Eternity, at the foot of the cross

Posted on March 29, 2024 by harasprice

Homily for Good Friday, Year B

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

“The dead do not turn their heads or their eyes to the right or left, but they sit in a quiet without stiffness.  When they speak their tone is matter-of-fact, without sentimentality and, above all, without lagubriousness.” -Thornton Wilder 

(stage instructions for the characters of the dead, opening of Act III, Our Town)

I was just shy of twenty years old when I read these stage instructions, written by Thornton Wilder into the manuscript for Our Town.  I was rehearsing for the role of Mrs. Gibbs, wife of Dr. Frank Gibbs the town physician, Mother to George and Mother-in-Law to Emily. In the play, George and Emily grow up in Act I, fall in love and marry in Act II.  And, if you know the story, you know that Mrs. Gibbs can be found seated among the on-stage dead in Act III, making a sort of distanced maternal welcome for young Emily who joins her family and neighbors in the Grover’s Corners cemetery after she dies during childbirth.  

When I first got the script, I admit that I had to look up lagubriousness: “the quality of excessive mournfulness and uncheerfulness”  I didn’t know that within a few weeks, I would more fully understand why Thornton Wilder chose that word.  And, it’s meaning is completely embedded for me in the context of Good Friday.

My role in the college theater club production of Our Town was just a few weeks after my spring break. We had rehearsed Act I and II before break, and Act III was next.  I headed home, bringing my script with me.  I wasn’t raised in a liturgical tradition but I did honor Holy Week so I made plans to attend a multi-denominational community Good Friday service held in a park, just one town over from where I grew up.  I called my friend Carlos to see if he wanted to go with me. Now, if I was narrating this story like the Stage Manager in Our Town, I might break the third wall and say, “her feelings for him were a mite bit more than friendship” which gives this story some added context.  But, back to the sermon: I called up my friend Carlos to see if he wanted to come to the Good Friday service with me.  And he said yes…and with a little hesitation added, “let’s have lunch first…I have something I want to talk with you about.”

Being 19, I was only worried about getting my heart broken.  I was so worried, in fact, that the only thing that I remember clearly about the early part of that day was ordering a tuna sandwich because it was Good Friday and it seemed like the thing that I should do.  I was chattering on nervously; my motive seemed to be that if I didn’t stop talking, I might not hear what I was afraid that I might hear.  I don’t think I’d taken a full bite of my sandwich yet when my friend asked me, gently, to stop talking.  And then he said to me: “I have to tell you something very serious.  I found out I have AIDS.  And, I’m probably going to die.”  It was the 1980’s.  This was our reality.

Now, I’ve been a priest for five years and preaching regularly for a decade, but surprisingly this is the first Good Friday sermon that I’ve been invited to preach. And a part of me always knew that I would have to preach this particular sermon at some point because Good Friday is indelibly marked by this memory for me.  And I’m glad it is a story that I can share at St. Mark’s, because I know this is a community that palpably understands.  Moments like this in our lives take us to the foot of the cross.

That Good Friday, I remember the entirety of John’s Gospel being read while we white-knuckled holding each other’s hands: love, death, grief, faith, resurrection all swirling together and yet silenced out of necessity. Later, I remember trying to get myself together so that my family would know nothing when I walked back through the front door. My profound and palpable grief felt like it was being carried in every cell of my body and yet all I could do was to focus my attention ahead, not looking to the right or to the left, at what was or what might be as I walked each deliberate step. The great irony was that I thought I could distract myself by memorizing my lines. Instead, I could only read the words of that Act III opening stage instruction over and over again as I imagined myself not as Mrs. Gibbs in the Grover’s Corners cemetery but at the foot of the cross, side by side with my friend.  Not turning our eyes to the right or to the left. Surrounded by death yet sitting in a quiet without stiffness or sentimentality.  Without lagubriousness.

Pause with me, if you will, in that space at the foot of the cross of Jesus. 

Thirty something years later, and that is where I always stand on Good Friday.  With me are the other mourners: Jesus’ mother; his mother’s sister Mary, wife of Cleopas, Mary Magdalene, the disciple whom he loved. There are so many other people there, too: disciples, named and unnamed; those who mock; those who are afraid; others gathered in solidarity who across the centuries have been victimized, persecuted, misunderstood, labeled, beaten, given a name that is not their own, mocked, stripped, left for dead. 

And after a time, we who remain begin to realize we are not among the dead.  We begin to free our vision, we dare to turn our heads, to see those others with us: their gentleness, their trust, their love and their belovedness.  And we realize that we are, in fact, still among the living who through their tears are also beginning to notice their lives more deeply linked in relationship with one other, to begin to see each other as beloved family.

In the play, Emily Gibbs tries unsuccessfully at first to take her place among the dead.  She asks for a chance to go back, just one more time, to a happy moment.  In spite of dissenting voices of experience and wisdom from among the dead, she is granted permission by the omniscient stage manager. She picks the day of her 12th birthday.  It’s an ordinary day, filled with ordinary yet overwhelmingly beautiful, loving things she hadn’t ever noticed before. And her heart is cracked open by the fact that no one among the living is pausing long enough to look at her; they are going through the motions of life unaware of its precious and transient nature. She turns away, exasperatedly saying to the Stage Manager:

“I can’t.  I can’t go on.  It all goes so fast.  We don’t have time to look at one another….I didn’t realize.  So all that was going on and we never noticed.” – Thornton Wilder (Emily, returning to her 12th birthday, Act III, Our Town)

Good Friday is our opportunity to stand at the foot of the cross and notice.  

Confronting life and death breaks us open to notice and transform our days.  Confronting the ugly death by which the Son of God died by human hands breaks us open to notice and transform our lives.  But what do we notice?  Who is with us?  Whose hand are we holding?  Whose tears are we wiping?  Who becomes our brother, our sister, our sibling when the one who has been loving us now looks at us from the place of his death and invites us not to turn away or to sit in detached silence like the dead, but to turn towards each other and to love one another? 

It starts to come into clarity now, here at the foot of the cross, these lessons of profound, mind-blowing love that defined Jesus’ life and ministry. Healing the out-cast; recognizing the faithfulness of the people that others see as broken or cast-off; the greatest among you becoming the servant and the servant becoming the greatest of all. The parables that seemed to turn everything we thought we knew over into new lessons of undeserved love, mercy, and grace which defy human logic.  The tables now literally and symbolically overturned at the sight of injustice and the arrogance of thinking we could somehow manage and manipulate God who made and will remake the whole world. There are moments when the whole world seems to be ending, and at the same time we realize that it is just beginning anew. 

On Good Friday, we have an encounter not only with death, but with eternity.

After some moments in life, we are not the same. Perhaps we wouldn’t wish them on ourselves or anyone else.  And yet these most powerful moments of our lives break us open. Perhaps that is because it is only in our brokenness that we are able to make room and receive God’s transforming grace.  Only at the foot of the cross can we know what it is to feel the smallest flicker of the eternal flame of God’s overwhelming love piercing through the veil.

In so many ways, the way I live out my life and vocation can be sourced back to that Good Friday thirty-something years ago. Because in every way, all that I am is dependent upon being at the foot of the cross, broken open, sitting in that quiet moment where we are given a glimpse of eternity…where my life, and your life and all lives are interdependent upon one another through our belovedness in the eyes of God who made us, and transforms us, and remakes us so that we are instruments of that transforming, eternal love.

“Now there are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often.  We all know that something is eternal.  And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars…everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.  All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it.  There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.” – Thornton Wilder (stage manager soliloquy Act III, Our Town)

Open to the eternal now, beloved friends in Christ as we stand together at the foot of the cross.

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From palms and branches

Posted on March 24, 2024 by harasprice

Homily for Palm/Passion Sunday, Year B
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Passing from one celebration to another,
from palms and branches let us now make haste, O faithful,
to the solemn and saving celebration of Christ’s Passion.
Let us see Him undergo voluntary suffering for our sake,
and let us sing to Him with thankfulness a fitting hymn:
Fountain of tender mercy and haven of salvation:
O Lord, glory to You!

(lyrics: Motet for Passion Sunday, composed by Frank Ferko)

We are, on this day and even in the past hour, passing from one celebration to another.

The culture around us has been “celebrating” a jelly beans-and-marshmallow-peeps laden Easter since the last red heart-shaped box of chocolates left the grocery store check-outs on Valentine’s Ash Wednesday. Advent calendars as a lead up to Christmas have developed a sort of cultural adaptation, but the lenten fast…not so much.

But here we are, Church. We are waving our palm branches and processing with Hosanna’s one moment and the next, standing in the midst of a recitation of the Passion Gospel where our voices, too, echo the crowd’s changing refrain from messianic adoration to the leering cheer of condemnation, “crucify him.”

This jarring change of destination is one that we instinctively do not want to travel. We yearn for a different changing of celebrations that is more palatable, like the smooth transition from candy hearts to chocolate bunnies. We’d much rather have the loud chorus of “Hosanna” shift to “Alleluia!” again. But there is still a road that needs to be traveled, friends. And just because we choose not to walk it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

This walk through Holy Week with Jesus is a narrower path that will make us confront our fears, that will rend our hearts, that will change our song from one of selfish expectation to one of soul-wrenching injustice…eventually overcome and transformed by unbounded, unfathomable love. We are, indeed, passing from one celebration to another: one which starts with shouts of human-initiated hope for tangible triumph and the other which culminates with God-initiated salvation for hearts broken open. Participating with the crowd in the first triumphal entry requires very little of us. The second walk to the cross demands much more. It requires us to risk our human comfort as we walk together into God’s vision of divine mercy and grace. That transforming love wasn’t free, painless, or socially supported. It was costly, excruciating, and solitary. It was, and is, the gift to surpass all gifts.

Being truly present with Jesus through the journey of this Passion narrative changes us, in ways that we cannot know right now. That’s perhaps the most frightening part for us, if we’re honest about it. We like to have control. We know the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection so we can control how much of it we deeply experience. We have faith to proclaim Easter even in the midst of Lent. But we don’t know what shifting our other life priorities aside and centering the celebration of Jesus’ outpouring of love, his betrayal, his humiliation and death will mean for us. Where will we be during Holy Week? What roads are we willing for our hearts, minds, bodies and souls to travel not out of convenience or even obligation, but out of love?

It’s not a rhetorical question.

We will choose every day this week what we do with this passing of holy time demarcating a Holy Week. On what images will our hearts and minds be fixed? Where will we put our bodies? With whom will we journey in solidarity of spirit as we honor Jesus’ journey of suffering and death at the hands of humanity, the very people whom God loved so much that he came to join with, live with and love profoundly, even to the point of death? Will it be with the disciples? With Judas first sharing bread with Jesus and then in his betrayal; With Peter in his denial; With Mary his Mother in her anguish; With secret followers like Joseph of Arimathea carrying a broken and beaten body to a tomb that had been dug for another; With Mary Magdalene in both grief and belief even while others disbelieved her resurrection witness? With those who, like Jesus, are oppressed at the hands of earthly powers and subjected to injustice and violence in this world and yet stand firm in the hope of God’s salvation which is beyond human understanding?

Wherever and with whomever we journey in this solemn celebration, we will be changed.

Transformed.

I opened today and will close again with the words of a choral anthem that I sang one Palm/Passion Sunday well over a decade ago now that forever altered my experience of this entry into Holy Week. The composer, Frank Ferko, wrote this motet based on a Byzantine chant for Palm Sunday vespers, sung as the sun sets on the day of triumphal entry and we begin this journey together into the depths of Holy Week. And we will journey together, if we choose to. I need you. You and I need all the others making this journey as well. So, I invite you to choose to make the journey and share in solidarity this solemn and saving celebration of Christ’s Passion. And together, we allow ourselves and encourage one another to open to transformation…to walk through the valley of the shadow of death into the unknown mystery so that we can be Christ’s transforming presence in this world, in all the spaces, places and people in need of divine love, mercy and grace. In that divine love dawns the light of resurrection.

Passing from one celebration to another,
from palms and branches let us now make haste, O faithful,
to the solemn and saving celebration of Christ’s Passion.
Let us see Him undergo voluntary suffering for our sake,
and let us sing to Him with thankfulness a fitting hymn:
Fountain of tender mercy and haven of salvation:
O Lord, glory to You!

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We want to see Jesus

Posted on March 17, 2024 by harasprice

Homily for Lent 5, Year B

St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA

Gospel reference: John 12:20-33

First, I want to thank the Rev. Marlene Forrest and St. Philips for the opportunity to be present with you today.  I have had the honor of knowing Marlene since the early days in our respective journeys into ordination.  My first recollections are some shared space and time at a retreat together at Richmond Hill.  We each took a different seminary path…literally, two different coasts…but it seems like our paths continued to weave together during those years in the kind of way that the Holy Spirit is prone to do.  And now, here we both are in Richmond.  We serve together in diocesan ministry and regional ministry, in Commission on Ministry work and in the hosting of ordinations.  And always, in all of those occasions,whenever I have had a chance to be in conversation with Marlene one thing is true: I always come away having seen Jesus.

Maybe that’s why this week, it is those simple, specific words at the opening of a profound Gospel text that have grabbed my attention: a few travelers from Greece come up to Philip the disciple and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

We wish to see Jesus.

Imagine this moment with me. This isn’t a planned business meeting or an arranged conversation; their approach to Philip wasn’t a check in with a receptionist.  These aren’t friends of Philip’s or even people who know him by name.  They are, in many ways, “the other”, the outsiders.  This scene unfolds in the midst of the Passover preparation time, where people were pouring into the city ofJerusalem and making preparations for a holy series of days.  You know what that’s like…we’ve got a big week coming up…and there’s lot to get done! Philip may have expected a random question about where to buy necessary provisions, or find lodging, or common meet up locations.  But in this moment conveyed in our Gospel text, a group of people from outside the Jewish cultural mainstream are among those who have come to the city of Jerusalem to worship. When they encounter Philip, their question is evidence of their trust: he is someone who knows the One who they wish to see.  The way this story is conveyed in Greek suggests that this wasn’t just a curious interest.  Their request comes from desire, from determination…perhaps better translated from the Greek, “we are longing to see Jesus.”

This moment is deeply profound, both in what is said and what is left unsaid.  After all, Philip could have just kept on walking, or made an excuse, or brushed them away.  But, he did not do any of those things.  He saw and heard their desire, and he responded.

Philip seems aware that their desire to see Jesus reflects something larger and more significant that is happening.  Philip goes to Andrew, then Philip and Andrew go to Jesus.  And Jesus, rather than going out to offer a social or even pastoral greeting uses this moment of their faithful inquiry to reveal with prophetic clarity the depths through which everyone will come to see him. Those to whom he speaks are unaware that they are about to see him not in the kind of glory they were perhaps imagining, but in the glory of God’s vision for humanity coming to its fullness through his death in this world and his glorification in God’s realm.

To truly see Jesus is to see him in the fullness of this paradox where those who love their lives will lose them, and those who serve will be honored; where death is necessary to bear fruit and where eternal life is found only when we let go of our love of this world.

We wish to see Jesus.

I was invited here to St. Philip’s today to talk about discernment and vocation, which are the areas in which I focus my diocesan work.  As I’ve been preparing to preach and offer a time of further conversation after the service, it occurs to me that this question, this invitation to see Jesus is really at the core of everything that we engage in discernment and formation.  That’s because we live in a world that needs to see Jesus…and by that, I mean JESUS.  I don’t mean a token Christianity that uses the name of Jesus to justify their privilege.  I don’t mean a co-opted Christianity that uses the name of Jesus to oppress other people.  I don’t mean the use of the name of Jesus to hide from historic wrongs and present day patterns of ongoing prejudice and injustice.  I mean that this world needs to see Jesus.

The world needs to see Jesus who loves without regard to status or affiliation; the world needs to see Jesus who sources his whole ministry in prayer and conversation with his heavenly Father; the world needs to see Jesus whose gifts of humility and reconciliation meant that he would give up everything so that the world might see clearly the intention of God’s love to transform the world.  

The world needs to see Jesus.

So what does this have to do with us, both in our individual lives of faith and for the Church?

If we believe that people need and desire to see Jesus, then we, like Philip, need to point the way with our lives to the One whom they are seeking. And that truly is about discernment.  We have some fundamental questions on which to discern: who are we in this world, and how do we carry our relationship with Jesus with us?  

Discerning who we are in this world and the role of Jesus in our way of being is what being called to the life of a Christ-follower is all about.  We don’t all need to do the same things; the whole world needs to see Jesus.  That means seeing Jesus in all manner and forms of our daily work: in schools, in health care, in business and industry, in science, in social services, in our neighborhoods and communities as well as our work in the church.  Just as Philip turns to Andrew, discernment relies on the wisdom of God found in community to help us better understand how the gifts that we bring can be best used to further the transforming love and grace of Jesus both in the world and in the church.  God’s love is everywhere.  When we are living into that love, surrounded by our community, living our lives in relationship with Jesus there is nothing to fear.  

In my own life and in companionship with others, I’ve engaged discernment in community.  Through the gift of community discernment we learn to pay attention, hear, notice and respond to the specific ways that the gifts we bring have value to God’s realm, on earth as it is in heaven.  It can catch us off guard and make us feel confused or uncertain at first when we feel God’s presence tugging at our hearts, inviting us to something more.  I imagine that those in our Gospel lesson who set off to Jerusalem in search of Jesus may have felt that way, too.  But they began the journey and continued the journey in faith, one step at a time.  And that journeying step by step is actually the kind of response that is modeled for us by the disciples.  Those who were journeying were a group: they were jointly making their way in the hopes of having that encounter with Jesus.  At the same time, Philip and Andrew along with the other disciples were traveling together, with Jesus and each other.  When this Gospel lesson opens, no one is on their own.  They all have community accompanying their journeys, discerning each step of their shared ministry in relationship with God and each other.  And that, my friends, is the truly good news. When we have stirrings in our soul that might make us both excited and perhaps a little worried about what God is doing, there is always someone…or someones… in community through whom God is working to companion us.  And sometimes, God is working on us to companion another person on their journey, too  

We wish to see Jesus.

Each and every day, I am blessed to be working with people in discernment and formation who not only wish to see Jesus, but desire to make Christ’s redemptive presence known to all with whom they live and work and worship.  Just so you know, not everyone’s path looks the same.  

Sometimes on the path of discernment, lay people find ways that their skills and gifts serve the church in particular and beautiful ways, and they commit deeply to showing Jesus’ love in their everyday lives in the world and in the roles that they serve in the parish as well as the diocese.  I know a number of St. Philip’s people doing that on diocesan committees and task groups as well as here within your parish. 

Sometimes on the path of discernment, there is a particular call to service which responds to the needs of the world and draws the Church to see those needs in ways that mobilize us to deeper and fuller service to God’s people.  Those called to serve as Deacons have this beautiful gift of service wrapped in prophetic voice and Gospel proclamation that means that the Good News that is in their hearts spills over into ministry with those in this world.  Through their actions of service, they are helping all of us see that in serving those on the margins of this world, they are serving Christ himself.

And sometimes on the path of discernment, there is a particular call to build up the Body of Christ and people of God through the nourishing sustenance of Word and Sacrament, lived out in our life as Church.  These priests whom God calls are formed with a core of awareness that the many, many things that they are called upon to do all have their source in Jesus’ own example of priestly humility: to nurture a life of grace in God’s people that equips them to do all that they are called to do.

This week we honored Bishop James Theodore Holly on our Episcopal Calendar of Saints, the first African-American Bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church and one among our Great Cloud of Witnesses who in spite of great personal loss made deep and lasting impacts on the Church and especially his ministry to the people and churches of Haiti. In his life and in the ministry of Bishops we see the gifts of pastoring God’s Church and helping us move forward courageously in the directions that further God’s love, grace and justice in this world.  Bishop Holly’s story was no doubt filled with moments of great uncertainty as well as a depth of clarity in God’s community.  The lives of our saints and spiritual ancestors are guiding lights in the journeys that each of us undertake.

Every one of these paths of serving the church is one on which we see Jesus, and through which others see Jesus in us. And it is communities just like this one which help those in whom the Spirit is stirring to walk openly into the question of how they are being called, and what will equip them to serve and respond to that call.  And I can promise you one thing: if you are engaged in this process of listening to God’s call in any way…through your own discernment or supporting the discernment of another…you will have a transforming encounter with Jesus that aligns your vision and sets the order of your world into God’s order.  And that, my friends, is exactly the Good News that this world needs: We want to see Jesus.

I invite us to keep this conversation going today at our forums, and at any time and in any ways I can be of support to this community of God’s beloved people.  And I close with a prayer that is for all of us, as we continue to discern God’s presence in our lives, our church, and our communities:

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated unto you; and then use us, we pray you, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pulpit, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church
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The Law of Love

Posted on March 3, 2024 by harasprice

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year B

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

There’s no mistaking it now: we are in the midst of Lent.  Branches have replaced flowers; certain words beginning with “A” have fallen from our collective liturgical voice; we have knelt at the beginning of our worship to offer our confession, hearing the words of God’s law spoken and responding with our collective assent. This morning, our appointed lesson from Exodus invites us to hear again God’s words spoken to God’s chosen people, outlining the Covenant which framed their relationship. These ten commandments reflect two intersecting pillars of the law, instructing us how to live out our love for God, and how we live out our love and respect for others who bear the image of God for us.  Love God.  Love Your Neighbor.  As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry notes repeatedly, that is the heart of our life in Christ.

This two-fold way of being that was first given to our spiritual ancestors is profound.  We are bound to God through love, and we are bound with each other through actions which display that love.  How we respond to this covenant matters: we can see each commandment at face value, offering a catalog of “do’s” and “don’ts” or we can see this Covenant for the depth of life-giving love it conveys: in the words of the psalmist “the law of the lord is perfect and revives the soul.”  I hope we can focus on that latter understanding this morning.

Living into the love language of the ten commandments is a transforming proposition.  As much as these commandments seem directed as instructions for our individual lives, it’s important to remember the source and inspiration for the giving of the law: these commandments from God were given to a community of people who had been exiled and enslaved in order for that community to see and experience their common identity as God’s chosen and beloved people.  Together, they speak to what it means to live together in a Beloved Community, the flow of divine love giving us the fuel to liberate our common identity in loving ways with one another.  This message of profound love is what we also are given in the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection: the divine flow of love overflows in the arms outstretched on the hard wood of the cross, extending that love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ for the benefit of all of humanity.  That message of the cross, notes our Epistle, is the power of God for those of us being made new through that liberating and life-giving love. Without God’s love to guide us, adhering to these laws and Jesus’ profound embodiment of them might truly seem like foolishness.

Our prayers and scriptures this morning all seem to come together around this intersection of love for God and love for our neighbor.  And then, enter our Gospel lesson to jar us as we meet an angry Jesus, making a whip out of cords, dumping out the coins of the money changers and overturning tables in the temple. 

How do we make sense of this?

I think it helps to go back to the beginning, to the story of God’s Covenant with God’s people. If we read more of the story from the book of Exodus conveyed in our Old Testament lesson, we might recall that while Moses was on the mountaintop caught up in this holy inscription of the liberating love of God who had saved the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt, the beloved people for whom God’s covenant was intended became impatient.  They took things into their own hands and created a golden calf to worship as their god, in the erroneous belief that they, of their own making, could create a god that provided for them in the ways that they understood to mean prosperity. When word of this reached Moses, we are told that anger consumed him and he threw the tablets of the covenant to the ground, burned down the calf they had built and ground it to a powder which he scattered on the water and then, he made the people drink it.  

Don’t mess with Moses!  

I think anyone who encountered Jesus in the temple likely felt the same.

But here’s the important message: in both of these accounts, the visible actions of anger destroying that which is not of God completely up-ends the status quo.  And in doing so, it breaks open a renewed outpouring of God’s liberating and transforming love.

Anger in these stories of our faith is a means for purging away that which enslaves us: in the case of the people of Israel, perhaps that included the remnants of their captivity that made them distrust their belovedness reflected in a divine-human covenant.  Their distrust needed to be destroyed before authentic trust could be rebuilt.  Jesus references this pattern of destruction and rebuilding as well, even in the midst of anger.  It is a foreshadowing of his death and resurrection, and also a reminder to us that not everything that we think we need to cling to ultimately serves us.  Sometimes, we end up clinging to a vestige of something that is enslaving us and keeping us from full immersion into divine love and grace.  We want to trust in God, but that golden calf is something that we can see right here and now.  We want to believe in the vision of a temple for all people to worship, but we put up barriers to full participation as we try to manage the fear and scarcity that we keep clinging to.

We want to believe the message of the cross and embrace the liberating joy and power of salvation, but we keep focusing on our doubts, our fear of not having enough or being enough, our worries that the church is dying or the world as we know it is ending.  And the message of the cross and its divine love and grace overflowing into a genuine outpouring of love for our neighbor can even begin to feel like foolishness when we fall into the spiral descent of cynicism, perishing in our doubts and fears.

We may find ourselves starting to construct our own golden calves of justification to fan our fears and soon we find our courtyards filled with moneychangers who can collect what we believe we have coming to us just so we can survive.

And then, a season like Lent comes to upend our status quo and break us open from the fear and distrust that enslave us.  We are reminded in all kinds of ways during this holy season that God’s love is more powerful than our fears, our anxieties, our self-doubt and our impatience.

Perhaps that purging comes to us as a conviction in spirit, the proverbial “dark night of the soul” that wakes us and shakes us and in which we finally find ourselves letting go and being held in the hands of a loving God who has been there all along.  Perhaps that purging comes when someone we least expect responds to us with a love that we don’t deserve; when we see God present in that grace, it breaks our hearts open and expands them three or even four sizes more putting even the Grinch that Stole Christmas to shame.  Perhaps we are extended forgiveness whether or not we deserve it.  Or perhaps in the midst of our own rage against the injustices of the world we suddenly feel a deep peace of presence and we choose to trust it in spite of all evidence to the contrary.  It doesn’t negate our rage; it places it in the hands of a loving God.

And perhaps the images of this Gospel can remind us that the purging of the evils of the world that interfere with the powerful, liberating love of God is the message of the cross which ends not with death, but in resurrection. People continue to be oppressed; greed and power enslave us; the fears instilled in us by the world in which we live convince us that we will never have enough and that survival and success depend upon the diminishment of others for our own gain.  Meanwhile, in God’s economy we are filled to overflowing with the gifts of the Spirit. 

We know so much violence in our communities that we no longer trust the safety of sacred spaces.  In this courtyard of commodification, unconditional love is made to seem like weakness and a spirit of gentleness is mocked. But in the cross and resurrection, violence does not have the last word.  

Perhaps the power of Jesus does need to knock over some tables and purge away that which doesn’t serve the holy in this world.  Our faith tells us that God hears the lament of the oppressed, and God acts. This purging and upending isn’t with an intent to destroy; it is with the intent to make room for regrowth and resurrection.  This my friends is the Good News.

God’s covenant with God’s people is one of love, and God’s commandment is that we live that out in relationship with our siblings in Christ and the whole human family.  Our anger at injustice is something that is known to a loving God. We can feel that anger, we can name that anger: but it does not have the last word. This image of Jesus in the temple reassures us that even when the moneychangers seem to have taken over the prayerful places of our own lives, a complete overturn of heart is always possible, with God’s help. 

I’ve been reading this beautiful book during Lent: Cole Arthur Riley’s Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems and Meditations for Staying Human.  In the section of her book speaking of the holiness of rage, she concludes with this Benediction. In her prayer, she offers precisely the words that want to offer up to God and leave with you today:

Awake, awake oh sleeper.  Be reminded that the world deserves so much more than apathy in the presence of injustice.  Go with anger, not as enemy but as guardian.  A sacred protector in a world of so much hatred, reminding us we deserve to be protected. We breath, we feel.  And we befriend our anger as if the liberation of our world depends on it.  May it be so.

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Call and Community

Posted on January 21, 2024 by harasprice

Homily for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

Lectionary Text Link

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation

On Sundays when I’m not here with you at St. Mark’s, I am often traveling to parishes around the Diocese of Virginia as part of my diocesan ministry, talking about vocation and call.  In my role as the Vocations Minister, my days are filled with people engaged in various aspects of responding to God’s call on their lives.  One of my most frequently used words during those conversations is discernment: a prayerful, thoughtful process that often accompanies a time when one has an experience of feeling compelled or called to a new aspect of ministry in their lives.  Discernment of call requires a focus not on doing as much as listening: that means both listening through the interior, spiritual discipline of prayer as well as through outer engagement with others in community. 

Our Christian faith doesn’t come with a discernment manual.  But, as followers of Christ, we base our understanding of vocation and call from the lessons we hear from our Holy Scriptures and the examples of faithful disciples and followers of Christ through the ages. On Sundays like this, our Gospel lessons invite us to pause, to listen and to think about what it might have been like for others to respond to God’s call.  We hear it in the story of the prophet, Jonah and we hear it again in the lives of the disciples of Jesus who were having their own “Epiphany” of realizing that Jesus was not just Joseph and Mary’s son from Nazareth, but also the Messiah, the Son of God.  The stories are profound. Today’s Gospel lesson reads like a movie: Simon, Andrew, James and John each working along the shore of the sea of Galilee, and each hearing God’s call with such unambiguous conviction that they confidently drop the nets of their livelihood and unquestioningly follow Jesus.

At least, that’s how the story goes when we hear it echoed through history.  Sometimes reading this Gospel text makes it sound like it was all very easy for these disciples.  I’m not so sure about that.

I’m not doubting the magnitude of faith it required of Simon, Andrew, James and John to choose to follow Jesus in that moment.  But, I am also reminded that it’s easier to convey stories looking back in retrospect, confident in their outcome through the wisdom of history. Moving forward step by step, day by day into the still unfolding future as followers of Jesus was the real act of faith. 

I was invited recently by someone who was at the beginning of their own discernment journey to tell my own story of call. It was a particularly compelling invitation because this person had met me on a discernment retreat and what their take-home was from our earlier conversation had been gnawing away at them…he remembered me saying that my first experience of God’s call brought me to the field of social work. Up to that point, the people he heard talk about “call” did so speaking about ordained ministry. But vocation and call is so much more than that.

As the story of call in my own life spilled out of me during that conversation, I began to see and hear the movement of God through all the events of my life with a whole new clarity.  Like the Gospel lesson, told in retrospect it all seems to fit together in ways too beautiful for me to have concocted on my own.  And that is because that story of call isn’t about ME.  It’s about God.  If I were in charge of my life, I would have made entirely different choices and screwed it up massively.  I managed to do that along the way a few times, too.  But, as I said to the person who asked me to tell my story of call, I know that living it as I did…step by step…was about following Jesus.  It has involved prayer…both the quietness of contemplation and my loud shouts for God’s help.  The journey itself is filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, leaps of faith and chasms of doubt.  And yet, when I reflect back, I know with certainty that God has always been present with me, sometimes through a sense of inner calm but often through the people that I need to help guide me at exactly the right moment.  And that knowledge keeps me moving forward in my following.

That is the nature of following Jesus: not just for me, but for every single one of us.

We aren’t all going to have a journey that looks the same.  Jesus’ disciples didn’t, either.  And I think that confusion about what “following” means is what can trip us up about today’s Gospel lesson.  We sometimes think of responding to God’s call as having to do all the right things to get ourselves from Point A to Destination Z.  But getting ourselves to a destination isn’t following.  Following requires us to be in relationship with the one that we are following, so that we can be guided along the way.  We think we hear a story where the protagonists are Simon, Andrew, James and John who just dropped everything and became disciples.  But the protagonist here is Jesus, the one who calls us.  We can quickly forget that what they actually did was choose to prioritize relationship with Jesus over the certainty of the status quo that they already knew.

I can assure you, it was not easy.  In fact, even the Gospel stories we hear about the disciples tell us repeatedly that it was neither certain nor easy to follow Jesus.  And yet, they persisted: through doubt, despair and arguments over who was the greatest; through miracles and persecution; through mountain-top experiences and rough waters.  They brought themselves…their gifts, their skills, their lives…into living out this relationship with Jesus who could see their strengths as gifts for ministry and transform them to God’s purpose. Some fishers of fish became fishers of people.  Some menders of nets became healers of broken souls. 

And all that you bring, too, will be transformed as you take steps forward in faith.  The call to discipleship is an invitation to each and every one of us, a living out of the promises made at our Baptism.  Answering that call as “I will, with God’s help” is what we do, step by step by step.

I had another experience last week where I saw a profound example of the way in which this call to discipleship is lived out beautiful and profoundly in our daily lives.  I was sitting right up there, in the back of the choir.  Our friend, Mike, came up at announcements time.  He told the story of how years ago, he had been invited into a ministry that wasn’t something he’d considered before.  He named both his willingness to learn and the uncertainty he felt when starting out in the new ministry of being a Eucharistic Visitor.  His story focused on a relationship that emerged with a home-bound parishioner that he previously didn’t really know well at all. And now, their deep spiritual friendship is a gift to them both.

As I listened to Mike, what I heard was the story of incredible discipleship in following the invitation to serve: a relationship between siblings in Christ emerging over the sacramental sharing of the bread and wine, transforming the gifts of visiting and sharing into a visceral example of how we become, together, the Body of Christ.  And then, even more amazing, Mike offered us all a chance to join him in a part of that journey. Less than a minute later, Amos was sharing his musical gifts on the organ, the choir were lifting their voices, Mike as well as Sandy brought out their phones to catch all the joy, the Zoom congregation were all sending hellos, all of us here were rising to our feet, waving and outpouring our love and joy while singing “Happy Birthday!” and making Doris’ 100th birthday an absolute priority for us all to celebrate within this entire gathered community.  Because that kind of beautiful outpouring of spirit is what happens when we follow the call to be disciples in relationship with Jesus and with each other…there may be some uncertainty, some doubt…but then we focus on Jesus, who draws us all together and we are caught up into that beautiful, relational becoming where we know the absolute joy of what it means to be the Body of Christ.

On that first day as a Eucharistic Visitor, I don’t know if Mike could have imagined the joy of the journey.  He probably didn’t guess he’d be mentioned in a homily, that’s for sure. But that is how this walk of discipleship goes: step by step we all grow stronger, together, in Christ.

Today, we have heard stories of call in our Holy Scriptures and in our midst.  And we have a chance to experience the Good News of knowing a bit of what it means to share in the transforming relationship with Christ and each other.  So, I urge you: don’t be afraid to follow Jesus.  You don’t have to be certain of the destination.  We are called to relationship, to building each other up, to sharing the Good News through being all of who we are and bringing all of who we are to be transformed by the one who calls us by name and invites us to share this journey: fishers of people and healers of the world through our willingness to walk together in love.

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A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness

Posted on December 10, 2023 by harasprice

Homily for Advent 2, Year B
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA
December 10, 2023

Gospel Lesson: Mark 1:1-8

On a misty autumn afternoon in Birmingham, Alabama, I first met Marcus. I was traveling with our diocesan racial justice bus pilgrimage group this past October, and we had taken a break for lunch after which we were to gather at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church for our afternoon pilgrimage site visits to both the historic church and the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum. One of my companion pilgrims, Deacon Susie, had suggested that we pack up a few granola bars and water bottles in our backpacks, foregoing a sit-down lunch in order to spend some extra time at Kelly Ingram park, which was directly across from the church. That park, as you may recall, was the site of the May 1963 attacks by city fire and police officials on civil rights activists including thousands of school children marching for racial justice. The city park contains a walking tour of statues and monuments reflecting this critical and bone-chillingly horrific time of civil rights history, as well as moving statues memorializing the four young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson and Denise McNair who were killed when a terrorist bomb planted by the Klu Klux Klan exploded just outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, caving in the wall to a room where they were preparing to participate in Youth Sunday. It is a lot to take in. And on that day, we were both drawn to enter this particular urban wilderness to make our pilgrimage of remembrance, repentance and healing.

I entered the park and began reading one of the self-directed tour markers. After a few minutes in the park, a thin, African American man wearing clothing that was too large for his frame and a winter stocking hat perched on top of his head came up to me and introduced himself: “My name is Marcus” he said, “And I can give you a tour of this place and tell you some of the stories that you won’t hear about, unless you hear them from where I walk, on the street.” I asked him where he stayed most days and he turned his head and with his chin nodded to a place in an older section of the park where there was evidence of several people who had taken up residence under an old gazebo. “Over there, until they tell us to go” was his response. “Did you eat lunch?” I asked, and he shook his head. I said, “I was going to eat and walk, do you want some?” He looked over our granola bar stash, trying to find something that didn’t have a lot of nuts and landed on a blueberry-oatmeal bar which he thought looked good. I picked cherry-chocolate granola and we headed for the next monument.

Marcus proceeded to tell us a story that was a mix of his personal recollections of his mother’s life, wound in with the civil rights narrative of her world in the 1960’s, intermingled with the lives and events that had taken place in that park. His mother’s story wove together with other young people taking a stand against racial hatred, including of the lesser known history of two young black men who died in incidents of racial violence on the same day as the church bombing: Johnny Robinson, killed by a white police officer and Virgil Ware, killed by a white teenager. Until that day in Kelly Ingram park, I hadn’t heard about the two young men. So often it is that our narratives are limited to who the storytellers are and how much distance…social and geographic…there is between the events and our more privileged and protected lives. We were learning about history in that park in a way that no museum or newspaper could ever teach us.

Marcus was unfolding his own story, too. I learned a lot about Birmingham from him, and about what life is like for a man with injuries and mental health challenges and addictions and recoveries and a mother that loved him unconditionally, until she was no longer in this world to care for him. And because we entered that wilderness with our eyes and hearts open and were met by one of its residents, we learned something real in words and beyond words about the day-to-day of street life, living off the food leftover by strangers, surviving on the proverbial wild locusts and honey of fast-food restaurant cast-offs and shared granola bars.

As we wove in and out of monuments in the park, Marcus would exit and talk with others and then circle back around, adding some more details as his mind was prompted by specific monuments. Lest you think this scene was too serene, there were also plentiful other people in the park, some colorful characters, some tourists, some avoiding Marcus and others living unhoused by making big changes in course to get from one side of the park to the other without eye contact. And there were people who I know thought we were crazy and others who told us outright that we were not safe. But they didn’t know our story or our draw to that particular journey into the wilderness any more than they knew Marcus’ story. I work with the saints of the street on the regular, as does Deacon Susie. And because that is part of my call, I have also learned about addiction, mental health, and about my own humanity and our collective humility when we enter the sacred space of encountering God’s presence on the social margins of this world. So, when I was mostly done with this most unusual of tours and Marcus said to me, “I want to ask you for one more thing” there was a part of me that was mentally searching through my wallet to determine what cash I had and what appropriate compensation for his time I would offer before we parted ways but there was also a part of me that heard the Holy Spirit whispering: you need to just listen.

And so, I listened. And before we closed our time together Marcus said, “will you pray with me.” And I said, “yes, if you will pray with me.”

And there in a city park, on a misty afternoon in Birmingham, I stood with Marcus and we prayed. Words poured out of both of us about the thanks we gave to God, and the places where we most needed healing in our lives. I don’t remember what words I prayed or what Marcus prayed because it was like we had a bit of an open channel with the divine in that moment together, meeting us exactly where we were at.

A voice calling out in the wilderness has a particular and profound connection with God.

When we read this Gospel lesson from the comfort of our modern surroundings and only think historically about John the Baptist, we hear part of the Advent message. But imagine, if you will, that there is a prophetic voice calling us into this story across time and distance. Imagine the people from the Judean countryside and the whole city of Jerusalem leaving their daily routines and making a choice to enter the wilderness and seek out the prayer and prophetic counsel of a wilderness wanderer wearing a rough, camel hair tunic held up with a belt around the waist. Something compelled them toward the wilderness and away from whatever was defined as safe and comfortable. They were drawn to John and through him their ears were attuned to hear not only his voice but that of the Messiah, Jesus, who was coming after him, who would also present himself to John to be baptized. And the ears and eyes of their hearts may have sensed the voice of God breaking open from heaven in that profound and holy moment. These are the same people, at least some of them, who would follow Jesus up the Judean countryside listening to his teaching and preaching. These are the same people, at least some of them, who would find themselves on the other side of their own baptism in the Jordan River experiencing a transformation unlike anything they imagined, their hearts burning with anticipation for an encounter with the Messiah, the incarnate Word-made flesh.

What was the yearning that drew them into the wilderness? What is it that we yearn for that draws us into the wilderness this Advent?

Perhaps it is a yearning for liberation that comes when we push past our complacency and start confronting the truth. Perhaps for us it is the liberation that comes with confronting the hard history that we’ve realized needs to be spoken. Perhaps it is our desire to lay down the trappings and baggage that weigh us down in this world, to be renewed and reborn and transformed with God’s help. Perhaps it is release from the hurt we carry from being in this world, the hurt inflicted on us and the hurt we see inflicted on others. Perhaps we yearn for forgiveness from the hurt we have done to others, whether or not we ever intended to do so.

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord”

The wilderness is a place where only the essentials matter, and the extraneous no longer serves us. This preparation we are called to in the season of Advent is not one of storing up, but of letting go. It brings us, individually and collectively, into a time and place where nothing else matters but the outpouring of our hearts to God as we make room to welcome Christ anew.

Deacon Susie and I were together again at the end of that day in Birmingham, sitting at a picnic table outside of a Mexican restaurant with a long waiting line. As we were talking and catching up about the day that had passed, I saw Susie look up. Her face lit up with recognition at someone she saw beyond where I was sitting, “Well, look who it is!” she exclaimed. I turned, expecting to see someone else from our group who might have been craving chips and salsa. And who did I see: Marcus. No hat this time, and a little bit cleaned up from earlier in the day. “I told you, I know how to walk and get everywhere in this city!” he said to us. We made room at our table, and he sat down with us for a bit, helping us understand the proximity of the park where we were earlier to this restaurant where we were at now, and how all that related to the parts of the city that he felt were important to know. And we shared that sacred space together for a while, until it was time for him to move on while we continued to wait for our dinner.

We laughed at the serendipity of another encounter and at the same time, none of us were really surprised that we found ourselves together again. Church is like that. Amid all our differences and even in the wilderness of our lives, we find one another. We wait with expectation knowing that Christ is always in our midst, drawing us together into holy moments and encounters not only in our familiar spaces, but with the people and places that we least expect.

We just need to open our hearts to make room.

Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham AL (October 2023)
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How to be a Social Worker Everywhere You Go

Posted on December 9, 2023 by harasprice

Commencement Address for VCU School of Social Work (December 2023)

The first day I realized that I might be a social worker, I hadn’t even taken a class yet. I was working as a CNA in a skilled nursing facility, which I’d started to do right after high school. I enjoyed taking care of the residents but I wasn’t particularly fast at my tasks, which means I wasn’t considered “good” at my job. Often I found myself at the receiving end of an unhappy glance from my charge nurse. During the fall, I started taking some classes intending to find my career in the medical field. But let’s just say that I wasn’t feeling optimistic about that career path after a semester of anatomy and physiology. One day over winter break, I went into work and learned that one of the residents I often cared for had experienced the death of her spouse. She wasn’t on my assignment that day, but I decided to go visit her on my break. So, later that afternoon, I knocked on her door and she welcomed me in. We sat together, looking at her old photos. She reminisced, I listened. I remember feeling comfortable, just being present.

Suddenly, my charge nurse was at the door. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out to the hallway. With a stern look on her face, she began to lecture me about sitting around on the job, and I reminded her: I was on my break. She immediately said, “if you’re going to waste your break sitting around, at least do something productive like scrub the sink.” Then, she added: “If you want to talk with people so damn much, why don’t you go be a social worker!”

I know she meant it as an insult. And believe me, I felt it. But little did she know, she had just changed my world. 

That next semester, I signed up to take “Intro to Social Work.” And that’s where I learned to apply terminology, theory and strategy around this part of my identity that longed to center relationships, to foster people’s ability to create changes in their own lives within the systems that impact their everyday experiences, and to advocate for just policies and systems that protected the fundamental rights and responsibilities of our collective care for one another.  

During my BSW program and my MSW program there were ups and downs, and challenges, and papers and tests and more papers and tests. I know you all know something about that! Eventually, there was a PhD in my future with a really, really big paper…and there have been many more classes and papers since then. All along the way, I have met people who have challenged me and mentors who have inspired me by giving me examples of how they put their social work skills into practice: in health care, in child welfare, in mental health, in government, in academia, as organizational leaders, as candidates for elected office, with their clients, colleagues, co-workers and community partners.  

I hope that it’s been the same for you during your studies: My hope is that social work learning took place not only within your textbooks and lectures and discussion boards and assignments, but also with your peers, your professors, your mentors and most importantly, with your clients.

From the clients, classes and mentors I encountered on my own journey, I learned to nurture social work not just as a field of study, but as vocation: that place where my deep fulfillment meets the world’s deep needs.  My vocational identity as a social worker has been front and center when I worked in health care, hospice, education, community practice, non-profits, in a school of social work and now within the organizational structure of a religious institution. In all the settings where we live and work, the values and ethics of our vocation are more than just professional guidelines: we have the opportunity to live into them every single day.

And that’s what I really want to talk with you about: How do we choose, each and every day, to embody what it means to be social workers?  

I’m going to suggest three ways: Commitment, Colleagues and Community

Commitment: Social workers commit to ethics and values every day and keep pushing our profession forward. It isn’t good enough to have skimmed through the NASW Code of Ethics like a one-and-done assignment. It also isn’t good enough to assume that the historic context of social work contained in that statement offers us everything we need in 2023, or 2024 or 2035. Instead, if we understand the core and continuing values of our profession as emerging from the intersecting movements of social casework, the settlement house movement and mutual aid among members of oppressed groups then we can continue to ask critical questions that guide our actions where systems, communities and the voices of those marginalized by social structures come together. If we intentionally center the voices of those sidelined by society then we can make a counter-cultural impact in this divisive and stratified society. If we commit to center human relationships then we will make tangible changes in our own lives, as well as effectively broker and advocate for change with our clients. A value-driven profession is not “less than” scientific: A value-driven profession participates in the great experiment and rises to the grand challenge of believing that change is not only possible, but imperative.

Colleagues: Social workers center human relationships. We are our best professional selves with colleagues who share our values; who can support and challenge us when we hit rough patches; who can call us in with love to be sure that we aren’t becoming jaded, burned-out or overwhelmed by systems of oppression. We need diverse colleagues who can see things from different vantage points and social locations so that we are not lulled into thinking that our way of thinking is the only perspective. Maybe we’re lucky and we find our social work colleagues in the same place as our social work employment. But, we may be practicing social workers in interdisciplinary settings, or we may apply our social work skills and values in paid and voluntary settings outside of traditional social services altogether. In every setting where we work and every job title we hold, we are social workers. Being a relationship-centered social worker compels us to intentionally build colleague networks that reinforce our values and build each other up. Make and keep up the relationships that you have forged here; change jobs if you want, but keep the colleagues who help you be the best social worker that you can be! A cherished colleague group is the best prevention for burnout and the first ingredient in professional self-care.

Community: Social workers create community. Community is bigger than family, friends, or even colleagues. Some communities are place- or system-defined: where we live, where we went to school, where others see us “fitting” ideologically, politically or demographically. We may find communities of identity who help us build up strength in numbers, especially if we are a minority group in a larger system. As social workers, we can also create community. Creating social work community means intentionally expanding our circle to include those who are different from us because we see strength in diversity. Creating social work community means practicing affirmation and inclusion because we value what everyone brings to the table exactly as they are. Creating social work community means setting extra places at the table or pulling up a whole other table to make sure that there are plentiful seats. Creating social work community means noticing exclusivity then acting on our discomfort to create inclusive opportunities. Living in social work community means it’s not all about us: it’s about ALL of US.

Today, we’re marking the threshold of a new beginning: the commencement of something you’ve been working for not only for several years of formal education, but for your whole lifetime. Commitment, colleagues and community: These are three essentials to living out the vocation of social work with each step that you take, wherever you choose to go in this world. The world needs us. This world needs YOU to be a social worker, wherever you are. Each of you is a unique gift to this profession and you will help social work shift, change and adapt to the needs of an ever changing world in ways uniquely suited to you. Congratulations, social workers. You have earned this day. Now, let’s go change the world!

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Trimmed and Burning

Posted on November 12, 2023 by harasprice

Proper 27, Year A
Homily for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke VA

Gospel Lesson: Matthew 25:1-13

It’s only been a few weeks now since I came back from our diocesan pilgrimage for Racial Justice and Healing. During that time we journeyed first to Memphis, then to Birmingham and on to Selma and Montgomery. In each place we stood in hard and holy places in which we had to face the depth of oppression, violence and dehumanization that has occurred in the history of this country as well as in our continued struggles for racial justice. And in each place, we felt the holy and life-giving presence of God who was, and is and ever shall be present.

To say that I felt God’s presence in places like the 16th Street Baptist Church and the national memorial for peace and justice isn’t just a trite expression. It was palpable…and most easily seen, for me, in the faces of my fellow pilgrims and sojourners as we walked together.

Each of us brought our own “stuff” to this pilgrimage…and by that I mean the literal as well as metaphorical baggage of our lives. Every person on that journey brought our knowledge, our history, our wisdom, our ancestors, our privilege, our oppression, our frustrations, our yearning for beloved community. Sometimes we had enough for a particular stretch of the journey, and sometimes we did not. Sometimes I found myself sobbing and someone holding me up. Sometimes my arms were wide enough to support someone else. In all these things, we found ourselves growing together in Christ as well as in beloved community over the six days and 60+ hours of bus-riding that we engaged together. Most of us, myself included, haven’t really been able to find the words yet to convey the depth of our experiences. So, there will be more sharing on that to come.

But there was one portion of that pilgrimage that has been a constant companion in my thoughts as I sat with this week’s Gospel lesson and prayed about my time with all of you. On the second day of our pilgrimage, we drove to the outskirts of Memphis to a place that was described as a museum of the underground railroad. It was someone’s actual house until 1997 when the then-owner recognized that some of the peculiarities of the house might have far more historical significance than she initially realized. It had been the estate of Jacob Berkle, a German immigrant and stockyard owner. In addition to the quaint house and barn with meadows for cattle to graze, it became increasingly evident by the holes in the basement, the strangely positioned doors and half-doorways and the re-discovered oral histories of formerly enslaved people who described the location of safe stations on the underground railroad that this place was instrumental to the anti-slavery and abolitionist movements of the late 19th Century.

On the tour, we saw the tiny corridors through which people passed unnoticed to safety. We walked into the basement and stood in the damp darkness where small crawl spaces to and from the outdoors…out of sight of passers by…came into view. We heard stories, and listened to oral histories that told of instructions being given through the patterns of quilts set out to air and the drumming and singing of spiritual songs in the fields worked by enslaved people that held meanings beyond what could be seen on the surface. One of the songs noted by our tour guide was the spiritual “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.”

This spiritual is accompanied with steady drum beats, the kind that keep you working and moving as a group. The lyrics reflect the Christianity with which those who had been enslaved had also been indoctrinated and the scriptures of our Holy Bible turned into song would have been acceptable when heard sung by the laboring. But this song is also believed to have emerged as an encoded spiritual of the underground railroad: keep your lamps trimmed and burning, children don’t grow weary, the time is drawing nigh.

Entering into today’s Gospel in this way gives us a unique vantage point. Standing in that home made me confront the lyrics of a spiritual that was sung by enslaved persons whose reserve supply of faith and community was so strong that it fueled their lamps of liberation, whether for themselves or for their children and generations yet to come. We encounter history retrospectively, seeing what was and having to acknowledge that it doesn’t often hold the whole story. I could see these singing people, beloved of God yet enslaved by human hands. I could imagine them moving about their journey with their eyes open, seeing where and how there were means to reach freedom, to reunite with family, to boldly hope for tomorrows that would hold the possibility of salvation in this world or at least, in the next.

The holy oil of liberation that they carried with them is a tribute to their strength and their wisdom. The light they carried still burns on in their ancestors and generations that have come after them. That light of their presence on this earth and their resistance to oppression can be seen, if we have our eyes open to look. And God was with them, profoundly. The light of Christ that they sang into their daily motions was sustaining and keeping them in a way that the false and fleeting light of the self-righteous security of their oppressors never could.

Standing in this history is hard. Christianity has been weaponized in many ways and most especially during this horrific history of enslavement…and yet Christ’s presence was also there not in dominance but in love and liberation. To the foolish, freedom was a possession, a material thing that could be bought and sold. But the liberating power of Christ’s love isn’t like that. The liberating power of Jesus Christ doesn’t demand social place or position and it isn’t available for a price to those who have means; that liberating love thrives in relationship, that liberating love lives and grows when we are emptied. The wise ones sang, together. And their lamps were ablaze in ways that could not be bought or sold.

We begin to see this Good News emerging from Matthew’s Gospel when we realize that the wise are not the powerful or the wealthy; the wise are the ones who align with the liberating love of God which is carried with them in a way that cannot be possessed in this world. Like the words of Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, our eyes begin to open to the ways in which our loving, liberating God moves to topple the oppressive hierarchies of this world and replace them with the humility, love and grace that is fueled by the liberating love of Christ’s presence. As our liturgical calendar moves towards advent, it is this urgency of staying awake and remaining in relationship that we are called upon to do, so that the liberating love of God brings a whole new realm of God into being:

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

This parable gives us just another glimpse into the upside-down nature of the realm of God, where we grow by giving away and are filled by emptying our hearts. The one who is coming asks us to have our eyes and our hearts open, to be fueled with the liberating love that is available in and through community with each other. Wisdom reminds us to do what our logic fails to recognize: pay attention, keep watch, don’t grow weary.

My work at the Diocese is all about discernment and formation. I realize that on the surface, I haven’t offered a lot in this homily about the work I do ministering with those who are called to serve the Church and the world as lay people, deacons and priests. In other ways, I’ve given away the two best lessons of it all, though: God has us, and we are people called to be community. God invites us not to cling to our lives or to think that we personally have all the reserves that we need for our work and ministry. God invites us to wait with prayer and patience, filling our reserves through the relationships where Christ’s liberating love is revealed. God invites us to share in a life of giving in order to receive; to empty in order to be filled. God invites us to understand the Gospel not as a hammer to be weaponized, but as a tool that breaks us open to make room for God to do the work in us that the world needs. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t about being privileged. It is hard, and holy and humble work. And if God is speaking to you in that place, whether you are called to lay ministry or the ministry of a deacon or a priest then I’ll accompany you as you listen and prepare with open eyes and open heart to do whatever work God has called you to do.

So, for all of us, the reminder is clear: keep your eyes and hearts open for God’s movement: in your life, in this parish, in the diocese, in your community, in the world. There are safe places along the way, and messages that your open eyes and heart can see that will guide you. And God will be with you, as you are with each other. There are others on the journey who help to share the load and spread the wisdom. The light of Christ that we carry and see in one another is not for the taking or the buying. But together, in community, we will find that we are filled with the liberating light of Christ and in that beloved community, we will always have enough.

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Question behind the Question

Posted on September 24, 2023 by harasprice

Homily for Proper 20, Year A

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

With thanks to many of you who have checked in with me about how I’m doing this first year outside of academia, I will acknowledge that it is both strange and wonderful to be living life beyond a syllabus-driven academic calendar.  I don’t miss having a stack of papers to grade every night.  I do miss my students, particularly the newness and enthusiasm of my doctoral students who were always eager to dig deeply into the questions they had come to this program to explore.  Many of them, like me, had spent time in social work practice and what drew them towards a research career was a nagging question that couldn’t be put to rest. They would come to their first research classes hoping to study and find The Answer.  I was always there to reassure them, with love, that the best kinds of research questions actually don’t lead to answers, but to more questions.  Hopefully, the initial questions lead to what I refer to as “The Question Behind the Question” which I’d term the “QBQ”  Getting to the QBQ is like striking gold: it helps us move beyond to the superficial, to get to the heart of what is important and meaningful that often stands in the way of the status quo that we’ve been observing.

Nothing goes to waste with God, so this week it was those memories of past fall semester research class lectures and discussions about the QBQ that seemed to come up for me again and again.  And as I read this portion of Jonah that comes after the famous whale incident, and then again as I listened to the parable that Jesus conveyed, I began to see a pattern emerging.  So, I invite you to a journey to the question behind the questions offered up in today’s readings.

Let’s start with Jonah.  Oh my friend Jonah.  The story most of us remember is that the prophet Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh, a city that was at enmity with the Hebrew people. Instead of going to Nineveh, though, Jonah bought himself passage on a ship to Tarshish, hoping to be “away from the presence of the Lord.” Good luck with that, Jonah. God makes it known through wind, sea, storm, sailors who try to turn the boat around and eventually through a giant fish that Jonah needs to pay attention to this call from God. Perhaps grudgingly, Jonah goes to Nineveh after God calls to him a second time after the whale adventure, and he delivers the message of rebuke and repentance. The people and leaders respond to the message: they repent, they change their ways and they look to God.

All this brings us to today’s reading: God, who was the One who called the prophet Jonah to them out of love, sees their actions and removes the calamity that was to befall them. God recognized with love even the enemies of God’s chosen people; God sent a messenger and a message; when invited, they responded with open hearts. 

But Jonah is MAD.  In his anger, he directs a string of questions to God: “Didn’t you hear me when I told you from the beginning I didn’t want to go? Don’t you understand that these are evil people and that’s why I fled?” Jonah’s unspoken question to God is: “why don’t you just destroy them?”

And God responds to Jonah with a divine QBQ: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah doesn’t answer that question.  He is still angry.  And so, the process repeats: Jonah goes to a hill outside the city and builds himself a booth, still hoping to see God smite the people he loathes.  While he sulks, God provides a bush for shade and Jonah is happy, at least for the moment. He becomes angry again when a worm attacks the bush and a hot wind unsettles his front-row view of anticipated retribution.  In response, God poses the Question behind the Question more specifically to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And Jonah answers with a toddler-tantrum reply that is funny because my friends, we’ve been there too: “Yes, angry enough to die!”

God, the loving, patient teacher sees hope not only for the people of Nineveh but also with this prophet who has fled and failed in so many ways. And thanks be to God, that means God the patient and loving teacher sees us beyond our own angry utterances, too. I see what comes next as God handing Jonah the answer key as a study guide instead of marking his failure with a red pen: if you care so much about a bush you didn’t even plant as to be angry about it withering, then why wouldn’t I care about this city filled with the lives of people and animals? 

Jonah never responds to that question in the Biblical text.  Perhaps it’s because God’s question gets to the heart of the matter which he cannot escape: God’s mercy and grace extend far beyond our human capacity to love and understand. True for Nineveh. True for Jonah. True for us, even when we’re at our angry worst.

Our Gospel lesson offers us a second case study in the divine QBQ, in the form of a parable.  If I were taking an anonymous poll at the end of this parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, I might force a response by asking a yes/no question, “was the vineyard owner just in his actions?” I won’t ask for a show of hands. Instead, I might invite us to listen to the discord that we feel in our bodies and minds when forced to answer “yes” or “no” to that question, especially when the parable begins by saying, “the Kingdom of God is like…”  Of course God is just so we want to say “yes.” But this parable, as it lands on our ears, doesn’t seem like an example of justice as we know it.  Instead of tossing out the question or passing over this parable, sitting in our discomfort helps us to see the QBQ emerging: How have we come to understand “justice?” Is our sense of justice based on a theology of God’s abundance? Or is our sense of justice derived through the culture in which we live?  Maybe that brings up yet another question: are there assumptions within our culture that are so much a part of the water that we swim in that like fish, we don’t even recognize it?

Perhaps speaking some of those cultural assumptions out loud will help us here: does longer, harder work make us more worthy? Are people who do less work less worthy than people who do more work? Should all wages be based on labor? Is observed idleness the fault of the people who aren’t working?  Are we right to be angry and feel  wronged if someone who does less than us makes more than us? 

These cultural assumptions lead to deeper questions, too:  Does money define our value, and should it?  Is what we earn really “ours”?  Are merit and deservedness the best ways to determine how we distribute money entrusted to us, either through work or through charity?

Sometimes seeing the water we swim in makes our eyes sting a little.  

What if, like Jonah, we’re so busy swimming in the water of who-deserves-what that we find ourselves fleeing away from God’s mercy and grace because it is so lavishly generous that it seems unfair?

We don’t always see like God sees: we see from our own perspectives and our own vantage points and our own cultural norms.  If we’ve been working hard, we want to see hard work valued.  If we see ourselves as one of the good ones, we want to see the bad ones…often, the ones not like us…punished.  We can quickly assign our daily frustrations with a person’s actions to a group to which that person belongs or an identity that they hold which is how prejudice forms.  We can begin to see the world through a series of binaries: yes/no; good/bad; deserving/undeserving and fail to see the beauty and complexity in every human being.

What if the Vineyard owner knows something we don’t?  What if the laborers in the marketplace at mid-day tend to be those who were caring for family members and couldn’t get there first thing in the morning?  What if those at the end of day were the ones who never got offered work because they weren’t the “right” gender, or age, or size, or shape or color or personality?  What if the end of day had some particular tasks that were just right for those whose neurodiversity or uniqueness helped them see what others had missed?  What if we had never even noticed the pitifully low wages of day laborers in the first place, let alone the differences between their daily wages? What if and what if? 

At the end of his parabolic lesson, Jesus also gives those who are listening the answer key for further study.  It begins with the Vineyard owner’s question to the upset laborer: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” which the hearers and all the rest of us can shrug off with a superficial, “sure, of course…that’s what money and power gets you.” 

Astutely, Jesus the teacher moves the story from that superficial question to the Question behind the Question: Or are you envious because I am generous?

That is the question on which we’re invited to study, too. An encounter with the realm of God knocks apart the cultural assumptions of worthiness and possession that we carry like burdens in this world. God who is generous with grace and abundant with mercy sees us in the fullness of our potential rather than the limitations of our lives.

God’s generosity cuts across the divisions that we draw, the limitations that we see, the biases and prejudices with which we are inundated and which keep us from seeing the fullness of God through the fullness of all of God’s people. Being present  in the realm of God makes our cultural assumptions irrelevant, because there is no room for that kind of division in an economy of abundant love and grace.

Whenever we celebrate the sacrament of baptism, we get a chance to put our study guide into practice in a kind of group oral exam: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? The answers that we are invited to give…you can even pick up the BCP and find them on pp. 304-305…are the foundations of our new life in Christ: “I will, with God’s help.”

And each time we come together for this holy meal, our Holy Eucharist of transformation from our individual selves to becoming the Body of Christ, we are brought into the realm of God’s abundant grace, mercy and love. We are not the owners but rather the caretakers of our lives, our work, our possessions, our neighborhoods, our communities, our world: with God’s help. 

God’s vision is beyond our own; God’s mercy exceeds our judgmentalism; God’s grace is so lavish and abundant that we ourselves and all others are seen and loved far beyond our faults or the worst thing we’ve ever done, to paraphrase activist and Just Mercy author Bryan Stevenson.  If we’re still at the end of the lesson asking who is worthy…or even who is right…we are still stuck on the superficial questions. But we have the study guide, the lessons, the Holy Word. We are invited through these stories and many others to be transformed by our loving God’s ultimate QBQ, our invitation to life in Christ: will we open our hearts to the unfathomable magnitude of God’s love and grace poured out for us, and for all?

We’re invited to that table, and to that holy transformation.

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What kind of test?

Posted on July 2, 2023 by harasprice

Homily for Proper 8, Year A

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA

Lectionary Texts:

Genesis 22:1-14

Psalm 13

Romans 6:12-23

Matthew 10:40-42

I have a pretty vivid memory of young school-aged Sarah in the church basement classroom with my friends where our Sunday School teacher would enact bible stories on a felt board with cut-out figures.  I liked the stories about Abraham and Sarah, especially the one when the three visitors come by the tent by the oaks of Mamre and Sarah fixes them cakes made of flour and water, then laughs when she hears she will bear a child in her old age.  My friends would snicker a little about “old Sarah” but I liked the hospitality and the humor of that story. Then, there was the story of Sarah and Hagar, details of which were brushed over for adult content on our childish ears, but the point of the story as my young mind remembers first hearing it was that God was honoring a promise to Sarah and also taking care of Hagar and Ishmael.  I seem to recall a palm tree and a well of water appearing around them on the felt board, and we talked about what a cold drink would feel like when we were thirsty, and how this kind of thirst was beyond any of that.  I took away the recognition that we sometimes do some not great things, but God always cares for us, and for those we hurt..

And then, there was the story of Abraham and Isaac.  There isn’t a pleasant, felt-board kind of way to tell this story.  It was shocking and horrible.  I think my teacher tried to move the bushes and the ram quickly into the picture before we really had a fully formed picture in our minds of Isaac bound on the pile of wood he’d been carrying, but honestly I felt pretty bad for the ram, too. My teacher tried to make a direct connection to Jesus, but that didn’t take for me, either.  I just remember thinking, “why would God tell Abraham to do that?”

I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped wrestling with that question, honestly.  And when I saw that the lesson appointed from the Hebrew Scriptures for this day on which I was appointed to preach here at St. Mark’s, with this group of people I also knew I could wrestle with it here.  You aren’t afraid to wrestle with scripture, and that’s a good thing. So,  I decided to take up the challenge.and wrestle with this story a bit from the pulpit.  

I don’t have a felt board with me today, and spoiler alert: there isn’t anything that I can offer up that makes this story any less jarring.  But what I did come away with after a week of rabbit hole diving into religious studies perspectives and academic sense-making is the realization that I am not alone in my wrestling. Jewish, Islamic and Christian scholars all struggle with the same core fundamental questions that this pivotal narrative from the Pentateuch raises for us.  The scholars I read raised some questions and observations about the text that have helped me name my struggles…and most importantly my search has reinforced that this text says what it says, and it raises important questions for us to ask, even if they don’t have easy answers.  

In Jewish life and literature this story, referred to as the Akedah הָדֵקֲע, or the “binding of Isaac” becomes a central story of self-sacrifice and obedience to God’s will. In the prayers of the high holy day of Rosh Ha-Shanah, there is an appeal to God to remember the Akedah: “Remember unto us, O Lord our God, the covenant and the lovingkindness and the oath which Thou swore unto Abraham our father on Mount Moriah: and consider the binding with which Abraham our father bound his son Isaac on the altar, how he suppressed his compassion in order to perform Thy will with a perfect heart. So may Thy compassion overbear Thine anger against us; in Thy great goodness may Thy great wrath turn aside from Thy people, Thy city, and Thine inheritance.”  In this prayer, Abraham, Isaac and all of God’s people are bound together.

Even with the centrality of this story within Jewish faith, rabbinic literature questions the meaning and intent, particularly around the opening phrase, “God tested Abraham.” Considerable attention is paid to the ways in which Isaac is either centered as the victim or the hero…or perhaps both. I learned through the writings of medieval rabbinic scholar Nacḥmanides,who  in the 12th Century wrestled with this story and within it the problem of reconciling God’s presumed omniscient foreknowledge with the gift of human free will.

Putting that more clearly: how is it that an all-knowing God can both know what is to happen, and allow us to choose with perfect freedom?  And what is the nature of this “test?”

It has made me wonder what the real test is here between God and Abraham.  Was it a test of loyalty and obedience, the way that the story might be read in an archetypal way?  That’s sort of like giving a “true/false” test: are you obedient, or not?  That seems like a very high priced test for what, as a teacher, I think of as a pretty shallow form of assessment.  

I think we often treat this story as if it was a multiple choice test, a sort of logic puzzle of God’s intent and Abraham’s actions: what if Abraham protested on moral grounds and a love of God evident in his child?  What if Isaac had bolted or had himself called out to God for help?  What if the timing was just off and the ram hadn’t caught Abraham’s eye, or the angel was just a second too late urging Abraham to hold forth and Isaac was already sacrificed…would God have brought him back to life?  It turns out that scholars have been wrestling with those questions for years, too.  

And maybe, just maybe, the answer could be “D”: God would have been with them, in all of the above.

So, I have to conclude after a lot of reading and wrestling this week that this story isn’t a true/false test of obedience, nor is it a multiple choice test of which path was the right path for Abraham and Isaac that would lead to a gold star from God.  I’m choosing to believe that it was an open-ended essay, the kind of test that we give when we aren’t looking for one right answer and instead, we want to see how the lessons being taught are being taken up and applied.  It helps us know where and when and how we need to keep reshaping the kind of care and teaching we provide as we seek to produce people who can carry out their mission with integrity.  In other words, maybe the test wasn’t about the actions of Abraham and Isaac at all.  Maybe it was God’s way of more fully understanding God’s creation.

If we keep wrestling with these ideas, our own eyes are opened to a few things: blind obedience isn’t always the right answer.  In the way this story has been conveyed through the years, Abraham was being obedient, and so was Isaac. That obedience looks like silent submission and it would have led to a tragedy unless divine intervention had not taken place.  

It makes me wonder if through this encounter, God could foresee the need for humanity to be able to question more, to allow for us…God’s creation…to ask God hard questions, and to be open to hearing God’s response.  That is the way that relationships evolve and deepen.  As the narratives of the descendents of Abraham continues through Genesis, we do see evidence of Jacob’s wrestling with an angel…or perhaps with God…even tangibly.  Jacob is marked from it, but not destroyed.  And in the great sacrificial story of our Christian lives, God-made-human Jesus who takes on the ultimate role of the perfect self-sacrifice first prays in the Garden at Gethsemane for this cup to pass from him before his betrayal.  And he is betrayed by humans and our free will to destroy.  But he is not abandoned, not even in death. Death no longer has the victory.

There is a welcome questioning that becomes evident in God’s self-giving, every bit as much as there is a desire for God to have a loving and trusting covenant with humankind as God’s creation.  And maybe that means there is more than one way for the story of God’s providential love to play out, not only in history but in our lives. We aren’t pawns living a scripted life, puppets dancing on the end of God’s strings. It becomes more of a “choose your own adventure” story, where the journey emerges as we are writing it with our lives.  But that story isn’t complete without God’s participation, either, which is the relationship God desires of us.

I don’t think we need to reach a peace with this story. We can still wrestle with it, and we can have permission to raise questions about it, even really hard ones.  Some of us can find comfort that the horror was stopped before it happened.  Some will see it as a historical morality tale, moving from sacrifice to symbolism. Some of us can stand bewildered as to why this seemed necessary in the first place, whether it was fact or myth.  We can also use our discomfort to generate empathy and be present in solidarity with those who live with human inflicted horror in this world every single day, including violence inflicted in the name of God.  We can remind them that they are not abandoned by God, even when the circumstances seem incomprehensible to us.  The best way to show that is by showing up and remaining present in their lives.  I picture that loving presence like walking back towards home, down the mountain, after this story comes to its conclusion.  I can’t imagine that Abraham and Isaac had words.  Sometimes we don’t need words, just presence.

If I did have a felt board, and I had only one figure that I could place on it at the end of this lesson, it would be this: a broken heart, fit together. Still broken, but together.

I choose to believe that everyone in this story was tested and broken open: Abraham, Isaac, the servants…and yes, perhaps even God.  We might need to retell the story because it doesn’t all tie up nicely.  Even our broken heart, fit together, still has evidence of being rent open after we stand in the presence of this ancient narrative.  And perhaps that is the nature of the test: not trying to get all the answers right.  But being willing to ask the hard questions, to sit with the unknowing, to accompany each other, and to be open to the learning that continues to emerge step by step through our lives.

Fresco from the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, DC)

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