In
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
For
those of us who attend church regularly, we can at times fall into a pattern. We begin to see our
relationship to God as something that is tended to each week on Sunday morning,
and, if we’re
lucky, we even have some uplifting thoughts or a spare prayer or two during the
week.
We participate on a few committees, we help out at church when someone needs a
hand, we’re
generally really, really successful at this Christianity thing, we think.
And
this pattern can make us start to think that others who aren’t in the pews next to us each
week, who aren’t
sharing their wisdom in committees with us, who aren’t lending the church a hand
are clearly slackers. We know what Christianity looks like. It looks like us, not like
those who are not us.
Leo
Tolstoy wrote of a legend from Russia’s Volga district involving a bishop who was traveling by
sea on pilgrimage with a group of pilgrims. As they passed a small
island, the ship’s
pilot told the bishop and pilgrims that on the island lived three hermits; the
pilot had encountered them when he was lost in a storm, and found these men on
the island.
They helped the pilot with food and water, and made sure to see him safely on
his way.
The
bishop, intrigued, asked more about these hermits, for he had never heard of
them.
The pilot told the bishop that they were very simple men, almost never spoke,
and lived in solitude for the salvation of their souls. The pilot made it clear that
the hermits were uneducated and, though kind, were not very impressive men.
The
bishop decided that he would take a boat from the ship and send the pilgrims on
their way.
Though he wanted to continue on pilgrimage, the bishop would make a sacrifice
and delay the pilgrimage and visit this small island, visit with the hermits,
and instruct them in the way of Christian living, so that their meager lives
could have more meaning. After wrangling with the captain, the bishop was let down
in a small rowboat from the ship, and he began rowing toward the small island.
The
bishop met the hermits on the shore, told them that he had heard of them from
the ship’s
pilot, and that he had come to visit them to discharge his solemn duty to teach
the faithful, and to instruct them in the proper way to pray. They thanked him for his care
and concern, and the bishop asked them: tell me, how do you pray?
'We
pray in this way,' replied one of the hermits. 'Three are ye, three are we,
have mercy upon us.'
The
bishop replied that, though they clearly knew of the Holy Trinity, that wasn’t the only, nor even the best
way to pray.
There was so much more than just their little prayer! He decided to start simply. He walked the hermits through
the words of the Our Father, explaining that those were the words of the prayer
that Christ had taught his disciples to pray to their Father in heaven.
So
he taught them: Our Father, who art in heaven. The hermits repeated it, but
stumbled on the words. He spent hours before he was able to get the hermits to
repeat that short phrase solidly! He labored through the rest of the Our Father for the
remainder of the day, until the hermits finally had memorized it. As night fell, the bishop was
relieved that the hermits now had learned the Our Father, though they clearly
were simple men for it took an entire day for them to master this one simple
prayer.
But now, at least, they would be praying correctly.
By
moonlight, he returned to his boat, and blessed the hermits as they knelt in
the sand.
He began rowing out to the awaiting ship, thankful for the opportunity to teach
small souls how to pray the right way, and happy to be returning to the ship
and to make his way back to the pilgrims. He faintly heard the hermits praying the Our Father as he
rowed, and their voices faded into the distance as he rowed away from the
island.
The
bishop returned to the ship late that night, but couldn’t fall sleep. As he walked about the ship,
he stopped at the stern, and looking overboard, saw something small approaching
the ship, bright in the moonlight. He assumed it was a small fishing boat, but as, it came
closer, he gasped. Walking across the waves were the three hermits! They stopped at the ship’s side, and calling up to the
bishop, exclaimed: Forgive us, holy servant of God, but we have forgotten the
words of the prayer you taught us! Please return to us and teach us the prayers we need for
the salvation of our souls!
The
bishop knelt down on the ship, and answered back: Your own prayer will reach
the Lord, men of God. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinners. And the hermits turned,
walked back across the water to their home, repeating 'Three are ye, three are
we, have mercy upon us.'
The
Gospel appointed today from St Mark illustrates how human the apostles truly
were.
And we should see ourselves in their example in this Gospel. While they are arguing among
themselves about who among them is the greatest, Christ is trying to tell them
about His death.
His death, which will be for the salvation of their souls, the redemption of
the world, the healing of brokenness: and the apostles were fighting over who
is more important.
And
that fighting is both the symptom and the disease: a symptom because it’s only one way in which the
apostles aren’t
focusing on their true mission of following Christ alone, and the disease
because the arguing about greatness takes them even further from the path
Christ has laid out for them. Like the bishop in Tolstoy’s story, the apostles are
focused on themselves and their own way of understanding, and are missing out
on the real opportunity for grace. The bishop overlooked the holiness of the hermits because
he found their prayer to be too simple, and the apostles are distracted by
arguing among themselves, and so do not fully appreciate the words Christ is
telling them about his own salvific death and glorious resurrection: The Son of
Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and
after three days he will rise.
And
so, Christ has to be direct. He knows what the apostles had been talking about, and so
deals with it directly, telling them that true greatness was service, and that
to be the first, as they had argued about, was to be the last. Maybe by then the apostles
were able to remember the prediction of His death, and tie in his words of
greatness equaling service and see it forecast in His death. Most likely not, though. The apostles would continue
to be scandalized by Christ’s prediction of his death, and seemingly caught unawares
once the Passion unfolded. Had they remembered Christ’s words about the first being
last and applied this to the Passion, then maybe they would have seen it as the
greatest witness of service.
The
key, then, is to focus on Christ. To focus on His life and His message, to focus on His
example.
Instead of arguing about who is the greatest, instead of believing that there
is only one right way to pray, instead of believing that enough committee
meetings will get us to heaven, focus should be lasered in on Christ. Christ as the only measure of
greatness, of prayer, and of holy life.
Each
of us struggles with this, for none of us has got it entirely correct. None of us is without
imperfections and flaws. Sometimes, though, those flaws can hold us back and
sometimes, they can be opportunities for us to look again to Christ and to move
back into focus.
A
practice developed in medieval Japanese pottery called kintsugi. When a piece of pottery would
crack or break, when a teapot handle would fracture, or a cup get chipped, a
master potter would mend the fault. But, instead of mending it with staples or cement, in
kintsugi, the flaws were mended with gold. Cracks would be filled in with veins of gold running
through the vase, teapots would have sparks of gold along the rim where chips
had been mended.
In
the Christian life, when we admit our own flaws and pray humbly to Christ for
the grace to amend our lives and follow him more closely, Christ repairs our
flaws with gold.
When we admit our sins, pray for grace to convert and to remember that the
first should be last, Christ puts our brokenness back together with gold.
Each
of us has running through our souls strings of gold where Christ has knit us
back together.
Instead of fighting, judging, arguing about who is the greatest or what is the
right way to pray, let us be thankful for the gold that binds us into
wholeness, thankful to the Christ who does the binding, and always remembering
that Christ must be the center of our lives. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Take,
O take him, mighty Leader,
Take
again thy servant's soul.
Grave
his name, and pour the fragrant
Balm
upon the icy stone.
Take
him, Earth, for cherishing,
To
thy tender breast receive him.
Body
of a man I bring thee,
Noble
in its ruin.
By
the breath of God created.
Christ
the prince of all its living.
Take him earth, for cherishing.
In September 1935, Michael Howells, aged nine, contracted
polio, and died in London three days later. His father, the composer Herbert Howells, would be forever
changed by his son’s unexpected and untimely death, and would continue for the
rest of his life to commemorate the date of his son’s death.
Soon after Michael’s passing, his father began his period of his greatest
work, creating both the largest quantity and quality of his staggeringly
impressive opus. He continued the
remembrance of his son, he allowed his work to be influenced by his loss, but
his work became a way that he gave thanks for his son’s life; Howells’ compositions sprang from
gratitude for the nine years he had with Michael.
28 years after Michael’s death, Howells was commissioned to write a new work. This work was Howell’s transformation of his grief
over Michael and thanksgiving for his life into a piece that would change the
world. Considered a masterpiece,
and entitled Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing, this work was not for any mundane
use, but was the motet for the memorial service of John Kennedy. Howells’ almost thirty year process of
remembrance and thanksgiving birthed a work of art that framed the national
grief poured out for its slain President.
Howells’
process followed a threefold opening of remembrance, thanksgiving, and
transformation that spanned across decades, across oceans, across to Heaven
itself.
In November, we celebrate a litany of holidays and
commemorations that entreat us to remember and to give thanks: We open with All
Saints, then right on its heels we have All Souls, then Guy Fawkes Day, then
election day, Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving Day, the Solemnity of Christ the King
and the end of the Church Year, and the Feast of St Andrew, the first apostle
Christ called to follow Him. This
entire month we are cycling through remembering those who have gone before us,
those who have served our nation, those who journeyed here seeking freedom to
worship, those who left their nets behind. We also cycle through giving thanks for the witness of our
ancestors, giving thanks for our freedom and democracy that allows us to elect
our leaders, gratitude for our nation’s safety, gratitude for the good earth on which we live and
gratitude that while we have elected a President, we remember that Christ is
our King.
It’s a natural process for us to remember and to give
thanks. Tomorrow, many of us will
sit down with our friends and families, eating the same foods using the same
recipes we’ve
eaten maybe our entire lives. I’ll be enjoying my mother’s strata, an egg casserole
that still reminds me of eating at the kid’s table during Thanksgivings at home in Corning in the
80s. Some of you may be eating an
apple pie baked with your grandmother’s recipe.
Giving thanks is tied together with remembering.
But recall Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing. Recall Herbert Howells and his movement
of remembrance and thanksgiving.
His pattern became larger than himself, it became transformative and
truly complete, when he shared it with others, when his grief became the frame
on which a nation mourned, his cries became an American lament, his tears, our
own Lacrimosa.
Our patterns of remembering and thanksgiving this November
will also find their fulfillment when we allow Christ’s grace to transform our
rememberance and gratitude into change for others.
This threefold pattern of remembrance, thanksgiving, and
transformation should be familiar to al of you, and not just because of this
moth’s
holidays. The Eucharistic prayer
unfolds this threefold movement.
We hear the celebrant lead us in the Eucharistic prayer: Do this in
remembrance of me. We all join to
proclaim that we remember His death.
We give thanks together for the bread and wine which the earth has
provided us, and we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. We declare that we are transformed
through this prayer, when we pray that we be sent out into the world in peace,
and be granted
strength and courage
to love and serve
with gladness and singleness of heart. We remember, we give thanks, we are
transformed.
The very word we commonly use to describe this threefold
opening in the Sacrament, the word Eucharist, is the from the Greek words eu-
and charisma, and together mean great gift, or thanksgiving. In discussing the Eucharist, St
Augustine told his congregation that they were to become what they receive,
that they were to pray that they might become Eucharist themselves, become
sacrament and grace for others.
This is the transformative aspect of the Sacrament we
celebrate tonight. We remember, we
give thanks, and then we pray that we might allow Christ’s grace to change us, to move
us into greater wholeness. Like
Howells’, our
lives are most complete when we allow Christ to transform our remembrance and
thanksgiving into grace for others.
This November, how have we been transformed into grace for
others? We remembered and gave
thanks for those who defend our nation, but 40% of homeless men are
veterans. Tomorrow we remember and
give thanks for the preservation of our forebears in the wilds of
Massachusetts, but 26% of Native Americans live in poverty, double the poverty
rate among White Americans. Are we
being transformed into grace for others?
If we remember and give thanks, we must also open our souls
to be changed by that. If we are
to be Eucharist to others, then our lives must be centered around people we don’t know, people different from
us, people who are not yet members here.
We need to open our hearts, our church, and our budget to those
outside. Today’s collect gives thanks for the
earth’s
fruits, then asks for grace that we might give relief to those who are in
need. That relief is not just
food. It’s sharing our money, our
space, our lives, our power. It
has less to do with pumpkin pie than with political empowerment. It has less to do with cranberry
sauce then with ensuring all persons are treated equally under the law, given
the same human rights. It has less
to do with apple pie than with education, access to health care and decisions
about one’s own
body and property. It has to do
with having a place at the table, whether that is the Thanksgiving table, the
Common Council bench, the altar rail, or the voting booth.
Our opportunity to be transformed through Christ will see
us as individuals and as a parish move beyond our concept of dispensers of
grace, as a temple where those who wander in will receive some trickle down
grace through us. We need to exist
for others, not for ourselves. Our
transformation happens when the remembrance and thanksgiving we do in our
offices, in our pews, and at the altar then spills out and changes our
community.
Archbishop William Temple wrote “The church is the only
organization in the world that exists solely for the benefit of its non-members”. For us, that requires a sea change. It requires us to take our remembrance,
our thanksgiving, and change it into something for others. It means that St Paul’s Cathedral is not here for
us, it’s
here for those who have never been inside of it. Our model is Christ Himself, who, in the Eucharist, commands
us to remember, to give thanks, and to be transformed.
Our choices, our budget, our mission must reflect that we
are being transformed daily by remembering who we are and what we’ve been, by giving thanks for
one another and for the redemption offered us in Christ, and then being
transubstantiated ourselves into the Eucharist that will be broken while still
being whole, that will be many though still one, that will be as mundane as
bread yet as mystical as redemption, that will grow by changing, and that will
gather together so that we may go out to others.
In the
Name of the Creator, the Keeper, and the Lover. Amen.
It’s probably the blue that gave it away, but Advent has
begun. This being the First Sunday
of Advent, the first Sunday of the new Church Year, I hope all of you got to
bed at a reasonable hour last night after ringing in the new church year with
champagne, party hats, Auld Lang Syne, and kisses at midnight.
Some of you, though, might be saving all of that for later
in the month.
And even if you didn’t make merry last night, that’s no less reason to be excited
about what this morning brings: a new year and a new hope.
Again, we journey along the path of mankind’s salvation, hearing the
promise of Jeremiah, that the days are surely coming when the Lord will fulfill
the promise he made to Israel.
Again, we journey with the people of Israel as they awaited the Messiah,
as they prayed and hoped for their deliverance: from Egypt, from Babylon, from
the Greeks, from the Romans. And
again, we are driven along with other pilgrims as salvation history is unfolded
during these four weeks of Advent, leading us through wilderness and exile to
the Bethlehem of promise.
Last Sunday was the final Sunday in the old church year,
and we crowned it with a celebration of Christ the King. We have a glimpse in today’s Gospel of what that Kingdom
is, over which Christ is King.
During Advent, we wait for Christ’s coming, and for the beginning of His reign, and the
Gospel we heard tells us what shape the Kingdom will take.
And it looks like something of a scary shape, frankly. People will faint from fear. The seas will roar, nations will be
distressed. Yikes. When I snack on that little piece of
chocolate behind the window each day on my Advent calendar, I don’t think much about distressed
nations as I count down to Christmas.
I planned to go a’wassailing, not to go a’fainting from fear. Somebody messed up the story!
We might ask how it is that Christ’s kingdom causes such angst,
but we might be asking the wrong question, or, at least, asking a question that
is not getting to the heart of Christ’s meaning in this Gospel. The heart of what Christ is conveying is connection, is
relationship, is communion.
The Kingdom that Christ will usher in does not go by
unnoticed. What God is doing
creates ripples: we hear that there will be signs in the heavens, in the
creation that God fashioned, called good, and sustains. We hear that there will be signs among
the nations of mankind that God established in his own image. We hear that the seas will rise up, the
same seas over which the Holy Spirit hovered at the beginning of the
world. This message of the coming
of the Kingdom ties together the actions of God with the world he created and
with mankind.
They are tied together: God speaks, and the created world
responds.
That interconnectedness and relationship will be told
through all of Advent: the story of how God and His people communicated through
the prophets, through the Law, and then through a Child. The Kingdom is not so much about scary
stuff happening, but about the communion between God and what God has made.
And we also have more understanding into the Kingdom when
we reflect on the reason for the sending of the prophets, the Law, and the
Christ Child: out of love. God’s action in establishing the
Kingdom is out of love for us.
We heard in the Gospel also that those who were listening
to Jesus, that that generation of his first followers would not pass away
before the Kingdom had been established.
There are numerous different ways of understading what that means, but
other Gospel passages are a bit clearer.
The Kingdom is not only a future event, but one being unfurled now,
being opened up here on earth already.
The Kingdom has already been established, and the earth and all mankind
are growing into it.
When we begin to think that our salvation is already at
hand, that our redemption is nigh, we gain a different perspective. God’s works becomes closer to us,
the call to live out the Gospel becomes more real and more urgent, and the
movement of Christ in our lives is more transparent.
In the Gospel, Christ tells us that the Kingdom will be a
place of peace, of justice, of fig trees blossoming in summer. We begin to realize our role in
hastening the Kingdom when the way we look at our world is transformed by that Gospel
message. We will hear the story of
the census of Caesar Augustus, of his desire that everyone be counted. Mary and Joseph will travel to
Bethlehem for the census, and will find the town full of travelers with no room
for boarding. Mary, an unmarried
young girl, will give birth in a cave, surrounded by livestock. When we see the Kingdom around us, this
is more than a story, but is also an invitation. It invites us to look around us to the struggling families
here in the city of Buffalo, and see in them the Holy Family as they scramble
for shelter and safety. In the
Kingdom, all families are the Holy Family, and we who look past the suffering
families are those who would not give up their place in the inn, we are the
innkeepers who couldn’t be bothered to find a little room when we ignore the
needs of the families around us.
The kingdom calls us to see all people as family, to see
everyone as Christ sees them.
Divisions between the rich and the poor fade, and delineations between
the living and the dead disappear.
Recently, James and I traveled to Philadelphia, and of
course I dragged him around to the historic churches there. We went to Christ Church to see the
tomb of Wiliam White, the first bishop of Pennsylvania. I was impressed to be at the burial
site of one of the most important leaders in the early American Episcopal
Church, and was awed by the experience.
James seemed less impressed with the dead bishop, but he was the one who
gave me an even greater lesson. A
we were wandering around, James noticed all of the memorial markers embedded in
the church floor, most of which were smoothed over from 300 years of feet, but
under which were buried notable members of the parish, within the church
itself. James commented on the old
practice of pew rents, that a family, sometimes for multiple generations, would
buy or rent a pew from their parish, and would sit in the same place for
decades. James wondered if some of
those families had buried their relatives next to their own pews. It’s an amazing thought.
Outside of All Souls Day, we can often forget about the dead who have
gone before us, but imagine if every Sunday, you were reminded tha your
grandfather had worshipped with you, and that, after death, he worships with
you still. Imagine how the barrier
between the living and the dead would fade, how the Kingdom shines through,
when you continue to attend church along with those who have already
passed.
Advent gives us the space to stretch back over a lot of
history, to reach back through the experiences of all those who waited for
Christ, from Adam and Eve up to Simeon and John the Baptist: hundreds of
generations who longed for their redemption, or the Kingdom to come. We should, then, admire and be thankful
for the grace to live in a time when the Christ has already been revealed, when
the Kingdom has already been founded.
Our transition to thinking about the Kingdom and our role
in it should impact the way we live and the choices we make. In the 14th century, an
English nun experienced visions from Christ in which she heard Christ’s words about the Kingdom, and
about the interconnectedness of life with the divine love. In one of those visions, Julian of
Norwich saw a hazlenut appear in her hand. She asked God what it was, and he replied that it was the
entirety of all creation. Julian
wrote: “marveled
how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for
littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall,
for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In
this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The
second that God
loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the
Creator, the Keeper, the Lover.”
The earth is our Island home a gift given to us by Our God
who is Creator, Keeper, and Lover.
Knowing that the Kingdom is already here and that its fulfillment is
nigh should drive how we treat the earth.
It was reported this month by the US National Climactic Data Center that
2012 is likely to be the warmest year on record since consistent climactic data
began to be collected in the US in 1895.
The famed Northwest Passage above Canada connecting the North Atlantic and the Pacific through
the Arctic Sea is no longer a quixotic hope f explorers, but is a real ship
lane as polar ice has melted and opened the Arctic passage for trade. Scientists of every discipline are of
agreement that these changes are due to human activity, to carbon
consumption. God established the
Kingdom on this earth that he created, keeps, and loves, and our actions are
destroying and poisoning it. Yet,
do we see this as citizens of the Kingdom? Do we see our own actions as contributing? Do we carpool or take public
transportation because of it? Do
we minimize our consumption, seeking to lessen our impact? Do we support policies that cause us to
deepen our dependence on burning carbon?
We often pray for the Kingdom to come: during all of
Advent, we’ll
ask that the Christ be sent to us, and in the Lord’s prayer, we pray Thy Kingdom
come. We pray for the advancement
of the Kingdom and should not be naïve to think that that will require nothing out of us. It will. It will require that we change. That we live as creatures aligned to a creator, as people
who are kept by a keeper, as men and women who are loved by a lover. The Kingdom means that we also shelter
and love those who are most in need, that we value and honor those who have gone
before us, and that we protect and nurture our earth.
During these next few weeks, as all Creation journeys
toward Bethlehem, we should feel the urgency of the Kingdom, of the call to be
changed by what is unfolding. We
are as pregnant as Mary during this Advent, for the Lord has asked us to bear
Him into the world, to work with him in furthering the work of the Kingdom,
and, with our lives, to bring the Christ into the world which so desperately
needs his message of comfort, of love, of strength, and of redemption.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
I really like puppies. I guess that’s true of most people, but when I say that I really like
puppies, I mean that I really really like puppies. I think that there are some of us who are made to live with
and to share our lives with dogs.
And this goes beyond the cat people vs dog people distinction: I am and
have known others for whom dog ownership is not a hobby, but a completely necessary
part of themselves, a part that completes them.
And this shouldn’t come as a surprise: humans first domesticated dogs 30,000
years ago. We’ve spent a lot of time, a lot
of formative time, living together and growing together. It’s clear how domestication has changed the dog: modern
domesticated dogs look and act very differently than wolves, their wild
counterpart and origin. But
domestication is a two-way street.
It may be surprising to consider, but humans have been dramatically
changed through domestication. For
example, the human digestive system has changed because of the introduction of
milk from domesticated cows.
Domestication of plants and other livestock allowed humans to transition
from nomadic to permanent settlements, concentrating on diversification of
labor, social stability, and national identity. Domestication of the dog gave humans increased security,
improved hunting abilities and scope, and even truffles!
Because of their interaction and growing together, dogs and
humans were both changed, and some of us keenly feel the need to have dogs in
order to be most completely ourselves: we have a dog-shaped longing, one that
only can be filled by a canine relationship.
Domestication is an interesting theme to consider during
this time of year, during this part of the Church season. In Epiphanytide, we recall the ways
that God reached out to us, shaping us, calling us to a different way of being
human, calling us to be domesticated according to his own life: through the
Law, through the prophets, through a special status as the Chosen People, the
Hebrew Nation came to know the God who called them into a relationship with
him. They grew to have a
Yahweh-shaped longing that only the Lord of Hosts could fill. And, after the Law, after the prophets,
God communicated to the world through an infant, born in Bethlehem, and living
silently in Nazareth, forgotten and forgettable: poor, a laborer, unremarkable.
Until the events we heard today. Until the wedding in Cana.
All of the Epiphany season is about how Christ is
manifested, how he is shown forth, Our word Epiphany comes from a Greek word
meaning to show forth. The
Epiphany is when the Wise Men find the Christ child in Bethlehem, the Epiphany
is when onlookers hear the voice of God as Christ is baptized in the Jordan,
the Epiphany is when the apostles see Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah on
Mt. Tabor. All of these are the Epiphany.
All of these are ways that God is showing us the new way in which He
comes to us to form relationship, the new way in which we are domesticated into
the divine life: through the person of Jesus Christ.
But today’s Gospel is a special Epiphany, for it displays the way that God is going to be among us
as Christ, and it marks the first miracle that Christ will perform.
In a small town in Galilee, far away from the important
commercial and religious centers of the nation, Jesus, his mother, and his
friends attend a wedding, likely the wedding of a relative. His mother, knowing that the wine has
run out, asks Jesus to intervene,
asks Him to give an Epiphany.
Through the request of a forgettable, poor, and simple woman, Christ’s first miracle is
wrought. This Epiphany at Cana
teaches that in Christ, God is cleaving to the heartfelt wishes of all: not
just the Hebrew nation, not just the priests, not just privileged men, but to
all. There was no less likely
requester of a miracle, no person whose name is less likely to be recorded in
the annals of history than a woman living in Galilee, and yet, through God’s work in Christ, the name and
example of Mary has inspired and strengthened tens of millions for two
millennia. This is the new
Epiphany: through Christ, God is present in all people, calling all people to
relationship. And like
domestication, this is a change not only in humankind, but in God: no longer
would one nation be the sole recipients of his grace and the only ones to hear
his voice. No longer would only
men be the ones who would call upon God for miracles.
At Cana, God showed us what we were getting into by being
domesticated to him through Christ: in the context of a human celebration, a
celebration of love and new beginning, God reached out and manifested
Himself. The Law was given in
thunder and terror on Sinai, Moses had to remove his sandals as he heard the
voice of God. At Cana, God descends
among us, far from the mountain of thunder, and caters to our simplest desires:
a good party, more wine, enjoyment of friends and family.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, God often talked about His love
for Israel as that between a groom and a bride, and at a human wedding, God, in
Christ, invites everyone into that marriage. Christ is the new wedding between God and all of humankind,
God is the new way that man is domesticated. As Israel had a Yahweh-shaped longing, after Cana, now all
the world would. And that longing
is filled by Christ, by the Christ who manifested himself in caring about the
request of his mother, caring about the enjoyment of a young couple on their
wedding day.
Cana was not a moment in history that fleetingly passed and
is gone; it is an eternal moment with eternal consequences. It was one of the times, one of the
Epiphanies, when we learned to see in Christ our need to be in
relationship. To be in
relationship with God as in a marriage, and to be in relationship and aware of
others. Mary saw the needs of the
couple as their wine was depleted, and called out to the God of miracles. At Cana, God showed us what our life in
Christ was going to be about: it was going to be about relationships.
And that is what makes the moment of Cana a moment that
continues to live on: we discover at Cana that God will be manifest to us
through our relationships with others.
Epiphanytide spills over out of these few weeks into the whole year,
into the whole of our lives and the lives of all people when we find in
relationships with others, the Christ who came as a Bridegroom. Cana is made permanently part of our
psyche and understanding when we see Christ at Cana in our relationships with
our spouses, with our coworkers and friends, with the person who cuts us off on
the 190. After Cana, the world has
changed, for Christ has stretched out his hand: stretched out his hand to
perform a miracle of changing water to wine, and stretched out his hand to
perform a greater miracle: inviting all of us into marriage with God.
The essence of Christ’s message, in the manger, at Cana, and at the Cross, is God’s overweening love for each of
us, and the manifestation of that love in our relationships with others. Christ chose his first miracle to be
among humans, at a human celebration, requested by his human mother. In God’s work of domestication with
us through Christ, it’s clear that both God and humankind are changing, are
growing into more intimate relationships with each other. In Christ, God is most himself when he
is with humankind and we are most ourselves when we are with God.
In the words of one of the Eucharistic prayers, we pray to
God that he may put all things into subjection under His Christ. At the wedding in Cana, in which Christ
invited all to join the divine marriage, we accept being domesticated and we
accept the subjection of Christ.
This is not a heavy load to carry, for Christ assures us that his yoke
is easy, his burden light. Our
domestication, our Epiphany, is nothing less than our growing into God’s love, and God becoming flesh
as one of us.
Christ no longer attends our weddings in person, Christ no
longer walks along our lake shores.
But Christ continues to be our guest and the wedding at Cana continues
our lives when we find in relationships with other, our own desire to stretch
out our hands in love, as Christ did at Cana. Cana continues even today when we care less about our own
comforts and more about those who suffer and need food, safety, and
education. Cana continues
today when we celebrate the love of all people for one another, the love
children share with their parents, the love that partners share with one
another. Cana continues when we
place relationships and others before ourselves. Cana continues when, in awe and when transfixed with wonder,
we confess that our God loved us so much that he allowed Himself to change,
allowed Himself to come among us in order to invite us to marriage. Cana continues when we acknowledge the
God-shaped longing in our hearts and the hearts of others, and when we invite
God to make his habitation among us once again.
In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Oftentimes, surprises are things
we've known all along, but have finally experienced in a different way. Recently, a priest in Chicago wrote
about an ordinary day that ended with a surprise. As he was walking his regular path to and from work, he
stopped and observed a memorial statue he had passed hundreds of times but
never really looked at. He wrote
about it this week as part of his reflection on Independence Day.
This memorial on Wacker Dr near
Michigan Ave shows three men: General George Washington in the center, his left
hand clasped with the hand of Haym Salomon, an American born of Polish-Jewish
parents, and Washington's right hand is grasping the hand of Robert Morris, an
Englishman.
We don't often hear these two names,
and that's a shame. These two men
were bankers financed the American Revolution, and with out their contributions
and work, the surprise of the American victory may never have been pulled
off. This memorial, however
celebrates an even broader contribution and attribute of American history. Inscribed in the base of the memorial
are words from a letter the-President Washington sent to the oldest synagogue
in the United States, in Touro, Rhode Island in 1790. In that letter, President Washington wrote:
The Government of the United States
which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only
that those who live under its protection conduct themselves as good citizens,
in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
And, just as Washington fought for
freedom, progress, and for a government that would give bigotry no sanction, we
find ourselves here, today, sharing in that high calling and as heirs of its
promises.
As much as we progress and as much as
we continue to be surprised and delighted by the new things we discover around
us, I am sure, that nobody here this evening is surprised that we all find
ourselves gathered for this occasion. We all know what Tim and Nicholas
are like: we all know how perfect they are for each other, and we all knew that
it was only a matter of time before one of them put a ring on it. None of us
is surprised to be here, because we know what Nicholas and Tim already know:
rarely are there two people who are better suited, more prepared, and exactly
what the other one needs.
But there are other surprises. At this
time last year, we would not have been able to celebrate together here in this
church, at the Commons, a sign that new things are being done to support and
strengthen the neighborhood for which this church was established. Only last year did the Episcopal Church
issue an authorized service for the marriage of all couples in jurisdictions
where it is established in law.
Only last month did we see the federal government catch up with now 13
states in extending equal rights under the law, preserving a government which
gives bigotry no sanction.
An adjective used to describe
progress in Buffalo, changes in the Church and movement in federal government
might be glacial.
But I, for one, don't care how long it took. I, for one, am glad to be here to celebrate these surprises,
and i am proud this evening to be here at the Commons, proud to be a New Yorker
and an American, proud to be here in the Church’s name, proud to be a Buffalonian.
This evening, Nicholas and Tim will
be doing two things: entering into a new legal contract and folding themselves
into a sacred social context. Nicholas and Tim have already shown their love
and commitment over the last several years, and marriage isn’t going to
change that.
They don’t
have to get married to show that they mean it when they say I love you. It’s not like
marriage is just the next logical step.
Marriage is a gamechanger. This
evening, the relationship that Tim and Nicholas have had together up to this
point, that relationship is not going to leave this room. It is
going to be altered.
By the exchange of vows, the giving of rings, the promising of their entire
selves, and the binding of their hands, Tim and Nicholas are asking the
community gathered here, and asking the grace from the God of surprises to
forever bind the two of them together, to make of them a new thing, a thing
never before seen: i saw on Facebook that we may be making a Renzarella or an
Anzoni or an Azzarella-Renzoni.
And we are here as witnesses to their
past love. We are witnesses to a
divine mystery, an act that will surprise and transform Tim and Nicholas, and,
if we allow it, to surprise and transform all of us, too.
Their marriage is for their mutual
edification and growth, but is also a gift that they give to us and to their
community.
The gift of their marriage shows us the total commitment and self-emptying
possible when two people are willing to give everything for each other.
That gives us a responsibility to be
there for Nicholas and Tim, not just today at their wedding, but all through
their marriage.
We all have the responsibility and singular privilege of helping them learn
from their mistakes and from their triumphs, and sharing our own with them. Whether we
are friends, family, or here for the food, we are responsible to laugh with
them, to celebrate with them, and to look to them as an example of love, just as
Christ is a model of love to us, as St John’s Gospel recorded: that we love one
another as totally as Christ has loved us.
Remember, also, on this day of joy,
that this is not a path you two walk alone. You are surrounded by all of us here and those who have gone
before us, and we've all promised to celebrate with you in times of joy, and to
support you in times of struggle.
And there will be those times of pain
and struggle. In Japanese pottery,
there is a practice called kintsugi. When Japanese porcelain is broken or
cracked, instead of throwing it out or discarding it, potters repair the break
using a gold lacquer.
In that way, the defects and flaws of the piece are transformed into beauty,
rather than hidden.
Instead of imperfections being shameful, they become opportunities to shine.
You come to each other today with
cracks, with gaps, with things that you’d like to change about yourselves. In your
marriage, if you permit yourselves to be vulnerable and open to one another,
each of you will transform the other’s brokenness into gold. Moving
from independence to interdependence can be rocky, but you will nurture and
benefit each other if you permit your love to triumph and to transform the
things that hold you back into the things that will be your most shining
triumphs.
And from this day, you will undertake this for and with each other. The
surprises that vulnerability will bring you will be as varied and exciting as
the surprises you’ve
already had.
Tim and Nicholas, what I can give
you, I give you with my whole heart. I can give the State’s license,
and God’s
grace through the Church’s
blessing.
But both of those things pale compared to what you give each other. In your
vows, you’ll
give to one another your very lives.
You, Nicholas and Tim, will forever
bind yourselves together, and generate a new and holy creation through your
marriage. You will place seals on one another’s hearts, and tie bands to each other’s souls. You will
give everything to one another, and forever be different men.
Nicholas and Tim, along with those
with your presenters and your wedding party, please rise and join me.
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