Psalm 103 (Morning)
Psalm 148 (Evening)
Isaiah 62:1-5, 10-12
Revelation 19:1-16
Matthew 1:18-25

Names are all over the place in our readings today. Our Psalms call to bless and praise the Lord's holy name. No fewer than five names for Israel and her people are mentioned in the verses of Isaiah 62. The rider of the horse in Revelation 19 is named Faithful and True. In Matthew, Joseph hears the name of Mary's unborn child--Jesus--in his dream.

The more we read and study the Bible, the more we recognize that "the business of naming" is an important thread that weaves through both the Old and New Testaments. I've always been especially intrigued how, when one picks Biblical names apart, they have a meaning within the name. Take Jesus' name--Yeshua--"The Lord is salvation." It's as if we are told within the name of Jesus itself, Lesson One in "Understanding Christianity 101."

The mistake, however, is in thinking once we pick the names in the Bible apart, that this knowledge is the be-all and end-all of the message. Human nature has the destructive habit of "Once we know the name of something, once we know how it works, once we have disassembled it and post-mortem'ed it, we're finished, with no further action necessary."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The danger of understanding names is that we tend, once we know the name of something, to use our definition to define the world, rather than letting the world shape and mold us. We tend to use it for the control of things we don't understand. Invariably, this fallacy leads us to placing God in a smaller box than God is capable of occupying. Once we think we fully understand a definition, we fill the air with the aerosol mist of a spray can chock full of of the delusion of control. Instead of letting the names churn our passions, we try to shut our passions down.

What would happen, instead, if we let these names shape us instead of us telling them what they are? In Matthew, Joseph's hearing and obedience to his dream saves his new family's lives. What would grow in us if we allow God to speak to our dreams, our hopes, our passions? Our passage in Isaiah gives us a window into restoration and renewal--a journey that begins forsaken and desolate, and becomes formed into a joyful wedding between the holy incarnation of God, and the mundane existence of our lives. We move from a God "out there" to "God with us." We discover salvation when the rest of this cold hard world would rather separate us with a chasm of despair. We move from a state of spiritual insomnia, afraid to dream, to one where we eagerly dare to dream.

On this day proclaiming the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, dare we listen to our own dreams, that, at times, speak the most profound truths to us? Are we ready to accept the new name God has bestowed upon us? It begins with hearing God speak the name of salvation to us in our dreams.

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Monday, January 2, 2012 -- The 9th day of Christmas , Year Two
Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, First Indian Anglican Bishop, Dornakal, 1945

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 34 (morning) 33 (evening)
1 Kings 19:1-8
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:1-14

It is a good thing to make a new beginning. We can feel so haunted, encumbered and bound by the past. Sunrise, like resurrection, gives us new birth, new life. Every experience of confession and forgiveness relieves the burden of accumulated guilt and bestows a fresh start.

There is something especially renewing about the turning of the year. It is a time to let go of the past and to embrace the possibility of a new future. We make resolutions. Some create goals for the year. We reclaim our birthright to live a full and wholesome life.

Last January our friend Philip Zweig who volunteers for our Community Meals feeding program made a new year's resolution to ride his bicycle every day -- a commitment to a growing practice of sustainability, letting go of dependence upon the automobile and embracing a healthier form of travel. He invited others to join him in his discipline by pledging a small donation to Community Meals for each mile he would ride. Two days ago at the end of the year, Philip rode a leisurely victory lap with friends, having accomplished his goal of riding every day -- include days of rain, snow and ice -- riding over 10,000 miles in 2011.

If he can do that, what might I do? I'm thinking of the disciplines that bring balance, health and wholeness to my life. I'm thinking of the habits that derail and waste my life. The new year offers an opportunity to let go of the latter and to embrace the former.

The morning psalm (34) offers encouragement:

1 I will bless God at all times,
and praise shall ever be in my mouth.

5 Look upon the Most High and be radiant,
and let not your faces be ashamed.

6 I called in my affliction, and God heard me
and saved me from all my troubles.

8 Taste and see that God is good;
happy are they who trust in the Most High!

12 Who among you loves life
and desires long life to enjoy prosperity?

13 Keep your tongue from evil-speaking
and your lips from lying words.

14 Turn from evil and do good;
seek peace and pursue it.

18 God is near to the brokenhearted
and will save those whose spirits are crushed.

19 Many are the troubles of the righteous,
but God will deliver them out of them all.

22 O God, you will ransom the life of your servants,
and none will be punished who trust in you.

Let us offer our resolutions to God with brokenhearted trust and radiant faces. Today is a new beginning -- the dawn of new hope. Behold, the past is gone and the future is nigh. What can I do to help bring life and light to to this new year?

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 -- The 10th day of Christmas , Year Two
William Passavant, Prophetic Witness, 1894

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 68 (morning) 72 (evening)
1 Kings 19:9-18
Ephesians 4:17-32
John 6:15-27

"Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." (John 6:27a)

The turning of the new year invites us to examine at our lives. Where do we place our priorities? How do we use our energy? What do we worry about?

Although it was more than 35 years ago, I still remember the last sentence of the first talk at my Cursillo weekend. "If your thoughts, your money, and your free time were a comet, and you were attached to its tail, where would it be taking you? That is your ideal."

Where is energy and motivation of our thoughts and time directed? The language of John's gospel contrasts the "food that perishes" with the "food that endures for eternal life." I think it is significant that Jesus speaks that way following the feeding of the multitude. Using the modest resources of two fish and five barley loaves -- the food of the poor -- Jesus has given to hungry people the food for the day that nourishes the body. He does not ignore their basic material needs. Yet he points beyond that material feeding toward the more significant "food that endures for eternal life." I also think it is significant that Jesus speaks that way following a terrifying journey with the disciples in a rough sea with strong wind.

I sense a similar theme in today's story from 1 Kings. Elijah has been fighting in the political arena, and though he has profoundly defeated a party of his enemies, his life is threatened now, and he has been forced to flee. In the wilderness, God feeds him and takes him to a place of encounter. Elijah experiences the great wind that splits mountains and breaks rock. He feels the earthquake that shakes the foundations. He sees the fire that burns all that is before it. Although these are signs that elsewhere are manifestations of God, God is not in the wind or earthquake or fire. It is not in the dramatic and demonstrable expressions of power that Elijah knows the divine presence. It is in the "sound of sheer silence" that Elijah knows himself to be in the holy presence.

From that quiet center, Elijah is renewed. Again he is given a political task with a religious dimension. He is charged with the anointing of two kings and a successor prophet.

From the quiet center comes the food that endures for eternal life. Out of that place of union and renewal we are charged to move into the world to address such material needs as hunger, poverty and the exercise of political power.

John's Jesus knows how easy it is to be distracted by the feeding, even when the mission is successful -- to see primarily the material significance of the work. All of us are so easily caught up in the dramatic and powerful -- the wind and earthquake and fire -- even when there is no presence within the power. There is so much that can distract us -- especially the quantifiable, and whatever confronts us with its great power.

Below the rough sea and daily bread, and beyond the wind, earthquake and fire, there is the food that endures for eternal life. It is food that is often given to us in the sound of sheer silence.

Where do our thoughts, our resources, and our free time tend to collect? Is is the material worries of daily life or even the structural evils of hunger and poverty and politics? Is it today's peculiar dramas wherever the winds are blowing, the earthquakes and fires that fill our headlines or threaten our securities?

The new year invites us to turn toward that place where the food that endures for eternal life feeds us from the infinite silence of God. Be still, and be fed. Then turn to feed others, and to face the elements fearlessly.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 -- The 11th day of Christmas , Year Two
Elizabeth Seton, Founder of the American Sisters of Charity, 1821

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 85, 87 (morning) 89:1-29 (evening)
Joshua 3:14 - 4:7
Ephesians 5:1-20
John 9:1-12, 35-38

"No good deed goes unpunished," according to the old maxim. Jesus heals a man born blind. You would think that all would rejoice. Instead, an argument ensues. The officials get involved. They've got institutions and rules and traditions to uphold. It is necessary that the blind man who now sees be excommunicated from the congregation. Jesus finds the exiled man, and extends both kindness and wisdom. Jesus tells them all, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Reinhold Niebuhr was a theologian adept at seeing the ominous sub-text in our good intentions. Our pride, self-preoccupation and self-illusion is so prevalent, he said, that "even the best human actions have some sin." His sermons invite us to the kind of self-analysis that will lead to repentance, and then he intends to inspire enough courage for us to take some kind of action to advance the cause of justice, even as we recognize the ambiguity of our own best actions.

Niebuhr sensed that our proclivity to perpetuate sin and injustice is even greater when we act as groups or institutions than it is when we act as individuals. We are less moral in groups and nations than we are as individuals.

He writes:

Individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own. ...But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups. In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships. (from Moral Man and Immoral Society, quoted by Richard Crouter, Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics, Religion, and Christian Faith, Oxford, 2010; p. 48)

Like a diocesan committee, the Pharisees gather to investigate Jesus' healing of the man born blind to determine whether it meets diocesan guidelines and policies. An individual cleric outside the institutional glare might have embraced the goodness, but the group has an institution to defend. And they do so, unjustly. As the American major said over the ruins of Ben Tre, Vietnam, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

"Surely we are not blind, are we?" chant the officials. Jesus answers, "...Now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains."

In the middle of his treatise The Irony of American History, Niebuhr offers this:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. (Ibid, p. 62)

The Psalmist speaks for us and for our nation again today:
Restore us then, O God our Savior; let your anger depart from us. Will you be displeased with us for ever; will you prolong your anger from age to age? Will you not give us life again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your mercy, O God, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:4-7)

For He was not, as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body, nor, while present in the body, was He absent elsewhere; nor, while He moved the body, was the universe left void of his working and providence; but, thing most marvellous [sic], Word as He was, so far from being contained by anything, He rather contained all things Himself; and just as while present in the whole of Creation, He is at once distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by His own power...

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 16 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4.

In subtle ways, we might be seduced by the doctrine of the Incarnation into thinking that the Word is localized. No classical Christian theologian thought this. There is a particular intensification of presence and effect, but the one present is present and efficacious everywhere, considered in himself. The Word is omnipresent or ubiquitous. Witness the words of Athanasius just cited. What God is up to in Jesus, is the same type of thing that God is always up to everywhere, in and through the Word, namely pouring out grace, giving life, establishing justice, showing mercy, establishing and reestablishing all things in a universal communion of love.

As we approach the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we might remember that the content of the Word that lives forever in the bosom of the Father, is made historical, tangible, and visible in the flesh, without for a moment ceasing to be what he always is, the perfect expression within the Godhead of all that God is and wants to be for us--pure and unmixed goodness, giving itself to frail and fallen humanity. And whatever is good, true, or beautiful, wherever we find it--in other words, all that is, insofar as it is--is a reflection of this Word's splendor, and shares in his Wisdom and purpose. In and through him, God will bring all good things to their perfection.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

Friday, January 6, 2012 -- The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 46, 97 (morning) 96, 100 (evening)
Isaiah 49:1-7
Revelation 21:22-27
Matthew 12:14-17

In a darkened church a dozen evenings ago we sang "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given." Out of the darkness comes light. And just as the mysterious twinkle of a star or the energizing light of the sun falls on all humanity without distinction, so this light is given for all, not just for those who have known themselves to be chosen.

In his 12th chapter Matthew narrates the unfolding character of Christ's light breaking through the artificial barriers of religion and law, tribe and geography, theology and family, gently bringing God's good news of healing, blessing and compassion. He insists that Jesus is acting universally, yet gently, remembering Isaiah's words "he will not break a bruised reed or quench an smoldering wick." One of the gifts Jesus brings is the gift of justice.

Epiphany is the day when we celebrate the vision that Jesus is for everybody. We who are Gentiles benefit from his manifestation just as surely as those who are Jewish do. Just as the particularities of the sabbath laws could not contain his boundless compassion, neither can any Christian laws we may erect falsely in his name. At the end of chapter twelve, Jesus reinterprets the meaning of family, expanding it universally. Radical words in a patriarchal and tribal culture.

Those of us who have been given the treasure of this manifestation are also invited to recognize Christ outside our boundaries. There are still foreign wise men following other stars whose light draws them toward goodness, beauty and truth. How gently can we affirm our common journey toward the light that heals and brings blessing and compassion to all the earth.

On this feast especially, we confess the darkness of our acts to box up and possess the light for ourselves and to cast the other part of the world into a darkness made of our own shadow -- the darkness of "them." Our language of saved and unsaved, believer and unbeliever, redeemed and doomed, Christian and non-Christian. What an irony that in the name of Jesus we have created divisions. What a blasphemy that we have called on the name of Christ and made war on the "others". Forgive us.

The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Let there be light. And let those of us who follow the light of Christ not be blinded to its manifestation beyond our nearsighted barriers.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. -- Colossians 1:1-14 (NRSV)

Next to Advent, Epiphany is my favorite season. It seems that although I have insights from time to time during the year, it is during Epiphany that they come more easily and more frequently. If a season were a thin place, Epiphany would be mine. It's more than a season, it's an enlightenment, a revelation, a seeing of things in a new way and it can happen any time of the year. One year I seemed to have had little epiphanies almost every day and kept track of them by writing about them. It was like a series of those "WOW! I coulda had a V8!" moments when suddenly the world shifts and a new way of looking at things comes through.

The Colossians obviously experienced some epiphanies as they heard Epaphras preach and teach. I wish we had record of what it was that he said that produced such rich fruit. Certainly the Spirit was moving among them and they responded. Paul, or whoever was writing in his name, is certainly encouraging them to continue their growth in faith and the fruitfulness of that faith. The sudden switch from "you" to "us," though, becomes a thanksgiving that reminds the Colossians that they are not an isolated community but rather one connected to people of the faith all through the growing Christian sphere.

What I sense from the passage is that for an epiphany to be of value it has to be acted upon, not just observed and then forgotten. Like anything else, it must be recalled, cultivated carefully and then actually produce something positive, something of value and purpose. The Colossians obviously were doing this and, in the process, increased in strength, dedication, faith and good works, all signs of a focus on God. Epaphras evidently taught them well.

Epiphanies are gifts from the Spirit. They can't be exchanged like a bad Christmas tie but, in a sense, they can be re-gifted, passed on to someone else in the form of good works, looking and listening for subtle calls for a shoulder to cry on or even a chance to ask if someone has a need we can help fill. The Colossians seem to have learned this, and I marvel that their example still inspires more thought of how to do the same thing in a very different world.

I still have epiphanies now and again, situations and experiences that make me stop and think about how I suddenly see something from a different angle. The first thing I have to do is not just see it differently but react to it differently, making something good and useful happen because of it. Most of all, I must not just sit back and wait for an epiphany to show up but actually be awake and aware enough to see even tiny ones that I might otherwise overlook , then do something with the insight.

All the faith in the world is of no use unless it is reflected in the difference it makes in the world.

I think I have just found a new mantra, a V8™ moment for sure.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Psalms 146, 147 (Morning)
Psalms 111, 112, 113 (Evening)
Genesis 1:1-2:3
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:29-34

Evolutionist that I am, I can still never say enough about the story of the Creation in Genesis, and never fail to hear it as a story of absolute beauty. It is still one of the most marvelous set of strings of words in all of written thought, both for its simplicity and complexity.

So my next sentence is going to sound incongruous: I believe in the story of Creation with all my heart.

Oh, not in the sense of days and order and "Poof! There's a horse!" but in the sense of believing in a God who is intimately in the creation business. Every time I read this passage, there's something new to see--not just what is said, but what is not said.

Ever notice the one big "no comment" in this story? It's here:

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

We see that the light is good--but the darkness is "no comment." Now, we are not told the darkness is bad, either. The darkness just is. Two paragraphs in, God separates the two. The illustration is that they are two entities--one good, one neutral. But then a few more paragraphs down the road we see:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

The darkness does not remain entirely separate in this story for long--it is punctuated by light. Oh, there's still an ultimate separation of light and darkness of some sort, but where the Earth is concerned, there is never total darkness, but only periods of greater and lesser light--which, as far as Earth is concerned, insures that light will always prevail. It reminds me of the words of the Taizé song La Ténèbre, "Our darkness is never darkness in his sight, the deepest night is clear as the daylight."

Each of us have a different notion of what we fear about "total darkness," but for me it's this: In total darkness, one cannot even tell if one is alone or not. I could be six inches from someone else, but enmeshed in the delusion that I am alone, deluded in a lie that I am separate from all creation, and from God.

In this story, we are reminded of one of the most simple, yet profound truths about the relationship between God, creation, and us--The Light of God is always with us, even if it's a mere trickle from our vantage point. Believing in the story of creation has far more to do with believing in the constancy of light and the presence of each other in it, than it does worrying about literal days and disappearing dinosaurs.

What changes for us, in our relationship with God, and our relationships with each other, when we accept the truth that there is no darkness, only greater and lesser views of light?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Monday, January 9, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany
Julia Chester Emery, Missionary, 1922

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 1, 2, 3 (morning) 4, 7 (evening)
Genesis 2:4-9(10-15)16-25
Hebrews 1:1-14
John 1:1-18

Beginnings. Today's readings initiate our next few weeks of successive readings in Genesis, Hebrews, and the gospel of John. All three open with words of beginnings.

The Genesis reading begins our great myth of creation and fall. God takes up "dust from the ground" (adamah in Hebrew), breaths the "breath" (ruach, spirit) of life into it, and it becomes a man (adam in Hebrew). Or, trying to retain the Hebrew linguistics in the English -- God forms from the Earth, "Earthling" and breathes the life of spirit into his being; or God forms from Humus, and breathes "Human" into being.

The gospel of John and the epistle to the Hebrews are concerned to proclaim that we are in relationship with this beginning through our life in Christ (who elsewhere will be called the second Adam, the second "Earthling.") John says, "In the beginning was the Word," (the Logos), the actualization of God's activity within creation. Hebrews is eager to connect this originating work with the "Son, ...the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word."

Through the Word, God's Spirit breathes into Mother Earth and creates a new life that can be conscious of God. The rest of history is the dance of the love story between God and humanity, a story of unrequited love and betrayal from the creatures, and steadfast love and compassion from the Creator.

Today, I want to live in that creative Trinity. I want be conscious of God, breathing me and the whole of Earth into being. I want to be awake to the never ending activity of the Word whom we name Jesus, constantly forming being from the dust of the ground. Today may my words, my breath, and my being be one with the divine consciousness for which I was breathed into life. May I be fully Human; a Spirit-breathing Earthling, awake to the ever-present Son which dwells within me, "the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, [sustaining] all things by his powerful word."

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 5, 6 (morning) 10, 11 (evening)
Genesis 3:1-24
Hebrews 2:1-10
John 1:19-28

Some questions are compelling and mysterious: Why is there anything rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why is life so hard? Why are we the way we are? Before such questions the sciences meet their limits. Science does a wonderful job answering the "How" questions: How did creation happen? How do we come to birth? How do things grow? But we need to know more. We a compelled to ask "Why?"

Science yields to story. It is our great myths that speak to the most compelling and mysterious questions. When we speak of Mystery itself, when we speak of the Divine, it is story and dance (liturgy) and prayer that communicates most deeply.

Today we read our story of temptation and fall. It is everyone's story. Why do we live in a state of alienation? Why do we long to be who we are, free and uncovered? Why is there enmity between human and animal? Why is birth so painful? Why must we struggle so to survive? Why do we feel in exile from our true home? Why do we do the terrible things we do?

An anthropologist and psychologist can tell us that the fall into consciousness, the awareness of the self as a separate being, is inevitable in order for one to become truly human. As our consciousness develops, we begin to discover the knowledge of good and evil. Only we discover it before we have the wisdom to know what to do with it, before we are mature enough to choose the good rather than the evil. But a story tells that better, doesn't it?

Our experience of the fall is every child's experience: We are born beloved of God, created in God's image and in an innocent union with the divine. But we do not retain that union. We do not come to self-consciousness with our oneness with God intact. We do not experience unqualified love. Instead, we have frustrated and exaggerated needs and desires, so we take things into our own hands to get what we want. And we are exiled from the garden, from that simple existence of intimacy, openness and trust. We suffer.

The letter to the Hebrews shows us the way home is the way Jesus has shown us. "It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings." And John the Baptist cries out from the wilderness to "Make straight the way of the Lord."

The biblical meaning of "repent" is not to feel bad about what you've done and promise to do better. In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means primarily to return to God. Return from exile; reconnect with God; walk in the way through the wilderness from Babylon to the Garden. That's the way home to God. And in the Greek New Testament, the word "repentance" has an additional meaning. The Greek roots combine to mean "go beyond the mind that you have." Go beyond the mind you have been given, shaped by our fallen human family, and turn to the mind that you have in Christ. Go beyond fallen human consciousness into union with divine consciousness. But theological words are a dry vehicle. Deep truth travels best in stories.

When we tell the story of what went wrong, we tell the story of Adam and Eve. When we tell the story to heal that injury, we tell the story of Jesus.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 119:1-24 (morning) 12, 13, 14 (evening)
Genesis 4:1-16
Hebrews 2:11-18
John 1:(29-34)35-42

Today we begin with the story of Cain and Abel, two brothers. It is a story that ends in bloodshed, the first murder. Cain resents God's greater acceptance of Abel's offering, and reacts with violence.

John's gospel also gives us a story of cousins and brothers.

John the Baptist sees the Spirit descend and remain upon his cousin Jesus, and John recognizes that this is "a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me." Even though John is older than his cousin, John blesses the greater blessing that God gives to Jesus, and calls him Lamb of God and Son of God.

In our gospel story we also have two brothers, Andrew and Peter. Andrew is with his teacher John the Baptist when John points out Jesus, the Lamb of God. Andrew follows Jesus, who invites him to "Come and see." After being with Jesus for the day, Andrew seeks out his brother Simon Peter and brings him to Jesus, who names him "Cephas," Aramaic for "rock" (i.e. Rocky). Peter will become the leader of the early church. Andrew, the brother who brought him to Jesus, will continue in harmony with his brother and the community of disciples.

Jealously and violence. Blessing and community.

Some have said that the Cain and Abel story symbolically represents the conflict between herdsmen and agrarian farmers. Besides the prejudice that so regularly occurs between peoples of contrasting lifestyles, there was true conflict when these different groups competed for the same resources of water and land. If the herdsmen allowed their cattle to stray into fields they would damage the farmers' crops. If the farmers fenced the land they inhibited the herds from traveling to green fields and water. It makes me think of the Broadway play Oklahoma, and lively song that starts, "Oh, the Farmer and the Cowman should be friends" -- a tame representation of a bitter feud.

We have in today's story the first use of the word "sin" in scripture. When Cain becomes angry that his offering of the fruit of the ground is not accepted, God says, "Why are you angry...? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."

But Cain broods and does not master his afflictive emotions. He lures Abel to the field and kills him. In a powerful moment, God tells Cain that he cannot hide his act. "Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!" God hears and knows the secret violence and injustice of the earth.

Cain's curse is a profound one. He is a farmer. A settled man of the soil. Now he must become a wanderer, and the soil will not yield to him. For a farmer to become a wanderer is a bitter curse indeed. As a wanderer, he has no rights or protection of tribe or belonging. He would be vulnerable to blood revenge for his act of murder.

God places a mark upon Cain as a warning, to protect him from death. The mark of Cain has a terrible history. During much of Christian history the mark of Cain was believed to be his black skin. The tradition justified racist theologies that saw the darker races as cursed by God and therefore destined to slavery and oppression. The Southern Baptists split from Northern Baptists using the curse of Cain as justification for their defense of slavery and their opposition toward the education of slaves. How ironic that the story of one brother's violence toward another became a justification for centuries of oppression and violence of brother upon brother.

Jealousy, prejudice and violence is healed by blessing and community. John the Baptist and Andrew are models for us. They see God's blessing upon their brothers and they rejoice. When Jesus accepts his death on behalf of the sin of the world, he becomes the Lamb of God who takes away our sin, heals our division, and consumes our violence with peace. The farmer and cowman, the settled and the wanderer, the black and white, the conservative and the liberal should be friends.

Our reading in Hebrews says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. It says that Jesus destroyed the power of death and freed us whose lives are "held in slavery by the fear of death." "For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father... Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested." We are called into the universal community that restores peace to the human family.

This is a day of much political pronouncement. I want to hear leaders who acknowledge our relationships with one another -- our fellow human beings are our neighbors, and we are responsible toward one another. I do not want to support politicians who create fear and division. I want to support politicians who create blessing and community. Will we live as Cain and Abel or will we will live like the disciples of Jesus?

Do not now turn away from the brilliance of that star in the east which guides you. Become a companion of the holy kings; accept the testimony of the Jewish Scriptures about Christ and avert the evil of the treacherous king. With gold, frankincense and myrrh, venerate Christ the King as true God and man. Together with the first fruits of the Gentiles to be called to faith, adore, confess, and praise this humble God lying in a manger. And thus, warned in a dream not to follow Herod's pride, you will return to your country in the footsteps of the humble Christ.

Bonaventure, The Tree of Life, 6 in Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey Into God, The Tree of Life, and The Life of St. Francis (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press), pp. 130-31.

As I reflect on the missionary themes of the season of Epiphany, I am struck by these thoughts from the great doctor of the Church, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, and minister general of the Franciscans at a time of great turmoil. For him, the star leads us with the three kings to “this humble God lying in a manger.” He invites us to join the first fruits of the Gentiles in faith and devotion, so that we might return to our homeland “in the footsteps of the humble Christ.”

But of course, we can’t just go home to the tried, true, and familiar. T. S. Eliot famously observed that the Magi had come to see a birth, but also found death. That they could no longer be at ease here in the old dispensation. The manifestation of the world’s true King and the one true Light shakes loose our settled convictions and patterns of living. It causes us to forsake the path of least resistance and to enter into new and unsettling relationships and ways of life. Ways of life based not on domination but on brotherhood and sisterhood.

As the Episcopal Church, among other Christian bodies, wrestles with a sea change in our self-understanding and mission, we too would do well to consider what the Magi saw that night in Bethlehem and how it changed them. What might it be for us to be called to greater faith? How might we best adore, confess, and praise this humble God? And how might that be Good News in a world that longs to hear it?

There’s a lot that we can do in terms of mission and program, in terms of structure, in terms of engagement with our communities. But it all begins with Christ, who reorders our priorities, gives us new horizons, and turns our lives around.

It is instructive that the two great feasts of the Western Christian year, Easter and Christmas, follow desert periods of preparation, are celebrated with great joy, and then culminate in great missionary feasts and seasons. When we behold the humble God, lying in a manger, as when we see him lifted high upon the Cross, we are changed. We are pushed out, beyond the security of a rented room at an inn. We are driven outside the gate, out beyond our walls and defenses. We are summoned, in the great joy of the resurrection, beyond the locked doors of the upper room, and out into the highways and byways, out into the public square.

Because in Holy Baptism, we do not go into the waters alone. We are brought into relationship, not only with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but with every human being—indeed, every living thing. By our baptism into Christ, we are called to the life-changing work of reconciliation, and into a universal fellowship of love.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

Friday, January 13, 2012 -- -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two
Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, 367

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 16, 17 (morning) 22 (evening)
Genesis 6:1-8
Hebrews 3:12-19
John 2:1-12

The Heart

All this week we have been following our great Biblical myths about the devolution of humanity. Myth is the poetic narrative all great peoples use to reflect upon our important questions of life. We resort to the language of myth when talking about Mystery. To my mind, myth is far deeper and more compelling than mere fact.

We've been with Adam and Eve as they left paradise; with Cain the brother-murderer and city-founder; with his offspring who create civilization and multiply violence. And now in the sixth chapter of Genesis, the created boundary between heaven and earth begins to break. Heavenly beings called "the sons of God" cross the boundary to have sexual relations with human women. There is reference to the shadowy Nephilim, thought to describe a superhuman race of mixed human and divine parents. Chaos is growing.

Then comes the denouement -- "The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually." (5:6) The heart is the focus of divine interest. In biblical language, the heart is much more than a physical pump. It is the place where the intellect and the will unite. The heart is where knowing what is good and evil connects with wanting to do the good and not the evil. It is the core and essence of our being. The heart is deeper than thoughts and ideas. It is the animating force, the level of the self, the place of transformation. So when we read those words -- "every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually" -- we realize that it describes an ultimate catastrophe, a complete failure. It's time to give up the project. But... there was Noah.

Our reading from Hebrews warns us to "take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." The writer is convinced that hardness of heart is the cause of all disaster and the source of our rebellion against God. We are invited to have soft hearts, hearts open to the transforming love of God. And our example is Jesus.

One of the best titles for Jesus is to say that Jesus is the Heart of God. Jesus reveals God's heart. Jesus shows us in human life what God's passion is like. God's thoughts and will are united in the heart of Jesus.

And in John's gospel we've reached a climactic moment. John has been building toward this since his symphonic opening. It is Jesus' first sign. The first act that announces his presence and mission. And what is that first sign? It is the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding feast.

The Jewish blessing prayer given over wine gives thanks to God for the gift of wine which "gladdens our hearts." At a wedding when the union of hearts is celebrated in community, Jesus turns the ordinary (water) into the extraordinary (wine). And it is good wine. It gladdens the hearts, it stimulates conviviality and community. It is a sign of what Jesus' coming intends: Glad hearts. Soft hearts. Community. Hearts open to God's goodness and at peace with our neighbors.

Have a glad heart day today!

These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.’ Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. -- Genesis 6:9-22 (NRSV)

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't know the story of Noah and the ark. Illustrations in Sunday School book showed animals in a curved line, marching two by two up a ramp and into a boat that didn't look a thing like any boat I'd ever seen. Still, that must have been how it looked or the Sunday School book wouldn't have shown it that way, would it? Somehow the animals moving into the ark made more of an impression than the reason they were going into the ark -- God's cold anger at the way creation had gone since its beginning when everything was "Good". Oh, knowledge of the anger was there, but to a child, animals marching in perfect lines was much more visibly interesting (not to mention wondering how all of them got there, including elephants, giraffes and bears).

Thinking about this passage this morning, I realized that I characterized God's anger as cold, something I certainly had never given any thought to before when studying this story. I usually think of anger as a hot something, a flash like the striking of a match that causes repercussions that can burn down a house or destroy a life or relationship. But when I read words ascribed to God, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth," I heard words about a decision that has been thought out and is now ready for execution. Somehow that kind of anger is, to me, worse than the flash, as disastrous as even that can be. It was this cold anger that was going to end the world and the lives of all that existed, including those who surely should have been considered innocent -- like deer and kittens and infants. This was deliberation and somehow it is more frightening than the flash that can come and go so quickly. Hot anger strikes, cold anger plans and refines a plan of action with equally deadly results. There is no doubt that the flood was deadly.

But then I thought of floods and what they meant, besides natural forces that disrupt and destroy lives and property. There is the kind often called a "flood of emotions" that make a person feel totally overwhelmed and awash as if they were figuratively drowning in an interior torrent of feelings and thoughts, whether good or bad. Then there are floods of tears, sometimes as a result of the emotional deluge, sometimes as a result of outside events that hit somewhere in the neighborhood of heart -- or perhaps the gut or the conscience. Guilt, remorse, fear, grief, pain, even anger (hot or cold) can produce them, and the result is usually a release of tension and anxiety as well as the emotion that initially produced the flood.

The odd thing is that both these related floods are, in a sense, like Noah's flood. His flood was physically catastrophic but also cleansing to the earth of what was considered unclean, unrighteous or corrupt, erasing that which was wrong and leaving a place where the earth could heal itself and where Noah and his passengers could re-create a second Eden. The flood of emotion and/or tears in an individual often signals a release of feelings and sometimes internal dis-ease, but also provides a space for cleansing and healing, giving space for new growth to take place.

I still have a lot of thoughts and questions about Noah, the flood and God's place in all of it. I'd still like to know how every animal got in there and still had room for enough food to keep them alive for the duration. I'd like to know how the bears, elephants and the giraffes got to where Noah was building the ark. Did God send two mosquitoes along on the trip or just creeping bugs? Mostly, though, I think I need to consider the real stories: the story of wrongdoing, the story of anger, and the story of cleansing and healing, with or without imported elephants and bugs. I have to consider where sin, repentance, judgment, and redemption play their parts in the floods of my life and the life of the world around me. Where is God in the story, and where are the plans for the boat? Those things bear consideration because they are universal, as are literal floods and their aftermaths.

I still wonder about the mosquitoes, though.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, “You are the Son of God!” But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Then he went home; --Mark 3:7-19 (NRSV)

Most of the time, when I've read this passage, it's never one that garnered much of my attention, but this time something new shot to the forefront of my mind--there's at least a possibility that more than twelve people went up the mountain, and what we do know is that twelve were chosen as apostles.

It gets one's spiritual imagination going, doesn't it? What transpired from that day in the lives of the ones who "didn't make the cut?" We don't know how many Jesus called to come up the mountain that day. We just know twelve were chosen to follow him. We don't know if others were chosen for different tasks, such as returning to their home towns and telling about the miracles, and this man Jesus. What we know, is, perhaps only a small part of the story.

Thinking about these possibilities can lead each of us back to a time in our own lives when we were not chosen for something we desired. I remember a time towards the end of my residency when I was courted by a department chair with a national reputation as a pathology textbook author, at a prestigious teaching hospital. I began to already imagine myself in that position. It was a time not long after I had returned from three months in Washington DC at the now-defunct Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Living in DC, even temporarily, was enjoyable and exciting (although expensive.) I was ready to try my hand living somewhere else other than Columbia, MO. I was already imagining the move and looking at real estate ads in that city's paper.

As it turned out, the position never materialized.

It was one of my first lessons in how even people with powerful national reputations don't get everything they want, which, in this case, meant I didn't get what I wanted. I was crushed for a spell. I was already assured a job at the University of Missouri, but I also knew this job would come with the baggage that accompanies "staying where one trained," and that there was very little year-to-year job security with it, and very little pay, comparatively, and one where I would never find a real "niche" that is so necessary for advancement in the large academic medical setting. It was a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none position, and non-tenure track, and most likely the first to go in a budget cut.

Yet our Psalms appointed for the morning reading speak to great joy, and unending praise. Where's the joy in seeing our heart's desire disintegrating? Our emotions in such things are closer to our reading in Genesis--a giant flood that seems to kill everything inside of us.

Perhaps the key lies in today's reading from Ephesians. Paul reminds us of the power of gifts of the spirit--that the gifts of some benefit all of us in the building up of the Body of Christ. Sometimes we have no way of knowing whose gift is building us up, and we also have no way of knowing how the things in our lives in the present--even the disappointing things--are slowly, unknowingly equipping us for building up that body in a way we cannot even imagine.

In my own case, the "lesser" job I took because I had nowhere else to go, brought me the gift of a particular senior pathologist who was a patient teacher, a man who often looked the other way at my inexperience, and became my most trusted and beloved colleague. The irony in it was during medical school and residency, I thought he was a fool. He equipped me in many things I use in my present position today, and there's not a week that goes by in my life and work I don't think of him in the frame of something he taught me. That "lesser" job gave me the tools to have the breadth and confidence to feel comfortable and secure in my present position--one where I am solo many days of the week and have to exercise diligent self-awareness of what my strengths and limitations are in my present practice environment.

By swallowing my ego, and becoming the willing pupil of the person I originally brushed off, in the job I felt was a losing proposition, I became transformed.

Failures, delays, broken dreams and disappointments often comprise the dough from which transformation arises--if we are willing to trust in the possibilities of a God who continually makes all things new.

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Monday, January 16, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Richard Meux Benson, Religious, 1915
Charles Gore, Bishop of Worcester, of Birmingham, and of Oxford, 1932

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 16, 17 (morning) 22 (evening)
Genesis 6:1-8
Hebrews 3:12-19
John 2:1-12

Psalm 25 is such a fine psalm. It is one of my favorites.

It is written by one who is beset by enemies and troubles. Unlike the psalmist we do not dread invasion, occupation and exile from the army of a mightier empire. We are the empire. We live in a relatively secure nation and time.

But there are those who regard our nation as enemies. Though they are small and so weak that their only weapon is fear, they can make us reactive, and some of us, including our leaders at times, have succumbed to their campaign of fear. "Fear not," the scriptures remind us.

When I read in the Psalms of the threat from enemies, that threat is usually much closer to home than the threat of invading foreigners. It is the threat we bring upon ourselves when we live as enemies of our highest aspirations. When we let fear, greed, and power motivate us, we become our own enemy. Sometimes the enemy comes from among our friends and neighbors. There are political movements who define themselves by fear, greed, and power. Sometimes the enemy is our own internalized fears, our greed and exaggerated needs. We have to triumph over enemies that are not only other people, but also the part of ourselves that works against our highest values.

"Show me your ways, O God, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long." We pray with the Psalmist, asking God to renew our commitment to God's way. And what is God's way? The next verse names it beautifully. "Remember, O God, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting."

Compassion and love. These are our highest aspirations and values. Compassion and love -- the antidote to fear, greed and power. "All your paths are love and faithfulness," the Psalmist remembers. "You guide the humble in doing right and teach your way to the lowly." Love and compassion, exercised humbly, with special attention toward the lowly -- the path God invites us to walk.

The Psalmist asks for forgiveness for the times he has not followed in this way, the times when we succumb to our fears, our greed, our pride. "Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O God. ...For your Name's sake, O God, forgive my sin, for it is great." With reverence for God restored, we reassert our trust that God will teach and lead us.

The Psalmist looks at his troubles. He has sorrows and miseries. He has enemies. He asks for help. "The sorrows of my heart have increased; bring me out of my troubles. Look upon my adversity and misery, and forgive me all my sin. Look upon my enemies, for they are many, and they bear a violent hatred against me. Protect my life and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you." He closes with a recommitment to integrity and uprightness, and he grounds his hope in God.

Then he prays for the nation. May God deliver us from our troubles.

When I think of our nation, indeed we are beset by enemies -- by fear, greed and power. We are not a nation that is living by the divine vision of compassion and love, exercised humbly, with special attention toward the lowly. Deliver our people, O God, out of all our troubles also.

Psalm 25 is a good psalm for us and for our day.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Antony, Abbot in Egypt, 356

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 945)
Psalms 26, 28 (morning) 9, 15 (evening)
Genesis 9:1-17
Hebrews 5:7-14
John 3:16-21

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." (Hebrews 5:7)

Yet the answer to Jesus' prayer was not accomplished during his lifetime. He was not saved from death. He was crucified and he died.

We cannot know the interior psychology of Jesus. So we don't know what he understood or thought or hoped as he died. The church has always insisted that Jesus was fully human. The death that he endured, he experienced as any human being would.

Mark's gospel indicates that part of what Jesus felt as he died was the experience of complete abandonment from God -- "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" (15:34) Jesus had placed his hope in God for deliverance, and he realized that he was not going to be saved from death. Very likely he also felt the loss of the intimate relationship with God whom he called Abba; God had been the motivating center and energy of his life. For Jesus on the cross, God was absent. Jesus was suffering extreme physical torture; there was no escape; there was no answer; he was dying a humiliating, painful, public death; there was no promise that anything good would come out of this.

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries of tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." We know the rest of the story. Jesus was vindicated. Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus lives. But the living did not happen until after he experienced the pain and abandonment and death.

How often do we pray, and we experience no answer. We pray to God that God would save us, and we experience no sense of response, escape or deliverance. Yet the story of the resurrection reminds us that God brings life out of death. God can accomplish what is beyond our imagination. God surprises us. The scope of God's response is beyond our horizons.

So often when I see the grotesque suffering and senseless killing that fills our globe I feel like my prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who is able to save them from death are futile and hopeless. Nothing is changed. People die daily. Injustice abounds. For so many there is no escape; there is no answer.

Yet I cling to the hope of resurrection. God brings life from death. And I hold on to the conviction that the central reality of creation is God's love for the world. We hear that again from John's gospel today. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (John 3:16) I've never been convinced that this was merely a trivial formula for punching a ticket to heaven -- believe and get eternal life; don't believe and go to hell. That notion turns God into such an arbitrary monster.

The word "believe" comes from the same place as the word "belove." I think of those who do not know Jesus, but do know some form of love. Maybe they are somewhere in Sudan or Yemen or Afghanistan today. Maybe they are being caught up in some form of horrible violence, some terrible threat or torture from which there is no escape. Their love cries out with prayers and supplication, with loud cries of tears to the one who is able to save them from death. Regardless of their "belief," Jesus is with them. Jesus is one with them. Jesus knows and understands their experience. Their blood is their water of baptism. They will be heard, because of his reverent submission.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Confession of Saint Peter the Apostle

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)

EITHER the readings for Wed. of 2 Epiphany (p. 245)
Psalms 38 (morning) 119:25-48 (evening)
Genesis 9:18-29
Hebrews 6:1-12
John 3:22-36

OR the readings for Confession of St. Peter (p. 996)
Morning Prayer: Psalms 66, 67; Ezekiel 3:4-11; Acts 10:34-33
Evening Prayer; Psalms 118; Ezekiel 34:11-16; John 21:15-22

I chose the readings for Wed. of 2 Epiphany

The annotation in my Access Bible for Hebrews 6:1-12 is titled "Either progress or slip back." I remember years ago reading an entry from the dairy of Pope John XXIII. I can't find the reference, so I'll just trust my memory. It was a brief note about a day that sounded fairly normal to me. Not much had happened. He had been absorbed in the trivial demands of the day. He hadn't had time to read or study. He was writing in his diary late in the evening. With his simple eloquence, he mourned that he had lost a day, a full 24-hours, without growing or learning. Something was gone that could not be retrieved.

The writer of Hebrews opens this 6th chapter with a grand challenge: "Therefore let us go on toward perfection..." It is so easy in our culture to condone mediocrity with the excuse "Nobody's perfect." The author of Hebrews will have nothing of it. Strive for perfection. Strive for conscious union with God. He writes today, leave behind "the basic teaching about Christ" and be like fertile ground "that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is cultivated." He urges his readers to exercise the three virtues of faith, hope and love: For God "will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we want each one of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

I am reminded of the standard that Paul offers us in our striving. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance. There is no law against such things. ...If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:22f)

The testimony tells us that we can live with this fullness. We can practice faith, hope and love. We can produce the fruits of the Spirit. We can live in conscious union with God. In fact, anything else is loss, something wasted that cannot be reclaimed.

More than any other New Testament writer the author to the Hebrews communicates this sense of tragedy when we fail to progress, when we slip back. In contrast to other writers who are sure that access to restoration is always available, the writer of Hebrews believes "it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened... and have fallen away." Whenever we fall away from the enlightened life of grace that we have been given, there is something lost that cannot be reclaimed. The past slips behind us and cannot be changed. It's meaning can be changed, but its facts cannot. Sometimes we find it is simply to late for acting.

I know I've quoted this before, but I can't think of a better expression of that sense of loss than a passage toward the end of Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory. As the Whisky Priest anticipates his execution the next day, "He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted -- to be a saint." (Penguin, NY, p. 211)

Only God our Lord can give the soul consolation without a preceding cause. For it is the prerogative of the Creator alone to enter the soul, depart from it, and cause a motion in it which draws the person wholly into love of his Divine Majesty. By "without cause" I mean without any previous perception or understanding of some object by means of which the consolation just mentioned might have been stimulated, through the intermediate activity of the person's acts of understanding and willing.

Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 205-206.

This is one of the classic texts for Ignatius' notion of consolation without cause, a notion which is in turn quite central to his treatment of the discernment of spirits. The very next paragraph of the Exercises sets out the alternative, a consolation with cause, which can come from either the good angel or the bad angel. What strikes me about the description of consolation without cause is that "it draws the person wholly into love of [God's] Divine Majesty."

Bernard Lonergan, the great Canadian Jesuit, comments about this as follows, "Being in love with God, as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion. All love is self-surrender, but being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity. That fulfillment is not the product of our knowledge and choice. On the contrary it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on and it sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of love will transform our knowing." Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press/Lonergan Research Center of Regis College, 1990), pp. 105-106.

This formulation is meant to give voice to the reality of religious experience in a way that is consistent with a thoroughgoing humanism and ordered process of inquiry and interpretation. The heart of the matter, however, is love, which leads to conversion and change in (our limited) horizon. This is the Holy Spirit, the divine love and living grace of God who floods our hearts (Romans 5:5), free, sovereign, and unbidden, and thereby changes everything for us.

And in this lies one of the clearest signs of the Spirit's presence--the mysterious gift that deepens our love for God and neighbor.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

Friday, January 20, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Fabian, Bishop and Martyr of Rome, 250

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 31 (morning) 35 (evening)
Genesis 11:27 - 12:8
Hebrews 7:1-17
John 4:16-26

Today we begin the great saga of Abraham, the father of nations. In an act of great trust, Abraham follows his sense of God's direction and leaves his family and ancestral lands without knowing his final destination. Throughout Scripture, Abraham is a model of faith.

Faith is active trust. It is the willingness to take the next step in the direction of God, even when you don't know where you are going. This is the dominant meaning of the word faith. A lesser meaning -- "the faith" as in the content of belief or doctrine -- sometimes overwhelms this more relational and deeper sense of faith.

It is promised to the faithful one, Abraham, that God will make of him a great nation. Note the contrast with the story of the builders of the tower of Babel, who sought to make a name for themselves by their own selfish efforts. God says to Abraham, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," a sentence that can as easily be translated "by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."

Some in our time have looked to Abraham as a possible source of understanding and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Moslems. Each of these three great religions look to Abraham as their patriarch.

In today's Gospel from John, we have a story of reconciliation between two people divided by religion. Jesus is a Jew; he is speaking to a woman who is a Samaritan. Their religions and nations are divided by hostile animosity, though they share a common source from Abraham. The woman states one of the issues: Which is the correct mountain for God's worship? Mt. Zion or Mt. Gerizim? Jerusalem or Samaria? She raises a hot-topic question that has consumed political and religious debate for generations. Jesus rejects the framing of the question. The place is irrelevant, says Jesus, for God is Spirit. Worship God in Spirit and truth.

In Hebrews the writer seeks to open up the concept of priesthood beyond the narrow inherited line from Aaron and Levi. His metaphor is King Melchizedek, who in Genesis 14 befriended and blessed Abraham. Melchizedek is of a superior order of priests than Levi because he is not bound by time or by family. Hebrews sees Jesus' priesthood coming from this other ancient order.

All three of today's readings invite Christians and all other religious people to develop creative relationships toward one another in our different religious expressions. Recently some have called on the children of Abraham to unite together in relationships of peace to solve the deadly conflicts between Jew, Christian and Moslem. Those of us who come from the line of Abraham are given to be a blessing to the world, not conquerors and dominators. Wherever we see people walking with trust in the eternal, we are seeing Abraham's brothers and sisters, whether from the blood line of Abraham or from the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek unbounded by family and time. And whenever we see the expression of Spirit or truth from any mountain or from any tradition, we can acknowledge the living water of God that springs up from within all who drink from the water of the spirit.

Today walk in trusting faith like Abraham. Claim your eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. Be open to God as Spirit, filling the whole world with living water, and drink from that Spirit that wells up from within you.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. -- Matthew 18:1-6

Reading the passage today, I picture a Jesus sitting on a rock surrounded by his disciples, and with a small child sitting on his lap, looking at him trustingly and possibly with his head on Jesus' shoulder, listening intently. I admit, my picture is based on the Sunday School illustrations which, while good teaching tools for me when I was a child myself, but which doesn't really show life at that time. Besides, the idea of a child being humble is rather odd; most children with whom I have been acquainted (including myself, I must add) are egotistical little beings, sure that they are the center of the known world and their demands are to be met forthwith, beginning from the day they were born until they learn that the world doesn't revolve around them (which, admittedly, some never do).

Children in Jesus' time weren't humble in the sense that we use the word; they were expected to act as miniature adults, helping with the family business or housework from the time they were very young. The rate of stillbirth was high and by the time a child got to the age of 16 he or she had already outlived 60% of children conceived at the same time they were*. During the years between birth and 16, however, children were at the bottom of the figurative ladder, the ones most helpless against disease, famine, war, loss of parents, genocide and abuse. They were loved and treasured, just as our children are, but that didn't mean that life was easy, comfortable or even safe for them.

Children almost always have to accept what happens to them. They don't have the knowledge or ability to fight back, to create for themselves a safe, nurturing environment where nothing bad ever happens, especially when there are things like famines and natural disasters or even the atrocities of human beings against other human beings. They have to rely on adults around them to provide safety. They have to trust that someone will be there to help them, even if it is another child and only a bit older than they.

Children in the US are generally privileged. Most have clean water, access to medical care and schools, toys to play with and leisure time in which to play with them, and parents to keep them fed, clothed and loved. Not all children in this country are so lucky, though. It isn't their fault. Sometimes parents make bad decisions, but quite often it is other adults, those with power, who want to reduce the national debt by cutting survival programs for the poor and the helpless while looking out for their own benefits. Think about it. Who is being hurt by the cuts in programs that people need in order to survive and to care for the children, programs like health care for the poor, funding education programs, more resources for families in crisis? Who wins when the humblest among us are hungry, homeless and hope-less? Who ends up wearing the millstone of which Jesus spoke -- the adults who have the power to cut the programs or the children and families who need them? How did they get such power? We as a nation handed it to them and tacitly approve of their doings by continuing to support them. We are all guilty, whether we accept that or not.

The disciples asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven but I don't think they liked the answer. We as a people, particularly Christian people, still don't like the answer. Becoming as a little child doesn't mean sitting on the floor playing with toys; it is about giving up competition for the sake of competition and then working to empower the powerless. Jesus is still asking us, "Who wins? Who loses? What did I tell you to do?"

I think I feel some chafing around my own neck right now, sort of like a rough rope and a heavy weight, and my feet feel a bit of dampness that wasn't there a few minutes ago. I wonder -- what kind of world would there be if we all felt that millstone and decided to do something about it?
The children can't wait forever.

* Malina, Bruce J. and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, (1992) Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 117.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Psalm 63:1-8, (9-11)
Psalm 98 (Morning)
Psalm 103 (Evening)
Genesis 13:2-18
Galatians 2:1-10
Mark 7:31-37

Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.

Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them living together; for their possessions were so great that they could not live together, and there was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land. Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward; thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord. ~Genesis 13:2-18 (NRSV)

In a time that we are hearing a lot of discussion about "the 1%" and "the other 99%," the story of Abram and Lot takes on new dimensions. We are shown right off the bat that too much of a good thing is...well...too much. Both Abram and Lot seem to be doing quite well in the livestock trade--so well, in fact, that it's creating a strain on the area resources, and causing a lot of tension between Abram's herders and Lot's herders, which almost certainly had to create tension between Abram and Lot. This isn't even a case of "The farmer and the cowman should be friends," it's a case of "The cowman and the cowman should be friends." (Or shepherd...or goat roper...take your pick.)

But somehow, the topic of "Maybe we don't need so much livestock, and we should both manage this land more responsibly," never came up. After all, that meant either Abram or Lot might have to have less, and I suspect each one was making book on the other's inventory as much or more than his own. Only until the land is depleted does Abram get around to approaching the problem.

At the time of this story, by rights, Abram should have first pick of where he will choose to take his people. But he gives Lot the choice. To the left are the plains of the Jordan, home of at least five major cities, and it's no coincidence that this is described in Genesis in Eden-like terms. To the right is the hill country of Caanan--a more rugged and secluded territory.

As Lot surveys the scene, we're once again shown what too much of a good thing can do to a person. Lot hastily takes dibs on the "better" territory. Of course, we'll find out later in Genesis that heading towards Sodom might not be the best choice, but we have the advantage of hindsight on that one. It's also important to consider that human nature reveals at times our "magnanimous" behavior isn't always as magnanimous as it seems. I call it "The Mismatched Pieces of Pie Gambit." I admit that there are times I really would like the larger of two pieces of pie with a guest in the house, and that little "greed critter" in my brain gets an idea. "I know," I think to myself. "I'll offer them the choice. If they're a 'good' guest, they'll take the smaller piece and leave me the bigger one." But every now and then, the doggone guest goes and takes the bigger piece, and then I feel a tad put about about that. How dare someone take my generosity at face value and choose accordingly when I was really trying to outfox them a little!

I imagine after Lot made his choice, Abram felt a little like I do after a failed attempt at the Mismatched Pieces of Pie Gambit. I suspect Abram looked over at the dust devils swirling around in the Hill Country of Caanan and felt rather put out about that--a lot more than I do about a slice of pie. One can almost feel the resentment building up as we read the story. But God steps in and essentially tells Abram, "Don't sweat it. It doesn't look like you got a good deal at the moment, but remember--I'm the God who makes all things new, and your people will eventually be better than good with this, when it's all said and done."

There are a lot of places that "too much of a good thing" can take us, and most of them are not good. It can take us to a place where we deplete everything around us and cause strife. It can take us to a place where "reasonably happy" is not good enough, and even pales in the light of our desire for "supremely happy." It can take us to a place where we choose the greedier choice at the other person's expense. It can blind us to our own greedy nature and make us think that playing The Mismatched Pieces of Pie Gambit is really "generosity." Yet, God has a way of working with all that and transforming us just the same, if we let God take control. Ultimately, the facts are that Abram gave Lot the choice and Lot took it. How is God working with both your "offers" and "choices" today?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Monday, Janaury 23, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two
Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 41, 52 (morning) 44 (evening)
Genesis 14:(1-7)8-24
Hebrews 8:1-13
John 4:43-54

Word of Jesus' return to Cana in Galilee reached Capernaum, a town on the lake, about eighteen miles from Cana. A royal official traveled from Capernaum to Cana to see Jesus. This royal official would have had a position in the service of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee who ruled there for forty-two years, including throughout Jesus' ministry. It was Herod Antipas who arrested and executed Jesus' cousin John the Baptist. John had publicly condemned Antipas for his marriage to his half-brother's wife. There is a place in Luke's gospel where a group of Pharisees warned Jesus that Herod Antipas was plotting to kill Jesus as well.

The encounter between the royal official and Jesus is interesting. One wonders if the official might have taken some risks in approaching Jesus on behalf of his dying son. Some among Jesus' group might have suspected some sort of trap. Is this official up to something that would lead to Jesus' arrest? Don't follow him back.

It turns out to be a legitimate request. The man's son is ill. Jesus honors his request, telling him, "Go; your son will live." It is important to John to say that the man "believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way." During the eighteen mile journey home, he was met by servants with the news that the child took a turn for the better at the hour of the conversation with Jesus.

Jesus does good without recourse to the relative merit, or lack of merit, of the royal official. He did not reject the man because he was a servant of Herod Antipas, despite the cruel treatment to John. Jesus did not lecture or correct the man, or demand that he cease his service to Antipas. Jesus did not refuse the heal the child because of the questionable status of the father. (That might be something to reflect on the next time a Christian legislator introduces a policy recommendation to restrict public medical or educational funds to children whose parents have immigrated here without having gone through the nearly impossible business of being legal about it.)

Amazing generosity. Jesus offers compassion to the royal official of Herod Antipas. He heals the man's child. How might that instruct us in the way we relate to those who misuse their power and authority? How might that inform us about our attitude toward our enemies?

P.S. I'll be taking off a couple of week from Speaking to the Soul. I'll be away meeting my new grandson.

Commemoration of the Ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved;
for you are my praise.
See how they say to me,
‘Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come!’
But I have not run away from being a shepherd in your service,
nor have I desired the fatal day.
You know what came from my lips;
it was before your face.
Do not become a terror to me;
you are my refuge on the day of disaster;
Let my persecutors be shamed,
but do not let me be shamed;
let them be dismayed,
but do not let me be dismayed;
bring on them the day of disaster;
destroy them with double destruction!
--Jeremiah 17:14-18

Jeremiah was getting it from both sides. His adversaries are scornful because his prophecies have not happened and God didn't seem to be too attentive to him at the moment. One can forgive Jeremiah for being a bit unhappy with the situation of the moment; however, he does remind God that he has been obedient, faithful and dutiful in proclaiming the message he was given to pass on, just like he was supposed to. Furthermore, God knew it because Jeremiah did his proclaiming to God's face, so there.

There was a woman, millennia later, who would have had every reason to ask why despite her faithful service, her ministry was limited and God didn't seem to be in too big a hurry to change that. Li Tim-Oi, "Much Beloved Daughter", was both a pioneer and a lightning rod. Ordained as the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion in 1944, serving as a priest in the Japanese-occupied colony of Macau (at that time, Maçao) when male priests were prohibited to travel from Hong Kong to Macau to bring the sacraments. She served quietly but effectively until, after the war had ended, her ordination became a cause célèbre around the Anglican world. She voluntarily gave up her license to act as a priest in the name of peace, but never relinquished her vows and anointing from her ordination. She served and suffered in China during some of the most brutal years of the Communist takeover, but was able to start again in public ministry when the churches in China were reopened in 1979, sixteen years after their closure. In 1981 she was able to visit family members in Canada where she later settled, and on that visit was licensed once again as a priest, this time in the Diocese of Montreal and later Toronto. She died in Canada in 1992.

As much as Li Tim-Oi suffered at the hands of the Japanese and the Communists, the rejection by her church of her priestly vocation must have been one of the hardest battles she had to endure. This time the adversary wasn't the armed enemy but those who were members of the same family. Jeremiah must have felt sort of the same way. It's hard to be a prophet, and it's hard to be the first. It's hard to face an enemy but even harder to face brothers and sisters of one's own spiritual family. Li Tim-Oi was the first but not the last. Two women were ordained in Hong Kong in 1971, eleven women in Philadelphia in 1974 and four in Washington in 1975. Canada approved women's ordination in 1975. Other provinces have followed but not all have yet accepted the ministry of women in the priesthood. For those early women priests, however, it was a struggle, and it still continues to be a struggle in some parts of the world. Florence Li Tim-Oi, though, was and is a beacon that will shine brightly wherever women are called by God and assent to that call. Like Mary at the annunciation, there is a choice to say yes or no to God’s call -- and the ramifications of an assent is life-changing. Jeremiah said yes and, even when whiny, kept his focus on what his job was. Li Tim-Oi had that choice and said yes in her turn. It probably would have been easier to renounce the whole thing when oppression came, but she never succumbed to that option.

Florence Li Tim-Oi never made a big noise in the world with powerful speeches and public appearances, but her faithfulness, dedication and grace in the face of hardship and suffering mark her as truly a "holy woman."

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Psalm 19 (Morning)
Psalm 119:89-112 (Evening)
Isaiah 45:18-25
Philippians 3:4b-11
Ecclesiasticus 39:1-10
Acts 9:1-22

"Saul/Paul and the road to Damascus" is very likely etched indelibly on the brains of most Christians, and honestly, there is very little I can say about this archetype of the Christian conversion experience that hasn't already been said, and by people far more erudite than me. In fact, the story of Saul/Paul's conversion, for many of us, is the polar opposite of our own experience of "encountering Jesus." It's probably the decided minority of us that have ever heard God actually speak to us and lead us to repent and change our attitudes and behaviors towards Jesus.

Really, the only conversion I know very much about at all, has to do with another of my passions--college football. In college football, one of the most exciting things (especially in the fourth quarter of a close game) is that a kicked point after touchdown is worth one point, and one that is run or passed across the goal line is worth two points. In fact, in the NCAA overtime format, once two teams have reached triple overtime, it's mandatory that the two point conversion be employed.

Various sources attribute the success rate of a two point conversion between 40 and 55 percent. The two point conversion, in college football, creates a risk/reward between the win and the tie, or the win and the loss. It has been so extensively statistically studied that in the 1970's, when Dick Vermeil was coach at UCLA, he actually developed a formula of when to "go for two" that is still cited and used in college coaching today.

Perhaps that is really the crux of the Christian conversion experience--when in our lives do we simply take the easy near-sure thing and "kick for one" rather than "run it for two?"

I'm afraid in the world of spreading The Good News In Christ, the institutional church in the past century, has been too complacent to "kick for one"--and the result is declining membership in the mainline denominations. The non-denominational megachurches, however, "run for two" at a rate far more than their mainline counterparts. The result is often increased membership. However, the flip side of that is recent studies show that this "increased membership" is often the result of shifting alliances rather than new converts. Megachurch attendees shop--and when they are no longer entertained, they move on.

Of more concern is the data in recent Gallup polls that show the numbers of people who attend church hovers at 30 percent year after year, but the number of people who never attend church continues to increase.

This is just a guess on my part, but it seems to me that a worthwhile strategy to explore in sharing The Good News In Christ and teaching people to desire that as a lifelong proposition is to first examine our own lives. When are the times in our lives in Christ that we risked "going for two?" What did we learn as a result of both our failures and successes? Did we use our two point conversion attempt wisely or foolishly?

Likewise, when are the times we really needed to kick for the relatively safe point after touchdown? Did we do that, or did we get impatient, risk going for two, and fail?

Perhaps then, we should extrapolate it into the lives of our parishes in terms of outreach and evangelism.

When is the last time your parish took a decided risk in "going for two" in terms of reaching out to the disaffected, the lonely, and the marginalized?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Approached in a prayerful manner, the Bible is found to be always contemporary--not just writings composed in the distant past but a message addressed directly to me here and now. "He who is humble in his thoughts and engaged in spiritual work," says St. Mark the Monk, "when he reads the Holy Scriptures will apply everything to himself and not to someone else." As a book uniquely inspired by God and addressed to each of the faithful personally, the Bible possesses sacramental power, transmitting grace to the reader, bringing him to a point of meeting and decisive encounter. Critical scholarship is by no means excluded, but the true meaning of the Bible will only be apparent to those who study it with their spiritual intellect as well as their reasoning brain. ~Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, Revised edition (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir's Seminary Press, 2001), p. 111.

According to the Catechism, we call the Holy Scriptures the "Word of God," because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible. Both halves of this statement are important. The first, because it acknowledges the full humanity of the authors of the text and thereby authorizes our full engagement with relevant critical scholarship. Nevertheless, it is the second part that captures my attention. The Scriptures, it suggests, can anticipate the situation of any possible reader and convey God's sovereign living Word of Truth. Truly they are the place of a sacramental, objective encounter with the living God for all who would engage with them. They are a means of grace and "addressed to each of the faithful personally," and indeed to the whole world.

We need critical scholarship and traditional practices of wrestling with Scripture, both to get ourselves out of the way of God's Word and because teachers mishandle the Word to support their personal agenda or buy into oppressive ideologies present in the text. We need a reverence for the Word, because God still speaks to us through the Bible, strong to judge, heal, and save.

Because they are a means of encounter with the living God, prayer provides a necessary key to opening the Scriptures. So too does participating in the sacraments and in the common life of the Church.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her." Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" Genesis 17:15-27 (NRSV)

“No way!” a youth says emphatically. “That’s not going to happen.”

We were just talking about forgiveness and how we can start over again with a clean slate. We are in a holding room at the Juvenile Detention Center with the guard sitting at the desk five feet away. He looks up when he hears the youth’s outburst.

We lower our voices. He continues, “You don’t even know all that I have done. You think God will have anything to do with me if he knows me. I’ve been there. My girl said she forgave me and then she tells everyone what I did and she still holds it over me when I see her.”

At this point, I know that I am not going to question why he is still going with the girl or what image of God he carries in his head. Since he is a Native, I go with a story.

“Abraham laughs in the face of God,” I begin. God tells him that he would give him a son when Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90. He promises something impossible and unbelievable.”

“What happened?” the teen asks.

“They had a son, as unbelievable as it is,” I reply. "Most of the stories about God are about unbelievable promises that come true. And one of them is that when you are honest before him, he forgives you and turns you around giving you a new direction. Every time.”

“Let me think about this,” he says. “I would like that but I don’t think it is possible. I’m not sure I believe in God.”

“That’s okay. God is patient. When you pray, ask for forgiveness and tell me what happens,” I reply.

The guard tells us our hour is up and I leave.

This is not a complete story. But Abraham’s story is so basic to these youth. They come from an environment where promises are never kept, where they are never given a second chance. Come to think of it, this is a story for me too. Grace has always been unbelievable.

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’ And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’ Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied, saying, ‘I did not laugh’; for she was afraid. He said, ‘Oh yes, you did laugh.’
Then the men set out from there, and they looked towards Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. -- Genesis 18:1-16 NRSV

Hospitality was one of the hallmarks of desert living in the days of Abraham. Even if your worst enemy showed up at your tent flap, it was beholden of you to take him in, treat him royally for three days and then see him on his way in peace. Abraham found three strangers showed up at Mamre and Abraham practiced the tradition of hospitality as his culture had taught him. He had no idea that these strangers were key to his future.
Sarah, of course, was behind a nearby tent wall. It would be unthinkable for her to take part in the conversation or the meal with strangers, even with Abraham present, but that didn't mean she couldn't hear everything that was said. Her ears must have pricked up when one of the strangers mentioned her by name and asked where she was. Abraham told them and suddenly everything changed for her. This stranger was actually saying he would be back and that she, Sarah the barren, would become pregnant. She and Abraham had tried for years to have a child, in vitro fertilization was several millennia in the future, and Sarah could remember when her menses ended quite a long time ago, so how was this going to happen? She had Hagar's son by Abraham through adoption, but actually bearing a child herself at her age? She did what any reasonable person would do when hearing something totally outrageous, unbelievable, incomprehensible and ridiculous -- she laughed.
The words "laugh" or "laughter" are mentioned a number of times in the Bible; add in "laughingstock" and it comes out to more than 60 times (per my Bible software), including 4 times in just this passage. In almost every mention of the word, the laugh/laughter context is that of scorn or derision. Even God laughs, but always at those who were due for punishment, unbelieving, at enmity with the chosen people, sinning or the like. Abraham laughed when, in the previous chapter, God told him that that he would be the father of of a son at 100 years of age. Is it any wonder Sarah laughed as well? Was it the laughter of derision or scorn, or the laugh of disbelief in the promise of something too incredible to be believed?
I think about how I use laughter. I know I laugh when there is a funny joke or story (although I do have standards as to what I feel is funny). I laugh when I'm embarrassed, when I meet a friend unexpectedly, or to communicate the idea that what I am saying or just said were not meant to be taken personally or seriously. If I'm honest, though, I have to remember that I also laugh at the discomfiture of others when they say, write or do something that is clumsy, ridiculous (to my mind, anyway), or inane. I'm not always kind with my laughter, and I don't like it when people laugh at me for the same reasons I may laugh at them. If God showed up at my front door and told me I would become pregnant at my age, or that I'd won Publisher's Clearing House or written a book that had won a Pulitzer or become best-seller of the year, I'd probably do more than give a quiet giggle or ladylike snort. Still, there would be a modicum of hope that this time, jut this time, there might be truth in the announcement. I have a feeling Sarah had a similar feeling.
There's an old joke that states, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans." The intimation is that God will be highly amused but somewhat derisive or scornful of the feeble ideas I have for myself, my duties and my future. But what if I get it right and the laughter of God is of delight and encouragement? I wonder.
Sarah had her baby, a son she named Isaac ("laughter"), and rejoiced that others around her would laugh with her. The laughter of disbelief had become the laughter of delight, like the winning of the Clearinghouse and the Pulitzer and more all at once.
Perhaps I should remember the other positive mentions of laughter in the Bible, "...a time to weep and a time to laugh," (Eccl. 3:4) and " Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh" (Luke 6:21c). No derision or scorn there, just encouragement to see beyond the immediate and the promise of joy to come. And the reminder that nothing is too great for God, whether it is an elder woman bearing a live child (which is more and more common today), or winning a prize.
Next time when someone tells me something that seems too improbable, maybe I should check for barely discernible wings before I laugh too loudly?

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Psalm 62:6-9
Genesis 28:10-17
2 Corinthians 2:14-17
Matthew 6:19-23

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” ~Genesis 28:10-17 (NRSV)

Just as Jacob saw a window into Heaven and a means to provide a means for a flow of traffic between the realm of God and the realm of humanity via "Jacob's Ladder," Andrei Rublev devoted his life to creating a ladder between those two realms via iconography. His process for writing icons is outlined in Holy Women, Holy Men, page 196:

For Andrei, writing an icon was a spiritual exercise. It involved the ritual of preparing the surface, applying the painted and precious metal background and then creating the image, first outlining it in red. Throughout he would repeatedly say the “Jesus Prayer” (“Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me”). He was creating a window into the Divine which he knew was always before him but which was invisible to the human eye. He knew he was able to create such an image of God because he himself was made in the image of God. His object was to be totally focused on receiving God’s love and loving in return.

In 2010, I decided I needed an icon for my prayer corner in my house, so I turned to a modern iconographer, Luiz Coelho, to make that happen. What I had discovered by pondering many famous icons, including those of Rublev, was that sometimes the iconographer hooked the viewer to the icon via renditions of cities or places at the time the icon would have been written--creating a ladder between antiquity and the present. I was stunned that Luiz was able to do this by means of my Facebook™ photos, linking Mary as Theotokos, and the image of the young Christ as teacher, with iconic renditions of vast pasture, my church, and my red pickup truck drawing nearer to Mary and Christ on a ribbon of U.S. Highway 63. (click to enlarge icon)

What I've come to realize via using this icon as a window into the Divine, is that icons demand of us the same painstaking process Rublev used to create his icons. First, we are asked to strip ourselves to our barest wood and to imagine ourselves in divine terms--to imagine God's view of us as part of God's good creation, and to allow God the Iconographer create that image in the setting of a discipline of regular prayer. The hardest part, however, is to allow that image to be viewed by others, and to trust that they will see what they need to see when they view us. When we are icons of the Body of Christ, we aren't allowed the luxury of projecting what we wish others to see--it requires being comfortable enough to trust that the scratches and misplaced brush strokes are part and parcel of this divine icon. We don't get to force the image we wish, upon the hearts and minds of others. Instead, we are invited to trust that the image is a sufficient window, and allow others to make their own choices about that window.

What is God telling you, when you feel brave enough to pray through the holy icon of you, as God sees you in Divine Creation?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

Psalms 56, 57 (58) (Morning)
Psalm 64, 65 (Evening)
Genesis 19:1-17, (18-23), 24-29
Hebrews 11:1-12
John 6:27-40

When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, they said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.” And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one? —and my life will be saved!” He said to him, “Very well, I grant you this favor too, and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord; and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the Plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace. So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled. ~Genesis 19:15-29 (NRSV)

In the Sodom and Gomorrah story, Lot manages to eke out one last-minute deal with the angels--to spare the city of Zoar from impending destruction and allow him and his family to take refuge there. Of particular interest is the name of the town itself--Zoar--literally, in Hebrew, "insignificant." Out of the five cities on the plain of what is now Jordan, the most insignificant one was spared.

Those of us who grew up or live in small town America are pretty well acquainted with the meaning of "an insignificant town." In fact, we often brag in the most colorful phraseology we can think of to tell others how small our town is, such as, "My town's so small, we have the "Welcome to" and the "You are now leaving" signs on the same signpost." We call it "a wide spot in the road," or say the sum total of the town is a gas station and a tavern. My all time favorite is the one used by a friend of mine who grew up in a little town in the southeast Missouri bootheel--"My home town? Two stores, two whores, and a cotton gin."

Well, my guess is Zoar, in comparison to the other four cities, was about that speed--except the cotton gin hadn't been invented yet. Excepting, of course, the unfortunate demise of Lot's wife, the salvation of Lot's family was destined to be in an insignificant place.

Our human judgmental tendency is to always belittle the smaller of the two. People in St. Louis make fun of Kirksville, people in Kirksville make fun of Macon, and people in Macon make fun of people in Bevier. Most of us from small towns, when we hear the line in John 1:46 of "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" we are usually mentally plugging in the name of our small town.

However, as we study the Bible, we discover God makes fairly good use of insignificant places, right down to using an insignificant place for the birth of the Savior. By all accounts, Bethlehem was somewhere between a berg and a shtetl on the significance scale, and Nazareth wasn't much better. But as it turns out, in the upside down world of God's Economic Scale, bigger is almost never better.

Instead, God works mystery in the world of insignificance--a dazzling alchemy, indeed, and it calls us to look at the insignificant places in our lives with a new wonder and a new awe if we are willing to accept, as John Calvin called it, "a teachable spirit." From the Lot story we learn that too much longing for the big significant things in life will petrify us as surely as Lot's wife was stiffened into a pillar of salt, and our salvation rests in not just journeying to, but fleeing to the insignificant places.

Maybe it's best summed up by Arundhati Roy, in "The God of Small Things:" “Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house---the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture---must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”

Where are the insignificant places where you've fled, that became the skeletal frame of who you find yourself becoming, as a fully-fleshed out child of God?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepiscatoid

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’ And she said, ‘Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’

The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.’ The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named after you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, ‘Do not let me look on the death of the child.’ And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.

God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. -- Genesis 21:1-21 (NRSV)

A tale of two mothers, each fiercely devoted to their children, one the owner and the other the slave, one old and barren and the other young and fertile. The younger slept with the owner's husband, as her owner wanted her to do, and a son was born of that union. The elder also slept with her husband also bore a son of their union. Suddenly, instead of no heir for the husband, now there were two, which was one too many, at least for the elder. She had the younger woman and her child sent out to the desert to live or die, it didn't really matter which, so long as the woman and her son were not in her camp and claiming the normal inheritance rights of the first-born. So out they went and, at the point of death, were saved by God. The two women never met again, although the two boys met as adults.

It sounds almost like a soap opera with twists and turns and improbabilities by the score. Of course, improbabilities in the Bible were pretty much the norm, so it's hard to be surprised at anything that happens. What could be more improbable than a 90-year-old woman getting pregnant and not only surviving the pregnancy and birth but having a live child. Sarah certainly beat the odds on that score. Still, now there was a problem of making sure her son, Isaac, would be Abraham's heir, not just a second son, probably dependent on the generosity of his older half brother, Ishmael. Even though it was the second time Hagar found herself in the desert (the first being when she ran away from the camp before Ishmael was born), it didn't make it any easier. This time she had another person, not just a promise, to give her concern.

I wonder how many Hagars there are in the world today, women cast off and left to sink or swim on their own and with their children to be cared for, fed, clothed, housed and educated? There are literally millions of women, single, divorced, or widowed, who are responsible for caring for themselves and their children only on the salaries they make at whatever job they can find and hold. In these times, jobs are scarce and even women with higher education often have trouble finding something that pays more than minimum wage. Programs that supported many of these women -- school lunch programs for their kids and access to reasonable cost day care or medical care -- are being stripped away in the name of "balancing the budget" of the country. Should the woman not be able to earn a living, she is forced onto welfare and labeled as lazy, unwilling to work, a government sponge, and taking benefits to which she is not entitled (in the minds of many). Meanwhile, those who have jobs, have good incomes and a lot of power to toss around, slash government programs that would benefit these daughters of Hagar and their children while enjoying all the benefits themselves.

I don't know what Hagar really did after God showed her the well that day in the desert. Did she have to become a servant to someone in a tribe nearby? Did she go to Egypt in a caravan or find a husband somewhere who would accept a woman not only not a virgin but with a child in tow? I can only hope that her life was at least halfway comfortable and pleasant, although I can imagine that it might not have been.

The question remains, though, who are the daughters of Hagar in our world? Perhaps they are not daughters by blood but certainly daughters by circumstance. Hagar is a single mother finding herself struggling to survive and provide for her kids, however the situation came about. What are our responsibilities to them as human beings and as Christians? Are we keeping them within the camp, supporting them and their children, or are we casting them out to fend for themselves? Some of the fault may lie with the women themselves and some of it may have been circumstance, but what about the children? What is our responsibility for them? What do we risk by ignoring or isolating them? What is a generation worth?

I have to remember my days as a Hagar in the desert with a child to support. I had help, and without it things would not have worked out well at all. What then do I owe to today's Hagars and Ishmaels? Will it be to be just a memory or will it be a suggestion (or even spur) to action? What can I do?

It's easy for me to see the story of the good Samaritan in this, only this time we see it from a woman's perspective and seeing the back story rather than the result. Looking at it that way, I can put myself in that story because I've been there.

I got help from strangers, as I hope and believe Hagar did. Now what do I need to do to pass it on to a younger generation? What do any of us need to do? And what can we do, individually and collectively?
I think the world might be a better place if we did something instead of dismantling the already threadbare safety net. I think God would heartily endorse the effort to strengthen and support it. That in itself should be encouragement enough.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter