when God says old Sarah will bear him a child. Sarah does bear Isaac, whose name means laughter3.

What is it about us humans that makes it so hard for us to embrace something different,
something new?

We acknowledge in our lesson from Romans: life can be tough, yet we speak of peace & hope & how Jesus died for us when we were a hopeless mess. Jesus bore our sins on the cross. Now we have work to share, to bear one another's burden.
Maybe we need to laugh more to lighten our loads.
Maybe it will help our work if we bear in mind a few of the disciples Jesus calls to work with him:
  • Matthew the tax collector works for Rome, which rules the people of Israel.
  • Simon the Cananaean is a zealot, one who opposes Roman rule4.
  • Peter will deny knowing Jesus after Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus.

What is Jesus thinking in calling this bunch of ornery bears?!

Like real bears, the disciples have strengths & gifts, God-given power to do the work Jesus gives to minister to harassed & helpless, people, who are like sheep without a shepherd.
Remember the skills a shepherd needs to protect sheep. Think of when David offers to fight Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 & tells of his experience fighting off & killing lions & bears.

We don't see a lot of lions in North Carolina. We do see bears, which are more positive than we may think. Like us, bears are social creatures5 that can work together & offer us a bit of wisdom for our work as disciples:
Bears don't work 24-7.
They know to rest.

We know we should rest & have “me-time”. You're “smarter than the average bear” [to borrow words from cartoon star Yogi Bear]. You're smart enough to know the wisdom of intentionally giving yourself time to play & rest just as you are intentional in our work of ministry.

Soldiers know the importance of working together & of rest. We see this in a special way in a World War II Polish soldier, Wojtek [pronounced Voytek], whose name means joyful warrior6.
A fellow Polish soldier with the same 1st name, tells BBC News: “I felt like he was my older brother.”7 He “liked play-fighting & boxing...He helped keep up the troops' morale,” serving from the Middle East to Scotland.8  The troops fought with the British 8th Army in Italy.9
As a corporal with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, Voytek served at the Battle of Monte Cassino, moving crates of ammunition, never dropping one.
“(H)e became a celebrity with visiting Allied generals & statesmen,” as Wikipedia says.10

After the war & out of the army, he lived the rest of his life in Scotland, appeared often on BBC television, was visited by journalists & former Polish soldiers.

Statues in Poland & Scotland & many memorials, including in London's Imperial War Museum, honor this quiet hero, who demonstrated how to live positively in community, sleeping in tents with his fellow soldiers.
His statue in Krakow was unveiled on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. The monument in Scotland shows Wotjtek walking in peace & unity with a fellow soldier:

Wotjtek walks on all fours . . . . .

as a proper bear often walks. . . .

He's a Siberian brown bear.
[He lived in the Edinburgh Zoo after the was ended & he left military service.]

If a bear can serve in war alongside humans,

if Jesus' mixed group of flawed disciples can make a positive difference in the world,

if Paul who harassed & imprisoned Christians can change into the positive force to advance Christianity,

how can we possibly let anything scare us from our work of ministry here?

Our God is the God of surprises.

As we read in Genesis:
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?




Bibliography
Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press. 1984.

Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.

Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-15736812. Accessed: 17 June 2017.


https://www.behindthename.com/name. Accessed 14 June 2017.




science/ Accessed 14 June 2017.

https://whatismyspiritualanimal.com Accessed: 15 June 2017

Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Krehbiel, Robb, “Bears on the Move”.  Accessed: 14 June 2017. http://www.vitalground.org/bears-on-the-move/#.WUGRwpLyvIU.

The New American Bible for Catholics. South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.

Shively, Elizabeth. “Commentary on Romans 5:1-8”. Accessed 14 June 2017. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3297

Yuckman, Colin H. “Commentary on Matthew 9:35-10:8 [9-23]. Accessed 14 June 2017. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3299


1 Yuckman, Colin H. “Commentary on Matthew 9:35-10:8 [9-23]. Accessed 14 June 2017. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3299
2 Shively, Elizabeth. “Commentary on Romans 5:1-8”. Accessed 14 June 2017. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3297
3 https://www.behindthename.com/name. Accessed 14 June 2017.
4 Yuckman, Colin H. “Commentary on Matthew 9:35-10:8 [9-23]. Accessed 14 June 2017. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3299
6 Note: Facts of his story are from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear). Accessed: 15 June 2017.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. wikipedia.

10 Ibid. wikipedia.
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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Who is Always with You?

Trinity Sunday Homily by The Rev. Marcia McRae
St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 11 June 2017
Year A RCL: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

Jesus says
“...I am with you always, to the end of the age."

May we have the grace to remember this blessing!

Jesus gives us this blessing after he gives us our marching orders in today's Gospel: Go & make disciples of all nations, baptizing people & teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us.

Jesus says: baptize “in the name of the Father & of the Son & of the Holy Spirit.” Today, Trinity Sunday, we focus on the Holy Trinity we worship: the 3 in One, One God in 3.

To go & make disciples, baptizing & teaching people, we must know & be clear what we are teaching: the Holy Trinity we worship is ONE God. We are monotheists.

The One God we follow has
“3 distinct personal expressions of the one, eternally rich God who is love...”1

Simple analogies may help us with this reality:
  • Think of music2. We play it, sing it, dance to it. We don't have to know all about it to enjoy it. We don't have to know all about the Holy Trinity to worship this Unity.
  • Dance offers an analogy. Think of folk dances with a circle of participants holding hands, as the Rev. Richard Rorh describes in The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, his book my colleague from Episcopal Communicators, Katerina Whitley, speaks of in her Trinity Sunday sermon.3 [We'll explore Fr. Rorh's book on the Legacy of St. Francis after Labor Day.]
  • Think of water: flowing liquid, solid ice, hot steam.
  • Think of bread: We experience its taste, texture, nourishment. We don't have to know all about how it nourishes us for it to nourish us.
The bread we eat at this Holy Table, we eat to remember Jesus, who comes to live among to show us how to live, dies to save us, rises again & ascends, & by his departure increases his presence with us4. He says: “I am with you always.”

Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus increases his presence with us – not decreases his presence.5

The Triune God who creates all, shows us how to live, & comes to dwell in us, wants to be with us. God’s love creates us to be “in a relationship”6 [with God & all God’s creation]. God makes us for relationship in community & draws us into God’s Holy Community.

We speak of God as Creator, Redeemer & Sustainer. Theologian & author David Cunningham writes of God as Source, Wellspring & Living Water.7 He notes a number of scriptures in Jeremiah & John refer to God & the Holy Spirit as Living Water (see Jer. 2:13, 17:13 & John 4:10-14; 7:38-39).8

The holy scriptures use analogies to help us grasp truths about God, this hard-to-comprehend Mystery, which is ONE.

You & I proclaim faith in this Mystery & declare our faith in the Apostles Creed & the Nicene Creed, the results of centuries of work by wise Christian thinkers to clarify the fact we are monotheists.9

“The doctrine of the Trinity is to explain the range & variety of divine action,”10 says priest, author & scholar Ian Markham, who serves as Dean & President of Virginia Theological Seminary & spoke about the Trinity at a conference I attended.

Our creeds help us express the Mystery of the One God we know through different aspects of our relationship with God. Notice: Our creeds & scriptures speak of God “concretely & specifically” rather than generally & indefinitely.11

We “Christians affirm [our] faith in God as sovereign Lord of all creation who has done a new & gracious work in Jesus Christ & who continues to be active in the world through the power of the Spirit.”12

We declare “God to be the source, the mediator, & the power of new life. God is the majestic creator of the heavens & the earth [as our lesson in Genesis says], the servant redeemer of a world gone astray, & the transforming Spirit who empowers new beginnings of human life & [an expected]...new heaven &...a new earth.”13

You & I proclaim faith in “...the one, eternally rich God who is love...”14

As we ponder this Mystery, we can take heart in the fact some on the mountain with Jesus doubted. It is OK to question, to wonder. As Albert Einstein says:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when [one] contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”15

Be wise & do as Einstein says:

“Never lose a holy curiosity”!




Bibliography
Cunningham, David S. “What Do We Mean By God?” Essentials of Christian Theology. ED: William Placher. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2003.
Dios Habla Hoy: La Biblia. New York: American Bible Society. 1983.
Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.
Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Hughes, Robert Davis III. Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life. New York: Continuum. 2008.
Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Markham, Ian S. Understanding Christian Doctrine. Malden, ME: Blackwell Publishing. 2008.
Migliore, Daniel L. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. 2nd Ed. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2004.
New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Eds.: Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1977.
Placher, William. Editor. Essentials of Christian Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2003.
Whitley, Katarina. “The Mystery of the Trinity, Trinity Sunday (A) – June 11, 2017”.
Van de Weyer, Robert. Celtic Praise: A Book of Celtic Devotion, Daily Prayers and Blessings. Nashville: Abingdon Press. 1998.
Voyles, Robert J. Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment. Hillsboro, OR: The Appreciative Way. 2010. www.appreciativeway.com.


1 Migliore, Daniel L. Faith Seeking Understanding. P. 69.
2 Idea from “Symphony” P. 15 in Robert Van De Weyer's Celtic Praise.
3 Whitley, Katerina. “The Mystery of the Trinity, Trinity Sunday (A) – June 11, 2017”. Accessed: 9 June 2017.
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2017/05/18/the-of mystery-of-the-trinity-trinity-sunday-a-june-11-2017/
4 Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. P. 1070.
5 Ibid.
6 Hughes, Robert Davis III. Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life. P. 59.
7 Quoted by Markham, Ian. Understanding Christian Doctrine. P. 84.
8 Cunningham, David S. “What Do We Mean By God?” Essentials of Christian Theology. Pp. 83-84.
9 Note: This point Ian Markham emphasizes in Understanding Christian Doctrine. P. 83.
10 Ibid. Markham. P. 84.
11 Ibid. Migliore. P. 66.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid. P. 67.
14 Ibid. P. 69.

15 Quoted P. 59 of “The Three Faces of Compassion.” based on Voyles, Robert J. Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
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Monday, June 5, 2017

Celebrate This Red-Letter Day!

Homily By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, Pentecost, 4 June 2017
Whitsunday; Year A RCL: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23
Notice how much action takes place in our brief Gospel:
Jesus overcomes physical barriers humans use to keep out other people.
Twice he says “Peace be with you.”
He shows the disciples his scars.  They rejoice!
Jesus gives the disciples work to do & empowers them / us
for this work he has started.
He gives the choice to forgive or not.
Knowing Jesus asks God to forgive us as he dies on the cross, how can the disciples – who deserted him – not forgive?
How can we not forgive? We have the Holy Spirit to guide us in the work of forgiveness.
Embrace God’s love Jesus expresses by choosing to forgive you.
Embrace God's deep love for you, which God powerfully expresses by the Holy Spirit choosing to live in you.
Embrace God’s expansive love with which God our Father chose to create you.

The day you were created, the day you were born were red-letter days. Today is a red letter day. [Our term is from the ancient habit of writing Capital Letters in red & later religious calendars & prayer books indicating saint days with red letters.]1
Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church. We also have our monthly birthday candles for you with June birthdays to blow out after worship. There’s a difference between birthday candles & tongues of flame alighting on disciples so they speak in ways which make some observers say they're drunk.
When we encounter something new & powerful, we struggle to make it fit what we know. Something new & powerful can be like looking from outside a church at stained glass windows. We don't see clearly.

On Pentecost we see red which reminds us of the tongues of fire. We tend to focus on fire's power. Fire has power to provide light. The disciples speak in ways which enlighten listeners' understanding of God's love.
We often speak of God’s love. What about God’s laughter?

When you think of God,
how often do you think of playfulness?
Notice: our Psalm today tells us of God's playfulness. God has fun with creation. It says: “Yonder is the great & wide sea...& there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.” God makes something just for fun!

I don't know if I have seen a Leviathan. I have seen the humorous-looking duck-billed platypus & the funny-moving blue footed booby. God makes things to enjoy :)
We enjoy having light when it’s dark. Light can have a playful quality. We speak of how light plays on a window. We see how light plays & enlivens stained glass2. 
Notice the difference in this icon when it has no light & when we remove what blocks the light shining through it.


 We are like stained glass.
Made in the image of God, we are crafted to live & love in Holy Community, to shine the Light of Jesus so our brothers & sisters in the human family can see God’s love more clearly.

God who creates with such delight & gives in such abundance yearns for us to celebrate our love & live in harmony with God, God's creation, & each other. How?
God gives us the Holy Spirit so our love may overflow more & more with knowledge & full insight to help us know how.3

When we shine the Light of God's Love on our Sisters & Brothers, we work with God, bringing light into their darkness. That darkness may be something hard to forgive.
God gives us what we need to do hard work.  God gives us the Holy Spirit to guide us in our Habit of Forgiveness4, in our work sharing it so our Sisters & Brothers can develop this gift.
God speaks through authors, who tell amazing experiences of the grace of forgiveness. This grace brings the Light of God's Love which people need, like stained glass needs light.
For inspiring looks into this inner light, I commend to your reading The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, which I quoted recently; Eric Lomax's book [which is also a movie] The Railway Man “A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality & Forgiveness”5
  & Ed Bacon's 8 Habits of Love. 

You will read real experiences, such as this one Ed Bacon shares from South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission in the post-Apartheid era with President Nelson Mandella & Archbishop Desmond Tutu.6  The author tells of an elderly black woman & the white policeman who forced her to watch as he tortured, murdered & cremated her son & her husband.

“The last words she [hears] her husband [say] before he finally [dies are] 'Father, forgive them.'”7 . . . .

When the commission asks her: What would justice look like to you? She lists these 3 things8.

1. She wants the policeman [Mr. Van de Broek] to go where he had cremated her husband & gather the dust so she can give him a decent burial.*

2. She says: “Mr. Van de Broek [has taken] away all my family from me & I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto & spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.”9
[She wants this murderer “to become her son so she [can generously] pour her remaining love into him.”]10

3. She says: “I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, & that I forgive him too.” And she asks someone to lead her across the courtroom because, she says: “I would like to embrace him so he can know that he is truly forgiven.”11

This widowed mother is a
stained-glass window,
the image of God's Love,
shining with God's Light from within.12




Bibliography
Bacon, Ed. 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind. Boston: Grand Central Life & Style. Grand Central Publishing. 2011.
Giridharadas, Anand. The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2014.
Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.
Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Lomax, Eric. The Railway Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1995.
Voyles, Robert J. Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment. Hillsboro, OR: The Appreciative Way. 2010. www.appreciativeway.com.


2 Note: Influenced from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross quoted by Robert J. Voyles, p. 44, “Teaching Forgiveness” based on his Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
3 Paraphrase of Philippians 1:9-10.
4 Note: Phrase from Bacon, Ed. 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind. Pp. 119-144.
5 Note: Quoted from book jacket cover & inside title page.
6 Bacon. Ibid. Pp. 119-121.
7 Ibid. P. 120.
8 Bacon. Ibid. P. 120.
* Note: I do not know why her son's ashes were not in the same place.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. P. 121.
11 Ibid. P. 120.

12 Ibid. Voyles. Paraphrase of Kubler-Ross. P. 44.
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