Episcopal RI Diocesan News

Bishop Knisely Calls for Prayer for Oklahoma Tornado Victims

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Dear Ones,

All of our hearts are breaking at the news we are hearing from Oklahoma and the midwest after Monday's outbreak of Tornadoes and severe weather. Yet even in the midst of the ruin and destruction we see the lights of acts of courage and kindness; teachers using their bodies to protect their students, neighbors rushing out into the storm to rescue others, first responders leaving behind their own tragic losses to save the lives of others. In the midst of the fury of the storm, let us pray that God will grant us grace to keep our hearts fixed on the light so that by its inspiration and reflection we can be beacons of hope to many who need us now.

I ask your prayers for all in the region who are suffering, who have lost homes or businesses, who's hearts are broken by the lost of a loved one. I ask you to consider how we can work together to help restore what we can and comfort those who's losses we can not. Below is an email from the canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Oklahoma with some details, should your parish decide to aid in the recovery, or you can do so through Episcopal Relief and Development

+Nicholas
The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, DD. S.O.Sc.
Bishop of Rhode Island

Crux Mihi Ancora
~~~~

From: José McLoughlin
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 10:37 AM
To: Transition Ministers-Diocesan

Subject: Tornados in OklahomaDear Colleagues,

Thank you so much to all of you who have contacted me and offered prayers and assistance.

As you have seen, the devastation is immense. We are in the process of assessing the situation with our clergy and congregations in order to most effectively respond. We have parishioners, church employees and their families that have been impacted Clergy are continuing to account for parishioners and relay information to us as events develop.

Rescue efforts continue and are expected to carry on for the days ahead. We have been asked to not encourage people to show up at the scene, but rather let emergency personnel do the work they need to do. We have also been asked not to collect clothing or household items. Right now, financial contributions are the best and most effective option. This will allow us to get funds to those who need temporary lodging, groceries, food, etc.

Contributions can be sent to us at:

The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma

924 N. Robinson

OKC, OK 73102

Notation on the checks should state “Tornado relief.”

We are coordinating with ERD and will continue to communicate any additional needs as the situation develops.

Thank you again for your email and prayers.

Blessings,

The Rev. Canon José A. McLoughlin

Canon to the Ordinary & Chief-of-Staff

Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma

924 N. Robinson

Oklahoma City, OK 73102

(405) 232-4820

canonjose@epiok.org

Last Weekend: Climate Revival in Copley Square with the Presiding Bishop

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:12:00 +0000

Photo: Bishop Knisely and the Presiding Bishop
By Heidi Shott, Diocese of ME

Boston's Copley Square is back open to the public, post-marathon bombings, and on Saturday April 27th Bishop Knisely and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori gathered with many local & national religious leaders to liven the spirit of the place up, creating a new positive stir with an ecumenical "Climate Revival".

The Climate Revival began at Old South Church (UCC) on Boylston street where there was worship, prayer, and preaching. Afterwards the whole party processed up the street through the busy sidewalks of Copley Square, to Trinity Church for more worship, prayers and a sermon by Presiding Bishop Katharine (see sermon below).

At Trinity Church, the day's events culminated in a round table where religious leaders signed a climate change statement titled “Lazarus, come out: A shared statement of hope in the face of climate change." For more pictures from the day visit the Diocese of Maine's flickr album.

Climate Revival Sermon

by The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church

Alleluia! We’re here today to breathe new life into a dying body – the body of God’s creation. It’s going to take the breath we have in us, and the breath of many, many others. Breathe in the breath of God, of life, and give it back – now, breathe! We’re going to need all the confidence we have that the act of breathing in and breathing out will continue – and we’re going to have to use as much hot air and vehemence as we can muster. Are you ready?

Jesus’ raising of Lazarus begins with several kinds of breathing – the calls for Jesus’ attention, then the sighs and sobs of the grieving, and hot words of reprimand: ‘if you’d only been here and paid attention…’! And then many more words trying to understand, more tears, and the charge to take away the stone.

The stone blocks the tomb, it keeps the dead dead and separate from the living. Never the twain shall meet, if the stone is doing its death-defying job. It’s not the stone’s fault, but it’s in the wrong place if we want to raise the dead. And there are far too many stones in the way.

There are stones in our shoes that cripple those who would run to heal. There is stone in the hearts of those who won’t hear the cries of fellow creatures, or see the growing chaos of a warming earth, or learn that stony hearts are killing the whole living system. There are little stones in our tear ducts that keep us from weeping, and specks in our eyes, and misplaced otoliths in our ears that block our hearing. Take away all the stones, O Lord, and give us hearts of flesh and organs of compassion, for your creation is suffering.

Let’s give thanks that the stones are beginning to be removed. That is still a work for divine breath – as Jesus acknowledges at the tomb, “thank you, God, for listening!” We know that God is always listening and breathing a response over the chaos around us. Resurrection and creative innovation are continually engaging the stuff of earth, bringing forth new life in spite of the tombs within us and around us. This city knows something about that, as so many hearts opened to strangers in recent days – may we all learn to listen and see and hope for healing and new liveliness in human communities and other parts of God’s creation. God is always delivering the dead from the tomb.

The body in the tomb is still called Lazarus. It means “God has helped.” God has always helped. We grieve the illness of the body of God’s creation, yet if we look at the long history of this body, we can see healing of the body in ages past, long before human beings were more than a dim glimmer in the DNA of creatures without backbones. The great extinction events caused by asteroids, shifts in planetary oxygen levels, or vast quantities of atmospheric dust give evidence of enormous and wide-ranging death, yet each time God’s creativity eventually brought forth new life. It was not immediate or sudden, but in God’s good time, the earth again knew riotous and flourishing diversity. The difference today is that we’re causing massive death through our own greed.

Creative breath has been displaced by a giant sucking sound, the vacuuming maw of our own emptiness. We seek to feed that desperate, gasping and grasping hunger with SUVs and more coal-fired power plants, and the latest imports of gadgets and gewgaws (and the 500 year history of that word is a reminder that this craving is not new). We feed ourselves out of season foods from far away, forgetting the delightful surprise of the first asparagus of spring or the first corn of summer. We crave houses so large they shut out the neighbors – with stones that block the sun from back yard gardens. The protection and prediction we insist on and strive for in all that accumulating frenzy ends in friendlessness, for we have no time to spend cultivating the earthy companionship for which we were created. That dying body is further burdened by our useless treatment of our own bodies – not just excessive food intake, but vain attempts to mold and remake the clay in others’ images, and remove every microbe from every surface and crevice. We are made in the image of God, uniquely gifted, beautiful, beloved, and profoundly social. What we think is human in ourselves is only a tenth of the cells in this communal organism – and the microscopic life within us feeds and nourishes and regulates our lives, until we meddle with its healthy balance. And then, quite literally, all hell breaks loose as one part of the whole exceeds its place and we find our guts revolting against us. That sick body, community that it is meant to be, is an apt reflection of the larger body of creation today.

If the stone is removed, and the way of life unblocked, what sort of Lazarus will emerge? Given what has already been done to that body, it will not be the same one that went in. Like gut microbes subjected to unrelenting courses of antibiotics, this will be a different community and system. The organ may still function, but it will do so in different ways.

The dead Lazarus may emerge, yet there will still be work to do in unbinding and turning the body loose to function creatively once more. The set points and equilibria have already moved, and it will take God’s time and divine creativity to establish new ones. Species have disappeared; others will emerge, over millennia, to take their places in the society of creation. The atmosphere has absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping molecules. Some will be removed to ocean waters and plant tissues, but the whole system will be warmer than before, probably for geological lengths of time. The ocean creatures that live with carbonate shells and supports – like corals and some kinds of plankton – are already struggling to lay down those structures. They, too, may disappear into the fossil record, and the bigger creatures that feed on them – fish, shrimp, whales, birds – may not survive either. Something will undoubtedly evolve to replace them, but it will take more than the three or four days of Lazarus’ entombment. It will take something on the time scale of the days of the first Genesis creation story. God’s time is not our time, nor God’s ways our ways.

The gaping maw of our greed is already making life harder for our human sisters and brothers, as weather patterns shift and food crops repeatedly fail in traditional growing places. Deserts are expanding, water is evaporating, and there is less health and healing power in parts of this body. Disease organisms that have been in reasonable equilibrium will emerge with new virulence, as will pests afflicting our food crops. The results will cause suffering, want, anxiety insecurity. We know what will almost inevitably follow: conflict, violence, and war.

The stones are being moved away, the body is emerging, and it is time to unbind the body, and set it loose. For we have met that body and it is us. We, too, are Lazarus. The medieval word was lazar, and it referred to the figure in Luke 16:20, the poor man covered with sores, the leper on the sidewalk outside the rich man’s house. Samuel Johnson’s definition of a lazar is apt: “one deformed and nauseous with filthy and pestilential diseases.”[1] The disease which afflicts lazars, the rich house-holder, and the body of this earth all has a common source – the stones that block awareness, compassion, sharing, mutuality, and love of neighbor – all our neighbors. The old word for those stones is skandaloi, stumbling blocks.

The mess we’re making of the body of creation is indeed a scandal, born of the temptation to put our individual selves in the place that belongs to the one who is beyond all of us. The good news is that we know something about the cure.
We are made in the image of God, creative and social beings meant for community. We routinely stumble over two kinds of scandalous stones – we forget that we were not created to be solitary individuals and we get stuck in understandings of community that are always too small. Jesus’ presence among us is incarnate evidence of our never-aloneness, and his ministry and death are about serving the whole of humanity and all creation. That’s why he feeds multitudes, and eats with anybody, even with germy hands, and that’s why he heals outcastes – including lepers and lazars!
Well, friends – friends of Jesus and of one another – we like to profess that we are his hands in this world. There is abundant healing work to do. It begins in discovering that our neighbors are far more numerous and diverse than we have heretofore imagined. From the microbes on our skin and in our guts to the yet-undescribed insects of tropical forests to the denizens of undersea thermal vents and the bacteria of Antarctic subglacial lakes, we are one body of creation. The health of the human part of God’s body of creation depends on all the members – we are created as a society, and we are created for productive and creative relationship with one another. We are meant to be friends. Unbinding Lazarus, and setting all the lazars free, is about restoring each to community and the possibility of redeeming friendship.
All of that takes some vulnerability – and a willingness to understand ourselves as less than omnipotent or omnicompetent. If we are social creatures, then it is only in community that we will be truly capable of breathing new life into dead and dying bodies. This body of humanity called the church has often been compared to a ship. Most ships have a compartment called alazarette. The word probably comes from the ships that brought lepers to Italian hospitals in the middle ages, but in nautical terms a lazarette is a storage locker near the steering gear. That part of the ship is always vulnerable, close to the water, in a well near where the rudder or steering gear pierces the outer surface of the ship. A lazarette is where the emergency gear is stored – sort of a first aid kit for healing, repairing, and saving the ship and the people on it. In a very real sense, our task of unbinding is to be exposed, to be vulnerable to the force of the storm, and to be equipped and ready to heal and repair.

Friends – lazars! All hands to the lazarette! The storm is upon us, and the body may be threatened, yet we know there is also abundant possibility of new life. Let the wind of life blow in us, remove every stone, and call forth the dead and dying body. Open us to God breathing new life in us and every part of creation. Now! Breathe! Blow, bellow for Lazarus, bless and unbind that body, that it may be set free to renew the face of the earth.

Bishop Knisely Thanks RI Senate for Passing Marriage Equality Bill

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:41:00 +0000

I applaud the Rhode Island Senate for a courageous vote yesterday evening to pass the bill legalizing same-sex marriage, giving all Rhode Islanders equal right to the civil benefits of Marriage.

I thank the Senate for passing a well balanced bill that I believe will protect the religious freedom of differing faiths with vastly different theological understandings of marriage. The constitution itself provides churches the right to decide who they will and will not marry within their denomination's conscience.

Here in the Episcopal Church, a majority have come to believe that same-sex couples can live covenanted, faithful lives together in service to God, just as people in traditional marriages do. Not all Episcopalians agree, but I thank the Senate for passing a bill that provides clergy who wish it the opportunity to minister in this way to the families and people in their congregations.

Friday 4/19 Evening Prayer with Bishop Knisely, for Boston Marathon Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:38:00 +0000

The tragedy and heroism at the Boston Marathon on Monday held up to the people of New England the fragility of our common life, but also commended our spirit of resilience.

In the wake of this event, The Right Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, Bishop of Rhode Island will be officiating Evening Prayer using the Book of Common Prayer's "An Order of Worship for the Evening" tomorrow, Friday April 19th at 7:00pm at St. Michael's Church in Bristol Rhode Island.

We welcome all to join us as we address the feelings, emotions, and thoughts that have been brought home at this time, and explore our response to the needs of the people of Boston.

We chose this service to allow prayer and reflection to be the centerpiece of that response, so that the Holy Spirit had room to guide us.

Come reflect, remember, mourn, and process the way to understanding, as well as our actions as the people of God.

The Death of The Rev. Hébert Winslow Bolles

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:29:00 +0000

The Rev. Hébert Winslow Bolles, 88, of 45 DeArruda Terrace, Portsmouth, RI, died peacefully at home, after a long illness, on April 6, 2013. He was the husband of Elizabeth (Bambi) Sands Elliot. Hébert served as curate of St. Stephen’s Providence, then Chaplain to Brown and RISD students before he became rector of Ascension Wakefield, RI 1953-57. He was called to be the Canon Pastor of Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis from 1957-62. In 1962, Hébert returned to active duty as a Chaplain for the destroyer Squadron DESDIV 122 in Newport, RI, he served as Battalion Chaplain of the 2/26 Marines in Vietnam, 1966-67 and in 1968, he was stationed at NAS Norfolk, VA then at Argentia, Newfoundland, and finally served as the Senior Chaplain at NETC Newport, RI. He retired from the Navy as a Captain in 1979. Hébert was a member of the RI Diocesan Standing Committee. He was the Ecumenical Officer from 1984-89, and an instructor at the School for Deacons 1982-91, a ministry to which he was deeply committed. Hébert served as interim of St. Paul's Portsmouth, St. Michael's Bristol and, later, was Vicar of St. Andrew's Little Compton (1989-94). He was the Chaplain to Retired Clergy & Widows.

Calling hours will be held at St. Columba’s Chapel, 55 Vaucluse Avenue, Middletown, RI on Friday, April 19, 2013 from 4-8 p.m. His funeral will be held on Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 10 a.m. at Trinity Church, One Queen Anne Square, Newport, RI. Burial will be private in St. Columba’s Churchyard. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in his memory to Saint Columba’s Chapel, 55 Vaucluse Ave. Middletown, RI 02842 or to the Wounded Warriors Project, PO BOX 758517, Topeka, KS 66675.

Email at Diocesan House is Restored

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:28:00 +0000

Verizon has restored DSL internet service to the North Main Street area, so we are now fully back online!

Verizon Outage: Office Internet & Email is Down!

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:53:00 +0000

Verizon DSL service is down for 24-48 hours in Providence's North Main Street area, where our diocesan offices are located. If you need to reach someone at the diocesan house please call us instead of emailing us, our number is 401-274-4500. Our email server cannot receive or send email until Verizon restores internet service.

We're not entirely offline though, a few of us will be working from smartphones, G4 iPads, or home offices until internet is restored. We can still be reached via our facebook or twitter accounts. Isn't technology wonderful (when it works)?

We're sorry for the difficulties! Verizon assures us they will have service back up as soon as possible. In the mean time thank you for bearing with us.

-Ruth Meteer, Communications Director

New Brown/RISD Campus Minister Announced

noreply@blogger.com (The Episcopal Diocese of RI) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:50:00 +0000

This week in a letter to parishioners, S. Stephen's, Providence announced the appointment of the Rev’d Blake A. Sawicky as their new Curate. This is also exciting news for the diocese as Fr. Sawicky will serve as the Diocesan Episcopal Campus Minister to Brown University and RISD as well.

Since June 2011, Fr. Sawicky has served as Curate at the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John in Denver, Colorado. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School [M.Div., 2011] with a Diploma in Anglican Studies from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. He also holds degrees from University College, London, in Maritime Archeology [M.A., 2007], and Wheaton College, Illinois, in History and Ancient Near Eastern Archeology [B.A., 2006].

Fr. Sawicky writes: “I sing and play the piano, and enjoy fly fishing, hiking, SCUBA diving, art, music, literature. I enjoy volunteering with various service organizations, which have included the Red Cross, World Relief, Habitat for Humanity, and others. I am also a member of the Guild of All Souls, and I currently sit on the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners.”

Ft. John Alexander, rector of S. Stephens writes "Fr. Sawicky’s appointment is very good news for S. Stephen’s and the Episcopal community at Brown and RISD. I know you will all join me in doing everything possible to make him welcome."

Fr. Sawicky will begin his new ministry at S. Stephen’s on June 1, 2013.

Lenten Bible Study, Easter Day; Acts 28

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 10:59:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 28 (NRSV)

If this morning was a bit warmer, I would be sitting here, watching the sunrise over the water of Wickford harbor with my windows open. And if the wind were just right, I believe I would be able to hear the hymns of Easter praise carried from the sunrise service at Old St. Paul's church. We have been journeying together for the forty days of Lent and the seven days of Holy Week. And today we have arrived at the shore.

In the final chapter of the Book of Acts, Paul too arrives at his final destination. He arrives on the shore of Malta, coming out of the waters of the surf, just as God had promised him. He finds help among the people of that island and eventually makes his way aboard another ship, makes for the coast of Italy and sails north along it. After a few more ports he arrives in Rome. The whole action of the latter part of Acts has found its conclusion in these verses. When Luke abruptly ends the story, Paul has spent two years (which is six months longer than the statue of limitations on his arrest) preaching and teaching about the Way in the City.

The greek language does a much more efficient job of communicating the nature of action than English does. There are more tenses of verbs used in Greek than in modern English and this allows a single word to communicate with more nuance than we are used to reading. Luke does just this sort of thing when he writes in verse 14 "so we came to Rome" and then again in verse 16 essentially the same. This difference is that in the 14th verse Luke uses the imperfect tense, which indicates an action that is ongoing but not completed. In the 16th verse Luke uses the aorist, which signals the full past tense. If you like reading detailed textual studies of manuscripts you can see that the scribes who copied these manuscripts down through history were a little bothered by the strange use of the imperfect in verse 14. Even modern translators aren't quite sure what to do about it. The best scholars think that Luke means to say by the use of that odd tense that he, Paul and the others had arrived in the districts that were under Rome's administrative control. The Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns is still about 34 miles from what we today would call Rome. They arrived in the Roman countryside, but not yet the City itself. And that understanding makes sense to me, at least as we read the text in a historical way.

But I'm rather taken this Easter morning by the two part of arrival at the final destination as a symbol of our own voyage. We too have arrived this morning at Easter, but we do so imperfectly. We are here, but we are not finished with our journey. We are baptized, but we are still wandering in the wilderness. We are proclaiming the Resurrection and the end of the power of death, but we still watch our loved ones die. The Kingdom is breaking in upon us, but it has not yet fully been revealed. Today is Easter Day in the imperfect tense.

We have truly arrived, but we have not completed our journey. There are a few more verses and perhaps, like for Paul, a few more years yet to go for all of us. This yearly pilgrimage through Lent toward Easter is a symbol that we are still travelers on the Way. We have arrived at the outskirts, but there is still more to come.

If you ever have had the chance to read C.S. Lewis' book "The Final Battle", the last of the Narnia books, you might recognize this idea. In Lewis' book, even after the world of Narnia has come to its judgement and end, the people of God are not yet done with their journey to the promised places. They must still go higher up and deeper into the new land they have found.

Those two verses in the final chapter of Acts, with the odd grammatical construction, seem to me the most fitting focus for our thoughts this Easter morn.

I pray God's fullest and richest blessing on you and those you love as you journey onward from this place. Go well!

+Nicholas

Easter Day 2013

Lenten Bible Study, Holy Saturday; Acts 27

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:11:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 27 (NRSV)

Sitting here at my desk, watching the sun rise over Narragansett bay, I find myself struggling to not get caught up in the eyewitness details of Paul's final sea voyage. The language and images are very familiar. A ship, caught in the teeth of a winter nor'easter, begins to break apart in the heavy waves. Cargo and tackle are thrown overboard, sea anchors are dropped and soundings taken. All details that anyone here in the Ocean State would recognize. But this is more than a sea adventure. This is an allegory about the Church and a proof of God's power that is particularly resonant on this Holy Saturday morning.

To the ancient Israelites the sea represented the forces of chaos. The sea's protean surface recalled the state of the cosmos before God began to order Creation and the story of God's people began. The psalms sing of God's power in setting the sea within bounds that it could not escape. The people of Israel were desert people and as such they had little interest in sailing and treated all water with respect, awe and a little fear. (We hear echoes of this in the language of early Church that describes baptism as a drowning and a death in the waters of chaos.) To the gentile nations along the Mediterranean coasts the sea was their highway, but it was mercurial and could turn in an instant on anyone - particularly on anyone who angered the gods.

Sea voyages were fraught with the interference of the gods. It was customary to sacrifice to the gods before the voyage began and during the voyage the crew and passengers were all very intentional in avoiding an behavior that might anger a god. At best it was hoped the gods would not notice the people pushing out into deep water because if they did they might unleash the winds and send a great storm to destroy the boat that represented the traveler's island of safety. Just as we read in the story of Jonah, when sailors discovered that a particular person on board a ship had angered a god, they felt no remorse in heaving that person overboard to suffer the god's wrath directly.

In the early church the symbol of the Church was the boat. The story of Noah and his safe passage in the ark while the created order was being destroyed by the rising force of the waters of chaos was read as an allegory of the Church that brought the faithful safely to the new Creation that God inaugurated on Easter Day. Isn't it striking that we still call the main hall of a church building the "nave", a word which comes the latin word from ship "navis"?

When you read the details of this sea voyage in that light, there's much more here than just a grain ship, carrying prisoners to Rome, being destroyed by an winter gale. Paul proclaims that this particular storm represents no judgement on the part of God, just a poor judgment on the part of the ship's owner. And the God who Paul proclaims is going to intervene to save all the people on board the ship. It's proof that this God has power over chaos, is greater than the pagan lord of the sea, and is actively protecting Paul and his companions. To the pagan cultures of Paul's time, this would have spoken volumes.

But look also at the how God uses the ship in the story. The ship carries the whole company through the storm though it is scoured by the wind and the waves, loses much of its cargo and tackle and in the very end breaks apart just before they find a safe shore. I'm rather taken by the image of the jettisoning of anything superfluous as the ship tries to hold together in the nor'easter. There doesn't seem to be much reluctance on the part of the ship's crew to get rid of anything that wasn't helping. Paul spoke to them all in the midst of the storm with a promise from God that no one would be lost. But the ship would not be saved. Yet it played its appointed role in bringing people to safety.

What parallels are there for us in this tale and our present experience of the Church this Holy Saturday morning? I expect that you are recognizing many. God has promised that we all would be saved, and we try to trust in that promise in the midst of great storms. We too are being asked what we need to lose to be able to keep moving forward toward our goal. We too are being told we must eat the food that gives us strength to see our voyage through to the end. We too have heard an angelic message. And there are so many more…

On Good Friday the church naves were stripped and bare. The storm broke upon us. This morning we awake to gray skies and silence. We are reduced to the essentials needed for our journey. But the shore is in sight. We need to make our way through the surf, through the water to reach the goal.

Keep all this in your mind tonight if you attend an Easter Vigil. Listen and remember the role the water plays in the stories. Watch the light come into the darkness. And find the shore underneath your feet even as you are dripping from the holy water of baptism.

Lenten Bible Study, Good Friday; Acts 26

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:25:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 26 (NRSV)

In this, the final of Paul's defenses of his ministry, there are some additional details added to his recounting of the events on the road to Damascus where he had his vision of Jesus. In a few places in this account, Paul intensifies the language he uses to tell what happened. The light he saw for instance is "brighter than the sun". "We all fell to the ground" is a slightly different version than what we read in the first account back in chapter 9 of this book where it is reported that the companions hear the voice but it is not mentioned that they fall to the ground or see the light. The main story is not changed, but it is more dramatically told.

But the most interesting addition to the account is Paul's inclusion of the phrase that he hears Jesus using, "Why do you kick against the goads?" That phrase, commonly found in classical literature (Aeschylus and Pindar for example), was how one described what it was like to resist the will of the gods. Paul's use of it, which was probably intentional, resonated with the audience before whom he was speaking. Prior to this vision Paul had been an observant Pharisee and had persecuted the Christian believers. Having heard the voice of God from heaven, he changed his beliefs and his direction. It's exactly how the Hellenistic world would expect a man to respond to the urging of his god. And Paul's experiences preaching the Gospel of Jesus served to verify to his hearers that this was an authentic encounter with the divine.

It is interesting that Paul uses this classical phrase to describe his experience of conversion. He was pushing against the will of God and was experiencing pain as a result. But notice that the pain is not caused by God directly, it's caused by Paul refusing to embrace the purpose for which he was created. Because he would not be true to God's purpose for him, he was cutting himself off from the Truth and from the profound Joy which we experience when we follow the Truth. God's response to this stubborn refusal is not to smite Paul or to curse him in anyway. Actually it's rather the contrary isn't it? Paul is free and has the approval of all while he is actively persecuting the Church. It's only when he seeks to serve Christ that he experiences opposition and personal persecution from his community. It's because he has turned to follow Christ that his is standing in court bound in chains. But Paul understands the difference between the appearance of freedom and true freedom. And it is the true freedom, even while bound that he is attempting to explain to Agrippa and to Festus. And it is this freedom that will take him to Rome and to his death.

Today, Good Friday, we hear how Jesus was bound and taken to his death just outside the gates of Jerusalem. We, like Paul, in rejecting the Messiah, cause God not to smite us, but instead to suffer. God's response to our rejection, like to Paul's, is an intensification of God's love toward us. Jesus, in way no one else ever has, embraces God's will completely in the moment of Good Friday, as hard and mysterious a thing it is for us to understand what that means.

How are we feeling pain in our own lives right now? What is the cause of that pain? Are we too kicking against the goads? Are we resisting God's purpose for our lives? Thanks be to God that very few of us are ultimately called to suffer the same fate that befell Paul or Jesus, and we don't have to fear that sort of end. But how willing are we to rethink where we are in our lives and return to God's purpose for us? Are we willing to find our own unique vocation?

Lenten Bible Study, Maundy Thursday; Acts 25

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:39:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 25 (NRSV)

Paul gives five formal defenses of himself and his actions in the Book of Acts. Today we read the fourth one which is the shortest of the five. By this point you should be recognizing many of the points that Paul makes. He, and the movement of which he is a part is no threat to the civil authorities. He is being accused by people who are disputing with him over particular points of what he claims as their shared religion. Paul is working out of a tradition in the Roman Empire that the State was very reluctant to be drawn into religious disputes internal to the conquered lands. This was a practical stance because the civil authorities sent from Rome could hardly be expected to have enough knowledge to rule wisely in such cases. And bad rulings led to more disturbance of the peace. (And that was bad for Roman business.)

The point being made in this chapter was that Festus thought this conflict was over one issue and discovered it was about something else entirely. The civil realm was unable to understand what was happening in the religious realm unless time was taken and an effort made to learn about the teachings of the faith.

There's a surprising resonance between this moment in the history of the Early Church and the situation in the United States right now. Much of the major conflict in society has to do with the places where the secular world and the religious world are in opposition. The secular world uses scientism as the primary source of its thought and the religious world doesn't. You can see this in operation in the present disputes between the pro-life and pro-choice (which is at its heart an argument over when life begins), in the dispute between evolutionists, creationists and adherents of intelligent design, and in the arguments over the rights of people attracted to others of the same gender and people who find themselves to be transgender. Scientific thought in this day says one thing, religious thought in this day says another in many cases, and the civil authorities are being drawn into the dispute between competing views. The problem, speaking as a scientist and theologian, is that most of the civil authorities don't know enough about either science or theology to be able to judge when good claims are being made by one or both and when they are being used badly.

Stirring the present volatile mix is the decreasing effectiveness of the media in informing society about the basic issues being disputed. The business models of the media are in a moment of rapid change and much of the institutional press is no longer viable. Religion reporters who are trained in religious teachings are very rare. Scientific reporting tends to the sensational. The civil authorities, locked in a moment of deep struggle to gain a definitive advantage over one and another, are not well-served by either.

Paul was facing death because the civil authorities who were trying his case simply didn't know enough about the Way to be able to judge well. Generally Rome would not be drawn into such a dispute. The Founders of this country took a book from that page when they passed the first amendment in our Bill of Rights. But there were times and there are times when the civil authority of a nation must act in such a dispute between differing beliefs. It becomes imperative for them to be informed. But who shall inform them?

In Paul's case, that responsibility fell to Paul. In our day, I wonder if it doesn't also fall to us. We have the resource of an active and well read laity. We have the resource of highly educated clergy. We live in a moment when we can very easily communicate with thousands of people whenever we want to. Who is there better suited or resourced to speak to the world about our faith today than us?

How willing are you to do that? How confident are you in doing that? What would you have to change in your life so that you would be more confident? I am so grateful that you've been faithful in this Lenten Journey this year. Reading the Bible, reflecting on the meaning of the words in their original and present context is the place to begin. Allowing God's Word to form you and the Spirit to transform you is the necessary step to begin this task. Look at how Paul was formed and transformed…

Lenten Bible Study, Wednesday in Holy Week; Acts 24

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:37:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 24 (NRSV)

It's surprising to find an entire chapter of Acts that's essentially a court transcript. Luke devotes this chapter and the next to detailing the case against Paul and Paul's defense. The inclusion of this testimony makes sense if you keep in mind one of the primary themes of Acts, that Christianity is a natural outgrowth of Judaism and poses no threat to the Roman Empire. You will see, as we arrive at the end of the book, that there is no mention of Paul's execution in Rome. The story ends with Paul in Rome teaching about the Way. There are many who think that the reason the latter sections of Acts were written was to lay out a case before the Roman authorities who were to decide Paul's fate. That would explain why Luke will go to such trouble to lay out the specific legal arguments used against Paul and Paul's rebuttal of those points.

Felix is not unknown in history. He was appointed by the Emperor Claudius to the governorship of Judea based in Caesarea in the year 52. Felix was recalled to Rome from his post in 59 by the Emperor Nero. The woman Drusilla mentioned in Acts was the daughter of King Agrippa, who we shall read more about tomorrow. She was Felix's third wife and had been the wife of another King in the region before Felix divorced his wife, persuaded her to divorce her husband and marry him instead. (The Wikipedia article linked above has the succession of wives somewhat confused apparently.) His time in Judea came to an end when he responded in a particularly heavy handed way to a conflict in Caesarea by its populace about whether or not the city was essentially Jewish or Greek. Daggers were beginning to be drawn between the factions, the Jews had won a street brawl and Felix sent in troops to aid the "Greek" faction. Thousands of Jews were killed and the wealthy had their homes where looted by the troops. The Jewish leaders appealed to Rome and Felix was recalled. There's no further mention of him in existing historical accounts.

Given all that, the reason Felix decided to hold Paul in prison for two years becomes somewhat more understandable. He was trying to keep the tensions between factions in the region from erupting into violence. By holding Paul, whom the Jewish leaders wanted dead, Felix was hoping both for personal financial gain or seeking a bargaining chip with which to curry favor if needed. Paul's long imprisonment had nothing really to do with anything Paul had done. He was a pawn being caught up in a game between the powers of the world.

Having people of faith being used as pawns in the political region is not unknown of in our own day is it? Much of the conflict in the Church here in the United States is initiated by people with completely separate agendas from those of the people trying to follow the Way. Churchgoer is pitted against churchgoer as political activists try to create voting factions that will move in a particular direction on one issue or another. As in Paul's day, if you aren't aware of the bigger political picture, you can find yourself getting caught up in the emotions of the argument and falling into the trap of conflict prepared for you.

During Holy Week we remember that what we read is happening to Paul happened also to Jesus. The city of Jerusalem was boiling over as the crowds gathered to celebrate Passover. Pilate was charged with keeping the peace in the city. He didn't know who Jesus was, and didn't care to discover where God was in that particular moment. He just wanted to do what was expedient to keep the violence from erupting. He was canny enough to see that the death of one could prevent the sort of riots that would cause him to be recalled to Rome in the way that Felix after Felix failed to prevent the violence.

How aware are you of when the Church is being used as a pawn in a game? How have you been complicit? How have you refused to participate?

I don't think the Church realistically has the option of completely withdrawing from the secular sphere, though that's certainly been attempted many times in our history.

Lenten Bible Study, Tuesday in Holy Week; Acts 23

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:56:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 23 (NRSV)

When you read the earliest commentaries on the Book of Acts, the odd detail of Ananias the High Priest ordering Paul to be struck, and Paul's subsequent apology to the High Priest, is the focus of much of the writing. It seems an odd thing to fix your attention on, but it seemed to the early writers to be very much out of character for the general arc of the narrative in Acts. Luke seems to be working on showing that Christianity is the legitimate successor of what we now call Judaism. (Modern Judaism is, for the most part, a descendent of the writings and thoughts of the Pharisees.) In this story Paul, rather than confounding the leaders of the Jewish people seems to be apologizing.

Much of the analysis of the passage tries to explain away Paul's words. (That they are so troubled by this incident is a reminder of how much the early Church struggled to come to terms with the fact that many Jews would not accept Jesus at the Messiah.) The commentators argue that Paul is tired and overwrought by the experience of being nearly flogged. Some point out that Paul has been gone from Jerusalem for a long time and he simply doesn't know that Ananias was once again the High Priest. Some such as Chrysostom see Paul attempting to deflect the loss of honor that he has suffered as a result of being struck across the mouth. Some, the Venerable Bede in particular, argue that Paul was prophesying in what he said - that the High Priesthood was about to come to an end. (Which did actually happened in the following decades after the destruction of Herod's temple by the Roman legions.) But it is the commentary of Augustine of Hippo that makes the most interesting point for us as we read this during Holy Week.

Augustine highlights the actual words that Paul speaks; "I did not know […] that he was the High Priest. For it is written, You shall not speak ill of the leader of your people". Paul was a follower of Jesus, whom the Church proclaims as the great High Priest. Once Jesus is revealed at the Messiah, our need for priests to serve as mediators between God and humankind has ended. The whole of the Church, as the Body of Christ, now serves the World in that way. Augustine writes "in the reply, “I did not know that he was the high priest,” he spoke the truth to those who understand him. It is as though he were saying, “I have come to know another high priest, for whose name’s sake I am suffering these injuries—a high priest whom it is not lawful to revile but whom you are reviling, because in me you hate nothing else than his name.” (De serm. Dom. in mont. 1.19.58) Augustine's point is that Paul is speaking the truth when he says what he says. And he is condemning those who are persecuting him for the offense of following the Truth.

I think that recognition that Jesus is the Truth is especially poignant in these days of Holy Week. On Sunday and on Friday this week we will hear an entire account of the Passion read aloud. On Friday, in John's version of the Passion, we hear Pilate ask "What is truth?" (John 18:38) while the Truth of God stands incarnate before him in the court of Roman Law. Pilate misses the deep meaning of the moment. Augustine argues that High Priest and the rest of the court miss the deep meaning of Paul's words as they try him in the Temple Court. They are both so intent on doing what they intend to do that they can't see that, in their action, they are doing the wrong thing.

Being so intent on doing what I want to do, and thus missing what God wants me to do, is something I can certainly identify with in my own life. I struggle with questions like this all the time. At my best I will stop in the middle of a particularly difficult set of decisions to ask myself, "Who is going to gain if I follow my present course, me or God?" I'd like to tell you that I've gotten very good at recognizing God's will in most things. But that wouldn't be true since I don't think that I have been consistently good at recognizing God's will. But God seems to be able to work things out in the end. God is like that. Thanks be to God.

How about you? How have you missed the deep truth that surrounds us all the time? How have you imagined that you were doing the right thing and later discovered that you weren't? And what did God do with that?

What would have to change in you so that you that this sort of thing wouldn't happen?

Lenten Bible Study, Monday in Holy Week, Acts 22

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 22 (NRSV)
Something that has been mentioned before in the Book of Acts now becomes very important. Paul is a Roman citizen by birth. As we read the story of the riot in Jerusalem which occurs because of Paul's defense of his faith, there are numerous parallels between the "trial" of Jesus and the "trial" of Paul. But at the moment the flogging by the Roman garrison is about to begin, Paul mentions to the centurion in charge that he is a Roman citizen. The action immediately changes. Torturing a Roman citizen without due process is a capital crime in the Empire.

There is great surprise on the part of the garrison commander when he learns this news. The commander had purchased his citizenship - at great cost. Paul was a freeborn Roman, which gave him higher status that the new man who had threatened to torture him. To the readers of Luke's time this would have made perfect sense, though to us it does seem a bit ironic that such a small thing would make such a large difference in how Paul was going to be treated.

Augustus of Hippo, in his comments on this passage, points out that what Paul valued the most, his relationship with Jesus, and his knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah that the prophets had foretold mattered the least to the crowd and to the Romans. What Paul seems to have cared about the least, his birthright as a Roman citizen, was the thing that the powers of the world valued most highly. There's a clear upside down relationship between what Paul thinks and what the world thinks. Chrysostom sees a further teaching in this moment; God is going to use the birthright of Paul, which Paul only mentions offhandedly to the guard (remember Paul has already earlier been whipped and beaten in other cities), to be the means by which Paul will join Peter in Rome. And it's in Rome that both will be martyred.

There are two things in this account that I think are worth meditating upon. The first is that Paul does not value the things the world values. Paul is running after something completely different. It's hard even today to not imagine a look of triumph on Paul's face as he surprises the garrison commander with the news of his citizenship. But that's a projection of our own values onto the story. Paul does not seem to be concerned about what he is about to suffer. In some ways you have to wonder why he brought the fact of his citizenship up at all. Was he concerned about the punishment is torturer might endure when the truth came out? Did he see that a reprieve might allow him another chance to proclaim the Gospel? We really can't tell. All we can be sure of is that Paul behaving differently than many of us would. What would have to change in us to be able to be like Paul in this moment?

The second thing that I find worth meditating on in this story is that God is going to use this reversal, based as it is on human rather than divine values, to accomplish Paul's final goal of proclaiming the Gospel in the great capital of the Gentile world. Once again God is drawing a straight path using crooked lines. That's something that is writ most large in the events of Holy Week isn't it? God uses our fear, our cowardice, our willingness to hide from the light to accomplish the salvation of the world. The early church used to say that on Easter Day, God used the values of God's opponents to overcome them. The forces which oppose God's will can't in the end succeed because they are fundamentally flawed, they are bent inward on themselves.

How have you seen God using the parts of you that you struggle with the most to do things that in end give you great joy? It's hard to recognize that God is doing that in the moment it is happening, but I find that in hindsight I can often see this principle at work in my own life. Can you see it in yours?

Lenten Bible Study, Palm Sunday; Acts 21

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:38:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 21 (NRSV)

Today in church you will most likely hear the story of the Passion read aloud. In the parish where I will be worshipping, the members of the congregation will be acting out the story in the form of a play. If you've been present for one of these community readings you know both how long the story is, and how powerful the retelling of it is.

We're now in the final week before Easter. The forty days of Lent proper have come to a close and we're in the last bit of the story that leads us to the Triduum. The events that we remember in the proper liturgies throughout this week will retell the story we all know, with all its increasingly difficult details. The whole of Holy Week is observed as a teaching device, much in the same way that the whole Church calendar year functions. We make our way through the seasons, the feasts and the fasts and arrive as different sort of people than when we started. The degree of the difference depends, in my experience, entirely on how much of yourself you are willing to invest in the journey.

The more you can place yourself in the story the more real it becomes. The Jesuits have an entire style of spiritual discipline based on making that happen effectively. And some scholars believe that is why the narrative in Acts, one section of which we read this morning, changes to the first person. For most of the story that we've been reading in Acts, the narrator (Luke) is recounting a series of events that he was apparently not a witness to but which has learned about from people who were. In the parts of the Book of Acts the language seems to indicate that the narrator is part of the story directly.

"We sailed to Jerusalem." "When we arrived, the brothers welcomed us." Is this the part of the story where Luke was actually traveling with Paul and his companions? Is this a part of the story where Luke was given access to someone's travel diary and he, for some reason, decides not to change the way the story is told? And why does the story then abruptly, in all three cases, stop using the first person narrative?

There are multiple answers to these questions. None of them seems to have definitely settled the question. Some scholars argue that Luke was part of the journey and is using his own notes for these sections. Others, believing that Luke was too young at this point to take part in the travel, argue that he is using another person's notes and for some reason decides not to edit the text - perhaps out of respect for the person who originally wrote it. Some scholars believe that this represents a literary convention of the time, a way to heighten the reader's interest. And some, not attempting to answer the why, see in these sections an invitation for the readers of the Book of Acts to enter personally into the story.

I think it's the last bit that catches my imagination this Palm Sunday. The liturgical observance of Holy Week, like the prayers of the Stations of the Cross, are meant to be a spiritual tool to allow us to enter into the mystery of the events that happened thousands of years ago. The ambiguity of the accounts, the rough drawn details, the economy of the narration are all meant to evoke a feeling that we are drawn inward and are walking the paths with Jesus and the disciples. We are seeing, with our own eyes, the events unfolding before us. What we do with what we see is up to the action of the Holy Spirit within our lives. For some of us it will lead to a deeper appreciation of what Jesus has done for all of us. For some it will lead us to consider how deeply complicit we are in rejecting God's dream of who we might become. For some it will spur us to take our faith journey more seriously. For some it will be a moment of healing, for others a time of spiritual crisis.

What will it be for you this year? Are you willing to follow the path that the Holy Spirit is laying before you? Are you going to see it through?

I promise you, that if you give yourself up to living into the story of Holy Week as best you can this year, you will be a changed person by Easter. You may not recognize the change at first, but you will be changed. I have seen this happen to so many people. I have observed it in myself - year in and year out.

Lenten Bible Study Day 39; Acts 20

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:42:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 20 (NRSV)
In this chapter Paul takes leave of the work he has been doing in Asia. Paul had spent years in Asia talking about the Gospel, teaching about Jesus and raising up leaders for the young churches he was planting. The account of his work in the region ends with a late night teaching meeting. Paul talks for so long into the night that a young man falls asleep while Paul goes on and on. The falling asleep occasions a fall from a window (probably a second story one). The account in Acts implies that the young man dies as a result, but Paul, when he bends over him, does not pray or call on the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul notices that the boy is still breathing and tell people not to be upset. Then Paul goes upstairs and continues to teach until dawn.

It's that single-minded dedication to his task that is the background for the story told in the rest of this chapter. Paul knows he is being called to Jerusalem - and wants to be there by Pentecost. He is leaving behind the fruits of his labors and heading toward an unknown fate. He tells the people in Asia, as he is leaving, that he is being told by the Holy Spirit that he will continue to experience resistance, persecution and imprisonment as a result of his work proclaiming the Gospel. Recall Jesus' words to his disciples telling them that such will be their fate after he leaves them. Paul's experience is a sign that he is truly doing what Jesus is asking him to do.

In his final conversation with the elders of Ephesus (which could mean he was meeting with priests of that church) he warns them that they too will face conflict, though of a different sort. In their case, the conflict will arise from within the Church. Some of Paul's followers will begin to distort the Gospel message in ways that are meant to attract more followers rather than continuing to be faithful in telling the Truth no matter the cost. I suppose there's a form of comfort for us today in those words too; we have seen similar things in our own history. According to Paul this is what happens within the Church. And Jesus warns about something similar when he is teaching the disciples during his earthly ministry.

Finally Paul kneels with the elders and prays with them one more time, and together they weep at this parting. Perhaps it's because I remember these sorts of partings during my ministry as a priest (elder) that I am drawn particularly to this part of the chapter this morning. I've said goodbye to three churches during that work. The first leaving was much like the last. I was excited at the new ministry that was coming, but I was also dreading leaving behind people who had become very dear to me. In each case I was able to hold it together until the final blessing at my last service. And then, three times, the tears came. They surprised me the first time, and became a comfort in the subsequent leavings. My voice always cracks the last time I give God's blessing to the people who have worked with me in community to further the reach of the Gospel of Jesus. And when I do leave, there remains a hole in my heart for all of them. After nearly twenty years distance from the first leaving, I can tell you that while the tears have dried, the hole doesn't go away. Almost every priest I know is hungry for news of the parishes they have served, what is happening in the lives of the people they have loved and how the community is doing in that place. I can't imagine it's any different for bishops. I've already experienced that longing on the parts of the former bishops of Rhode Island.

But the pain of leaving a community to go forth to new work and ministry isn't unique to the ordained. I've had similar conversations with lay members of the community, who make a point of coming back to visit the church whenever they are back in town, who would rush to coffee hour to hear the news and who continued to hold their former community in their prayers. And I've known a few people for whom the experience of grief at parting is too overwhelming. And they respond to that grief by refusing to reengage a new community partly out of guilt that they were not being true to the community left behind and partly because they can't imagine experiencing that pain again.

All this is true too for our personal relationships, our friendships and our family lives as well.

But according to what Jesus tells us, and what read in Paul's speech today, that pain is an unavoidable part of being alive and working in this imperfect world. There is nothing else to do but push our way through it. That is part of our call to be faithful to Gospel work we are doing. I imagine the pain is like the soreness of an athlete in training. There is no way to achieve the goal we are reaching toward without the hard and painful work of building our selves up to the task.

But this last Saturday in Lent (for tomorrow we begin Holy Week) perhaps it would be appropriate to spend a few moments remembering. Remember the pain of the parting and the way a new community welcomed you in. Are you willing to go through that experience again if God so calls you?

Lenten Bible Study Day 38; Acts 19

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:50:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 19 (NRSV)
What I notice about today's reading in Acts is the operation of two different ways of interacting with world around us. As the circle of conflict that Paul is encountering grows, he is starting to face increased opposition from the established pagan institutions in western part of Asia. The core of the conflict in this chapter seems to be about the way we interact with the divine.

Earlier in our readings I mentioned in passing the difference between magic and faith. Magic is an attempt to control the world around us, usually by some sort of mechanism that binds greater power to our will.

The story which we read today about the exorcists who started using the name of Jesus to try to cast out demons is an excellent example of this. Jesus' name in this case doesn't represent a sign of a relationship between the exorcist and Our Lord. It's a token of power that the exorcists hear being used by the followers of the Way, and which the exorcists decide to add to their bag of tricks. But as the demons say in response, "Jesus I know, Paul I am familiar with… but who are you?" Using the name of Jesus not in response to the urging of the Spirit, but rather at ones desire for personal gain, doesn't turn out well. It's a magical use. And it's not what God would have us ever do.

Paul's ability to have a relationship with Jesus is the root of "unusual miracles" that are being performed in his presence. Paul is not seeking to do anything for himself. Certainly he is not seeking money in the way that the exorcists were doing. You can see this in action in how the great miracle, the gift of the Holy Spirit, happens in the very beginning of the chapter.

Paul meets believers who had not yet been baptized into a relationship with Jesus. They knew the baptism of John, which was meant to be a sign that pointed to Jesus, but they had not yet encountered the living words. Paul baptizes them in the name of Jesus and then lays his hands upon them. (The laying on of hands by the apostle, which is described a number of times in Acts is generally used as the scriptural warrant for the rite of confirmation by a bishop by the way.) Paul does not call down the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes when the Spirit decides to come. But in this case the way for the believers to enter into a relationship with God has been opened by the baptism which binds them into relationship with Jesus. Paul's action of laying on of hands represents their being bound in a relationship with the whole of the Church.

Now reread the last part of today's chapter. There's no mention of relationship between the silversmiths and the "image of Artemis which fell from the sky". At least there's no personal relationship, no emotional connection. The relationship is only one of personal gain. The silversmiths sell copies of the image to people who travel to Ephesus. And I'd wager that the people who bought them weren't planning on using them to deepen their emotional connection to their goddess. They most likely bought them to serve as amulets or as a form of spiritual protection. The way those particular cults worked was that you offered something to the god, and if the god decided your offering was sufficient, the god would do what you wanted. That's magic.

Faith, on the other hand, grows from relationship. And relationship is based in a sort of mutuality, a shared engagement with one another and even a vulnerability that simply isn't present in an attempt to control. Faith (trust) finds God active and present in everyday life and seeks to understand what this presence can teach us. Faith expects that God is already active in our lives and does not need to be bribed. Faith receives from God and does not dictate to God. When miracles occur, they are clearly a result of placing ourselves more fully in the presence of God, not as a result of some form of trickery or binding of God.

There are some scholars who argue that Christianity (and Judaism) is not a religion in the strictest sense of the word, but really a philosophy. The argument is based in the ideas that I'm writing about here.
How often to you go to God attempting to make a bargain that you do "this" if God will do "that" for you? How does that work out when you do that? In my case, it hardly ever turns out well. What does seem to "work" is for me to open myself to what God has in mind in any particular moment, and if it turns out to be something I feared, looking to find a way to trust that God was present in the moment all the same. Have you managed to do that at one time in your life? How did that work out?

Lenten Bible Study Day 37; Acts 18

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:24:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 18 (NRSV)

How should the Church relate the world around it? That's a question that runs as a secondary or perhaps tertiary theme throughout Acts. In the 18th Chapter we hear how Luke is trying to describe how the new movement within Judaism is relating to the more traditional followers, and to the secular authorities of Rome.

This isn't the first time we've encountered a story about a controversy between the followers of what Luke is calling "the Way" and the Jewish community that has been dispersed around the Roman empire. At times this controversy has turned to violence and even become deadly, as in the case of the martyrdom of Stephen, and as we'll see, the controversy continues to escalate over the remaining chapters.

Did you note the contrast between the internal conflict within Judaism (internal, because at this point, both groups, believed that they were Jews) and the lack of external conflict with the Roman authorities? This framing appears to be intentional on Luke's part.

In Paul's letters, and in the stories of the early Church in Acts, when conflict is described it is centered in internal interpretations of religious matters. That was something that the Roman authorities, in a way not unlike our own government, avoided getting involved in. The Romans used the formal imperial recognition of local religions and cults as a tool to create the glue that held the empire together. Their generals would recognize local gods as "manifestations" of the Roman gods, ask that the local people recognize one more God (the emperor) and simply require that religious conflict not spill over into violence. Violence and the disturbing of the peace were the two things that the thinly spread Roman legions would not tolerate. Their fear was that such agitation would spread, and the legions would not be able to terrorize the populace back into submission to Roman rule.

Given that background, now recall how Luke presents the religious conflict in this chapter. Followers of traditional judaism are being converted to the truth of the new Way as they meet people who are able to instruct them. There are those who won't accept instruction, or who are not willing to be converted, but the conflict is all about internal religious questions within Judaism. When the conflict spills over into the public sphere, it is instigated by the opponents of the Christians.

The Roman authority, in this case a proconsul of Achia named Gallio, follow Roman military doctrine and refuse to intervene. And, being left in relative peace, the Christian community continues its missionary work of proclaiming the Good News. It's worth noting that Good News, literally Gospel, is actually a technical term of the Roman imperial court. When the Emperor wished to declare something of great political import, he would have his ambassadors (apostles…) go to the center of a city and shout "GOSPEL, GOSPEL!" (GOOD NEWS, GOOD NEWS). They would then tell the gathered crowd the emperor's message, generally of a new edict, or news of a military triumph or alliance.

How fascinating that the early Church is using the language of the secular world to proclaim its message to anyone would listen. And how different it must have looked to people used to the imperial trappings of power to have a simple man like Paul stand up in a market and proclaim "good news" about a peasant teacher who the authorities had crucified and who had risen from the dead. Unless we keep that background in mind, we can't fully grasp the fundamental subversive nature of the message being spoken.

Luke is describing a community of believers that is working peacefully within the empire. But there's an electric message being shared to those who have ears to hear it. The Church's role is to live within society, but not be a part of society. That dual role is something that the Church has struggled with again and again in its history. I wonder, for instance, if we ought to be looking at the present state of the Episcopal Church in the United States with gratitude rather than sadness. We can no longer be described as the church of the powerful at prayer. According to what Luke is describing, that's a good thing.

But it's a hard thing to live into for people who remember a time when the Church had a much more privileged place in society. Do you find the present role of the Church in society an easy thing to accept? Do you wish things were more as they used to be? Do you think the Church has not gone far enough down the road of being in but not a part of society? And what does it mean to be in but not part? Where are the limits? Which parts of the secular world should the Church engage? Which parts should it ignore? How should we decide?

Lenten Bible Study Day 36; Acts 17

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:26:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 17 (NRSV)
The story of Paul and his visit to Athens has been for a long time, a model to me of how Christians might best interact with people of different or no faith.

Athens was the intellectual center of western classical culture. While the days of the great flowering of philosophers had passed, their legacy, carried east and south from Greece by the conquering armies of Alexander the Great, had become part of the common heritage of the hellenized world. Paul was a product of that world. While he was trained as a rabbi, the way he writes and the way he constructs his arguments in his letters indicate that he was also trained in philosophy and rhetoric. He was a man of two cultures, a hellenized jew, and it is because of that comprehensiveness that he was so effective in taking the message of the Gospel to the gentile peoples.

In today's reading in Acts Paul arrives, apparently for the first time in his life, in Athens. He sees a city full of temples and graven images. Reconstructions of the city today indicate that it teemed with shrines and temples to nearly every god or demigod that the Greek armies had encountered during their campaigns. The best of Greek thought recognized that the idols were not the gods, and perhaps Paul hadn't realized how different the idealized thoughts of the philosophers were from the actual practice of people of the city.

At any rate Luke reports that Paul is distressed by what he finds and begins to argue in the synagogue against the idolatry all around. (That's an interesting choice of a place to hold forth against idols; it's the one place in all of Athens that you would expect there to be no idols.) His arguments bring out philosophers of two of the major schools of thought of the time, the Stoics and the Epicureans. They are apparently attracted to him because they were interested in any new ideas, and his teachings were certainly new to them.

Eventually Paul is brought to the Aeropagus, literally "the rock of Ares (the Greek God of War)". It was the place where legal matters were pursued, and in Paul's time probably the place where investigations into criminal matters took place. It's there that Paul makes a speech about a temple he saw in the city that was dedicated to an "unknown God". He uses the presence of that shrine as a way to introduce the people of the city to the good news that God has definitively and uniquely entered human history in the person of Jesus. The words of his argument, as Luke reports them, deal mainly with the issue of idolatry but there must have been more to the speech because it's the scoffing at reports of the resurrection of the dead that divide the crowd. Some of the people who hear Paul continue to listen to him and eventually are added to the Church. Many apparently don't and aren't.

But what I find interesting is the way that Paul chooses not to attack the Athenians, but to find things in their practice that he can use to lead them to a relationship with God. He does the opposite of the street preachers I used to encounter when I was in college, who would stand on the sidewalk near campus and shout condemnation at anyone who walked by. I never saw a single person converted that way. I did see a lot of people embarrassed by the behavior who would no longer admit to their classmates that they too were Christians. Paul doesn't shout or condemn. The word translated "repent" in the text (which is the word metanoia in Greek) might better be rendered "re-think" or "reconsider". There's no call to sit in the dust or put to ashes on their heads. Just a call to engage with these new ideas about God's nature.

When Gregory the Great sent Augustine of Canterbury to bring the Gospel to the British Isles, Augustine asked what he was to do about the existing shrines of the British people. Gregory replied "Things are not to be loved for the sake of a place, but places are to be loved for the sake of their good things." In other words, Gregory was telling Augustine to seek out the things that already existed in Britain and which pointed to the God that Augustine was proclaiming. Whatever he found that pointed to, or was adaptable to the Gospel, he should use to proclaim it.

I think sometimes we forget this principle. Which is ironic because it's part of our founding gift as the descendants of Augustine's missionary work. When we encounter people who believe differently than we do, rather than condemning them, we would do better to learn their ways, and seek the things in their lives that already point to Jesus. Such things will exist in any place. We believe Jesus is the Truth, and so where ever there is truth, we look to find the presence of Jesus. Paul did this in part in Athens, and it allowed some of the people who heard him to give him a fair hearing. Not all could hear, but some did.

How open are you to finding truth in other people? How much will you open yourself to that task when they do things that you find hard to accept or understand? People who are trying to communicate across cultural boundaries really need to acquire that gift, whether there are working in inter-religious dialogue, speaking about religion to scientists, or trying to talk about faith to a community that has lost its memory of the basic language of belief.

Where are you hearing the Truth of God in a surprising place today? How might you use that truth as a place to begin a dialogue about what you believe?

Lenten Bible Study Day 35; Acts 16

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:24:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 16 (NRSV)
In the opening of the 16th chapter, we read how the early church now, at least in principle, in agreement about how to handle the question of gentile believers, begins to organize itself formally to reach out in that direction. Paul begins to put his missionary team together for what is his second major missionary journey.

I say "in principle" just above because as I hope you noticed, Paul decides to have Timothy circumcised before they begin their work together. Paul apparently does this because of his desire to not upset the jewish believers that they will come into contact with during their journey. Remember how I mentioned in yesterday's meditation that the decision of the Jerusalem Council took a while to be received by the whole Church? Here's part of the reason I wrote that. There are other instances in other Epistles, both in the New Testament and in ones that were not included in the New Testament, that talk about the conflict as lasting for a number of decades.

In this case Paul is doing something that is expedient because he thinks the most important thing is to declare the Gospel and anything that gets in the way of doing that is an indifferent thing. (The technical term for an indifferent thing is "adiaphora". It means something that is not of first importance with respect to the Gospel: like whether we stand, kneel or sit to pray.)

It's interesting that at this point in the account we turn our attention to following the work of Paul exclusively. Paul choses Silas to join him in his ministry. He then chooses Timothy. In both cases the decision is Paul's. There's no mention of conflict or controversy around these particular decisions (and there is about others) so apparently it was a typical sort of thing. There is an explicit mention that Timothy was well spoken of by the believers in the region. We know from other places in Paul's writing that Timothy was a young man. But other than that we don't know what it was that caused Paul to choose him; or Silas for that matter. The reason given for the choice of Silas was that Paul and Barnabas had a fight over whether or not to bring along Mark. (Traditionally this is the Mark who wrote the second Gospel in the New Testament; who is said to have eventually become Peter's secretary by the time Peter came to Rome.)

How extraordinary though that this important missionary journey begins in conflict, a conflict so sharp that it breaks apart the team that managed the first journey; the team who's report occasioned the Jerusalem Council. That's three bits of conflict listed in these two chapters. The controversy over Gentile believers, the fight between Paul and Barnabas and attempt to head off any problems that the choice of Timothy as a missionary might occasion. Paul pushes hard on two and gives way on the last. It would be wonderful to say that Paul had a consistent and strong vision, but he doesn't show that here. He does what he needs to do to focus on what he argues is most important.

There is a common sort of belief that the greatest days of the Church were in the earliest days of the Church. But if that's the case, what we read here was, that from the very beginning, there was conflict and fighting in the Church. There were personality conflicts, issues over who's mission takes priority, and questions about the limits of inclusion. That sounds like our church in our day doesn't it? Did you catch the message in the 5th verse? It's a repeat of a common formula in Acts. "The churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily." This in spite of the sharp conflicts. Luke, rather than writing as if he is scandalized by the conflicts, includes them and then points out that the Church was expanding rapidly.

How do you feel about conflict in the Church today? I have to tell you honestly that I'm not a fan of it. I'd much rather we could all get along and work together in harmony. So would most of the people in the Church. But that doesn't seem to be the way things work. They didn't work that way in the early Church, they didn't work that way at the height of the Christendom, and they don't work that way now. We have conflict. We have conflict in our parish, in our diocese, in our denomination and in our Communion. We have conflict between the major streams of Christian thought. At one level I'm scandalized by all of that. But reading these opening verses of Chapter 16, I'm also comforted. Back then God used the conflict to create multiple teams to do mission. Perhaps God is going to use the conflict of our own day to do something for the kingdom as well.

How comfortable are you with conflict in the churches you know? Why are you uncomfortable? Looking back, have you seen God doing something with that conflict, turning it to God's purpose?
(NB: In this chapter we come across the first of the "we" sections of the narrative, where the action is apparently being reported by an eye-witness observer. I'll say something about this in a bit.)

Lenten Bible Study Day 34; Acts 15

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:35:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 15 (NRSV)

The early church was facing a crisis. Some of the apostles were welcoming gentile believers into the community but not insisting that they keep the Law as given to Moses. The question the community was facing had to do with the limits of God's grace. Was God's grace given to only the faithful remnant of Jews, or was it for all who responded to the Gospel? And once people responded, how were they to change their lives?

The fact that this crisis occurred early on in the life of the Church, while many of Jesus' closest disciples were still alive, is a pretty strong indication that he gave no direct teaching on this matter. Remember that the words we are reading here are probably written a generation, possibly more, after these events took place. There were, as yet, no gospel accounts written. Paul was likely writing his letters but the most important of these had not been gathered together or given any particular authority. What we have, in this moment, is the early Church facing a question of how it will order its life and not having a clear recollection of Jesus' will in the matter. I find that worth meditating upon. Jesus apparently trusted the disciples who were going to be building the community of his Body to do the right thing. Or more to the point, he expected them to be led by the Holy Spirit into making the decisions that he would have expected them to make. That level of trust toward those of us in the Church, on the part of the second person of the Holy Trinity is rather breathtaking. I don't know that we ever really think about its implications. I'm not sure I recognize or understand them all. Jesus calls us friends, sisters and brothers. And he's apparently treating us that way, letting his family order its common life. (I find my comfort in my own belief that if we chose wrongly, the Holy Spirit will lead out of that error eventually.)

In response to this particular moment, the apostles gather together to take counsel with each other. They listen to Paul and Barnabas talk about what they had witnessed as they had preached the good news to the gentile people. They were especially interested in seeing the Holy Spirit's presence and action in those who had received the Gospel and begun to live into the message.

They looked into the scriptures of the Jewish people to see if what they were doing was contradictory to what was taught there. They did find support. It's worth remembering that there are other verses in what we call the Old Testament that would contradict this mission to the Gentiles. Holy Scripture is never simple and there's rarely a clear single thread. I would guess that they chose to read it they way they did by using the lens of the Gospel to make sense of what they found. The good news and their experience of Jesus' direct teaching, and the Holy Spirit's actions led them to give more weight to certain verses than others. In the end they were convinced that they were not acting in a manner contrary to the full witness of scripture.

But they did not welcome the new believers without putting some restrictions on them. There were some parts of the Law that still applied to all. (It seems that the apostles believed that jewish converts would be still expected to keep the full Law - which was apparently the case for the original apostles, with the exception so far of Peter.) The apostles, having come to a consensus in their counsel wrote a letter to the whole church. (I hope that the act of writing a letter to the whole church sounds familiar. The House of Bishop's meeting I attended in Kanuga, wrote a letter to the Episcopal Church following this example.) We do know that the matter was far from settled after the letter was written. It took many years for the teaching to be received by the whole church. And some parts of the early church, particularly the parts of the Church in Jerusalem, struggled with the question for many years afterwards.

What happened in this instance became a model for how the Church made its decisions. It's the process that was used when the Nicene Creed was compiled. It's the process used when the list of which books belonged in the Bible and which ones didn't was drawn up. It's the process used to decide questions about the role of Mary in the lives of the faithful.

It can also be a model for much smaller groups as well. When we are faced with a difficult decision, we can come together, try to discern God's action in a moment, test that action using the scriptures, looking at the traditions of the church and thinking hard about what is reasonable. (That's our Anglican "three-legged" stool right there.)

I wonder today how well we keep to this pattern. Do we discern in community? Or do we hold ourselves apart as we make decisions. Do we have a community to use to make decisions? Do we try to discern God's will? Do we test by remembering the message of the Gospel and scripture? I do imagine that what we ultimately decide is decided because we are convinced it's reasonable, so we've got that part covered: as long as we're discerning in community.

What community do you use to make decisions? How did you chose it? Or did it chose you? You probably do have one, though perhaps you've not thought about it this way. Is the the community you are using the one you think you should be using?

If not, what are you willing to change?

Lenten Bible Study Day 33; Acts 14

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:59:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 14 (NRSV)

"Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news…"

On the face of it, this story of how Barnabas and Paul are mistaken for two gods come to earth could be read as a sort of broad comedic interlude in the Book of Acts. Barnabas, because he is quiet and apparently possessed of greater gravitas is called Zeus by the crowds, while Paul, ever loquacious, is identified as Hermes. The two apostles are overwrought at the misidentification and tear their clothes in frustration. They have come to proclaim God's action in Jesus, not to be mistaken as gods themselves.

Yet, when you step back a bit from the biblical text, there is as always, much more here than we might first notice. There's something frankly attractive to the honesty behind the refusal of either Paul or Barnabas to accept the honors that crowd wants to give them. I imagine that if they had played along with the crowds idea they would have been given fine clothes, precious gems and whatever they had asked for from the community. But the apostles will have none of that. They rip the simple clothes they are wearing, ruining them in the moment, rather than accept the finery that might have been offered. They were scandalized that the crowd could be so wrong, missing the point of the action of a loving God by misunderstanding a simple healing miracle.

There are many people today who would not hesitate at all to accept the crowd's adulation. I expect, all things being equal, there must have been many people in Paul and Barnabas' day who would have as well. But the apostles won't go that route. They have too much integrity, and they are too focused on doing God's will to stumble into a trap of self-enrichment. As I write this note today, we are hearing about how the new Pope Francis is acting in a similar way; refusing to be trapped in the riches of the Office of the Pope, telling for instance his fellow bishops not to travel to his installation and give the money to the poor instead. The fact that this story is remarkable and being told on all the news channels is a reminder of just how unusual Paul's and Barnabas' behavior is in this chapter of Acts.

There's a second, more subtle message for me in this passage as well. The crowd is not simply going off on a random tangent when they decide that the gods had come to their city that day. There were numerous myths that described how Zeus and Hermes would take on human form and walk among mortals. And when they did that, they would reward the righteous people that they found and punish the wicked. When scholars began to rediscover those sorts of myths about the Greek and Roman gods, they wondered if the stories of Jesus, taking on human form to walk among us, might have been nothing more than a retelling of the older stories. And, on the surface, they were probably right to wonder that. There are many similarities in the story of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection to other stories in mythology. But the thing that is different, when you look at them all carefully, is that in Jesus' case, this is a self-emptying action of God on human behalf. The other stories require an action on human behalf to benefit the gods. If it really had been Zeus and Hermes come down to earth in the moments described in Acts, most likely the gods would demanded tribute and worship. Jesus, and his followers Paul and Barnabas, never demand that. The worship happens sometimes, but never on demand - always in response.

C.S. Lewis, a well known scholar of classical writing from this period, called the myths of how the gods acting in ways similar to how God acts in the Bible the "good dreams". He argued that God's actions in Christ defined human history and thought. And that because of that, we should expect to hear echoes of the Gospel, echoes of Jesus in all human literature. But all of the echoes, by their derivative nature, fall short of the full revelation of God that we encounter in Jesus.

When I was a boy I delighted in reading stories about the Greek and Roman Gods. I didn't know it at the time, but I now recognize that I was being attracted by the parallels, sometimes close, sometimes not so close, to the true story of God in Jesus. I wonder if you had a passion for a certain kind of literature or art as you were growing up, and if now you might see connections between that and what you have learned about God in the life of Jesus? How have you become the person you are today because of the stories or art you loved - or love today? Where do you find the good news in them that has brought you to the living God?

Lenten Bible Study Day 32; Acts 13

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:42:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 13 (NRSV)

Up until this point in the narrative both Saul and Barnabas are identified as "elders" (presbyters - in medieval english, priests) or "deacons". In the opening verses of chapter 13 Saul and Barnabas are set apart by the church and the action of the Holy Spirit, have hands laid upon their heads and are subsequently identified as apostles. Did you notice that from the next paragraph on Saul is no longer called Saul, but becomes Paul (without any particular reason or notice given that this change will happen)?

The word that Luke uses to describe what today we would call their "ordination" is "set apart". That Lukan term is probably closer, in our use, to our word "consecration". The two men are "consecrated" by the Holy Spirit which acts physically through the gathered local community of the Church, at least one of them is given a new name (not unlike what happens in some Christian traditions upon ordination) and they are sent out. The sending out is a recognition of their particular ministry as apostles, a word that might be translated for us as "ambassador" or "emissary".

What do you think it means to be "set apart"? In the Prayer Books of the Anglican Communion we sometimes read the phrase rendered as "ordered" for ordained ministry (where the term "Holy Orders") comes from. There's a sense here that the Church is being arranged by the stirrings of the Holy Spirit so that it is able to care for its own and to respond to Jesus' command to proclaim the Gospel to all the world. Notice that immediately after their "ordering" Paul and Barnabas head toward Europe, striking out to take the story of Jesus to the gentile nations of the north and northwest. Both Paul and Barnabas are set apart for a particular task. There's no sense in this narrative that they now more holy than they were before being set apart.

As someone who was recently ordained, I can tell you confidently that something was changed in me as a result of that action. But I can't yet tell you exactly what because I'm still discovering what it was. I can also tell you that I don't find myself more holy as a result. But I have been ordered, consecrated for a new and particular ministry; one that is different from the one I had as a deacon or as a priest. My experience is similar to what the narrative in Acts describes, I was set apart and sent to my new task. The holiness might yet show up, but…

Years ago, when I was the Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, I was asked to bless a comfort quilt that had been made by members of the Cathedral for a member who was gravely ill. It happened to be the Sunday that I was preaching a children's sermon and I decided it would a good chance to explain to everyone (by apparently speaking directly to the children) what was about to happen. I asked the children to watch carefully as I prayed over the quilt. Doing so, I asked them if they had seen the quilt change in anyway. They said they hadn't. I asked them what had they heard? They said they'd heard me ask God to set this quilt apart for the purpose of being a sign of our love to the person who was going to receive it. I told them they had it exactly right. The quilt was consecrated, ordered, by a person in the Cathedral community to whom that responsibility had been given, for a special purpose. It was not more holy at the moment, but the holiness was going to come it in the next days. Because, as we gave the quilt to our friend, and they held it tight as their life was ending, the use of the quilt would make it holy to all of us.

That is a particularly Episcopalian understanding. We make a distinction between consecration and sanctification. Things are consecrated for a special use, and then made holy by that use. The vessels we use on the altar, week in and week out, become holy because of what they come to represent to us as a result of that use. We remember those moments when God acted in the liturgy, becoming closer to us, feeding us. They become worthy of being treated in a special way and their presence becomes a trigger to our memories of all those special moments of grace encountered in worship.

This weekend, as you attend worship, look carefully at what is happening at the altar. The bread, the wine, the chalice and paten, the vessels are all being sanctified by their use in the community. As you look carefully at them, are there any memories awoken in you? Do you remember their use at the last Easter, at a Christmas service, at a particular baptism?

What is true for the things we use in worship is even more true for the people who are doing the worshiping. God orders things and God orders us. How has God ordered you for your ministry? Only a few of us in the Church have been ordered to live under the special discipline of being clergy. But all of us are ordered for ministry. What task has the Holy Spirit ordered for you? (I love how that sentence can be read in two ways - as a setting apart and as a compulsion.) We believe in the Church that everyone is ordered for God's purposes. Today, while you are going about your daily tasks, why not ponder your own particular calling to ministry in your heart?

Lenten Bible Study Day 31; Acts 12

noreply@blogger.com (+Nicholas) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:36:00 +0000

Acts, Chapter 12 (NRSV)

Have you ever wondered what happened in the darkness of the tomb during the three days that Jesus lay within it? Today's reading has, to me, always seemed a partial answer to that question which we, as humans, can understand.

After James, the brother of John (one of the three disciples closest to Jesus in the Gospel account) is killed by Herod, Peter was arrested and placed in prison just before the Passover festival. Unlike the disciples' behavior when Jesus was seized by Pilate, the Church gathered and faithfully prayed for Peter and for his deliverance. The night before the festival itself, Peter, chained in the darkness, guarded by signs of earthly power, saw an angel appear to him. A light shined in the darkness. The angel released Peter, telling him to dress himself for a journey and led him out of the tomb-like prison cell. Together they pass by guards who have fallen asleep. When they came to a final barrier, a locked gate, the way was miraculously opened for Peter to complete his escape from captivity to freedom.

Do you notice the parallels? Peter's prison experience in the darkness of that night has many of the same details to the nights that Jesus spent dead in the tomb. While we can't know for sure what exactly happened in the tomb on the night before Easter dawn, the light, the angel, the barriers that remove themselves, the sleeping guards all seem like they were part of that too.

I wonder too how you and I have experienced release from the various prisons and situations in which we too are help captive? I think that is Luke's point here. What happened to Jesus, has just happened to Peter, can we hope, happen in our day to us. And certainly even while we place our hope in the general resurrection from death, that moment when we arise to new life and meet our Lord, I think we are expected to look for release in smaller ways during our present days as well.

Has there been a moment of light that overcomes the darkness in your life? The appearance of a messenger who leads you to a new life? A series of surprising events that let you escape from a situation in which you despaired?

I have had moments like that, small and not so small, a few times in my life. Sometimes it is a sudden inspiration that breaks through a mental fog in which I find myself trapped. Sometimes I hear God's message in the voice of a friend or loved one. (Sometimes in the voice of a complete stranger…) And there have been a number of times in my life when I've experienced coincidences which have taken me by surprise and led me to a place I didn't imagine I would be.

But notice too that these moments of resurrection come unbidden and often unexpectedly. And sometimes they don't come at all. It didn't come in this chapter for St. James. And remember that eventually, after Peter arrives in Rome, he too dies. I wonder if James and, in that day Peter, experienced that final moment of imprisonment as a failure or as a triumph? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd imagine a bit of both. Jesus cries out in pain and loss as he is dying on the cross. There's very little of the sound of triumph in that. But even in the midst of that, at the very last, his words sound a note of accomplishment - and while that's not triumphant, it's not a cry of bereavement either. There's a sense of hope buried in the darkness of the pain. I expect that was true for James and Peter too as they were, at the end, his faithful disciples.

Perhaps that's what the experience of being saved, of being released from our bounds, is supposed to give us. We know that eventually our lives on earth will end. But as that is happening, we recall the previous moments that God was close at hand to us, we remember how God, in the final end, did not abandon Jesus or the disciples. And we find our hope, the light that shines in our darkness, in that.