Last fall we were thrilled to watch our six-year-old granddaughter Sienna run cross country. (Yes, we are that kind of grandparents, the ones who beam with pride at pretty much anything she does.) When you run cross country, you encounter many obstacles: the terrain, the weather – especially in the wet Pacific Northwest, and your body itself. And running cross country was a huge milestone for Sienna because she suffers from severe asthma.
Despite her asthma, Sienna ran faithfully throughout the season. Not only did she work out with her teammates, but she also ran with her dad. And, whenever she ran, she had one goal. It wasn’t winning. It wasn’t how she placed.
Her sole goal was to do her best, to persevere and to run her race. And her favorite part of one race venue was running up the hill – at the end!
I’ve thought a lot about how healthy Sienna’s approach is. It’s also counter-cultural in today’s world which seems to value only winners, where the goal seems to be to find some way to “win” without doing the hard work that our values and our dreams demand.
We can apply this to our own spiritual lives when we seek to live our faith to our best – with love. Following Jesus isn’t easy. Following Jesus means to keep going, to persevere. It means putting one foot in front of the other, as we encounter obstacle after obstacle in the challenges and disappointments of everyday life. Just like Sienna’s obstacles to running her best in cross country are unique to her, our obstacles in living our faith to our best are also unique. And Jesus is with us always: during the easier stretches, through the unexpected obstacles, when we trip or fall, and as we persevere up the hill at the end of that long run after we’re already tired. In the end, it doesn’t matter to God whether we come in first or if we come in last. Instead, it simply pleases God when we live our faith to the best of our ability, every day.
The stream of alarming news over the past week has been unrelenting:
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in front of a crowd gathered at Utah Valley University.
Another school shooting in Colorado placed 900 high school students in lock-down, with two students critically injured and the shooter dead by his own hand.
The Israeli military ordered a full evacuation of Gaza City, home to about one million Palestinians.
Russian drones violated Polish airspace, eliciting a response from NATO forces.
Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s unremitting attacks, now in the fourth year of this most recent invasion, as Ukrainian civilian casualties continue to mount.
The French government collapsed following a no-confidence vote, ousting the prime minister.
Four hundred US federal agents raided a Hyundai plant in Georgia, detaining 475 workers, including hundreds of South Korean nationals.
US National Guard troops remain deployed in Los Angeles and Washington DC, with planned deployments in Memphis and Louisiana. Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, and Oakland, CA may also see similar deployments.
The nation observed the 24th anniversary of 9/11/2001, when terrorists crashed four passenger planes, demolishing our country’s illusion of invincibility.
Perhaps we have access to too many bad-news stories. Allowing even 30 minutes of news from around the world is enough to quench hope and feed despair. This week, I sought out dependable hope-bearers I’ve discovered thanks to the world wide web. Perhaps you’ll glean a bit of perspective and courage from three full-length articles that have bolstered my courage and raised my spirits. Each one, excerpted here, offers a helpful focus for action:
“We often say that we will pray for the victims and their families, and pray we must. But our faith demands more from us. We must guard the hatred in our hearts and on our lips; it is hatred and righteous indignation that leads to violence. Jesus said plainly, ‘it is that which is on our lips and in our hearts that defiles us.’”
SHOW UP — From Nadia Bolz-Weber, reprising her reflection on Mary Magdalene in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting in an Aurora, CO movie theatre, killing 12:
“My Bishop Allan Bjornberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice … is just showing up. “And in some ways Mary Magdalene is like, the patron saint of just showing up. “Because showing up means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. She didn’t necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think….but none of that is nearly as important as the fact that she just showed up. She showed up at the cross where her teacher Jesus became a victim of our violence and terror. She looked on as the man who had set her free from her own darkness bore the evil and violence of the whole world upon himself and yet still she showed up.”
“George W. Bush, who was president on that horrific day, spoke in Pennsylvania at a memorial for the passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, who on September 11, 2001, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy…. “[W]e can take guidance from the passengers on Flight 93, who demonstrated as profoundly as it is possible to do what confronting such a mentality means. While we cannot know for certain what happened on that plane on that fateful day, investigators believe that before the passengers of Flight 93 stormed the cockpit, throwing themselves between the terrorists and our government, and downed the plane, they took a vote.”
Pray. Show up. Courageously claim your identity. And for heaven’s sake, connect with a community of like-minded souls, who can walk alongside you, strengthening your resolve. Such practices help us give life to the baptismal covenant that seals our God-given identity — “child of God, beloved and called.”
As we make our way “through many dangers, toils, and snares,”[1] may we be en-couraged to walk in our rabbi’s footsteps.
As I listen to the news these days, I’m distraught by the direction that our country seems to be heading. Our economy is impacted by our over-consumption; and our reliance on cheap – even child – labor deprives people of the dignity of a living wage. We’re destroying our planet with our over-reliance on fossil fuels, our wasteful attitude toward water, and the destruction of our forests and wetlands. We support systems of domination, as the rich get richer on the backs of those less fortunate. We’re mortgaging our children and grandchildren’s future.
And the budget reconciliation bill passed by Congress on July 3 only exacerbates matters. When I read about its provisions to strip people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, and curtail clean-energy development, I ask myself: How do we, as people of faith, respond to the injustices around us?
In the midst of my personal anguish, words of the late Rev. Canon Fletcher Lowe – one of the founders and convener of Partners for Baptismal Living (Episcopalians on Baptismal Mission) – come to mind. Fletcher often reminded us that the intersection of Church Street and State Street is where we bring our faith to bear on public policy, striving to promote the common good and to protect those pushed to the margins and those unfairly treated.
Fletcher’s words are a call to action, because, whether we want to be or not, we’re embedded in relationships with one another. And today’s political environment fails to recognize how deeply interconnected we are.
Earlier this month, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe echoed that sentiment when he wrote in Religion News, “God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all.”
At baptism we promise to follow Jesus and Jesus alone – with God’s help. We are called to serve as instruments of God’s healing, and that begins by striving to seek and serve Christ in all persons and by respecting the dignity of every human being. Today.
Nearly 50 years ago, a Roman Catholic archbishop told his flock,
“How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand that their work, their job, is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cabs: you are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if your work with honesty, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab.” – Oscar Romero, Nov. 20, 1977
Fletcher Lowe, a colleague and a co-founder of Partners for Baptismal Living, frequently quoted Martin Luther: “When you wash your face, remember your baptism.” He longed for each Christian to be reminded every day that their baptism inspires and equips them to live their baptismal promises:
continue in the apostles’ teaching and the prayers;
persevere in resisting evil;
proclaim God’s Good News by word and example;
seek and serve Christ in all persons; and
strive for justice and peace, loving your neighbor as yourself.
A few years ago, Adam Hamilton, pastor of a large Methodist Church in Leawood, KS, asked each member to hang a laminated tag in their shower. As they showered, they were to pray the words on it:
Lord, as I enter the water to bathe,
I remember my baptism.
Wash me again by your grace,
Fill me with your Spirit,
Renew my soul.
I pray that I might live as your child today
And honor you in all that I do. Amen.
Eastertide offers us 50 days to practice. What reminder might you use to claim your baptismal promises? How might you remember each day to claim your identity: “Child of God, beloved and called”? How might we grow every day in recognizing the calling God has placed on our lives?
A priest I know recently attended a meeting of local business leaders who were struggling to comprehend the many changes that are being thrust upon our nation. The meeting included an elected official who was also struggling for answers and how to respond in such times. The leaders conveyed a sense of hopelessness, pondering where to find hope. Then, they turned to the priest and said that the church was their only hope. This took place in a blue city in the heart of the “none zone.” Their message was that the church is our only hope.
When we focus on our baptismal promises, as Episcopalians we often focus on the three action-oriented promises – especially in these challenging times as we advocate on behalf of so many who are being increasingly marginalized and ostracized. We are actively striving to proclaim the Good News of the Jesus of the Beatitudes, especially in response to the loud voices of Christian Nationalists.
Yet, our first promise at baptism calls us to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. This promise is about worship. As Demi Prentiss wrote in her blog last week, this promise points to being rooted in Christ. And we can’t be rooted in Christ if we aren’t engaged in worship.
Communal worship matters because it helps us learn about Jesus. It helps us pattern our lives after him. We encounter Christ in the sacraments and hear the stories of God’s profound love for us in the scriptures. We offer our thanks and praise to God. Our souls respond to the Holy One.
We can’t respond to our second baptismal promise – to persevere in resisting evil and to repent and return to the Lord whenever we fall into sin – without faithful worship in community. Corporate worship inspires us to love and to good deeds – and to become inspired ourselves. It keeps us accountable to God and to one another.
Worship is also a form of resistance that pushes against the status quo. Worship transforms what could be fleeting hope from mere wishful thinking to something concrete and sustaining. And worship transforms us into agents of God’s hope to go forth into the world.
What a glorious vision of what takes place at every baptism, and even at the four yearly occasions when Episcopalians renew our baptismal covenant (Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, Easter, Pentecost, and All Saints’ Day): “Rooted in the very life of Christ.” Like the tree planted by the water, we recognize that we are sustained by the Word of God (Jesus Christ, especially as revealed in scripture) and the water that represents God’s sustaining love, bathing us at all times and in all places.
The opening quote above was written by Mark S.B. Docken, a 1982 graduate of Luther Seminary, in a reflection on Psalm 1. To offer more context:
….[T]here was a severe drought when I served in northeast Montana, and the Big Muddy went dry. Nevertheless, the cottonwoods were sustained by the subterranean moisture invisible to the eye. When we encounter the arid times of depression, oppression, loneliness, ill-health, and grief, we trust that God will sustain us even when we cannot sense it. For in the water and the Word of baptism, we have been rooted into the very life of Christ. “It is not I who lives, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We trust that God is an ever-flowing stream of justice, unconditional love, and blessing.
Each day, each hour, each minute we are immersed in the blessing of being rooted in Christ. Our challenge is to claim and proclaim it, by living into our identity as members of Christ’s Body.
How Full is Your Bucket Is the title of a book I read years ago for professional development.Authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton’s premise is that each of us has an invisible “bucket,” and each interaction with another person can help fill our “bucket” by making us feel more valued, more positive. Conversely, when we say or do negative things, we diminish other people and ourselves. Those interactions affect our physical health; our mental health; our productivity; and even our longevity.
Each of us also has an invisible “dipper.” When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets – by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions and energy[1] – not only do we fill their buckets, but we also fill our own bucket.
I was reminded of this book on the first Sunday in Lent when we read in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit as he is led in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. It’s no surprise that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. After all, he’s just been baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist and anointed by the Holy Spirit. He’s also been affirmed as God’s beloved Son, with whom God is well-pleased. As Jesus fasts for 40 days in the wilderness, the devil keeps trying to empty Jesus’ bucket by tempting him.
At baptism, we, too, are anointed and affirmed. We’re sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own – forever. Our buckets are full. They’re full of the Holy Spirit. They’re full of love – because God created us in love and for love.
Every day, throughout the course of our lives, each of us has multiple opportunities to fill someone else’s bucket – or to dip from it. Each such encounter is a choice. We can fill someone’s bucket, or we can dip from it. We do this by choosing to be loving and kind – especially in the face of adversity and even cruelty. By choosing to be kind we can profoundly shape our relationships, our health, and our spiritual well-being. This Lent, I’m choosing a daily practice of kindness. And I invite you to join me in this practice, as together we spread Christ’s love in a way that just might offer hope and healing to our hurting world.
[1] Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, PhD. How Full is Your Bucket (New York: Gallup Press, 2004), 15.
Veil Nebula supernova remnant picture by the Hubble Space Telescope. Source: NASA
by Demi Prentiss
My extended, blended family is, probably like many other similar families, repeatedly in the throes of learning how to be with one another. Lately, we have a mantra to fall back on when things get tough: “We are allowed to make mistakes.” That’s not designed to avoid accountability, or foster a laissez faire attitude about not doing our best. It does, often, open a door to grace – recognition that human beings are fragile and prone to unforced errors, and often in need of toleration. We need safe space where we can risk and be wrong. Fail fast, learn from mistakes, seek forgiveness, and even when we fall down, persist in falling forward.
A priest friend, looking at the Genesis story of “The Fall” and Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden, often said that original sin had nothing to do with sex, and not even with lust for knowledge. “The original sin is the desire for certainty,” he would pronounce, with a wink to those who recognized the irony of his daring to be so certain.
We human beings – made in the image of God, say the prophets – really do seem to prefer black-and-white, cut-and-dried, take-it-or-leave-it dichotomies, with clear boundaries and the opportunity to categorize outcasts and insiders. The only trouble is that Jesus – and the rest of the Trinity, apparently – are much less into stark differentiation and more into a willingness to focus on similarities rather than differences. That whole “God is love” thing.
As we seek to be followers of the Son of God, part of the walk of faith is the willingness to take the next step, following God’s calling, without the luxury of certainty. Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”[1] And author Anne Lamott answers, “[The] opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns”[2]
“…until some light returns.” That’s a tough space to wait in. And Christians are called to speak out for God’s truth and light even when darkness appears to prevail. The Good News includes, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). God’s truth, revealed in the cosmos, reminds us that God’s incredible, enthusiastic diversity is a more trustworthy guide to truth than single-minded certainty. The “first testament” – all of creation – speaks that truth. Difference – and mess – everywhere!
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for Aug. 31, 2024 offers a prayer from author Cole Arthur Riley, “A Prayer for Those Who Thought They Knew,” a “prayer for those who have left spiritual spaces of certainty”:
God of wisdom, It’s hard to know what to say to a God claimed by those who have wounded us. Can we trust you? We have known what it is to exist in spiritual spaces that are more interested in controlling us than loving us. To have the room turn against us when our beliefs diverge from the group’s. We thank you for giving us an interior compass, an intuition that no longer trusts spirituality that feels like captivity. Free us from those spaces. But as we depart, keep us from relinquishing our own connection to the divine. Help us to approach you slowly in the safety of our own interior worlds before granting another spiritual space access to us. And when we’re ready, guide us into new and safe communities—communities capable of holding our deepest doubts, our beliefs, the fullness of uncertainty, without being threatened. May we approach shrewdly and carefully, for our own protection, as we search for spaces that honor the whole of us. Ase.
Riley offers this prayer to use with the breath:
INHALE: I am free to not know. EXHALE: I can rest in mystery. INHALE: I may not know what I believe, EXHALE: but I know it will sound like dignity. INHALE: My doubts are sacred. EXHALE: God, stay close as I wander.
[1]Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume 2 (University of Chicago Press: Feb. 15, 1975), pp 116-7. Dec 08 . 2015
[2] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, (Riverhead Books: 2005)
These days, little towns and suburbs of the big metropolises grow fast in Texas. Buda, a suburb of Austin, is no exception. In 2022, the population was reported to be about 16,000, yet this growing suburb is home to a bright promise of Baptismal Living – St. Elizabeth of DWTX.
St. Liz, as the Budans fondly call their little Buda mission, is served by Vicar Fr Mike Woods and his family. On Sunday, September 8, 2024, Fr Mike exegeted Mark 7:24-37 from the week’s lectionary Gospel reading. I’m quite sure most if not all of you experienced exegesis of this passage Sunday. I highlight Fr. Mike today for what I name his Baptismal Covenant Preaching of the Word.
When I name this Baptismal Covenant Preaching, I am highlighting a preaching that emphasizes an exegesis that includes an analysis of and call-to-action from a scripture passage that derives from all or part of The Episcopal Baptismal Covenant. Fr. Mike did that on Sunday, September 8, with Mark 7:24-37, yet he never even had to utter the words “baptism,” nor the words printed on pp. 304-5 of the Book of Common Prayer. Fr. Mike embodied the baptismal covenant and called all of us to do the same by sharing an analysis of Mark 7:24-37 that describes the Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man of Sidon and Jesus himself as people who need to be open to hearing from God, people who need simply to be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking and seeing, and to people not like themselves.
Fr. Mike spent time relating the word from v. 34 εφφαθα [ephphatha] to ideas of openness and how the need to be open to others and to hearing from God has not diminished but has in fact increased since the time in which the Syrophoenician woman reminded Jesus of this part of his own ministry. The Syrophoenician woman calls Jesus to be open to a blindspot, a cognitive dissonance, between how he’s treating her and what he’s been teaching. Εφφαθα – be open to me, to us, to difference.
Jesus’ own tomb is opened by that magic word – εφφαθα – just as Jesus becomes open to the need and faith of the Syrophoenician woman and then opens the ears and mouth of the man in Sidon. Just as so many of us begin our own words with a prayer of “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O God.” Open us. Open us.
Fr. Mike never had to say explicitly that we must remember our Baptismal Covenant, but we were reminded of it nonetheless, as he spoke to us of Mark 7:24-37 and εφφαθα – we were opened to new ways of thinking about this scripture and of applying it to our lives today.
As people who “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving neighbor as self” and “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,” we cannot help hearing “εφφαθα,” as Fr Mike speaks it as a call to be open to every person in our midst today.
It might not be a Syrophoenician woman asking for healing for her daughter, but you might have a new kind of “neighbor” on whose behalf God is crying εφφαθα. Do you have ears to hear? Or shall Jesus come back and stick his fingers deep down in there?
On the website of St. Liz, the welcome message says, “We are an open, inviting, and inclusive community of Christ followers who seek to love our God and our neighbors by being a loving presence in the communities of Buda/Kyle and surrounding areas.” Sounds like Mark 7:24-37 and the Baptismal Covenant to me.
Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, has Juliet ask, “What’s in a name?” In what’s become a famous soliloquy (Act 2, Scene ii), Juliet wonders why her family and Romeo’s should keep their love from being known.
Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their use in communication and meaning making, has been applied by philosophers, linguists, anthropologists, theologians, and others. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1912) was a Swiss semiotician who worked in the subfield of semiology, focusing on the bilateral nature of the sign – the signifier and the signified. Saussure taught that words only have meaning in social context. What I say and think I mean only have meaning when you hear it and assign it value.
In The Princess Bride, a 1987 comedy-adventure film based on the 1973 book of the same name, Inigo Montoya says to Vizzini, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Finnish academic Osmo Wiio’s somewhat satiric, yet accurate, laws of communication, state, “If communication can fail, it will.”
I live in Texas. Our Legislature meets every two years. In the last several sessions, one topic has held traction in the House and the Senate – anti-LGBTQ (especially anti-trans) legislation. Session after session, activists and advocates in the legislature, in the lobby, and in the public square have thwarted efforts to disenfranchise LGBTQ Texans. This year was different.
Texas, as of Friday 19 May 2023, is near enacting a law banning diversity offices in public universities. SB14 passed and will go to Gov Abbot, who says he will sign it. This bill bans minors from receiving trans-affirming medical care. The House has approved SB15 which bans transgender athletes from participating in sports based on gender. A bill that would have ended a law criminalizing homosexuality in Texas did not make it to the floor.
What’s in a name?
My name is Brandon. It hasn’t always been, but it is now.
He and She are signifiers of gender. The person to whom the pronoun refers is the signified. My pronouns are he/him. I am male.
How do you know what someone means when they use a word to describe a group of which you’re a part? Does the word really mean what you think it means?
Supporters of SB14, during the hearings, described transgender Texans as a “social contagion.”[1]
Communication fails.
Even Jesus’ Law of love:
43 “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you 45 so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.46 If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.[2]
We enter a covenant with Jesus and reaffirm it again and again at Baptism:
I will follow the apostles’ teaching; I will be in community, break bread, pray; I will resist evil, repent, return; I will proclaim by word and example the Good News; I will seek and serve Christ in ALL PERSONS; I will LOVE my neighbor as myself; I will strive for justice and peace among all people; I will respect the dignity of every human being.
This love that Jesus teaches – of whose name we seem to have forgotten, whose signified is nearly lost, whose meaning seems absent these days – this love of Jesus we have allowed to fail to be communicated to our neighbors In Biblical Greek “love” is ἀγάπη (agape), considered the highest form of love – that between God and God’s Son – incarnational love – sacrificial love – perichoretic love – mysterious love. Nothing should be desired more or shared more than the love we receive from heaven.
When we promise to live baptismally, repeating those words everytime we support a newly baptized sibling in Christ, what are we signifying? What do we really mean? Do our words and actions toward all our neighbors, no matter their name, demonstrate the love of God – Three-in-One?
Living God's Mission 