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Friends -
This has been the summer of unexpected blessings. As I shared on Sunday morning, I returned late Saturday night from the youth pilgrimage to Costa Rica energized by the experience but exhausted as well. I also returned to news of an unexpected and abundant blessing for our Parish.
I want to tell you about what I just did before sitting down to write this, but before I do, let me tell you about this coming week.
At 6:00 am Sunday morning eight teens and four chaperones (me included) will be meeting at the international terminal at BWI and we will fly to Costa Rica. This group has worked very hard to get to this point, and I am quite proud of them, and confident that we are going to have a great time, everyone will stay out of trouble, and we will grow as Christians. If you’ve ever heard one of our sermons preached by our graduating seniors, these pilgrimages always come up. For them, the process of earning the trip and going together is life changing.
I will be out of Church on Sunday and Jackie Pippin, who has covered for me quite a bit will be back in the pulpit. There are a lot of good priests, and she is one of them. The Episcopal Church is incredibly diverse in its religious expression. Among the pool of good priests, a minority of them will have a good fit at any individual Church. We are lucky that Jackie appears to be competent and a good fit. This runs the risk for me that you all might like her better than you like me. To be honest, if you do not appreciate how I preach or lead worship, I hope you like her better. We cannot be everything to everyone, and having a plurality of voices and leadership can help ensure more of our people get fed. Consider this a request to go to Church this Sunday to pray for our pilgrimage and to see how Rev. Jackie does Church.
I absolutely love the scripture that is assigned over the summer. We are in the gloriously ambiguous “Season after Pentecost”, or as some people call it, “Ordinary Time”, and this is where the powers that be assigned the great passages that didn’t fit into the themes of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter. Keeping in mind that scripture existed well before our seasons of the Church, it goes with reason that there are neglected themes and lessons that fall outside of the general framework in which we tell our salvation story. These fantastic parables, stories, prophecies, and teachings have found their way to this amorphous season, and if you join us on these hot Sunday mornings, you can also live into some of the lesser known passage from our sacred texts.
You all got that last’s week’s article was completely produced by AI, right? I was trying to be all cute and I got ChatGPT to write a poem about me using AI to write my devotion while away. I even got it to generate an image of me on vacation, which I really hope you realized wasn’t me! I didn’t realize I was so vain until I saw what it thought I look like, plus fedoras are not quite my style.
Our trip to England and Wales was wonderful, exhausting, and spiritually edifying. We got to do fun touristy things, but our main goal was to go wedding for people we love, and to visit old friends. It was wholesome.
I am in the final moments in my office before I leave for England for ten days for the purpose of attending not just one but TWO super fancy British weddings. I am excited and out of time.
Here are somethings for you to consider about our physical plant:
Friends,
I love my family so much, and I am going to take a moment to brag on my brother and mother.
My brother and sister have exactly no interest in going to Church, but they generally live a more Christian life than me. Their capacity to love and do something about it is remarkable. My brother has always gravitated to people that most others avoid or even feel active distain for. In High School he often skipped lunch because he was giving his food away to friends who were very sketchy and very hungry. One person was downright scary, but my brother seemingly had a compulsion to understand that scariness, and what he found was someone that experience too little care, lacked resources, and found ways of surviving that sometimes… oftentimes meant doing sketchy things. This isn’t a “their scariness was just a façade and deep down these were just innocent kids in need of love” sort of story. They were kids in need of love, but the scariness was very much real. My brother’s drive to befriend these kids was remarkable, and the way he did so through being their friend and not a just a privileged kid with extra food, makes me suspect this is how Christ would have shown them love.
Friends,
This coming Sunday is big in the life of the Church! Pentecost is when we remember the disciples receiving the gifts of the spirit. The passage from Acts describing the day of Pentecost is one of my favorites. Not only is it great story telling and profound, it also is a bit silly with Peter proclaiming to the bewildered crowd witnessing these followers of Christ speaking to them in their native language, “Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:..” When seeing the birth of the Church everyone assumed they were witnessing a group of drunks. We come from a religious tradition that loves order, intention and decorum. I bet most Episcopalians would have been rubbed the wrong way seeing this miraculous event as the disciples poured into the street filled with the power of the spirit.
This coming Sunday has some of my favorite and least favorite passages from scripture.
I almost always just use the Gospel lesson as my source scripture when I preach. The reason I give most people is that the Gospels are specifically about Jesus, so it makes sense to start there. Probably a more honest reason is that I preach right after I get done reading the Gospel in front of Church, so it’s what I have on my mind when I start talking. Don’t get me wrong, I think about my sermon way before I preach, but it feels weird to read the Gospel like I mean it and then go preach about the psalm or whatever. All of this is to say, I am getting nothing about this week’s Gospel.
I am on day five without my glasses, which a minor inconvenience that is creating an unnecessary amount of ennui in my life. I never get headaches, but since my spectacles went the way of the dodo, a slight dull ache has been nearly omnipresent, and focusing on this screen does not help.
Too many meaningful things happened last week. Here they are in order:
This has been a very special year for me. This was the only year in my life where both of my sons are in St Luke’s Day School. Theo is in the two-year-old “Kangaroo” classroom, and Andrew is in the oldest class we offer which is the “Elephant” kindergarten room. Mondays are extra special as we begin the week with chapel, and you can’t have chapel without Rev. Vanilla Bean. Considering Vanilla Bean lives with us, she gets to ride to Church with us on Monday mornings.
One of my best friends from Seminary was the last of our rag tagged group to get ordained. Not due to a lack of sanctity (he probably had the most of our lot), but just because that is how his Diocese’s bureaucracy worked. When he did finally get his date for his ordination, he did something remarkable. He made fancy invitations and just didn’t send them to his family friends, but he also included the Pope, the Queen of England and the President of the United States. He immediately got a legit nicely hand-written note from the Pope’s office giving the pontiff’s regrets but still offered a genuinely encouraging message. He heard from the Queen’s office a month later. Less personal than the response from the Pope, but regardless, it was nice. Then from the President, a standard letter well after his ordination giving the president’s regrets.
With such a late Easter, we went straight from Easter mode to Annual BBQ mode! To further complicate and restrict my time, I had a clergy retreat at Shrine Mont early this week, which I LOVED; however, it has greatly diminished my time to write a thoughtful article to you. This feels well suited to the typical rapid-fire life of a priest at St. Luke’s, and it is a rhythm in which I typically thrive. In lieu of me trying to be profound, here is a bulleted list of things I’d like you to know more about:
I write this on Maundy Thursday, and at the earliest you will read this on Good Friday. If you didn’t go to the Maundy Thursday service this year, then make it a point to go in 364 days at the next one! I love this service so much, and for me, it is when the roller coaster to Easter really gets going.
With all the excitement happening this week I completely neglected the Wednesday noon healing service, which is not uncommon. Generally, we only have three or four people that attend the service, and I rarely get an opportunity to mediate on the scripture, let alone read it all, before the service begins. Considering I find little to no correlation between my sermon preparation and the quality of my sermons, so going into a service blind no longer frightens me. Actually, I find it quite freeing and often notice new things and explore new topics that I would have ignored if I had the time to think about it too much. This Wednesday, I felt like I heard a portion of Paul’s letter to the Hebrews anew, which reads:
Friends,
It’s strange how fast time is going by. The altar guild just got done putting on the red altar hangings in preparation for Palm Sunday, bulletins are getting finalized, and in a weird way I feel like Easter is imminent even though we have eight more services to do before we reach Easter morning. Next week there won’t be a ton of time to sit and write e-mail, edit things and try to do things intentionally. I’m sure the week after Easter we will come up with a list of things to do differently the following year, but right now we are on the cusp of it being too late to much differently this year. Regardless of our preparation level, we will start Holy Week with Palm Sunday this coming Sunday, which sets the stage for the darkness of Maundy Thursday, the absence of Good Friday, then to the new light of the Easter Vigil, and the sheer joy of Easter Sunday. It is going to be an emotional roller coaster, and we will undoubtedly be exhausted by the end of the 10:00 am Easter service. With all of the expectation, nervousness and excitement, I can’t help but still worry about paperwork.
Friends,
I hope you looked at this past Tuesday’s mid-week message, because it contained an announcement about a new transparency ministry. According to the blurb the purpose of the ministry was to take some of the mystery out of the business of doing Church, and this goal would be accomplished by having a live stream of our parish administrator (Sue Bentley) working at her desk. It even included a nine-minute segment of Sue answering e-mails…riveting stuff. At the end there was a link where you could sign up to watch the stream whenever and wherever you like. Of course, the link took you to the April Fools page on Wikipedia. I thought this was hilarious, and I hope you did too.
We grew up going to the Roman Catholic Church, and I hated it. Don’t get me wrong, when I was ten, I hated the Episcopal Church too. I couldn’t stand Church for the same reason that I couldn’t stand school assemblies; I was being forced to sit, be still, be quiet and to occasionally do the school motto, prayer, hymn or whatever. It wasn’t like going to the movies where I had some choice in being there. In Church I was a hostage and I learned the liturgy (order of service), for the sole reason of being able to determine when it would be over. In our case, this was immediately after communion, as we didn’t stay for the post communion prayer and final hymn. By sixteen or seventeen I was considering myself a Christian again, and we were all attending the Episcopal Church, and this time we stayed for the whole service. I had warmer feelings for the whole thing at this point, but I always signed up to be an acolyte just so I wouldn’t have to sing the first and last hymn, as I would be carrying the cross in and out. Not having anyone to chastise me if I choose not to sing the hymns is one of the benefits of being a priest. Church is weird.
When we tried the Lenten Burger Night for the first time two years ago, I thought it would be a one-off thing and we’d be lucky to get a crowd of fifty or so. In general, I like the idea of changing up stereotypical Lenten practices that feel penitential for something like Burger Nights, but we took this approach for a very specific reason. We were at the tail end of the pandemic, and we realized that people were simply having a hard time getting accustomed to being back around people. It was hard to be apart, and it was hard to be back together, so we tried to facilitate being back together by creating something appealing. Instead of selling a Lenten event with something like, “you should probably come to terms with your mortality. Join us for some plain soup and uncomfortable conversations.” We said, “Let us make your life easier. Show up, let us feed you with the burger of the week, drop off your kids, and meet someone new.”
I am consistently embarrassed by the stupid things that I once embodied, and one day I will be embarrassed by the stupid things that I currently hold dear. Ghosts of past hurts and embarrassments once haunted me nightly leading to poor sleep and frustration, but in recent years I have held a more friendly attitude toward these ghosts. If you have them as I do, you should learn to trust your ghosts, because they are often telling you something true of the past. The very fact that they are painful, embarrassing or uncomfortable is evidence that you have grown. Ghosts are uncomfortable, but generally that are a good sign.
Friends,
Last Wednesday I flew to Northwest Arkansas to visit my sister, and I got back on Monday. This trip came about when we found out that my brother was going through an unexpected and unfortunate transition in his life. He knew that he was to be in limbo this past weekend, so he reached out to my sister and I saying he needed a trip as a distraction. I do not think my brother has ever asked me for anything, so this came as a shock. He knows that I am there for him and we are all very close, he is just the sort of person who is content sleeping in a mud puddle (literally), and is never in want. My sister and I were more than happy to oblige, and for four full days we stayed in an airbnb in downtown Fayetteville Arkansas and ate decadently. I mean like, 15 different restaurants and a surprise pop-up tiki bar speakeasy in the basement of an art gallery that was surprisingly luxurious sort of decadent, and I didn’t even realize tiki bars could be fancy, let alone be in Northwest Arkansas.
Friends,
I find myself again in the last thirty minutes of my work week in need of writing to you.
It has been a busy week. There is a lot happening in my background that may be in your foreground. One thing I have said consistently about St. Luke’s is that we know how to get things done. The efficiency of our BBQ is the living manifestation of this tremendous skill that seemingly inhabits all our members. It is no coincidence that a disproportionate amount of our members serves in the military or the federal government. Things are very difficult for many people right now. I have heard of other Churches offering space for federal workers to share their experiences, and some have suggested that St. Luke’s offer a similar space. Some federal workers have explained to me that this could be a very bad idea. Other suggested that continuing to be a safe harbor is a good approach. I honestly do not know where to go from here. Are you a federal worker? Would a support group of your peers be helpful? Contact me directly to let me know if it would and we will see what we can do.