Pentecost Letter: mapping our location

William Smith was born in Oxfordshire, England, in the early 19th century and from an early age he was interested in stones. In his diary he wrote that the small round rocks used for marbles looked like something that once lived.

Dairy maids in Oxfordshire used Chadworth Stones (this is where the word stones came into usage as a weight of measurement) to weigh their butter, moreover, the most popular stones looked vaguely like living creatures as well. Manufactured weights were not available at the time and unknown to Smith, the “marbles” and the “weights” were fossils.

Smith grew “curiouser” and “curiouser” pondering the patterns he noticed in rocky formations while he worked as a surveyor of coal mines and canals. Concurrently, the industrial revolution was driving questions about harnessing energy for manufacturing and human energy for labor. The origins of species was being questioned. It was Smith though, who pulled the many thoughts and questions together and eventually drew the first geological map, accurately depicting the layers of earth's strata. This map is the physical birth of geology and quite literally, changed the world. Geology and the manner of study inaugurated in large measure by Smith literally provided both a wealth of raw resources that industry needed to industrialize the world. I learned this all by reading a wonderful book by The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester.

We live in a world that clearly stands upon the answered questions of Smith's day, but we live in no less a chaotic time. Advances in technology, science, global culture and society challenge many of our preconceived ideas about the world and its origins. The speed of this change is momentous. In The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle writes that there are three questions being asked today: Where is authority? What is a human being? And what does it mean to be a religious person in a world of global religious complexity?

The top most sought after jobs this year 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are quite literally training children to answer questions and work in jobs that do not yet exist. China will soon be the largest English-speaking country in the world. The United States is the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. Twenty-five percent of India’s population with the highest IQ’s is grater than the total population of the United States.

Twenty-seven billion users on My Space make it the size of the fifth largest country in the world. There are five times as many words in the English language today than there were when Shakespeare wrote. One out of eight couples married last year met online.

Billions of searches are done on Google - people seeking answers.

You can watch more of these facts on a YouTube video entitled: Did You Know? at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUMf7FWGdCw

Where do we go when Google can’t come up with the answer? Who do we talk to when we only get computerized voices on the phone?

It would be nice to find a solid place to stand in this scenario.

While I cannot be certain, I do believe that this the very same kind of question that the disciples asked themselves as Jesus explained to them that he was leaving. If I were a disciple I would have asked it as a follow up to Philip's question on the road to Philippi. I would have asked it at the Last Supper. I would have asked it in the Garden of Gethsemane. I would have asked it in the Upper Room and on the shore of the Galilean lake. I would have asked it every time Jesus said he was going away … and in John's Gospel they pretty much did!

Jesus' answer is the same throughout the Gospel, and it reminds us of God's faithful friendship with the patriarchs and matriarchs of our deuteronomistic family: "I will be with you."

Jesus desires an apostolic community where his disciples are forever unified to God - to the community of God - through the Holy Spirit. Jesus dreams that they will follow him, continue to love as he has loved, and continue his ministry of proclaiming the good news. All of this work intimately reflects the divine community of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), reflects the divine unity, the divine love and the divine outpouring of itself into the world.

We are the Episcopal Church. We are that apostolic community in the world. We are the community united in all of our diversity in and through the power of God's revealing Spirit. We glorify God and we make him known as creator, as unique revelation (Jesus Christ), as empowering Spirit.

Yes, the Holy Spirit, the wind, the pnuema, God's breath, the Paraclete, the wisdom, spirit and perfect love of the divine Godhead moves inside the very being of our church and our congregations, our orders and our mission.

The Episcopal Church is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. And it is in our apostolic family of God that we find our place on the map and where we will find our solid rock. It is from this vantage point that you and I together forge the reign of God - a reign of peace and justice, a reign where people find their dignity, a reign where others are treated as neighbor. Outside the church we are God's hands at work, we are God's revelation.

Our church may not always get it right. We may not have all the answers for how to live life in this chaotic and changing world. But we do know who we are, where we are and in whom our hearts rest.

Come Holy Spirit come, comfort your people and send us out transforming our congregations, our community and the world around us. Come Holy Spirit come!

Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday Year C

John 15:26 - 16:15

26”When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. 27You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

16”I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.

7Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. 12“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
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Resources

Oremus online text: http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+15:26+-+16:15&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

Textweek general resources: http://www.textweek.com/yearc/trinityc.htm

Textweek resources for John’s Gospel this Sunday: http://www.textweek.com/mkjnacts/jn15_16.htm

Something for Everyone:

Chris Haslam’s commentary: http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/archive/ctrinl.shtm

William Loader: http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/LkTrinity.htm

"Not everything which masquerades in garments of light brings light. To affirm this Spirit, this Christ of John, is to deny counterfeits and to encounter popular spiritualities inside and outside the church critically."

Interesting article on 4th Gospel from Easter to Pentecost: http://www2.luthersem.edu/word&world/Archives/18-2_Ecumenism/18-2_Berge.pdf
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Prayer

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,

The strong name of the Trinity;

By invocation of the same.

The Three in One, and One in Three,

Of whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Translation: Cecil Frances Alexander

A collection of prayers for Trinity Sunday: http://www.churchyear.net/trinityprayers.html
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Thoughts

This week we continue with Jesus' teaching of the interrelated life of the Apostolic community and the Holy Trinity. While last week's lesson from John focused on the coming of the Paraclete, this week gives an understanding of the interrelated nature of God as Trinity and how that interrelated life is to be a part of the interrelated life of the community.

The very first verse is key to the creedal arguments of the second century and the statement that the Spirit proceeds from the Father became a chorus for the Greek or more Western argument.


Jesus says that the Spirit will bear witness to him. What is meant theologically is that the Holy Spirit will, in it's very person, bear witness to the unity and love between the Father and the Son, and bear witness to their love. The Spirit is the very perfect image of God's love.

It is also clear that the Spirit will provide the undergirding of the community and that those followers, the one's whom Jesus called to be with him, will be witnesses because of God's presence with them in and through the Spirit.

It is clear that the passage holds within itself and Jesus' words a sense of dread for the apostolic comity that remains. Whether a forecast of things to come or reflecting the reality of the time in which the text was written, the message is clear - as the movement continues to take shape and bear witness to a new community life they'll be segregated and separated from the religious roots from which their faith was birthed.

Religious zealots have always sought to purify religion (it is human nature it seems). As this is the Sunday after the Pentecost story I cannot help reflect on the major stories of religious upheaval, from Babel to Babylon to Pentecost to the Reformation, we see God building and rebuilding his faithful followers challenging them in ever new ways. Phyllis Tickle speaks of these moments as great shifts. The nature of the church as Family of God is deeply rooted in these emerging shifts over thousands of years. N. T. Wright's work also gives a clear understanding of the emerging deuteronomistic family of God and how it has shaped us.

The disciples are right in the midst of a great shift and Jesus tells them they will not be alone, and that the Spirit will help them to understand their witness of the Truth which is clearly meant to be the Living Word Jesus Christ. From Stephen to Polycarp the names of the earliest martyrs are eternally with us. Perpetua and her friends have been joined by a holy family of saints who have paid the cost of faith - a family of God martyred by Christians and non Christians alike.

There is martyrdom of the physical body and there is martyrdom of the conscience, too. Our zealotry has little room today for difference of opinion and conscience falls away as we wrestle with the cult of belonging. The heresies of the ancient world catch up with us once again, Donatism and its friend on the opposite sides of the spectrum Gnosticism; Nazarene to its partner Manichaeism. Each requires perfection of its followers, rather than mutual and communal discernment of the Holy Spirit's revelation, which begins not with our knowledge, but of unknowing our common search for truth and our common brokenness and sinfulness. Always beyond us and always our aim, the collect for Richard Hooker is therefore prayed in hope: help us seek unity not for the sake of compromise but for the sake of comprehension.

I guess all of this is to say that it is easier for humans to walk apart because of their zealotry than it is for us to walk together for the sake of truth. No wonder Jesus prayed for the comforter to come and for the unity of those who follow him!

The very last verses confirm the reality of Jesus' own perfect revelation in that the Spirit's work will confirm what has been taught. There will not be a new or differing revelation as time wears on. Now some will say, but don't we believe that the Holy Spirit continues to work and reveal God in the world through the mission and ministry of those who follow Jesus?

I think sometimes we get confused about what is changing. As a person who loves to think systematically and theologically, how I understand this may in fact be different than most, but what I am about to say also fits with my understanding of the Episcopate as keeper of the church's faith, handing down a living tradition of apostolic belief. The revelation of God in the unique person of Jesus Christ and the community of the Godhead as Trinity is an unchanging reality and faith. However, I remember at this point, and always at this point (humbly I must admit), the prayer for the church from our prayer book, page 816: where [the Church] is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it... All this is to say that here are the areas where I believe the church is challenged, not with new revelation but with the challenge of seeing God and God's mission more clearly.


Raymond Brown confirms this reading in today's text when he writes: "Verse 14 reinforces the impression that the Paraclete brings no new revelation because he receives from Jesus what he is to declare to the disciples..." The author records Jesus' concept that he, like the Paraclete, is an "emissary of the Father. In declaring or interpreting What belongs to Jesus, the Paraclete is really interpreting the Father to men; for the Father and Jesus possess all things in common...In Johannine thought it would have been unintelligible that the Paraclete have anything from Jesus that is not from the Father, but all that he has is from Jesus." (R.B., Anchor Bible, John, vol ii)

Perhaps in our time the Gospel -- the Good News-- is the promise that seeking the truth, come whence it may and cost what it will, intends to be nothing less than a pilgrimage into the heart and community of God. So I pray at the end of my life's journey, may I find I am closer to God and that such a closeness reveals and births in me a love for my real and ever expanding family of God.

The Lambeth Bible Study Method

This Bible study method was introduced by the African Delegation to the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church. It is known by both names: "Lambeth" and "African." This method is derived from the practice of Lectio Divina. The entire process should take about 30 minutes.
Question #5: "Briefly identify where this passage touches their life today," can change based upon the lesson. Find lesson oriented questions at this website: http://www.dcdiocese.org/word-working-second-question.

Opening Prayer: O Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that we may embrace and hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. One person reads passage. This person then invites a member of the group to begin the process.

2. Each person briefly identifies the word or phrase that catches their attention then invites another person to share.

3. Each shares the word or phrase until all have shared or passed using the same invitation method.

4. The passage is read a second time, preferably from a different translation. The reader then invites a person in the group to begin the process.

5. Each person briefly identifies where this passage touches their life today, and then invites someone who has not shared yet.

6. The passage is read a third time, also from another translation, and the reader invites a person to start the process.

7. Each person responds to the questions, "What does God want me to do, to be or to change?"

8. The group stands up in a circle and holds hands. One person initiates the prayer “I thank God today for …” and “I ask God today for…” The prayer goes around the circle by squeezing the hand to your right.

9. When the circle is fulfilled, the person who initiated the prayer starts the Lord’s Prayer, “Our father…”

Easter Day: Hail thee Festival Day

St. John of Damascus, called the golden tongued doctor of the church, an Arabian, a Christian, a priest, and mystic monk, reflected on this holiest of feasts in the eighth century:

Thou hallowed chosen day! That first

And best and greatest shinest!
Lady and Queen and feast of feasts,
Of things divine, divinest!
On thee our praises Christ adore,
For ever and for evermore.

Come, Let us taste the vine's new fruit
In this propitious day, with Chrsit
His resurrection sharing:
When as true God our hymns adore
For ever and for evermore.

Raise, Sion, raise thine eyes! For lo!
Thy scattered ones have found thee:
From east and west, and north and south,
Thy children gather round thee;
And in thy bosom Christ adore,
For ever and for evermore!

O Father of unbounded might!
O Son and Holy Spirit!
In persons three, in substance one,
Of one co-equal merit;
In thee baptiz’d, we thee adore
For ever and for evermore!

Today we gather to celebrate the great feast of the church, the resurrection of Jesus, the great prophet and ruler who brought to us the reign of God, burst into our world, taught us how to live in love with one another and with our God.

His Holy life, the Holy Meal, the Holy Cross, and the Holy Tomb have birthed for us, for our friends, for our families, for the church, for all of creation: new life, freedom, and resurrection.

Whereas the cross was the end of bondage to sin and death, and the invitation to live a new transformed life…the empty tomb of Jesus Christ is our new beginning -- our recreation. The empty tomb is the nativity of Christian faith and the renewal of Creation through an ever expanding communion with God and in community with one another.

On this day we do not linger on Golgotha’s hill top, at the foot of an empty cross, no we venture down into the new Garden of Eden in which resides our empty tomb.

The freedom redeemed on the cross is freedom purposed for the renewal of God’s covenant relationship with his people and with all creation.

People’s experience of a new and more powerful presence of Jesus Christ on Easter day and in the weeks that followed gave way to a continuum of transformation that flowed throughout the emerging Christian community.

Centered in Jerusalem and in ever expanding circles like the ripples in a pond, the resurrected Jesus appears in different ways -- traveler along the road -- in the midst of locked rooms -- he is there powerfully and emphatically -- a reality to those to whom he visits.

These resurrection appearances and the revelation which accompanied the risen Lord led to the ever clearer revelation of the Word of God and the opening of the scriptures in a way that had been veiled.

Before the empty tomb Jesus’ followers, the crowds, his detractors were deeply rooted in the ancient covenant of Israel. Their emerging understanding was that the cross coupled with the resurrection was a new covenant act provided, along with the Holy Spirit, an understanding of the apostolic mission and the nature of community formed in the aftermath of the empty tomb.

This resurrection and the experience of Christ led the first Christians to see the unveiling of the new covenant story and to understand their place within an ever expanding family of God.

Through the lens of the resurrection the first followers of Jesus began to understand that God wanted and desired and in fact designed creation to flourish under the stewardship of human beings. Jesus’ followers understood though that while this was the inherited promise to Israel they were not able to live within the law and were more likely to rebel against God and one another. And, that in this rebellion all of creation suffers.

The promises to Abraham and all the faithful mothers and fathers who followed God and made a life with him were constantly finding themselves in exile. Those who experienced the resurrection understood that Israel’s exile, their own exile, must be undone and the cross was the key to an empty tomb whereby the mosaic Christ was able to lead his people through exile and the darkness of death into the light of life.

In Christ we have a renewed, new covenant, empowered by the Holy Spirit, salvation and the freedom from sin and death is the gift given in baptism, sustained at the Eucharistic feast and nurtured in a life of daily prayer. The resurrection and empty tomb goes beyond salvation and creates a covenant community that is in mission and ministry in the world.

We do not claim the work of the cross and empty tomb for ourselves alone but for the whole of creation. We claim resurrection as stewards in God’s creation. We claim our mission and our work as the laborers Christ needs to take into the fields, the laborers whom Christ calls to serve the world under his commandment of love.

We are declaring that those who experience and claim the resurrected life of Jesus are part of the global family of the one creator God…we are the family of god, and God is with us as we seek to recreate, renew and restore God’s creation.

Formed in the Episcopal Church and later a Roman Catholic, pacifist, suffragette and the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day understood the work of the resurrected community of Christ.

We must practice the presence of God. [She wrote.] He said that when two or three are gathered together, there He is in the midst of them. He is with us in our kitchens, at our tables, on our breadlines, with our visitors, on our farms…”

[She said:] What we would like to do is change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. Add to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the worker, of the poor, of the destitute – the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words – we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world.

On this day, Christ’s day, we share in and offer to the world resurrection. Our hymns, our prayers, and our worship adore Christ and encourage us out into a world desperate to hear the voice of a loving living freeing God.

On this day, most hallowed of days, queen of feasts, all creation resounds in shouts of praise and thanksgiving feeling and knowing that from east and west and north and south, the great family of God is being gathered in. You and I are changed in the emptying of Christ’s tomb, we are changed, and the world can be changed…for ever and forevermore...

Meditation on the Cross of Christ

As I meditate upon the cross today I am drawn to the image of Jesus as the great prophet king who has ended his ministry and come to Jerusalem to claim his rightful seat upon the Temple mount; replacing the rulers of this world, freeing us from the rulers of this world -- who are corruption, power, greed and self-interest. In fact Jesus comes to take his rightful place as ruler of our hearts and minds and souls, freeing us from ourselves and our disordered lives.

It is an exodus moment for Jesus and an exodus moment for the whole creation.

It is a moment in which victory is won; death and all the corrupt powers of this world are overthrown.

It is a moment in which we see that evil no longer will have power over us; that we are ultimately freed from the bondage of sin and the bondage of death, the shackles of our own creating.

In the very earliest accounts and faith stories of Jesus handed down in our tradition, his death was understood as a saving act.

The Jesus story was inextricably connected to the servant song in Isaiah: “He had no form or comeliness…he was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows…Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows…He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed…When he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days…because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors (Is 53:1-12).

We see that these words were interpreted and written inscribed into our New Testament understanding of the life of Jesus which culminated on Golgotha’s hill. The suffering servant is the lens through which we read and interpret the passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (Specifically we can read in Paul’s letters and in the first narratives of the Gospel; see I Cor. 11.24, 15:3-5 and Mark 14.24 for details).

Hippolytus, an ancient father of our Christian Faith writing in the 3rd century, in his Easter sermon offered the following words regarding Christ’s battle with death:

"Death was angered when it met you in the pit."

It was angered, for it was defeated.

It was angered, for it was mocked.

It was angered, for it was abolished.

It was angered, for it was overthrown.

It was angered, for it was bound in chains.

Death swallowed a body, and met God face to face.

It took earth and encountered heaven.

It took what is seen and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting?

O Grave, where is your victory?

We come to worship God on this day and at this hour, to venerate the Holy Cross because we have come to understand through our spiritual disciplines, our prayers in the dark nights, and the plain facts of life daily lived, that we are unable to truly have life within us if we do not cling to the cross and the sacrificial act of Jesus.

I will never be good enough. I will never please enough. I will never know enough. I will never have enough. I will never be a good enough son or a good enough daughter. I will never conquer my ailments of cancer, alcoholism, food, sex, or whatever pleasure or illness binds us to death.

All of our brokenness, all of our addictions to life and to power, all of our eagerness to hate and blame and lie and cheat, all of our anger and willingness to treat unjustly for the sake of justice, all of our darkest and innermost hauntings, those things done and those things left undone are taken up on that hill at the foot of that cross and then buried in the tomb to die along with death.

We discover that we must depend upon God alone and the saving work of Jesus Christ for our freedom -- for our exodus in this world and the next.

So let us contemplate the mighty acts of Jesus upon the cross. And when he has died, let us take him down into the miry filth of our lives. Let us bravely walk into the pit and carry Jesus with us; wrapped in the linens of our brokenness and suffering, and let us in this moment of darkness face our death. Let us lay in the spiced tomb all that we brought with us to the cross, let us bury it there, let us leave it there, let us allow all that we are and all that we have become to be bound with Christ and to lie upon the shelf of his garden tomb.

Let us role the stone in place and allow God and death and all our sin and brokenness to be locked away in a battle for life, resurrection, and rebirth – a battle which promises deliverance for you and for me, for the church, for the world, and for all creation.

2010 Wardens & Vestry Conference