When Thou, O Lord, at Jordan’s Stream

When Thou, O Lord, at Jordan’s stream
Received the baptism of John,
The voice of God from Heaven proclaimed:
“This is Mine own belovéd Son.”

According to Thy Father’s will,
Thou didst the bitter cup imbibe.
O saving Blood! O sacred rill
Cascading from Thy piercéd side!

Then, clothed in Resurrection light,
Thou went at once to Galilee,
And there, before their wond’ring sight,
Stepped out onto the shimm’ring sea.

When from this mortal life we pass
Into Thy presence bid us come
And gather ’round that river blest
To praise Thee with Thy holy ones. Amen.

Tune: ROCKINGHAM
Written to the glory of God and dedicated, with deepest affection and gratitude, to Anna Rilla Holmes.

Seven Weddings and a Funeral (P+22C)

The Twenty-Second Sunday after the Pentecost, Year C

[Texts: Job 19:23-27, Psalm 17 1-9, II Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38]

“Seven Weddings and a Funeral”

Anna-Kate Howell

Sunday, 10 November 2019

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My sisters and brothers, I speak to you today in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What do you think Heaven will be like?

No, really. I want you to think about it.

What do you think of when you imagine the afterlife?

What do you think Heaven looks like?

Do you imagine pearly gates,
streets of gold,
choirs of angels,
an all-you-can-eat taco buffet that’s open twenty-four hours a day and you never get fat eating there?

(Okay, so maybe the taco thing is just me, but you get my point…)

What if we think a bit more deeply than just imagining what they pave the streets with?

What do you think Heaven will be like?

Do you think you’ll get to see all your loved ones who passed before you?

Will all the pets you’ve had in your life be there?

What about ancestors whose names you never knew? Will you meet them?

Do you think you’ll get to meet some famous people, too? Will you get to have tea with Queen Elizabeth I, or a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with Elvis? Play a game of chess with Albert Einstein? Talk about justice with Rosa Parks?

And, do you think you’ll get to ask God all those burning questions you’ve had in your life about how the universe works?

What do you think?

People have been asking questions just like these about the hereafter since… well, probably about as long as there have been people on earth.

Even people who don’t profess belief in an afterlife aren’t immune from this curiosity, as we see in today’s Gospel lesson.

Today we have the story of a Sadducee—he is Jewish, but the particular sect of Judaism he practices does not teach that there is a Heaven. (Believe it or not, the Pharisees were the religious liberals of their day, because they believed in radical ideas like the afterlife—the Sadducees did not.)

He makes up a little hypothetical scenario and presents it to Jesus, asking Him, “How would this work in the afterlife?”

In order for us to understand this scenario the Sadducee came up with, we need to talk about a practice called Levirate marriage.

Levirate marriage is “a type of marriage in which the brother of a deceased man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow.” [1]

In other words, if a woman was married and her husband died, she became her late husband’s brother’s wife.

You’re probably cringing right now, imagining having to spend the rest of your life married to your stupid brother-in-law who manages to ruin Thanksgiving every year by bringing up politics at the dinner table. I feel you.  

But imagine you’re a woman living in the first century.

You have no voice in society. You can’t have a job. You can’t own property – legally, you’re little more than property yourself. You have no independence and no agency.

If you were to become a widow, and you didn’t have a son to take care of you, your life would essentially be over.

Your best bet would be to remarry as soon as possible, but you’re hardly anyone’s first pick at your age, especially since you’ve already been married. You might find a new husband, but your odds aren’t great.

Barring that, you will likely die in poverty, a beggar or a prostitute, homeless and alone.

I’m sure you can see how levirate marriage would be a positive in such a society, where women are totally legally dependent on men. The practice would ensure that the widow—who would otherwise be SOL—had a male provider and protector, as well as another chance at having kids.

This practice was common in the Ancient Near East at the time of Jesus—not just practiced among the Jews, but many cultures in that area—and is still practiced by some people groups today, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Jewish law regarding levirate marriage can be found in Deuteronomy chapter 25. This passage makes it very clear that this is something a widow is entitled to. Her late husband’s brother is obligated to marry her and take her in—it is his duty, and if he refuses, he is in big trouble under the law.

So, this Sadducee comes to Jesus with a story:

There is a certain woman who was married, and her husband died, leaving her a childless widow. Under the law—according to the rules of levirate marriage—she automatically became the wife of his next-oldest brother. When that brother died, she became the wife of the next-oldest brother. Well, he died too, and I bet you can guess what happened next. And so on and so forth. By the time this woman eventually passed away, she was married to the seventh brother, and still didn’t have any kids.

The Sadducee wanted to know, “When this lady gets to Heaven, Jesus, who is going to be her husband? The first brother? The seventh brother? All of them? How’s that going to work? Who is she going to enjoy all of those delicious no-calorie tacos with for the rest of eternity?”

Now, during her life on earth, the woman in the story got the best deal that a widow could possibly get, thanks to levirate marriage.

Rather than be condemned to the sort of life a childless widow would normally have after the death of her husband, she got a new husband automatically.

She had a male provider—and, remember, only males could really be providers—from the moment she left her dad’s house to marry her first husband to the moment of her own death.

Given the alternative, I’d say she lucked out by the standards of her day. Her story is a best-case scenario, if you think about it.

For a guy who doesn’t believe in Heaven, the Sadducee sure made a lot of assumptions about Heaven—and not very imaginative assumptions.

By his logic, the afterlife would basically be a carbon copy of Earth but with a few improvements, like death not being a thing, but all the same systems would still be in place. It would be different, but not too different—certainly not outside of our ability to grasp.

And that is where our friend the Sadducee went wrong in this story.

He probably thought he was going to win this little game of stump-the-rabbi, but Jesus gave him an answer he wasn’t prepared for: The woman in this story wouldn’t be married to any of the seven brothers when she got to Heaven. She wouldn’t be anyone’s property. She wouldn’t need to be married in order to ensure her survival.

In the eternal reality– in God’s reality– no one is property. Everyone is equal– equally cherished, equally valued, equally beloved of God. We belong to God alone, not to a husband or a father or a master, and stand on level ground as sisters and brothers, children of the same God.

I’m sure this blew the guy’s mind.

Like I said, he is thinking too much in terms of the here and now. (Well, “now” for him, meaning the first century.) He is thinking too much in terms of the systems and the reality he is familiar with.

Sure, levirate marriage isn’t a thing we really see a lot in the United States in 2019, so his story seems a little dated to us now, but I’m sure we could create a modernized equivalent, something that makes sense in our day. And whatever we came up with wouldn’t sound any less silly compared to the eternal reality than what this Sadducee came up with did.

Jesus isn’t talking about the first century or the twenty-first. He is talking about eternity. He is talking about something radically different.

He’s not talking about a place where your side always wins the war—He’s talking about a reality where we will “study war no more.”

He isn’t talking about a place where we work out all the kinks in oppressive systems and make them work better for more people—He is talking about a reality where those systems simply do not exist.

He’s talking about the Kingdom of God.

And the truth is, we can’t grasp that. We can’t even begin to imagine it.

Sure, we have glimpses of eternity here on earth—what Celtic Christians called “thin places,” those moments when the veil between this life and the next seems to be thinner and more transparent than usual. We have the witness of people who have had near-death experiences. And, most importantly, we have the Eucharist, which is the way we encounter Christ in bodily form here on Earth.

But, as St. Paul said, in this life we see the eternal reality as though we were looking “through a glass dimly.” Even our most profound experiences as human beings on earth are like looking through a foggy pair of glasses. We don’t know all the details—and, in fact, could not comprehend them with our finite human minds.

You know, people might think I’m weird for this, but my absolute favorite thing in the Book of Common Prayer is the Order for the Burial of the Dead.

I love Episcopal funerals. They’re beautiful. The liturgy is exquisite.

And one of my favorite parts is at the very beginning, and it actually comes from our reading from Job this morning. It goes like this:

“I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.” [2]

While we don’t know the details of the hereafter, we do know that we will see God face-to-face one day, once this life is over.

We know that. We cling to that. We claim that.

That is our hope as Christians—that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too will be raised, and we will see Him in all His glory and majesty and power—not through a glass dimly but fully and completely. That is His promise to us.

Will the streets really be made of gold?

Will we get to meet all our favorite saints?

Will we all recognize each other?

Most importantly, am I going to get my taco buffet?

You know what? I don’t know.

But I do know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth.

And, for right now, that is all I need to know.

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[1] Definition obtained from wikipedia.org

[2] The Burial of the Dead, Rite I. BCP 1979 pg. 469

Jesus Came for All (P+5C)

The Fifth Sunday after the Pentecost, Year C
[Texts: Amos 7:7-17, Psalm 82, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37]

“Jesus Came for All”

Anna-Kate Lenaghan
Sunday, 14 July 2019

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My sisters and brothers, I speak to you in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Each of the four Gospels, as you may already know, was written by a different person. I bet you know their names—St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. Right? Four different Gospels, four different authors. And each one has his own fascinating life story.

Take, for example, St. Luke. Something you might not know about him is that he was a doctor by trade. This is why he is sometimes called St. Luke the Physician, and if you are a doctor yourself, or work in the medical field, he is your profession’s patron.

(When you get home today, take a moment and look up who the patron saint is for your own occupation. Some of them make sense—St. Luke was a doctor, St. Thomas More was a lawyer, and St. Martin of Tours was a soldier. Then there are the ones that kinda-sorta make sense if you squint just a little—golfers get St. Andrew because he evangelized Scotland, where golf was invented, and chefs get St. Lawrence of Rome, who was martyred by being roasted alive—and then there are some that just make you wonder… like, why do paralegals get St. Patrick of Ireland of all people? My only guess is that anyone who spends that much time around lawyers needs to know how to deal with snakes… but I digress…)

Something else you might not know about St. Luke is that, in addition to writing one of the Gospels, he also wrote the book of Acts, which immediately follows the Gospels. We read large portions of the book of Acts during the fifty days of Easter. Acts contains stories like the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the calling of St. Matthias to replace Judas as the twelfth apostle, the conversion of St. Paul, and of course the Pentecost event. St. Luke is the author of all of those stories that are so important to us as Christians, in addition to the ones that appear in his Gospel. I expect you to remember that next Easter. There will be a quiz.

And, at no extra charge, one more fun fact about St. Luke: out of the four Evangelists, Luke is the only gentile. They all became Christians, of course, but unlike Matthew, Mark, and John, Luke was the odd man out: he was not born Jewish.  

When the Gospels were being written, there were so many stories floating around about Jesus, telling about His background, and His teachings, and the miracles He performed, and His life. Each of the four Evangelists got to choose which stories to include in their accounts of the life of Christ. Each Gospel was written by a different person, to a different audience, for a different purpose.

St. Luke was an outsider, who wrote his Gospel to and for the outsiders, and his message to them was that Jesus came for the outcast, for the down and out, for the ones who had made a mess of their lives. Jesus came for those with little to no status in society. Jesus came for the poor, the weak, and the brokenhearted. Jesus came for those who would never dare to imagine that Jesus might come for them.

Put simply, the message of St. Luke’s Gospel is always this: Jesus came for all. No exceptions.

Let me say that again:

Jesus came for all.

No exceptions.

St. Luke—the gentile, the odd man out, the outsider—wrote his Gospel for outsiders. For people on the margins. For people who might make the mistake of thinking Jesus wouldn’t really be interested in loving or saving someone like them. Some of the stories he chose feature lepers, a prostitute, a prodigal son, a tax collector. Where St. Matthew’s Gospel says “blessed are the poor in spirit,” St. Luke’s simply says, “blessed are the poor.” Women also feature most prominently in Luke’s Gospel. In fact, our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, sings her beautiful song in the second chapter of Luke, when she finds out she is pregnant with Jesus—we call that song the Magnificat or the Song of Mary.

Yet another one of these “outsider” stories is the parable of the Good Samaritan, which we heard today.

Our story begins with a lawyer. Now, the society we are dealing with here is a theocracy, meaning there is no such thing as separation of church and state, no division between secular law, or the law of the land, and religious law. The law of the land was the religious law. So this lawyer is an expert in Jewish religious law. He has heard about a storyteller and teacher from Nazareth who has gained quite a following—a man named Jesus—and wants to know exactly who this Jesus guy is and what He’s all about.

So the lawyer goes to test Jesus. He asks, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?”

It’s worth noting that he’s not asking how he can know God, or how he can be in right relationship with his neighbor, or how he can work toward a more just and peaceful world. He is looking for a get-into-Heaven-free card.

Jesus turns his question around on him, pretty much saying, “Well, you’re the legal expert here; what do you think the law says?”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This is the right answer—Jesus even says so Himself.

But now the lawyer has a follow-up question: “Okay, about that ‘love your neighbor’ thing… who exactly is that referring to? Who is my neighbor?” Translation: Who do I need to pay attention to and who can I ignore or write off?

And that’s when Jesus decides to tell a parable—a story.

A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half-dead on the side of the road—a specific road that was well-known for being unsafe.

A priest came along, but when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and kept going.

Now, some people try to justify this by saying the priest might have been going up to Jerusalem for religious services, and didn’t want to be late, or couldn’t touch this man because touching blood would make him ceremonially unclean. But if you look at the Greek, it’s pretty clear that the priest was not going up to Jerusalem, up to the temple—he was coming down from the temple and headed toward Jericho. Any religious services he might have needed to perform were finished.

And then a Levite—a staff member at the temple, with ceremonial duties similar to those of an acolyte or a verger—passed by him and did the exact same thing.

These are two of the most respected positions a person could hold in the world Jesus lived in, so you can imagine the shock this parable must have evoked. These two people—a pastor and a full-time church staff member—had just been to services, had just heard the scriptures read, had just been in the immediate presence of God. They walk out of the temple and start to head home, and on their way home, they see a man literally dying on the side of the road, and what do they do? They cross over to the other side of the street and leave him there.

But then, we get to verse 33, and the story changes. This is where we meet the Samaritan.

So, what is a Samaritan, anyway? There is a lot of history here that I could spend all day getting into, and I do want to make sure y’all can still beat the Baptists to brunch, so I’m going to give you the Reader’s Digest version here.

If you want the full story, go back to the Old Testament and look up II Kings chapter 17. To make a long story very short, the Jews hated and looked down upon Samaritans, and that was still very much the case by the time Jesus was around.

We know the rest of the parable—the good Samaritan went and rescued the dying man, doctored him up, and spent his own money to put the man up in a hotel so he could take care of him and help him recover in a safe place. And… scene.

When we hear a parable, I think it’s only natural to ask ourselves, “Who would I be in this story?” In this one, though, it’s pretty obvious who the good guy is—who we should want to be. So perhaps a better question is… what keeps us from being the Samaritan in our own lives? What keeps us from being the good guy in our own story?

I think a lot of it stems from the tendency to assume, when we see someone stuck in a ditch, that they dug it themselves, and therefore, they must deserve to be there. Drug users deserve to be denied treatment. The poor deserve to starve. Ex-felons deserve discrimination in employment. People who commit certain crimes deserve to be put to death. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free who arrive in this country without the right papers deserve to be deported or detained, and their children put in cages. We have been conditioned to see such things as simply the natural order of things. Those people deserve those problems.

Except, we serve a God who came to disrupt, to turn upside down, the natural order of this world, to put the last first and the first last. So, as Christians, we don’t have the option of letting blame or prejudice or even apathy keep us from loving our neighbor.  

Nor do we get to ask what the lawyer was asking: Who is really important, and who can I ignore? Who is worth stopping for if I see them on the side of the road, and who do I get to pretend I didn’t see? Who is mandatory for me to love and who is optional? We don’t get to make those distinctions, because they don’t exist in the eyes of Jesus. We know who He tells us is our neighbor: everyone. Absolutely everyone.

We serve a God who came for the least and the last, who came for the widow and the orphan, for the poor and the lowly, for those suffering in mind and body, for the leper, the tax collector, the prostitute, the prodigal. He came for the immigrant, the addict, the incarcerated, those condemned to die. He came for every race, every language, every nationality, every identity—all who are willing to proclaim Him as Lord and Savior, regardless of their backstory. He came for the Samaritan in this story, and for the gentile who wrote it down.

God shows no partiality, which means, neither can we.

As a dear friend of mine said so beautifully in an Easter Sunday sermon many years ago, “As followers of Christ, we are commanded to love one another as He loved us – even our enemies, because the truth is, we have no enemies. We are all children of one family: the family of God.”

Jesus came for all. And so, we, His followers, must also be willing to be His hands and feet to all His people.

I’d like to close with a poem written by St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun from the sixteenth century, who gives us this call to care for our neighbor:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which He blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are His body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Amen.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference (P+2C)

The Second Sunday after the Pentecost, Year C

[Texts: I Kings 8:22-23, 41-43, Psalm 96:1-9, Galatians 1:1-12, Luke 7:1-10]

“The Wisdom to Know the Difference”

Anna-Kate Lenaghan
Sunday, 23 June 2019

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My sisters and brothers, I speak to you in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, 
and the wisdom to know the difference. 

There’s a reason we ask God for these things– the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference– it’s because those things are hard.

It can be hard to find the serenity– the inner peace– to accept that you can’t fix something– or someone. It can be hard to find the courage to step up and do the hard work needed to change a situation that is your responsibility to change.

And that last part– the wisdom to know the difference– I think that can be the most difficult and complicated piece of all. Human beings like to think we’ve got it all figured out. We like to think we’re in charge. I think it gives us a sense of security.

It is a truly brave thing to admit when we have reached the end of our rope– or, as the Twelve Steps put it, “that we [are] powerless… and our lives [have] become unmanageable.”

God’s call to us in these unmanageable situations, these powerless situations, looks a lot like the Serenity Prayer– and, indeed, a lot like what we see in today’s Gospel reading from St. Luke.

Let’s take a look:

Our cast of characters includes Jesus, of course, the slave of a Roman centurion, and the centurion himself.

Do you know what a centurion was?

You may have noticed that the word “centurion” begins with the same letters as the words century and centipede. A century is a hundred years, a centipede has a hundred legs, and in Jesus’ time, a centurion was a professional military officer who had command over– you guessed it– a hundred soldiers.

A hundred Roman soldiers– a hundred men in what was perhaps the greatest army on earth at the time. That’s a lot of responsibility for one man. Imagine the leadership, strength, and bravery he must have had to display to get a job like that.

And in addition to that, if he had a wife and kids, he was also the head of his household, which would have included not just them but any slaves and hired workers they employed.

Not to mention, just by virtue of being Roman, he held a certain degree of status as compared to the people whose homelands were occupied by Rome– including the Jews of the Holy Land.

I think it’s safe to say that our centurion is a guy who is used to being in charge.

He even tells Jesus this. He is a man accustomed to authority. He says come, and his soldiers come. He says go, and they go. He says jump, and they ask how high. He is a centurion, after all. He can tell people what to do– it is, in fact, his job to tell people what to do– and their job to do it!

The problem with authority, though, is that it only goes so far.

In today’s story, our centurion learns that lesson the hard way.

We find out he has a certain slave who is very dear to him. This slave, the text tells us, is very sick– close to death, even.

How frustrating must this be for a man like the centurion, who is used to being in charge all the time, to suddenly encounter a situation where he is precisely the opposite of “in charge”?

Addicts call this situation “rock bottom”.

The substance or behavior to which we are addicted– which, in my case, happens to be self-injury, but for others it might be drugs, alcohol, gambling, or any number of things– makes us feel like we are in control of our lives and ourselves. It makes us feel like we are in charge. With the help of our drug of choice, we are able to manage our lives.

Until we aren’t.

Until a situation comes along that is unmanageable. Then the blinders are ripped off. For some addicts, this is the loss of a relationship, or the loss of a home. For some, it is an overdose. For others, it happens as they are sitting in a jail cell.

For me, it was around Thanksgiving, just after I turned twenty-one years old. I had cut my arm much more deeply than I had meant to, and I realized, as I was passing out on a blood-soaked floor, that I had cut way too deep, and I was terrified of this happening again– but I also realized that I was completely powerless to stop it from happening again. At least on my own. It wasn’t the first time, not by a long shot, that I had cut too deeply and passed out like that, but it was the first time I had been so scared and upset by it.

This was my rock bottom– my “I can’t do this” moment.

I don’t think, however, that you have to be an addict of any stripe to understand that feeling, at least to some extent. I think we can all tell a story of a time when we thought we were in charge until we weren’t, and what it felt like to stare into the headlights of a problem we couldn’t solve on our own.

So our friend the centurion is in over his head. Sure, he’s usually bossed around a hundred people before breakfast, but death isn’t one of them. And death is what he is dealing with. Not an unruly son, or a servant who is out of line, or a soldier who needs to get with the program, or even a difficult battle on the battlefield.

Death. He is dealing with death. And not just death, but the impending death of someone he loves.

So, what does he do?

Well, first, he admits that he is at the end of his rope. He is in a situation that is above his pay grade. This is where that “wisdom to know the difference” thing that the Serenity Prayer talks about comes in.

And he takes it one step further than wisdom. He takes it one step further than knowing that this situation is outside of his authority to deal with. He goes one step further– he seeks out the One who does have that authority. He has heard about Jesus– this prophet, this miracle worker, this rabbi– and although the centurion himself is not Jewish, he knows there is something special about this Jesus guy.

So he sends someone to go find Jesus. And not only is Jesus able to help– He heals the centurion’s slave– He is amazed and overjoyed at the centurion’s choice to ask Him for help, and the reasoning behind why he made that choice. The centurion, as we’ve talked about, understands authority, and understands where his own authority ends. He knows Jesus is the one who has the authority over life and death. Jesus remarks that he wishes even his own followers had that much faith in Him.

Back to my story– I passed on the floor in the bathroom, covered in my own blood, scared to death. I came to in an hour or so, took a shower, doctored myself up the best I could, and wrapped my forearm in gauze. I had the routine down to a science.

As I was on my knees scrubbing the bathroom floor, I made a decision: I can’t do this alone, so I won’t. I needed help. Less than twenty-four hours later, I was sitting in a folding chair in the basement of a Methodist church, admitting aloud to myself, God, and eight other human beings that I was an addict.

For the first time in my life, I said those words that are now so ingrained in my heart:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, 
and the wisdom to know the difference. 

And then I went home, called my priest, and told her everything that had happened.

She burst into tears of joy. The same joy Jesus must have felt when the centurion came to Him, when the woman who had been bleeding for eighteen years and the woman bent over in pain came to Him, when the beggar called out to Him from the roadside, when the father of the young girl who had died trusted in Him, when St. Peter stepped out of the boat…

And the same joy He feels when you– my sisters, my brothers– when you come to Him with your broken heart, your trials, your addiction, your relationships, your finances, your medical situation, your life– when you acknowledge that you are powerless, that you’re not in charge, that you’re in way over your head.

And then you take it one step further and say, “God, I’m not in charge, but I know You are. I can’t do this, but I know You can.” And we give it to Him. He rejoices when we find the serenity, the courage, and the wisdom to do just that– and the faith to put our trust and our hope in the One for whom nothing is too hard.

I’d like you all to join me in praying aloud the words of the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, 
and the wisdom to know the difference. 

Amen.

Not That Kind of King (CTK B)

The Solemnity of Christ the King, Year B

[Texts: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4-8; John 18:33-37]

“Not That Kind of King”

Anna Lenaghan

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I speak to you today in the Name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

What do you think of when you hear words like “kingdom” and “monarchy”?

Perhaps you think of works of fiction and fantasy

that take place in magical kingdoms,

long ago and far away

and once upon a time

full of dashing princes and beautiful princesses

and lavish banquets and balls where only the fanciest and most powerful people were invited

and mighty kings who rode white horses into battle,

leading their troops to victory.

Or a time when most nations in this world were ruled by kings and queens,

The Middle Ages, for example,

when monarchs

ruled over their subjects with an iron fist

from tall, imposing castles on a hill.

These kings and queens were thought to be answerable only to God,

because God Himself, they said, gave them the right to rule.

(To their credit, I suppose “God” sounded like a better answer
than “strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.”
That’s no basis for a system of government.)

Or maybe you thought of the royal wedding in England earlier this year.

It really was spectacular, wasn’t it?

Those royals sure know how to put on a wedding.

I don’t think anyone could have looked at Westminister Abbey that day

and questioned the power, prestige, or wealth of the British monarchy.

But whether we’re talking about

reality or fantasy,

modern times or once upon a time,

all of these kingdoms have a few things in common.

When we think about what it might be like to be a king or a queen, we imagine

being wealthy beyond our wildest dreams,

having the best of everything–
from food and drink
to furniture and possessions
to medical care and education–
that money can buy,

having our pick of the most dashing young men
or the fairest maidens in all the land,

and most of all, being really, really powerful.

If we could be the king or the queen of our very own kingdom,

we would be powerful, wouldn’t we?

We wouldn’t have to follow anyone else’s rules.

We’d be the ones making the rules!

No one would outrank us.

We’d be in charge.

(And if anyone has a problem with that,

I say, off with their heads!)

Right?

Man, all this kingdom stuff sounds pretty good!

Where do I sign up?

As a matter of fact, our reading from Revelation today

tells us that we are already part of a kingdom.

But it’s not that kind of kingdom.

Because we don’t have that kind of King.

Christ, whose Kingship we celebrate today on this Feast of Christ the King,

doesn’t really tick all those boxes we were daydreaming about earlier.

He was born not in a palace but a barn,

not to a well-dressed queen but to a teenage girl.

He didn’t rule from a tall tower or a mighty castle;

in fact, He was a refugee as a child

and homeless, owning nothing, during His ministry as an adult.

He wasn’t waited on hand and foot by a staff of servants,

but washed the feet of His motley crew of disciples.

He didn’t hobnob with the who’s who in glittering ballrooms;

He took His meals with tax collectors, prostitutes, and outcasts.

And when the time came for Him to leave this earth,

He died as a criminal.

No carriage-drawn funeral procession through the streets

(or Elton John singing “Candle in the Wind”
to a cathedral full of weeping mourners.)

He was buried in a borrowed tomb.

If you’re thinking, “gee, Anna, that sounds literally nothing like

any king I’ve ever heard of!”

then you’re in good company.

Jesus’s contemporaries were, for the most part,

inclined to agree with you.

They were expecting something a lot more… well… regal.

They wanted a warrior king,

a real macho guy who

wasn’t afraid to throw his weight around

and get things done.

They wanted somebody who was going to come swooping in on a big horse

and teach those nasty Romans a lesson

about messing with God’s chosen people.

And they got…

Jesus.

Who was none of those things.

Because Jesus isn’t that kind of king.

And we are not called to be that kind of kingdom.

If He was,

we would all be pretty screwed.

Sure, that kind of king can put on a good show.

He looks great on a white horse

in a freshly-pressed military uniform with all kinds of medals pinned to his chest.

When he gives orders, he certainly sounds like he knows what he’s doing.

He’s got all the trappings of royalty– all the things you’d expect.

He has the affection– or, at the very least, the fear– of his subjects.

He may even have won a battle or two.

But his power comes from this world,

from human beings.

It’s man-made.

What power does he have over sin?

Over despair?

Over death?

Over Hell?

Can he simply say, “off with your head” to the forces of evil?

Can he issue an edict telling Satan where to stick it?

Can he lock up death in some cobweb-covered stone cell
underneath a castle?

“Of course not, Anna,” you say.

“That’s silly.”

Well… yeah. 

Of course it’s silly.

But it’s something we all fall into believing from time to time.

When we proclaim Christ to be our King,

and ourselves to be members of His Kingdom,

what are we saying about Him?

(and about ourselves?)

How often do we let the identities we claim as citizens of this nation

distract us from our common identity as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven?

How often do we pray, “Thy will be done,”

while secretly thinking, “my will be done?”

How often do we place our hope in the wealth and might and rulers of this world

instead of the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord?

How often do we get so caught up in wishing we had that kind of king

that we forget who the Kings of Kings is?

 

 

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates!

Behold, the King of Glory waits!

The King of Kings is drawing near!

The Savior of the world is here! 

 

Amen.

 

Why I Vote

The older I get and the more elections I witness, the more I am convinced:

Voting is not the right to express yourself.

It’s the responsibility to protect those more vulnerable than yourself.

If I see my vote as being fundamentally about my RIGHT to express myself, my right to make a statement, my right to cultivate my personal brand as I see fit…

then it is okay for me
to vote for a non-viable third-party candidate
to write in a vote for my genitals or a dead gorilla
to refuse to vote at all because
neither candidate excites me
or meets my standards of ideological purity
or because I am uncomfortable voting for
“the lesser of two evils”.

But if I see my vote as being fundamentally about my DUTY to protect those less privileged than myself…

then it is no longer about me
or my statement, or my rights, or my personal brand.
it is about my duty to the poor, the displaced, the unemployed,
the incarcerated, the unwanted, the homeless,
the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the underserved.

it is about children in cages, rapists in the Supreme Court,
pussy-grabbing, Muslim banning, unregulated access to weapons of war, restricted access to life-saving medicine, the decline of decency and civility, and the triumph of hate over everything that fundamentally makes us Americans.

When my vote is about my responsibility to you– my fellow man, my fellow American, my fellow human being– and not about the rights I claim for myself,

it’s really not difficult for me to put on my big girl panties and admit that

those things make me a hell of a lot more uncomfortable than a boring, overly-moderate Democrat in a bad pantsuit ever could.

And that is why I vote.

Approaching the Cross (Pentecost +18B)

The Eighteenth Sunday after the Pentecost, Year B

[Texts: Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 1; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8; Mark 9:30-37]

Approaching the Cross

Anna Lenaghan

Sunday, 23 September 2018

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Please pray with me: 

O Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Thee. Amen. 

In today’s short Gospel lesson, we get to be a fly on the wall for some interesting interactions between Jesus and His disciples.

We’re in chapter nine today,

which starts with the very famous story of the Transfiguration,

when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to the top of Mt. Tabor

and revealed His full glory to them.

Jesus and all of His disciples are now on their way to Capernaum.

On the way, they pass through Galilee.

Jesus had become somewhat of a celebrity in this region,

and normally, news that He was in town would have attracted a huge crowd.

But not this time.

This time, He doesn’t want anyone to know He’s there.

He just wants some time alone with His disciples,

because He has some very important things to talk to them about.

Namely, He wants to talk to them about His impending death.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that we are in the Gospel of St. Mark.

St. Mark’s Gospel is known for several distinguishing features

which make it unique from the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke.

(We’ve talked about some of them before–

Remember the “Markan Sandwiches”

where the narrative jumps back and forth between two different stories?

Or the way Mark likes to get right to the point,

giving us the “Reader’s Digest” version of the story,

where everything happens “immediately”?)

Another characteristic that you will find throughout Mark’s Gospel has to do with the way he portrays the disciples.

To put it bluntly, in Mark’s Gospel, the disciples usually look like a bunch of idiots.

St. Simon Peter tends to be the main offender when it comes to “missing the boat,” so to speak,

But when Mark’s telling the story,

we get to see the not-so-great side of several of the disciples,

not just Peter.

For example, in today’s story, the disciples are really batting zero.

Jesus tries to tell them about His death, which is not too far in the future at this point,

and I’m sure it’s not the easiest thing for Him to talk about,

but rather than engage Him in a conversation about it,

asking the questions that burn in their heart,

they clam up.

They’re scared, St. Mark tells us.

They’re scared of the truth.

Then, come to find out,

they’ve spent the whole journey from Mt. Tabor bickering with each other.

Finally, we learn what it is that they’ve been bickering about–

these grown men have been arguing with each other about who is the greatest among them.

They’re fighting about who’s the best.

They are on the road with Jesus,

walking with Him

as He prepares to go to Calvary.

They are approaching the Cross.

And they’re approaching it with

a spirit of fear,

a spirit of discord,

and a spirit of pride.

We, too, must approach the Cross of Christ.

We are called, as Christians,

to take that cross up

and bear it through our mortal lives.

As we live out this call,

let us not follow the example of the disciples,

but rather,

let us follow the example of Christ.

Let us go to the Cross,

not with a spirit of pride,

but with a spirit of humility.

Let us humbly recall that God shows no partiality,

which means, neither can we.

Let us go to the Cross,

not with a spirit of discord,

but with a spirit of unity.

Let us, as the Body of Christ, never falter

in our duty to care for one another.

Let us go to the Cross,

not with a spirit of fear,

but with a spirit of hope.

Let us never forget,

through all that we are called to bear in our lives,

that our hope comes from the One by whose Cross

we are redeemed.

Draw near to the Cross, dear Christians.

Humbly, together, and clinging to the hope we have in Christ,

draw near to the Cross

and find everlasting life.

 

---

 

Like the Watchman (Pentecost +3B)

The Third Sunday After the Pentecost, Year B

[Texts: Genesis 3:8-15; Psalm 130; II Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35]

Like the Watchman

---

Please pray with me: 

O Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Thee. Amen. 

There are a few categories that Old Testament scholars use to group Psalms together by the themes that show up in them.

For example,

the Psalm we heard this morning is an example of what scholars like to call a “psalm of lament.”

(Basically, those are the ones that were written from a place of despair and grief.)

And if you read Psalm 130,

you can tell right away

that it was indeed written from just such a place.

Listen to the ache in his words: “Out of the depths I call unto You, O Lord!”

And yet, he’s still writing a Psalm, isn’t he?

We don’t know exactly what he has going on in his heart,

but we know that he is desperately reaching out and crying out to God,

begging God to reveal Himself in the midst of this crisis.

Now look at verses five and six:

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in His Word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than the watchmen watch for the morning,
more than the watchmen watch for the morning.

Before we had high-tech security systems, cameras, burglar alarms, and things like that, cities and towns were kept safe by watchmen.

Basically, there were these tall towers– watch towers– placed in strategic spots along the city wall,

and it was someone’s job to sit in those watch towers,

generally armed with a bow and arrow,

and make sure nothing suspicious was going on.

Much like security guards nowadays, watchmen would take shifts.

Some watchmen worked during the day, and others worked at night.

It might be kind of cool to be a watchman who worked during the day.

You know, you’d be up high and you could see everything,

and you could watch the daily life of the city

from a vantage point almost no one else had ever seen it from.

I couldn’t imagine being a night watchman, though.

That might be in part because I’m a card-carrying morning person,

and I get cranky just thinking about having to stay up past 10 PM.

But I also think it would be kind of boring to have to keep watch all night.

Sure, every once in a while you’d have to deal with a situation,

but for the most part,

you’d just be sitting there

in the dark

by yourself

for hours on end.

That doesn’t sound like very much fun.

Plus, it would be really hard not to fall asleep on the job.

But there were people who were night watchmen– that was what they did for a living.

They kept vigil over the city while everyone else was sleeping.

They sat in the darkness,

waiting patiently for the sun to come up

so they could go home and get some sleep themselves.

A watchman waiting on the dawn isn’t wondering whether the sun will rise,

or curious to see whether it will happen.

That was the one certainty in that line of work:

the sun would rise,

and a new day would dawn.

So, when the Psalmist says,

“my soul waits for the Lord, more than the watchmen watch for the morning,”

he’s not talking about a theoretical possibility–

maybe God is with me,

perhaps He will redeem my experience of grief and suffering,

I wonder whether I should continue to hope–

No.

He is saying that God’s presence is,

to borrow a phrase from Beauty and the Beast,

“certain as the sun rising in the east.”

He knows that God is there

not only in our joy and comfort and security,

but also in the seasons of our lives

that make us want to scream,

“Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;

Lord, hear my voice!”

It’s a tale as old as time, truly:

Human grief,

human suffering,

human brokenness.

But we know how the story ends.

We know how things turn out.

The cold, dead, barren grasp of winter

gives way to the first green shoots of spring.

The agony of the crucifixion,

becomes Easter triumph and Easter joy.

And in the darkest, longest night of our souls

we can rest assured–

even more so than the night watchman

who sits on the wall night after night–

that light will break through.

So, dear Christian,

wait,

hope,

pray,

believe.

Keep watch.

Morning is coming.

 

No, I Won’t Stop Talking About My Mental Health. Here’s Why:

I am not normally a fan of publicly putting people on blast, but I feel it’s warranted in this case. I am not going to use any names so as not to further embarrass this person’s child (who already reached out and apologized on behalf of her mother– which, while not necessary, was appreciated) but I am going to talk about what happened.

So, sometime in the middle of the night last night, I was sent the following horrifically ignorant message from the mother of someone I went to middle school with.

“I feel compelled to tell you that I and many others are not a fan of your recent shtick about your mental problems and suicide issues. No one comes on Facebook to hear such negativity, see pictures of people who cut themselves, or fawn over attention-seeking behvior [sic] related to suicide and being infirmed. It is nothing to be proud of and certainly nothing to broadcast to the entire world. I am sure your parents and family are mortified. I know you come from a verhy [sic] good family. Please save them, and yourself when you grow up and realize what a mistake you are making, the embarrassment and stop. You will thank me later when you are able to realize what you are doing.”

In case you’re not up to speed on the backstory here, I have suffered from severe depression for about the last seven years– so, basically, since I graduated from high school– and on top of that, I have post-traumatic stress disorder and an anxiety disorder. It has made me a horrible friend, spouse, and human being at times.  I had to drop out of college because of it, gained over 100 pounds in just a few years, and ultimately found myself in a downward spiral that would end up with me wanting to end my own life.

In December of last year (2017), beginning on the 11th of that month, I was hospitalized. I was housed on pod 4 of the psychiatric unit of Spartanburg Regional’s emergency room. I slept in room 89.

After the psych hold in the ER, I was referred to outpatient, which essentially means living at home but with a regimen of therapy, medication, and adherence to a rigorous “home plan” written up to keep me on the path toward getting healthier. Should I need to be hospitalized again (which is not out of the question) I will likely end up in inpatient after the initial psych hold, which could last weeks or months, rather than just days.

I am on the path to recovery, but it is not a quick or easy path, nor is it necessarily linear. Four months and counting after my hospitalization, I still feel like I am swimming upstream. My recovery is still a full-time job that takes all the heart, energy, strength, and courage I have every single day. I am engaged in a daily fight for my life.

And, yes, it is something I talk about, both publicly and privately.

And no, I am not going to stop.

Which brings me to this message I woke up to this morning:

I feel compelled to tell you that I and many others are not a fan of your recent shtick about your mental problems and suicide issues. No one comes on Facebook to hear such negativity…

You call it “negativity”. I call it “reality.” If by “shtick” you mean frank, honest description of my daily reality, then, sure.

I don’t especially care what you and your “many others”/imaginary friends are or aren’t a fan of. Mental illness and suicidality are a real problem that need to be discussed.

Personally, I (and my many imaginary friends) don’t care about your pictures of your girls’ nights, your brunches, or your tacky outfits from the clearance rack at Chico’s, which is obviously what you think people are on Facebook to see.

  …see pictures of people who cut themselves…

So, here’s the deal: I’ve been cutting myself since I was about ten years old. Both of my arms, one of my thighs, most of my torso, and both of my calves and ankles are covered in scars.

They’re not paper cuts, either; they’re the kind you can see from the International Space Station.

I understand that’s not something a lot of people are used to seeing, but there’s not much I can do about it, either.

They’re a part of my body.

Most pictures of me, unless they’re only of my face or I happen to be wearing a burqa, are going to have visible scars in them. I refuse to dress inappropriately for the situation or the weather just to hide them– if it’s a hundred degrees outside, I’m going to be wearing shorts, scars or no scars. They’re just a part of me.

I am not self-conscious about this, because there would be no point in that– why be upset about something that is a part of my body?

Or, better question: Why should you be upset about part of a body that isn’t even your body?

or fawn over attention-seeking behvior [sic] related to suicide and being infirmed.

Okay, first of all, I wasn’t “infirmed.” I admitted myself voluntarily to the emergency room.

Secondly, my desire to speak out about my mental health and about mental health in general has nothing to do with “attention seeking”.

I have the three cutest cats in the world. If I was out for attention, my Facebook would be nothing but pictures of them, and I would be internet famous– because, and I cannot stress this enough, they are the cutest cats literally ever.

On the other hand, when I talk about my mental illness, my experience of hospitalization, and my recovery, what I am out to raise is not attention but awareness. There’s a difference.

It is nothing to be proud of and certainly nothing to broadcast to the entire world.

I agree with you on this point– having a mental illness is nothing to be proud of. Neither is being left-handed, having freckles, or any other fact of your genetics/biology is something to be proud of.

But it’s also nothing to be ashamed of.

And that’s kind of what I’m getting at here by talking about it so openly. The only shame that mental illness carries is the shame people attach to it. People like you.

Furthermore, you know what is something to be proud of?

Surviving mental illness. Which I am doing. Every day.

And not just surviving but healing.

Being a survivor is something to be proud of, and you bet your sweet ass I’m proud of that.

I am sure your parents and family are mortified.

You know, to me, the word “family” has a pretty fluid definition. Anyone whom I might happen to be related to, but who is “mortified” by me fighting to get better and helping others in the process, is not my family in the truest sense.

Those who love and support me and are proud of me, whether or not we share a biological or legal bond, are my family. Now, that’s not to say I don’t have some cousins and other relatives who have been extremely supportive– I do, and I thank them with all my heart– but not everyone whom I consider family is necessarily related to me.

Your own daughter is pretty mortified by you, by the way.

I know you come from a verhy [sic] good family.

What in the world does the fact that I was raised with financial privilege (which I am grateful for, and for the opportunities it has provided me) have to do with whether or not I was born with a chemical imbalance in my brain?

Can someone explain that to me, please?

There is mental illness in all ethnicities, nationalities, social classes, geographic areas, both sexes, all ages… it’s not decided by whether or not someone’s parents are wealthy or part of the social elite in their hometown. It’s literally biology.

Please save them, and yourself when you grow up and realize what a mistake you are making, the embarrassment and stop.

You know what? No.

Because you know what got me to that hospital room? You know what almost caused my “good family” the “embarrassment” of having to bury a child?

The fact that I wasn’t honest.

I wasn’t honest with people about how I was feeling, what was going on, and how bad things were. I shut out pretty much everyone and isolated myself, because that’s what depression does. And that’s how depressed people end up committing suicide.

And I decided, as part of my decision to pursue recovery, that there would be no more pretending I was okay. There would be no more shame and no more hiding. There would be full transparency.

I decided, in short, that I was going to document this journey with full honesty, and share it with the world.

Because if I can make just one person going through this feel less alone than I felt, then thanks be to God.

I got to what almost became the end of my life by refusing to tell the truth. One day, I believe, I will reach wholeness and light, and I believe it will come only through total, radical, fearless truth-telling.

And hopefully, along the way, I will help fight some of the stigmas that people like you are so hell-bent on maintaining around mental illness, too.

You will thank me later when you are able to realize what you are doing.

I do actually want to thank you.

I want to thank you for so articulately pointing out everything that is wrong with how our culture responds to mental illness.

I also want to thank you for the opportunity to write this post, and to articulate some things that I hadn’t previously thought to try and put words to.

Even if it is too late for you to find meaning in what I have said here today, I hope that someone else will.

And I do realize what I’m doing:

I am recovering from a medical crisis that almost took my life.

I hope, along the way, to help others in the same situation know that  they are not alone, and to help people who have never been through this to understand a bit about what it’s like.

I am helping, in whatever small way I can, to remove the stigma and shame unfairly attached to mental illness.

I am giving meaning to my experiences by sharing it in the hopes that it will help or inspire even one person.

I am adding my voice to a movement that is slowly, surely changing the world.

What are you doing?

 

O Radiant Light (a hymn)

O radiant light, that wondrous star
Which once o’er Bethlehem did shine
Its tidings to proclaim afar:
“A King is born of David’s line.”
Which star bade wise men westward go
The infant King for to behold
And unto Him their homage show
With gifts of incense, myrrh, and gold

Unto its light the sages came
Until the holy Child they found
There beckoned by its heav’nly gleam
As angels’ voices echoed round.
And still to every searching soul
That star from realms above doth shine
Its light celestial to bestow
And bid us all, “Come, seek, and find.”

And all our ways it doth illume,
Though Hell should undertake in vain
Its guiding radiance to consume
Or blind our hearts by earthly pain;
Whate’er befall us here below,
Where’er our mortal path may lead,
We, onward marching in its glow,
Are heirs to glory yet unseen.

All praise, O Morning-Star, to Thee,
Begotten of the Father’s heart,
Who in Thy blest Epiphany
The light of Heaven didst impart;
Whom with the Father we adore,
Who spake, and lit the sun above
And Holy Ghost forevermore
O Trinity of light and love. Amen.

Text: A. Howell (b. 1991)

Written for the occasion of the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord;
Dedicated, with love and gratitude, to Anita.