We should all be beyond thankful for Carol Bloom’s ministry to St. Luke’s over the course of the last couple decades (27 years I think). Her ministry, with just a couple of minor interruptions, has been a consistent and faithful presence at St. Luke’s. For more than a quarter of the history of our parish, Carol has been in the sacristy, getting the chalices, patens, wine, bread, water vessels, fine linens, candles, flowers, vases, and hangings ready for worship. We are a liturgical Church, and part of our identity is the centrality of the sacraments. The sermons are short, because we believe it is just the opening act. People gather not to listen to me, but to break bread together in the belief that Christ dwells with us in that moment. Because of this emphasis on the sacraments, the role of the altar guild is quite important. We could celebrate the Holy Eucharist on a plain table, but we are compelled to make it beautiful so it reflects the miraculous grace surging from it during worship, and the members of the altar guild are the stewards of this beauty.

It is that time of year again when we recognize our graduating seniors. We pray and give thanks for all of those who are graduating from high school, college or graduate school, and for those who may or may not be directly part of our community. Personally, I am intensely proud of my cousin Joe who graduated from Law School. The world is a better place with him in it, regardless of what his politics may be (Joe, I’m kidding…mostly). I am also in awe of Edward Wallingford who is enlisting into the Marine Corps. Edward may not be a member of St. Luke’s, but he is part of our family, and I am thankful for his courage and character, and he will especially be in my prayers. Other seniors, such as Blake Brantley, have led Eagle Scout projects through our Church, helped run the pumpkin patch and taken part in our youth programs. The fabric of our Church is shifting after this cycle of graduations, and we should pay attention.

Friends,

I love being excited for other people. Meeting a new person who is deep into something I know little about and hearing about it through their perspective fills me with joy. In our congregation it is easy to get excited about what people do, because we have a lot of interesting people. The amount of “space people” in our congregation is staggering, and I cannot help but feel awe when they talk about missions to Saturn’s moons and whatnot. This enthusiasm is not limited to people with dramatic careers. I still do not fully understand what Paul Johnson does for a living, and I doubt I ever will, but I know enough to know that it is everything to do with things I am terrible at, like spreadsheets, budgets and financial trends. If someone told me what Paul does, I would be desperately bored, but when Paul talks about it, it is as if some veil is being lifted and all of a sudden, I get why people like Paul do what they do, and my world gets a little bit bigger.

When I was a kid, I do not remember any of my peers asking it, but adults kept trying to give us the answer to the question, “What makes us human?” Many religious folks would say that our souls are the single factor separating us from animals, but what exactly does having a soul mean? What evidence of the soul can we gather? Incidentally, this what my secular education seems to have been trying to answer. The first answer I remember receiving to this question is that it is our big brains that make us human. This makes sense from the religious and secular perspective. It is our big frontal lobes that gives us personality, empathy and all sorts of fun stuff that looks and feels like a soul. The problem with this answer is that we don’t have the biggest or most complex brains. Dolphins and other mammals have highly developed brains that outpace us in several metrics. The teachers would often point this out as if it were an interesting bit of trivia, but I always thought it completely undermined their initial goal. That can’t be what makes us human or gives us a soul. Maybe, Dolphins have bigger souls than us? Child-Nick was perplexed.

I write to you as I have recently returned from a three-day clergy retreat at Shrine Mont, and I have confusing good news to offer you. Clergy are obnoxious. I’ll get to why this is good news later, but first let me explain to you why people like me are and will likely always be obnoxious when we gather.

You all know that during worship I just don’t sit in quiet prayer when I’m not doing stuff, right? Don’t get me wrong, I do that too, but I also spend a lot of time noticing who is in the pews, going over names, and seeing who is new. Back in February, I noticed someone who looked like the epitome of a seminarian trying to not look like a seminarian. He wore casual clothes, but used all of the correct books, sang enthusiastically, and clearly knew when to stand, sit, kneel, bow and cross himself. I was not surprised when I got an e-mail from him a few days later saying that he is indeed a senior at Virginia Theological Seminary and was looking for a spot to volunteer until his graduation in May.

Last decade I was a new clergy person, and I thought I knew a lot about Church, Christianity and stuff, and I was determined to remain jaded when it came to the business end of Church. Me and many of my peers that were required to go to monthly new-clergy classes at the Diocese of Atlanta were extremely dismayed to find our required text as something widely embraced by the business community. We felt comfortable with abstract theological ideas, biblical exegesis, and every esoteric bit of pretentious liturgical trivia, but we were down right disgruntled when we were given Ronald Heifetz’s book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership and told we’d be studying it for two years.

Oh, my goodness. It has been an incredible, beautiful, anxiety inducing, and hopeful week. To be honest, I still feel like I am recovering from the marathon that we have been running toward Easter. We were not just preparing for the holiest day of the year, but for the bishop’s visit at the Easter Vigil, which entailed preparing those to be confirmed and received into the Church, which was a whole other endeavor entirely. We consistently tried to go above and beyond and embrace opportunity, even if we were already stretched thin, and now that we are on the other side of Easter, I feel no regret for opportunities not taken, and an overwhelming sense of thanksgiving for the vibrant spirit of this place. Since we are on the other side of Easter, I thought I would share of numbers with you, and give you a litany of thanksgiving to those who made this season possible.

Last night I had the realization that I didn’t know how to articulate my belief on whether or not the Bible is literally the word of God. As our make-up confirmation class was winding down, we got a series of very good questions, and I believe I answered faithfully, but even as I was uttering my answers, I knew it was woefully insufficient. As always, I realized a better thing to say several hours after it was too late.

Friends,

Right now, all I can think about is confirmation, Lent, and the Bishop’s visit on March 30th. I think this is understandable, considering I am directly responsible for those things, and I believe this is our big chance to bridge the gap between the church and the diocese, we can set ourselves up for prolonged growth, blah blah blah. Though my focus is understandable, the Church is not all about me and when I get tunnel vision like this the wonderful things happening around me can become muted.

Friends,

Something I harp on constantly with anyone that I might feel is uncomfortable in Church is the two rules, which are:

1.     Whatever you are doing, do it slowly.

2.     Pretend like you know what you are doing.

There are additional rules that, like, “if you see someone doing something wrong, don’t say anything, unless someone will get hurt.” But even most of these are variations of the first two. If you call out a Eucharistic Minister for standing in the wrong place during the Sanctus, then you’re making them break rule #2, which is distracting to everyone. It’s best to let them continue to observe the first two rules, despite their minor infraction. 

The liturgical seasons often feel informed by the seasons around us. This makes sense, considering these seasons and holidays developed organically, and communities would observe them whenever was most meaningful to them. The most obvious seems to be Easter. It makes sense to celebrate life coming out of death in Spring, because the natural world is literally coming back to life all around us. Christmas makes sense, but in a dissonate sort of way. People were already wanting to rage against the dark and the cold before Jesus’s time. In areas that are particularly cold and dark in winter, there seems to be a common wisdom to be stubbornly joyful when it is the coldest and the darkest as a sort of communal reminder that things can get better. When Christian communities wanted to remember and celebrate the birth of Christ, it made sense to take from the winter traditions that were already around, and use that storytelling to help teach the community about the hope that comes with Christ being born.

Friends,

It is that time of year, when everyone in my family takes turns having a cold, and it is my turn. From about November through mid-March at least one of the boys, Leandra or I are down for some sort of crud. Even when they are well, the boys constantly have runny noses, and our whole world is fairly gross until the weather gets better. I’m sure that I will be fine by Sunday, but while I write this my brain is foggy, so do not expect anything profound. The good news is that I have a lot of non-found things that are mostly unrelated to one another that I’ve been wanting to tell you, so did you know:

We finally have a plan in place for confirmation classes at St. Luke’s! Our community has seen a lot of new faces join us in the last two years, and we are determined to make these classes and the opportunity to be confirmed or received available to anyone who feels called to go through the process. 

First of all, what is all of this stuff?

 When Christianity was growing in the first centuries of its existence, Bishops gave priests the authority to do baptisms, and then the bishop would visit and seal all those who were prepared to join the Church with the gift of the holy spirit and strengthen them for ministry. This would be done after the person studied scripture and felt called to join the Church.