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Sermon preached by The Reverend Hope H. Eakins and a Voice

at St. James’ Episcopal Church, Farmington, Connecticut

on July 26, 2010, Proper 12, Year C

 St. Mark’s, New Britain, has something new in its chancel. They have installed a “prayer reef” there and covered it with depictions of the creatures who live in the Gulf of Mexico as well as all manner of prayers: prayers for the environmental clean-up workers, for those whose livelihood depends on clean waters, prayers for the scientists and politicians working for a solution, and prayers for all of us that we may be good stewards of this earth. But what does it mean to pray? Does God really hear us? How can we keep on praying in the face of such an overwhelming problem? We say “Our Father who art in heaven …”

 God: Yes?

 Preacher: Sir, please don’t interrupt; I am trying to preach a sermon on prayer.

 God: But you called me.

 Preacher: Called you?  All I said was “Our Father who art in heaven.”

 God: There you did it again. You called me. Don’t you know how powerful those words are?

 Preacher: If you’re God, I thought you were supposed to be in heaven. You know, somewhere distant, out of sight?

 God: Where do you think heaven is?

Preacher: Hm. I suppose heaven is anywhere where you are. I know you aren’t sitting on a cloud. Well, I suppose you are there, but if I really think about it, heaven is anyplace where we can imagine you, where we are aware of your presence, and maybe even heaven can be deep within ourselves.

 God: That’s sounds about right. So now that you’ve called me by my name Abba, Father, what’s on your mind? What’s next in your prayer?

 Preacher: Well, actually I wasn’t really praying the prayer, I was just reciting it. The Gospel this morning says that Jesus taught this prayer to his disciples, and we Episcopalians say it just about every time we gather, so I thought it was worth exploring.

 God: Now that’s an understatement. Please proceed.

 Preacher: “Hallowed be thy name.”

 God: Hallowed? That’s sort of an obscure word nowadays, don’t you think? 

Preacher: Well, hallowed is an old fashioned word for holy. Your name is holy, special, blessed.

 God: And the blessing of my name is also your blessing because I made you in my image. If I am your God and you are mine, then you have inherited my holiness. You are holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. And I have put you here on earth for a holy purpose.

 Preacher: This praying business is getting a little more complicated than I thought.

 God: Did you think prayer was simple?

 Preacher: Not simple exactly, but I thought it was easy, something that everybody could do.

 God: It is, for everybody can pray, and I listen to their voices and hear them when they call me. Now go on.

 Preacher: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

 God: Now do you really mean that?  Is that what’s in your heart?

 Preacher: Oh, I really do mean it. I want your kingdom to come, Lord. I don’t want to live in a world where we send our sons and daughters to be killed in war. I want peace in the world and food for the hungry, and I want the Episcopal Church to stop fighting and start getting on with our mission. I know this would take big changes in the world and in the Church and in me. And I do believe that, despite all the chaos in this world, your will for us all is love.

 God: Tough love maybe, but always love. Now, you seem to understand these things, but what are you doing about it?

 Preacher: Doing?  Well, I was trying to preach the sermon that I am under your holy orders to do, but I seem to have been interrupted.

 God: Preaching, talking about me, is good, but what are you doing?

 Preacher: Probably not enough. I’d like to do more, but it’s hard. Just when I get ready to pray, the phone rings. I’d like to get more involved in that Hartford tutoring program, but we travel, and I can’t be there consistently. I try to visit friends who are sick and shut-in, but my family needs me too. And when I walk by the homeless, I get afraid, and I don’t want to see the pain in their eyes, so I don’t look. And sometimes, if I am honest, I get afraid that the homeless might follow me home, and, well, I just wish you had control of things down here the way you do up there.

 God: Have I got control of you?

 Preacher: Well, I try to follow a rule of life that balances my prayer and my work and my play.

 God: That isn’t what I asked you. I’m asking about those times when you think you know best and decide to go your own way without asking for my help. And what about that temper of yours? You can be all peaches and cream until you get tired or frustrated, and then you can really let people have it. You have a problem there, you know. And you have been known to be a bit judgmental …

 Preacher: But I am trying!

 God: Indeed you can be very trying.

 Preacher: Please stop picking on me, God. There are plenty of people in the church that need it more than I do. I turn up at church every Sunday, even when I’m on vacation, and I tithe. Even though I’m retired, I still help out so that people can come and worship you and be inspired to care for the needy. But whatever I do, it never seems to please everybody, and what’s more, nobody here is going to be very happy if this conversation lasts too much longer.

 God: Whoa! Wait a minute. You see what I mean about the judgmentalism? I thought you were praying for MY will to be done. And for that to happen, I need people who are willing to look honestly at themselves and repent.

 Preacher:   Well … I guess I do have some shortcomings. Come to think of it, I could probably name a few you haven’t mentioned.

 God: So could I, but I’d rather not go into them now, so let’s get on with the prayer.

 Preacher:   Okay, “Give us this day our daily bread…”

 God: I’d watch the bread if I were you. Actually daily bread is not the first thing you should be asking for. You are going to have to get more exercise if you want more bread. And whom do you really want the bread for?  If you really mean what you say, “give US this day our daily bread” then you personally will have to be satisfied with a little less so there is enough to go around.

 Preacher: I hear you God. And I’m afraid to go on. This praying is a pretty deep and personal thing.

 God: Praying is a dangerous thing. You could wind up changed. That’s what I want you to realize. You called me and I am here. I am always here, and I always answer prayers. I don’t always answer the way you would like. Sometimes you don’t know what is good for you. And I want you to understand that prayer is more about listening than it is about talking.

 Preacher:   Oh, God, I am so glad about the listening. So I think I’ll just listen for a while and leave out the next line.

 God: Oh, no. This is the one I have been waiting for.

 Preacher: Okay. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

 God: Does that include your old friend, Richard, for telling those lies behind your back?

 Preacher: I knew you would bring him up. And he is not my friend and I haven’t forgiven him. Even after all these years, what I’d really like to do is to get even with him.

 God: Now you know how I feel when the people I love get hurt. And I could get revenge. In fact some people think that’s what I do, and they blame me for their misfortunes. But that’s not what I am about. I am about forgiveness. I forgave those who killed my son. I forgive you, and now you must forgive Richard as well. You may lose a little bit of that self-righteousness, but you will be at peace with yourself.

 Preacher: Well, maybe I can. I know why Richard acted that way, and I guess it’s better to let my anger go. But what about Hitler and the al-Qaida terrorists? Are you against the death penalty, too?

 God: Did you ever read the Bible? “Vengeance is mine,” I tell you. I’ll give you some more time to learn how to forgive. But leave the justice to me. Just remember my commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” That goes for you as well as for them.

 Preacher: Oh, lead us not into temptation, Lord, and I mean it.

 God: Good. I never lead those I love into temptation. You do that to yourselves. I am here to help you keep away from temptation, not to be an escape hatch when you get yourself into a mess. We need to talk before you start down the path toward temptation. I do get a bit weary of hearing my people pray, God, please rescue me just this once.  

Preacher: I’m ashamed, God. I guess I sometimes think it’s your job to keep me out of danger and I forget that you have given me the will and the strength and the responsibility to do it for myself. So I will try. I’ll try to pray first and last and in all the times in between and to ask for your help in figuring out how to do the very best I can. “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.”

 od: Do you know what brings me power and glory then?

 Preacher: I’m trying to figure it out Lord because I do want to do what is right.

 God: You just answered the question.

 Preacher: I did?

 God: Yes, for once. What brings me glory is to have people love me and trust me even when they do not have all the answers to their questions. Mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever; I will be with you always and I will make all things come out right. Even when weeping spends the night, joy will come in the morning, and I will wipe away the tears from every eye. So keep on praying and keep on living what you pray.

 Preacher: So be it, Lord, Amen.

 God: So be it. So be it. Amen.

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Sermon preached by The Reverend Hope H. Eakins

at St. James Episcopal Church, Farmington, Connecticut

on July 11, 2010, The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, Year C

 Ah, the Good Samaritan. We know the story, don’t we? The image of the good Samaritan is not even limited to us church folks familiar with the Scriptures, because Good Samaritan vans quipped with spare tires and battery chargers cruise up and down Route 91 to help stranded motorists, and hospitals across the country are nicknames Good Sam.

 So we think we know the story. There’s a victim who was set upon by robbers and left to die. There are the priest and the Levite who pass by and leave him suffering on the road, and there is the man from Samaria, an outcast from the wrong side of the tracks, who turns out to be the hero. The points of the parable are clear. Help your neighbor when he is in trouble, and that means helping everybody, because everybody is your neighbor. Yet, like all of Jesus’ stories, this one is more complicated than it seems; there is more to it than three bad guys, a good guy and a victim.

 Let’s begin with the lawyer. This is the character I most identify with. He was not a narrow-minded bean counter concerned with the letter and not the spirit of the law. The lawyer was hungry to know God and to know what God required of him. So he asked a question of this wandering rabbi and expected to bat the commentaries and the Scriptures around, tapping the mind of the master in much the same way as we do law schools and business schools and seminaries today.

 “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks Jesus, and like a good teacher, Jesus tossed the question back to the lawyer. “What does the Law say? What do you read?”  And the lawyer gave the right answer, “You shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.’  “Good answer,” says Jesus. “Now go and do it.”

 DO it? Can’t you hear the lawyer’s mind spinning? Like any good lawyer, he wanted to limit his liability, to find out who was not his neighbor. What about those ne’er-do-wells who slept beside the temple because they had drunk too much wine to find their way home? What about the foreigners in need of aid and the disabled veterans and widows and orphans, the refugees and lepers? What about the people who hadn’t paid what they owed him because they had hit hard times and what about all those people who wanted free legal advice from them? What about his wife and kids who kept reminding him of his promise to spend more time at home? How could he help them all without dying of exhaustion?

 The lawyer was not a bad guy; he was a good guy struggling to find a way to live like one. So just who IS my neighbor, he asked Jesus. Since I can’t help everybody, just precisely who am I obligated to help? And instead of giving him rules, Jesus gave him a story. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead,” he began.

 Now if the lawyer is not what he appears to be at first glance, neither is the victim. Remember that this is a complex story. The Jerusalem-Jericho was known to be a dangerous one – it is a dangerous one today – a place where bandits hid in caves and smart people traveled in groups because it was courting trouble to walk there on your own. So it wasn’t too surprising that this loner was assaulted. Now Jesus doesn’t spend much time evoking our sympathy for the victim, and perhaps that is because he doesn’t want us to equate victims with good guys. We are all victims from time to time, all wounded by the world in some way. We all lie by the side of life’s road then, bleeding of loneliness or grief or fear, stripped of our assets, our defenses, our hopes. We deserve mercy and help when we are bowed by these losses – but we are supposed to use the aid to get better and not languish too long at the inn. Victims are not supposed to stay victims.

 The next character in the story is the priest, usually portrayed as the quintessential bad guy who saw the victim, crossed to the other side of the road and ignored him. But I want to put a word in for that priest. He was charged with temple ministry and the pastoral care of the community. He was Social Security and Medicaid and welfare all rolled into one. People depended on him, and, according to the law, he was prohibited from doing his job if he came within thirty steps of the dead because he then became ritually unclean. Now the Torah actually holds that the saving of a life is a greater good than ritual purity, so if the victim were only half-dead, the priest had to come to his aid. But if the priest were only 29 steps away and discovered that the victim was all dead, his goosed was cooked, because he then would have been prohibited from offering sacrifice in the temple.

 Jesus was a clever story teller. He posed his question well. “The robber left the victim half-dead,” he said. From thirty paces away, maybe you couldn’t tell if he were alive or dead. You had to take a risk in order to find out. Jesus lets us know that the priest wasn’t a bad guy, but a good guy who could have been better. Jesus doesn’t condemn the priest for making a decision according to the law; instead Jesus asks if it is always a good thing to follow the law, if there are other ways to measure our conduct besides following the rules.

 Jesus is also telling us that we had better know what rules we play by. Are they rules of compassion and love or rules of justice and economy? Is this not today’s conflict at BP after the oil spill? What is BP’s obligation – to support stockholders or local businesses? If the company goes bankrupt, jobs will be lost, pensions unfunded. Who are the victims here? Jesus tells us that there is no easy solution to such moral quandaries. In the world of the Good Samaritan, not everyone wears a white hat or a black hat.

 The next person to come down the road is a Levite, seemingly a black hat without question. The Levite had a hereditary office at the temple, sort of like an Altar Guild chair who can pass her ministry on to her defendants. It is not hard to imagine that the Levite had seen the priest walking ahead of him on the Jericho road. That road extends into a wide gully in the Judean desert as it curves around steep hills. You can hide in caves there, but once on the road you can see far ahead because vegetation is sparse and small. So the Levite may well have seen the priest and figured that the priest must have decided that the man was already dead and thought he’d just follow the priest and cross over to the other side of the road too.

 The Levite deferred to the one with authority. It is often easier to follow orders than to buck the system – but that is how we got a Holocaust and the My Lai atrocity in Viet Nam, how Jim Jones got his followers to drink arsenic Kool-Aid in Guyana and how Private Lynndie England could torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. We know the excuses: the devil made me do it, my boss made me do it; I was just following orders. The Levite didn't have the “inquiring and discerning heart” we ask for those newly baptized, a heart that does not defer to human authority but seeks to know what God demands.

 So now we come to the last person in the story, the man from Samaria. The Samaritans were hated because they were different. They had their own temple; they only believed in the first five books of the Scriptures, and worst of all they were contaminated by intermarriage with foreigners. Our Samaritan traveler couldn’t even get ritually unclean because he already was judged unclean. No amount of good deeds could save him from the scorn of Jewish prejudice. But he was the one who stooped down and bandaged the victim’s wounds. Why? Because he was moved with pity, not by obedience to the Law or the authority of his superiors or a fear of consequences. He was moved by compassion, by love.

 It is tempting to hear this Gospel as the story of three black hats and a white hat because the stereotypes get us off the hook. We don’t have to identify with a story of three rats and one noble character. But Jesus told us a story not about stereotypes but about people like us who are faced with a moral dilemma, and Jesus challenges us to go beyond the law, beyond the excuse, beyond authority to find the Love that expresses itself in compassion and pity for all who are in need, sharing our denarii, our attention, our time. That is the way to find life, says Jesus, and if you sit with your rule books, determining the legal extent of your obligations, you never will find true life. But if you live instead by the Law of love, your hands will open when your heart does, and you will know the abundance of life that is God’s gift to you.

 Let me give you an example. On August 28^th, St. James has made a commitment to feed lunch to the hungry in Bushnell Park in Hartford. You – every one of you - are needed to buy food, make sandwiches, pack lunch bags, distribute the meals, clean up, and provide the money to fulfill this ministry. You can work at the meal preparation on Saturday or the meal distribution on Sunday, or you can write a check today. If you don’t participate, your resources will be intact; if you do participate, you will be blessed by the sharing and the joy of serving Christ in the least and the lost.

 These moral dilemmas are really not so complicated after all. The lawyer got it right. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” he said. “Go and do that,” said Jesus, “and you too will live.”

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on June 27, 2010 

"Oh where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?"

 Today’s first reading seems tailor made, Spirit-given, remarkably appropriate for St. James parish this morning, for the first Sunday after your Rector’s retirement.  The lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures is about a transition, about the anxiety that rises when leadership changes, about what God requires of us at such times of change, and about God’s presence and strength, which is with us always.  But it is not a lesson just for parishes in the search process; it is guidance for everyone faced with letting go, all who look to the future with hope. 

In this story Israel’s’ chief prophet, Elijah, is taken to heaven in a whirlwind, leaving Elisha, his successor, behind.  Elisha is fearful of what lies ahead, unsure if he can measure up, and he learns two things: that his heritage is a rich and valuable foundation but it is not enough because new occasions teach new duties, because the future holds new challenges. 

Elijah, the one who had called Elisha to serve, the one who had inspired and instructed him in the ways of God, the one who had worked miracles, had been whirled off to heaven in a wind and fire storm until, as the Scripture says, Elisha saw him no more.  Elisha was suddenly and profoundly alone, and standing there by the Jordan River, he tore off his clothes and stooped to pick up the only thing that was left of Elijah, a mantle of authority that could cover him on the outside while his insides quivered away.

 But as soon as Elisha had settled the mantle on his shoulders, perhaps adjusting it a bit and trying it on for size, the garment fell to the ground.  Poor Elisha, whatever his size, too small for these britches, unable to fill Elijah's shoes, unable to wear the prophet's mantle even for a moment.  And so he stooped to pick it up once again and fasten it in place, hoping that his ears could hear the voice of God like Elijah had, that his voice could do more than cry in the wilderness.  And then all the grief and self-doubt in his heart welled up into his anguished cry: "Oh where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?"  Elijah had gone; was Elijah’s God gone too? 

Elisha and Elijah had been inseparable.  Elisha had come to trust and depend on Elijah as he traveled with him from miracle to miracle, from prophecy to prophecy.  Elijah knew that and he also knew that soon he would have to leave Elisha behind.  Like all transitions, like all leave-takings, this one would be filled with fear and confusion and a fierce clinging to the past.  So Elijah had tried hard to send this son of his spirit off on his own. On the long road south from Gilgal, Elijah had commanded three times, "Stay here, Elisha, for the Lord has sent me to Bethel, to Jericho, to the Jordan." But Elisha would not leave Elijah's side, so the two traveled on to the Jordan River together.

 It was there at the riverside that Elijah took off his mantle and struck the water with it to teach his successor that God's prophets must have enough faith to attempt the impossible, enough hope to act decisively, and enough love to risk failure.  Elisha watched as the Jordan River parted, just like the Red Sea had parted for Moses.  And then Elijah handed over the prophetic role to Elisha - with one last question: "What may I do for you, Elisha?"  Elisha begged Elijah not for his cloak or his wisdom, but for his spirit, and then, feeling very small compared to Elijah, Elisha got bold and asked for a double portion, for two scoops, for the blessing of a father for his son. 

"If you see me being taken up from you it will be so," if you can see that my departure is not defeat and loss but the possibility of a new beginning, then you will inherit my spirit, said Elijah.  And there on the banks of the Jordan, Elijah disappeared in a chariot of fire, and Elisha was suddenly alone, gawking up at the sky with only a dusty garment to make him a prophet.  "Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah," he cried.

 Could he be what Elijah had been? Could he do what Elijah had done?  In an endearingly human gesture Elisha tried it out.  Like his teacher, he took Elijah's mantle and struck the Jordan River.  Would it work the second time?   Would the God of Elijah be his God too?  And in an endearingly divine gesture, God parted the waters so that Elisha could cross back over and begin to find his own way, which would be a different way.

 We all become anxious when trying to do something new, to fill somebody else's shoes. This week I spoke with a woman on her sixty-fifth birthday. Ellen's mother died ten years ago, and her father died last week.  She is the editor of a prestigious publication, but she told me through her tears that she couldn't take on all this responsibility – it wasn’t the responsibilities of the funeral and will and disposing of possessions that overwhelm her- not the grief - but the responsibility of being the family tradition bearer, the matriarch.  "I don't know enough," she cried, "I didn't listen hard enough to all the stories, and now they are lost forever."  Ellen may not remember the stories as well as her parents, but when I called, she was outside, planting the garden of her father's house the way he always did, with three rows - of red salvia, orange marigolds, and purple ageratum.  Ellen is wearing the family mantle well, carrying on the old traditions and also finding her own way, which is a different way.

 That is what God called Elisha to do, to establish his own ways and speak with his own voice.  Elisha's ministry was to be shaped by his own unique gifts and by the particular time and place in which he lived.  Elijah preferred solitude; Elisha liked company.  Elijah was a prophet of judgment; Elisha became a prophet of mercy and compassion as he freshened wells and multiplied barley loaves to feed a hundred. 

 It was not an easy task for Elijah to anoint Elisha to take his place; it is never easy for us to let somebody else carry out what we have only started, but that’s the way it works in God's great plan.  And that is the way it will work here at St. James as you seek a new Rector to carry on God’s mission in Farmington.

 God asked Elisha and God asks us to do two things: to put on the mantle of the tried and trusted past and then to step out into an unknown and awesome future, to assume new responsibilities, to discover what and who God calls us to be.  It was tempting for Elisha to do things the way they had always been done, to wrap himself in Elijah’s mantle and rest on Elijah’s laurels and ignore his own gifts.  But preserving the past is not enough, because the mantle of tradition can become so heavy that it hinders the Holy Spirit from the work of reformation and renewal.  Elijah had worked miracles to keep Israel away from following pagan gods.  Elisha had to chart his own path.  He purified water and healed lepers and supported widows, and guided the governments of his day. 

 Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah, the God of the Episcopal Church in the good old days, the God of my father, the God of my childhood?  Elisha spent ten years as Elijah's companion before he set out on his own.  He learned the traditions of the community, and he asked for Elijah's spirit to guide him.  He got a mantle, and then he learned that the mantle was only a sign of his call, that it was not Elijah's spirit but God's spirit that led him on his way, a spirit that is ever changing and ever new.  tGod is always present, not as a Creator on a throne in the clouds, but an active, living God who speaks still. The Lord, the God of Elijah is right here with us, pointing the way ahead, daring us to let go and venture forth in the faith that wherever we go, God goes with us.

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Farewell sermon delivered by the Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan
in St. James Parish, Farmington, Connecticut
on Sunday, June 20, 2010.

I was so very badly hurt, the doctors did not expect me to survive.  But I did.   

Today, I am alive.  And I am so grateful, and I now consider myself one of the wealthiest people in the world:  I still have the gift of life in this world, and I will never, ever take that life for granted again.

 In the gospel of Mark (8:37), Jesus says, “ . . . what can a man give in return for his life?”

 There is nothing we can give in return for our life.  Life is priceless.  It is such a mystery, so very fragile, precious beyond belief.  And our God has made us in His image:  He has given us the gifts of laughing and being able to discern humor, crying and being able to feel pain, warming up inside and being able to feel the security and absolute comfort of true love.  You see, God didn’t have to give us any other gifts;  He could have simply given us the gift of life, and placed us in a world with no humor, no pain or sadness, no love.  In my opinion, such a life would not be worth living at all;  God breathed His life into us and gave us the extra gift of a dramatic world in which to learn the art of living.

 Now, I want to tell you about a man who had a secure and clear vision of what the art of living was:

             Maine Yankees are usually portrayed as being the very picture of resourcefulness, wit, and understatement.  I'm convinced that my maternal grandfather was fashioned from the original Maine Yankee mold.  A schoolteacher by profession, he was an avid hunter and fisherman.  He was a carpenter of such skill that he built the three homes in which his family lived over the years- built them by himself, as well as most of the furniture in them.  He loved making fine violins, at least two of which are still in use in orchestras in Europe.  At night after dinner, even though everyone wished he wouldn't, he would often sit in the basement and play his violins.  From the time he was in high school, he painted in watercolors and in oil, paintings which hold a warm and compelling beauty.  He was an accomplished and gifted human being.  Those who knew him knew that.  But what we didn't know was that during his life he was also a poet.  He never bothered to tell anyone, and nobody ever asked.  That was the Maine Yankee in him.

             Oh, people knew that he could turn a phrase.  Whenever he ate steamed clams, he would recite this verse:

 You hold the dripping corpse on high
Above the level of the eye,
Then drop the messy little chap
Discretely in your neighbor's lap.

             But his serious poetry was something that he kept to himself. About thirty years ago, after my grandmother had died, some of my grandfather's poetry was found as the house, including his workshop, was being cleaned out.  Written on scraps of paper, written on pieces of cardboard, written on old shingles- written on whatever was handy at the moment- the poems are full of his strong faith and deep wisdom, a level of wisdom that any of us would be lucky to attain in this life.

             There is one poem in particular that I want to share with you this morning, because it seems to speak directly to all of us on this occasion.  It was penciled on the back of an old shingle.  It is entitled, The Future.

The Future 

What knowledge of the past we have
Though infinitely small, alas!
Is not much less than we can boast
Of present happenings we note.

 Then of the future, what's to be,
Or where beyond today we go;
What can blind mortals hope to see:
We're after what we cannot know.

 When at last the future unfolds
It then, of course, becomes today;
Thus does the future secrets hold
And it shall ever be that way.

 Our vision is like a tiny flame,
Within the darkest hour of night
By which we see a little way
And all beyond is shut from sight.

 And as we hold the flame aloft
and slowly grope our way along,
Each step we see yet further off
And wonder what may wait beyond.

 Beyond!  What other word does bear
The very meaning that it hides;
And all of us must wonder where
And who or what does there abide. 

 And if doubt does chill our mind
Doubt that comes against our will;
A deeper trust we must ever find
And let God the future fill.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Dorr H. Woodward
                                                                                                1890-1958

""When at last the future unfolds
It then, of course, becomes today.""

             For Betty and me, and indeed for the whole St. James parish family, the future has become today.  This is one of those rare occasions of a lifetime, when past and future converge and make the present moment so much more powerful and meaningful than usual.

             For my whole family, this place will always hold a special place in our hearts.  My children all grew up here, and lots of you became honorary aunts, uncles and grandparents.  I thank you for the loving ways you have accepted and supported my children over the years.

             I am grateful for the opportunity to have participated in some small way in the life and ministry of this great and beautiful parish.  You have allowed me the privilege of sharing in the joy of your new babies, as well as the pride of watching your older children mature and begin to think about such important things as what college they want to attend, and which profession they should choose.  I have consecrated the love that has led some of you to marriage (In fact, about two years ago I married a couple, and the bride I had baptized as a little girl!).  You have greeted me in the midst of illness, sadness, and despair;  and I have sat in the soft, quiet darkness and held the hands of your dying loved ones.  As such, you have allowed me to be to you a friend, a brother- you have made me and my whole family a part of your families, and that is the most affirming and loving blessing I can ever hope to know in this life.

             I want to read you a passage from John Powell's masterful book, The Secret of Staying in Love:

                         We should judge our success in loving not by those who admire us for our accomplishments, but by the number of those who attribute their wholeness to our loving them, by the number of those who have seen their beauty in our eyes, heard their goodness acknowledged in the warmth of our voices.  We are like mirrors to one another.  No one can know what he looks like until he sees his reflection in some kind of mirror.  It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.

             Betty and I attribute our wholeness, in large part, to your loving us. My one overriding memory of St. James Parish will be the caring warmth of the many mirrors of love that dwell here;  memories of all of you.  You have come together in the most wonderful way over these past twenty years;  this is an incarnate family of Christ, and my ministry has been strengthened and enriched by my full immersion in it.  For that opportunity, and for your support over the past twenty years, I extend to you my deepest and most sincere gratitude.   

            As I look out at all of you, I can remember contributions that each one of you has made to this place, and I thank you.  If I start naming names, we’ll be here all day, so I won’t!

             All of you and many, many others have helped keep this parish running smoothly and effectively for the past two decades, and I thank you for that.

             I need to mention two people this morning, both of whom are here with us.  If not for each of them, I would not be standing here this morning: 

             First there is my daughter, Claire.  Claire was with me when I fell off that cliff.  Claire, you are my hero- you saved my life, and in doing so you proved that under extreme pressure, you are capable of swift and decisive action.  I am so proud of you, and I love you so much.

             The other person I must mention is the one who has kept me going throughout all the pain and difficulty of the past year.  She is my wife, she is my best friend, and she is my reason for being.  Through Betty, God has chosen to reveal to me the meaning and the power of true resurrection, of unselfish love, and of unbounded joy.  Thank you, Betty, for the sacrificial way you have devoted yourself to my wellbeing over the past year.  I don’t know how you have done it, but I thank you and I love you.

 "When at last the future unfolds, It then, of course, becomes today."

             The future of St. James Parish will be carefully developing in the competent hands of your vestry over the months to come.  If you give to your new rector the same measure of support and love and willingness to work hard that you have given me, then I believe there is no end to what can be accomplished in God's name here.  May God in his infinite goodness make it so.

             My love, my hopes, my very best wishes for all of you are contained in a wonderful old Celtic composition. 

             The Celtic expression of Christianity has always been the initial, predominate, largest and strongest root of our Anglican tradition.  Given that historical fact, it should not seem odd that these Celtic words, first penned to paper over a thousand years ago, in an early Celtic Christian monastery somewhere in today’s British Isles, should grab our souls’ attention and our breath as something so authentic and timeless it could have been written yesterday.  But slowly, as we reread the words, we connect with these as timeless truths- as perhaps the most basic Christian understandings of how, as mortal human beings, we are to ever, confidently, make our way through this often stormy terrain we refer to as human life.  And then we realize the reason it is that our hearts, minds, and souls should resonate so fully and completely with such words – we are the Celtic Christian tradition for today.  Our hearts long for the same things that the first Celtic Christians longed for well over a thousand years ago, and yet even here in the technical vastness of the future we cannot seem to be any more articulate about such spiritual mysteries than were they.

             These words hold within them my most passionate hopes for you as you prepare to move forward into the future together;  take them with you; let them guide you as you seek to identify and fulfill your deepest longings, which come from God:

 Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens your soul with wonder.

 *   *   *

 May the light of your soul guide your thoughts and shelter your feelings.
 May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.
 May you know that absence is full of tender presence and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
 May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from and may you have the courage to speak out for the excluded ones.
 May your soul be as free as the ever new waves of the sea.
 May you succumb to the danger of growth.
 May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.
 May you belong to love with the wildness of dance.
 May your body be blessed, may you realize that your body is a faithful and beautiful friend of your soul.
 May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.

*  *  *

 May the day never burden.
  May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching the new day with dreams, possibilities and promises.
 May the evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
 May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected. 
May your soul calm, console and renew you.
 May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight are one and may your longing emerge within the shelter of the great belonging.

 *  *  *  *  *

                                                 (A Blessing for Einin,  Celtic  Christian, 5^th – 8^th century AD)  

            I want to close today with a prayer:

             Lord, bless this parish family in the months and years ahead.  Make us all instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love;  where there is injury, pardon;  where there is discord, union;  where there is doubt, faith;  where there is despair, hope;  where there is darkness, light;  where there is sadness, joy.

             Grant  that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;  to be understood as to understand;  to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive;  it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;  and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

An Old Celtic Christian Blessing

May the blessing of light
be on you, light without and light within. 

May the blessed sunlight
shine upon you and warm your heart till it glows
like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may
come and warm himself at it, and also a friend.

 And may the light shine out of the eyes of you,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

 And may the blessing of the rain
be on you – the soft sweet rain.  May it fall upon
your spirit so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.

And may the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there many a shining pool where the blue
of heaven shines, and sometimes a star.

 And may the blessing of the earth
be on you – the great round earth;
may you ever have a kindly greeting
for them you pass as you’re going along the roads.

May the earth be soft under you when
you rest upon it, tired at the end of a day,
and may it rest easy over you when,
at the last, you lie out under it.

May it rest so lightly over you that
your soul may be off from under it quickly,
and up and off, and on its way to God.

And now may the Lord bless you,
in the name of the Father
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit,
and may He bless you kindly.

                                                 Amen.                                                         

                                                                        (Celtic Christian  blessing, 7^th to 8^th century AD)

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on June 13, 2010 

So look at your bulletin cover.  It takes 140 Episcopalians to do a Sunday service at St. James – and that doesn’t include the shut-ins who pray for us and the Buildings and Grounds committee who paint and shovel and rake and the lay ministers who carry our worship to Convalescent Homes and the visitors who make our horizons broader and …well, why do you all do it?

 This morning’s Gospel tells us something about why, why people pour themselves out teaching Church School instead of playing tennis, why people weed the church gardens even before their own.  The story of the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet is complicated, but its point is simple: the woman gives much because she has been given much, she loves because she is loved.  And isn’t that why we offer ourselves to serve this place too?  Because we are blessed with the friendship and support of this community, we open our doors so that others may come in and share this community’s Christian values, because we know God’s forgiveness here, we bend our hearts to forgive as we have been forgiven.

 The woman in the Gospel was a sinner who was probably a prostitute.  No wonder the Pharisees thought she was outrageous.  She walked right into their dinner party and went to the place where Jesus’ feet stuck out from the couch and poured everything she had over them. She cried over those feet and dried them with her hair and then she kissed them and anointed them with ointment.  Sometimes there are no words for what you have to say.  Sometimes you just have to do something.

 Kids know this better than grown-ups.  Kids show their feelings with extravagant gestures.  They run up and hug your legs if they like you, or, like some babies I have baptized, they take one look at you and scream.  Kids squirm in church when it gets boring and clap their hands when something delights them.  Kids are born utterly unself-conscious and become self-aware as they grow, but every once in a while, we hoot and holler and cry like we did when we were kids because, well, sometimes there are no words for what you have to say, you just have to do something.

 A long time ago a young woman came to see me; her story was not this, but it was something like this.  She said that she had done something terrible, and she had.  She told me the lurid particulars of a crime she had committed.  I listened and listened, but all I heard was a barrage of the gory details.  I offered to help her find a therapist, but she told me that although she was in counseling, she was still haunted by her crime.  She knew that she wasn’t going to get caught, and she also knew she was condemned by God.  Although she had been raised as an Episcopalian, she hadn’t been to church since she was a child, and when I offered her sacramental confession, she said she was so haunted she’d try anything.  And so she went to make her confession at a church far from home, and for the first time she heard the words of absolution and believed them.  “Go in peace, abide in peace.  The Lord has put away all your sins.”

 Like the woman in the Gospel story, because this woman felt forgiven, she wanted to show great love.  She wanted to start going to church, to the place of comfort and forgiveness where she had found God’s love, but she didn’t feel like she fit in.  She was a young mother with no money, so she couldn’t pledge, and she didn’t have time to work at the church fair, and yet she wanted to make a contribution, she wanted to give back some of the love she had found.  So she decided to offer her considerable skills as a plumber.  Since she had no telephone, this woman put her baby in a back pack and her wrenches in a tool kit each Saturday and came to the rectory to get the address of a person who needed her service.  It was an extravagant gesture because sometimes there were no pipes to be fixed.  And sometimes there are no words for what you have to say.  Sometimes you just have to do something. 

 “Therefore I tell you,” said Jesus about the woman in the Gospel, “her sins which were many have been forgiven, and HENCE she has shown great love.”  It was not because she washed his feet that Jesus forgave her sins; it was because Jesus forgave her that she was freed to show great love.  It was the woman’s faith, not her love, that saved her.  Imagine the woman’s life before that dinner party, a notorious sinner unwelcome in the homes of the righteous.  Imagine her stopping by the road one day and seeing a leper cleansed and wanting to be clean herself.  Imagine her in a crowd who saw a paralytic walk when Jesus told him, “Your sins are forgiven you.”  Imagine her hearing Jesus say, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” and wondering if she was the kind of sinner he was calling. Imagine her one day hearing Jesus preach, “Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh.”  Imagine her, yearning for the abundant life that this Teacher seemed to offer and believing that this new life could be hers.  And then imagine her when she heard that he was having dinner right down the street, bringing her self and all that she had to Jesus and kneeling at his feet and weeping.  Now imagine her joy when the one she had come to find turned to her and blessed her with his words, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

 The cover on last week’s Time magazine read, Being Pope Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.  That expression comes from the movie Love Story, in which Ali McGraw declared, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  She was wrong.  If we love, we always have to say we’re sorry when we fail at love, and confess our wrong doing and take responsibility for it and then – here’s the important part – and then accept forgiveness when it is offered.  “Go in peace, abide in peace,” says the liturgy of reconciliation.  “The Lord has put away your sins.”  They are no more.  They are dead and gone and you are not supposed to go around digging them up again.  You are just supposed to show great love.

 For the woman at the Pharisees’ dinner party, her joy began when she was desperate enough to fall on her knees and pour herself out.  We make the same kind of gesture every time we come to worship.  We get all dressed up, looking proper and holy – some of us even put on vestments - and then we throw ourselves on our knees and say, “Most merciful God we confess that we have sinned against you in thought and word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.  Have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways.”  We make that confession of sin because we know that God has promised forgiveness to those who repent. 

 Then after the assurance of forgiveness comes peace and the freedom to show great love.  Then, because God loves us, like ushers and acolytes, we show the way to God’s heart, like lectors we proclaim God’s Word of love, like the Altar Guild and chalicists we prepare a table and feed the hungry, like our choir we sing God’s praises, and in the singing and feeding and leading and serving we are God’s servants, pouring ourselves out in love

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on June 6, 2010

 Your Rector is retiring on medical disability.  Before long he will return to this pulpit for one last time to say goodbye to you; he will thank you, and you will wish him God speed on his way.  But now we have to deal with the swirl of emotions that always accompanies loss and change and failure.  There is the sadness that someone you treasure won’t be with you any longer, that Jeff’s truly miraculous recovery was not miraculous enough.  What comes now is confusion and anxiety about what will happen next, about what lies ahead for St. James Parish.  There are the other emotions too, guilt and compassion and anger and relief and fear and worry and frustration and blame – the feelings that are tied to other feelings so tightly that you don’t always know where they are coming from and where they are taking you.  Fourteen months have passed since Jeff Dugan’s accident, and those of you here today who are not visitors have had fourteen  months of living with these emotions.  Now you are at a crossroads, a place where roads meet and go in two directions.  And it is not a good thing to hurry through crossroads; we need to pause and take stock, pause to ask God’s blessing upon the journey, pause to recognize that we are at a place where there is a cross at the crossing, the cross of Christ, present before us to show us that we are not alone. 

 There is also a crossroads in this morning’s Gospel reading, a crossroads not unlike the one before us today.  In this lesson, two processions intersect outside a town called Nain.  One procession is headed into town and is led by Jesus the prophet and teacher from nearby Nazareth.  Jesus is followed by his disciples and a jubilant crowd of folks who have been attracted to Jesus’ bold and novel teaching and by his miracles of healing.  When Jesus’ procession is about to enter the gates of Nain, they see the other procession leaving.  This one is a burial procession, with a widow and men bearing the corpse of her only son.  A wailing crowd of mourners walks with them as they head outside the gates to the burial ground.

 Jesus leads one procession; death leads the other.  One procession bubbles with excitement and promise; the other is heavy with gloom and despair, with sobbing and cries of anguish.  On the outskirts of Nain the two processions come face to face.  There is more than a traffic problem, more than a question of how two crowds can pass each other by on the narrow road.  There is a confrontation of attitude and outlook.  Which is more powerful – despair or hope? It is a question that is as real for Jeff and for you as it was on that road outside Nain. 

 In Nain death has claimed the life of the widow’s only son just as it had claimed the life of her husband.  Death has robbed the widow of any joy and hope.  Nothing lies before her now but loneliness and poverty.  But the procession of death collides with the procession of life.  The widow meets Jesus.  Jesus has compassion on her – he takes her pain and sorrow as his own, and then he touches the coffin and commands, “Young man, I say to you, rise.”  And the boy sits up and begins to speak.  Who has the final word?  It is Jesus who has the final word, not death.  Life defeats death.  Joy comes in the morning.  Good Friday ends, and the light of Easter rises on the horizon.

 There is a similar miracle in the Old Testament reading today, in which Elijah raises the widow of Zarephath’s son.  Elijah stretches himself out on the boy and cries to God, and the boy breathes again and life defeats death.  Now these stories are not just about some dead people who were raised to life a long time ago.  Those miracles of healing, although wonder full in themselves, produce no lasting change in the order of things.  After all, both sons, though restored to life, nevertheless grow old and in the end, they die, like we all will die. 

 Both Bible stories show us that even when it seems that death is all there is, even when the procession is on the way to the cemetery, God is in the midst of it.  God comes to the intersection of life and death and says, “Do not weep,” there is more life ahead.  God’s assurance of new life pours out in Jesus who promises, promises eternal life, promises that he will come and take us to himself, because life and love are eternal.  Even more, God’s assurance of new life pours out for the widow as well, a promise of new life for all who mourn, for all who are lonely and confused and upset and unsure.  At our crossroads stands the cross, a sign of Jesus present in our pain and loss, a sign that Jesus will not leave us while we are here nor will he abandon us in our journey ahead.

 In both stories there is an endearing touch – and one that is a little bewildering as well.  Remember?  In the story of Nain: after Jesus tells the widow not to weep and touches her son back to life, the son begins to speak – just imagine what he has to say!  And then, we are told, Jesus gave the young man to his mother.  Gave him.  Now why would Jesus have to give the boy to his mother??  Surely we would have thought that the mother and son were hugging and laughing and staring and getting each other wet with their tears.  Or were they??  Perhaps the mother was so frozen in terror that Jesus had to give the boy to her and tell her that she wasn’t dreaming.  Sometimes, that is so.  Sometimes when Jesus offers us new life, we can’t believe it.  It seems too good to be true so we don't trust it and we don’t take it, and we are filled with fear like the people of Nain, and the new life, the resurrection, the glory passes us by because we are looking backwards at our loss and not forward at life.  Sometimes we hang on to our grief because that is the only way we can hang on to the one we love; sometimes we hang on to our grief because we are too scared, too naked to be without it.  Sometimes we hang on to our grief because we are looking down and don’t see anything else but our grief.  And it is then, at the crossroads of death and life, that Jesus comes to us and says, Do not weep.  Fear not.

 It is that way for you at St. James today.  Your Rector’s retirement is not the only loss in your lives, I know.  There are widows and widowers here who are lonely too.  Some of you are facing profound loss and unknown futures; some of you are weighed down by the burden of sin.  Some of you wrestle with ethical decisions, wanting to do what is right and not knowing what that is for sure, and not knowing if you are strong enough to do it.  These are the times when we stand at crossroads, and these are the times when Jesus comes to meet us there.  This is true for Jeff Dugan, because God has a plan for Jeff.  This is true for St. James, because God has a plan for this parish.  God is with us.  God offers us new life.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on May 30, 2010, Trinity Sunday

She had been raised by Christian parents; she knew the stories of the faith, but she had never been baptized. She had been studying the Prayer Book Catechism and we met for our first conversation about it.  I started the conversation.  “What questions do you have?” I opened.  She looked embarrassed; her words stumbled, like a child slow to learn. “Well, I know I should know, but the thing I don’t understand is that thing about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit; can you explain it to me?”

My catechumen is not alone.  We name our churches and universities after the Holy Trinity; we have a whole Sunday – today - devoted to this doctrine, but we can’t explain it.  That thing about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit has befuddled theologians for as long as there have been theologians.  The word ‘Trinity’ appears no place in the Bible.  The Prayer Book Catechism says only “The Trinity is one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  

From the beginning people have tried to give an explanation to mystery.  One little boy who wrestled with the question was St. Augustine.  It is said that the saint was walking along the beach one day pondering how God could be three persons and yet one God, when he came upon a boy pouring water into a hole in the sand.  “What are you doing?” Augustine asked.  “I’m pouring the ocean into this hole,” was the reply.  “You can never do that,” scoffed Augustine.  And with the wisdom of an angel, because that’s what the boy was, he responded, “And neither can you, Augustine, ever comprehend the mystery of God.”

 Now Augustine might have saved himself a lot of trouble by playing baseball instead - or whatever little boys played in the fourth century, but apparently the question would not let him go, for when Augustine was a grown up theologian, he wrote of the Trinity as a relationship of love:  God the Father is the Lover, Christ is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the Love that flows between the Father and the Son.  What is important, Augustine said, is the relationship, the love, that connects the persons of God.

 Another theologian named Meister Eckhart saw the Trinity as a relationship of joy and pleasure.  He asked, “Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity?  I will tell you.  In the core of the Trinity, the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son.  The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit.  The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.

 St. Patrick used a shamrock to show that God was like three leaves on one stem, three separate but connected persons in one God, and I even tried my own hand at a Trinitarian analogy when my parents bought their first air conditioner with three buttons labeled ‘Cool’ ‘Fan In’ and ‘Fan Out.’  Aha, I thought, plunging full blown into the heresy of modalism, God is one being with three functions.

 All of us, Augustine, Eckhart, Patrick, and a girl named Hope were trying to answer the question of what God is like.  And that is where the doctrine of the Trinity comes from.  It did not spring full-blown from the pens of theologians or from the meditations of saints.  The idea of the Holy Trinity evolved slowly from the growing experience and understanding of God’s people.

 The doctrine of the Trinity began with the primary experience of someone bigger than we are, a Creator who brought things into being, a power that the Israelites called Yahweh.  From the beginning, Israel claimed that Jahweh is made known in history.  God made things and called them good; God saved Noah from the great flood; and God called Abraham to leave home and become the father of a great nation.  God saved Israel by sending Moses to lead the people through the Red Sea waters.  And so God became known not as a god of a place, not as the god of the Tigris and Euphrates, not as a god of an attribute, like the god of power, but as the God of people named Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In a world of many gods, Israel boldly proclaimed monotheism: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  No more gods of wind and rain, no more tribal deities, Israel had one God and dared to say that theirs was the God of all people and all places and all times. 

And then in the fullness of time when God saw that legalism was supplanting love, that people were trying to follow the rules but forgetting why the rules mattered, God sent Jesus Christ to dwell on earth.  And the people came to see that God loved them enough to live with them in a world that was both frightening and wonder-filled.

 After Jesus died on the cross, the first words spoken were by a Roman soldier.  “Surely this man was the son of God,” the centurion said.  But Jesus’ own followers weren’t sure what they wanted to say about him.  Was he the son of God or was he God?  Was he truly divine and only appeared to be human?  Was he was the holiest of men, but not God?  The greatest sin for Jews was that of idolatry, that of worshipping false gods.  If Jesus were God, that claim would challenge the monotheism that was their faith and their heritage.  But if Jesus were not God, how could he claim to speak God’s word as his own and rise from the dead? 

It took hundreds of years before the great councils of the Church met to capture the mystery in words.  They didn’t try to say who Jesus is as much as they said who Jesus isn’t.  The councils and the creeds established boundaries that said, “You can think within these lines but not outside of them.  You can’t believe that there are two Gods, nor can you believe that Jesus was merely a terrific fellow.  You can’t believe that he was only pretending to be human, because he is both God and man, and it is a mystery how this can be so.”

 The question about Jesus was not the only question in the air.  The disciples knew that they were ordinary men.  Time and again they had failed to grasp what Jesus told them.  They were not brave; they had proved that at the time of Jesus’ arrest.  But these ordinary people found themselves doing extraordinary things.  They found that the healing power of God gave them the power to produce miracles.  They found that they could preach news good enough to win thousands of followers.  Even though Jesus had died and risen and ascended into heaven, they experienced God within them still.  God’s spirit, the holy spirit, they called it.  And the spirit was more than a memory; that spirit was present and powerful; that spirit blew through windows and set people on fire.  And so the people claimed yet another person of the Trinity, the one who made them holy, the Sanctifier.

 That is how the doctrine of the Holy Trinity came to proclaim that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons who have existed from before time and forever as one God, a God of relationship, a God who is not just Love but a God who loves, who creates and heals and make us holy.

 What this means is that if we are made in the image of God, we are made to be in relationship.  This means that relationships are the core of our life together.  This should come as no surprise.  Infants, for example, are made to be cared for.  If infants are not held, not fed, not dandled on the knee, they die, for their physical and emotional survival depends on being known and loved.  Throughout our days, life is a shared experience.  Our habits and skills are taught to us by others; we get a sense of self by seeing ourselves through the eyes of others.  Our worst fears are those of alienation, being separated by death or divorce, having a life so isolated that it doesn’t matter to anybody whether we get up in the morning.  The worst punishment, even for hardened criminals, is solitary confinement.  On the other hand, our best moments are when we connect with each other - when we are hugged, when our work is affirmed and we contribute to the common good, when friendship makes us valuable.  We exist to be in relationship because our Creator is a God of relationship and the highest virtues are forgiveness and reconciliation and care for each other.

 The mystery of the Holy Trinity is more than a dry doctrine.  It tells us that the quality of our country’s relationship with other nations is more important than our power over them.  The mystery of the Holy Trinity tells us that the most important quality of the Church is not the correctness of our theology but our relationships with one another. “By this shall they know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you love one another.”  The mystery of the Holy Trinity tells us that how we connect with each other at St. James is more important than our buildings, our budget, and our programs.

 It is because relationships matter that we care for the poor and the weak.  It is because relationships are holy that the men and women we remember this Memorial Day gave their lives so that we might live in freedom.  It is because relationships matter that the church takes marriage seriously and condemns promiscuity.  It is because we take relationships in the Church seriously that authority is shared and every person valued.  We are not just individuals but a community connected at the very heart of our being, and so competition and rivalry, jealousy and rancor, have no place in the Christian heart.  In short, we are called to care for one another, enrich one another, be faithful to one another, and love one another, because this is what “that thing about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit” really means.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on May 23, 2010, Pentecost 

It was Pentecost; it was fifty days after Jesus’ Resurrection on Easter.  His disciples were all together in one place, but they weren’t in church.  There was no church.  There wasn’t even an idea of the church yet.  There was just a band of faithful disciples, waiting as Jesus had told them to wait, remembering a little, praying a lot, and wondering what would become of them, what would come next.  “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” Jesus had told them.  But they had no idea when that would happen or what it would mean. 

 They were a little “edgy,” as Bishop Curry said to us in his sermon here last Sunday.  They were on the edge, waiting to discern what they were supposed to do, waiting to figure out what was going to happen to them.  Things had been going along just fine when they were following Jesus, until the unthinkable happened and he was crucified.  He had risen as he said, and they had seen him.  He talked with Mary in the garden and broke bread with them in Emmaus, and cooked them a fish breakfast, but things weren’t the same without him, and they didn’t know what to do. 

 All they knew was that they were to wait together, and while they waited, it happened.  Wind and flame filled the room, and the church was born.  We celebrate this birthday of the church this morning with the red that fills our sanctuary, a traditional symbol of the flames that descended over their heads, signs of the elusive and life giving Spirit who comes to fill us with power.  At the same time the Spirit comes to blow all our pre-conceptions aside, to teach us of the incarnate and obstinate Word of God that will not let us rest and be comfortable, but challenges us to move into new places where we have nothing to trust but God-with-us.

 A Pentecost symbol far more dramatic than our red paraments was used in churches in the Middle Ages.  Many of them had a large aperture in the ceiling through which a great disk would be lowered above the people, to the blare of trumpets.  Usually this disk had a blue background with gold rays streaming out from the body of a white dove.  In some places even this drama wasn’t enough, so they went with the real thing and released doves and roses into the nave of the church through the Holy Ghost hole, as it was called.  Some braver churches dropped burning straw through the hole, but unlike the flames described in the Acts reading, this fire didn't hover in tidy tongues over the faithful but fell on them instead.  Symbols can get out of hand.  Christians are not supposed to be burned up, but set on fire by the Spirit.

 We too often forget this – that we are to be inflamed, passionate, burning with faith and hope and love, set on fire by the Spirit so that all things can be made new.  If the church is to be faithful to our founder, all that is unfaithful and pompous and hard and unloving and selfish must be burned to ashes in the very painful process of disclosure and repentance and forgiveness. 

 We are the church.  The church is not someplace to go, not this lovely building, not the Diocesan House in Hartford, not our National Offices at 815 Second Avenue.  The church is not the body of teaching in our catechism, nor is it our clergy.  The church is us, the people of God, frail and muddled, but led and inspired by the Holy Spirit.  We are the church whether we are here in these pews or on the golf course or sitting at an office desk.  We became the church 2000 years ago, and we continue becoming the church of God today when we plant vegetables to feed the poor and when children like Ella Peer and Sienna X come to be baptized and we celebrate weddings and welcome newcomers and through these things are given new hope and new responsibility.  We continue becoming the church when we mourn the death of companions like Donald Moss and remember the promise that to God’s faithful people, life is changed, not ended, by death, and we grieve together and support each other through our tears.  

 If I had founded this church, I wouldn’t have left it in our hands, but God has.  And God says to us, “I leave my church in your care.  I chose you like I chose the young people who were just confirmed this month, Meg Brookman, Hannah Fiske, Eric Geuser, Haley Root, Michael Rosenthal, Karen Smith, Amelia Mason, and

 Like I chose you, I chose my twelve apostles.  Like you they did some unbelievably faithful things, and like you they messed up over and over again.  But that’s the way I made you, and I do not leave you to do it on your own, for I send my Holy Spirit to strengthen and guide you.”

 What Jesus calls us to do is to be open to the power of that Spirit, to see God’s hand at work in the world about us, even when it works in unexpected and unconventional ways, because that’s the way it usually happens.  I was recently told a wonderful story that happened in a conservative Episcopal church that still administers the Holy Communion only to those who have been confirmed, a church that still has the altar against the east wall so the celebrant faces away from the people.  It was to this place that a grandfather brought his grandson, a little boy with Down’s syndrome, who squirmed his way out of his grandfather’s arms and escaped down the aisle.  The grandfather wasn’t too worried because this parish felt like his family, and he trusted that someone in the pews ahead would scoop the little tike up and hold him fast.  But this child knew where he wanted to go, and so he made his way to the foot of the altar where the priest was breaking the bread.  As the celebrant turned around, what did he see but small hands stretched out waiting to receive a mystery the boy could not understand, but what he did understand was that this was his family table.  And so the priest bent down and carefully placed a wafer into the boy’s hands.  It was a holy moment, but it wasn’t over because the Holy Spirit was not through yet.  For after the child consumed the sacrament, he turned to the congregation and beckoned with his arms.  “C’mon,” he said.  “C’mon.  C’mon.’

 We need to be a church with hearts and minds open enough to shout “C’mon.  C’mon” to the whole world, no matter what language they speak, no matter where they come from, Jew or Greek, slave or free.  We need to trust that God has big plans for St. James Church, to make us a light to the nations, a center to serve the world in Christ’s name.  We can put aside our edginess and uncertainty about what lies ahead because we know what lies ahead: a challenging and rich future together, reconciling the world to Christ, led by the One who loves us and whose Spirit dwells with us – always.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on May 9, 2010, the Sixth Sunday of Easter 

 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” 

The Dow fell this week.  Oh it rebounded, but then it fell again, and who knows what will happen next?  There was another home invasion nearby this week.  Four people in East Hartford thought they were safe at home; they weren’t: a shooting spree killed three and wounded one.  Hartford’s Mayor Eddie Perez is getting ready for his trial on bribery and larceny charges, but he has found time to write a budget that raises taxes on small businesses, and coffee shop owners may have to close their doors.  A wonderful woman named Grace Philips died in Farmington this week, and her family is filled with grief.  They get some peace from treasuring her love and from their faith that, as the Burial Office says, “To your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended.”  But they also knows anguish over this death, and God’s peace seems elusive.  Jesus may have left it with us, but sometimes we can’t feel it. 

Those who are fearful, those whose hearts are broken find it hard to believe that “God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.”  You have heard such platitudes, haven’t you?  I have said them myself.  “Everything will be all right.  He’s better off now that his suffering is over.  You always have your memories.”  But in the midst of life’s tragedies, such pious pronouncements fall flat.  When the disease is terminal, when the divorce is final, when the last pay check has been cashed, when the stock market crashes, we need to believe in something bigger and better.  We need to believe Jesus’ words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.  MY peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives, give I unto you.” 

The peace that the world gives always falls short.  If peace is the absence of conflict or pain, then peace is an impossible dream.  Even in the face of the great news that President Obama is negotiating a nuclear cooperation pact with Russia, we worry because Russia is building nuclear facilities in Iran and is still in violation of the cease-fire agreement with Georgia, so our peace is uneasy and uncertain.  If peace is the avoidance of struggle and escape from pain, the world assures us that we can find it, find peace, if we pop a pill, take a drink, buy a car, watch TV, or go on vacation.  But when we do those things, even if they bring a moment’s peace, that peace is fleeting, and we get frustrated and anxious.  

Those who know the peace of Christ, however, live in the real world with all its conflict and pain, and they face that conflict with the confidence that God is present and powerful in spite of it all.  Christ’s peace comes in the middle of defeat.  Only a week after his crucifixion, Jesus came to his disciples bearing his wounds and proclaimed the same words we heard this morning.  “Peace be with you.”  It is as if he were saying, “See, here are my hands and my feet, marked by the signs of betrayal and mockery, by spiritual desolation and by death itself.  Here I am standing among you as living proof that God’s power is greater than any evil, therefore, be not afraid.” 

In the valley of the shadow of death, nothing can save us but the peace of God.  Alcohol, busyness, acquiring possessions, revenge – none of these bring peace.  We can get help from support groups, therapy, the passing of time, and financial bailouts, but none of these can give the true peace of mind and heart and spirit that is at the core of our desire.  A long time ago, St. Augustine said it another way, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” 

I was told the story of a family of three who lived in London in World War II.  After a bombing raid that killed the mother, the father and son searched frantically in the rubble to find her body.  After the son recognized the futility of the work, he stopped and looked up at the night sky.  The father stopped digging too and took his son’s hand and stood crying.  And then the boy pointed up and said, “It’s going to be all right, father, “God is hanging out the stars again.” 

God’s stars say that peace can come despite great loss.  God’s peace promises that there is a purpose to this world, that tragedy does not have the last word, that we are in God’s hands even when we are wrenched by grief.  God’s peace passes all understanding so it is a peace that reigns even in a world where young people die in Iraq and where our church is debilitated by tensions about sexuality, and where we wonder whether the Mayor of our city is telling the truth.   

So how can some people walk in peace while others become prisoners of their own rancor and jealousy and vengeance?  How can some people see stars in a dark sky while others allow a traffic jam to ruin their day? 

The answer, I think, comes in the introduction to today’s Gospel reading, which reading itself is the answer to a disciple’s question: “Lord, why do you reveal yourself to us and not to the rest of the world?”  As we listen to Jesus’ response, the answer to the question becomes painfully obvious.  The problem is not God’s choosiness but our own.  Jesus tells us to forgive – and we insist on holding grudges.  Jesus tells us not to be afraid – and we bind ourselves up in fear.  I have seen it this week and maybe you have seen things like this too – a mother who refuses to go to her son’s table for Mother’s Day because she’s angry at his behavior, a man in the middle of a divorce who won’t submit information on time because she didn’t get hers in on time and so they both are mired in their anger and unable to move on to a new life ahead. 

God chooses to come and dwell where there is room for love.  “Those who love me will keep my word,” Jesus says, “and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  Jesus’ promise is the foundation of a petition for healing in our Prayer Book, “So fill my heart with faith in your love that with calm expectancy, I may make room for your power to possess me.”  God needs room in our hearts to dwell there, and when our narrowness and fear and hatred and selfishness get in the way, we live without peace.   

At the end of the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe proposed the idea of Mother’s Day as a reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War.  Mrs. Howe believed that women had a responsibility to shape their societies and so she wrote this Proclamation:  

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts….
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience. 

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.  

Let [us] meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let [us] then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing … the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

 In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women … may be appointed … to promote the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

 Hmmm.  It seems that the florist industry and Hallmark cards may have diluted Julia Ward Howe’s high goals just a little bit.  But we mothers know that there is something more important to Mother’s Day than azalea bushes and going out to dinner with the kids.  Jesus taught us what it is.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.”  May all of us who are mothers and that is all of us who give birth – birth to the things of the earth and the policies of this nation and the spirit in our neighborhoods, let all of us then, make room for God’s power to possess us so that we may live as children of God and be people of peace.

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 Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on May 2, 2010, The Fifth Sunday of Easter

 “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

 Surprisingly, it is these words of Jesus that have come to my mind as I have followed the story of the oil spill threatening our coast.  While reading the distressing news of gallons of oil pouring into the sea, I have remembered another spill, not that from the Exxon supertanker Valdez more than twenty years ago, but that from a little shrimp boat called the Pathfinder.  It was in April of 1984 that the Pathfinder was grounded by high seas off Siesta Key, Florida.  Hundreds of tourists watched the seventy-three foot vessel, listing badly and carrying about 7000 gallons of diesel fuel, as she sank lower and lower into the water.   

As always, people speculated about the cause of the disaster – perhaps a navigation error, a drunken captain, or the most popular view: economic greed.  The predominant assumption was that the Pathfinder had edged too close to shore in order to harvest a rich bed of shrimp.  As the speculation and the spectating continued, two tug boats tried to dislodge the Pathfinder, and a salvage vessel tried to pump her fuel into tanks.  The rescue was unsuccessful.  The fuel leaked, and traces of it are still there today, hidden in crevices and under rocks. 

The cause of the disaster eventually became known.  On Palm Sunday of that year, a young girl, a tourist from the Midwest, had swum out into the Gulf, unaware of the strong undertow.  When she cried for help, the shrimp boat veered in to rescue her.  The crew pulled the girl from the water and she went home the next day.  The Pathfinder did not.  For saving a life, a ship was lost, along with thousands of dollars in salvage and insurance costs, along with the time and effort of the Coast Guard and police, and traffic jams that extended for miles. 

The Pathfinder chose a course that burdened taxpayers, damaged her owners, and led to disgrace.  She also chose a course that led to life.  Loving one another is a high risk business, against which there is no insurance.  But the Gospel commands us to love despite this, despite misunderstanding or burden or loss.  We are to love one another as Christ loves us.  We are commanded to love even when it is inconvenient or embarrassing or expensive.  As Christians, we are commanded to show our love for the needy by doing more than sending a check to the church.  We are commanded to greet the folks in the pews beside us even when we don’t know their names.  We are commanded to visit the bereaved even when we are tongue tied and awkward and don’t to know what to say.  We are commanded to come here to worship Almighty God even if the sun is shining on the golf course.  As a nation, we are commanded to seek peace even when others would wage war, to care for the poor, even when they don’t care for themselves very well and to vote for those who would care for all of God’s world and not just the little part of it where we live.   

Jesus loved that way.  He gave his disciples the Law of love at a time when he knew the depths of deception and disloyalty.  Look when it happened.  The new commandment was spoken on the night before Jesus died, right after Judas left to betray him and right before Peter’s faithless denial.  In the few moments between these treacheries, Jesus made the most powerful statement he could to his little flock: “A new commandment I give you … love one another.”  Not a new choice or a new guideline or a new goal, but a new command. 

We are commanded to love as Christ loves, sacrificially, compassionately, faithfully, and specifically.  Godly love is not blind, as songwriters would have it, but open-eyed.  We are commanded to love others not as we imagine or want or hope them to be, but as they are, with all their quirks and all their defects.  That is the way Christ loves us, even when, or maybe especially when, we lust or cheat or die from AIDS.  Our Lord gave us not another commandment but a new one that was the greatest commandment of all:  Love one another. 

We are left only with the question of how to do so, of how to love our enemies, how to treat terrorists with compassion and care, how to love those who threaten and terrify us.  I cannot believe that God commands a warm fuzzy acceptance of evil and of those who are evil because the Christ of the Gospels was not a first century flower child or a smarmy preacher tolerating injustice and ignoring sin.  This was a man who overturned tables in the temple and cursed the fig tree and preached that sinners would not see salvation.  Christ’s love contains anger and judgment as well as acceptance.  We need both.  Tough love is Godly love too. 

Jesus did not promise us that love would heal all the wounds of the world.  Jesus commanded us to love despite the wounds, to love in a world where there will always be sin and chaos and destruction, to love not in order to remove the pain from the world but to banish it from our hearts.  He commanded us to love because not to love is the worst pain of all.  Love anything and your heart will surely be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact, you have to lock it up.  It will be unbreakable, but it will also be impenetrable, and you will be alone. 

The anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked what she thought to be the first sign that a community had been formed.  I would have expected her answer to be shared tools or a common language or huts built close together.  But she said that the first sign we have of a community’s formation is a mended fracture in a leg bone, a femur that has healed.  For then, she said, you can be sure that there was someone there to care for the sick, to tend their fields and feed them and support them until they could walk again.  It is our degree of care for the weak, said Mead, which makes us whole.   

Like the crew of that little shrimp boat, we are all commanded to listen for each other’s cries and to rescue each other, even when the cost is great.  Christ’s new commandment is new because it does not chart the course for us.  It does not give us laws, like Leviticus does, about how much grain to leave for the hungry after the harvest.  The new commandment tells us only that if we love, we will feed the world so that someday there will be no hungry people.  The new commandment does not tell us to welcome the stranger, as Exodus does; it tells us only that the cost of building walls to separate us from our brothers and sisters in need is greater than the cost of welcoming them into our family.  There are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Jesus gave us only one new commandment of love.  This new commandment commissions us to find the path for ourselves and presupposes that we will make mistakes, for finding a path means taking wrong turns and getting lost.  Like that shrimp boat, we can’t always expect thanks or understanding of our motivation, and we may even get stuck on a sand bar or two. 

 I imagine that there is probably somebody in each of our lives today who is difficult to love – maybe it is a partner who has betrayed you or a parent who has hurt you or someone who threatens you or someone who ignores you.   This is why Jesus commands us to love instead of asking us to do so.  He knows how hard it is to love sometimes, and he demands it anyway.

The Good News is that along with Jesus’ command comes a promise.  If you love those who persecute you, if you are a pathfinder seeking the road of love, you can be sure that the God of Love will be with you and sustain you on your way – and you can be sure that it will be the best way you have ever traveled.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on April 25, 2010, The Fourth Sunday of Easter 

“My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me.”

 When asked, “What church do you belong to?” most of you would probably answer, “St. James, Farmington.”  And some of you would naturally be referring to this building.  This building has been around since 1898, when it was built by Henry and Charles Mason from our local stone.  This building is important because it is where we worship, and because it shelters us and holds our stories and is a sign of our heritage, because some of us paint it and clean it and weed the gardens here.  But if this building were to blow away in the next storm, St. James would still exist.  We would be out there saying our prayers and celebrating the Holy Eucharist with somebody’s bread and wine and consoling each other and probably fussing about who would serve on the next Long Range Planning Committee.

 When asked, “What church do you belong to?” some of you would answer with your denomination; you would say that yours is the Episcopal Church and not the Baptist or Greek Orthodox one.  It is important to value our Anglican heritage, our sacraments and our history.  It is important to know that our church does not have a doctrinal statement which members have to adopt, but instead a Book of Common Prayer.  Our identity is in our worship; what makes us Episcopalians is that we say the same prayers.  But our identity is not in the Prayer Book because (remember?) Prayer Books get revised.  

Some would say that our church is our people, that without us there would be no church, but that’s not really true either, because there are others who will come after us, and St. James will likely still stand after we are long gone.

 So I propose that what makes St. James a church is not what we do or where we meet or even who we are, but whose sheep we are.  Jesus didn't say that any particular building or doctrine or people was the way, the truth, or the life.  He said that he was.  He said that he was our shepherd, and that it was by following him, by living the life of love that he showed us, that we become his flock. 

 The flock to which Christ calls us is not an institution but a community.  The early Christians took their community very seriously.  It is where they prayed and where they took care of each other, and no one was ever in need because they shared everything they had with each other.  My strongest experiences of the grace and power of our Lord have all been in Christian community.  It is through the people of faith who have taught me and loved me and nurtured me and forgiven me that the Gospel has taken root in me.  It was through Aunt Mabel teaching me my prayers and through Bob Sullivan’s ministry to poor immigrants and through Eleanor Weseloh’s integrity and through Pat Staebler’s faithful dying, that my faith has been nurtured and grown.  It is through seeing my husband’s faithfulness to God and your faithfulness too, that my faith has been strengthened.  When I say that I am an Episcopalian, I don’t mean that I am a member of an institution but a member of a community of faith. 

As an institution, the church exists as a purveyor of religious services to people who come to be inspired, consoled, advised, and taught and to have the various occasions of their lives blessed by clergy, to be hatched, matched, and dispatched, as they say.  In return, these Christians usually contribute to the upkeep of the institution so that the church can continue to provide its services. 

On the other hand, in a Christian community people’s primary loyalty is not to the clergy or the building, but to the community, because the community is where they share their lives.  A Christian community is a place where people have different ideas about theology and the budget and decorating the parish hall.  Members of that community use their strengths in God’s service and the gifts of each bolster the weaknesses of each.  A community makes demands on us because it is a place where people get involved, feel ownership, accept responsibility, celebrate their history and wonder about their future.  A Christian community is a place where people disagree and sometimes they hurt each other but they stay together because, since they all belong to the Body of Christ, they can disagree with each other and still love each other. 

St. James community is facing some challenges.  While you are awaiting your Rector’s recovery from a serious accident, we have welcomed newcomers who don’t know him and don’t know us.  So I ask you to look around at the peace and see if you know your neighbor’s’ name.  If not, ask them, and greet them by name the next time you see them.  We have a deficit budget, and our Vestry is managing to make it work, but we need to make it balance.  We have eight young people who knelt before our new Bishop yesterday and confirmed the promises made at their Baptism.  We need to engage them in the life of this parish – and start by getting to know them too.

 Living in Christian community is not an easy thing to do.  We like having a Good Shepherd who will call us by name and lay down his life for us, but we don’t really like being in the flock very much because some sheep wander off and get themselves in trouble – and get to be black sheep.  But the problem is that sheep belong in a flock.  And so when we wander off, the Good Shepherd leaves ninety-nine of us behind to go and rescue the one of us who has strayed, and when the Shepherd finds the stray, he brings it home to join the others, because sheep belong in a sheepfold.   

It is through Jesus Christ – and only through Jesus Christ – that we can enter God’s Kingdom, but we have to be careful what we mean by that.  The temptation is to look smug once we are inside the gate and to find the idea of being in the flock more attractive if we know that the black sheep are going to be left outside the gate.  The temptation is to keep the sheepfold small and exclusive, but we are not Christ’s Church if we do that.

 What does it mean to be the church?  It means that we are a community of Christians who try to follow the Good Shepherd and care for each other while we are on our way.  It means that when we are tempted to behave like the gatekeepers of God’s Kingdom, we remember that God sent Jesus Christ to do that for us, to be a Savior who is always seeking sheep who are lost and trying to convince us that the Kingdom is big enough to hold us all.  Jesus’ arms stretch out to all his sheep, and most of them are not card-carrying members of the church.  But Jesus says that they are HIS sheep and that he will bring them into the fold anyway because he is on his way to his Father, and his Father’s will is that there be one flock with one shepherd.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on April 18, 2010, The Third Sunday of Easter 

This is a day of celebration and great joy for the families of Sienna and Ella who have been baptized this day, and it is a day of celebration for our parish family as well as we welcome two new members into our midst.  But tomorrow will be quieter.  People will go back to work, back to paying bills and cooking dinner and Sienna and Ella will play with their toys.

It was like that in today’s Gospel story too.  It was late on Easter Sunday, which for Jews was like our Monday.  It was the day after the Sabbath, a time when folks got back to ordinary life.  For at least two people, it was a time of confusion and sorrow.  Their hopes had been nailed to the cross with Jesus, and their hopes had died.  Jesus had made great promises, great claims, and they had believed that just maybe he was the Messiah.  But now he was dead.  Would Jesus’ life or his death make any difference now?  Of course, there were the rumors about the tomb being empty.  Some women had come back just after sunrise filled with strange stories.  But rumors are rumors, and men don’t always believe women’s stories.  So for at least two of the disciples, there was nothing left to do but to get out of town.

Cleopas and his unnamed companion walked away from Jerusalem, walked away from the empty cross and the empty tomb.  They were looking at death, not looking for life, and the emptiest place of all was their hearts.  They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel.  But now Jesus was dead, Rome was still in power, and the people were still suffering.  Nothing had changed.

The lament of these two wayfarers on their way to Emmaus is surely ours as well.  Just two weeks ago we celebrated Easter, but the world is still full of crime and poverty, and soldiers and civilians are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.   The Vatican is criticized for doing and not doing what is right.  Hartford’s mayor is being tried for corruption.  So we ask, along with Cleopas and his friend, what difference does Jesus make?  If he is the redeemer of the world, why do people kill each other and use drugs and break promises?  Why is there still so much injustice?  In short, the world’s supposed to be redeemed, why does it look so unredeemed?

Like the apostles, we don’t know where to go and what to do when events turn out so differently from our expectations, when our hopes are dashed.  Those two apostles in the Gospel story went to Emmaus.  It was no place in particular; we can’t even find it for sure on a map today.  All we know is that it was seven miles way, seven miles away from a situation that had become unbearable, incomprehensible, and painfully sad.

There isn’t one of us who has not gone to Emmaus.  Emmaus can be a movie theater or a shopping mall, it may be watching American Idol or reading a supermarket novel or rearranging the living room furniture one more time.  Emmaus is where we go when we discover that the world holds nothing sacred, that even the bravest and holiest die, that even the noblest ideals can come to nothing.  Emmaus is where we go to try to escape failure, loss, and bewilderment. 

All of the Easter stories about Jesus appearing to people after his death are odd, and what is most odd about them is how simple they are, how little fanfare there is in them.  They aren’t at all like the Christmas stories where stars blaze through the skies and angel choirs sing and kings come bearing fabulous gifts.  There are but two men walking down a dusty road to a town of no importance.  And suddenly they heard footsteps approaching them and they are joined by a stranger.

They don’t recognize him at first, and because it is late when they reach Emmaus, they persuade the stranger to have supper with them.  It is only when he takes the bread and breaks it that they know who he is.   But as soon as the moment comes it passes:  Jesus vanishes out of their sight.

Much as they would have given to have Jesus stay, they can’t nail him down.  And that’s how it always is:  we can never nail him down, even if the nails we use are real iron nails and the thing we nail him to is a cross.  Jesus comes unexpectedly out of nowhere, and maybe we recognize him and maybe we don’t but if we do, our lives are never the same again.

It seems that Jesus comes to us in the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable.  That is how Christ appears in all of the Easter stories.  Even the dramatic story of Paul that was recounted in the first lesson happened as Paul was walking along the road to Damascus.  Mary waits at the empty tomb weeping and turns around to find a gardener who calls her by name and turns out to be Jesus.  Thomas hides in a locked house, filled with doubts and questions and fears, and he looks up to see Christ pointing to his wounded hands and side.  Peter docks his boat after a night without fish on the lake and there on the shore is a charcoal grill filled with fish and a familiar figure inviting him to breakfast.  And then there are the two men at Emmaus who invite a stranger to dinner and recognize him in the breaking of the bread. 

Sacred moments, the moments of miracles, are usually like that, everyday moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only a gardener, a stranger on the road, an ordinary meal.  But if we look with all our hearts, and listen with all of our imagination what we may see is Jesus himself.  What we may hear is a voice somewhere deep within us saying that there is a purpose in this life, a purpose for our life, whether we can understand it now or not.

Someday Ella and Sienna may well ask if Jesus is real. Or how he can be real if we can’t see him, and in all honesty we will have to say that we have no proof.  But in place of proof we have 2000 years of witnesses, starting with the men on the road to Emmaus, and we have something more.  We have the witness of our own lives, the times when we have recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread even if only for a moment or two.  And these are the stories we owe to Sienna and Ella because they are stories of Christ at work in our lives.

They happened when we heard a voice urging us to forgiveness when all we want is vengeance, when a holy spirit opened our hearts to charity when we had other plans.  They happened when we got lost on life’s journey and followed what we thought was the right way – and it was, and we found that our hearts burned within us. 

Christ came to walk beside the men on the road to Emmaus, and Christ comes to walk alongside us too.  He comes; he comes because he loves us, and then he waits for us to invite him to stay.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday

  At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the Easter service begins when the Bishop raps at the great West doors with his heavy wooden staff.  The doors are flung open in a dramatic representation of Jesus bursting forth from the tomb, and the Bishop then begins the liturgy from outside the doors.  In this age of modern technology, since all the folks inside the vast church can’t hear him, the Bishop is wired for sound.  Now it probably won’t happen again, for it has already happened – as the Bishop was struggling to find the switch for his wireless mike somewhere in his vestment pockets, his voice boomed through the church.  “This is awkward.  This is really awkward.”

 Easter is pretty awkward too.  We really don’t know what resurrected body of Christ means, or what it means for us.  And so we try to explain it with images of chicks pecking their way out of eggs and tulips pushing their way through the earth.  But it’s got to be more than that.  Awkward or not, we wouldn’t have needed Easter if we could have grasped God’s meaning by looking at a daffodil bulb.

 From the beginning, it was awkward to deal with Jesus.  His story begins with an inconvenient pregnancy, a birth far from home, a strange star in the sky, shepherds leaving their sheep, and wise men coming from the East and threatening the political system.  When he was twelve, Jesus embarrassed the priests of the temple by knowing more than they did. And then he kept preaching the good news to the poor.  He talked about freeing captives and loving your enemies.  And since it was very awkward for the authorities to have him around, they trumped up some charges and had him killed.

 The disciples were disheartened and confused by his crucifixion.  They wept at the cross, prepared his body for the grave, and tried to accept the finality of it all, to pick up their lives where they had left them and make sense of their dashed hopes.  But to their great astonishment, Jesus came back from the grave, and it was – well, it was awkward, for when they had buried Jesus in the sepulcher, they had buried some other things with him, things they didn't want to look at any more, like their self-centered quarrels about who was the greatest, like their unfaithfulness and their denial and their cowardice.  It was really very awkward when Jesus came back to life and they had to meet Him face to face, the one whom they had betrayed and forsaken.

 The disciples didn't know it, but their troubles were just beginning.  Risen from the dead?  All heaven could break loose.  The Kingdom of God might just come.  We might have to love our enemies.  We might have to turn our cheek instead of fighting back.  We might have to work for justice – and that might mean putting our money where our mouth is and paying more taxes so that the poor can have health care like we do.  What’s more, if Jesus is out of the tomb then God is at work everywhere, in the favelas of Rio and the slums of Hartford, in prisons and red-light districts too, for the Risen Christ, I promise you, does not stay inside churches.

 No one knows what happened inside the empty tomb, because no one was there.  The disciples arrived after the fact, and so have we.  And when they arrived, they didn't find Jesus there, only his grave clothes.  Now I suppose Jesus could have stayed sitting there, all pink and healthy, so that the disciples could come and see the miracle for themselves.  But that is not what he did because our Risen Lord’s business is not among the dead but among the living, and that made it decidedly awkward for the disciples, because they couldn’t just return to their same old lives. 

 It is awkward having Christ loose like this, awkward for the disciples and for us.  The self-made man thinks that he has made it, and with it have come a boat and private schools for his kids and what he calls a cushion of comfort.  But once the Risen Lord comes into his life, he is discovering that comfort is not what he wants or what he needs.  He wants to be useful, not comfortable, and he wants to be loved more than admired.  It is awkward when God gives him a change to pour himself out, to give himself away, to share what he has in order to share who he is – for he might have to sacrifice that cushion he calls comfort.

 It is awkward for the person who sees herself, sees himself, as the prey of an abuser, when they are is faced with God’s promise of new life, for victims may not choose to stay victims in God’s Kingdom.  And if Christ’s Resurrection brings hope, they can no longer give up and cringe and meekly accept their lot.

 It is awkward when we Christians see our children sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill other people’s children.  We are trying to protect ourselves against terrorism, but in doing so, we are bringing more terror to this world, and the One who rose from the dead said that he rose for ALL people, that there’s no such thing as homeland security because God’s home is everywhere.

 It is awkward having Jesus around.  Had he been entombed for eternity, we could have concentrated on following God’s law.  We know what God’s Laws are, for they are written in the Bible.  But the Risen Christ invades the text and calls us to more than the Law, asks us about abortion and private property, about homosexuality and stem cell research, and about gambling and bullying.  There are no laws but the Law of Love, he says, and it is up to us to do the loving.

 It is awkward trying to run a business after Easter.  You know how to make a profit, but it comes at the expense of your employees.  You’ve got a great ad campaign, but you know that you are creating a need, not meeting a need, and you also know that your company is making jobs for the unemployed.  Where is God in all of this?   In the economy or in the corporation?  in the stockholder or in the consumer?  Once loosed from the tomb, the Risen Christ will not let us escape from the questions.

 It is awkward when you want to sleep in on Sunday morning, when the lure of coffee and the newspapers rings louder than the church bells.  Awkward when the Lord says, “This is my day; remember to keep it holy.”  From then on, you can’t feel quite as comfortable when you snuggle back into bed. 

Even death becomes awkward when you start believing that it isn’t the end.  I stood at the bedside of a woman who said that it was time to go, that she was ready to go.  She was a woman who trusted God’s promises and a woman who loved hymns, and so she wanted us to sing some with her.  As her granddaughter picked up a Hymnal and started leafing through it, the woman’s voice found her own tune.  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true; I’m half crazy over the love of you…”  And that music was a hymn, if a hymn is something that celebrates life and love and goodness and God’s claim that death is not the end after all.

 It is awkward all right, but there is nothing smooth or graceful about dancing on death’s grave – and that is what Easter is all about.  Think of it this way.  Think of it as a contra dance or a square dance or a line dance or a hula dance where you don’t know the steps, but somebody grabs you by the hand, and before you know it, your feet are tapping and you are doing do-si-dos and suddenly you are part of it all and it doesn’t feel awkward any more because you are dancing.

 Most of come to church on Easter hoping for Good News, for family ties that bind, for music that sets the soul astir – and what we get instead is a risen Jesus who is risky business.  He expects us to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty for somebody else’s children, to become amazing grace to the poor and the forgotten.  He expects us to laugh because to laugh is to see that death never has the last word.  It is decidedly awkward, but it is the only way to have life. 

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on April 1, 2010, Maundy Thursday

It was late on the night before Jesus would walk to the cross, and foreboding filled the air.  Only a few hours later, Jesus would pray so hard at Gethsemane that blood would pour off his body along with his sweat.  It was the night of his Last Supper, his last chance to be with the disciples before the soldiers came and laid the thorns on his brow and the cross on his shoulders.  He had no time left to teach the disciples he loved, and the truth was, they needed teaching, for they didn't get it yet.  Of the twelve who were at the table with him, Judas would betray him for thirty pieces of silver, and Peter would deny him before the cock crowed, and the other ten had missed his point.  They hadn’t understood the Good News of God’s abundant and abiding love for them; they were still trying to get to heaven the hard way by following the law.

Jesus worried about them, worried about how to sustain them after he was gone.  And so what he did on this night, on the first Maundy Thursday was what we all do when the end is near, when we fear that we have very little time left.  Jesus tried to teach his disciples all the things that they had not quite understood.  He had tried sermons and parables; he had spoken straightforwardly and symbolically, but now he was up against the clock, sort of like you are when your first-born child is leaving for college in the morning and you want to teach them everything they need to know about doing their laundry and balancing their checkbook and how you will never stop loving them no matter what.  Jesus was up against the clock sort of like we are when the nurse comes into the room and says “They are ready for you down in surgery,” and you turn to your spouse and want to profess your love and note where the insurance papers are and you know that everything’s going to be all right, and you also know that anything could go wrong.  Jesus was up against the clock like that; he knew that the hour of his death was coming, so he had to show the disciples what he hadn’t managed to tell them.  He reached across the table and took bread, took a simple thing that they would always have at with them.  He took the staff of life and blessing it, he filled it with his life. “This is my body which is given for you,” he said, and then he broke it, as he would be broken upon the cross, broken to be shared.  He showed them that he was their companion (from the Latin cum panis, with bread), and did what companions do – break bread together.  He took the cup of wine then, and they saw the cup of celebration and he knew it was his life’s spirit poured out for them.  “This is my blood,” he said, and he poured out the wine so it could be drunk from one cup because they were one family at one table.  “Do this in remembrance of me,” he said. Do this and you will never be alone, for I am with you always.  Whenever you take and bless and break bread I will feed you with my very life, and whenever you drink from this cup, it will be my life’s blood that warms you and fills you with my presence.

And then … and THEN … filled with the sacramental body and blood of their Lord, celebrating the Passover on this holiest of nights, what did the disciples do? They argued over who was the greatest among them.

Jesus had one last chance to teach them that in his Kingdom, the one who is greatest is the one who serves. He gave them one last commandment: to love one another as he had loved them. But commandments are one thing and following them is another.  Jesus had to show them that service was not drudgery but glory, not servitude but freedom.

So he took a towel and wrapped it around himself and stooped down to wash their feet.

In that washing Jesus taught them, and Jesus teaches us, that we are needy and dirty and in need of cleansing from the pride and arrogance that keep us from loving each other.  While they squabbled about who was the greatest among them, Jesus showed them that they were all great.  They were great enough for Jesus to be born among them, to heal them, to eat his last meal with them, to pray for them without ceasing, to tell them stories over and over so that they would remember what he taught them.  They were great enough for him to wash their dusty feet.

There was a price involved for the disciples, for the price of being loved is being known.  In order to accept Jesus’ tender ministrations, they had to show him their unwashed feet and they had to show him their dirty jealousies and shabby fears.  In order for us to let God cleanse the most shameful parts of ourselves, we have to expose those things that we cannot bear to show, even to this greatest of all Lovers.

We are invited to that same privilege this night.  Jesus says, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done to you.”  Go and serve one another.  But first bring yourselves that you may be cleansed and forgiven.  And you do not have to ask which among you is the greatest for you are all precious in my sight.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on March 28, 2010, Palm Sunday

  Jerusalem was in the mood for celebration on that first Palm Sunday.  The streets were jammed with people who had come from the four corners of the world for the Passover feast.  The Holy City was in a frenzy of activity, voices a little louder because of the crowds, children scampering around, people gathering to greet each other.  There was heightened expectation, talk of Messiah in the air, some rumors about a rabbi from Galilee.  They knew their Scripture, this crowd.  They knew that Zechariah had prophesied, “Behold your King is coming to you, humble and mounted on an ass,” and then they saw him, the one called Jesus, and behold, he was entering the city on a beast, just like the prophet had said.

 Some spread their garments on the ground; some cut palm branches and made a carpet of them.  “Hosanna,” they cried.  “Hosanna to the Son of David!”  It was a parade, and everybody loves a parade.  Sometimes it doesn’t even matter why you’re there, you just get caught up in the fun and excitement of it all.  But Jesus didn't respond to the cheering; he didn’t wave like a politician or shout out his greetings.  He rode on silently knowing that this was no football game; he had told them that  , but they didn’t believe him; he had told them that this journey would lead to his death.

 And so the crowd turned on him; they didn’t want to follow anybody to their death.  Give us Barabbas, they say, give us a zealot to revolt against the Roman occupation.  And so the choice is made to release Barabbas, and Jesus’ punishment was executed, pounding nail into flesh as he lay there to be mocked, to be scorned, and then to die.

 The scene is replayed over and over when we wave our palm branches around and then don't come back until the Easter lilies deck the chancel next week, when we move from today’s triumphal procession to next week’s Resurrection party and forget that the first procession leads to a cross on Calvary before it leads to Easter.  Could you not watch with me an hour, he asks, and we say no, we’re too busy getting ready for Easter.  Could you not watch with me one hour, he asks.  Could you not come for healing prayers on Wednesday and for the foot washing and the altar stripping on Maundy Thursday? And hear my last words on Good Friday?  Oh, we’d like to, but the relatives are coming and we have to get the eggs dyed.  Could you not come and remember why I got nailed to the cross?  Well, we’re not eager to do that, Lord, to hear about the pain and the blood, and so we walk away when the pageantry is over and before the hard work begins.

 It is a funny thing, but when you are dying, the important thing isn’t the parade but the cross.  You want somebody to listen to your fears and tell you that your life matters, not that every little thing’s gonna be all right.  It is a funny thing, but it is through Jesus’ death, ugly as it is, that life is offered to us and hope is poured into our hearts.  What matters is that our God loves us enough to die for us.  What matters is that God sent Jesus Christ to hang beside us on all the crosses of our living and all the crosses of our dying too.  What matters isn’t the party but that somebody loves us when the party’s over.

 I have watched people face death.  I have watched the anguish of those that die and the pain of those who have to see them die.  And I have also seen them gather together to support each other and believe for each other and hold each other up and dare to remember their faith in Christ’s promises.  And then it happens that the unbearable pain becomes bearable and they remember that they are not alone, that there are two on the cross, because in our living and in our dying, Jesus promises that we will never ever be alone.

 “Could you not watch one hour with me?” asks Jesus.  Could you not be there for the crucifixion as well as the parade?  God didn't ask the crowds to rescue Jesus from the cross, just to go with him and wait with him.  And that is what God asks of us.

 God asks those of us who come to this parade this morning to keep on walking to Calvary, not so much to do something but to be something – to be present.  And maybe God asks us that so that we can learn how to be Christ’s presence at the crosses of today: to listen to the bereaved, to sit by sickbeds, to hold the hands of the anxious, to hold out hope for those who are getting divorced and listen to the pain of those who have lost their jobs, to dream dreams for the despairing, to engage the lonely, to look the poor and homeless in the eye and greet them.  When there are no quick fixes, no easy answers, we are asked to walk with those who go through the valleys of fear.  That is a hard thing for people who want to fix things and make them all better, people who like solutions and plans, construction and parades.  But then I imagine that Jesus preferred the parade to the cross too.

Could you not watch with me an hour, he asked.  Could you not stand beside me as I offer you my body and blood as a sign that I am with you always?  Could you not be there to cry when I die?  Could you not hope that I will not be gone forever?  Could you not stay a while after the parade?

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on March 21, 2010, The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C

  “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters … Do not remember the former things, or consider the ways of old.  I am about to do a new thing.”

 These words of Isaiah were written to a people in despair.  Their enemies had conquered them and left their cities desolate and their holy temple in ruins; the Jewish nation had nearly been eradicated from the face of the earth.  The Jews’ religious faith began to fade when they were held captive in Babylon, for there was no place to gather for worship and remember their stories of salvation, and their children began to remarry with pagans.  In short, the Jews were a long way from the Promised Land, and they wanted to go home.

 Then into their exile came the voice of God saying, “I am about to do a new thing.”  Now remember that the old thing had been pretty spectacular in itself: the miraculous parting of the Red Sea and the deliverance of the Hebrews from Pharaoh’s pursuing army.  God’s great rescue was a cornerstone in the spiritual history of the people, a story told to their children and their children’s children.  But when they found themselves in slavery for a second time, God told them not to remember the former things, but to look to the new.  But how could they forget their history? It was the basis for their hope.  How could they forget the deliverance of their forebears in Egypt?  But God told them not to consider the things of old.  God said, “Don’t look backward so long that you fail to see the new thing ahead of you.  Don’t keep looking for a dry path through the waters, because that is not what I am doing for you.  What I am doing is making water in a dry land – do you not see it?”  God was warning Israel not to hold onto their old ways so firmly that that wouldn’t grasp new things.

 New things are risky, but it is in the nature of love to take risks.  God took the risk of creating folks who got themselves lost in Babylon, and God takes the risk of creating folks like us who get lost still today.  And when we get lost, the human instinct is to cling to the tried and true, to preserve and conserve what we know because no matter how bad it is, the known always seems safer than the unknown.  And no matter how much God yearns to make all things new, God is stymied unless we let go of what is old.

 How can God bring peace to a land that insists on using weapons to resolve conflict?  How can God bring peace to a family where the battle lines are drawn and every conversation includes shouts of “You always think you’re right!” and “You never listen to me?”  How can God teach forgiveness to a people frozen in righteous indignation?  How can God heal a nation where teenagers bring guns to school?  Where freedom of the press is more important than freedom from smut and violence?  Where our legislators are given passes from voting on what is right because it may compromise their reelection?  Unless we are open to be changed by God’s power, we are forever doomed to be stuck where we are.

 “Behold I am doing a new thing,” says God, warning the Israelites, warning us to get out of the way, to let go of our preconceived notions and our assurance of what is good.  How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?  Maybe five, they say, one to change the bulb and four to form a memorial committee for the old one.  Others say that the answer is “none,” because Episcopalians don’t change.

 Our Anglican stability is a good thing when it protects the faith from theological whims of the day.  Our personal stability is a good thing when it anchors us in a sea of changing values.  But stability can also smother the power of the Spirit.  It can make us so sure that we are right that we settle for less than God would give us.  We all need a new thing to be done for us – in our lives, our jobs, our relationships, our faith.  Each of us has become stuck at sometime or another in sin or sickness or sadness and feared that there was no way out.  But the Good News is that God helps those who CANNOT help themselves. If we get out of the way, God can make a way, even in the wilderness.

 I know a woman who was decidedly tied to her old ways.  She is a wealthy woman in Florida who has not been very happy.  She spends much of her life entertaining well and giving unsolicited advice to her children and grandchildren.  A few years ago, when vacationing at her house in the Bahamas, Adeline (I will call her) saw the Vicar of the local Anglican parish wobbling on his bicycle while struggling to carry rice and beans to the sick.  “Poor man,” she said that evening at cocktails, and her hostess agreed and even seemed to know a bit about the church.  “The Vicar needs a car badly,” she said, for his old one has rusted out.”  And Adeline remembered that one of her old cars was just sitting in the garage at her home.  It was a new thing that God was doing but Adeline didn’t know it yet.  All she knew was that she would speak to her hostess, not to the Vicar, for she didn’t really know him, and offer to ship the car to the island.  And she did.  But when she returned to the island, Adeline was upset to see her car looking like a junker with wires trailing from its hood.  This time she went to see the Vicar.  “The starter is broken,” he explained, “and they don't have them on island, Ma’am.”  Adeline had sent a Subaru, you see, and there were no other Subarus on the island.  Now God’s new thing was really beginning to take shape.  Adeline agreed to acquire the part when she returned home and mail it to the Vicar’s mechanic.  But once Adeline found the parts department and once she had the actual starter in her hand, she decided it was too complicated to mail it, so she would deliver it herself.  But since she didn't know where the mechanic lived, she had to deliver the part to the church, and somehow when the Vicar invited her to go with him on his rounds, Adeline couldn’t refuse.  She found herself toting bags of rice and beans into island shacks – and somehow she has kept on doing it at the times when the Vicar is busy.  Life isn’t the same when God is doing a new thing.  Somehow Adeline doesn’t find lunch at the golf club quite as satisfying as she used to.  Actually she is spending the first week of each month on the island now, and she is organizing her friends to build a new kitchen at the church.  The Vicar says that they don't need a new kitchen because people do their cooking at home, but Adeline is convinced that they do need one and she is going to make sure that they get one.  Now you know that this isn’t a story of God providing a new thing for the people of that island; you know that this is a story of God providing a new thing for Adeline.

 You will hear a splendid prayer twice next month if you listen carefully.  The first time is on Good Friday, the second time is at the consecration of our new Bishop.  At each of these occasions we will hear, “O God of unchangeable power and eternal light … let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to perfection by him through whom all things were made…”  You will hear God’s promise of new beginnings on the day of darkness when Jesus hung on the cross and on the day of hope for the leadership of our church.

 Like all new things, God’s are usually surprises.  We can’t imagine what they will be, but they are always better than we can ask or imagine.  What we can do is miss out on them because we get tired or lose faith and give up, because we settle for second best, because we insist on doing things our way, because we are burdened by sin. 

 Adeline would still be organizing her parties if she hadn’t listened to the voice that whispered in her heart one day, “You could give your car away, you know.”  And the Israelites would be scattered in pagan lands if they hadn’t left Babylon to go back home and start all over again.  Our nation, our world, each of us, has the same choice.  God promises that those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.  And God is faithful to God’s promises.  Lift up your heads and see; God is doing a new thing.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on  March 14, 2010 The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C

You know the story of the prodigal son, the boy who asks for his inheritance early and then squanders it on loose living.  You know about this younger brother who leaves home and goes to a far country with no real intention of coming back.  He is the sinner who wastes his life tending pigs, which was not something a good Jewish boy would do, and ends up eating pig slop until he discovers that the swine had a better deal than he did. 

You know about him because you have been a prodigal too.  Have you not wasted your inheritance, wasted opportunities set before you?  I have.  Have you not spent your talents, your integrity, your money on unworthy things?  Harry has.  Harry is a young man who worked hard in college, so hard that he thinks he has earned the right to find himself, to travel, to take some time off.  He has spent all the money that he got for graduation and he is living with, living off, a woman he met on his way.  This month he called home and asked for a loan.

 You know the story of the prodigal son’s father, the one who never forgets his ungrateful rebellious child even for an hour, the one who gazes down the road in the impossible hope that the far country really isn’t so far away after all, until one day he sees him.  One day he catches a glimpse of his skinny dirty child straggling home and before the prodigal has uttered a word, the father races out and kisses his face and embraces him with laughter and tears that don't need any words to say, “I love you son, welcome home.”  Emily knows that story.  Emily was married to George for fifteen years when George met another woman.  When George left her for a trial separation, Emily kept hoping that he would come to his senses.  And one day George did just that, and Emily embraced him and through her tears she said it, “I love you, George, welcome home.”  I asked Emily if they have ever talked about George’s affair, and she said that they had not.  “I don’t want to know about it,” she said, “but I think George needs to explain and apologize.  Someday he will, I suppose, but it doesn’t really matter to me.  All that matters is that he is home.”

 The prodigal son was home; that was all that mattered.  His father doesn’t do what any other father under heaven would have been inclined to do.  He doesn’t say, “I hope you learned a lesson,” or “I told you so,” or “I hope you find some way to make this up to your mother.”  He says instead, “Quickly, quickly bring the best for this boy who has returned.  Bring him the best robe and some shoes and kill the fatted calf for we must celebrate.”  The generous and grateful prodigality of the farther is even greater than the foolish prodigality of the son.  Nothing is too much. Look at the images of restoration!  The father runs to the son, embraces him, kisses him; he gives him clothing and a ring as a sign of the son’s restored status, shoes to show that he was a member of the family, for slaves didn't wear shoes and guests took them off.  He kills the calf and makes merry because what was lost has been found.

 You know the story of the older brother, the one who hears the sounds of rejoicing and refuses to go inside to see what the commotion is all about.  He must have known; he was not blind, but he calls the slaves to have them know that he would have no part of it.  “Your brother has come home,” they tell him, and the older son is so consumed by his envy and his pride that he stays in the fields and refuses to join the feast.  Have you not been the older brother?  I have.  I have seen “older brothers” in our church.  Andy and Hal were seminary classmates together and then they were both curates waiting to have their own parishes.  Andy’s turn almost came first.  Andy was the first choice of the search committee at St. Minks and All Diamonds, but when a committee member called Hal to check references, Hal wasn’t very enthusiastic.  Oh, Hal didn’t lie, he just suggested that Andy’s obvious skills might not stand up well in the long haul.  If Hal were going to get stuck out in the back field, he didn't want to go to an installation party where they might serve fatted calf.

 But God bids all of us jealous older brothers and sisters to come to the party anyway, because the fatted calf is for everybody.  When the older son pouts in the back field, the father takes the initiative to invite him in.  The father’s words are an exact parallel of the words he speaks to the prodigal son because both sons have been in a far country.  While the younger son is recklessly carousing, the older son is so lost in his rules and his envy and his insecurity that he forgets what it means to be home.  He forgets that love is never diminished if it is shared.  He forgets that he has had his father’ love his whole life long and never appreciated it.  There is some of the older son in each of us.  We get jealous when somebody else gets an undeserved break – look at how Americans who paid their bills objected when their neighbors received mortgage bailouts. 

 The title of this parable is not in the Bible.  It is not God but we human beings who call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son who spent, who wasted his inheritance.  I think the parable should really be called the Parable of the Prodigal Father, the father who was also wasteful, recklessly extravagant, profuse in giving what he had, spending it on a son who didn't deserve any of it, but who was loved anyway.  Jesus told us this story to tell us that this is what God is like, prodigal in love, always waiting for us, ready to embrace us and cook a feast to celebrate our arrival. 

When my dear friend Pat died, her family carefully planned a funeral liturgy that celebrated her life.  They filled the church with wild flowers from the meadows where Pat had walked, the funeral pall for the casket was made from squares that her friends had embroidered in bright colors of hope and promise, and we sang hymns of great joy.  The service was a reflection of the faith and hope and love that were Pat’s legacy to us.  All except for one thing: nobody had looked at the back of the cards the funeral home had printed.  There was an appropriate picture on the front of them but on the back was a prayer that said “Be not severe in thy judgment, Lord, but let some drops of thy precious blood fall upon the devouring flames.”

 This prayer is not a prayer to the prodigal loving God I know.  This is not a prayer to a father who holds his arms out wide in welcome.  We do not have to beg God to be merciful for ours IS a God of mercy who sent his Son to die so that we might live.  Jesus is the way the Father runs out and looks for us.  Jesus is the running out of the Father, the one who comes from home to bring us back home.  Jesus is the one who went into the pig sty of this world where he ended up on a cross so that we might wear the family ring and the finest robe and eat the fatted calf. 

Jesus came to tell us that every time we stop wasting our inheritance and come back from the far country, every time we turn away from our sin, God will be waiting for us.  Every time we spend our love and decide to live with hope and trust God’s promises, every time we share what we have because we know that there IS enough to go around, God says to us the same thing that the prodigal father says to both his sons: “let us celebrate and rejoice, let us eat and be merry, what is lost has been found, for my child has come home.”

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on February 21, 2010, The First Sunday in Lent, Year C 

“For forty days [Jesus ] was tempted by the devil.”

 Apparently Tiger Woods was tempted for longer than that!  Last November the golfer had a little car accident that sparked the revelation of more than a dozen extra-marital affairs.  In his press conference this Friday, Woods apologized and explained his fall from grace.  “I stopped living by the core values I was taught to believe in,” he said, “I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me.” 

The Gospel story this morning gives us a different way to respond to temptation.  It begins with Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan River.  Immediately after John the Baptist poured the water on him, Jesus was led to the other side of the Jordan where he spent forty days.  At the baptism, Jesus had heard God’s voice saying, “You are my beloved Son;” in the wilderness, he heard Satan's challenge, "If you ARE the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread."  Satan's offer was a dare, "You look like a poor Galilean carpenter, Jesus, and you don't have many followers; if you really are the Messiah, you need to look more powerful.  Do it my way, and I will make you look good."

Satan does not try to persuade Jesus to do something wrong but tempts him to question who he is.  Satan's temptation to make us forget who we are and whose we are is far more subtle and deadly than any temptation to get us to disobey the commandments. He tempts us to a far more basic and insidious sin: forgetting that we are made in God's image, called to be holy people in a world that is anything but holy.

In the world around us, it is hard to avoid gossiping, and even harder to walk away when others are telling juicy stories around us.  It is hard to turn off a television show that portrays immoral behavior, but even harder to tell our friends that we didn't watch it because we are Christian.  It hard to live by our core values and tempting to live for fame and success and security and pleasure.

"Turn this stone into bread," said Satan. Jesus had been fasting for forty days and he was hungry.  He knew that changing all the stones into bread could feed the hungry and show the power of God working in him - thousands of lives saved, children with distended bellies sleeping with comfort.  But Jesus knew the Scriptures too, knew that we cannot live by bread alone, that once the stomach is full, the soul cries out to be filled with the bread of heaven.  In effect Jesus said, "Yes, I AM the Son of God, and because I am the Son of God I can trust God to care for me."

Satan tried again.  "Worship me, and I will give you authority over all the earth,” he said.  Think what it would mean if Jesus had political authority.  We would not be threatened by Iran’s nuclear capabilities; our soldiers could come home from Afghanistan, and we wouldn’t be arguing over the provisions of a health care bill.  All you have to do is to worship me, said Satan, and the people will admire you and the world will be at peace.  How can you be a Messiah if you are going to suffer and be rejected? Show them that you are a winner, Jesus and they will get on your bandwagon. Who would ever follow somebody who died on a cross?

No, said Jesus, No, I will not coerce the people by force; I will invite them through love. He turned down bread and he turned down power, and then Satan offered religion as his trump card. "Throw yourself down from the tower and there will be spectacular results. Once those angels catch you, everyone will believe in you."  Imagine the publicity; no longer would people wonder if the carpenter’s son could really be the Son of God but Jesus would be acclaimed as Messiah and not have any cross to bear.  Surely this would be a demonstration of God’s power and not a sin, but Jesus didn’t want disciples to follow him because he could do magic. 

We have all faced such temptations, to feed our bellies while the world goes hungry, to take power that doesn't belong to us, to test God by demanding magic answers. What could it hurt to fudge the numbers just this once? What would be wrong with taking the day off and saying I'm sick? It's been a long week, and I'd like to sleep in on Sunday; what would be the harm in missing church?

The devil’s temptations are always subtle and seem harmless; that’s why they get us into trouble.  I don’t believe that Tiger Woods set out to be a philanderer.  I don’t believe that he intended infidelity and betrayal when he promised to love and honor and obey on his wedding day.  What I do believe is that he was flattered a bit and decided to lower his standards a bit, not to have an affair, just to have a drink.  I can imagine that because it happened to me.  It was twenty years ago when I gathered up the money in the alms basin after the weekday service.  I had to leave quickly to make a lunch appointment so I stuffed the bills in my purse, and I when I got to paying for lunch, I didn't have enough money – but there was the offering.  It didn’t feel right to use it, but what could I do; after all, it was only a few dollars.  Oh, I stopped at an ATM on the way back to the office and I repaid the church when I returned, but it was so easy to use that money, so harmless, such a small thing.  But I think that is how the road to embezzlement begins, with an easy temptation, with one small step.  And that is why we have to be vigilant about taking the first step in the wrong direction.

Maybe little temptations are not so bad, maybe they wouldn't really hurt anybody, but they are the devil's insidious ways of getting us to forget our high calling as Christians. Tempted in the wilderness to do the same thing, Jesus remembered the scriptures he had learned as a child. He remembered that God told the Israelites that they were chosen for a purpose.  God promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation and God delivered the people from slavery and brought them to the Promised Land.  When the people rebelled and forgot who they were, they were sent into exile, but when they repented, God brought them home, and they came back with tears streaming down their faces because God had been faithful to the promises. They remembered whose they were and who they were.

Tiger Woods said, “I was wrong I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”  Tiger meant that he can’t get away with things just because he’s famous.  But I think he does have a moral imperative to play by different rules.  Because Tiger IS famous, he is a role model, so he has a responsibility to the young people who look up to him.  And so do religious leaders.  I think that the abuses of clergy are more egregious than those of lay people because their behavior affects people’s faith.  And how about parents?  Is theirs a higher call?  Are their sins worse than those of single people?  I think so, because their children will be shaped by their choices.  Now how about employers?  Is their injustice more culpable that their employees?  I think so because their vocation is to set an example to those who work for them.  And how about all of us Christians?  Are our sins more significant than those of non-Christians?  I think so because just as “they will know we are Christians by our love” they will know us by our sin.

 “One does not live by bread alone,” Jesus said to the devil, and “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him,” and “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  If we face temptation with words like these, chances are that God will speak to us the same words God spoke to Jesus: “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.”  Pray that it may be so. 

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on February 17, 2010, Ash Wednesday   

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 In a few moments you will be invited to come to this altar and kneel to hear those ominous words. You will come to the same place you usually come to receive the life-giving bread and cup, to receive a foretaste of the feast to come one day in heaven.  But instead of the sacrament of life, you will receive a sobering taste of your mortality.  Make no mistake of it, the ashes proclaim that we will die, that every cradle swings over a grave.  How can this be good news?  How can the ashes be a gift of God’s love, an upbuilding, transforming, healing sign?

 “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” is good news, I think, because recognizing that life is limited makes life more valuable.  “Teach us to number our days,” the Psalmist says (90:12) “that we may get a heart of wisdom.”  Knowing that we face death means that our choices matter; knowing that life is short makes us try to spend it wisely.  When my uncle was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a hard-driven man was turned into a teddy bear.  He said the tender things he had never been able to say; he stopped trying to save for a rainy day and made significant contributions to the poor; he asked us to pray with him and told us of his experiences with God.  This formerly self-sufficient man asked for help and received it gratefully.  He got to know the guys in his radiation unit and became friends with people he would never had spoken with before. 

 My uncle was a fiercely honest man, but what he valued was telling the truth about the world, not about himself.  It took the fear of death to let him look inside.  “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” is good news because the fear of death somehow focuses us to look inside and see the truth about ourselves, the truth that we are all filled with pride, envy, covetousness, sloth, gluttony, and lust.  We need not assert our innocence because none of us has clean hands.  We need not lie about our past because God knows us better than we do.

 We are all sinners but our greatest transgression is not that we sin but that at every instant we can turn to God and beg forgiveness and start over – and we do not.  When we know that those days are numbered, we want them to be good days, we want to live them right.  When we see our sin, we are led to confess, “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.  Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.”

 There is a young man who has been crying this month, and at a time when he is trying hard to be a grown-up, he doesn’t let himself cry very lightly.  Everyone keeps asking him what he wants to do with his life, and he doesn’t know.  He feels like he has no home, and in a way he doesn’t, because he is away at college, his parents are divorced and his girl friend has been pressuring him to live with her.  He says he feels like a ghost who doesn’t belong anyplace.  He used to go to church, this man-child, until he stopped going in a fit of adolescent rebellion.  But somehow in the midst of his despair, somehow in the awareness of his separation, he found himself at the church of his childhood and somehow he found where he belongs. 

 The ashes of today mark us as sinners, but they also mark us as beloved children of God who belong someplace.  The ashes are not just smeared on us but traced on us in the sign of the cross.  There is all the difference in the world between smearing dirt on someone’s face and placing a cross there.  A smudge of ash and the words of death are signs of abasement and despair.  But the same words joined with the cross connect us with our baptism when another cross was traced on our forehead with the words, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.  And forever after that sealing, we are not wanderers on the face of the earth, but named and claimed as God’s children.

 Today’s liturgy doesn’t end with the ashes.  It doesn’t end until you come back to this table of God to be fed with the bread and cup of salvation.  “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But remember ALSO that you are precious dust, dust into which God breathed life at the beginning of creation, dust so beloved that God came to be a part of it, embraced us, died for us, and despite our sin, returns again and again to love us.   

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on February 14 , 2010, The Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year C

   Year in and year out, Lent comes to confront us with the mystery and gift of Christ’s death upon the cross, and year in and year out, the lessons we hear on the last Sunday before Lent are those of Jesus’ Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor.  Jesus takes three of his disciples with him, leads Peter and James and John up a high mountain, and then it happened: Jesus shone with a dazzling light so bright they could have been in heaven, and Moses and Elijah were with them too.  Peter’s reaction was probably exactly what ours would be:  “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”  Wow.  Let’s stay.  Let’s build some houses and dwell here together away from the world.  Yet what would have happened had Jesus agreed and said, “You are right, Peter.  Let’s stay up on this mountain and see who comes to visit us.”

 What would have happened is that the man possessed of a demon would never have been cured, nor the lepers cleansed, nor the children blessed.  The loaves and fishes would not have fed 5000, and Jesus anguished cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me would never have been heard.  The cross, the dying, the empty tomb, the rising - none of it would have happened.

 Peter’s wisdom chose the mountain; God’s wisdom chose the cross.  Peter chose detachment from the world; Jesus chose involvement and love, even if it was bought with his blood.  Jesus’ transfiguration began his way to the cross.  Descending the mountain, he set his face toward Jerusalem, toward his death, because he knew that he had more to do than establish a mountain top retreat.  He knew that although it was nice up there on Mt. Tabor, it was no place to pitch a tent because he had been sent to redeem the world down here in the dirt and the toil and the pain because this is precisely where the world needs redemption.

 Lent begins in three days.  It is a dark season when we come face to face with life in th valley, with thorns and whipping and death, with sin and decay and betrayal.  But is that not what life is all about - facing into the darkness and finding light?  We Christians say that we’re an Easter people, but that does not mean that we spend our time rolling eggs on the lawn and wearing new hats.  Being an Easter people means that even though we know sickness and suffering, like the disciples, we have seen signs of transfiguration and glimpses of resurrection.  It means that since we know the end of Jesus’ story, we can have hope, knowing that in the end, life and love do triumph over death and darkness.

 So why do we need Lent?  Why can’t we just go straight to Easter?  Why can’t we stay on the mountain top in radiant glory like Peter wanted?  Because then we would forget that Christ died for us, that we need dying for, that we are worth dying for.  It is time for Lent, time to fast and do penance and face the darkness of our souls to find out just why Christ died to save us.  .

 In my family we gave up two things for Lent: eating between meals and candy.  And oh, how I waited for Lent to end!  For some reason my mother believed that moment was at noon on Holy Saturday, so about 11:30, the noise of unwrapping came from the kitchen.  Then magically, a huge platter of candy emerged.  Long black licorice sticks, homemade fudge, decorated sugar Easter eggs with windows in them, and of course jelly bens.  The forty days were over and the feast began!

 An acquaintance of mine who has just passed her 100^th birthday also remembers Lent.  She remembers the mite boxes in which she put her pennies instead of buying horehound drops and peppermints.  Grown men gave up smoking, she said, and nary a wedding was held nor a ball given.  The funds that would have been spent were given to the Missionary Society, and there were no poker evenings for men nor bridge afternoons for the ladies.

 Now it has become popular to say that it is better to take something on for Lent rather than to give something up.  We are exhorted to read Scripture, visit the sick, and go to church.  But there is something unsettling about this to me.  Prayer, Bible study, good deeds, exercising - these are not disciplines but good things we should be doing anyway.  There is also something questionable about giving things up for Lent.  If sweets or card playing or smoking are causing us trouble, we should give them up not for forty days but forever.

 So perhaps the real Lenten exercise is in the discipline itself, not in giving up something bad for us or taking on something that is good for us, but choosing a discipline for no reason other than to strengthen us for Christ’s sake.

 Discipline is not punishment.  Other people punish us; we discipline ourselves.  Athletes do it; musicians do it; Christians do it.  Athletes run to build up their muscles; musicians practice to build up their skills; Christians pray to build up their souls.  Christians pray even when they don’t need to pray so that they remember how when they do need to.  Christians give up things to learn that God is more important than dessert and Christians keep at it for forty days because being faithful to small commitments teaches us to be faithful to larger ones.  The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Springfield, Massachusetts, put it this way.  “How can you expect an adolescent boy who is filled with raging hormones to say no to a dangerous seduction if he hasn’t been taught to say no to a candy bar?”

 Lent is a time for discipline.  The Prayer Book liturgy this Wednesday will exhort us to keep a holy Lent “by prayer, fasting, and self-denial.”  G.K. Chesterton wrote “A white post will only continue to be a white post if it is painted white every year; otherwise it will become a black post.”  Our lives are like that.  We need a time of annual painting, a time of discipline to keep our souls from getting tarnished.

 So I don’t think it matters what we do for Lent, as long as we do something.  You could promise to read the newspaper carefully each day and pray for God’s blessing someplace in this broken world.  You could clip stories from that paper and sent them to someone who is lonely or shut-in.  Even putting a dime a day in a mite box can be a powerful sign of self-offering if we make a serious ritual of it.  The four dollars won’t make a dent in the world’s poverty, but it can make a dent in our souls.  Calling a shut-in every week may not change her life, but it may plant seeds of gratitude and compassion in our lives.  Taking a moment of silence each day may not stop the war in Iraq, but it might let us hear God’s call to pray and work for peace.  Letting the other driver always go first may not slow down our frenzied traffic, but it will challenge our tendencies toward self-importance.

 Self-denial is not a good thing in itself but a discipline that teaches us what really matters.  God does not need us to fast or give alms or turn off the television for Lent.  But when we do those things we make God more important than television and that DOES matter to God and to us. 

Those of you who have read your bulletins or the  calendars in the prayer book over the years very very carefully will have noticed that the Sundays that lay ahead until Easter are not Sundays OF Lent but Sundays IN Lent.  There are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, 6 of them Sundays.  The forty days are a remembrance of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness and the six Sundays are places to rest in the wilderness, feast days, days of celebrating that we DO live on the other side of Easter.  And that arrangement works out just fine for those who take on Lenten disciplines.  Have you given up sweets?  Then eat a piece of chocolate cake every Sunday because if chocolate cake is a bad thing, you should give it up permanently, and if it isn’t a bad thing, you should enjoy it so that you know what you are giving up.

 Lent is upon us.  It is time to decide how you will keep it.  I hope you will begin this week on Ash Wednesday and come to be marked with ashes as a sinner in need of redemption, as a Christian in a secular world, to be marked as a pilgrim seeking God.  I hope you will fast on Ash Wednesday, eating only a simple meal to remind you that although your body needs food, your soul needs emptiness.  I hope you will find some Lenten practice of devotion and that you will share your intent with somebody else because it is a lot harder to cheat if you’ve gone on public record.

And speaking of public, speaking of community, Lent is not just a time for personal devotion.  It is a time for the community of faith to walk together on the way to the cross.  It is a very lonely journey otherwise.  So why not come to the parish Lenten program on prayer?  It meets for four Thursday evenings from 7 to 9.  Why not come to the new Adult Education program between the services, beginning next Sunday at 9 am?  And why not make it a point to be here every Sunday of Lent to hear the old, old story of Christ’s love for us, so that heartened by the gospel and supported by each other, our Alleluias may resound all the louder when Easter dawns.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on February 7, 2010, The Fifth Sunday of Epiphany, Year C

  So you are in the middle of a Gospel service – say “Amen!  Alleluia!” – and this is a Gospel service because it proclaims Good News.  We heard Good News in the first reading when the angel says to Gideon, “The Lord is with you.”  Gideon then asks the angel what every one of us would ask, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?”  It may be good news, but we are in trouble.

 A lot had happened to Israel.  God had promised the people a land flowing with milk and honey, but they were not seeing much of it.  Every time they planted their crops, every time they grazed their livestock, the Midianites would descend on the fields like locusts.  Israel was begging God for help, and God sent them an angel, but instead of conquering Israel’s enemy, instead of wielding a sword against Midian, the angel offers self-help instructions.  “You Gideon,” the angel says, “I commission you to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian.”  And instead of falling on his face with reverence and with awe, Gideon tells that angel just why God’s plan won’t work.  “My family is not a consequential one,” he says, “and me?  Well, I’m the weak link in a weak family.”  Then Gideon challenges the angel, “How can I be sure that you speak for God?  If God really wants me, then let God send me a sign.”  And so God does.  God sends a blaze of fire, and finally convinced, Gideon rallies his troops and defeats the Midianites.

 What is the moral of this story?  All things – even what seems impossible – all things are possible with God.  Now isn’t this Good News?  Say Amen!  Alleluia!

 A second story.  Peter, a professional fisherman, is washing his nets on the shore after a long night’s work.  Jesus tells Peter to hold on a minute, to put those nets back on board and go out for another trip.  Like Gideon, Peter is doubtful and he tells Jesus that the fish are not biting that day.  But then in a burst of faith, Peter casts off into the lake and lets down his nets.  God gives Peter a sign too, a catch so enormous that his nets break with the strain. 

 And the moral of this story?  If you cast your nets where Jesus says, you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.  Now that’s good news too, isn’t it?  Say Amen!  Alleluia!

 This Good News seems made for us too.  Soon an angel will come to help us defeat our enemies.  And if we are obedient and put out for the deep water, our nets will be filled.  We just need to take a closer walk with God and put our faith in him. 

 But we need to read on to the end of these stories, read to the end of them.  First, Gideon.  As soon as God’s fire springs up from the rock, Gideon figures out that this is no ordinary barbeque and cries out in anguish, “Help me, Lord God!”  An odd response, don’t you think?  Gideon begs for a sign; God gives him one, and instead of saying thank you, Gideon cries out for help.

 Now Peter.  As soon as the boats are filled with fish, Peter cries out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  Why?  Why does Gideon ask for help when, for the first time in his life, he knows that he is truly in the presence of God?  Why?  Why, instead of singing a Psalm of praise for a bigger catch than he has ever seen, why does Peter beg Jesus to leave him alone?

 I think it is because both Peter and Gideon know that they are unworthy, that they are sinful, that they are in need of repentance.  And we do too.  When we come into the presence of God, we know our sin.  We acknowledge it every Sunday in the Collect for Purity when we pray: “Almighty God, unto who all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.”  We sing it in the hymn, I Want to Be Like Jesus: “In him there is no darkness at all.”  In the presence of God, there is no place to hide, all masks and all bets are off.  Peter watches the fish pile up until he can stand it no longer, for he knows that he does not deserve God’s favor.  “Get away from me, Lord,” he says, “for I am a sinful man.”  Gideon begs for help.  And do you remember Job?  When Job finally gets his chance to speak with God, Job can cry only, “Now my eye sees [the Lord], therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

 We are all sinners, and if we don’t admit it, we are in worse trouble than we think.  I was astonished to hear that there is a new hymnal which changes the second line of Amazing Grace from “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that that saved a wretch like me” to “[grace] that saved and strengthened me.”  Grace, amazing grace, does save and strengthen us, but not until we admit that we are really wretches in need of salvation.  I’m not okay and you are not okay.  We are all sinners.  We commit personal sins, whether they are lust or envy or gluttony or selfishness.  As members of this church we sin whenever we exclude someone from this fellowship.  We commit social sins too, for as long as we are a part of this community, this world, it is we who allow slums to exist and fail to pay living wages and pollute our waters and wage wars that seem to happen even though nobody seems to want them.

 Sin is separation from God, from the good, from what is right.  And I know that is true.  When I was a teenager, my parents went away on vacation and despite their instructions to use their car for local trips only, I decided to drive to Pennsylvania with a friend.  I had forgotten that God does indeed give parents eyes in the back of their heads.  When they returned home, they looked at all the bugs that were stuck in the car radiator and asked me where I had gone.  I didn’t admit it.  I lied and I stonewalled.   It took me three months to confess.  For three months, I had to live not only with my disobedience but with my deceit.  For three months, I was separated from my parents because they didn’t trust me.  Even worse, I did not trust myself, and I hated going to church because I knew God could not trust me either.  I felt like Isaiah when he was drawn into the heavenly court, crying, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.”  No, that lie is not the worse sin of my life, but I will never forget it because I cannot forget the cost of my sin. 

We live in a society that would excuse me because my lie didn’t really hurt anybody.  We live in a society that would excuse Peter because he had low self-esteem or came from a dysfunctional family, but Peter knew the truth, and I knew the truth.  There is a consequence to sin, a cost, a penalty that will eat away at us and kill our soul as surely as an ulcer can kill our body.  It is only if we are lucky, if we are blessed, that the guilt or denial or separation or troubled conscience eats away at us until we say “Lord, save me.”.

 When Peter cried out, “Go away from me, Lord, because I am sinful,” he heard Jesus say, “Do not be afraid, Peter” and understood that Jesus wasn’t going to leave him.  Not even a thousand pounds of fish could beat that offer, so Peter hung up his nets and followed the one who had saved him from himself.

 The moral of this story is not that God will conquer our enemies and make our world all better, but that God can make us all better, and that’s even better news that we thought.  Say Amen!  Alleluia!  The moral of this story is that God loves us enough to shine holy light into our hearts so we can see the sins we have buried there.  Whether it takes three months or three years or our whole lives, God loves us enough to wait for us to repent and say the nine words of grace: “I was wrong.  I am sorry.  Please forgive me.”  We can say it on a walk in the woods, we can say it in the General Confession, or we can say it in a private confession to a priest.  But we have got to say it.  We can offer our apology to those we have hurt personally or in writing or through our actions, but we have got to make apology and we have got to make amends.  If we do not, we are ever in bondage to our sins, but if we do, we are set free by the grace of God who said to Gideon and who will say to us, “Peace be to you; do not fear.”  And that is the best news of all.  Say Amen!  Alleluia!  Amen!

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on January 31, 2010, The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, Year C

 Now the Word of the Lord came to [Jeremiah] saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  Then I said, “Ah, Lord God!  Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

 God stoops down and whispers into young Jeremiah's ear, “Jeremiah, my son, I have great plans for you.  I’ve had it in mind for some time now, long before you were born.  In fact, it’s the reason why I gave you life.  You’re going to be my prophet, my personal representative, to speak on my behalf before the whole world.”  Understandably, Jeremiah is overwhelmed by the enormity of what God is calling him to do.  Surely God must have made a mistake.   “You can’t mean me, Lord; I am too young.  I haven’t got what it takes to be your prophet. I’m no public speaker; people won’t listen to me.  And you don’t understand what folks are like around here.  If I start talking about you, God, they’ll think I’m crazy and just walk away.”  But God speaks again, “Stop making excuses, Jeremiah.  Remember, I am in charge here, not you.  Your youth and inexperience are irrelevant because I am giving you the ability and the strength to do what needs to be done.  And stop being afraid.  You won’t be alone; I will be with you to help you.”  And after he takes a deep breath, Jeremiah says, “Okay, Lord; it’s a deal.” 

Are we not all like Jeremiah?  We look at the broken places in the world and feel powerless.  Although we hear the promises of Scripture that God loves this world and is active in it, we also hear the daily news about the brutal realities of violence, cruelty, and corruption.  We are overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s problems, and acutely aware of our limited qualifications to be God’s change agents.

 We are God’s feet and hands, we are told, the only feet and hands God has in this world.  But how could God use you and me?  “I’m only a boy …”  I’m only a retired priest, a student, a struggling businessman, a harried parent, an overworked teacher, an exhausted member of the sandwich generation – the list of onlys is endless.  And to each of us God speaks, “Do not say I am only…  I will choose whom I will choose.  Be not afraid.”

 Scripture is full of people’s reasons for evading God’s call because they didn't feel capable.  Moses objected, “I can’t speak, I stutter.”  David said, “I’ve only got a slingshot but that giant’s got a sword.”  The disciple despaired, “We’ve only got five loaves and a few fish here.”  And God used Moses to lead the Israelites through the Red Sea, David’s sling felled Goliath, and the loaves fed 5000.  Over and over again, God makes surprising choices, doing great things through little people with meager resources, probably to make it clear that it is God who is at work not merely human beings. 

 God said to Jeremiah’s excuse, “Do not say I am only a boy.”  Or in modern terms, “Don’t sell yourself short, Jeremiah.”  That’s a term from the investment world.  Selling short means that you don’t believe in the stock you are buying, in the company it represents.  You sell it at today’s price on the assumption that you can buy it back at a lower price tomorrow.  If you are very astute, that can be a good way to invest in the stock market, I suppose, but it is not a good way to live.  We are of infinite value to God, and we cannot sell ourselves short – nor can we sell God short.  God told Jeremiah, Do not be afraid, I am with you,” and God was faithful to that promise.

This listening for God’s call is a dangerous business, because you never know what God will ask.  But to hear God calling you makes you feel like somebody, gives you a real sense of purpose.  So what do you think God may be calling you to do?  Perhaps it is to challenge the status quo at your place of business, to ask the awkward questions about ethics or personnel policy or practice.  If so, do not say, I am only one employee, what can I do?  If God wants you to speak up for what is right, God will give you the words to say and the wisdom and strength to deal with their consequences.  Maybe God wants you to save children at risk in Hartford by serving as a mentor or tutor. If so, do not ask how you could ever relate to inner city kids.  If God has opened your heart for such a work, God will enable you to do it.  Perhaps God is calling this congregation to reach out to those who are moving into Farmington and share the Good News of God’s love with people who have little experience of the Church.  If so, do not say that we have enough questions of our own without trying to deal with outsiders, that we are in transition here, waiting for our Rector to return.”  If God has called St. James Church to proclaim the Gospel, God will provide the ways and means.  And who knows how this parish would be strengthened by answering God’s call?  Maybe God is calling St. James the Fisherman to host a fish breakfast on the opening day of fishing season this year.  If so do not demur, complaining “If only fishermen didn’t get started so early.”

 One of the reasons why we may be reluctant to listen to God’s call is that we may suppose that if God really has something for us to do it will be something huge like Jeremiah’s mission to be a prophet to the nations.  However, it is more likely that God is calling us to more particular responsibilities, like being a prophet to our family or our friends or our neighbors.  Fulfilling such a mission will require not great speeches or heroic actions but a few timely words, simple acts of kindness.

 I know a priest with a long career as an effective Rector and then a seminary Dean who claims he owes his vocation to the elderly woman who sat in the pew next to him when he was a boy.  Every Sunday as the sermon began, the woman would quietly open her purse, reach in, and without taking her eyes off the preacher, remove a piece of candy and place it in his hand.  That woman made him see the church as his family and understand God’s love for him in a way words alone could not.  It was “only” a piece of candy, but what a difference it made.

 To each of us, some time, somehow, God stoops down and whispers a plan, a mission, an idea, a vision – some task to accomplish that is uniquely our own, suited to our talents and opportunities, something that will challenge and stretch us, but something that with God’s help we can do.  When we are called, we might be tempted to say, “Lord I cannot because I am only …”  but to each of us God says, “Be not afraid for I am with you to deliver you and I appoint you ... to build and to plant.”  And if we like Jeremiah and holy men and women of every age say “Okay, Lord, it’s a deal,” who knows what might happen?

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on January 17, 2010, The Second Sunday of Epiphany, Year C

“They have no wine.”  I don’t think that Mary’s words to Jesus were a simple observation that the servants had stopped filling up the glasses.  I don’t think Mary was making a judgment that the host at the party was too cheap or too disorganized to give a decent wedding reception.  I think the words were said in the way that mothers of all ages make statements when they want to get something done…things like, “the garbage is piling up, dear,” or “gosh your room sure is messy.”  I think it was said that way because Mary believed that Jesus could do something to fix the situation.  Since Jesus’ birth, we are told, Mary had been pondering things in her heart: Jesus’ miraculous conception, the angels’ song piercing the sky to herald his birth, the long trip to Egypt and then back to Israel, and then Jesus’ puzzling claim in the temple that he was about his father’s business.  So when Mary told her son that the wedding feast was in trouble, she had reason to expect that with Jesus, a miracle might just be possible.

 But Jesus didn’t seem to think so.  He didn’t respond with the compassion and immediacy that we see in his later miracles.  As a matter of fact, he said no.  “What concern is that to you and me?” he asked his mother.  “My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus must have known that a miracle at Cana would be the beginning of his end, that if he met this very human need through very non-human means, life would never be the same again.  After such a triumph, his thirty years of small town life would be forever behind him.  The only time he would have to himself would be stolen in a garden before dawn or during a catnap in a boat.  The people, whose great need he knew with all his heart, would press about him on hillsides and the seashore, no matter where he was.  He must have known that if he asked God for a miracle, he would become the object of gossip and speculation and debate, and that he would have to defend his actions and teachings against the Pharisees’ law. 

 And so I think Jesus pondered these things much as Mary had pondered.  He knew that this wedding festivity would be a feast to remember, a celebration to punctuate the lives of the community.  He knew that, if there were no wine, when the young couple settled down to live in Cana, they would be embarrassed by a reputation as cheapskates, and his heart must have gone out to them.  But, “My hour has not yet come,” he said.  And he wasn’t ready.  The disciples had not all been called, and Jesus had yet to preach his first sermon. 

 So Mary got things going, as mothers so often do.  She ordered the servants to “Do whatever he tells you.”  And so her beloved Son began his ministry and told the servants to fill the jars with water and then without a word or a touch, he converted the water to wine – 150 gallons of it.  And when the servants took a glass to the chief steward, the water had become wine.  Not the kind of wine with the screw top that comes in a refrigerator bag, but the best vintage that they had ever tasted.  It was Jesus’ first miracle, but not his last. 

 So why did Jesus do it?  I think that we miss the point of the water to wine transformation if we see it only as a sympathetic response to the plight of some starry-eyed newlyweds – or as an affirmation of the importance of marriage – or even as a sign that God is always in the midst of our joy and celebration.  Those explanations limit the significance of the miracle and leave us, like the steward, smacking our lips and savoring the good wine, stuck in our small world of tastes and smells.  We miss the point if we explain what happened at Cana as the provision of pleasure for a work-worn community.  And we miss the point of the miracle if we regard it only as a supernatural wonder, because one marvel is never enough to clinch the deal.  After all, the servants and wine stewards saw and tasted the water made wine and they didn’t take off their aprons and lay down their jugs to become disciples on the spot.

 So, the purpose of the miracle?  John’s Gospel tells us directly that its purpose was to reveal Jesus’ glory and lead his disciples to believe in him.  That means that Jesus’ ministry pointed to the Father, that his miracles were designed to tell us what God is like.  That is a good thing, because all by itself, Jesus’ miracle at the wedding feast would only reveal a wonder worker who could provide enough wine to avert a social disaster.  On the other hand, a manifestation of God’s glory is a peek at God’s very self.

 The point is that the changing of water into wine reveals what God is about - and what God is about is transformation.  The miracle is a foretelling of the kingdom right in the thick of life.  It is about Jesus showing us a God who is always present and ready to transform every celebration, every meal, every love, into a holy and miraculous event.  It is a miracle of hope.

 How do we experience that grace?  How do we ever know hope again when the jugs of our lives are empty, empty even of water?  How do we get a miracle?  Like Mary, we need to ask with the expectation that God can act.  Many prayers are left unsaid because we are self-reliant and not God-reliant.  We have to pray.  We have to say, “There is no wine, Lord.”  There is no money, no job, no peace.  I am involved in a lie, Lord.  I’m lonely.  I’m sick.  Like Mary, like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this week, like everyone who dreams dreams that are bigger than life, we need to ask God with expectation and with the faith that God can indeed transform bland water into rich wine and make dreams come true.

 This asking, then, is at the core of dealing with our wounds and failures.  Instead of resigning ourselves to live in pain, instead of weeping that it’s just too late to do anything, we can pray, ‘Lord, I am in trouble, and I don’t know where to turn.” 

 Note one basic thing in the Gospel story – the invitation to the wedding.  Had the bridegroom in Cana said to the bride, “That carpenter over in Nazareth?  I know him, but not that well.  Let’s not invite him,” the story would have had a different ending.  For Jesus to transform our lives, we have to invite him to the party. 

 Note one more basic thing in the story – the servants did whatever Jesus told them.  “Fill the jugs with water,” said Jesus, and they filled them up to the brim.  Without the servants, Jesus was powerless, for the jugs would have been empty.  The servants had no idea what they were going to do with 150 gallons of water, but they went to the well anyway, and that made all the difference.  How many of our ventures are never begun because we insist on knowing precisely what God is going to do with the water before we draw it, because we demand a complete road map of God’s plan before we take the first step on the journey.

 It is odd, but it seems that God’s road map always comes as a surprise to us.  The wedding feast was in need of wine, but Jesus didn’t send the servants out to the nearest vineyard shop to get it; instead he sent them to get 150 gallons of water.  What good was that much water at a wedding?  They didn’t know until they tasted it.

Sometimes we do not know the blessing of what God offers us either.  Too often we get down on our knees and beg, “Lord, give me back my marriage, my child, my job, my health; restore my life just the way it was.  And when we are looking for our brand of wine and God gives us water instead we get disappointed and we stop believing that prayer is effective because it seems like God is not listening to what we want.  Meanwhile, God says, in effect, offer me whatever you have left and I will transform it beyond your wildest expectations.  I can’t fix what is past, but I can glorify and bless what is to come.

 That is not just a pie-in-the-sky promise.  This is the story of cancer patients who surprise us when they say, “I almost wish I’d gotten this disease sooner, because it makes me grateful for every minute of every day, and I’ve discovered God, and in a strange way, I am happier than I have ever been.”  This is the story of the man who has lost his job and found not another place to get rich but someplace where he makes a difference in the world, someplace where kids look up to him and he feels worthwhile.  This is the story of the woman who is indescribably lonely and begs God for someone to share her life and gets filled with such love and richness that she becomes a blessing to all who know her.

 This is the story of Martin Luther King, Jr., reviled and oppressed and excluded, who dreamed “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”

This is the story of a boy with 5 barley loaves and a few fish from which Jesus made a feast for 5000.  And this can be the story of you who gave $5 or $50 or $500 to hew a stone of hope from the mountain of pain and despair in Haiti.  That is not much in the face of the profound need there, but through God’s transformative power of love, it can do miracles. 

 Cana’s miracle is not only about a wedding feast.  It is a bigger story about all of life.  It shows us that God can transform loss, boredom, pain, betrayal, whatever we bring to be changed.  God wants us only to bring the water.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
on January 10, 2010, The Second Sunday of Epiphany, Year C

 “Thus says the Lord: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen,
in whom my soul delights.”  (Isaiah 42:1a,b)

My mother took delight in me even when I was not very delightful.  Sometimes she succeeded in bringing out the best in me, and she brought out the best in others as well.  A disabled boy named David lived next door to us, and my Mother seemed always to make the time to talk with David, and David always walked with his head held up a little higher afterwards.  My mother’s friendship was also a promise to her newly widowed friend, Marge, that the years ahead would be filled with more than loneliness.  My mother taught me never to look down on anybody because everybody was valuable in the eyes of God. 

 My father delighted in me as well, even when I was a teenager with ideas of my own.  He got irate sometimes and tried to set me straight, but he never gave up on me.  He held out dreams for me that I was too timid to dream for myself, and he believed that I could do anything I set my mind to.  He taught me the values of integrity and hard work, and he taught me that I had a responsibility to help those in need.  My father thought I was pretty even when I felt like an ugly duckling.

 My mother and my father held high standards for me.  A twelve o’clock curfew meant twelve o’clock and 12:05 meant punishment, but I never doubted that they loved me, and it was because they loved me no matter what, that I wanted to please them.  My parents taught me that God loved me too, so even when I rebelled and strained against them, even when, like all children, I felt misunderstood and unappreciated, I knew that God was like the God whom Isaiah describes in today’s first lesson, a Creator who delights in what he has created.

 In that lesson God says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

 These words were not spoken to the faithful and righteous, but spoken to exiles, to people who had sinned and strayed from God’s ways so badly that God drove them away from their once promised land.  Yet God called to them in the midst of their exile, in the midst of chaos and defeat, and assured them that they were still God’s people, God’s chosen, God’s delight, chosen to bring forth justice and be a light to the nations.

 This passage from Isaiah is known as the first of the Suffering Servant Songs.  Biblical scholars have always debated the identity of the unnamed servant – perhaps Isaiah himself, perhaps a prophetic description of Jesus, perhaps an unknown person or persons, perhaps the entire nation.  But on this day when we celebrate the sacrament of Baptism, I have a not-so-modest proposal.  I want us to assume that this Servant Song is addressed to us.  I want us to hear the passage not as pretty words written for someone else thousands of years ago, but words intended for us here today. 

 Thus says the Lord, Here, right here and now, are my servants whom I uphold.  Here in this pew and in that pew are my chosen in whom my soul delights.  Delights!  I, the Lord, delight in them and have put my spirit upon him - and upon her - to bring forth justice and to shine light over the whole world.  God gives us an awesome responsibility.  The One who created us, who knows us and delights in us, no matter what we have done or not done, commissions us to bring forth justice, to free those held captive, to open eyes that are blind.  It is we who are chosen to do these things, we in whom God delights. 

It seems that God always seems to choose people like us, people who are unequal to the task.  “I have found David, my servant,” says the Psalm, “I will make him my first born and establish his line forever.”  This David was the smallest of Jesse’s sons, a fugitive who had committed adultery with Bathsheba and then sent her husband off to be killed in a war.  This was the man God chose as the King of Israel.  God delighted in David and believed in him and gave him the grace to be a national leader.  And ever since then, God has been taking people who have failed and who don’t have all the advantages to be light in the darkness, commissioning us to be creators and healers and reconcilers.

 People who don’t think they are worth very much usually act like they are not worth very much.  On the other hand, people who are praised and encouraged usually do better than they ever thought they could.  This is true for kindergarten children and for graduate students taking oral exams.  If teachers are told that their little five year old students are bright, the kids live up to the teachers’ expectations; if teachers are told that a student is slow and difficult, they student rarely makes much progress.  The phenomenon is not limited to children.  Graduate students praised by their examiners at the beginning of their exams outperform those who are challenged when they sit down.

 Here is another story.  If white rats are put into a vat of water, they will swim for an average of 67 hours before sinking.  If you take away a rat’s sensory feedback by shearing its whiskers, however, it will sink immediately when put into water.  But here’s the amazing thing.  Rats who are shorn of their whiskers, put into water and sink immediately and then are raised up by hands start to swim again and demonstrate heroic and long lasting efforts to remain afloat.

 Although it is risky to make generalizations from such an experiment, it is at least arguable that we human beings behave in a similar fashion to those rats.  As long as we have someone to support us, to rescue us, to delight in us, we will fight to the last breath to maintain our lives and our dignity.  I guess once we have been “dewhiskered” by failing an exam, by harsh criticism, by rejection, we are in danger of drowning, and it is precisely at these times that we need the help of someone who cares about us. Learning that someone has confidence in us, knowing that someone delights in us can make all the difference between success and failure, whether we are trying to pass examinations or trying to keep our head above water in trying times. 

 Thus says the Lord: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”  As God delights in us, we are called to delight in each other, and if we don’t know how to do it, God has given us an example in Jesus Christ.

 Although Jesus lived in a society that saw children as of limited value, he stopped what he was doing to take little children into his lap and bless them.  Although Jesus came to a world that believed that the sick were sick because they had sinned and were unclean, Jesus touched them and healed them.  Unclean lepers were cleansed, unclean dead were raised, and Jesus ate with those shunned as unclean and called them to new life.  Why?  Because there are no outcasts in Jesus’ kingdom, because we are all beloved sons and daughters, worth an infinite price, worth Jesus’ own life and his own death because God delights in us.

 Because God delights in us we can delight in each other.  Praising each other does not make us look bad by comparison but makes us look good because we are speaking well of our family.  Delighting in someone doesn’t mean that anything goes; it does not mean that we are supposed to praise sin.  Delighting in each other means singing each other’s praises for the simple things – thank you for that wonderful meal; it is always such fun to take a walk with you; the gift you gave me touched my heart; your garden is so beautiful and restful.  Delighting in each other means enjoying each other, thanking God for each other, praying for each other, encouraging each other – I know you can do it, you are much more able than you think; you have such a wonderful way about you; I am proud of you; you are a fine man.  We delight in people just because they are, not because they are perfect, not because they give us what we want, but just because they are our brothers and sisters, made in the image of God just as we are. 

 God speaks to Isaiah: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”  God speaks to Jesus proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  God speaks to us too, saying, “You are my beloved son, you are my precious daughter in whom I delight.”  Hear those words.  Let them resound in your heart.  God speaks them to you to tell you that you are of infinite value and to fill you with such joy that you will go tell it on the mountain and in the valley and everywhere that yearns to hear God’s Good News.  Go delight in somebody and tell them – today.

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Sermon preached by
The Reverend Hope H. Eakins
January 3, 2010

 “Now after [the Wise Men] had left,
an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.”

 We don’t know a great deal about Joseph, but we do know that he was quite a dreamer.  When he was faced with the shame of Mary’s pregnancy and unsure of whether or not to “dismiss her quietly,” Joseph listened to the voice of an angel who came in his dreams to tell him, “Joseph … do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”  Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the Lord commanded.  Nine months later, Joseph’s sleep was again interrupted by an angel who came to warn him of Herod’s plan to kill the Baby.  “Get up,” said the angel, “take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.”  And so Joseph arose and traveled far across the desert, while Herod sent his soldiers to kill all the little boys in Jerusalem under two.  And when Herod finally died, the angel woke Joseph up in one dream to tell him that it was safe to go back to Israel and the in another to warn him to avoid Jerusalem and hightail it to Nazareth instead.

 The tale of Joseph’s dreams is a story of God’s infinite providence and care, yet it is a story that raises questions for any of us who are not on intimate terms with angels.  First of all, why did the angel appear to Joseph and not to all the other fathers of innocent children killed in Herod’s slaughter?  Second, how do we know whether our dreams come from God or from bad digestion?  And third, why would God speak in dreams anyway?

 The question of why God did not protect all the innocent little boys in Jerusalem is the same question that arises whenever a child dies through illness or disaster or neglect.  We ask the valid and understandable question of how a loving God can allow little children to suffer.  If ours is a loving God, why didn't God stop Herod from murder?  Or at least warn the other parents to flee?  Why didn’t God stop the Holocaust?  Why do any children starve to death or get eaten by rats or get cancer?  The only answer we can give is that God wept with the parents of the Holy Innocents just as God weeps when children die today.  For whatever reason, evil exists in this world.  That is the way the world was made.  Sometimes we can understand where evil comes from.  Sometimes there is a Herod or a Hitler to blame, but too often there is no one to blame but God.  The only answer to why bad things happed to good people is that in God’s world there are viruses and earthquakes and car accidents.  God knows about them and can weave them together in good ways that we just cannot understand. 

 Ultimately only God knows why innocents suffer, and ultimately, we are asked to trust that God does know, even if we cannot understand why or how.  Habbakuk asks why God’s people suffer while the Babylonians get off free, and God answers, “Wait and trust me, Habbakuk.”  Job wants to know why he has boils and why his camels are dying, and God asks how Job thinks he can understand things like that when he doesn’t understand the elementary facts about creation.  Paul begs to have the thorn in his flesh removed and receives the word that God’s power is shown in his weakness.  We cannot penetrate God’s mystery; but we can believe that God hears our cries and cares about them.

 Sometimes God intervenes to stop suffering.  The angel appeared to Joseph because God’s plan was for Jesus to die, not as a babe in the manger but as a man on a cross.  But how did Joseph know whether or not to heed the words of the angel?  Egypt is a long walk from Israel; how could Joseph trust the angel’s command to go there?  Why should we put our trust in a dream?  Well, one reason is that dreams are one way that God speaks to us.  Maybe God uses dreams to get a word in edgewise when we are so busy working that there is no time for night dreams or day dreams.  Maybe God likes to speak to us when our minds are opened and our mouths are closed.  Maybe God reassures us in dreams because when we are awake, we are too busy or too scared to hear God’s voice.

 I am married to somebody who recounts his dreams in vivid detail over the breakfast table, but I rarely remember my dreams myself.  But there are times when I have gone to sleep confused and agitated and awakened with hope and courage to face the situation in new and unexpected ways.  I have gone to sleep feeling alone and weak, praying into the silent darkness, and awakened to feel the arms of God enfolding and protecting me.

 Everyone dreams.  Crazy people dream just as much as everyone else, and some of them do crazy things because they hear voices and misconstrue their hallucinations as real events.  So we cannot trust that every fantasy is God’s direction to us.  But when a dream haunts us, is fierce enough to awaken us, makes connections we have not seen before, we need to pay attention to it.

 Now this is not a sermon designed to send you all home to take naps and listen for the voice of an angel.  This is a sermon designed to awaken you to the voice of God which speaks to those of us who listen.  You may hear it while you are at prayer or while you are on a silent walk, or when you are overwhelmed with worry, or when you are so surprised by joy that you are empty of words. 

 This is also a sermon designed to say that God has a dream for St. James Parish.  And I believe that God wants you, that God needs you, to make it happen.  None of us is clear about what that dream is, although each one of you probably has a little hope, a small idea, a yearning for your parish.  You have been through a lot of trauma and a lot of waiting, as your valued Rector has worked to recover from his heart attack and his accident.  You have had interim clergy who have cared for you well and now this new priest-in-charge who will try to do the same, but that’s not the same as having your Rector back. 

 Years ago when my boys were little we left them with my parents for a weekend, and when we returned I got the report:  the big two were happily engaged, but the little one cried himself to sleep saying, I want my own bed and I want my own toys and I want my own car, and I want my own…”  So I think of you, not crying yourselves to sleep, but wanting to get on with things to execute your five year plan, Vision 2012, and to have your Rector with you on your journey. 

 St. Paul says that all things work together for good for those who know God, and who are called for God’s purpose, and this is true.  God did not cause your Rector’s accident, but God can use this misfortune for a good purpose for those who let their dreams be shaped by God’s dream.  This is your church, the place where you have buried your dead and celebrated your weddings and brought your children to faith, where you have celebrated feasts and confessed your sins and broken bread together.  God has led you here for a purpose and asks you to work and pray here to make a dream come true.

 If Joseph had not paid attention to his dreams, who knows how God’s great dream of salvation would have turned out.  Without your dreams, who knows how St. James will grow.  In the waiting, great things can happen.  As the Psalmist proclaims, “Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.”