Psalm 72
Genesis 22:1-8
Hebrews 11:23-31
John 6:52-59

Leaving the counselor’s office the youth walking beside me is fuming. He has spent an hour by the court’s order to attend a session with an addiction counselor. She spent the hour interrogating him and berating him for his behaviors. If her intent was to cause a change, she failed spectacularly. “She treats me like dirt,” he says. “She doesn’t believe I can change.”

“I believe that you have the capacity for change,” I announce. “And I also have faith in you.”

“What is the difference?” he rejoins.

“When I believe, I think with my mind of all the things that are possible,” I say slowly hoping that the difference will come to me quickly. “Faith is more difficult. Faith changes us. Faith implies that I trust the promise. My faith in you is that you will change, not that you can change” I say tentatively. “I believe that you can stop drinking. I have faith that you will stop when you so choose.”

He nods, “So what is this faith in God thing?”

I sigh a little, “I trust that God keeps his promises that I can be healed, and that I am never alone. What do you have faith in that changes your life?”

He thinks for a long time. Finally he says, “I have faith that God doesn’t think that I am dirt.”

With that pronouncement, I begin to see a long line of defeated people who never believed that they are valued and cherished. Without this fundamental faith understanding, change is not possible. And faith requires trusting, which is tough on those whose days are overflowing with fractured promises.

I look again. It’s another distinct line of those we count in the community of saints with Moses and maybe Abraham and Sarah who took the risk of trusting God’s promise. Yes, I even see my grandmother marching along.
I am so glad we are in this rich tradition of those who lived ‘by faith.’ Perhaps we can write about this young man one day -- By faith, he went beyond racial insults. By faith, he gave up alcohol. By faith, he was restored to wholeness. By faith, he chose a different path. By faith, he lived in joy. By faith, he led his people.

Thanks be to our God who keeps his promises.

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

"Christ is the light of the nations." With these majestic words the Second Vatican Council began the greatest of its documents, the "Constitution on the Church." Fundamental to everything else that came forth from the council were the reaffirmation of the missionary character of the church, the recognition of the unfinished task which that implies, the confession that the church is a pilgrim people on its way to the ends of the earth and the end of time, and the acknowledgment of a new openness to the world.
~Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Revised Edition. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 1.

As I reflect on the themes of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple and Candlemas, I am reminded that the Blessed Virgin, along with the prophets Simeon and Anna, lift up Christ within the Temple as a kind of first fruits and sacrifice. We ourselves are the Temple built of living stones, the Body of Christ, which the Spirit binds together in faith, hope, and love. In every celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we are presented to the Father, along with the other gifts, by, with, and in Christ. We are
the ones who have come to know the blessings of his light long expected. We rejoice with God's prophets and the poor in the gift of the Savior. We find ourselves in communion with all those who pour their hearts out night and day to God.

Whatever one thinks of the present state of ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church, it would be hard to find a student of the history and mission of the Church who did not see the Second Vatican Council and in particular the document Lumen Gentium as an amazing step forward, not just for the Roman Catholic Church but for all Christians everywhere. The document, like several others, bears the stamp of the great Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner. For the Council, the Church is missionary of its very nature and a kind of sacramental reality that makes Christ present in every time and place. And, as Newbigin rightly insists, there is an acknowledgment of a new openness to the world.

There are aspects of Lumen Gentium that I suspect many of us who are not Roman Catholic would find hard to swallow, but the basic perspective has long influenced ecumenical reflection on mission in all communions. Truly the Church is called and sent by the One who is light and truth for all people and nations, namely Jesus Christ, God's definitive offer of mercy for the world, especially the "least of these" and those who have God alone for their helper.

Truly, we are the Temple and the pilgrim People of God, present in all times and places, bearing witness by what we do and say, by how we suffer and struggle and forgive and watch and love and pray. And wherever we are, in all our frailty and brokenness, there also is Christ himself.

Truly, he is the light of the world.

Truly, every flame has become a sign of his Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, the one who spoke by the prophets.

Truly, the many lights--and there are many--now bear witness to the one true Light.

Truly, all truth, all goodness, and all beauty, wherever they are found, have their source and find their goal in Him.

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

Psalm 69 “O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you.”

One of the Native Youth with whom I work has just moved out of state for a job. He chats with me on line. “Everything is really good. I like it here and I have already saved money for a car. It is going so great.”

It was an upbeat conversation and we ended by saying the usual “later.” Before I could sign off, he sends another message.

“There is one thing I am worried about,” he writes. “I am praying that everything continues to go well. What I am afraid of is that some of the things I’ve done in the past are going to kick me in the face. I’m afraid that one day will be payback time from God and everything will come crashing down.”

Thankful that I had time to think before I respond, I finally write down, “God already knows all about it. He doesn’t do payback time. You are his beloved child. Even if you have some hidden stuff you think no one knows about, Grandfather God knows and cherishes you anyway. He doesn’t do revenge. The way it works is that when we face up to all our foolishness, God’s forgiveness is a done deal. Until then, we are totally loved as we are, regardless of how much we mess up or run away.”

After we disconnect, I look at the four basic faith issues that keep coming up in this youth ministry. This is the story out of which these at risk youth make decisions. “I can’t have value because I am basically a bad person who has been in trouble all my life. Life can’t be good because I can’t trust anything that happens to me to be without pitfalls. My past cannot be forgiven because guilt and shame weighs me down. My future is closed because I can’t trust that good change is possible.” This is the story for those who have been crushed by indifference, by curtailed promises, by reprisal, and by contempt.

Since they have been interacting with the Church, that destructive story has been eroding along with the behaviors that go with it.

Sometimes they have had a brief moment in which they realize that they are truly children of a forgiving God and start to make choices in reference to that moment. And when that happens, even if they, like all of us, start to slip back into old behaviors... When that happens, they and we are healed.

He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. -- Mark 6:7-13 NRSV

Back when I was a lot younger, the rage was for Broadway musicals. They were usually pretty similar in general plot with just the details differing --- boy meets girl, couple start to become closer, something separates them, something else brings them back together, they all lived happily ever after. Stories like that were common then. A hit musical usually had a few songs that people would walk down the road or sidewalk humming, whistling or singing, and there were a few songs that everybody knew. To have a smash hit musical on Broadway, well, that made the composer/lyricist's names household words.

For every hit musical, though, there were probably 30, 40 or more that never made it through the first week, the opening performance or even consideration for production. Even big names in the musical field didn't hit home runs every time, so it was important to them to get back to the drawing board and piano and start working on something new. They had to shake off the rejection of their initial project and move on to something else.

Sounds a bit like what the disciples were instructed to do: if someone doesn't receive your message, shake the dust off your Birkenstocks and head on down the road to the next city, village, or hamlet. They were to do what might be considered "portable living" - taking absolutely the most basic kit, no extra or unnecessary items, even some perceived necessities (like money) were to be left behind. They had a job to do, but if people didn't want that message, then off they were to go, two by two, and try again somewhere different.

Even for the disciples of Jesus, success wasn't a guaranteed thing. There were people who didn't believe their message, didn't feel it was for them, or just plain weren't interested. But there were people who did listen, did welcome them and did come to believe. They honed their craft, they spoke from their hearts and their inspiration, and more and more people came to believe. Still, there was always the risk that they would need to walk away, so they stepped out in faith but tempered it with practicality and a dose of reality.

I think there's a point in every person's life where they have to walk away from something because it isn't productive, isn't safe or isn't fulfilling. Sometimes they have to leave everything behind and travel light. I don't think it's an easy decision most of the time. It's hard to walk away from a melody that haunts you but isn't really complete, a message that captures you but doesn't seem to have the same excitement and relevance for others, or a situation that may be familiar but which has a negative impact. It's scary to move to something new and unfamiliar, wondering whether this will be the right choice or the wrong one.

I think the disciples had to step out in faith, using the guidelines Jesus gave them, using their minds, senses and heart to judge whether or not this was a place that would be receptive of their message, and not being afraid to cut their losses and move on if it didn't work out. I don't think it would hurt for me to remember that as well. Sometimes one has to risk in order to gain.

Now where did I put my Birkenstocks? And do I have to leave my Kindle and iPod behind? Yes? oh, well. Some things are more important than musicals and best-sellers.

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

Psalms 93, 96 (Morning)
Psalm 34 (Evening)
Genesis 24:50-67
2 Timothy 2:14-21
Mark 10:13-22

Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some.
But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.” In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for special use, some for ordinary. All who cleanse themselves of the things I have mentioned will become special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work. ~2 Timothy 2:14-21 (NRSV)

"Special utensils" have always been one of the small joys of my life, whether they are commercially made, fashioned by my imagination, or invented by others in my life.

To understand my penchant for gizmos and special tools, you have to remember I grew up with the infamous Ron Popeil commercials blaring on the TV as a child--the Super Veg-O-Matic (It slices! It dices! It chops! It makes julienne fries!), the Cap Snaffler (Snaffles caps off any size jug, bottle or jar!), and Mr. Microphone ("Hey good lookin', I'll be back to pick you up later!"), just to name a few. (Okay, so I admit I thought Ron lost it, though, with that spray-on hair, GLH-9.)

So, as you can imagine, it wasn't that hard for me to sign on to the concept of being fashioned into a special utensil for use in the service of God.

However, as those old Ron Popeil commercials used to say, "But wait! There's more!"

As we start looking over how these special utensils are made, we are cautioned in this Epistle to "avoid wrangling over words."

Unfortunately, when it comes to our faith, it seems the words we most wrangle over are the words of the Bible. At last count, over 450 versions of the Bible translated into English are available to the modern reader. It's a safe bet that there are at least 450 theological opinions as to the meaning of any significant passage from the Bible in one version alone. We can't even agree as Christians on the meaning of words like "salvation," or "grace," let alone hot-button issues such as our understanding of sexuality in the Bible as it pertains to same-sex relationships. As Marcus Borg says in the introduction to his book, Speaking Christian, "Christian language has become a stumbling block in its time. Much of its basic vocabulary is seriously misunderstood by Christians and non-Christians alike."

The end result is exactly what we see in our reading--it not only does no good but it ruins those who are listening. We have an increasing number of people in this country who would rather choose no religion--the group of people that Elizabeth Dreschler describes in her book, "Tweet if you Heart Jesus" as The Religious Nones. I suspect much of it is because they are, frankly, tired of watching the faithful wrangle over words. They're tired of having so-called Christian words used as knives to stab and slash at their innermost parts. They're tired of watching us filet each other with them and shred each other apart like julienne fries flying through the blades of a Super Veg-O-Matic.

Of far more importance is how these words transform us, rather than argue with each other over their meaning. When we look inward, and really sit quietly with God on this one while reading the words in the Bible, we are very likely to be shown those places where our impious words are stumbling blocks to ourselves. If they are stumbling blocks to ourselves, they are liable to be stumbling blocks in our interactions with others. The nuances of Biblical translation pale in comparison to the positive changes others see in us when we actually live the words rather than fight with each other about them. When we allow ourselves to be transformed by the words of the Bible, more useful stories emerge--stories of how we are changed as a result of following at least a few of the words of Jesus.

Rather than feel a need to be superior and "right" about the words in the Bible, what would happen if we reflected more on their potential to change us? As the old commercials used to say, "Operators are standing by for your call."

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

Readings for the Feast Day of the Martyrs of Japan
Psalm 16:5-11
Lamentations 3:46-48, 52-59
Galatians 2:19-20
Mark 8:34-38

The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
I have a goodly heritage.
I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I keep the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. ~Psalm 16:5-11 (NRSV)

It's absolutely horrifying to think that the story of the 26 Martyrs of Japan represents the focal point of the annihilation of a Christian community that, at least, numbered 300,000 (some scholars estimate it up to just under one million.) However, the more fascinating part of this story, to me, is "the rest of the story"--when the underground remnants of this community were re-discovered by Fr. Bernard-Thadeé Petitjean on March 17, 1865. (Actually, the covert Christians introduced themselves to Fr. Petitjean--but only after he and other missionaries had passed certain tests posed by the Japanese Christians, to confirm that these visitors, were, indeed, Christians themselves.)

For roughly two hundred and fifty years, the remnant of the original Japanese Christians, and approximately seven successive generations of their descendants had managed to keep the Christian faith alive, and relatively intact. Although a few documents and relics had been passed down, most of the faithful carried the tenets of their faith orally through snippets of remaining documents and the creation of the Tenchi hajimari no koto, a sacred book they created themselves that had an amalgam of Bible stories, elements of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, and Japanese folk tales. Many of them committed much of this to memory.

Another clever feature of their survival was that they had split among the community various sacramental duties that normally would have been under the scope of a single priest. They understood the Roman Catholic rubrics for emergency baptism and penitential rites in the absence of a priest, and divided these duties up among the community. Other duties overlapped among community members, such as the keeping of the liturgical calendar, the prayers and liturgies known as the orashiyo (from the Latin Oratio) and preserving various relics. Rather than worship as a large group, they created numerous roughly five-household cells, which interconnected to larger confraternaties or sodalities, that interconnected with each other.

But perhaps the most ingenious practice of these crypto-Christians was their creation of everyday objects indistinguishable to the eye from Buddhist tradition that were actually Christian objects of veneration. One example is a statue known as the Mariya Kannon. To the untrained eye, it appeared to be a female Buddha embracing a child--but to the faithful it was obviously the Blessed Virgin Mary and the young Jesus.

Although there were gaps in their understanding of some Sacraments (namely ordination and confirmation, since they required a bishop,) they still transmitted the knowledge of several Sacraments (particularly baptism) with amazing fidelity. When questioned by the missionaries upon their return in 1865, one woman remarked, "We celebrate the feast of our Lord Jesus on the 25th day of the month of frost. We have been told that on that day, about midnight, our Lord was born in a stable, that he grew up in poverty and suffering, and at the age of 33 he died for the salvation of our souls on the cross. Now we have the season of sorrow. Do you also have these celebrations?" (Fr. Petitjean remarked in his writings that, indeed, they were in the season of Lent at the time this story was told.)

It staggers the mind to see the complexity and detail these hidden Christians kept intact for seven generations. They re-wrote a rudimentary form of the Bible mostly from memory. They baptized their descendants. They created hidden objects of worship. They did what had to be done to keep the church alive--because their Christian faith meant that much to them. I doubt anyone would argue that even with their mistakes, gaps, and merging of Japanese folk tales into the tales of the Hebrew people, that these people were undoubtedly Christian.

As we remember not only these 26 brave martyrs, but the seven generations of crypto-Christians that carried on their legacy, let's participate in an imaginative spiritual exercise. If space aliens came tomorrow and began to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth, what would we believe were the most key aspects of our faith that we would be bound and determined to preserve? How would we disguise it? What pieces of our liturgy can you recite from memory? What are the stories in the Bible that matter most to you? Perhaps those are exactly the features we should be displaying to younger generations that are struggling to decide if the church--and God--has any relevance to their lives.

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 scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again." John 8:3-11 NRSV

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in all the garbage of dysfunctional images of a quick fix god who spends his time floating in the air condemning everyone in sight. Where do these images come from? Yes, I know how the church has overcompensated with one image or another in specific historical crisis. And I remember my racist grandfather searching through the bible line by line searching for anything that can justify his ranting against those who are different. I listen today to those who are so scared that their world of exclusive saintliness has come to an end that they desperately proclaim that they and they alone have the truth that will protect us from “those people.”

After I read the above story of the woman not condemned, a teenager asks, “Why would he do that?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He continues, “She was guilty wasn’t she? If she is guilty she should be punished.”

I show them a rock I have where I have painted the words “First Stone.” “Why do I need this stone to remind me of something important?” We read the story again. We discuss the different parts.

One of the young adults says, “I remember the post you erased on FB where someone said that instead of all the things we do, including our homeless mission, we should concentrate only on the drinking problems we have. Who did he think he is to judge us? I get so tired of that. I think this is about who is qualified to judge.”

“We do it too,” says one of the young adults. “I criticize people all the time. My mother hit me on the side of the head when I walked in late from school one day. We got into a big fight yelling at each other and all I could think of is how much I would like to slam her. Later I found out she had lost her job and didn’t know how to tell us. I’m too quick to condemn someone.”

“We don’t know what is going on with a person. It’s up to God to judge.” Someone concluded.

“This is too easy,” I say. “It sounds like you are all giving me the ‘right’ answers. Go back to the first question. ‘Why would he do this?’”

One of the teens responded, “He made them think about their own problems instead of why someone else is wrong. And even though he knew she was wrong and he had the right to judge, he still said that he did not condemn her. That’s extreme. That’s really big.”

We left it at that. I know that we haven’t finished with that story. We are so used to censuring and being censured by those who do not have our standards. But to receive the message “Neither do I condemn you,” is so radical an act of majesty.

Somehow to say, “This is really big” may be the most comforting expression that can be said in our limited understanding.

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

Part of the task concerning evangelism is to recover nerve about our modes of speech in church traditions that have debased our speech, either by conservative reductionism or by liberal embarrassment. The noun "gospel," which means "message," is linked in the Bible to the verb "tell-the-news"...At the center of the act of evangelism is the message announced, a verbal, out-loud assertion of something decisive not known until the moment of utterance. There is no way that anyone, including the embarrassed liberal, can avoid this lean, decisive assertion, which is at the core of evangelism. The act of announcement, however, is not barren and contextless. I argue here that the announcement itself is the middle term of a three-part dramatic sequence. No reductionist conservative can faithfully treat evangelism as though it were only "naming the name." We are required to notice that behind (prior to) the announcement is an "event" of mythic proportion to which we have no direct access. And after the proclamation comes the difficult, demanding work of reordering all of life according to the claim of the proclaimed verdict.

Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 14-15.

There's a good deal of truth in this brief quotation from Watler Brueggemann on the nature of the task of evangelism, which comes from a brief, excellent book on the subject.

I do like the stress on overcoming liberal embarrassment. The Church has been called and sent to share the Gospel story, and "lean, decisive assertion" against the contradictory story of Empire is central to the evangelical task today, as it is in every time and place. Brueggemann recently spoke to a gathering of diocesan clergy here in Southern Ohio and made this very point.

At the same time, I wonder how many would be "conservatives" would be shocked to find out that they are reductionists, engaged in a "barren and contextless" announcement. If we are asserting the real Gospel, in all its shocking truth, we are issuing a decisive call to conversion and comprehensive transformation of life. Not just the private sphere. But all of it. As Brueggemann says, "after the proclamation comes the difficult demanding work of reordering all of life according to the claim of the proclaimed verdict."

I do wonder, as we struggle with questions of self-definition and adequate structures to support the Church's mission, whether we are remembering the main thing, i.e. showing forth Christ and the Kingdom in word and deed, in such a way that we are invited to share in his holy and life-giving work. For in hearing and responding to the Good News lies our true freedom, and the hope of the world in the midst of so much suffering and death.

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

Friday, February 10, 2012 -- Week of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)
Psalms 88 (morning) 91, 92 (evening)
Genesis 27:46 -- 28:4, 10-22
Romans 13:1-14
John 8:33-47

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Romans 13:1-3a

It is easy to understand these admonitions in the context of the early Church's life in the Roman Empire. As followers of one who was executed as a capital criminal and an enemy of the state, suspicion surrounded this new religious movement. Rome could be incredibly efficient and violent when dealing with those it regarded as enemies or conspirators. For the Church to survive, it had to convince the authorities that it was not a threat. To appeal to a wider audience, the Church could not be seen to be a seditious movement. Early Church leaders were at pains to convince those who might threaten them that they were not a threat to the governing authorities.

But in so many ways, the gospel that Paul preaches is a direct challenge to the empire and to the civil religion of emperor worship. Many of the fundamental claims of the Church directly confronted the claims of the emperor: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Son of God. Coins and inscriptions throughout the Empire declared that the divine Caesar is Lord and Caesar is Son of God.

So on the one hand Paul offers these admonitions of respect for the authority of the empire and for Caesar, and on the other hand he leads an organization that undermines the claims of empire.

Paul is not naive. He know that innocent members of their community have been arrested, punished and occasionally executed as traitors of the state. He want to establish a prima facia case that the state has nothing to suspect from the Christian movement so that they won't be threatened and persecuted.

But these words -- instructing obedience to the state and presuming that governing authorities do God's work through their institutions for punishing bad conduct -- these words stand in contrast to so much of the rest of the Biblical witness. God called Moses to challenge the authority of Pharaoh and to lead the people into freedom. God raised up judges to liberate the people from oppressive powers. God anointed the prophets to speak truth to authority and to proclaim God's will for justice. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God -- what the world would be like if God reigned instead of Caesar, and Jesus was executed as a capital criminal and enemy of the state. Jesus stands forever as a testimony of God's triumphant peaceful challenge in the face of the violence of the powers and principalities.

Except as words of accommodation to threat, these messages from Paul about being subject to governing authorities cannot stand as immutable and timeless truths. Unfortunately they have been used historically to quell movements of freedom and to justify institutions of oppression. When liberal innovators began to argue on behalf of representative government and democracy, many Church leaders opposed them, using passages like these to invoke God's purpose on behalf of the Divine Right of Kings. (After all, you see only Biblical examples of monarchy, not of elected government.) The notion that a representative government should be of the people, by the people and for the people had to assert itself in the face of many Biblical proof texts when monarchy was the tradition and the norm. George Washington and the founders of our nation appealed to a higher authority and to more fundamental rights when they resisted Royal authority in the name of God.

More than a few conflicts have pitted Biblical proof texts and traditional practice against more universal values and the higher calling of justice and liberation. Slaves, democrats, women, and gay people stand in a notable tradition among those who have challenged the traditional interpretation of scripture in the name of God.

The rock on which their challenge has stood is the rock that Paul shifts to right after his paragraph about being subject to the authorities. Paul echoes the Gospels, saying, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."

Justice is love extended into the communal sphere. Whenever love and authority are in conflict, love trumps authority.

Now that is a revolutionary notion.

Commemoration of Fanny Crosby

Readings:
Ps. 108:1–6
Isaiah 42:10–12,16
1 Peter 1:3–9
John 9:35–39

I made acquaintance with Fanny Crosby long before I knew her name or her story. In the church of my childhood, there was plenty of singing, lots of songs of praise, comfort and hope featuring a loving God, a gentle shepherd, and the joys of redemption. There were plenty of songs about sin and the need for repentance too, sometimes even in the same hymn along with any of the other elements. Most were very sentimental and flowery of language, the usual poetry and prose of the Victorian era in which Fanny lived. Still, congregations loved singing them and even children could learn them by heart and consider the message they brought. They still do; my neighbor next door, a member of the same denomination in which I grew up, assures me they sung often and much loved.

One of the ones that I remember most clearly was one called "Blessed Assurance":

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood,

Refrain
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. Refrain

Perfect submission, all is at rest
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love. Refrain*

The music was credited to Phoebe P. Knapp and the lyrics to Fanny Crosby. Reading Fanny's biography, I found that the name I knew from the hymnbook I used in my childhood and adolescence was really quite a person. She wrote thousands of hymns, some of which are present in many contemporary Protestant hymnals (but not Hymnal 1982). Many of the most prominent composers of hymns of the day came to her with music already composed, asking her to fill in the lyrics. She would hear the music several times and, usually in very short order, would have a set of lyrics to go with it.

The hymns became as important to camp meeting revivals and the Holiness movement as they were to the Sunday morning services. Because of their quality, quality, quantity and endurance, Fanny was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1975, 60 years after her death. I'd never really considered her music to be "gospel", but the evangelical expressions and tone were unmistakable.

The readings for today, Fanny's commemoration, speak of many of the same things of which Fanny wrote so frequently: hope, faith, belief, praise, thanks, salvation and mercy. The readings also mention blindness and the release from blindness. Fanny may not have had a physical curing of her blindness but she truly seemed to walk in a higher light than the sun could provide. She walked unafraid in prisons and less-than-desirable neighborhoods, speaking and preaching the love and mercy of God. The glory wasn't for her but rather for God. Many were attracted to and acknowledged God as a result of her words.

Thou the Spring of all my comfort,
More than life to me,
Whom have I on earth beside Thee?
Whom in Heav'n but Thee? **

* Accessed from the Cyberhymnal
** "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior", verse 4, lyrics by Fanny Crosby, accessed from The Cyberhymnal

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

Readings for the feast day of Charles Freer Andrews
Psalm 113:2-8
Deuteronomy 15:7-11
Ephesians 2:13-22
Matthew 23:8-12

If we know of Charles Freer Andrews at all, we probably have an image of the rugged looks of Ian Charleson--"Charlie" of the movie Gandhi. A quick Google Images search, however, yields photos of a man who looks a lot more like a mad monk than the lean, handsome Charleson of Richard Attenborough's movie. Often pictured in traditional Indian garb, the real-life Andrews was noticeable by his moderately long beard and his intense, piercing eyes. The Mahatma himself claimed that Andrews' initials stood for "Christ's Faithful Apostle" because of his tireless work in India's independence and in the abolition of indentured servitude. Although the British Empire had abolished slavery, the practice of indenturing servants was alive and well in Britannia's empire.

Andrews never married--but what I have read about him led me to believe he was married to India. He was married to his sense of justice. He was married to the Christ-like notion of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. The British political hierarchy and the Church of England ecclesiastical hierarchy found him to be quite a prickly character in that regard--Englishmen who sided with the struggles of "the colonials" were generally thought to be traitors for questioning their motives and their methods. Some went to far as to denounce him as a traitor to the land of his birth and the church that had ordained him--even a traitor to the very faith he had been sent to preach.

It is surprising, in these precarious economic times, that his words and his prophetic words have fallen into relative obscurity--a quick search on Amazon.com shows several out of print (and slightly overpriced) works. He was a proponent of the Christian Socialist movement, which followed a very strict definition of the word "usury." Usury, if looked at in a biblical and historical sense, was defined by "the accumulation of wealth beyond what is required to meet the responsibilities of station"--not just as it applied to interest rates. He questioned the morality of his own Church of England's Western/Eurocentric view of Christianity, demanding it to fully embrace humanity, not just the "white races."

"If the desire of possession in a man is stronger than the sense of brotherhood," he wrote, "he may be a tyrant or a slave, or both in one. He in whom a sense of brotherhood is uppermost may suffer, even to death, but he will preserve society from destruction. Through that suffering he will surely rise to the conception of one common humanity, called into existence by one Father, redeemed by one incarnate Savior, quickened by one infinite Spirit."

Our readings today call us to truly embrace "the other," in a way far beyond money and lip service. Our Psalm praises a God who "raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people." Our passage in Deuteronomy reminds us "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”" Paul, in Ephesians, exhorts us that we are "no longer strangers and aliens," but are "citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone." Finally, Matthew's Gospel calls each of us to servanthood, reminding us that "All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted."

Are we ready to embrace the radical discipleship of the Gospel as it was understood by the real Charles Freer Andrews, or is it easier to watch the dashing and likable Charlie in a re-run of Gandhi?

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, February 13, 2012 -- Week of 6 Epiphany, Year Two
Absalom Jones, Priest 1818

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 949)
Psalms 89:1-18 (morning) 89:19-52 (evening)
Genesis 30:1-24
1 John 1:1-10
John 9:1-17

"...this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us..." 1 John 1:2

The epistle of 1 John begins not unlike the gospel of John -- "In the beginning was the Word... What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." (John 1:1a,4)

One of the ways of thinking about the process of life is to see creation as the Divine emptying Itself of its transcendent nature into material creation, a process of "involution" -- Spirit becomes matter; out of no-thing is something. From that point on, creation is being gathered back into its Source, a process of evolution. The Divine is deeply involved in drawing creation into higher levels of consciousness, until in human beings, "the universe becomes conscious of itself." (Julian Huxley)

In some sense, each human life moves through the whole process of evolution into fuller consciousness. We begin as a single cell and through cell division and specialization, we are born into life with a primitive, animal nature, requiring prompt attention to our instinctual needs for food, comfort, shelter, and sense pleasure.

By ages 2-4 we have processed much sensory information, developing an emotional life with likes and dislikes. We live in a magical world, where the part and the whole are interchangeable, still unable to distinguish imagination from reality. But we begin to recognize our sense of body-self as being distinct from other objects. When an object is removed from our field of vision, we know it still exists outside our vision.

We evolve into what Thomas Keating calls the Mythic Membership level of consciousness, when we interiorize the values of parents, culture and peer groups. It is a tribal consciousness, with deep loyalty and over-identification with family, peer group, ethic group, nation, religious affiliation, ect.

Sometime between 7-15 years, the capacity for logical and abstract thinking increases. The intuitive powers of the right brain are activated. We can begin to reflect self-critically on the inherited information of our affiliative groups. We can move from self-centered values toward the higher values of compassion and unconditional love. We become rational beings of full personhood, reflective and self-conscious.

If we continue to grow, we can experience an intuitive sense of oneness with the cosmos, an identity of belonging to the whole human family. We transcend the instinct to compete and become motivated by an inclination to serve.

Early Christian theologians spoke of God's particular entry into the process through the incarnation of Jesus -- God became human so that humanity might become divine. "God became man so that men might become gods." "The Word became flesh … that we, partaking of his Spirit, might be deified." (St. Athanasius) God "became what we are in order to make us what he is himself." (St. Ireaneus of Lyon) St. Gregory of Nazianzus urged his listeners to "become gods for (God's) sake, since (God) became man for our sake."

Each of us in our own particular life brings to God the whole of creation in self-offering. We are mineral, vegetable, and animal evolved into enough self-consciousness that we can praise God and serve creation in God's name. Insofar as we can grow into the divine consciousness, each of us can contribute to the evolution and healing of the whole. We can become one with God in Christ, at peace in union with ourselves, with all humanity, and with creation and the universe itself. Our self-emptying into life allows the divine to fill us with life, and we can recapitulate the divine enterprise, becoming truly who we are.

1 John encourages us, "We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our/your joy may be complete." (1:3-4)

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 -- Week of 6 Epiphany, Year Two
Cyril and Methodius, Monk and Bishop, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869, 885

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 949)
Psalms 97, 99, [100] (morning) 94, 95 (evening)
Genesis 31:1-24
1 John 2:1-11
John 9:18-41

We are pretty messed up. Today's readings are reminders of how we bring conflict, division, jealousy, and sin into nearly everything we touch. Today we've got examples from work, religious fellowship, and even trying to do good.

The Jacob vs. Laban saga is a story of nasty, cut-throat business competition with an edge. Jacob has lots of qualities of a hard working entrepreneur; but his shrewd tactics are hard to justify. He sows some bitter seeds. Resentment and conflict are inevitable byproducts of this bitter relationship between two relatives who are dishonest with one another. This is one of those stories where there are no good guys. Yet underneath it all is the reminder that God is working even through these compromised means to bring about blessing for humanity.

In 1st John we face the reality that even among those who have embraced the ethic and community of Jesus, there is animosity and bitterness, disobedience and failure. But, "the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining." (1 John 2:8b)

The gospel lesson is so sad and frustrating. It is a metaphor for our many blindnesses. Jesus heals a man who was born blind. The conventional wisdom (and theological orthodoxy) said that when a child is born blind it is God's judgment for sin. There was an argument whether it was for the sin of the parents or the child. But, the curse of being born blind is obvious enough, so there must be a cause, they reasoned. Nevertheless, Jesus heals him. But... he did so on the sabbath, an obvious violation of one the Ten Commandments.

So, the religious authorities are in a bind. The Pharisees are good people. They are the ones charged with the responsibility of teaching and promoting religious life and principles. Giving sight to the blind seems like a good thing, but no one following God through the revealed law of the scriptures would do such work during the holy rest of the sabbath! Scandal. Yet, it is a wonderful miracle. They are in a quandary. They investigate. As they consider the situation, it seems to them that this man born blind ("You were born entirely in sins!") tries to lecture them. Their cultural conditioning prevails, and they lash out in contempt. Their religious scruples have blinded them to the goodness in front of them. The irony is pretty obvious -- the blind man sees; the supposedly enlightened are blind.

What a mess! How about us? Where does jealousy and competition stain our work? In what ways do we fail to live up to the ideals we have embraced? How do we get stuck and fail to see the good because it comes outside our theologies?

Yes, we're pretty messed up. But God works even through Jacob and Laban, through blindnesses of all kinds, and "the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining." (1 John 2:8b)

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 -- Week of 6 Epiphany, Year Two
Thomas Bray, Priest and Missionary, 1730

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 949)
Psalms 101, 109:1-4(5-19)20-30 (morning) 119:121-144 (evening)
Genesis 31:25-50
1 John 2:12-17
John 10:1-18

The image of Jesus the Good Shepherd is among the most beloved and pastoral we have. We adorn our church nurseries and children's areas with pictures of Jesus caring for the lambs. At times when I have felt particularly vulnerable, I have turned to the shepherd image of Jesus, the strong protector, and felt myself embraced, guarded and sheltered.

But there is another traditional way that we might read and hear today's familiar passage about the Good Shepherd (from John 10). In the scripture and in other ancient literature, shepherd imagery was often used for human rulers, for kings and emperors.

In Ezekiel 34 the prophet famously prophesies against the shepherds of Israel -- leaders who have been feeding themselves and becoming fat and rich while the sheep have suffered. "You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them." (Ezekiel 34:3f) Ezekiel insists that these leaders, these bad shepherds, must be replaced. They will be scattered, exiled. Jeremiah also prophecies against the rulers, speaking of the shepherds who are stupid and who do not inquire of God. (10:21)

We also have Biblical images of good leaders who care for their flock. David is the shepherd who moves from caring for the flock to becoming the good king and leader. And Micah (5:2) looks forward to a Messianic ruler from Bethlehem-Ephratah who will be called "shepherd of my people."

When Jesus names himself the "Good Shepherd," it might have been heard as a very political statement. When Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, he may have in mind a challenge similar to the metaphor of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is how the world would be if God were ruler, and not Caesar or Herod. The Good Shepherd is the caring and benevolent leader, who protects the sheep, guards the vulnerable and heals the hurt. Jesus the Good Shepherd is an image a godly ruler, a challenge and contrast to Caesar or Herod. The image of the Good Shepherd is also a challenge to our contemporary leaders -- our elected representatives and other governmental officials. Ezekiel's accusation against the shepherds of Israel could also apply to many of our own leaders today.

Jesus called on his disciples to exercise their leadership as servants, and he gave them the example of himself, as leader, washing their feet as a slave might.

Today is the commemoration of Thomas Bray, an English country parson who became active in many public ways. He had oversight for the Church's work in the colony of Maryland, where he promoted education and literacy and expressed compassionate concern for Native Americans and Blacks, particularly slaves. He made prison reform a major issue, influencing public opinion on behalf of the misery of inmates. He organized Sunday "Beef and Beer" dinners in the prisons. Bray is credited with inspiring General Oglethorpe to found a humanitarian colony of Georgia to give honest debtors another chance.

One of my colleagues, Roger Joslin, vicar of All Saints', Bentonville, has recently been doing some Good Shepherd work in Benton County, Arkansas, in the spirit of Thomas Bray. The Benton County sheriff is rather proud of the fact that the jail serves no hot food to their prison population. Roger has challenged that practice. He's pointed out that many in jail are only accused, officially innocent until proven guilty. And even the guilty deserve humane treatment and nutritious food.

The scriptures invite us to hold our leaders accountable as servants, as good shepherds, benevolent leaders who strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strayed, seek the lost or ghettoed -- good shepherds who care for the flock rather than becoming fat and powerful themselves, attending to the interests of the fat and powerful.

When Jesus says "I am the Good Shepherd" he throws down a gauntlet to every ruler or authority. And he gives us all an example of how we exercise whatever power or authority we may have in our own home or work or among our friends.

...[T]hrough the luminous brightness that shone from the face of the Lord on the mount the thrice-blessed apostles were secretly led in an ineffable and unknowable manner to the power and glory of God which is completely incomprehensible to every being, for they learnt that the light that appeared to their senses is a symbol of what is hidden and beyond any manifestation. For as the ray of the light that came to pass here overwhelmed the strength of the eyes and remained beyond their grasp, so also God transcends all the power and strength of the mind and leaves no kind of trace for the mind to experience.

Maximus the Confessor, Difficulty 10 in Andrew Louth, ed. Maximus the Confessor (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 128.

The Transfiguration story is the final Gospel appointed for the Sundays after the Epiphany. It tells us something about any theophany, defined as God's act of self-manifestation to us. Because God is absolutely incomprehensible, theophany never means simply conveying secret knowledge, especially if by knowledge we mean the kind that grasps and controls its object. Rather, theophany leads to deeper participation (itself a form of knowledge) in a Mystery who is Wholly Other. Indeed the living God is so fully Other, that God is free to be with us and in us, more intimate than our inmost selves. Without ceasing to be God, God is free to be the innermost source of all we are. God is free to share God's own life ever more fully with us.

The stammering of Peter before the transfigured Christ gives way to a more perfect disclosure of who the Lord Jesus in fact is. The voice and the cloud are reminiscent of many Old Testament theophanies, and Christ is himself flanked by Moses and Elijah (the Law and the Prophets?), figures who had direct personal acquaintance with the Holy One. The words spoken by the voice also remind us of the Trinitarian theophany at the Jordan, with which the Sundays of this season began.

As we turn the corner into Lent, we ought to bear in mind that the Transfiguration also foreshadows the Paschal mystery. Like the Easter Gospel of the Lord's dying and rising--or, for that matter, any good story about God--the Transfiguration story creates as many problems as it solves. Ultimately, we are led into a set of relationships that we cannot contain or control, only accept and embrace as divine gift. The nearest analogy in our experience is falling and being in love. The beloved really gives himself or herself, yet remains beyond our grasp or control.

Indeed, it is love that binds us to God, so that our flesh (body and soul), might be transformed into Christ's likeness, from glory to glory.

As we enter the desert, and ultimately the darkness, may we adhere to God in 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, February 17, 2012 -- Week of 6 Epiphany, Year Two
Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr, 1977

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 949)
Psalms 102 (morning) 107:1-32 (evening)
Genesis 32:22 - 33:17
1 John 3:1-10
John 10:31-42

By this time in our Genesis narrative, Jacob has been assured and reassured of God's intention to bless him. His blessing had been pronounced by his father Isaac. Early in his sojourn he experienced a mystical insight in a dream. He has enjoyed the blessing of children and wealth in his conflicted relationship with Laban. Even Laban said he was warned by God not to harm Jacob because God had blessed Jacob.

But Jacob has never really trusted God. He has always made his own way, usually by cunning -- willing to cheat, lie or deceive to advance his cause. His own self-serving strategies have alienated some of those closest to him.

He now finds himself caught by the consequences of his life's pattern. When he recognized that Laban and his sons were showing signs of hostility toward him, Jacob stole away with his wives and possessions. He escaped a potentially violent showdown and made a truce between them, marking a boundary, like a demilitarized zone. He got away from one enemy he had made. But now, he must face his brother Esau, the one whose birthright he stole. Twenty years ago, the last words we heard from Esau were, "I will kill my brother Jacob."

Jacob still does not trust God's blessing. When he hears Esau is nearby with 400 men, he panics. He divides his party into two parts, hoping one will escape if Esau attacks. He begins sending flocks of livestock ahead, as if to purchase his brother's good will. Then he spends a fevered, restless night alone, wrestling with a stranger. At daybreak, it seems that he is prevailing, when the man displaces Jacob's hip. Jacob still holds on, demanding a blessing. The man renames him "Israel," meaning "The one who strives with God" or "God strives." Jacob asks for the stranger's name. That will not be given. But Jacob is blessed (again), and realizes it is God with whom he has been wrestling.

And Esau? Big ole Esau. He had no devious or violent intentions. He let go of the past long ago. He embraces his long departed brother with affection and tears. Esau has enough, and doesn't need more. Apparently it had not crossed Jacob's mind that some people are not like him.

So there is reconciliation. And Jacob restores the birthright blessing he had wrongly taken saying to Esau, "Please accept my gift." The word for gift is "berakah"; the same word for "blessing." And though Esau is willing to stay with Jacob and live with him, graciously (or maybe warily, ever suspicious), Jacob finds a place to settle some distance away. If Jacob has actually matured, it could be that Jacob modestly creates the distance as a consequence of his earlier betrayal.

Now it is time for Jacob to trust God. He doesn't have to scheme and conspire to make his way, but that has been the story of his life. His strivings have marked his character and left some mixed consequences in their wake. But God's blessing has never left him.

Some of us catch on quickly. For others it takes a while. God loves us. God intends blessing for us. Yes, life is difficult and unsettled. Bad things do happen to good people. But God's blessing is ever present upon us. God doesn't lose patience. If it takes a whole life before we learn to trust, God will wait and even wrestle with us. But the blessing and the love is secure. Always.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” - John 11:1-16

Jesus got a message from his dear friend Mary of Bethany that a loved one, Lazarus, was critically ill. Instead of rushing to see them, Jesus stays to finish some work and then suggests traveling even further to a place where he had already been in danger. Finally he announces that Lazarus had died and that now they needed to go there so that they could understand why he had delayed and what it meant. There must have been some mumbling among the disciples about why he didn't hurry to Lazarus as soon as the message came. After all, isn't that just human nature to want to be there to say goodbye?

Recently I got a phone call from one of my nieces telling me that my only brother was dying. It was not unexpected but the actual words brought home that unless I got there quickly, I might never be able to see my brother again. We had talked just a few days before and although the conversation was of hope and love, I still had the feeling that it was my goodbye to him. I was right; it was. When my niece called again, it was only a few days later. What to do? Go at once and deal with the consequences of that decision or stay here and deal with the consequences here. Unlike Jesus, I didn't have a lesson to teach about the power of God, or to prove his own power over the grave, but I have a feeling that in his very human heart, Jesus would have had similar feelings as I did when he delayed going to Lazarus.

There are so many times when I wish I didn't have to make decisions, especially difficult ones that are part of an intensely internal flood of emotions. Those emotions pull me this way and then that as I consider the consequences of my decision. Even after I decide, there are second, third and fourth thoughts, causing me to ask if I really made the correct decision. As painful as it must have been for Jesus, his decision was to continue his mission and let Lazarus help him teach a lesson to his disciples and friends about his own coming death and resurrection. I have a feeling that just because Jesus was tuned in to the will of God it didn't always make the human part of him ache from time to time.

Lazarus probably believed that he would see a resurrection on the Judgment Day but the call to come out of the tomb must still have been a shock. I have no doubt my brother had a similar faith that he too would be raised at that time but for him there was no call to come out -- at least not yet. I have faith that one day we will see each other again, without recriminations of "Why didn't you come?" or need to ask for forgiveness for not being there.

Somehow I don't think Lazarus' first thoughts upon seeing Jesus were "Why didn't you come?" either.

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

Psalms 148, 149, 150 (Morning)
Psalms 114, 115 (Evening)
Ecclesiasticus 48:1-11
2 Corinthians 3:7-18
Luke 9:18-27

Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 (NRSV)

Of particular note in our Epistle today is the fact the word "glory" appears fourteen times in our passage from 2 Corinthians, and the remainder of the readings have "glory" sprinkled around a few more times for good measure. Wow. That's a lot of glory.

Have you ever been lucky enough to see a solar glory? A solar glory is a halo-like phenomenon caused by the observer being directly between the sun and a cloud of refracting water droplets. Light tunnels through air and is emitted backward, causing a "reverse rainbow" effect against the clouds--the red is on the outer ring of the glory, and the violet is in the center. Often, this is accompanied by a giant sized shadow of the observer's body against the clouds, known as a Brocken spectre (Brocken is the name of the tallest mountain of the Harz Mountains in Germany.) When the Brocken spectre is part of the phenomenon, it appears that a reverse rainbow halo is emanating from the observer's head (the Buddhists call this "Buddha's light.")

It strikes me that in order to see a solar glory, we have to have the light on our backs and our head aimed at the clouds--really, not so much different than what Paul describes how the people of Israel could not look directly at Moses' face after he had seen the Glory of the Lord. Looking directly at the Glory of the Lord appears to be a big no-no in more than one place in the Old Testament. Moses veiled his face, not just so the people could look at him until the glory faded, but one could postulate it was also for the people to be obscured from the fact it was fading. I imagine Moses want to get all he could on that one with the people, while the getting was good.

I remember as a child, the first time I remember another natural solar phenomenon, a solar eclipse, how my grandpa cautioned me ad nauseum, ad infinitum that I could not look directly at it. He showed me how to make a little pinhole in a piece of white cardboard and project the eclipse on another piece of white cardboard. Always the ingenious sort, I took this one step further by making a box with a pinhole and a white piece of poster board taped on the other side so I could put the box over my head and have the eclipse all to myself and not have to share. But after a while, I realized it was pretty boring to look at it by myself (not to mention my entire family was teasing me about having a box over my head,) and cannibalized my contraption for parts to share the fun with others. After all, other people could see it with their own pinhole contraptions. I wasn't really controlling it for myself, it turned out. But the glory of that moment faded, too, with the fading of the eclipse.

The glories of the Lord are as mysterious as solar glories and solar eclipses. I don't think any of us wakes up and says, "Today, I plan on seeing a solar glory." They just happen and if we are awake enough, we might get to see one. We do get a little luxury in planning for eclipses, but the fact remains that we don't see either phenomenon by direct intent of looking at the source of light. In both instances, we have to turn our backs to the light and trust it will do what it will do. Our role in this is to face forward and look ahead of our own noses, and hope.

When we are faced with the presence of the Glory of the Lord, do we try to stare at it and burn out our spiritual retinas? Do we try to keep it all to ourselves by putting a box over our head? Or do we trust there's enough there to share with the whole world? When we sense the glory fading, do we try to squeeze down on it in a last-ditch attempt to control its duration, only to have it smoosh out between our fingers? Or do we savor this time together in the presence of God and live in hope for the next one?

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, February 20, 2012 -- Week of Last Epiphany, Year Two
Frederick Douglass, Prophetic Witness, 1895

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 951)
Psalms 25 (morning) 9, 15 (evening)
Proverbs 27:1-6, 10-12
Philippians 2:1-13
John 18:15-18, 25-27

Spiritual growth and conversion is a process. The Christian life is an invitation to an ongoing commitment to transformation. We're not done with a single decision or experience. Paul reminds us today to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Humbly, we are to take responsibility for our own spiritual growth. It is comforting to know that "it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure."

Good sentiments on the cusp of Lent. Lent is a time for the kind of humble self-reflection that yields penitence. The invitation of Ash Wednesday coaxes us to recognize and embrace our mortality -- "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The glare of impending death has a way of adjusting perspective. Traditionally Christians have used these two days before Ash Wednesday as a time of personal inventory. What are the destructive patterns in my life? Where has the balance and priority in my life drifted towoard? How have I grieved God's Holy Spirit? How have I betrayed my best self? How have I failed others?

The reading from Philippians offers a model -- "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, ...emptied himself taking the form of a slave... He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death." That is a daunting example.

We receive comfort from the gospel of John today. We read of Peter's great failure at the crucial moment of decision, when he betrays Christ. But we know the rest of the story. Peter becomes the "Rock" on which Christ founds the church; he becomes a courageous witness to the power of resurrection. Peter is healed of his sin and betrayal, and of the cowardice that a guilty conscience can create.

So we embrace the process of transformation:
Seeing our calling to become like Christ
Confident that it is God working in us to accomplish our transformation
Humbly facing our weakness and failure
Allowing the healing love of God to renew the Spirit within that will enable us "both to will and to work for his good pleasure."

Tuesday, February 21. 2012 -- Week of Last Epiphany, Year Two
Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras
John Henry Newman, Priest and Theologian, 1890

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 951)
Psalms 26, 28 (morning) 36, 39 (evening)
Proverbs 30:1-4, 24-33
Philippians 3:1-11
John 18:28-38

Reminder: Our Shrove Tuesday event starts tonight at 5:30. Cajun fare and/or pancakes. Great entertainment from our youth. A fund-raiser for our diocesan camp for mentally-physically challenged. $15/adults; $10/youth; $50/family max. We'll burn last year's palm branches at the end of the evening (around 7:30).

I have a former teacher who served for awhile as the priest-visitor for a convent of nuns. Part of his work was to offer the sacrament of reconciliation (confession) from time to time. After one visit, he complained tongue-in-cheek, "Listening to the confessions of a convent of nuns is like being stoned with marshmallows."

It is usually true that those who have made great progress along the spiritual path, who have disciplined themselves so that they rarely commit such sins as trouble the rest of us, are also more fully aware of their own darkness and of their own inner shadows.

Paul reveals something crucial about himself in today's passage from Philippians. He got to that place of outward, observable moral perfection. His zealousness for the law was such that he mastered his behavior. He was able to follow all of the laws that defined righteousness in the Biblical tradition of Judaism. "As to righteousness under the law," he asserts that he was "blameless." I wish I could say the same for myself.

But Paul found that his upstanding morality did not bring him peace, but rather anxiety. Elsewhere he describes it like death. He was perpetually anxious. He lived with chronic performance anxiety. Am I doing right? I dare not fail.

When I was growning up, they took careful attendance at Sunday School. Anyone who had perfect attendance got a perfect attendance pin, presented with appropriate fanfare in church at the end of the school term. Such pins could accumulate with consecutive bars that attached to the first year's pin. Several of my friends had rows of perfect attendance bars hanging from their first year's pin. One particularly disciplined and compliant classmate began to enter junior high school with eight years of perfect attendance pins. It was a terrible pressure, a deadly weight to bear. The obnoxious and motivating pride of accomplishment had long left her. Now she lived in simple dread -- the burden of living up to the perfect chain or the burden of inevitable failure. The one way out would be to make it to high school with the string attached. Then she could successfully graduate from Sunday School, very possibly never to return, finally freed of such a burden.

Paul found liberation as a gift when he discovered that he did not have to perform to be accepted by God. In Christ he discovered that his acceptance, his complete righteousness, was a gift. No strings of accomplishment attached. In Christ he discovered freedom. Christ is God's message of acceptance. Love before and behind. Forgiveness freely given. Blessing always.

When Paul realized that, he threw away the perfect attendance pin like it was rubbish. He died to his compulsive legalism. He experienced resurrection.

Now he could simply be. His being was accepted. Filled with gratefulness for such liberating love, he found new motivation for his behavior. Because he had been so completely loved, he was free to love others. He was able graciously to accept the uncircumcised outsiders and to be lenient about their scruples and superstitious over meat sacrificed to idols. He could welcome slaves and women as equals. He could insist on the preeminence of grace over legalism.

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" he exclaims. That's Sunday School come alive.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 -- Week of Last Epiphany, Year Two
Ash Wednesday

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 951)
Psalms 95* & 32, 143 (morning) 102, 130 (evening)
Amos 5:6-15
Hebrews 12:1-14
Luke 18:9-14 *for the Invitatory

"Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is put away!" (Psalm 32:1)

These are the words from the psalmist to open our readings today. Ash Wednesday is a good day. A day of penitence, when sin is put away.

"I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to God.' Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin." (Ps. 32:6)

Our gospel story gives us a picture of one who knows his weakness, failure and brokenness. "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" says the tax collector, standing by himself in alienation in the holy temple. He will leave that place and return to the same corrupt work tomorrow that is his guilty burden today. Yet, Jesus tells his listeners that this tax collector "went down to his home justified." He was restored to a right relationship to God, whether he realized it or not.

During our worship today, we will pray one of our tradition's most powerful compositions of self-knowledge and confession, the Litany of Penitence (Prayer Book, p. 267). No one can read the words of the Litany consciously and not be struck to the heart. "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" "Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is put away!"

The Pharisee of our gospel reading is a man who has given his life to God, in discipline and thanksgiving. He prays gratefully that he has found this way of virtue and good living. But his pride blocks him from the justification that he assumes. When he looks at others and compares himself, he breaks the seamless garment that is God's compassionate relationship and presence with all humanity.

Amos also reminds us of the corporate aspect of our call. We are not called simply as individuals to avoid sin and be a person of high morals. We are called to pursue justice as a society and nation, to "establish justice in the gate." Amos decries the nation for being unresponsive to the needs of the poor while the wealthy live at ease. He condemns the bribes that the powerful use to advance their interests while the needy are ignored. Imagine what Amos would say to our American system of lobbying and influence peddling. These are sins that he insists we address before the Lord can possibly "be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."

Ash Wednesday is a day when we are called to a solemn fast. We are to look at ourselves with conscious penitence. We are to confess, and to know our forgiveness. We are to take responsibility for our corporate brokenness and injustice. And we are to commit our selves to a new way, the disciplines of individual goodness and corporate reform.

Hebrews seeks to inspire us in that discipline. "Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet... Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord."

We begin this day like the tax collector, seeking God's mercy. Happily we embrace Lent's call to discipline -- to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. These are the tools that the Church commends to us for the healing of our souls and healing of the world's injustice.

"Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is put away!"

For many, if not for the majority of Orthodox Christians, Lent consists of a limited number of formal, predominantly negative, rules and prescriptions: abstention from certain food, dancing, perhaps movies. Such is the degree of our alienation from the real spirit of the Church that it is almost impossible for us to understand that there is "something else" in Lent--something without which all these prescriptions lose much of their meaning. This "something else" can best be described as an "atmosphere," a "climate" into which one enters, as first of all a state of mind, soul, and spirit which for seven weeks permeates our entire life. Let us stress once more that the purpose of Lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to "soften" our heart so that it may open itself to the realities of the spirit, to experience the hidden "thirst and hunger" for communion with God.

Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001), p. 31.

I would note that this is true not just for the Eastern Orthodox but for any Christians who attempt to keep a Lenten discipline. The risk of merely formal disciplines, understood negatively as abstention, is high. The hidden meaning of every discipline--and I'd be the last to underestimate their importance--is the softening and the opening of the heart for communion with God.

Lent is meant to be a journey toward something. Fr. Schmemann does not call it "journey to pascha" in vain. Its entire purpose is Easter joy, which is deepened by the desert season that comes before, and which suffuses that desert season like hidden leaven. Every Lenten discipline is pregnant with the possibility of conversion, of a new dying and rising with Christ, of a deepening communion with God.

As we are marked for death on Ash Wednesday, we are brought to remember our baptism and the words that were spoken to us then, when we were sealed with holy chrism (in the very same spot) and marked as Christ's own forever.

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

Friday, February 24, 2012 -- Lent
Saint Matthias the Apostle

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)
EITHER the readings for Friday of Week of Last Epiphany, p. 951
Psalms 95* & 31 (morning) 35 (evening)
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Philippians 4:1-9
John 17:9-19

OR the readings for St. Matthias, p. 997
Morning: Psalm 80; 1 Samuel 16:1-13; 1 John 2:18-25
Evening: Psalm 33; 1 Samuel 12:1-5; Acts 20:17-35

I chose the readings for Friday of Last Epiphany

"The Lord is near." What a gentle encouragement. Much of the intention of the many prayer disciplines is to create in us a constant sense of God's presence. Classical spirituality calls it "recollection" -- the state of being constantly aware of God and responsive to God's presence. Some use the word "mindfulness". A gentle reminder -- "the Lord is near" -- repeated over and over can help plant a mindful consciousness within us. Some people repeat the Jesus Prayer or some other mantra for that purpose.

I love the way that phrase "the Lord is near" is nestled within Paul's beautiful hymn that we read today. "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

That's my wife's favorite passage of scripture. It is one that she memorized as a child. I think I too can say it "by heart." It is good to take the time to memorize such truths. We say we know them by heart. They dwell in our hearts. When you have prayed certain prayers for many years, you know them by heart. Like the Lord's Prayer. In a deep sense, these words of God dwell within us when we know them by heart.

I intend to make it a habit today to recall over and over again "the Lord is near." And then, every once in a while, when I'm not having to concentrate, I'm going to try to repeat by heart Paul's beautiful words, "Rejoice in the Lord always..." Doing little exercises like that is a way of following Paul's advice in the subsequent passage. He tells us to think about certain things -- "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Remembering "the Lord is near" is a brief way of doing all of this.
______

P.S. Today's passage in Ezekiel is an important one. Ezekiel challenges an old tradition that punishment is passed on for the sins of previous generations. Jeremiah has a similar opinion (Jer. 31:29-30). Their words dispute the traditions from the Ten Commandments and elsewhere, "...punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation..." (Ex. 20:5)

Commemoration of John Roberts, Priest and Missionary (1843-1949)
Psalm: 90:13-17
Deuteronomy 31:30-32:4,32:6-12a
Acts 3:18-25
John 7:37-41

Growing up in Virginia, where history seems to ooze out of every molecule of air, water, earth and rock, it was hard not to know something about the Native American peoples who had populated the area and their relationships with the first English settlers who arrived in 1607. There was interplay in every phase of their mutual existence in that small area of green forest and sparkling water, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. When the settlers arrived, the Powhatan people did not realize that they were seeing the beginning of what became the general policy for most settler-native relationship: their own exile like the children of Israel, mutual warfare and massacres, and the end of their way of life on land they had occupied for centuries. By the time I came along, I knew there were Native Americans around somewhere, I just didn’t know where.

I found some in Phoenix when I moved here. There was a school set aside for them right in the middle of the city. Great, I thought. Give them a chance to get off the reservation, get a good education, help them get good paying jobs and make a better life than they would have had on the reservation. To my horror, I found later that I had bought into something called “forced assimilation,” a policy of the government that dated back almost to the founding of the country. Students at the Indian School, as it was called, were removed from their families at a very young age, sent to a totally strange, closed-in and frightening place, given a new name, a new hairstyle, new and strange items of clothing, different food. They were denuded of any artifact from their homes like small totems, fragments of rock, or anything else that would have connected them with their families. They were forced to speak only English, were regimented as surely as if they were in an army, and basically taught to be domestics and laborers with very little real education. The trauma of such treatment still has an effect on those who had to undergo it years ago.

Reading the biography of John Roberts, who we commemorate today, the thing that reached out and grabbed me was how different he was from probably almost every other white person the Arapaho and Shoshone people had ever seen or met. He treated them with respect, encouraging them to maintain their tribal languages, customs and traditions. He learned their languages and used those languages to preach, teach and even encourage harmony between two very different tribes of Natives Americans who were mutually antagonistic. In a sense, he was a man ahead of his time, educational philosophy-wise. Perhaps it was because he was Welsh by birth and did not grow up with the beliefs common among white people that Native Americans were savages, killers, and inferior in every way to the settlers, who had pushed them into reservations, appropriated their lands, destroyed their food chain and then tried to set them in a form of slavery. He earned respect by showing respect. In establishing missions around Wyoming along with his educational and missionary efforts on Wind River, he bridged the gap between the worlds of the non-Native Americans and the Native, doing his best to live the Golden Rule and, perhaps unwittingly, using St. Francis’ dictum to “preach always and sometimes use words.”

John Roberts, in his dual role of priest and missionary, asked to be sent to the most difficult place among Native Americans. His request was granted and he spent the rest of his very long and productive life among those he had asked to serve. I think the lesson I can take from John Robert’s life is that people are people, no matter what their outside appearance or perceived differences are. Treat them with respect and it will be returned.

Looking at Jesus among the different peoples with whom he interacted, he didn’t ask them to change their language, their location, their manner of dress or hairstyle or anything else other than their hearts. He didn’t force them, but by his words and witness he convinced them. He cured and healed them and they responded to him. John Roberts may not have done any physical curing, but I believe he did a lot of healing as he worked with people who had been sorely wounded as well as those who had done some of the wounding.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” I have a feeling John Roberts more than fits that job description.

Now where can I take his example and put it to best use in my life? I don’t think I’ll have to look very far.

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

Readings for the feast day of Emily Malbone Morgan, February 26
Psalm 119:137-144
Exodus 1:15-21
Romans 16:1-6
Luke 10:38-42

When I first started learning more about Emily Malbone Morgan, my first stop is almost always the Episcopal Church publication "Holy Women, Holy Men." At first, she didn't seem all that attractive an alternative to the "regular" Daily Office readings. In my mind was this image more like the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey, but with an American twist--some never-married moneyed do-gooder from one of the old, fine families of New England who went about flinging philanthropy all over the place, to the point she had even bought her way onto our Calendar of Saints. Honestly, I didn't want to be interested in her. It was only until I stumbled on another biography of her in Project Canterbury that I began to have an open mind.

What I discovered is that, although she is still a little obscured by history to me, there are parts of her life that might have more to do with 21st century realities of life than I thought. Her parents, were, indeed, from the more moneyed families of New England--but one wonders if the marriage of her parents was more about that than it was about their personalities complementing each other. Her mother was described as "otherworldly;" her father, a man of mercurial, volcanic temper outbursts--and it appears Emily's mother set out to "reform" her husband. Any of us who have lived under the shadow of alcoholism, drug abuse, or a family member with a personality disorder can perceive some recognizable patterns there. Emily and at least two of her siblings gravitated to the "helping professions"--she had a clergyman brother and a physician brother, and she devoted her life to philanthropy and prayer, creating Girls' Clubs and the Companions of the Holy Cross. Her dearest companion, Adelyn Howard had a "fatal hip disease" (which sounds a lot like chronic osteomyelitis to me, not so uncommon in the pre-antibiotic era.)

Our Gospel reading is the story of Mary and Martha, and the more I thought about it, the more I began to see that Emily Malbone Morgan was a woman with both streaks of Martha and Mary in her--and possibly constantly had to juggle the two roles in her own life. She saw visions. She was deeply committed to the value of intercessory prayer, and her companion Adelyn--an invalid who understood her own power as a dynamo of prayer even in her fragile condition--was key in Emily's understanding of these matters. Yet she was firmly a woman doing good works in the world, and used her wealth to discover places of holy wonder throughout the world. Emily shunned her own ability to provide creature comforts for herself at times, and was known to sleep on floors and in cupboards in her younger days. She chose the least attractive spot in her home, Adelynrood, for herself.

Suddenly, I began to see her life in a different light. At first, I couldn't see anything this woman had to offer me, because of the money. I grew up more or less running three steps ahead of poverty. But as I begin to read her family story (or should I say "hear" it?) I began to see who she was in the light of family dysfunction, and how many of us live lifestyles "below our means" at times, when we start to hear the call of living in Christ, and how many of us end up in the pull of the "helping professions" like the pull of a magnet. I thought of a key player in my own life in terms of learning to serve others with love--my late friend Ben, who had muscular dystrophy. I spent a good portion of my 20somethings accompanying him and chauffeuring him various places because he could not walk or drive. I used to push his wheelchair into amazing places in the pre-handicap-accessible world of the early 1980's, even goofing up a few times and causing him a few bumps and bruises, which he stoically bore as a result of my enthusiastic over-estimations.

Gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or lifestyle all begin to be less of a barrier the moment we begin to see things in others, that are like ourselves. Praying for others, praying for all sorts of conditions of humans and humanity, praying for those we don't even know all are gentle waves that lap at the seawall of what divides us. Instead, those prayers link us like gossamer threads to people and places that are beyond our capacity for reason or recognition--but without it, we become more Dowager Countess-like ourselves--it's all beneath us.

Is it possible--just possible--that the things we believe that we have changed our hearts and minds about, have actually been answers to the prayers of others, and it was never about "us" at all?

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, February 27, 2012 -- Week of 1 Lent
George Herbert, Priest, 1633

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 953)
Psalms 41, 52 (morning) 44 (evening)
Genesis 37:1-11
1 Corinthians 1:1-19
Mark 1:1-13

We enter the Daily Office Lectionary for Lent today. Each of the three readings begins a period of sequential reading from scripture. Today we begin the Joseph saga in Genesis. We also start Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth, and we open the first gospel, the Gospel of Mark.

Joseph's story begins ominously. He's the special child -- the youngest and favorite. There are signs that he is precocious and gifted, but naive and spoiled as well. His self-centered dream images provoke his family. We can feel the jealousy take root.

Mark's gospel begins with a special child -- "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" -- but we get no birth narrative as in Matthew and Luke. It begins with the "voice of one crying out in the wilderness." But this story begins in humility rather than jealousy. John the baptizer looks forward to God's fulfillment of the baptism that John initiates. And Jesus receives a vision that he is a father's beloved, but instead of the naive gloating of Joseph, he intuitively follows the leading of the Spirit into the wilderness for a time of testing about this calling.

Paul's letter will be all about the complexities of being the beloved, called children of God -- a gifted and special people. But with those gifts comes responsibilities. How do we use the wisdom and freedom we've been given? Will pride or power spoil the gifts?

The people I admire and look up to are people who seem very special. They have gifts and talents that seem wonderful and remarkable to me. But when I look a little closer, the best of them seem almost unaware of their giftedness. What they do just seems like what they should be doing. For them, it's no big deal. It's nothing special. And the best of them betray very little self-consciousness about their wisdom or leadership. They are just doing the work they've been given to do.

Each of us is a special child. Beloved and gifted. How will we use our gifts? Reflectively after a time of testing and intention, or thoughtlessly with an immature naivete? In service or selfishness? In pride or humility? Over each of us has been spoken the divine blessing -- "You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Now, what will we do with that?

Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - Week of 1 Lent
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper and Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, Educators, 1964, 1904

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 953)
Psalms 45 (morning) 47, 48 (evening)
Genesis 37:12-24
1 Corinthians 1:20-31
Mark 1:14-28

"For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." (1 Cor. 1:25a)

Paul addresses head-on the obstacle that makes his proclamation difficult for many to believe -- the cross. Why would anyone worship someone who was executed as a capital criminal? It's like someone today saying our God died in an electric chair. The Rabbis will tell you that the scripture says "cursed be any one who hangs on a tree." (Dt. 21:23) The cross is the Roman solution to threat to order from rebels and insurrection. Some Greeks will speak of the impassibility of God. Why would anyone worship a God who is subject to the vicissitudes of human life? God should not suffer? God is beyond change. God on a cross. Scandal and foolishness.

But among those who were not "wise by human standards" or "of noble birth," among "the weak" and the "low and despised," this story that God enters into our deepest despair and pain and overcomes it is "wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." It flips on its ear the elitist projections about God. God is with us in our most desperate times. God soaks up evil and violence; God endures injustice and cruelty; God experiences pain and abandonment -- and God answers with nothing but love.

Dorothy Sayers says it nicely: "God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead."

For those who are looking for a powerful, triumphant tribal Lord who overcomes our enemies with might and violence, this weak God looks foolish. For those who are looking for some pure heavenly escape from the change and sufferings of this world, this vulnerable God looks foolish. But for those of us who are weak and low, in despair and pain, this is a God who understands. This is a God we can trust because God knows what we are suffering. This God gives meaning to suffering. And when you are miserable, it makes all the difference if you believe that God is with us and that God uses our human misery to heal the world. It is the wise foolishness of the cross.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - Week of 1 Lent
John Cassian, Abbot at Marseilles, 433

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 953)
Psalms 119:49-72 (morning) 49, [52] (evening)
Genesis 37:25-36
1 Corinthians 2:1-13
Mark 1:29-45

In Mark's Gospel today we see a snapshot of a day in the ministry of Jesus. It begins on Saturday, the Sabbath, when Jesus and the disciples attend worship and teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum. They come to Peter's home, where Peter's mother is ill. Jesus heals her and she serves them. (The Greek word for serve, "diakonein," is the root of our term "deacon.") When the Sabbath ends at sundown Jesus begins his work.

The ministry of Jesus is characterized by healing and teaching. His power is particularly manifest in the casting out of demons. People who are broken or suffering, people who have lost their center or their congruity -- find that in his presence they experience wholeness and health, meaning, congruity and centeredness.

In the morning, Jesus withdraws for his own intimate prayer with God. He is renewed in his centeredness upon God. He continues to move from place to place, even though there are more people who need his healing in Capernaum. He goes to the neighboring towns, he says, "so that I may proclaim the message there also." Healing and teaching.

The center of the teaching-message that he proclaims is the Kingdom of God, the near and inbreaking reign of God. It is a message that is threatening to the established authorities. It is threatening to the religious authorities because Jesus teaches that there is no external mediator between God and us. The gifts of blessing, forgiveness and divine presence are ours without need of recourse to the Temple or priests or other authorities. The Kingdom of God is among you. His message is threatening to the political authorities because it imagines the world as it would be if God were Emperor, not Caesar. He teaches of a society, culture and economy motivated by the virtues of compassion, love, generosity and equality -- a society that overturns all of the power and authority of the established orders. It is the kind of message that can get somebody in trouble with the established orders.

Teaching and healing. Word and sacrament. Religious/political discourse and hands-on service to the needs of others. Walking the talk.

That is the calling that we are invited to enter into as the church, the community of Jesus. We are to continue his message of forgiveness and freedom. And we are to continue to reach out in concrete and real ways to respond to the brokenness and need of our neighbors. Talking is not enough. Doing good without challenging the power and principalities is not enough.

In our reading from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, we hear him speak of the spirit that empowers his ministry of healing and teaching. He has embraced the cross. He has died into Christ's death and been raised in a new life in the Spirit. This new life makes him bold to do and to teach. His orientation is no longer toward "a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish," but God's wisdom. God's very Spirit is now present in and through him -- motivating him to follow in the way Jesus has shown: to heal and bring wholeness and congruity to all human brokenness, and to proclaim a new Kingdom ruled by the virtues of compassion, love, generosity and equality.

That is our calling today. Religious/political discourse and hands-on service to the needs of others.

Lowell