Polite and Wild – The Holy Spirit

       As I’ve said before, I grew up in an evangelical, at times borderline charismatic, Episcopal church.  Unlike a lot of Mainline Protestant congregations, there was a significant focus on the Holy Spirit as St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church.  We were an Alpha training parish, where we taught others how to put on a ten-week crash course in Christianity, with an entire weekend retreat devoted to the work of the Holy Spirit.  Later, when I worked there as a youth minister, our Associate Rector regularly held healing services, where people would fall out in the Spirit.  That’s an usher assignment I will never forget.

       One of my responsibilities as youth minister was to organize the annual trip to the Creation Music Festival, a multi-day Contemporary Christian Music festival in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania.  We had such a large group attending, we got our own section of the campground and two private port-a-potties.  You can imagine how popular that made me.  We were there for three days and two nights and saw hours upon hours of live music.  Christian rock, Christian pop, Christian rap, and lots and lots of praise and worship music.  During the concert, I noticed that there were two kinds of Christian music fans.  On the one hand, there was the group of fairly reserved listeners.  They might move their lips to quietly sing along or sway a little bit if the groove hit just right, but for the most part, they listened and enjoyed the music rather stoically.  I associate this group with the coming of the Holy Spirit as told by John.  The other group was more Acts 2 in their response to the music.  Eyes closed, hands raised, songs bursting forth at the top of their lungs, and spontaneous dance were the marks of this second group.  They were clearly caught up in the Spirit in the more Pentecostal sense: big, brash, and bold.

       This Pentecost morning, we hear two very different stories about the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The more familiar one comes to us from Acts, chapter 2.  The eleven remaining original disciples, Matthias, a group of women, and likely a handful of others were all together celebrating the Feast of Shavuot.  One of three major Jewish festivals that brought pilgrims to holy city of Jerusalem, Shavuot, known in Greek as Pentecost because it comes fifty days after the Passover, is the feast of the first fruits.  The first loaves of bread baked from the early wheat harvest were dedicated to God in hopes of a fruitful remainder of the growing season.  Pilgrims from all over the Jewish Diaspora, the world as it was known to those in Israel, would come to bring their offerings.

       With the city teeming with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of tourists, the disciples were holed up in a house, having waited ten days since Jesus ascended into heaven, wondering when the power of the Holy Spirit might arrive.  All of sudden, the room was filled with a cacophony of wind, flames alighted upon each of them, and they began to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ in every language spoken by the Jewish faithful around the world.  The scene was so chaotic that it garnered the attention of passersby.  Through the narrow streets filled with people, the news of this strange event began to spread rapidly, and soon, the house was surrounded by thousands of onlookers wondering why they heard this group of clearly Galilean bumpkins speaking in the languages of the Egyptians, Parthians, Medes, and others.  Some assumed it was the result of an early celebration and they were filled with new wine, but others looked on in true amazement.

       From the midst of the chaos, Peter stepped forward and began to speak alone, though he seems to have been understood by the many.  He proclaimed to the crowd gathered that this was not the result of beer in their Cheerios, but rather that the Spirit they were filled with was the very Spirit of God who had come to fulfill the promise of the prophet Joel, that every human being would receive the Spirit.  Young or old, all genders, all classes, free or enslaved, it didn’t matter, the Spirit of God was available such that anyone who called on the name of the Lord might be saved.  Luke, the author of Acts, tells us that 3,000 people from every kingdom, language, people, and nation were added to the Jesus Movement that Pentecost Day, and from there, the Good News couldn’t help but be spread far and wide.

       This wasn’t the first run in the disciples had had with the Holy Spirit.  Fifty days earlier, they were once again gathered in a room.  This time it was locked out of fear.  Jesus had died on Friday, by Sunday, word was out that his body was gone and that he might have been raised from the dead, and the disciples were terrified.  Ten of them, along with various Marys and other women were holed up behind a locked door, when all of a sudden, Jesus was standing in their midst.  “Shalom,” he said to the stunned group before him, “peace be with you.”  Clearly, they were in shock, and so he showed them his hands and his side, and they finally began to realize who was in their midst.  Jesus, their rabbi and friend, who just a few days ago was dead on a cross, was alive!  “Shalom,” he said to them again, “peace be with you.”  Jesus then commissioned them to follow in his footsteps by proclaiming that the Kingdom of God had come near and breathed the Holy Spirit upon them.  This breath of new life was meant to be shared.   If you help others be set free from their sin, Jesus tells them, then their sins will be forgiven, but if you fail to offer them the Spirit of forgiveness, their sins will be retained.  Go, therefore, as the Father has sent me, and share the Good News.

       There isn’t a right or a wrong way to engage with the Holy Spirit.  Some of you might be more subtle in your Christianity, more Johannine, with the Spirit of Peace coming calmly as a breath of new life.  Others of you might associate more with the Holy Spirit in Acts, ready and willing to jump up and down showing others the power of God’s love.  Either way, polite or wild, what we learn from these two stories is that the Holy Spirit calls all of us to a ministry of evangelism, of sharing the Good News of God’s love to a world that desperately needs it.  Our job as disciples of Jesus is to encourage others to follow in the way of love.  We do so not in isolation, but as members of a community brought together by the Spirit precisely for this purpose, that the whole world might see and know the saving love of Jesus Christ.  Go, therefore, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and follow in the Way of Jesus, proclaiming in word and deed that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Come, Holy Spirit, come. Take our minds and think through them. Take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  Amen.

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How Long?

       Advent is such a wonky time of year.  While down on 11^th and College, the Methodists are having their Christmas Cantata this morning, we’re stuck with an imprisoned John the Baptist seemingly having second thoughts about his cousin, Jesus, being the Messiah.  Given all that our community has been through over the past few weeks, I can’t help but wonder why we can’t just get on with the joyful celebrations and familiar carols of the Christmas Season? If only God, and God’s church would conform to my expectations, all of this would be so much easier.  On second thought, I guess I can understand where John the Baptist was coming from.

Our passage begins with the surprise announcement that John is in prison.  Last we heard from John, he was in the wilderness baptizing people by the thousands and calling Pharisees and regular folk alike to repentance for the forgiveness of their sins.  Of course, people don’t always like it when you tell them they are sinners who need to repent.  Those who like it the least are often the powerful and the privileged, those who likely need to hear it the most.  Herod the tetrarch found John the Baptist interesting, but when he started to meddle in Herod’s personal life, condemning him for stealing his brother’s wife, Herod’s interest faded, and John found himself in prison, wondering what would come next.

       At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he entered the Synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, took the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and read “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  John surely knew of this famous first sermon.  Afterall, it had gotten Jesus run out of town and nearly killed.  After escaping the angry mob, Jesus went about fulfilling the words of Isaiah.  He healed the sick, preached good news to the poor, brought sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, raised the dead, and gave hope to the oppressed.  So, you can imagine John the Baptist, sitting in a dungeon in one of Herod’s palaces, wondering when Jesus is going to do the whole “freedom for prisoners” thing for him, when he gets the idea to send his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you sure you’re the one?”

       Jesus’ response to John’s disciples is telling.  He tells them to go back to John and tell him what they had seen and heard, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  Jesus knows that John knows that Jesus is the Messiah, whether he springs him from jail or not, because Jesus is doing exactly what the Messiah was supposed to do.  Its why John asked the question in the first place, but John was tired of waiting for the Messiah to impact him directly, and so he tried to speed things up, which is really, really, relatable.

       Advent is a season of waiting.  We wait for the birth of the Christ child on Christmas, and we wait for the return of Jesus with power and great glory at his second coming.  In the midst of all this waiting, it can be easy to being to wonder, like John the Baptist did, “how long O Lord?”  This year, the waiting seems particularly keen.  Today marks one year since dual tornadoes ripped through our community.  For those whose homes were directly impacted, it has been a year of waiting on insurance claims, contractors, window deliveries, inspections, and occupancy permits.  For those of us whose impact was more psychological, the waiting to hear from family and friends, the waiting to know how to help, the waiting to see progress, or the waiting for our favorite butcher shop or restaurant to reopen is its own kind of challenge.

As we have waited on anniversary events like tonight’s “Light the Path,” our community has tried to have a normal December, celebrating the Christmas season as usual.  Early last Saturday morning, life was once again disrupted as the Bowling Green Police and Warren County Sherriff shared news of a shooting threat against a protest planned downtown.  The possibility of violence led to the postponement of the Jaycees Christmas Parade, the Miracle Mile race, and the Mistletoe Market.  Suddenly, our community found itself waiting again for joy, for hope, and for peace.  Then again on Thursday, violent threats against high school students in our community forced us to wait for answers, arrests, and a sense of peace.  And of course, front of mind all week long was Linda Surface as we prayed for her family while they kept watch, waiting for her journey to end and to be reunited with her beloved Howard.  I could feel the weight of our collective waiting this week as the fog of grief would come and go among our staff, the many volunteers who came through the building, and those who called, texted, and emailed to ask after her.

All week, I’ve felt myself asking God, “How long, O Lord, must we wait?”  How long until the scars of the tornado are healed? How long until there is no longer violence?  How long until illness ceases, death’s sting is undone, and every tear is wiped from our eyes?  How long, O Lord, how long?  I guess that means that Advent is precisely the right season for us at this moment in time.  Despite the trees and decorations and Christmas music all around, it hasn’t yet felt like the Christmas season to me.  I’m still waiting.  Waiting for joy. Waiting for healing.  Waiting for the good news of God in Christ to really take hold of my heart again.

I suspect I’m not alone in this.  It has been a difficult week, month, year, or longer for many of you as well.  And despite the desire to paste on a smile and to cover the sadness with the smell of cookies and the sounds of carols, our first step toward true joy this holiday season is to invite God to stir up some power, with great might to come among us, and with bountiful grace to speedily help and deliver us.  So that’s what I’m going to do today.  Tonight, we’ll remember the destruction of the tornadoes.  Tomorrow and Tuesday, we’ll mourn and tell stories of Linda (and Howard), we’ll mix laughter and tears, and ponder what is really the end of an era.  Who knows what Wednesday will bring, but all the while, the Holy Spirit will be here as our comforter and guide, reminding us that we do not wait alone, that God is with us, that Jesus has experienced our pain, and that there is always the promise that in Christ, mourning may last for a season, but joy will come in the morning.  So come Holy Spirit, in this time of waiting and grief, come fill the hearts of your faithful, kindle in us the fire of your love, and speedily help and deliver us. Amen.

The Scandal of Particularity

       I graduated from seminary fifteen years ago last month, which is really hard to believe.  Some days, it feels like a month ago; others, it feels like fifty years.  The hard truth of being fifteen years out of seminary is that I don’t really remember much of what I learned.  Between two kids, two jobs, the BP oil spill, a two-year pandemic, and the December 11^th tornadoes, I’m lucky to know my name most days.  Still, there are a few things that have remained stuck in the cobwebs of my mind.  One of them came floating back to the forefront of my thoughts this week as I prayed through the Acts lesson preparing to preach.  It is called the Scandal of Particularity.  This is the notion of the absurdity that God would choose to enter humanity as a particular person, in a particular place, at a particular time, among a particular culture.  That the Second Person of the Trinity came to earth as a Jewish male, in first century Palestine, born to working class parents from a backwater town is, in many ways, a scandalous idea as it puts so many limitations on the God of the universe that it is nearly impossible to believe.

       Yet, we do believe it.  We believe it because Jesus claimed it.  Even when pressed by Philip to just show us the Father, Jesus says, with all the confidence of God in flesh, that if you have seen him, this shaggy bearded, rough handed, occasionally grumpy, wandering rabbi, you have seen the Father.  That’s all well and good, but the further you get, in both space and time, from Jesus and his disciples, the harder it is to wrap your head around this very particular person actually being God incarnate.  That’s why, forty days after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, his disciples pressed him even further.  “Lord, now that you have been raised from the dead, now that you’ve made your resurrected body known to many who already believed in you, now that you’ve escaped time and space only to return to it again, is now the time when you will finally restore the kingdom to Israel and set everything right?”  The disciples want to know, definitively, when all this particularity is going to go universal.  When will the heavens open and God’s reign finally be known upon the whole earth?

       What happens next, however, is more of the same.  The heavens are opened, but instead of God coming down to earth to fix everything humanity had messed up, Jesus is lifted up and seated at God’s right hand.  Like it was on Good Friday, the disciples are once again left alone to figure out how what they learned from Jesus is going to change the world.  Jesus had told them to wait, that someone else was coming who would empower them to take the Good News and share it beyond the particularity of Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and, ultimately, the ends of the earth.  For ten days they waited, they gathered in prayer, and they wondered, “what next?”  In the meantime, the city of Jerusalem began to swell with tourists.  Tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of the Jewish faithful came to celebrate the Pentecost Festival, an annual remembrance of the giving of the Law to Moses by the offering of the first fruits of the harvest to God at the Temple.

       The very ethnically Jewish city teemed with people from all kinds of different cultures.  Since the exile by the Assyrians in 733 BCE and exacerbated by the Babylonian exile in 597 and Roman occupation in 63 BCE, the Jewish diaspora had led to Hebrews living all over the known world.  They had intermarried, learned different languages, and settled into new cultures, even as they remained faithful to the Jewish traditions and festivals.  So it was that on the Pentecost, the fiftieth day after the Passover, faithful Jewish Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontins, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs were all in the holy city of Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and caused the Good News of God in Christ to move beyond its original, particular audience, to be heard by the whole world.

       The Spirit arrived with wind and flame, filling the house in which the disciples were holed up, and alighting on each of them, filling them to overflowing with the Holy Spirit: Advocate and Guide.   They began to speak, each in a language foreign to them, and tell the Good News.  What’s so awesome about this story is that even as the Church grew from 120 to thousands in a few hours, God’s affinity for the particularity of humanity never went away.  God didn’t make it such that everyone miraculously learned to understand Hebrew in order to join the Way of Jesus, but rather, God made the disciples each to speak the particular language of those gathered in the city to offer sacrifices.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles spoke across lines that have divided humanity forever: language, culture, ethnicity, race, gender, and politics, while never asking anyone to give up who they were as human beings to follow Jesus.

       That’s not to say that following Jesus won’t change us.  God loves us just the way we are, but God loves us too much to leave us that way.  Following Jesus will require sacrifices as we listen for the Spirit’s guiding, seek to love our neighbors, and grow in compassion.  Following Jesus will not cause us to give up who we are as human beings, however.  Straight or gay.  Trans or cis gender.  Black, white, Hispanic, Arab, or Asian.  UK, UofL, or meet and right Bama fan.  The particularities of who you are in the fullness of being made in the image of God is welcome into the Body of Christ on Pentecost Day.  What’s more, God doesn’t just welcome each of us into the fold but goes so far as to invite us in the particular language and idioms with which we are most comfortable.  The Body of Christ truly is open to all flesh.

       As we celebrate the Day of Pentecost and enter the long season to follow, I invite you to listen to what the Spirit is saying to you?  Amidst the particularities of your own life, where is the Spirit inviting you to change and grow?  Whom is the Spirit asking you to know and to love?  What is the new thing that God is up to in your life and in the life of this particular community of faith called Christ Episcopal Church?  Listen carefully and hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.  Amen.

ACTS, with a focus on the T

       Nearly a quarter century after my Young Life days came to an end, there is plenty that I would quibble with their leadership about these days.  My understanding of God’s grace, of atonement, human sexuality, and gender have all changed in the last 25 years. Yet, I still find myself recalling fondly many of the memories from those halcyon days.  One of the best lessons I learned from my Young Life leader, Fletch, is the ACTS form of prayer.  Not as in the book of Acts, from which the Pentecost Day story comes, but the acrostic, ACTS.  When my prayer life gets dry, I’m grateful that the foundation of ACTS is always there to catch me.

       I have probably told you this before, but in case you don’t recall, ACTS stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.   A prayer that follows that pattern can never go wrong.  Adoration, as defined in our Book of Common Prayer, “is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, asking nothing but to enjoy God’s presence.”[1]  This comes first as a means to enter into the presence of God in prayer.  Rather than flinging our requests up to some far away God, we seek first to come into God’s presence, so that we can enter into a conversation with the God of all creation.  Confession, an action we do corporately every Sunday, is the act of acknowledging our sins in the hope of repentance and forgiveness.  It comes second so as to wipe the slate clean before diving into deeper conversation.  Thanksgiving is also defined in the Prayer Book as the act of thanking God “for all the blessings of this life, for our redemption, and for whatever draws us closer to God.”  I often wonder if human beings put this third, not because it makes ACTS easier to remember than ACST, but because we feel the need to butter God up before we move onto the fourth step.  Supplication is asking God to do or provide something.  Supplication can be split into two foci: intercession, wherein we bring to God the needs of others, and petition, where we ask God’s will be done upon our own needs.

       ACTS is a simple way to begin, or restart for the 4,000^th time, a routine of regular prayer and conversation with God.  If I’m honest, however, I’ve found the Thanksgiving piece to be increasingly difficult over the last 15 months.  I suspect I’m not the only one.  As I said on Wednesday evening, COVID-19 has taken so much from us, there have been times when it felt nearly impossible to come up with things to be thankful for.  When you are working, schooling, cooking, cleaning, and everything else from home, it can be hard to even be thankful for that dang roof over your head.  I guess that’s why I’ve found myself drawn not to the typical Pentecost lesson from Acts, or even Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit in John, but to Paul’s short little lesson on the Holy Spirit from Romans.

       “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought.”  Tell me about it.  Whether it isn’t knowing how to give thanks for the little things when COVID was raging, or not knowing how to pray through such weighty issues as police violence against our black and brown siblings, assaults on the democratic process in this country, white supremacist Christian nationalism, or the return of mass shootings in the post-COVID world, I have found myself stuck, not knowing how to pray as I ought, again and again.  Thankfully, the redemption of the world is not dependent on my ability to pray, and even if it was, my ability to pray isn’t even dependent on my ability to pray.  “The Spirit helps us in our weakness…” Paul asserts, “that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

       Off the top of my head, I can think of three famous prayer scenes in movies from the last three decades.  There is the grace prayed over Christmas dinner by Aunt Bethany that is nothing more than the Pledge of Allegiance in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  There is the grace prayed to tiny infant Jesus in his golden fleece diaper by Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights.  And finally, there is the dinner prayer of Sister Mary Clarence in Sister Act.  “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts … and, yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of no food, I shall fear no hunger. We want you to give us this day our daily bread … and to the republic for which it stands … by the power vested in me, I now pronounce us, ready to eat. Amen.”[2]  None of them know how to pray as they ought, and even though each prayer is ridiculous in its own right, I still firmly believe that the Spirit can translate even those prayers into words of thanks and praise.  Just imagine what the Holy Spirit can do with whatever prayers you or I might come up with.

       To further assuage my worry that my prayers aren’t up to snuff, Paul goes on to remind us that the reason the Spirit can take our deepest prayers to God using language that beyond words is that the mind of the Spirit is fully known to God the Father.  As we’ll hear again on Trinity Sunday next week, there is no brokenness in the relationship of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The mind of the Spirit, which knows what is on the hearts of each of us who are baptized into the Body of Christ, is the same mind that is in God the Father.  The Spirit knows that even in my inability to be thankful during this difficult season, my desire to be thankful is enough. 

       Sometimes, I worry that the reason the Holy Spirit doesn’t get much love in the denominations of the former Mainline Christianity is that we think we’re too proper for such things.  The Spirit is so often associated with ecstatic outbursts like praying in tongues or Benny Hinn type healing miracles, and we prefer a more polite version of God, thank you very much.  On this Day of Pentecost, however, in the midst of a long, difficult journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, a long overdue racial reckoning, and a highly polarized and often violent political climate, I wonder if we might be well served to remember that for all the wind and flames and foreign languages, what the Spirit is really about in our lives is carrying the mind of humans to heart of God, and mind of God to the heart of humans.

This morning, as we gather to celebrate Holy Eucharist together for the first time since March of 2020, I’m reminded that Eucharist means Thanksgiving.  We begin this morning, with the help of the Holy Spirit, a long-overdue season of Thanksgiving, for all that is past, for what is, for what is to come, but especially for the gift of God’s grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.  Come Holy Spirit.  Come and intercede to God on our behalf.  Come and show us the will of the Father.  Come and teach us to be thankful.  Come and refresh us, that we might help renew the face of the earth.  Amen.

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[1] BCP, p. 857

[2] Thanks to Pastor Charlie Woodward at Epiphany Lutheran Church for transcribing this one. https://www.epiphanydayton.org/sighs-too-deep-for-words/

The Spirit?

I think I can understand how the Ephesians felt when Paul asked, “Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit?” That gut sinking feeling that goes with feeling out of the loop or unable to keep the conversation going is one of the worst, in my opinion. This is a silly example, but one that I’ve experienced more than once recently. I have a friend who has really enjoyed the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. A month or so ago, he asked me about it, excited to talk about the season finale, but I hadn’t seen it. We were talking last week, and, still excited, he asked me about it again. I still haven’t watched it.

It stinks to not be able to share in someone else’s excitement. My friend can’t simply lay hands on me and impart two seasons’ worth of content in my brain, but Paul was able to pray for the Ephesians and God willingly poured the Holy Spirit upon them with power and might. All it took was a willingness to experience the joy of God and Paul’s willingness to share the gift he had received.

I wonder if the general shyness Episcopalians have around evangelism is in part due to our limited comfort with the Holy Spirit. As a Church that was focused in the Apostles Creed for most of our existence, we’ve had very little liturgical pedagogy in the Spirit. This underdeveloped understanding of the Spirit has, for too long, robbed us of the joy of the the Spirit’s gifts and the desire to share them with others. Rather than living lives imbued with the Fruit of the Spirit like patience, kindness, humility, and self-control, we take to Twitter to rip one another’s pandemic liturgical choices and puff up our own liturgy and enlightened theology.

Perhaps this Sunday, as we recall the Baptism of our Lord, we should pray for some of that Spirit that descended upon Jesus at the Jordan and upon the Ephesians when Paul laid hands upon them. God is always willing to share the Spirit with us, and we should be ready to do the same.

Overcome Evil with Good

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest, I’ve felt a bit overcome by evil this week.  Monday brought with it yet another video of yet another black man, Jacob Blake, being shot by a police officer who reacted not out of his training, but out of a systemic and culturally engrained fear of black bodies.  Wednesday’s news revolved around the story of a white teenager, raised on steady diet of hatred and fear, who shot multiple protesters, killing two, with a gun almost bigger than he is, only to be allowed to walk right past police officers, cross state lines, and return home to sleep in his own bed. Lest Mother Nature be left out, we had two hurricanes, including the incredibly destructive Hurricane Laura, wreak havoc, throughout the southern United States.  And let’s not forget that amid COVID-19, school started this week for the students of Western, Warren County, and Bowling Green Independent while news of positive tests among school aged children and young adults rattled through our inboxes and across our television screens.  Fear and hatred and violence and pain and suffering seem to be ever present.  They weigh heavy on my heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Evil seems impossible to overcome.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

There was a point this week where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say anything more to you than these words from Paul to the Christians in Rome.  They are a message of hope that feels almost out of reach these days.  In my heart, I know that I am called to preach the hope of the resurrection at all times, but as the week went by, finding that word of hope felt more and more difficult. By Thursday evening, when my sermons are usually fully drafted, I had nothing but a couple of false starts, as I searched for hope in the midst of systematic evil.  I kept searching because, despite it all, I know that earlier in Romans Paul promises that hope does not disappoint us as God’s love has already been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.  Hope may feel beyond our grasp, evil may feel overwhelming, but by the grace of God, we have the opportunity to overcome evil with good through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Thursday evening, the Trustees and Council of the Diocese of Kentucky met via Zoom.  As is the custom at T&C meetings, the Bishop offered some opening remarks.  He noted, as I have here, how difficult things continue to be amidst the dual pandemics of racial injustice and COVID-19 before he reminded us of our call to shine the light of hope in our communities.  By way of a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bishop White called us as leaders in the Diocese of Kentucky to not be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.  “Christianity stands or falls,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”[1]

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

In order to find our voice as harbingers of the goodness of God, those of us who claim to follow Jesus must side with the vulnerable, the weak, the outcast, and the oppressed.  On the broad scale, Episcopalians like to think we do this naturally, but we also tend to take a lot of pride in claiming 11 US Presidents as Episcopalians, St. John’s Lafayette Square as the Church of the Presidents, and the Diocese of Washington’s Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul as the National Cathedral.  Our collective past would have us aligned pretty closely with the worship of the kinds of power that since the beginning of civilization have threatened to overcome good with evil and violence.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

In order to help us live into this call, Paul offers a few specific keys to success.  Love one another with mutual affection.  Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal.  Be ardent in spirit.  Serve the Lord.  In light of the dual pandemics and the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two of these are speaking deeply to me this weekend.  First, Paul calls on Christians to outdo one another in showing honor.  Honor is one of those old-timey words that gets used often in the church, but so rarely in society that I’m not sure we really know what it means anymore.  To honor someone simply means to regard them with respect.  In order to outdo one another with honor, we must seek to respect all who have been made in the image of God.  Christians who seek to overcome evil with good must learn to see the other, especially those whom we have been taught to hate or fear, as beloved by God, and worthy of honor.  Hearing that quote from Bonhoeffer on Thursday night, I realized why I struggled to find a word to preach this week.  I felt powerless to the societal evils that threaten to overwhelm and saw that powerlessness as a bad thing, when, in truth, powerlessness is exactly what is called for.  Setting aside our positions of privilege to outdo one another in showing honor is the beginning of our society’s path toward wholeness.  This is not easy work. Emptying oneself of power and privilege is a learned behavior.  More often than not, it is a lesson hard-learned as we work to overcome the things that our society, our churches, our politicians, and sometimes even our families of origin, have taught us.  Which brings me to the second admonition that is gnawing at me today, Paul’s call to be ardent in spirit.  Paul is always good for a word or two that need some exploration. I had to look up ardent. I’ll save you the effort and tell you that, in the Biblical context, ardent means to burn hot.  While the world has always taught humans to burn hot with anger, fear, and hatred at those who differ from us, Christians who seek to overcome evil must seek to burn hot with the Holy Spirit. It is only by the Spirit’s help that we can learn to give up the pursuit of power and seek to love our neighbors. It is only by the Spirit’s help that we are able to live lives marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  It only by the Spirit’s help that we can, ultimately, serve the Lord.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

In case you haven’t noticed, these words are becoming something of a mantra for me.  In a time when evil feels as real and as threatening as I’ve ever known, my prayer for myself, for you, for our nation, and for this world is that we might not be overcome by evil, but that with the help of the fire of the Holy Spirit burning within us, we might outdo one another in showing honor, setting aside our positions of privilege to listen to and lift up those who have been marginalized and systematically dishonored for so long.  It is a long and arduous journey toward self-emptying love that at times will seem impossible, but the invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus has never been easy.  Do not be overcome by evil, my dear friends, but by the power of the Spirit, find comfort in the hope that one day, with God’s help, we will overcome evil with good.  Amen.

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), ‘My Strength is Made Perfect in Weakness’ a sermon on 2 Corinthians 12:9 found in ‘The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’

More than enough

One of the great gifts of ordained ministry is the opportunity to engage in continuing education.  In my almost 12 years as a priest, I’ve had the privilege of traveling around the country, learning from some of the leading voices in practical theology and liturgy.  Of course, as many of you probably know from experience, continuing education opportunities can be intimidating at times, especially early in one’s career.  I still remember vividly my first continuing education event way back in November of 2008.  I had come across a conference put on by the United Methodist Church called “Worship in a Postmodern Accent” that just sounded really cool.  I booked a flight to Oklahoma City, everyone’s favorite vacation spot, for a few days at some non-descript, airport-adjacent hotel.  It really was a fantastic conference, filled with impactful alternative worship experiences, lectures by some of the most creative minds in worship planning, and good fellowship with people some whom I still have contact through social media.  For all the good that weekend had to offer, I also still vividly remember the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy that threatened to swallow me whole.

In November of 2008, I had been a priest for half a minute.  I was twenty-eight years old, and still not sure what this life of ordained ministry would really look like.  There I was, mixing it up with some of most imaginative and talented people in their field, and I began to wonder, “Do I even belong?  Not just here in Oklahoma, but in the priesthood.”  It all came to a head on the second day, in one of the lower level meeting rooms, at three o’clock in the afternoon.  Jonny Baker, then-head of the Fresh Expressions Office in the Church of England, had set up a labyrinth experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  A dozen or so prayer stations had transformed a room with loud carpet and foldable walls into a sanctuary.  There was a working television at one station, a sand box at another, and various light displays.  It all led to the center where Jonny had somehow created a flowing river in this hotel ballroom.  As I took in what was happening in that space, a little voice crept into my head and said, over and over again, “You’ll never be this creative.  Give it up.  Why waste your time?”  Still, I plodded through the labyrinth because I had signed up for it and I’m a One on the Enneagram.  In the middle, at the bank of the manmade river, we were supposed to write down our fears on a piece of paper, and I kid you not, fold it into an origami boat, to float down the river.  This really happened.  By that point, I knew my fear all too well.  I was afraid I wasn’t enough.  I was afraid that I would never be enough.  Not just to create some crazy alternative worship service someday, but that I’d never be enough to be a good priest.  I grabbed a pen from the bucket and began to write.  A few letters in, the pen dried up.  Of course, it did.  I couldn’t even do that right.  I looked down in exasperation at the pen in my hand and noticed that it wasn’t your typical gray Bic that you can buy a dime a dozen.  It was a promotional pen, not for Saint Swithin’s by the Sea or the United Methodist Church, but it said, “God doesn’t call the equipped.  God equips the called.”  I thanked God for the moment of reassurance, tucked that dried up pen in my pocket, and have been mostly able to trust God to sustain my ministry ever since.

That experience came to mind this week as I read the story of Jesus’ baptism by John at the Jordan River.  Last we heard, Jesus was a twelve-year-old boy who had stayed behind at the Temple in Jerusalem while his parents made their way back to Nazareth after the Passover Feast.  Last we heard, Mother Becca was inviting us to think about how, during those three long days, Mary must have struggled with her own inadequacy in the call to be the Mother of God.[1]  Today, we’ve fast-forwarded 18 years. Jesus is now about thirty and at the Jordan River asking John for baptism.  John knows he’s not adequate for the task at hand. He couldn’t even tie the thong of Jesus’ sandal.  John shouldn’t baptize Jesus, Jesus should baptize John, but Jesus is resolute.  John is more than enough for the job because this is the way to “fulfill all righteousness.”  My friend Evan Garner spent a lot of time thinking about that phrase this week.  It’s an odd turn of phrase in Greek and it is very difficult to capture the idiom in English translations.  Righteousness is one of those fifty-cent church words that gets used a lot, but I’m not sure any of us really knows what it means.  Joseph was described as righteous when he decided to dismiss Mary quietly after she was found to be pregnant out of wedlock.  He was a rule follower, but more than that, he was compassionate.  Righteousness was found in the delicate balance of doing what was allowable under God’s law, while also doing what was best for Mary; not taking it to the extreme.  Having Mary stoned to death was also allowable under the law, but it would seem that was not the righteous or just option for Joseph.  The Contemporary English Version, an authorized Biblical translation for use in the Episcopal Church translates the whole sentence as “For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do.”  Evan argues, and I agree, that what Jesus is saying to John isn’t that this moment of baptism is the capstone in God’s work of redemption for the world, but rather, it was, in that moment, the right next step in God’s ongoing unveiling of the Kingdom on earth.[2]  That’s what the season of Epiphany is all about, glimpses into God’s plan for salvation, spotlights on the still ongoing work of restoring creation to wholeness.

As Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were torn in two, the Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice from heaven spoke, maybe only to Jesus, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Here too, the Greek is hard to bring into English.  Well pleased isn’t a bad translation, but another possible rendering is “whom I have gladly chosen.”  Jesus, the human manifestation of God the Son, had been chosen from before time and forever.  We won’t hear the Temptation story for a couple of months, but in all three Synoptic Gospels, we are told that immediately following his baptism, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.  As a kind of pre-emptive encouragement, God affirms Jesus’ calling, names him as beloved, and reminds him that he has all he needs for what lies ahead.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember any voices from heaven at my baptism.  Still, whether you were baptized at 6 months or 60 years, I firmly believe that in that moment, as water ran down your brow, God named you as a gladly chosen member of Body of Christ, heir to the Kingdom of Heaven, and co-worker in the ongoing work of fulfilling all righteousness.  Through the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit and the specific spiritual gifts imparted upon each of us in baptism every one of us has been equipped for ministry. With God’s help, none of us is inadequate for the task at hand, whether that task is building chairs for a new Sunday school classroom, leading a book study, packing sack lunches, or sharing the Good News of God’s work in your life.  God is still at work in the world, fulfilling all righteousness, and invites each of us to take our part in it.  When you feel overwhelmed.  When you feel like you aren’t enough.  Just remember, you, like Jesus, are loved by God, you were gladly chosen for the task at hand, and you are specifically equipped for ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit.  God doesn’t call the equipped.  God equips the called for the salvation of the whole world.  Amen.

[1] https://beccakello.wordpress.com/2020/01/05/three-days-time/

[2] https://evandgarner.blogspot.com/2020/01/fulfill-all-righteousness.html

Speedy Delivery

It isn’t just the holy Scriptures that are living and active, but truly every written text can be multivalent, carrying many different levels of meaning and open to various interpretations.  This came to mind this morning as I read the Collect appointed for Advent 3 and my mind was immediately taken to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’s mailman, Mr. McFeely who’s catch phrase was “Speedy Delivery.”  In the prayer, sadly, the only “stir up” prayer we have left in our current Prayer Book, we that God’s abundant grace and mercy might “speedily help and deliver us.”

It is likely due to the fact that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is in theaters now and that Mr. Rogers has been in the media spotlight of late that I heard this prayer in a new and different way, but I think that’s how God works through written texts.  As we read words, especially those that are familiar to us, with intentionality, God, through the Holy Spirit, is at work in our minds, causing synapses to fire, memories to be triggered, and new meaning to burst forth.  So it was this morning as the words I’ve read hundreds to times “speedily help and deliver us” made me think of Mr. McFeely and took me down a rabbit hole of what we mean when we ask God for deliverance.

My first stop was my trusty copy of the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms.  That’s right, when they’re not holding internationally famous dog shows, the folks at Westminster are publishing dictionaries for nerds.  In it, the word deliverance is noted to have come to us from the Latin deliberare which means “to liberate.”  The deliverance we ask for in this prayer and hope for in our faith in Christ is liberation – freedom from our enslavement to sin.  It makes sense, then, that we would pray for such deliverance to come quickly.  Anyone who has taken honest stock of their lives will realize that the consequences of sin are what make life hard.  Broken relationships, dysfunctional systems, out of balance power dynamics, hurt, and sadness are just some of the things we pray would end “speedily” when we ask God for deliverance.

Next, I cracked open Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the American Prayer Book, which expanded my understanding even further.  Hatchett notes that this phrase “speedily help and deliver” is a 1662 expansion of the original prayer from c. 750 AD.  By adding the word help, the revisers of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer made this an intentionally Advent-y prayer.  “… this prayer sets forth better than the others the themes of the two advents: the first in which [Christ] came in great humility, and the second in which He comes in power; the first in which He came to save (read, “deliver”), the second in which He comes to help and relieve.

So, a random synapse fire helped me learn some new things today and will deepen my prayer life going forward.  I hope it helps you too, dear reader.

Hope in the Spirit

As I helped Eliza with her 5^th grade math homework this week, I realized two things.  First, they are apparently doing algebra in 5th grade now.  Second, I realized how little math I remember beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  I never thought I’d forget to “please excuse my dear aunt Sally,” but alas, I’ve replaced it with some very limited basics of Biblical Greek, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, and since we had kids, the plot and major characters of every Disney movie ever made.  While I’m only a little bit sorry that I don’t remember much about how to solve for x, I am profoundly grateful to have made all kinds of new memories, to have learned all sorts of new things, and to have a computer with one hundred thousand times more computing power than Apollo 11 in my pocket at all times.

Two of the few things I can recall amidst the fading memories of my seminary days are lessons I learned in my Old Testament class.  Our professor, Dr. Cook, was a fan of the Canonical Method of Old Testament criticism.  This method says that the books of the Hebrew Bible should not be read in isolation.  Verses and Chapters should be read within the wider context of the book from which they come and even whole books themselves should be read with an eye toward how they fit within the larger narrative of Scripture, God’s love story for creation.  Dr. Cook also taught us to pay attention when reading the prophets and to note that any prophecy of destruction would be followed soon-there-after by a promise of some sort of restoration.  It might only be an assurance for a few, but the prophets never left the people of God without some hope for the future.

Somewhere this week, between basic algebra and the Canonical Method, I ran across an article by Casey Thornburgh Sigmon from the Saint Paul School of Theology, who suggests that understanding Isaiah eleven requires looking at the bigger picture.[1]  I was immediately reminded of Dr. Cook’s teaching and began to take a larger look at our Old Testament lesson for this morning.  It begins with a word of hope.  It is the promise of restoration to the people of Israel.  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” If it is true that the prophets never offer judgment without hope, then we can reasonably assume that a word of future hope is rarely offered in isolation from past devastation.  Turning back to Isaiah chapter ten, we see the tail-end of a long prophetic oracle on the impending destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Judah.  In her article Professor Sigmon notes that in order to understand this image of the stump of Jesse we first have to see how the end of the Assyrian army is promised by way of some very woodsy imagery.  “The Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power: the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low.  The Lord will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.”  Chapter ten ends with forest felled completely.  All that is left are stumps as far as the eye can see.  The trees of Judah destroyed by the Assyrians.  The trees of Assyria destroyed by the power of God.  It is a barren wasteland, stark as the bleakness of mid-winter.

As we turn to chapter eleven, suddenly, hope springs forth from hopelessness.  From a stump that is as good as dead, we see the tiniest shoot breaking forth, reaching toward the sun.  In the midst of the reign of the destructive, idolatrous King Ahaz, Isaiah looks forward in hope by hearkening back to the ideal model of kingship for the Israelites, King David.  Yet, even with David in his sights, the prophet is careful to avoid the language of any sort of human monarch, but rather builds this future redemption exclusively upon the power of God to restore all things.  The leader who will bring forth life from the stump that was left after the destruction of Judah must be one who is grounded in the Spirit of God; a spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord.  With these gifts of the Spirit, the leader of this renewed Israel will judge with equity, will care for the needs of the poor, and will strike down the evil with nothing more than a breath.

Over the years, one of the three things that I have filled my head with in the place of algebra is the plot to almost every Disney movie ever made.  In 2016, Disney released a film called Zootopia.  It’s a fantastic film that everyone should watch, no matter their age. It tells the story of a bunny name Judy Hopps who becomes the first rabbit police officer in the city of Zootopia, a city built upon the idea that predators and prey can live together in harmony.  The city slogan is “Anyone can be anything,” but that gets put to the test when predators, who had evolved beyond their ferocious pasts, suddenly find themselves reverting to their “primitive savage ways” for some unexplained reason.  The whole stability of Zootopia becomes threatened by fear and the love of power.  Since seeing that movie in the theatre three years ago, I can’t read Isaiah’s portrayal of the peaceable kingdom – wolf and lamb, leopard and baby goat, calf and lion all living together in harmony – without thinking about the story of Zootopia and how precarious the peace that God promises is, unless it is built upon a foundation of the knowledge of the Lord, the pursuit of justice, and the love of neighbor.

Heard in the light of King Ahaz and his fondness for self-preservation, worshipping false gods, and entering into treaties with the enemies of God, Isaiah’s vision of a new godly leader for Israel would have been met by hearts filled with joyful expectation.  Reading Isaiah some 2,700 years later and through the lens of our faith in Jesus Christ, it is easy to see how this vision of a restored Israel became a popular one for Christians looking for the promise of a Messiah in the Hebrew Bible.  It is easy to see how this vision of the peaceable kingdom became a popular one for Christians looking toward a hope-filled future after the second coming of Christ.  Even so, we don’t have to read this text as only describing what is possible through the coming of the Messiah or the second-coming of the Christ.  This vision of a future built on peace is possible at every level of society – individual, church, community, nation, and even the world, if we set our hope, as Isaiah would remind us, on the power of the Spirit of God.

While we shouldn’t exclusively read this lesson through the lens of our faith in Christ, as disciples of Jesus, it is our natural tendency to see the promise of the shoot of Jesse’s tree as the promise of the Messiah who we believe to be Jesus of Nazareth.  We believe that in baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit promised by the prophet.  That same Spirit of God lives within each us, guiding us toward wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  With our eyes fixed on the hope of the holy mountain of God, this Advent season, we join with the beleaguered people of God throughout the generations and search with joyful expectation for the shoot of new life breaking forth from the stump of sin and death.  Like our ancestors in the faith, we don’t wait passively, but rather, with God’s help, we live our lives seeking to be at peace with our neighbors, caring for those live on the margins, working toward justice for all people, and striving for the day of righteousness when we will join with the heavenly chorus and sing out the truth for all creation, “Rejoice! Rejoice!  Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel!”  Amen.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4316

The Potential Energy of the Spirit

My high school physics teacher, Mr. Amidon, suffered from narcolepsy.  As a result, he would fall asleep at random times throughout the day.  Most often, he’d zonk out at his desk, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to fall asleep while writing notes on the board or even while showing us an experiment.  As high school students are wont to do, we took advantage of Mr. Amidon’s ailment and were very careful to not wake him up.  As a result, I don’t remember a whole lot of what I was supposed to learn in high school physics, which is probably why college physics was so difficult for me, which is probably part of why I’m a priest today and not an engineer like high school Steve had planned.  Anyway, one of the few memories I have of high school physics is the experiments we ran highlighting the differences and relationships between potential and kinetic energy.  The most obvious of these experiments were aided by gravity.  This higher we held a ball above the ground, the more potential energy is possessed.  As it dropped, that potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, and then it bounced upward, returning kinetic energy back into potential while losing some of its overall energy to friction and ball deformation.  This process repeats until all the potential energy gets transferred through friction and deformation and you are left with the ball at rest on the ground.

While Mr. Amidon’s class sticks with me because of the narcolepsy, the power of potential energy has stuck with me over years.  It came back to me this week as I prayed for Mila Veletanlic and Thomas Stiles, whom we will baptize this morning.  As I thought about Mr. Amidon, I came to realize that, the baptismal service, especially on All Saints’ Sunday, and especially when we’re baptizing little ones, is where the potential energy of the Holy Spirit is the most obviously apparent.  This day is set aside to remember all the saints, not just those who are considered hall of famers, who carry a capital S Saint in front of their names like Saint Paul or Saint Mary Magdalene.  On All Saints’ Sunday, we remember everyone who has ever been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and give thanks to God for the work that the Holy Spirit has done through them – the way in which the potential energy of their baptism was lived out in the kinetic energy of the faith.

Toward the tail end of the baptismal liturgy, Mother Becca will say a prayer for Mila and Thomas that, while new to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, restores to the baptismal liturgy a part of our ancient past, asking God to bestow upon these two children, both just infants, the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, sound judgment, endurance, knowledge, reverence, and wonder.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy
Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the
forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of
grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them
an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to
persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy
and wonder in all your works. Amen.
It will be quite a while before these two will be called upon to utilize their gifts, but today we celebrate their saintly potential to live lives of faithfulness to the honor and glory of God.

In Christ Church 101, we spend one of our class sessions talking about the Gift of the Spirit.  According to Saint Paul, the charisms given in baptism are particular gifts that each of us are given for the upbuilding of the Church.  Some are called to be apostles, some teachers, some evangelists, some intercessors, and on and on.  In baptism, the Holy Spirit bestows upon each of us unique and special gifts, but to all of us, these seven are given.

The restoration of the prayer for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit brings back to our awareness the potential energy that God imparts upon each us in baptism.  This potential energy is most apparent on All Saints’ Sunday, as the sevenfold gifts are easily tied directly to each of the Beatitudes that we hear in Matthew’.  It was Saint Augustine of Hippo, a fifth century theologian, who first found in the Beatitudes each of the seven gifts.[1]  To Augustine, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” brings to mind the gift of wonder.  It is our poverty in spirit that allows us to find amazement in the richness of God’s grace and mercy.  For Augustine, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” was a call to knowledge.  In this case, mourning wasn’t about the death of a loved one, but the result of our coming to know our own sinfulness.  We rightly grieve the role that we have played in our broken relationships with God and with our neighbors.  “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” corresponds to the gift of reverence as we can only show deep respect and honor toward Almighty God when we are not puffing ourselves up or putting ourselves in the place of God by judging our neighbors.  Those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” are blessed with the gift of endurance as they work tirelessly to bring about that which they desire.  By enduring in good works, they will one day find satisfaction for their hunger and thirst.  Good judgment is the gift of those who are merciful as, in deep awareness of God’s forgiveness, they choose to forgive; in knowing fully God’s love for them, they show love for their neighbors.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” infers those who have been gifted with understanding.  Even though no human eye can see God, those who have experienced God in their hearts can truly understand what it means to follow the way of God’s love.  Finally, those called to be peacemakers are living into the gift of wisdom; setting aside passion and rebellion, they seek only the peace that passes all understanding.

None of us knows how these two young children will live out their giftedness.  Even as mature adults, many of us who have been baptized into the faith might not be quite sure how we live out this kind of giftedness, but we can all rest in the knowledge that it is only with God’s help that we are able to claim the blessing that is the exercising of our baptismal gifts of wisdom, understanding, sound judgment, endurance, knowledge, reverence, and wonder.  It is only with God’s help that any of us is able to turn the potential energy of the Holy Spirit into the kinetic energy of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven.  As you pray for Mila and Thomas today, pray also for your neighbor in the pew, for your clergy, and for yourselves, that none of us might fall asleep, but rather, that the potential energy of the Holy Spirit in each of us might be put to good work in order to bless the whole world.  Amen.

[1] http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/16011.htm (Chapter 4, Section 11).  Accessed 11/2/19