Our scripture lessons for Trinity Sunday – particularly the epistle and the gospel - are noticeably short. Why is it, then, that some of the longest sermons I have ever endured – including my own – were preached on Trinity Sunday? In dealing with the great mystery that is the Holy Trinity, the lectionary committee wisely decided to keep it short. After all, there is no amount of scripture that can effectively explain the mystery of the Trinity. But rather than taking a cue from the lectionary committee (and holy scripture), preachers oftentimes fall into the trap of using the pulpit to try to explain what our scriptures allow to remain as a holy mystery.

Most simply stated, God uses multiple means for loving and relating to us. The Triune nature of God - traditionally known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – reminds us that God manifests God’s very own self within a diverse community. Michaela Bruzzese points out that in the Holy Trinity, God is not limited to one expression of love or relationship, or one dimension of caring. God relates to us as the Holy Parent/Creator, the Beloved Son/Child, and the ever-present Spirit. And these means of relating to us are not meant to be abstract and intellectual. They are God’s tangible, concrete means for loving God’s very own creatures and creation.

So I think that a great way for us to consider the great mystery of the Holy Trinity is to do so in the same manner that God expresses God’s very own self – through a diversity of expressions.

In our worship service today, we are expressing our understanding of and gratitude for the Holy Trinity through the words of our liturgical prayers, most explicitly in the Collect of the Day and the Nicene Creed. During the 10:30 service, the hymns are taken from the Holy Trinity section of the Hymnal, and explicitly have trinitarian themes and language. For some of us, music is the medium through which God most effectively reveals God’s self to us. So some of us are more likely to experience God through the singing of a hymn than we are reciting an ancient creed.

 Another way that many of us experience God is through visual art. During the Seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, our Wednesday Noonday Prayer group studied icons from the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Icons are “a window out of the obvious realities of everyday life into the realm of God.” Our bulletin cover this morning includes an image of Andrei Rublev’s famous icon for the Holy Trinity. After worship today, I encourage you to take your bulletin home with you and read the material at the end that describes this icon in great detail. For some of us, gazing at this icon or other ones similar to it are more likely to reveal the reality of God more than an erudite sermon or beautiful hymn.

After the sermon this morning, we will experience another medium through which God reveals God’s self  - bodily movement and dance. As Buffy mentions in her description in the bulletin, what you will observe is not meant to be seen as a performance but rather, a kind of visual prayer. In Buffy’s own words, this movement is “an invitation to enter into contemplation of this divine gift, communally, with thanksgiving.”

After this meditation that involves contemplative bodily movement, we will stand and engage our intellect and collective voices as we recite the Nicene Creed. Many Christians these days argue that the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds no longer bear relevance, and should be relegated to the historical documents of the church, but not our common worship. I deeply value contemporary scholarship, and I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit didn’t cease all inspiration after the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century. That being said, I also deeply value the inspired wisdom of the Early Church, and I believe that our continued communal engagement of their voices honors the diversity of God’s witness through the ages. The Creeds aren’t the only way through which the Holy Trinity is revealed to God’s people, but they are one of the many faithful, reliable means through which God’s reveals God’s diverse self.

But the diversity of the Holy Trinity isn’t only revealed through the church’s scripture, music, liturgy, and worship. God reveals God’s very own self to us through a myriad of mediums and means. Most recently, I experienced the diversity of God’s power, love, and presence through Vacation Bible School this past week at Christ the King. Our church property was abounding with energy from people ranging in age from 4 to nearly 80! Children were experiencing the mystery and love of God through songs, stories, and most notably, play. I truly believe that we have a playful God, and one of the best ways to connect with God is through play, regardless of our age. It brought me great joy to see the likes of Tommy Fairweather, Tom Huff, Geoffrey Butler, and Jane Hinte playing with children several decades their younger at VBS. My guess is that the children and the adults all experienced God in new and exciting ways during that week of intentional, joyful play. Yes, I believe that God is revealed in the ancient creeds of the Church as well as in an inflatable bouncy house!

As Jesus said to his disciples as recorded in our Gospel lesson for today, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” So our role as followers of Christ is to allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit. If we humble ourselves enough to be open to the many means, mediums, and people through which and through whom God the Spirit communicates, we are more apt to experience what the Apostle Paul describes as “God's love… [which has been] poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

The Mid-Week Missive is based on Community Rules: An Episcopal Manual by Ian Markham and Kathryn Glover, both administrators at Virginia Theological Seminary. I am working my way through this book, reading and writing  through the lens of our Life Together as part of the Christ the King Episcopal Church family, as well as part of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. 

Rule #12: Think About How Communication Will Be Received. Markham and Glover’s reflection on this rule can be found in their book, which can be purchased here. 

How does this rule apply to our Life Together at Christ the King? As is the case with most churches these days, we have a number of different ways in which we communicate. This blog is one of the newer means of communicating that I have taken on. We have our Facebook page, website, the Weekly Herald e-newsletter that goes out every Monday, the Sunday bulletin insert, the Sunday announcements prior to worship, and good ole fashioned word of mouth.

But when organizations and individuals communicate, how it is received is as important – if not more – than what is received. In other words, “how does this message sound?” Some messages are purely informational, and thus have a neutral “tone.” Some are intended to bear hopeful, exciting, good news. Some are meant to inspire, motivate, and rally. Others are meant to bear difficult news. Some of this nuance can be difficult to catch digitally/electronically. So when we communicate via the internet, we need to be sure to remember that “tone” is sometimes difficult to decipher.

One good rule of thumb is to always try to assume the best and give others the benefit of the doubt. I can’t tell you how many times a quick phone call or face-to-face meeting have cleared up a misinterpreted email. At the end of the day, we are an incarnational people, and incarnational communication is the most effective means to relate with one another. But when that is not possible, we can still aim to incarnate the Way of Love in how we communicate.

Pentecost blessings and peace,

Richard+

You may not realize it, but right now, we are worshipping in a Pentecostal Church. The Episcopal Church in general is, among many things, Pentecostal. Christ the King Episcopal Church in particular is, among many things, a Pentecostal Parish. Now, before you head for the exits, let me explain why I believe this claim to be true.

The first reason is that all Christian churches are Pentecostal by their very existence and nature. The gift of the Holy Spirit was initially received in the Upper Room when Jesus first appeared to his disciples on the evening of the resurrection and “breathed on them.” But the Day of Pentecost is when we celebrate the moment when, as we heard from the Book of Acts, “there came [from heaven] a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and… divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them… and... all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…”

 And since that first Pentecost, all baptized Christians are Pentecostal Christians, and all Christian Churches are Pentecostal Churches, because we only stay alive by the power of the Holy Spirit breathing in and through us. In a similar way, any church that reads and preaches from the Bible can be called a “biblical,” or “Bible-based” church. So go figure, somehow – and I’d say it is through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have all landed in a biblically-based, Pentecostal, Bible Church this morning. But aside from what I have already said about the criteria for being Pentecostal, what does that label really mean for us today?

 Holy Scripture and the Christian Tradition refers to the Holy Spirit as the Comforter and the Advocate. I understand these two labels as holding in a healthy tension the Holy Spirit’s gifts of binding us together in unity while also sending us out – dispersing us – to do the work we are called to do.

 St. Irenaeus, who served as the Bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, described the Holy Spirit as being like “dew from heaven.” He points out that in the story from Acts, “people of every language and scattered tribes joined in singing one song of praise to God, as were offered as the firstfruits of all the nations.” But Irenaeus likens these first Christians – and us - to “dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture…We who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.”

 I love how Irenaeus brings us back to our baptisms with this image. The element that I most associate with Pentecost is fire – the tongues of fire that rested upon those disciples on the first Pentecost. An indeed, fire is an appropriate symbol for the Holy Spirit. But Irenaeus wants us to remember the waters of baptism, and beautifully points out how water is needed to make a unified loaf of bread out of dry, formless flour. As such, God the Holy Spirit serves as our Holy Comforter, binding us together into one body, one community, loving and supporting one another in our new identity as the Body of Christ.

 But God the Holy Spirit not only binds us together. The Holy Spirit empowered those first Christians to be dispersed – to go out into the world proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to every tribe and every nation of the world. This dispersal is likened to the dispersal we heard about in our first reading from Genesis with the Tower of Babel. But while the dispersal of God’s people in the Tower of Babel story almost seems like a punishment of sorts – or at least a means for humbling them – the dispersal of God’s people we see in the Book of Acts is a result of being rewarded by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. But in this dispersal, the disciples would no longer have the security of their original community. They were being separated and sent out in different directions with the call to spread the Good News as far and wide as possible. But because of this separating – because the loaf of bread was being sliced up so to speak – God the Holy Spirit would need to be with them always, serving as their Advocate on the journey. Those disciples likely remembered back to when Jesus said to them, as recorded in our Gospel lesson for today, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth…You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you."

 Of course the Pentecost story, with God the Holy Spirit binding up and sending forth – Comforting and Advocating – is not just about what happened a long time ago. It is our story too. Every time we gather together as a body for worship, we are bound together by the Holy Spirit. The dry flour of the liturgy, music, scriptures, prayers, and the congregation are held together and formed by the moisture of God’s Holy Spirit. Here, we are being comforted in the familiarity and stability of the church’s tradition and community.

 But remember, being Pentecostal isn’t only about being bound together. It is about being sent forth into the world, empowered by God the Holy Spirit. I refer to the prayer that immediately follows Holy Communion as the “Prayer for Mission” because after thanking God for feeding us with the spiritual food in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, we boldly ask God to “send us now into the world in peace.” Some people have asked me why we refer to the final hymn as the Processional Hymn. Since it is the final hymn of the service, many are used to referring to it as the Recessional Hymn. But we are not being released for recess. Having heard and proclaimed the God’s Word in scripture, and having been nourished by the Eucharist, we processing into the world – we are going forth with a mission and a purpose to share what we have just received with others.

 And our Dismissal reflects the missional, Pentecostal nature of our worship service as well. The Prayer Book includes these three dismissals: “Go in Peace to love and serve the Lord” or “Let us go forth in the name of Christ” or “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.” That’s not recess, that is Pentecost! Baptized in water and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are a Pentecostal Church and we are a Pentecostal people. Empowered by our Holy Comforter and Advocate, let us go forth and boldly claim, embrace, and embody our Pentecostal identity. The world needs this to be so, and so do we.

Below is the sermon that Christ the King parishioner Lily Greene preached for the 7th Sunday of Easter.

Good morning! My name is Lily Greene. I just graduated from Fort Walton Beach High School and Northwest Florida Ballet Summa Cum Laude and am going to be going to Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre next year. I’m a quirky, artsy, determined girl. I’m passionate about Jesus, ballet, art, the ocean, animals, the environment, & love and joy. But I’m definitely not someone to be known to agree to speak in front of an entire church of lots of people… and honestly, when I was asked, I didn’t really feel qualified or worthy to be up here — But as nervous and anxious as I am today, as Rachel Meyer recently reminded me: “you are a child of God, that’s the only qualification!” so, here I go….

Through the 17 years that I have been alive, I have come to realize 3 main things:

The first being that God created YOU to be YOU – not like the rest of the world.

As the body of Christ and as people of this world, we cannot be afraid to be different. The world needs us to be unafraid to be who we were created to be by the Creator in order to inspire others to do the same. God has created everything in this world to be so complex, intricate, and yet so insanely and simply beautiful, so why would we be any exception? Why would our own individual, passionate way of carrying out our calling, be unworthy compared to another’s way? We are all needed to do our own part – no matter how different or small it may seem – so that we can function as one, complete body.

Romans 12 says, “Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.”

So as my senior year went on and I started getting asked the famous question of “Where are you planning on going to college next year?”, I initially felt bad – and almost ashamed –to answer that I was planning on further pursuing my passion of ballet by working to get into a ballet company straight away, rather than following the so-called traditional route of going to a physical college. But with more consideration, I felt confident that I shouldn’t feel this way. I knew in my heart that ballet is my passion, my love, and what I feel called to do. It is something that I know I can bring glory to God as long as I remain faithful. And it is an art that I feel so passionate about. So why would I give up on this so easily???

All that really matters is that we do everything to ultimately bring glory to God and faithfully play our own, individual role of spreading God’s gift of love, joy, and hope with the world. With this intention, I truly believe that it does not matter what we do, or who we are, as long as we use every opportunity for the glory of God.

This leads me to my second realization: Life is an opportunity in itself – life changes when you start looking at EVERYTHING as an opportunity.

Our life, from the second we were born, has been an opportunity. But it is so easy to become numb to this idea. We can get stuck going through our everyday routines just as that, a routine. We can live in such a way that we are just jumping from one checklist to the next and are just scraping by. We forget that this life we were given is not meant to just merely be existing through, but to live through. We forget that this life we have been given is a gift and an opportunity. 

Now with this undeserving gift, we get the opportunity to share with others the endless love of Jesus Christ in everything we do. Every second we have the opportunity to make choices – We can choose to be brave, kind, empathetic, loving, selfless, joyful, and hopeful, or we can choice to complain and be angry at a situation.  

Personally, as a person who is not always very good at talking to other people in conversation, I know what it’s like to see a perfect opportunity to make a connection with someone and spread a little love, and then not act because I feel like I don’t have the courage to do so. But what would happen if I took the opportunity knowing that there is nothing that God can’t help me do? What if we all listened to and then pursued the opportunities that we feel called to take? As Benjamin Mee says in the movie “We Bought a Zoo”, You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.” As long as our life is lived to love and serve the Lord, we can never truly fail. 

From this, I will dive into my third, and final realization that I am sharing today:  God will provide.

With faith, God directs our paths. Not activities, or degrees, or careers, or other people – GOD DOES. Sure, all of these other things are great, and I believe that God can use us in all of these aspects of our lives, but God is really the one and only constant who will continue to direct us through the paths of life even when one part of our life just isn’t working out.

Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”

As a perfectionist, I often finding myself trying to make everything perfect on my own accord. And when everything doesn’t fall into place just the way that I would like it to or I planned it to and I feel uncomfortable, I let worry, anxiety, and fear overcome me.

So, a particular quote by Francis Chan really hit home for me. He said: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure … but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

For me, this just helps to put things into perspective and is almost a scary idea to think about. It makes me question and shift my focus towards the idea of whether I am truly focusing my daily intentions and goals towards the glory of the only one who really matters – Jesus? Or am I worrying about the small picture things that won’t really matter 5 years down the road? In a world where success is often defined by the amount of wealth, productivity, power, and popularity that one has obtained, it is easy to forget that those things are inconsequential in the big picture of things. We forget that we were created by God for a purpose to shine His light, love, joy, and hope into the souls of others.

We forget that as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”

Now I have no idea what next year will be like – I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, much less visited Pittsburgh ballet, I’m going to have to live on my own in a big city – filled with new surroundings, new friends, and a new church family; I am scared out of my mind and feel so vulnerable, but at the same time, I am overwhelmed with the joy of knowing that Jesus Christ has already claimed victory. I know that there is nothing that I can’t or would ever want to handle without God – for He is good, and He will ALWAYS provide.

I’m going to end today with the phrase Aloha Ke Akua. The direct Hawaiian translation of this phrase is: God is love. Aloha means to love others as one's self and to do so unconditionally, living a life of charity, compassion, and forgiveness towards others.) Ke Akua recognizes ke Akua, or God, as the supreme being, acknowledges His hand in all things, and encourages us to be appreciative of His many blessings.

……So, Aloha ke Akua—and thank you for this opportunity! I’m so blessed to have a church home filled with so many kind, beautiful souls. Thank you.

Tomorrow at Christ the King, we will have a funeral for parishioner Bill Fearon at 11:00am. As I have been preparing for the funeral, an article that I had previously read and shared with others came to mind, and I’d like to share it with you. I invite all of you to join us tomorrow at 11:00 as we bear witness to eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Always Go to the Funeral, By: Deirdre Sullivan

From NPR’s All Things Considered, August 8, 2005

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that. The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson(ph), my old fifth-grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. `Dee,' he said, `you're going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.' So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be. I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson's shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, `Sorry about all this,' and stalked away. But for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson's mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went unchaperoned but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16 I'd been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, `You can't come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.'

Sounds simple. When someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That I can do, but I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that. `Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I really don't have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me but the world to the other guy: you know, the painfully underattended birthday party, the hospital visit during happy hour, the shivah call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good vs. evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days my real battle is doing good vs. doing nothing.

In going to funerals I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand, heroic gesture I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable occasional calamity. On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and traveled the world working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern University. She's now a freelance attorney living in Brooklyn. Sullivan says her father's greatest gift to her and her family was how he ushered them through the process of his death.

Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles has actually been broken up into two sections with separate headings- the first being “Paul’s Vision of the Man of Macedonia”  and the second being “The Conversion of Lydia.” Sometimes I think that the Translation Committees have done a good job of coming up with these headings, and sometimes I don’t.  In the case of today’s reading, I think they missed it.  I wouldn’t refer to the second half of the story as being “The Conversion of Lydia” because I think that conversion happens to everyone in the story...not just Lydia.

But before we get to Paul’s vision and Lydia’s hospitality and everyone’s conversion, I want us to remember that at the time he had this particular vision, Paul was suffering from a painful split as well as a stalemate in his recent missionary activity. He and his friend Barnabas had been missionary partners since they were commissioned together in Antioch, when the Holy Spirit herself said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” After that, over the course of 2-3 years, Paul and Barnabas traveled together as missionaries to 11 cities, covering approximately 1,200 - 1,400 miles.  But when they returned to their home base in Antioch to celebrate their recent success and to begin planning for the future, they had a falling out over whether or not a fellow by the name of John Mark would accompany them on their next missionary journey. The falling out ended in an irreconcilable split, with Barnabas taking John Mark with him and heading one way, and Paul taking Silas and heading another way.  Paul and Silas later added Timothy, and the three of them were doing pretty well until they hit some bumps in the road.  Apparently, the Holy Spirit did not allow them speak the word in the region of Asia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them into Bithynia, even though they tried.  So Paul’s reports being sent back home weren’t as good as they had been before. At this point, I wonder if Paul was curious as to how well Barnabas’ mission was doing. Maybe he wondered if Barnabas had been right after all? Maybe he wondered if the Holy Spirit wasn’t allowing Paul to do his thing because they were too busy helping Barnabas and John Mark with their mission. When we struggle, it is easy to doubt. Well, Paul did what I often do when I get stressed about things - he went to sleep.

During his sleep, Paul had a dream - or a vision - of a man of Macedonia pleading for him to come over and help them. Now this is where Paul and I differ. Paul got up and immediately went to Macedonia, “being convinced that God had called them to proclaim the good news.” I most likely would have convinced myself that it was just a dream, and gone back to sleep.

Now this part of the story is where for the first time in a while, Paul, Silas, and Timothy encounter hospitality, and it is then that conversion takes place. They were now in Philippi of Macedonia and it was the sabbath day, so Paul, Silas, and Timothy - who still observed customary Jewish law - were looking for a synagogue in which they could worship and pray. Well, instead of finding a synagogue, they stumbled upon a group of women praying by the river. As it turns out, Lydia and the other women were “worshippers of God” - which means that they were Gentiles who worshipped the God of Israel. But in order to have an official synagogue, there had be a quorum of at least ten Jewish men. Lydia and the other women with her were neither Jewish nor were they men, so they went down by the river to pray. So who was this Lydia that we encounter down by the river? Lydia was an entrepreneur - a dealer of purple cloth - which means that she enjoyed a relatively high social and economic status. She either never married or was once married and now was a widow, but either way she was economically independent and the head of her household, which was an unusually privileged status for women back in those days. And as the story unfolds, the most remarkable thing about Lydia is that she ends up being the first Christian on the European continent. That’s right - the first European Christian was a woman...a successful business woman who was the head of her household!  

Anyhow, Lydia and her friends were going through their sabbath ritual of prayer when Paul, Silas, and Timothy stumbled upon them. Now this was quite a collision. As we all know, Paul - a Pharisee and strict adherent to the Jewish law - wasn’t the biggest fan of women being in charge of anything. My guess is that they might have been a little suspicious of these three ragged-looking sojourners who entered uninvited into their sacred space. Maybe Lydia and her friends tried to look so preoccupied with their prayers that hopefully the men would keep walking rather than disturb them. Or maybe they thought about referring them to the prayer group upriver a little ways. And my guess is that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were also surprised to see these Macedonian women worshipping the God of Israel, and not only that, but imagine the shock and horror for them to see a woman leading the service! 

We have to remember that Paul was still suffering from the wounds of his broken relationship with Barnabas - his close friend, fellow missionary, and brother in Christ. All over an irreconcilable disagreement over whether John Mark was cut out for ministry or not. He was also suffering from the disappointment of the recent lack of success in his own missionary activity. He, Silas, and Timothy had been turned away in Asia and Bithynia, and who knows how much success Barnabas and John Mark were having. Maybe Paul felt humbled through his wounds, and as a result, he decided to respond to his recent vision with an open, listening heart. So the Paul who stumbled upon Lydia and her friends at their prayer meeting might very well have been a Paul who had been transformed by his wounds.

And Lydia - what I mentioned earlier is all that we really know about Lydia, except for one more brief mention at the end of this chapter in Acts. What we do know, is that “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” So here was this potentially disastrous collision of cultures, and in the midst of this collision, the Lord was furiously at work, opening Lydia’s heart to Paul, and Paul’s heart to Lydia. Lydia invited Paul to sit down and speak with the women who were gathered there. And the women obviously stayed and listened. And what happens next? Lydia and her entire household are baptized! Talk about conversion! My favorite part about this section of the story is that Luke doesn’t give credit to Paul’s magnificent preaching or teaching or speaking for Lydia and her household’s conversion to Christ. Instead, Luke gives credit to the Lord, who opened Lydia’s heart to listen eagerly. Of course it certainly can - and does - happen a lot: terrific preaching, teaching, or speaking can lead to conversion. But not always. I would venture to say that if we truly allow the Lord to open our hearts, conversion will always happen. Yes... I did it. I said always.  But how could I bet against a heart opened by the Lord?

Now let us be reminded that Paul and his friends and Lydia and her friends weren’t passive in this arrangement. They didn’t sit back and passively wait for the Lord to begin opening hearts so that conversion would take place. Remember this all started with Paul immediately responding to the vision he had by going over to Macedonia. And Lydia and the other women would never have had their lives changed by the Gospel message if they had all slept in that morning, or gone to Starbucks for a latte and the Sunday paper. Paul, Lydia, and all of their friends were actively living out their faiths when they stumbled upon each other. And the Lord opened their hearts,  - their wounded hearts were transformed, so that rather than obeying the most learned human behavior of fear and distrust in the midst of encountering strangers, they opened their hearts and space to one another. Lydia invited Paul, Silas, and Timothy in to her space, and listened with an eager, open heart. In spite of being well out of his comfort zone, Paul taught with an open, eager heart. My guess is that this group of women was not who Paul had in mind when he set out to form his first church in Europe. But the Lord works in mysterious and miraculous ways if we are open to it.  In Paul and Lydia’s case, the result was nothing short of miraculous. When each of them woke up that Sabbath morning, my guess is that neither of them knew that they would be chosen by God to begin the largest religious movement the world had ever seen. On that Sabbath morning, the church in Europe was born. And we today are direct descendants of the church that was born at a women’s prayer meeting down by the river in Philippi of Macedonia. My prayer for all of us is that we can respond to God’s calling for us with hospitable, open, and eager hearts. In so doing, we may be surprised at the miracles that can happen when we open our hearts to God.

Back in the Season of Epiphany, I remember sitting in my seat as the Epistle lesson was being read, and thinking, gosh, maybe I should ask if anybody in the congregation would like to come up to the front here and get married.  The reason that came to my mind was that we had all the makings of a lovely wedding that day – the gathered community, the choir, the clergy, and the clincher was that our epistle lesson for the day was that great passage from 1st Corinthians that many of us probably assume is a mandatory part of our wedding liturgy: Love is patient, love is kind…

Well today, it might be a little awkward if I were to ask if anybody would like to get buried today, so I won’t do that… but, we do have all the makings of a lovely funeral this morning– the gathered community, the choir, the clergy, the Paschal candle, and two readings that many of us probably assume are a mandatory part of the funeral liturgy: Psalm 23 – “the Lord is my shepherd” - and Revelation 7 – “God will wipe away every tear.”

Indeed, Psalm 23 and Revelation 7 are terrific passages to be read and reflected upon at the time of death.  I can’t tell you how many times I read Psalm 23 at the bedside of a patient during my year as a hospital chaplain.  And during my first year as a priest, I preached on Psalm 23 twice in one month – both times at funerals for young adults in our parish who had died suddenly and tragically.  Whenever I find myself struggling with what to make of or believe about our Holy Scriptures, all I have to do is remember how Psalm 23 has carried countless throngs of folks – myself included - through times of seemingly inconsolable grief and trouble.

 But today, I’d like to take the opportunity to look at Psalm 23 not as a text for death, but rather, as text for life. Let’s not relegate “the Lord is my shepherd” to only the hospital room, hospice care, or funeral service. After all, I don’t know about you, but I need to Lord to revive my soul and guide me along right pathways now – today, tomorrow, and in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

 Last week, during the Treehouse Chapel service, I greeted the kids with “Happy Easter!” They were quick to correct me, saying, “It’s not Easter!” Well, I was just as quick to correct them by reminding them that Easter is not a day, but a season that lasts fifty days. So until we reach Pentecost, we are still celebrating Christ’s breaking the chains of death and rising to life everlasting. So we are in the season of life. Springtime is finally upon us – the trees are blooming, the days are longer, and life is more abundant. 

 So in the midst of this season of life, the Church has decided – on this 4th Sunday of Easter – to have us reflect on God as the Good Shepherd.  Some folks refer to this Sunday as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Our opening Collect of the day calls upon God to grant us the discerning hearts to “know him who calls us each by name, and to follow where he leads.” It is so much easier for us to listen and long for the shepherd’s voice when we are near the end of our life here on earth, and as we approach our seat at the heavenly banquet table. That is why the last moments of our lives can oftentimes be so sacred and holy – because we truly feel like the Good Shepherd is guiding us home. So when I hear Psalm 23, I usually find myself imagining the sacred journey from this life to the next, the journey from suffering to healing, the journey from death to eternal life. 

 But with the hustle and bustle of our over-hurried, over-programmed, sensory-overloaded lives, it is much more difficult to discern the gentle voice that calls us to follow while we live. But why should we wait for death to come upon us before we choose to be led to the green pastures, where we can lie down by the still waters? Why should we wait until we at the end of our emotional rope to have our souls revived, and to be steered towards right pathways for his Name’s sake?

 Oftentimes I find myself wondering, “What on earth was the Revised Common Lectionary Committee thinking when they gave us these readings today?” This is not one of those days. Today, they couldn’t have had better timing. This past week, we heard the news of yet another school shooting, tragically killing one youth and injuring several others. Once again, we are left here in a state of shock, anger, and grief, in desperate need of our Good Shepherd.  We seek justice, answers, explanations, and safety. Why is there evil in the world? Why would a loving God allow this to happen? Why didn’t the Good Shepherd lead the children away from the shooter that day? These are all fair and even faithful questions to ask.  And while the Good Shepherd will guide those victims home to their maker, we – the living – need the guidance of the Good Shepherd every bit as much as the dead. 

 Yes, if we listen for the shepherd’s call, we will be strengthened to face evil without fear. In the face of violence and hate we will be comforted.  But, notice, that the shepherd strengthens and comforts us not so we can triumph over our enemies. Rather, the shepherd takes us on a shocking detour – to a table that is spread out in the presence of “those who trouble me,” or in the presence of our “enemies.” Yet, as we are lead to sit at the table, directly across from our enemy, the shepherd anoints our head with oil, and our cup is running over. So, here in the land of the living, in this Season of Life, the Good Shepherd leads us to green pastures, beside still waters. Here in the land of the living, the Good Shepherd comforts and protects us. But the scandalous news is that the whole time we have been following the steady call of the Good Shepherd, he’s been leading us to our enemies. But rather than going to battle against them, we will sit down for table fellowship, with the Good Shepherd as our Host. There, we will all be anointed, and our cups will overflow. 

 When interpreted like this, Psalm 23 sounds like the ole Bait & Switch. But if I am honest with myself, I know how difficult it is for me to willingly choose to sit down and eat with an enemy of mine. So, as long as I am here in the land of the living, I need guidance from the Good Shepherd, even if it involves a bit of a Bait & Switch. And I truly believe that as long as we allow ourselves to stop and listen for that Holy Voice, his goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives – not just at the end of our lives.  And we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Amen.

The Mid-Week Missive is based on Community Rules: An Episcopal Manual by Ian Markham and Kathryn Glover, both administrators at Virginia Theological Seminary. I am working my way through this book, reading and writing  through the lens of our Life Together as part of the Christ the King Episcopal Church family, as well as part of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. 

Rule #11: Be Transparent in Communication. Markham and Glover’s reflection on this rule can be found in their book, which can be purchased here. 

How does this rule apply to our Life Together at Christ the King? I have just completed a weeklong spiritual retreat and workshop with my colleagues in the Order of the Ascension, and one thing we worked on was how we communicate in group process. As we were going around and around trying to make a decision about our community norms and expectations, our leader kept challenging us to get at the real issues(s) instead of trying to solve it with a quick fix. Those in the group who were offering quick fix solutions just wanted the tedious conversation to be over. But our leader knew that this issue wouldn’t be solved with a quick fix. So each of us were invited to reflect on and articulate what we wanted and why, and then to think about the consequences of that decision (i.e. what it would actually look like if implemented). For me, it was indeed a tedious process, but I was amazed at what transpired once we hung in there together to get at the root of the issue. In the end, each one of us was able to share how we felt and why, and once the group made a decision, everybody felt heard, there were no hidden agendas or “parking lot” discussions afterwards.

Many of us at Christ the King grew up in the South, and the blessing and the curse of the Southern charm is that we oftentimes sacrifice transparency for harmony. Many of us (myself included) aren’t comfortable making others uncomfortable by disagreeing with them. But when comfort, harmony, and politeness prevail over transparency, the relationship or the community suffers in the long run. It can be hard, tedious work to not only “say what we mean and mean what we say,” but also to make the graceful space for others to do the same. The Order of the Ascension is a “deep” community because we value transparency over harmony. What holds us together isn’t that we all agree on everything – it is a diverse group of folks from all over the country. But one of the many things that holds us together is our commitment to healthy, transparent communication.

I invite you to hold me in your prayers as I continue my journey towards becoming a more transparent, healthy, and effective communicator and leader. And I invite all of you to join me on the journey. The depth of our relationships with one another and with God will indeed grow much deeper.

Eastertide blessings and peace,

Richard+

Today’s lesson from the Gospel of John is one of my favorites on many levels. First of all, I love that Peter seems to be so discombobulated. First of all, he was fishing with no clothes on – who does that? But then when he recognized Jesus on the shore, he put on all of his clothes and then dove in the water to swim to shore. It seems to me that if he insisted on taking off his clothes, it would be to swim, not to fish.

 But given the recent events of his life – who could blame Peter for being a bit disoriented? Another thing that I find interesting about this story is that apparently, after Peter and his friends had seen the risen Christ not once but twice, they still weren’t sure what to make of the situation. When they saw him last, he blessed them with his peace, breathed his Holy Spirit upon them and empowered them to go out and forgive the sins of others. So what did Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two of the others do? They went fishing.

 Now, perhaps they were simply hungry, and they needed to eat. Or maybe they felt like they needed some money for their apostolic journey, so they figured they’d catch and sell a bunch of fish. Who knows. But it amuses me to think that those seven disciples, after seeing the risen Christ, went fishing. And Peter did so without any clothes on.

 When Jesus appeared on the shore, he already knew that they hadn’t caught a thing. So he called out to them and invited them to try the other side of the boat. And that’s the other thing that I love about this story. Anybody who knows anything about fishing with large nets knows that Jesus’ simple advice of “trying the other side of the boat” is nonsense. If they had been throwing their nets off the boat all night, and certainly not from the same location in the water, the issue with their lack of luck had nothing to do with which side of the boat they were casting from. But this story really isn’t about fishing. The miracle of this story isn’t about Jesus helping them catch a bunch of fish after a long drought. This story is much more profound than that. I believe that the point of this story has to do with discerning our call to follow Jesus, and how we might live out that call in our daily lives.

 Pastorally speaking, I think that the issue that I am presented with the most is vocational calling. What am I called to do? Who am I called to be? Where am I called to be? With whom am I called to be? These important questions come  from folks of all ages and walks of life. Vocational discernment doesn’t end with retirement. It is a lifelong journey. Some of us are even given the opportunity to discern how we or those we love will die – whether or not we will aggressively treat an illness or continue life support.

 Many of us are at a point in our lives where we are like Peter and those other six disciples – fishing off one side of the boat and not catching a thing. We are stuck, yet we don’t know what else to do. We must remember that these guys were professional fisherman prior to being called by Jesus. Fishing is what they knew. It was their livelihood and their vocation. But that was prior to their three year journey with Jesus. When Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit on them and sent them out on a mission of forgiveness and reconciliation, he didn’t intend for them to go back to their old way of doing things. They had a new mission and a new purpose in life. They had a new identity as followers of Christ. In our story today, it appears that Jesus had come to remind them of their mission. Once they had a shared meal on the seashore together, Jesus gives Peter a threefold command - feed my lambs, tend to my sheep, and feed my sheep. In other words, your vocational calling is no longer fishing for fish, but fishing for people.

 Today, it is not as clear for us as it was for those disciples. Jesus hasn’t physically appeared to us in the same way that he appeared to them. But we are still called to follow Christ in all that we do. But this can be a terribly difficult thing to do. Following Christ isn’t just about being a member of a church, attending church on Sundays, or identifying as a Christian. It is about a unique way of being in this world. And this way of being in the world can be lived out in a myriad of professions, geographical locations, churches, and relationships.

 As we celebrate Newcomer Sunday today, we are first recognizing with joy and gratitude those who have recently become a part of our church family. But similar to our gospel lesson today, there is a thread that runs deeper than the presenting storyline. The newcomers among us have prayerfully discerned that at this point in their journey of faith, this is the place where they feel that God is calling them to be, and we are the people with whom they feel God is calling them to connect. But it is also a good time for all of us to pay attention to where we are on our journey of faith. We can draw inspiration from the newcomers in our midst – they had the courage to prayerfully listen to God’s call for them to make a change, whether it was geographical, denominational, or social. Where and how might God be calling each of us to make some sort of change in our lives so that we can more authentically and faithfully live out our calling as followers of Christ? Do any of us need to try casting our nets on the other side of the boat?

 On a personal level, I have done just that. In the past year or so, through spiritual direction and some very rewarding continuing education opportunities, I began throwing my net on the other side of the boat. What had been working – my old and comfortable way of being – was no longer working for me, or for my vocation as a priest. My journey led me to the wisdom and grace of St. Benedict of Nursia and the Benedictine tradition. This approach to the Christian faith, along with Contemplative Prayer and Family Systems Theory have all had a profound impact on me and my vocation as a priest, husband, and father. So in a sense, I too am a newcomer, because through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ has been born anew within me.

 My prayer is that all of us will listen for Christ’s voice – his invitation to cast our nets on the other side of the boat. Or for some of us, as was the case with the disciples, the call might be for us to leave the boat entirely. We must remember that ultimately, the call is to follow Christ’s call for us to follow him. If we faithfully respond to Christ’s call for us, our other decisions will fall into place with God’s blessing.

Today’s Gospel lesson is one of the true gems in all of scripture, so much so that it is assigned to the 2nd Sunday of Easter all three years in our lectionary cycle. It is one that we simply cannot skip. Yet the irony is that the 2nd Sunday of Easter is unofficially known as “Low Sunday” because it is one of the lowest-attended services of the year. And that is a shame, because I think that today’s gospel lesson is essential for us to hear and live. Just as we say that we shouldn’t celebrate Easter Sunday without Good Friday, I think that Easter Sunday without the 2nd Sunday of Easter is just as incomplete.

Once the initial reports of the empty tomb begin to settle in, we, like the disciples, are left with the question, “Now what?” Much attention has been paid to Thomas’ doubt in this story, but we must not skip over the primary emotion that is expressed from the outset – fear. The disciples are in the upper room, behind locked doors, because they are afraid. They are afraid that they might be the next victims of crucifixion. The news of Jesus’ resurrection had been delivered to them, but the implications of that news had not yet sunk in. So they were afraid.

In the midst of their fear, confusion, and doubt, Jesus appeared to them. And the first words out of his mouth were, “Peace be with you.” And just in case they missed it due to the shock of seeing him in the flesh, Jesus said it again, “Peace be with you.” When he made his first appearance to his disciples as a group, Jesus’ first priority was to bring them the peace that passes all understanding.

Imagine that. A little more than 48 hours after dying a horrifically violent, unjust death, Jesus came bearing peace. And to add to it, his disciples – his closest companions -  abandoned him at his most vulnerable moment. Yet Jesus wasn’t angry. He wasn’t angry with the Jewish authorities, the Roman authorities, Judas, or his own best friends – all of whom played a part in his undeserved death. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead seeking revenge or retribution. He rose from the dead to bring his peace to the world. He rose from the dead to show us that God’s peace conquers sin, death, evil, and hate.

We may not be afraid for our lives in the same manner that the disciples were. But we still, in many ways, are bound by fear. Our society is marked by fear and anxiety. Perhaps the greatest gift that the Church can offer to the world today is the gift of peace in Christ.

Jesus didn’t bring his peace to the fearful, anxious disciples so that they would feel good and sleep well. The second gift Jesus brought to them during that first appearance was the gift of the Holy Spirit. In nearly 50 days, we will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. But the first Pentecost happened on the evening of the resurrection in that upper room when Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit on his disciples with the commission to go out into the world and bring peace to others through the forgiveness of their sins.

Let that sink in for a second. The primary mission of the disciples was to go in peace to love and serve the Lord by forgiving people! Their mission wasn’t to exact revenge on those who had killed Jesus. Their primary mission wasn’t even to convince people of the truth of the resurrection. Their first charge was to go in peace and forgive others.  

It’s too bad that Thomas’ natural, well-founded doubt overshadows the first part of this story. Perhaps Jesus knew that the best way for people to hear and believe the Good News of his resurrection would be if the conversation was grounded in peace and forgiveness. Jesus knew that fear and anxiety would always be prevalent, no matter the era. And the best way for we as Christians to respond to our own fear and anxiety, as well as that of others, is through peace and forgiveness, not righteous anger. Through our baptisms, we have been anointed by God’s Holy Spirit to be bearers of peace and forgiveness, just as those first disciples were. We have been grafted into a legacy that dates back to the evening of the resurrection in that upper room. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, let us, as a community here at Christ the King, claim that legacy in all that we say and all that we do.