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

Hope Rising: Sermon on Matthew 16:24-28

You may not know this, but it is possible that as you sit here right now your microwave oven at home may be leaking microwaves. This may be shocking, but it also may be true.

The way you check this is by holding up an ordinary fluorescent light bulb, move it slowly up and down, along the edges of the door while you are cooking something – let’s say popcorn.

If the light bulb glows your microwave is leaking and I would suggest that you recycle it and purchase a new one.

I learned this interesting fact from Chuck Meyer a priest of this Diocese. He wrote and I believe hoped the following: “God is still outrageous and inappropriate, audaciously appearing in spiritual movements all over the world where people are holding up the spiritual equivalent of the [fluorescent] light bulb and finding that they glow like crazy. They are holding up ideas, rituals, structures, and relationships- sometimes prayerfully, sometimes rebelliously – but always testing them out to see the response. They are offering them up and finding them blessed in the glow of the light that indicates the presence of the Living Leaking God, far away from the Dying church, though sometimes appearing as an aberration within it.

This leaking God is the Jesus of hope. This is the Jesus of the Gospels and specifically the Jesus we find within Matthew’s Gospel from which this evenings passage is taken. An outrageous, at times inappropriate, audacious prophet of a man proclaiming a reign of hope and offering up to his contemporaries new ideas, rituals, structures, and relationships – at times prayerfully and sometimes rebelliously.

Jesus is proclaiming a reign that is abundant in the face of scarcity. Jesus is proclaiming a reign that springs up out of the rocks like water so that the dependent and exploited masses may be filled with good things. Jesus is saying the reign of hope is like the woman and her leavened flour, a world where one sows only the best seed regardless of the return, a world were one sows wildly and yet purposefully, a world hidden for those who are not willing to give up all that they have to enter into its gates. These are Jesus’ stories of abundance; they are his stories of spiritual wealth for those who choose to live within God’s reign. This is good news for the poor, helpless and imprisoned.

Returning home to teach in his family’s synagogue I imagine Jesus hoping for his hometown to connect with his message. Those within the religious structures of Jesus’ time cannot believe his message that the reign of hope is at hand and it is at hand for everyone and that there is more than enough to go around. The light of Christ shows their vulnerabilities and they cannot hide from its truth they cannot hide from their nostalgia of the Davidic dynasty. So it is that we are told they do not rise and they do not connect.

While finding rocky soil at home, Jesus’ message of hope finds roots in more than a few followers. And, it is with them, along the road, not in the temple, along the way and not in the synagogue, that we hear Jesus first proclaimed Son of the living God – our hope.

After these teachings and revelations Jesus makes an invitation here in this the 16th chapter of Matthew to connect. After answering the question, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus turns to us and questions, “Will you be my hope and choose life on the road and connect with me?”

Jesus is speaking to his disciples now in a more intimate setting away from the crowds. Here in this moment, a private moment, we hear Jesus speaking to his closest followers; disciples, apostles, saints to be. It is in this setting that Jesus whispers to his followers come after me, deny yourself and take up your cross. This is not a triumphal cross as some might suppose but the cross of trial.

This is the cost to live abundantly in the reign of hope; you must (like the merchant) give up everything that is dear to your heart including your own self-preservation and connect deeply with the living God.

Come after me and disown yourself, separate any claim to your own desires. You are no longer your own but I am with you till the end. This is the meaning and promise of Jesus’ words to us tonight.

When you follow Jesus you live in the reign of hope oriented not to yourself or your needs but to the imperative Gospel proclamation. One lives connected to hope eternal. Not for our own sake but for the sake of others.

When you follow Jesus you choose to orient your life around the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry, and the thirsty. When you follow Jesus you are to seek out and become vessels of mercy, purity, and peace.

It is in this context that one picks up the cross. Symbolic of life’s ambitions and human egocentricities, the cross is lifted out of the desert of life, the counter-kingdom of scarcity.

In Jesus’ teaching the disciple becomes the divine one’s possession. In effect the human self which so easily lords over others, now has a new Lord and it is the Christ. The worldly heart and satisfied will seeks authority and power over the cosmos, kingdoms, principalities, and powers. But the reign of hope with Jesus Christ as pantocrator is a life lived instead as servant of all and handmaiden.

As St. Ignatius wrote, “The farthest bounds of the universe shall profit me nothing…It is good for me to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth.”

Yes, for Christianity Jesus has come and been in our midst but it is likely he may have already left the building.

I don’t believe that Jesus leaves our sanctuary Godless; rather he leaves to invite the God following out into the light of day were the reign of Hope may be proclaimed more brilliantly on the road and along the way.

Jesus is beckoning us out of our synods, conclaves, councils, and churches to bear witness to the abundant grace of God in the world. Jesus is calling us to rise up, proclaim hope and connect with our brothers and sisters.

No amount of investment will secure our possession of the kingdom of God, only our poverty delivers us into the hands of the reigning monarch of the Gospel’s hope.

So what is it we must do to rediscover the proclamation of abundance? How can we reread the Gospel into our own time and our own ministry and mission contexts?

The all too human and complex St. John Chrysostom offers us a place to begin:
If you ever wish to associate with someone make sure that you do not give your attention to those who enjoy health and wealth and fame as the world sees it, but take care of those in affliction, in critical circumstances, who are utterly deserted and enjoy no consolation. Put a high value on associating with these, for from them you shall receive much profit, and you will do all for the glory of God. God himself has said: I am the father of orphans and the protector of widows.

Where do we in this Consortium find the dependent and exploited, the orphans the widows, the afflicted and those in need of consolation? Where do we in this group go to reread the Gospel?

I believe the radical message of the Gospel reorients our gathering and our concerns from the provision of wealth to the provision of mission; from investment strategy to mission strategy; from scarcity to abundance, from nostalgia to hope.

Our gospel message challenges us to move our attention away from thoughts of self-preservation to Gospel proclamation – this is a holy different type of fiduciary responsibility.

We must recognize we are Christians who live in the abundant reign of Hope; we are also people who live among the abundantly wealthy. We are people who proclaim abundance and have been blessed with abundance.

No matter how sorry and sad we might be about our investments over the past year the reality is that the combined holdings of the Episcopal Church today (even after a severe market downturn) remain larger than the annual GDP of over 80 of the 180 nations in the world. In fact our combined annual pledge and plate for the Episcopal Church is larger than 15 nations’ of those nations’ annual GDP.

I believe a cross we must lay down is our sense of privilege and the lie that we are poor.

We must realize that our local and global mission to restore and change the world with Jesus Christ demands of us that we move beyond a time of propping up ministry models and ministries that no longer function. Like Jesus in his hometown synagogue, I believe he sits and waits for us to rise up and proclaim a Gospel for a new age.

We must divert monies from the tired and unsuccessful models of ministry and orient them to the places where we see that God is, already, today, leaking and pouring his spirit out into the world.

We have received a great legacy gift from our faith ancestors, but that gift is given for the purpose of the reign of hope and to assist God in breaking into the counter-kingdoms and municipalities of this world. It is to meet and connect with people out in the world and make their lives better tomorrow; better than they are today.

The world must be a better place because the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are at work in it.

We must use resources for new initiatives that connect us to the world around us, our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our country, our world. We must hold the light of Christ up to the world around us and seek to discover where Christ is already at work and we must join him there.

We must use our resources for research and development in the field. We must embrace new opportunities and be blessed by the gifts of success and blessed by what we learn from failure. Let us not be nostalgic but visionary.

For out there on the road, outside the safety of our buildings, in the wilderness which is our world, Christ beckons to you and to me. Jesus is calling us, “Come find me in the face of your neighbor, come and connect with me, and join me in the reign of hope.”

For The Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes

The Life Lived in Prayer

As we enter the season of Lent I would like to draw our attention to the call of a particular Lenten discipline: prayer. We are called to a holy Lent which is the result of a number of disciplines--the first is prayer and the last is meditating on God's holy Word - Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures (BCP 264ff). I believe it is through the discipline of prayer and meditation that we are transformed and may better serve and bear witness to God's mercy in our lives.


I have a long and winding prayer journey with God and with Jesus. I first learned to pray the Lord's Prayer as a child. I remember that most of my prayer life as a child was as a petitioner and was most likely egocentric; but those are the beautiful prayers of children. I can imagine that God smiles at these prayers.

Adolescence brought prayers of sadness, joy and gratitude as I lived a somewhat difficult teenage life. These would lead to prayers of discernment about ministry. I learned to pray the Daily Office while in college and was introduced to daily mass. I studied prayer for a semester under an American Orthodox seminarian. He taught me meditation and contemplation. We read and sat together quietly. His name escapes me now but his ministry and mentorship provided a life-long lesson of sitting still with God.

I also was introduced to private confession during this same time, which has continued. I experienced the discipline of daily chapel and Morning Prayer in a deeper sense while I was chaplain at St. Stephen's School, Austin. This was reinforced at Virginia Seminary and today the Daily Office is my daily companion. When I left seminary I toyed with the Franciscan tertiary order but eventually landed on the Society of St. John the Evangelist as a support for the prayer life on which I had come to rely. I began to develop a rule of life, which I continue to this day.

Today, this takes the form of sitting quietly daily before I read Morning Prayer. I follow the ordo (liturgical) calendar of the Society of St. John, so I am praying within community each day. I pray for the clergy of the diocese by name throughout the week. I pray for my staff, along with a list of concerns given to me. I pray a prayer based upon the ordination service for a bishop and read (along with the scripture appointed for the day) a portion of the Archbishop's reflections on the ministry of bishop.

My prayer life has been healthy and sometimes it has not. There is an ebb and flow as I look over the years; however, as I get older my dependence on this daily routine continues to become more deeply rooted. I am out of sorts when I do not follow my daily feast of quiet, intercession, thanksgiving and meditation on God.

As I think back, I think the most difficult work of prayer begins after the conversation has gone quiet--meaning when I have forgotten to pray. After long periods of silence from my end of the connection, or in those times of deep questioning, I find it so difficult to know just what to say. I also remember how difficult it was to begin prayer. I remember it was hard as a child. I remember it was hard as a young adult. Perhaps we place too many expectations on prayer. I guess it is a human thing, but I can get so focused on praying "right" that I forget the sustenance of prayer, which is most often in the deep well of silence or in the questions themselves. I wonder if you find this true as well.

It seems so many people, ordinary people like myself, have a hard time knowing how to begin to pray. Richard J. Foster in his book entitled Prayer, offers a useful reminder for us all. "We will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. We simply must set all these things aside and begin praying. In fact, it is in the very act of praying itself--the intimate, ongoing interaction with God-- that these matters are cared for in due time. What I am trying to say is that God receives us just as we are and accepts our prayers just as they are."(R. J. Foster, Prayer, p. 8) So, I encourage you to begin or to begin again for the first time.

Find a comfortable, quiet place where you might pray daily. Write down a list of those for whom you would like to pray. Will you use written prayers from a book, the Prayer Book or other sources? Place them near by. Will you use a rosary? An icon? Set up your place and make it your deliberate place to be with God. Then go there each day. Go and be with God and open your heart to his companionship in your life. Sit quietly. Use words of prayer. Pray the Lord's Prayer. Pray a portion of scripture.

I encourage you to sit and be with God. Begin again, perhaps for the first time, a conversation with God. If you have a rule of life, dust it off and recharge it with committed time to follow its precepts. Pray, pray, pray. For it is in praying that we are truly transformed to be a witness of Jesus Christ. It is in prayer that we are humbled by the abundance of God's grace.

One of the prayers that I pray every day is the General Thanksgiving prayer at the end of Morning Prayer II, (BCP, 101). Along with thousands and thousands of Christians around the world each morning I pray, "give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service…"

I hope you might join me in daily prayer and service this Lent and, with me, rediscover our conversation with God.