Bread, Wine, Salt

What is the reputation of our church? What do people say about St. Andrew’s? This is not an idle question. As a member of the Vestry in the middle of a Rector search, our reputation is something I have been thinking about a lot. Any candidate considering a call to St. Andrew’s will surely ask around to find out about us. The Episcopal church is small enough that any priest will know someone who knows someone who knows us. What will they say? Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians today is the very beginning of the first of the two letters we have from Paul to the church at Thessalonica. This epistle is one of the earliest writings of what is now the New Testament. Paul visited Thessalonica in the late forties or early fifties, that is, the first century CE, not the 1940’s. The letter, written from Athens, was written as a Pastor to his congregation. This opening section is an example of Paul’s “Thanksgiving” sections. He opens almost every letter to his churches by listin...

  I have been thinking about what to do with the toxic pieces of your family history: The bank letter of credit issued to the cotton merchant. The portrait of a man and wife who were on the wrong side of a war,  not the losing side  the wrong side. The letter crafted to convey the most pain in perfect rolling script. The hurt feelings that have no physical form but are  solid all the same;  weight that you carry. The heroic stories you believed when you were small But now you realize they have no heroes in them You can burn them,  store them in the attic,  put them in a box you give to your cousins at Christmas,  fling them without ceremony in a dumpster on the other side of town and drive away quickly,  keep them wrapped in archival tissue paper and take them out to show at family gatherings.  If anyone objects you can say that things were different then.  Offer no further explanation. You can weaponize them: use them to fuel ...

Our Gospel reading today opens with Jesus praying what is known as the high priestly prayer in the hours before he will be arrested. Unlike other accounts which have Jesus praying alone while the disciples doze elsewhere, Jesus is in midst of his disciples here, and praying out loud. In the first half of the prayer, Jesus uses the word glorify a lot. He glorified the Father and now he’s asking the Father to glorify him so that we may know God.  We need to ask what Glorify means here. To me, glorify sounds like “raise up on high and add some back lighting so that the sunshine seems to be radiating out of the glorified person”, like something from a Monty Python sketch, but I am assured by better Biblical scholars than myself that Glorify here means to reveal the presence of God, which involves fewer crowns and sunbeams and more knowing God and being in relationship with God.  It is knowing God that gives us eternal life, and it’s not just something that will happen to ...

With thanks to Saturday Night Live and Melissa McCarthy

“In those days . . .” our Gospel reading begins. “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness . . .” You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that a story that begins with “In those days  . . .” is a story about things that were and things that are and how they’re different. There is a new thing coming, the Gospel writer tells us. And if we’re to believe the description in today’s reading from Isaiah about wolves living with lambs, and lions eating straw, this new thing is completely different from anything we’ve seen so far. If you’re paying attention to the rhythms of the church year, you’ll know today is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent, of course, is the church season when we wear blue, light candles on a wreath, and open tiny boxes to eat the tiny chocolates inside, all while stubbornly refusing to listen to Christmas carols and being smugly satisfied that we are doing the Liturgical year the right way, not letting any spare merriment sneak into the s...

Perfume Joy smells like lying in the dark in my bedroom, pretending to be asleep  when my mother came in to check on me after coming home from a glamorous grown-up party, the kind I never go to,  because no one is glamorous anymore. Joy smells like the sound of her charm bracelet jingling  as she took off her fur coat,  and the rustle of garment bags as she put it away in the spare closet. Sometimes the parties were at our house.  My parents would hire a man to tend bar,  and his wife to manage the kitchen for the evening  so they could mingle.  My sister and I put on our best party dresses and carried trays of hors d'oeuvres  through the sea of people, offering up ham biscuits and shrimp puffs  and showing off our best manners.  We were never relegated to watching the party from the top of the stairs.  My mother knew there was no chance we would sleep  and she might as well get fre...

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost Year C, Proper 9 (track 2) If there is a theme that stands out in today’s readings it might be joy.  The prophet Isaiah tells the people of Jerusalem to rejoice and be glad. The Psalmist tells all the lands to be joyful in God. In the Gospel the seventy are sent out ahead of Jesus and they return with joy. The work that God has for us to do is meant to fill us with joy. If that’s not good news I don’t know what is.  What is the work? In Galatians Paul tells us to work for the good of all and to bear each other’s burdens. I could just give a nice three sentence sermon today.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Be joyful. Great talk. Enjoy your holiday weekend. Except there is a little bit more to say. Our readings today are also about vulnerability. The people rejoicing in Jerusalem were home from exile and everything was supposed to be great again. For the whole time they’d been in exile the prophets had been telling them it...