All Saints

The Rev. Pam Fahrner

September 9-10-2023  

Exodus 12: 1-14   Matthew 18: 15-20

When I am doing pastoral visits, I often begin prayers at a bedside with the words that ended our gospel for today/tonight. “Dear Lord, you have said, wherever there are 2 or more gathered in your name, you will be amongst them. Be with us now as we are so gathered….” By that definition, God is surely with us now as we gather each week. I must admit that I have mixed emotions about the instructions given in this same passage about reconciliation between church members-tell it to the church! I envision lines around the block with disgruntled people, unable to work out their differences and putting the problems in our laps! When you think about it though, our advice would always be the same, urging you to soften your hearts, listen to each other, try to understand the situation from the other’s point of view…and forgive-not to condone, but to free yourself from the burden of hate. These words have been used over and over as a model for an in-house judicial procedure for dealing with those whose behavior breaches the rules and expectations of the church community. At times, keeping things in-house has been used as an excuse for cover-ups-even in the Episcopal Church and we’ve deservedly been condemned for that, but what is mostly taken for granted is that this example by Jesus is intended to provide a model for structuring the practices of discipline and dealing with offenders, in both secular and religious communities world-wide.

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In recent years, I find myself looking for the unexpected, surprises in scriptures and even in diocesan reports. I frequently ask “what surprised you or what stood out as different from your expectations?” The first thing that surprised me in our readings was the passage from the Old Testament itself. What is it doing here in Pentecost describing Passover? Why did the lectionary skip over all sorts of interesting events to get us to this particular passage in Exodus? This rather specific account lays only some of the foundation for the journey to the promised land for God’s people. Moses has been ramping up the pressure on that particular Pharaoh by bringing progressively bigger and bigger disasters down on the nation of Egypt in order to push the pharaoh to release the Hebrew slaves. We understand this because it is is exactly the sort of law and order that we use to this day. This has become normal human practice. If we want to bring about a change of policy in a foreign power, and they won’t bow to reason, then we resort to threats of force and gradually escalate the level of the force until they yield to our will. This usually works, although the complexity of the world and its disparate cultures make this difficult at best. It usually works, and because we are always sure that we are unquestionably right, we invoke the name of God to sanction our controlled use of force to bring about justice and freedom and peace. We are God’s agents after all, doing God’s will, and stories like this one from Exodus are used to justify our belief that this methodology which we are employing is God’s way.

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Initially invited to Egypt, they (the Israelites) immigrated and settled. Think about this as I tell a story and see if you can’t see the parallels in our current world.At this particular moment in history, their numbers had grown and presented a threat to the Pharoah and his absolute power. So-over several years, the Pharoah through increasingly restrictive laws, made slaves of the immigrants. Our account begins as the kettle is about to explode. As we read accounts in the Bible, we tend to picture ourselves in a role in the scene. Since our Christian faith began as a branch of the Hebrew faith, we often see ourselves as the abused underdogs-the slaves, God’s people held down by increasing degrees of injustice. The ‘surprise bomb’ here my friends, is that we resemble much more closely the Egyptians. 

When I look around at our church, our non-representative sample of the United States, I see privilege. As far as I know, we are all non-indigenous Americans. Most of us came here in our own cars, a mode of transport forever out of reach of two thirds of the world’s population. We came from our homes which have plumbing, electricity and gas, heating for cold nights, and TBTG- air conditioning. We come wearing clothes we have selected from a vast assortment in our closets. Our households contain a plethora of electronic gadgets from robotic vacuums to computers with instant answers at the sound of our voices. And because we are so accustomed to this comfort, we believe that it is, somehow, our right. We have worked and earned wages, and out of those wages we have paid for our stuff. But what is the real cost of that stuff? Once we start asking these questions, our identity takes on a new perspective. The Sacred Ground course opened my eyes to concepts I learned in school, things I accepted as part of our history and hadn’t really thought about for years. Remember reading about Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery? They take on new meanings when analyzed from a social justice perspective. 

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So how does this all fit in with Exodus? With today? The Hebrews were invited by Pharaoh to live in Egypt. A later Pharaoh, who did not know them and felt threatened by their large families, forced them into slavery and gave them outrageous quotas to fill. As this did not adequately control them, Pharaoh developed a program of genocide directed against them. In last week’s reading, God heard the cries of the Israelites, and resolved to liberate them. We live here in America, a land taken by force from the original occupants who were then violently abused and subdued. The United Nations defines genocide as 1) Killing members of a group (check) 2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. (check) 3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. 4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. 5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. White northern Europeans did all of these things and more. We shot them when they killed our cattle, or when they became too threatening. My own family I have learned not only kept slaves, but fought on the frontier against the ”savages”! We took their land, separated them from their ancestors and exiled them to reservations on worthless land. We stole children from their families and placed them in homes for orphans, demanded that they learn our language and our culture. We continue to cause immense social and health problems. Even now, native Americans have such severe health issues, often poverty-related, that the life expectancy of a native American is the lowest of any other group-Caucasians, people of color, Asians, or Latino. It is fair to describe our colonial history, and our society’s continuing treatment of native Americans as genocide. Although none of us are active agents in genocide, like the Egyptians in this story, we all benefit enormously from it. Slavery? Officially ended well over a century ago, it continues to wreak havoc in our communities. Our justice system, economic systems, educational systems and health systems are rigged against the marginalized amongst us.  

The good news is that God provided a way of protection for the Israelites AND a way of reconciliation for us in our New Testament passage. The ‘surprise bomb’ there is easy to miss. It comes when all else has failed and reconciliation appears to be impossible. What does Jesus say to do then? “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” He says to treat them as tax collectors and Gentiles. And what does he do with Gentiles and tax collectors?      

He invites them in to eat and socialize. He welcomes them too into the household of God. What happens after that? Well, we don’t know for sure. But it would seem that maybe over time, the tax collectors and Gentiles would reconcile as a natural process of familiarity. As they get to know each other, they would understand each other…and over time, their differences would just evaporate.

This is a great and generous gift that we, the powerful, have been given. God has given us a story of liberation in which we are invited to act, invited to participate and invited to learn. It is not just the Israelites’ story. Even the Egyptians are invited to engage. For in the end, all of us, Hebrew and Egyptian, native and colonial, oppressed and powerful, are invited to act against violence and exploitation. We are all invited to leave behind the oppressive ways we have known and walk towards a new way of life, life with love as the foundation and driving force. In our readings and research, we are given the gift of a new perspective and a refreshing way to leave our anger, bitterness, arrogance and privilege behind-ever moving toward the promise of new life lived with selflessness, generosity, innocence, wisdom and peace. Drawn together by love, the real ‘surprise bomb’ is that it was there all the time. In our ignorance and blindness, we just failed to see it! Amen.

The Rev. Katie Presley

All Saints Episcopal Church

Hilton Head Island, SC

August 27, 2023

[Ex. 1:8-2:10; Rom. 12:1-8; Matt. 16:13-20]

“Loving God, bless my mind to illuminate me with your wisdom; bless my lips to allow me to speak your word; and bless our hearts that we might live out the gospel. In the Name of the Holy One who Creates, Redeems, and Sustains, Amen.”

You’ve likely all heard the quote “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” It’s been attributed to many women, most famously Eleanor Roosevelt and women’s history pioneer Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Women, and people, who defy odds, subvert power systems, and resist oppression are history-makers indeed. Today’s Old Testament reading in Exodus recounts the origin story of Moses and often is remembered only as such. But more importantly, it is the story of women who certainly were not “well-behaved” as they recognized an oppressive power system and resisted in their own ways. Their Old Testament heroism is worth celebrating as a model for us Christians who are called to resist conforming to the powers of this world and instead be transformed by the true discipleship of following Jesus.

Pharoah commands Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives to the Hebrew women, to kill any baby boy born. Because they fear God, they let the babies live and so Pharaoh goes another route. He expands his gruesome command to all the people - “If you see a boy born to the Hebrews, throw them in the river.” Moses’s birth mother succeeds in hiding her baby boy for a few months and then tenderly places him in a basket and puts him in the river, hoping beyond hope that something good will come of this. It is Pharaoh’s own daughter that resists her father’s unjust and oppressive command and has pity on the crying baby when she finds him floating in the river. After he is nursed and raised, Pharaoh’s daughter takes him in as her own son and he grows up in Pharaoh’s house - being formed in the Egyptian ways while still bearing his Hebrew ethnicity. This story focuses not on the boy Moses, but on the women who ensured his survival, the women who risked their own safety by going against Pharaoh’s oppressive power system. In their own ways, from their own contexts, they chose to do what was right rather than stand by and conform to injustice.

In Romans 12, the apostle Paul appeals to us to offer our whole selves to God. He says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.” True discipleship means that we engage the world as those who seek what is good and acceptable to God, witnessing with our whole selves against injustice and advocating for anyone who is marginalized. Through our individual God-given gifts we work together for the common good, encouraging one another to recognize our gifts and offer them upon the altar of God’s grace. In doing so we become a transformed sacred community who resists oppression in all its forms as we share the good news of the Gospel of Jesus with the world around us.

Modern-day prophet, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a nonviolent movement that transformed the soul and the laws of the United States in the face of severe injustice. And while it's never been more clear that his work is not yet complete, his words are powerful reminders of God’s call to use our gifts for the work of justice. He writes, “Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” The time is always ripe to do right. Dr. King, like Shiphrah and Puah, like Pharaoh’s daughter, like Moses’s birth mother and sister, knew that we could not wait for someone else to do the work that God had called us to do. True discipleship is a process of transformation that pushes us onward to discover our gifts and then use those gifts for the work of God’s kingdom.

“But what if I don’t have any gifts?!” Or “What if my gifts aren’t good enough?!” Questions that we’ve all asked at one point or another - when self-doubt and self-criticism creep in as we succumb to the pressure to compare ourselves to other people. Trust me when I say that God needs exactly what you have to offer, for no one else can play your part in God’s redemptive story. Take Peter, for example. Today’s Gospel story makes Peter look like a hero, a leader, someone who “got it” when it came to understanding Jesus’s true nature. Let me remind you that this is the same Peter who tried to walk out to Jesus on the water in a storm and began to sink when he noticed the waves around him. The same Peter who fell asleep in one of Jesus’s most vulnerable moments. The same Peter who denied Jesus three times during his arrest and trial. This is the Peter Jesus declares he will give the keys of the kingdom to. Like a parent giving car keys to a newly-licensed 16-year-old, God entrusts this immature Peter to lead the early community of Jesus-followers knowing full well that there will be bumps along the road. Certainly Peter doesn’t always get it right. He isn’t always the hero who knows exactly who Jesus is. But he trusts in God’s faithfulness to use what he has to offer and make something good of it. For God relates to the church not as a coercive ruler but as a loving parent who entrusts to a fragile and immature child the power to do right and to do wrong, to be faithful and to drift away.

Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong. And yet God continues to call us to offer ourselves just as we are - flaws, failures, mistakes, all of it. Henri Nouwen, in his book The Wounded Healer challenges us to see our healed wounds as a place from which profound ministry and transformation takes place. Nothing is wasted in God’s kingdom. My dear friends, you have great gifts right now. Bring them to the table today. Be transformed by this generous meal of grace. Go out into the world emboldened with the gifts given by the Spirit to resist injustice in all its forms. For the time is ripe to do what is right.

Year A  Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15

All Saints Parish, Hilton Head, SC 
Ven. Kerry J. Smith

8/20/2023 

In the name of Our Lord, Jesus of Nazareth!  Amen

“Listen and Understand: …”

Why is it that when we come across people who we don’t perceive to be like us, we assume the worst and ignore them, argue with them, berate them, hate them, or even hurt them?

I’m sure that this is a question that has crossed many of our minds in the last 10 or 15 years and even more frequently lately, as we watch or read the news.  So much anger and hate.  We may have even had relationships with friends terminated because of our disagreements, here in a country that has been successfully built on disagreements.  Hearing today’s Gospel reading, it is pretty obvious that this is not a new problem, just a natural tendency of human beings, going back to our beginnings.

For me, when I am trying to explain any Lectionary lesson, it helps to look at the perspective of the author, the intended audience and what happened in the verses before and after the designated reading, realizing, of course, that the lessons are not necessarily in chronological order.  I also check to see if anyone of the other Gospel writers had included the story and how they conveyed it. All of these stories of Jesus were recounted by word of mouth for 25 to 50 years before they were written down in the Gospels.

This story was recorded by both Mark and Matthew, and each version is a little different, based upon the intended audience.  Matthew’s target audience was other Jews and his theme was that Jesus was the Messiah who would deliver the Jews from the rule of the oppressive Romans. Mark’s message was intended for the Christians in Rome, to present the teachings and works of Jesus.  As you might guess, Mark’s recounting of the healing of the Canaanite girl is much gentler than Matthew’s.

I’m sharing this approach, before I explain the lesson, because both the research and description of what this lesson is intended to teach us have been unusually challenging for me.

Matthew chapter 15 begins with several Pharisees and Scribes coming from Jerusalem, most likely under the direction of the Jewish leaders, to check out what Jesus is teaching.  And, when they see his followers eating without washing their hands first, they challenge Jesus saying “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the Elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat.”  Washing your hands before you eat was not only good hygiene but was also a Jewish tradition which had started with the priests and been expanded to one of the 613 Jewish laws (called the Mitzvoth) which apply to all Jews.

Jesus responded by asking why the Jewish Elders break the Command of God for the sake of tradition, providing the specific example of not honoring their Fathers and Mothers. He quoted Isaiah saying: 

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain, their teachings are but rules taught by men.” 

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and called the religious leaders hypocrites saying that they claimed to know a lot about God, but they didn’t really know God. Have we spent enough time trying to know God, through Jesus, and how God really expects us to treat each other and live our lives? It is not enough to know about religion, our denomination’s guidance on God, or even to study the Bible.  We need to really listen and work to understand what Jesus tries to teach us about God’s expectations for us here on earth, not 2000 years ago in Palestine, but today in the 21st century, in our culture and community at the real core is of which are two simple commandments “ Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself”.  Jesus doesn’t say, “love the neighbors who are like you, he says love all your neighbors.”  We don’t need to agree with them but we are all called to treat each other with respect and love.  I don’t see that happening much in our world today.  We need to pay attention to what is going on in our hearts and how it comes out of our mouths.  We become healthy spiritually by spending time with Jesus and following his example of how God expects us to think and behave.  That’s one reason why it is so important to learn how to communicate with God and Jesus through prayer on a regular basis, particularly when we are facing challenges and transitions in our lives. 

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We spend  a lot of time trying to make our appearances attractive and trying to be physically healthy, but god knows what we are like on the inside.  

What does God see when looking deep inside of you?  Healthy thoughts and motives or just healthy food and healthy organs?

Jesus told his disciples to leave the pharisees alone because they were blind to God’s truth and anyone who followed them was also blind. The blind leading the blind!  So often, I see religious leaders placing more emphasis on ceremonial trivialities than on the real needs of their flocks and responding in accordance with religious tradition rather than in accordance with Jesus’s teachings.  They act as if you don’t follow their rituals and traditions you are unacceptable to God. One of the reasons I like serving at All Saints, even though I am significantly beyond retirement age, is that we tend to love and accept everyone the same despite their perspective on our denomination’s rituals and traditions.

Now comes the hard part. The second story in today’s Gospel lesson was hard for me because it seems to exemplify exactly what Jesus was talking about in the first part, but not necessarily in a positive manner. And as I looked at a variety of sources and commentaries on this lesson, the spin to make Jesus’ behavior look less negative got to be ridiculous, even to the point where one commentator stated that “if we could have only heard the tone of Jesus’ voice when he made some of these comments, we would see them in a more positive light.” I can’t imagine any tone of voice that would make someone calling another a “Dog” positive. 

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 All of the Bibles I checked, titled verses 21-28 as something involving Jesus healing or driving the demons out of a girl.  However, for me, that’s not the real lesson here.  Maybe it’s because I am always looking at Jesus teaching and behaving as one of us, not necessarily divine and unlike us.  As I’ve said so many times, that’s how I learn how God wants me to behave.  I can’t be divine, at least as long as I live on this earth! Ask my wife. 

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The effort to take the focus off Jesus’ response to the woman asking for help starts immediately when some commentators opine that Jesus made the 50 mile journey to Tyre just to exorcise this demon.  Really! In the reading, it shows that the possessed girl’s mother had to pursue Jesus relentlessly before he finally agreed to cure her daughter.  Our reading says that as Jesus arrived in the district of Tyre and Sidon, a Canaanite women from that region came out and started shouting “Have mercy on me Lord. Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 

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Mark refers to the woman as a “Greek” because she speaks Greek.  Matthew calls her a “Canaanite woman” since the Canaanites are looked down upon by the Jews and considered to be enemies that they often referred to as “Dogs”. 

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So how does Jesus respond to this woman’s request for mercy and help.  First he ignores it, as he often seems to ignore the initial requests for help from other women when he is traveling with his disciples. But when his disciples ask that he send this woman away because her shouting is annoying them, he doesn’t.  And then, when she continues shouting, asking for help, he stops and tells her that “ I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Instead of rejecting her outright, he engaged her in meaningful conversation, expressing his reasoning, and he listened as she knelt  before him and begged again, saying “Lord help me”.  

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Once again, he engaged her, expressing his perspective on the situation by saying “ It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” using a reference to the Canaanites that the other Jews present would relate to. Then, when the woman persisted with more reasoning, that “Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table”  Jesus considered her arguments and healed her daughter.  

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This is an example of the kind of discussions and considerations we should be having with others when we disagree.  Jesus reacts in a very human way at first, trying to decide if he should ignore this woman or not, then deciding to engage her and reason with her.  I like to think that although some of his references seemed somewhat degrading, his tone was gentle and he seemed engaged, but I wasn’t there. 

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This woman provides us a great example of how we should behave when we have disagreements with others.  She was humble, patient, persevering, and clever, continuing to emphasize why her position was important to her.  She got what she needed and Jesus was recognized for performing another miracle.  Sounds like a win-win to me, although I am not sure that either mind was changed when the discussion was all over. 

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So I ask you, 

1.    Are you truly open to Jesus’ guidance to love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself, realizing that everyone is your neighbor? 2.    Do you believe that even people who are different are as important in God’s eyes?

3.    When you feel challenged and conflicted by these questions do you pause and say “Help me Lord” and open yourself up to receive the guidance you need?

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Amen

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Sermon August 13, 2023

The Rev. Pam Fahrner

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Petrified. Glossophobia-fear of public speaking. Thatwas me many years ago as I stepped up to the lectern to preach my very first sermon ever. Knees shaking, my mouth so dry that my tongue stuck to my cheeks, my body had reacted to the fear with a mandatory bathroom stop just before the service. There was no reason for the fear of course. It was a small group-only about probably 25 or so-all friendly, all pulling for me, since God knows, they didn’t want to be up there! Our vicar was out of town and I had agreed to lead Morning prayer. As long as I could just read everything I was okay. But then I asked if I had to do a homily…and of course, he said yes. There simply was no one else who could do it. I just had to put on my big-girl pants and do it!      This gospel reading was the scripture for that day. I titled it Sweet Surrender. The idea of sweet surrender came as the process by which we surrender our will-willingly-to that of God’s. The sweet part was the relief of leaning into God and letting God take control…an entity who loves us beyond measure having control over our lives. Yes, it is sweet to surrender our ideas, our stubbornness, our determination, our baggage, our vision of justice…to God. God encourages us to trust and to act with courage, discourages us from living in fear. It is sweet indeed when we learn to lean on God, to trust and step out-just as Peter had done. Of course, his undoing was his doubt…as sometimes is true for us as well. For most of us, this is much more difficult than we imagine. Our desire to control, our ideas and confidence in our ability to see just solutions is limited and     it drives us crazy. So crazy that we try nearly everything before we just give up and let God give us a hand. I’ve seen it in my life, but in so many others as the masks we all wear drop down-even for an instant. Ye of little faith indeed. Yet we ask that God’s will supercede ours every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But like many of the things we recite, we seldom stop and think. Imagine how much more serene our lives would be if we could learn to lean into this concept. David Lose explained this idea this way, “But all too often we note our modest success and assume we no longer need God, or at least forget how much a part of our lives God is and desires to be. Or perhaps we confuse safety and stability with abundant life. Either way, we may forget how much we depend on God. Until tragedy strikes in the form of illness and job loss or the end of a relationship or some grave mistake we’ve made, and suddenly our ongoing need for God becomes painfully clear.”

It's not much of a stretch to imagine that Joseph’s faith in God grew through the adversity he faced. Dysfunctional is a term thrown around currently describing less-than-ideal family circumstances and relationships. I doubt if many dysfunctional families approach the level of hatred that must have been on display in Joseph’s family. His brothers planned to kill him but decided to just sell him into slavery in Egypt and make a little money on the side. Sibling rivalry has been ever-present in the Bible from Caen and Abel forward. Treachery, greed and violence were also frequently depicted. But this hits home doesn’t it? The pain Joseph must have felt is palpable. This story has a happy ending…spoiler alert. Many years later, those same brothers came to Egypt seeking assistance when there had been a famine in their land. Joseph had, to put it mildly, landed on his feet and had prospered in exile. He was the official the brothers had to approach to seek assistance! When he recognized them, one would logically expect anger and an immediate expulsion of the sin filled brothers. But Joseph welcomed his brothers and reconciled with forgiveness and love as his guide. Perhaps he had learned, in those years and through those devastating experiences of rejection and hatred, to lean on God and let go of his anger, his hurt, his pain? Perhaps he learned to listen to his heart? Karoline Lewis described faith as living out of your heart. She urges her readers to live, love and lead with our hearts. Joseph graciously forgave his brothers-much like a switch in characters like the prodigal son, this time it was the son/brother in a position of power to accept and welcome or turn away. He made the loving choice, being a man of God. Perhaps somewhere along the way, he learned the joy and peace of sweet surrenders? Have we learned? Can we? Amen.

The Rev. Denise Trogdon

Sunday, July 7

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I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, but sometimes I wonder what he can do through me. His strength is perfect when our strength is gone. He'll carry us when we can't carry on. Raised in his power the weak become strong, his strength is perfect, Amen.

This week our nation celebrated Independence Day, often marked by parades, fireworks and barbeques. This holiday is an opportunity to express gratitude for the “battles” fought on our behalf, for freedom, justice and equality. Growing up in a military family stationed on bases throughout the world, every day at 5pm, no matter where we were, everything stopped when the flag was lowered and the National Anthem rang out. People got out of their cars, stood quietly and remembered those who made great sacrifices and won our freedoms at great cost. Taking that moment was not about inalienable rights or national pride, but thanksgiving for the people whose care made our liberation possible.

While the nation celebrates independence, as Christians we  celebrate our interdependence. We are called by a compassionate God to continue Christ’s work of justice, freedom and peace for all. Our mutual care for one another is an expression of our faith, and gratitude for what God has done for us. Liberation comes in letting go of the self- sufficiency that can enslave us.

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In the Gospel, we witness Christ sending out his disciples into what was likely a very hostile world. He empowered them with gifts of the Spirit to preach, teach and heal, and warned them of the rejection they would face. Amongst his kin and in his hometown, Jesus was spurned. You remember that saying, "familiarity breeds contempt." Those who had grown up with Jesus took offense at his authority, chiding, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?"

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I wonder if Jesus felt the temptation to prove his divinity, to dazzle them with a miracle. Instead he sent his disciples out to continue his work. He told them to take no provisions, to depend upon the hospitality of others and to shake off the dust of any who would reject them. Stripping them of their self- sufficiency, Jesus made them open for the power of God to be at work through them. At the end of their own resources, they learn about God's strength.

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Likewise the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about power being made perfect in weakness. Despite the great suffering he personally endured, Paul would bear witness to God's grace working within him to give him strength. This was a word of hope to the early Christians in Corinth mired in conflict and suffering persecution. It was also an exhortation to those who boasted in their own power.  He wrote, "God's grace is sufficient, for power is made perfect in weakness." God's power is made manifest in us as we humble ourselves and awaken to God's persistent presence.

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 In our women's Bible study this summer we are reading a book entitled Call it Grace, by The Rev. Serene Jones who is the first female president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Jones speaks of this persistent presence as God's grace that is always there when we open our eyes and our hearts to it. Profoundly  influenced by liberation theology,  she suggests that humans striving for their own power have become lost and enslaved. Our culture is mired in a win/ lose proposition that keeps systemic inequality alive.

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 When Serene Jones went to study at a seminary in India, she learned first hand the poverty of disenfranchisement. She was determined to live alongside the other students, eating their food, drinking their water. Becoming desperately ill over months and less able to depend on her own resources, she found herself one day, delirious on a bus station platform, lost somewhere in South India, sick and helpless. She never forgot the kind woman who all but carried her back to the seminary and got her the medical help she needed. Ultimately she regained her health, but also perspective about God's grace in her weakness.

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Sometime in our journey, we will face our human limitations, our finite nature. Whether a gradual weariness sets in, or a sudden event stops us in our tracks, vulnerability has a way of shifting our perspective. At the end of our own resources, we learn lessons about God’s strength. With no shortcuts around hardship, we confront the truth that ultimately we are not in control. When we are lifted up from that state and given hope, we become vessels of God's grace for others. This is our calling and is made manifest through simple care for those who need it most. Perhaps you have reservations about your own gifts to serve. Our ability rests not in our own  talents, but in God's power working through us. For those who revel in their own accumulated power, they may never recognize these chains that bind. 

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In this time when we remember our freedom, let us recall the source of our strength, never forgetting those who continue to struggle for liberation. May this Franciscan Benediction provide us  hope and inspiration as we are sent out into a hurting world.

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that we may work for economic justice for all people.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, hunger, homelessness and rejection, so that we may reach out our hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in the world, Amen.
 

Pentecost 2024

Rev. Pam Fahrner

Sunday, May 26

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She was a thirty-year-old woman going through her ‘darkest night of the soul’. She had obediently done exactly what her family and culture had always told her to do but instead of making her happy, the life she was living made her want to die, feeling like the dry bones we heard about in our first scripture today. Eventually she told the truth and left her marriage, and then her worst nightmare came true: Many people in her life were furious at her and disappointed. She was depressed and anxious, confused and ashamed. How had she failed so miserably? Why couldn’t she just want what she was supposed to want, instead of longing to run away and be free? Why had she let everyone down? What was the matter with her? Her life had dried up-as dry as the bones we heard about this morning.

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She decided to extend a business trip for a week or so, because some deep inner voice was telling her very specifically that she needed to go to the furthest away place in the world, far from everyone she knew, and that she needed to be in absolute silence for 10 days — to try to find some peace from her shame and from the voices in her head. She went to a remote and dusty little fishing island, inhabited by impoverished Muslims who lived off whatever they could pull from the sea. There was no electricity, and tiny, starved-looking horses pulled carts that served as transportation—but mostly, everyone just walked. She rented a little cabin on the beach, and there, she sat in silence with herself, hoping that if she just stopped talking and moving, she would find peace. But peace was elusive.

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She spent those days alternating between weeping and meditating, praying and listening. She barely ate and never said a word. She was trying so hard to hear the voice of God, and to find some sort of ANSWER, but mostly she just suffered in torments of the mind. But every day she would go for two walks — circumnavigating the island once at sunrise, and once at sunset. She never spoke to anyone, and people left her alone. 

But there was one woman who she saw every day—on the other side of the island. She lived in a small hut, and the sign outside her door said she took in laundry. Every morning and every evening when she did her walks, she would find her standing outside her door-less shack, smiling at her as if she had been waiting for her. Always wearing the same dress and headscarf, with her little naked toddler boy at her feet. They would smile and bow to each other, and that was pretty much the only human contact she had.

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On her 8th day on the island, she got sick. Ferociously sick. She felt like she was dying. Vomiting and diarrhea, shaking one moment and freezing the next, teeth chattering, the worst headache of her life. All she could do was crawl back and forth from the bed to the toilet. She ran out of bottled water and didn’t have the strength to leave her cabin and find more. She passed the night in misery, and the next day, too — unable to move or call for help. She thought, “I’m going to die here, and nobody even knows who I am.”

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Of course, she did not go for her walks while she was ill. But on the second night of her sickness, she heard a knock at the door. She literally crawled to the door and opened it. It was the woman—her silent friend from across the island. She had come looking for her, and she could see by her face that her silent island friend was worried.

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All she knew is that she held up one finger — the international signal for “wait right here” — and then she disappeared into the night. When the woman returned an hour or so later, she brought her bottles of fresh water, a plate of rice, and some sort of herbs. She came into the cabin and held her against her body while she offered her this sustenance. She wept and wept in the woman’s arms, and she held her and rocked as if she were her child, even though they were probably the same age. The woman stayed with her until she stopped weeping, and then brought her more water and went home for the night.

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The next morning, she was well again. And the next night— her final night on the island — she went out and sat under the stars to meditate. She sat in silence for over an hour, just listening to the wind and the water. Then the most extraordinary thing happened: As she sat in stillness, she felt a presence rise within her. A divine being entered her consciousness. It was a woman, a kind woman, with a scarf around her head. She came right into her heart and said to her, “Bring me all your pain and fear and shame, so I can heal it.” One story at a time, she told this woman every painful, fearful and shameful thing she had ever done. Each tale was like a small, orphaned child, head bent in hunger and loneliness. And the woman welcomed each and every one of those broken children into her heart, saying, “Come in, come in, we have beds for you.” She did this for hours. Then a smile appeared, and she finally knew peace. There is nothing she could ever do to lose God’s love.  She fell asleep on that beach—safe in the embrace of love.

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She had to take a ferry early the next morning, and she never had a chance to say goodbye to her friend from the other side of the island. But she carried her home with her in her heart, and she has never left her consciousness. She is, and remains, the face of unconditional love to her. She has saved her life many times in the years that followed. Whenever she is full of shame and pain, she calls out to her and finds that she is there — standing at the gateway to her heart, just the same way she used to stand at the door of her shack when she would pass by on my morning and evening walks. (Story by Elizabeth Gilbert and edited by PF+.)

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So what on earth does this story have to do with Pentecost? I think this woman sought what we all seek-peace, connection, to be heard without judgment, to be understood, to love and be loved. She went away seeking answers to the questions and instability in her life. She received, as we all do, the unexpected, a backwards, upside down way to reach that place of peace and contentment she sought. The Holy Spirit came to her in a most unexpected way. We live in a most unexpected world-unsettled, fearful and hopeful concurrently, divided from our families, friends and neighbors by political dissent, separated from those precious to us by actual distance as well as technology designed to facilitate communication, but in reality, separating us. We need wind to blow away the cobwebs from our minds-the cobwebs that trap us and enclose us in webbing that prevents us from moving in new directions, from seeing clearly what surrounds us, from feeling deeply life surrounding us inviting us to delight. Like insects caught in spiders’ traps, we find ourselves frozen in our positions, frozen in our routines, frozen in our self-inflicted boundaries, frozen by fear of the unknown and by change itself. We need the seeds of inspiration, the clarity of hope to release us from inertia that slowly kills our souls. We need the Holy Spirit to transform us and weave together the dry bones in our lives. This is the work of the Holy Spirit – to come along side us in times of anxiety and remind us that because we are God’s children, we have nothing to fear. With the Holy Spirit, we sense the intimate presence of Jesus with us. This omnipresent Holy Spirit enables us to love and serve others as we move forward in confidence, joy and peace, knowing that the future is in God’s hands. Come Holy Spirit and breathe life into us. Come-over and over again to heal us. Come now in the hour of our need. Amen.

The Rev. Katie Presley

All Saints Hilton Head

21 April 2024

John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24 (Good Shepherd)

If you Google images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd what will mostly come up are pictures of a light-skinned man with flowy brown hair carrying this small lamb on his shoulders or in his arms. This Jesus looks a bit too clean to represent someone working in a field and the lamb he carries looks a bit too docile to represent sheep roaming a hillside. The reality of sheep is quite different than dreams of them. Sheep are not easy to train. They are simple, gentle spirits who scare easily. The majority of sheep are happy to follow and they often have to rely on someone showing them the way through a gate due to poor depth perception. Most of the time they’re quiet, with a few contented bleats here and there – but if you’ve caught them, and they don’t want to be caught, they scream.

The picture we have in our minds of Jesus as the good shepherd often inadvertently paints us as being good sheep, somehow. When Jesus is depicted carrying a lamb on his shoulders, I think it is more likely that the lamb is screaming for dear life – perhaps even wriggling around, trying to get free. Maybe if we’re honest with ourselves, we might find that image closer to our own experience. Maybe you like to believe that when Jesus carries you, you are well-behaved and soft and gentle – that you know God knows better than you do, and you’re willing to let go of control and allow God to work. In reality, though, perhaps all of us scream and kick a whole lot, finding it hard to give up control. Though we know Jesus is the good shepherd, it can still be hard for us to fully trust him. All of the trite little phrases – “Let go and let God!” or “Jesus, take the wheel!” – might be easy to say, but they are not easy to do. 

When we can let go and trust Jesus the Good Shepherd that John presents to us, we are invited into a life of fullness, a life of flourishing, a life of belonging, and yes, even a life of self-sacrifice. However, we do not go alone. Sheep will not go anywhere that someone else - their trusted shepherd - does not go first, to show them that everything is alright. And our shepherd has gone before us to show us what a life of sacrifice looks like. It is a life of love through action. Not simply a love in words or emotions. Just as God’s love is known to us through the visible action of Christ, so our love is known to others through concrete actions that mirror Christ’s own. 

Laying down one’s life is often relegated to superhero movies, soldiers in war, or heroes who run into danger to save others. And those stories are profound and moving and inspiring, but the stakes are often much lower than that. Laying down our lives, at its very core, can mean any number of ways in which we lay aside our claim to our own lives. Putting others first. Living for the good of others. Making time for others. Choosing love when we don’t feel it. When we lay down the completely normal desire to live for ourselves, and when we instead allow the love of God to reorient us toward the needs of others, we are laying down our lives.

Each year CNN puts out a list of ordinary heroes making an extraordinary difference in their communities - people who are laying down their lives in service to others. People like Yasmine Arrington, who was raised by her grandmother because her father was in and out of jail her whole life. At the age of 16, Yasmine created “ScholarCHIPS” - CHIPS standing for Children of Incarcerated Parents - to help young people like herself with scholarships, mentoring, and a network of support. Since its inception in 2010, ScholarCHIPS has awarded over $450,000 in scholarships and supported more than 80 young people in their journey towards a college degree. 

Or there’s Stacey Buckner, who created the program “Off-Road Outreach” to provide meals, showers, and laundry services to homeless veterans. On her way to work Stacey would drive past a strip mall and noticed a lot of homeless people there. Wanting to do something she would bring hygiene packs and food. But one day a woman refused a hygiene pack, and her explanation was eye-opening for Stacey - the woman said, “I’m homeless, where am I supposed to shower?” She realized that all she was doing was giving them more stuff to carry around all day. So Stacey turned her Jeep into a mobile shower and kitchen so she could meet the needs of the homeless population right where they’re at, without any judgment. Serving over 50 homeless vets a week in the Fayetteville, North Carolina area, Stacey also connects them with local organizations who can meet their other needs. 

Or how about Alvin Irby, a first grade teacher in the Bronx in New York who created “Barbershop Books” - a program he hopes will change lower literacy rates by encouraging boys to read for fun, on their own. One day, after school, Alvin went by a barbershop for a haircut and one of his students walked in. He’s sitting there bored and Alvin thought how it would've been a good time for this kid to be reading a book. So a few years later Alvin launched “Barbershops Books” and since then he has brought over 50,000 free children’s books to more than 200 barbershops in predominantly Black neighborhoods across the country. 

People like Yasmine and Stacey and Alvin are finding ways to put others first, to see a need and use the resources they have to meet that need, to lay down their life in service to others through love in action. Jesus has shown us the way to love through action and we have living examples all around us - people in this very church are doing extraordinary things in the community. Following our good shepherd means patterning our lives after his, even if we go kicking and screaming, we can trust that he will lead us towards fullness of life. 

Sometimes we go astray, just like sheep. Sheep that are ill may follow the voice of a stranger. Sheep wander off and fall into ravines and have to be rescued. There are many voices out there vying for our attention. Many distractions to lure us from the path that God has set before us. But Jesus promises that he will never let us go. When we go astray, his voice brings us back. In our choices each day as we practice our faith by saying yes to some voices and saying no to others, Jesus is there, going before us and leading us. May you hear God’s voice today calling you to love through action. 

The Rev. Robert Woodroofe

April 13 & 14, 2024

“We shall be like him…” – I John 3:1-7

In this Easter season, Jesus’ resurrection is on exhibition.  The gospel (Luke 24:36b-48) today mentions a visit by Jesus to his disciples after his death in which he defies nature as we know it.  He appears ghost-like, materializing before them out of nowhere and yet as a living body.  He invites them to touch him and even to probe his wounds.  In a move that escapes any assumption that he’s a figment of their imagination, he eats some broiled fish like any other human being.  The combination of rising from death with his somewhat altered appearance may well have sent fear and doubt into his followers.  Yet, the encounter does leave them convinced of his living presence.

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So much of this remains a mystery to us.  Still, there is, I think, something to be gleaned from the First Letter of John about the resurrection of Jesus, and for all to whom his risen state is promised.  A portion of that letter was read today which gives hints of a life beyond this one not only in Jesus, but for us ultimately as well.  John writes, “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

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There is a great deal of Christian hope packed into those verses.  We’re to understand ourselves as “God’s children.”   It’s a family resemblance.  There are several ways in which we might understand this connection.  Certainly, there’s a temptation to assume “like father like child.”  We should know better.  Our kids turn out to be anything but a complete derivative of their parents.  Mostly, we wisely love them and challenge them, yet, in the end, we let them go to develop their own lives.  John insists that at some decisive point of God’s revelation, as God’s children we will have become like God.  There is a promise of Christlikeness and a face-to-face encounter at this world’s resolution.  Being fashioned in the image of God opens up the possibility that we might by God’s grace evolve in God’s direction.  

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As the first chapter in Genesis sketches it out, female and male are created in the Creator’s image.  Whatever else we might speculate, an image bears a resemblance to or constitutes a reflection of a kindred being, in this case - God.  One possibility says that there’s a similarity between us and God which is physical as in the painting of God touching Adam into life on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  

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That image recalls an incident long ago.  I went to the local hospital to visit a parishioner.  He was a large man, and he was in for some major surgery.  As it happened, I ran into his surgeon in the hallway outside the patient’s room, and we got into a conversation about his patient.  The surgeon made several references to “the Big Guy.”  I assumed that he was talking about the patient, but suddenly realized he was referring to God.  God was “the Big Guy.”

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That’s a description that challenges me.  If it’s true that we can grow nearer to God, and I do believe it, I don’t believe it’s in terms of might, size or power, but rather in terms of vision, patience, love and joy.  The Genesis account of our being made in God’s image is thought to have emerged as a corrective in a time when images of real humans were used to attempt to maintain sovereignty over the vast territory of empires.  For example, there’s an image the Assyrian King on a stele in the mountainous area of eastern Syria.  The likeness depicted of the king is an image of menace which stakes out territory difficult to oversee and it is intended to warn his defeated foes not to become rebellious.  There were probably very many such images placed about the empire in lieu of maintaining the expense of a standing army there.  “Big brother is watching you” comes to mind.

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What if we are supposed to serve as images of God, yet by contrast to the image on that stele, the Creator God in Genesis is benign.  What God creates is good, and if God does not choose directly to inhabit this created world as we know it, what better plan than to place images of God as ambassadors within Creation, representatives of that goodness.  Men and women as images of their Creator are to witness to God’s precious essence and goodness.  Jesus would use the image of a loving and forgiving father in his parable of the prodigal son.  It is a reassuring evocation of God’s goodness and love for us such as Rembrandt painted.  That’s the image of God I want to more and more grow into and be like.

So, to summarize a bit, when God chose God’s people beginning with Abraham and Sarah to begin the Earth’s reconciliation with its Creator, they were at pains to show that their God was invested in goodness rather than with menacing empire.  The male and female that God created in God’s image was purposely chosen to reflect a better way than that of force and fear.  In our fall from grace, however, as imagined in the Garden of Eden, we have backed away from such an image.  We have tried to do without God our loving Creator, and instead we tried to find our own way.  In the Fall, we re-imaged ourselves.

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The Orthodox Church in particular makes a sharp distinction between being made in the image of God and being similar to God.  We cannot claim that sort of resemblance given our tendencies toward disobedience and pride.  For the Orthodox, bearing the image of God means that we carry within us all that distinguishes humankind from the rest of creation.  We’re the only creatures carrying around clues to what is divine.  Achieving any likeness to God is the grace and responding service of a lifetime in communion with God and through living our lives into God’s direction.  This is our calling, and some would say that properly pursued it leads to our deification, becoming more godlike.  Jesus in God becoming one of us, so that through faith in Him, ultimately, we might become more like him – which is to say god-like.

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The pursuit of God’s likeness, our deification, is a process requiring imagination and discipleship.  Imagination is built upon images.  It requires a stretch and suspension of ordinary expectations.  Toni Morrison, one of the great American novelists used to tell her creative writing classes at Princeton not to write about what they already know.  Her two reasons were that we really don’t know all that much yet, and also that she wasn’t particularly interested to read about what little we do know.  That’s just information.

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Instead, she told them to imagine people outside their own experience, such as someone halfway around the world in a foreign occupation.  It was amazing what the students produced, said Morrison, when the students were allowed to imagine something outside their realm of experience.  Just so, do we need that permission to lift our hearts from the common and ordinary to contemplate God’s larger plan for us.

I think that something similar occurred when the risen Jesus met the disciples. They were given a glimpse of the true Master rather than an extension of their own experience.  It was mysterious; it was new; and it was dazzling.  Perhaps it was just enough to allow them recognition there at the resurrection, and to see it as the truer promise for themselves and all humankind as well.

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The Rev. Pam Fahrner

Good Friday, 2024

It’s a really hard act to follow. There are so many stories in this account, so many chances for courage, so many who could have prevented it, or mitigated it in some way. But of course, I feel like Peter standing in Jesus’ way-right before Jesus called him Satan for urging him to avoid God’s will-to step aside. And that is what the devil tried to do by some accounts, by daring Jesus into demonstrating his power. “If you are who you say you are, get yourself out of this!” Jesus refused, whether understanding his role in saving us from our sins or in understanding his part in this great tragedy…and the need to submit himself to what-he-believed was his father’s will. Now we know the rest of the story, We know what is coming in three days’ time. But they didn’t know. The thought of the moment at which they knew they had crucified the son of God? 

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But we who have been around for a while have seen this played out multiple times in our lives. We know what people do on a regular basis to obtain and maintain control over others. We’ve learned about autocratic regimes and corruption and greed and war and the devastation piled onto the backs of the young and the poor and the most vulnerable. Most people don’t have difficulty believing in the crucifixion because, although the gruesome details are rarely on display, ruthless murder is not new to us. Terrorism has become part of our lives-because we’ve seen it on our television screens and heard the screams of the anguished as they grapple with their losses.

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But there’s another aspect to this horrendous story and that also resonates with us, not necessarily on a national or international scale, but on a very personal level. Have we not all experienced or those close to us experienced this seemingly endless cycle of life in our own stories? Life, death, life. Can we not all resonate with Jesus’ cry “My God, why have you forsaken me?” It seems that the only thing we can absolutely count on is change! It becomes a rhythm, with hope and promise and joy evolving into difficulty of some sort or another. Struggle, sometimes defeat results and with it comes growth and strength and compassion for others going through the same or similar paths. And then hope is born again. It’s really the most likely thing to make believing in resurrection possible-this pattern expressed over and over again in our own lives. 

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One more thing-as this week we host folks who are not always regular faces around here. First of all, welcome. We in the church are aware of the difficulty some people have in the affirmations expressed here in our liturgy. In some churches, you do need to buy it all, hook, line and sinker. In those churches, you have to believe it the way they describe it or you’re just not eligible to join the club of the saved. That is not the case here. We welcome your questions, in some cases share your concerns, honor your honesty in expressing them and respect you and your intelligence in using your brains to figure it out. Faith is a choice, but it is not the same thing to all people. We struggle to understand the impossible. We struggle to accept and reconcile miracles and all sorts of things we cannot explain. We respect the mystery-even as we cannot unravel its complexity and depth. And as we ourselves question and struggle and study and wrestle with this grand biblical collection of accounts, we don’t expect more of you than we expect of ourselves. So join us-even on days when it is not Good Friday or Easter Sunday or Christmas! Join us as we learn and grow in understanding ourselves and each other and our relationship with creation and love far beyond our understanding, far bigger and better than any faith tradition alone. Join us wherever you are on your journey.

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But do take a look before we move on to Holy Saturday and joyous Easter Sunday. Take a look at what happened when fear caused those in power to look the other way, when the quest for control and position was more important than fairness and love, when courage to stand up to power was non-existent, when people would do anything to maintain their iron grip. It has happened in the past and is happening now. Learn from history they say, or we’re doomed to repeat it. But still, there IS good news! I ran across a statement from Episcopal Relief & Development’s Lenten series that I’d like to share with you. “Through Peter’s fallibility, the story involves all of us. Christianity is not only for the heroic, the unspeakably wise or the extremely brave. It is also a faith for people who overreact, who get it wrong quite often and who run away. On Good Friday, Jesus is arrested and led away to be crucified, and Peter utterly fails to live up to what he had previously promised to do. This is a source of embarrassment, yes, and yet it’s exactly this full and complicated humanity that Jesus redeems in the days to come.” Jesus had it wrong. It was not finished. We too, beloved of God even with our faults, rise with Jesus and carry his message of grace and love to all we encounter to this day. Amen.

The Rev. Pam Fahrner

March 16 & 17, 2024

We live in a society in which the individual is valued. In particular, we in the US take pride in our ability as individuals to make our own fate through our own choices. We are free from the cultural restraints that still affect Europeans in which children are expected to follow their parents in family occupations and in which traveling between classes is discouraged. With this emphasis on the prospect and power of the individual here, it is no surprise then that we own our success or failures as individuals. All of this lies in great contrast to the principles of religion, the idea that we are dependent upon an omnipresent and omnipotent God to who we are beholden for everything good that comes to us. We live in a culture that tells us that we will be happy if only we can purchase the perfect home, the perfect clothes, the perfect life…or at least paint the picture of that for others to see. 

Our readings today remind us again of a very different view of our world and our roles and goals within it. The world tells us that we are to strive for greatness. Jesus says that we are to humble ourselves. The world tells us to look out for number one. Jesus tells us to look outward with mercy and grace and generosity toward others, not only to gain eternal life, but to live a life worth living in the here and now. The world tells us to work hard to accomplish much and savor our success. Jesus tells us that we are all sinners and need to repent-forgive others in order to receive forgiveness ourselves. “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

Really? We have to hate life on earth in order to gain eternal life in heaven? That is not to say that there is not plenty to hate about this earth and how things are going. We live now in a world with at least 2 formally declared wars going on, many countries around the globe are ruled by folks so corrupt their people have all but given up and are fleeing their homelands. In this country, democracy, once thought to be a shining light to the world of ‘how it’s done and ain’t it grand?’ seems to be under assault and countries around the world are actually voting in autocrats, people like Putin and Orban in charge. How could this be so? We are divided like never before, with families and friends separated by electronics and distance (literally or virtually) and viewpoints so disparate they cannot understand the others point of view.

Thrown into this is the cross and the passage from Jeremiah in which this new relationship between God and God’s people is described. The connection is written on our hearts. We need not sacrifice or go through some saint or even a priest to reach God. God is there, accessible for us all. I’ve heard, as I’m sure you have, that the vertical part of the cross represents a pathway from the world to God and vice versa. The crosspiece is supposed to represent the relationships we have with each other. But I read a piece from Diana Butler Bass recently in which she described the upright part of the cross (the stauros) as representing power and violence.  Much like our world, the powerful and wealthy are at the top and the downtrodden at the base, the kings and queens and rulers and those in charge raised above. literally, those they control. The definition of the crosspiece remains somewhat similar, representing human relationships with each other-standing in tension with the upright. But Bass describes the patibulum (the crossbeam) as the theological image demonstrating God’s vulnerability, creativity and love. God’s vulnerability is found in God’s desire for relationship with us-so much so that it led to our creation, all born and fulfilled by love. The logical conclusion here then is that the crossbeam represents those two most important commandments to us: to love God and to love each other. 

Our gospel features Jesus preparing to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, although the term used in this translation was festival, a once-a-year practice -part of the fabric of Judaism. I ran across a description of a similar practice from a book written by Rabbi Sharon Braus in her recent book, The Amen Effect. She described a Mishna from 220 CE-temple times and before. In the practice described, followers make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and enter a large archway. The majority of folks turn right and begin a counterclockwise walk around a central structure. They pray and ask forgiveness for their sins as they slowly make their way. Others coming through the archway turn left. This direction is for those broken hearted or ostracized, broken by illness or fear or disappointment or shame. As the various people meet going in opposite directions, the ones coming from the right, stop and see, really see those suffering. They are to ask how they have been broken, “what happened to you?”, “tell me about your heart.” After they have listened, they are to offer a blessing to the ones broken hearted by this world. It reminded me a bit of the practice of Muslims going in a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca to experience the Hajj-circling with their fellow Muslims as they pray.

All of this. If you can imagine my brain as I absorb “life” and the everyday news cycle as I prepared to write this sermon! Super Tuesday and the State of the Union address reminded me of how broken we are as individuals and as a society. “Tyranny is preconditioned on loneliness”, says Rabbi Brous. And we are lonely and broken people. We must root our suffering in a community of care. When we are living fully in community, we cannot be broken. Tyrannical regimes cannot take over when we are strong in community. When we are strong in community, children do not seek acceptance in gangs. When we are strong in community, the disillusioned or hurt do not buy guns and go out and shoot people. When we are strong in community, we do not seek vengeance. When we are strong in community, we do not let God’s children starve or die from easily preventable diseases. We need to refresh our connections with each other and minister to the brokenness within us all. Tending to the worlds’ ills seems overwhelming and impossible. But it really begins as a one-on-one thing, a cross-piece thing with one imperfect hurting person reaching out to give comfort and blessing to another. Not only would our country be healed, but the world as well. It begins with us as individuals. Create in us Lord, a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. Amen.

Pam Fahrner

February 28, 2024

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I learned something this week-hopefully more than one thing! I love the spiritual Wade in the Water. I think it’s the mood it brings or the reminder of the ties, here in the south, to its mysterious dark past. I learned this week that Harriet Tubman was connected to this hymn, used it as part of a code to prepare slaves fleeing their imprisonment-instructions if you will- as they traveled north-to be sure to go across streams or lagoons of water-to indeed wade in the water-so bounty hunter’s dogs wouldn’t pick up their scent and drag them back to bondage. “Immerse yourselves. Find your freedom in the water.” The readings of this first Sunday in Lent have us immersed in water — the water of the flood, the waters of Christ’s baptism, reminders of our own baptism. In the Psalm we have David imploring God to direct his path, teach him the way, and help him escape from his enemies. 

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These topics of being hidden and protected in the water, finding promise in God’s protection and provision, and looking to God to for direction come quickly after the Ash Wednesday declaration that we are but dust. Understanding that we are but dust, we now come to focus on how much we need God. We look to God to direct us in the right way to go from here, and to keep our enemies (whomever and whatever they may be) at bay. 

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With the waters of baptism still clinging to him, Jesus was driven to the wilderness. Son of God he may have been, but here at the outset of his ministry, he needed liminal space, this thin in-between place, to deepen his clarity and to prepare him for what lie ahead. As assuring as God’s declaration of love and authority, imagine what it must have been like for a man of 30 to face the unknown ahead of him! Of course, we too ask ourselves these questions throughout our lives-who we are, what we believe, what are we called to do and be and-how do we head in that direction? In that harsh landscape, without of any comforts that might distract him, Jesus came to a vivid knowing about who he was and what was essential to his ministry. In taking the time, in venturing into that place, Jesus found what he needed. As he entered his public ministry, he possessed a concise vision of his path. 

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In the other synoptic gospel's accounts, (Luke and Matthew) three temptations were described. None of that appears in Mark’s account, but only this perplexing description. "He was with the wild beasts..." It’s a kind of condensed version of Jesus' entire life and ministry, isn’t it? He would dwell among the wild beasts - the unruly principalities and powers that defy the ways of justice, love and peace. He lived and died among the wild beasts who mocked him at his trial - "Hail, King of the Jews!" - stripped him of his clothing, placed a crown of thorns on his head-believing that they had seen the last of him. But after the beasts of empire had dishonored him, tortured him and nailed him to the cross, he became for us not the crucified, but the resurrected King-whose love would claim us all forevermore.

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In his book Man Before Chaos, Dutch philosopher-theologian Willem Zuurdeeg argues that all philosophy and religion is born in a cry. “It is the primal cry of human vulnerability, our contingency, our finitude, our mortality. It is the cry for order, protection and for meaning in the face of the chaos- without and within. Separated from all social structure and from all the answers that express or muffle the cry, removed from civilization and all distraction in the wilderness of time, "he was with the wild beasts." There are times for each of us when the beasts are all too real, moments when faith falters, nights in the darkness when despair gnaws at us, and days in the noontide heat when hopelessness extends its claws to destroy our sense of wellbeing.” Who are our beasts? Is it our culture itself-pulling us into excessive materialism and greed? Is it our bodies or even time itself? Is it our own doubts, our fear?

I ran across a story that exemplifies, in contemporary terms, one example of our serendipitous life experience. A young woman sat in the Atlanta airport. She was returning home from a year of study abroad. All flights had been delayed because of a storm. She was anxiously awaiting the final leg of her journey home. But home as she had known it no longer existed. Her mother and father had separated. Her father had entered treatment for alcoholism. She entered a wilderness not of her own choosing. The beasts were tearing her apart. Her ordered universe had fallen apart.

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She sat down to wait out the storm. A stranger, her father's age, sat down. He jolted her out of her fog. "Do you have the time?" he asked. As strangers are sometimes likely to do, they began to talk. Unaware of her circumstances, he told her that he was a recovering alcoholic, a former heavy drinker whose drinking was destroying his marriage until his wife became pregnant. The impending birth of his daughter snapped him into treatment and sobriety. "I thought I was going to die," he said, "but it was the beginning of a resurrection, a whole new life." The young woman began to feel a burden lifting. The stranger’s flight was called up and he disappeared. She never got his name.

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The loudspeaker announced her flight's departure. She boarded her flight, and as the plane rose through the clouds, she found herself momentarily sandwiched between two sets of clouds - one below, one above - and the space between is filled with rainbow light, a world whose grandeur and grace exceeded all reasons for despair. She was strangely calm in the face of what lie ahead. A sense of peace descended. It is as though the man had slipped into her wilderness as a gift. She had been with the wild beasts. But then an angel had ministered to her. I bet you’ve had angels who have serendipitously shown up in your lives, people who have ministered to you by opening your eyes or leading you to ask new questions, be open to new directions.

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We need to acknowledge the wild beasts that surrounded Jesus in that desert, just as we need to acknowledge the things that scare us. Lent is a time to do that. But it's also a time to remember the angels, in his wilderness experience and in ours. To remember, as Mark does, that they were there for him from the very beginning of his 40-day journey, just as God has been with us in the wild, lonely places of our lives. Even in the wilderness, the angels got the last word. May that be true for us in our wilderness journey too. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Pam Fahrner

January 21, 2024

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With a nod to Harvard, my sermon this morning is heavily based upon a column recently posted by contemporary historian and author, Heather Cox Richardson. When I read it on MLK Commemoration Day, it resonated so with my thinking about our scriptures today that I couldn’t help but incorporate her examples and sentiment as they echo my thoughts so perfectly. I love the Old Testament, a strange statement I know since many find it hard to relate. I don’t know why, but I weep as I read of primitive people attempting within the confines of their cultural experience, to tell the bigger-than-life-itself love story between God and His people. Two books I find particularly wonderful and funny in their honesty, Jonah and Job. In both accounts, they reveal the kind of emotions that resonate with me as being true to human nature-resistance to God’s plans…at least initially. They are not the only ones who question God and His call. Moses, a very unlikely hero, a stutterer, offered up his relative Aaron for the task. Take him! But God chose Moses and Moses spent the rest of his life on earth leading God’s people to within sight of the promised land. We can all relate to Job’s anger as he let God have it after a series of disasters fell upon his life. But God put his complaints squarely into perspective and Job complied with God’s wishes. This morning’s readings point to another few unlikely heroes, Jonah, Simon (aka Peter), James, John and Andrew.

But heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know. It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself, in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did. It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did. It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold print, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did. It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did. Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did. It means dropping your plans or making room in your life for paths you never imagined-dropping everything and leaving your life behind, prophesizing disaster upon a huge city, risking your life when perhaps no one would listen as Jonah did. It means volunteering for a racial justice mission when you can easily rationalize that it will make little difference. It’s sometimes writing a check larger than you planned to help people who you’ve never met. It’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know. None of those people I’ve talked about this morning woke up and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that, when they had to, they did what was right.

About 15 of us marched on Monday to honor the legacy of MLK. Strangely Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice. He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. Things have changed since MLK walked the earth-some better, too many not-so-much. Let us, everyday heroes, choose to put others before ourselves- walking in the pathways of unlikely heroes like Jonah, Job, James, John, Simon, Andrew, and Moses and all who receive-usually via a still small voice coming from deep within-the call from God to participate in the drama of life, making things just a little bit better because we listened and followed that still small voice. Amen.

Italics=Heather Cox Richardson

Pam Fahrner

January 6, 2024

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Our readings tonight are filled with images that play out throughout the entire biblical story. Our language is filled with these symbols. There are “dark days” indeed; we are “kept in the dark”; we suffer “dark nights of the soul”. And sometimes something hidden is “brought to light”, or a light is shone on it, or maybe after a time of doubt and confusion you have one of those moments where suddenly “the lights go on” for you. For Buddhists, the moment of conversion is called “enlightenment”, and in our Christian tradition, especially in the Eastern churches, it has been called “illumination”. And of course, it is not lost upon us that Jesus is seen as a source of light for all of humanity.

The symbol of the star, so central to the story of the magi visiting the infant Jesus, is a symbol of a bright light that shines in the darkness of the night sky and draws strangers to the place of enlightenment, of epiphany. For us, light comes after the dark nights of the soul pass away. For us, light represents the new start presented to us each day as the sun arises. The prophesy from Isaiah develops the image at length after opening with the words, “Arise, shine; for your light has come.” Light has come to us, and for us, and now we are to shine, to reflect that light. In our modern day, remember the Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun, Da De Da Da”? I used to dance to that song, carrying my young son in my arms. It was a song for the moment, but a yearning of the ages.

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The magi symbolize the divine promise given to Abraham for "all peoples on earth" in the first book of the Bible (Genesis), and John's vision of heaven with people from "every nation, tribe, people, and language" in the last book of the Bible (Revelation). The new king Jesus abolishes not only the barriers of nation, race and ethnicity. He also transcends the boundaries of gender, religion, economics and social stratification, for in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are one in Christ Jesus” ; the magi were only the tip of a very big iceberg. Epiphany was not a one-time event, but is a continuum. We are continually surprised and even disturbed as God’s ways and means are brought to light. Over and over we look for one thing, even cry out and plead for it, but we get another. In Jesus, hunted at birth and humiliated at death, God’s ways and means are shockingly brought to light. The Greek historian Herodotus says that the magi were a caste of priests from Persia who could interpret dreams. There are five dreams in Matthew's birth narrative, and four of them warn of the murderous intentions of king Herod and his sons who succeeded him. Early believers, who at first were all Jewish and who knew that they were the elect of God — the shocking idea that impure Gentiles were, from God's perspective, on equal footing with them was shocking and disturbing. This is Paul's point in this week's epistle. His ministry, he writes, is “for the sake of the Gentiles,” that through the Gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus”.

Herod could not have imagined the enormity of the magi’s role in this drama. The story of the pagan magi worshipping Jesus ends in carnage when king Herod slaughters innocent children in order to protect his rule. This is an old story, retold many times in our own day, in which political powers annihilate their opposition to protect their power; it's certainly not a fairy tale.

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Meanwhile, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus fled to pagan Egypt, after yet another dream, where they found asylum. That symbolic place of Israel's bondage became a place of protection. All these Herods did the opposite of the magi; they worked hard to make the subversive kingdom of Jesus subservient to the political power of the state. The Herods of the world fail when good men listen to their dreams, listen to their still small voices from within, and act with courage from the place deep within us all, the ground of our being, to enact ‘right’ and enable goodness in our world. But: If not for the magi paying attention to their dream…If not for the magi taking the time to look into the sky…If not for the magi’s courage in following their dreams and a distant star…If not for the magi paying attention to their instincts as they listened to Herod…If not for their courage as the magi dared take another road to their country…

 Can we see that this story which seems so distant, really is not so distant at all, but that it lives among us every day?

For God is still working. For yes, we still dream. We still yearn for truths just beyond our grasp. Tyrants still rage. And the story continues. And it is ours, yours and mine for we enter the story again and again.

So keep listening to your dreams. Keep our eyes and your hearts peeled for signs of hope and light and to follow where they lead.

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To make the journey. To bear the gifts. And yes, to protect the innocent wherever, however we can.

I’m going to close with a poem written by Walter Bruggemann called: Epiphany

On Epiphany day,
    We are still the people walking.
    We are still people in the dark,
         and the darkness looms large around us,
         beset as we are by fear, anxiety, brutality, violence, loss —a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

We are — we could be — people of your light.
    So we pray for the light of your glorious presence -as we wait for your appearing;
    we pray for the light of your wondrous grace -as we exhaust our coping capacity;
    we pray for your gift of newness that will override our weariness;
    we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact your rule through the demands of this day.
        We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope. Amen.