Reflections: I have been thinking about Ephesians 3

June 13, 2012
The Rev. Marguerite Alley

       I have been thinking about Ephesians 3:20 this morning and the phrase “exceedingly abundantly” keeps bubbling up for me. Last evening was my final high school orchestra concert. I was more than a little anxious about this, largely for purely egotistical reasons. I know I should have been sad about it being my last, I should have been thinking about all the details I needed to take care so that it would be a really special evening for our seniors. I should have been thinking about how blessed I have been in 28 years (26 of them at First Colonial) to have had the pleasure and privilege to have taught some extremely talented and fabulous musicians, and a lot of generally awesome young people. However, most of the day I was more concerned with whether or not they would perform well in public and if they didn’t, how that would reflect on the program I have tried to create. As a musician, we are trained to hear things with a critical ear; to fine tune everything and then do it again. It is very easy for the perfectionist in me to take the drivers seat when I walk on stage. But last night, I believe that God spoke to me in a rather different way. As I walked to the stage, I was strangely calm and as I poked at that in my mind, I very clearly heard, “it is still not about you” and I thought to myself (with just a hint of whine), “when will it be about me?”

      I have spent 28 years of my life locked in a room 7 hours a day, 189 days a year with kids from the ages of 10-18. I have tried to share with them the joy of all kinds of music but especially classical, and I have tried to teach them a bit about goals, pursuing excellence and self-discipline. I have helped them celebrate college acceptances and to learn to overcome adversity. I have offered bits of wisdom about life after high school and being good people. I have opened their eyes to the world in trips to Europe, Toronto, Orlando, New Orleans, Atlanta and New York. I have pushed them to give me more and to put more into their playing. I have been hard on them at times, and at others let them get away with a few things. I have driven around in search of them when they call because they ran away or got themselves into situation they didn’t know how to get out of. I have talked to their parents when they didn’t have the words to explain. I have visited them in the hospital and in jail. I have endured the rage of parents when I failed to recognize that their child, struggling to read music, was Julliard material. I have enjoyed the assistance of many wonderful and committed parents who have supported and assisted me in our many program endeavors. I have fought for funding of our program and for recognition of the accomplishments of my students in a world obsessed with sports. I have pushed them to play in public, tried to prepare them for auditions, and encouraged them to play for life. Through the years I have wondered at the decisions made by school administration, building administrators and program coordinators. I have worried about the decisions parents have made, or not made for their children and how it would affect that child’s future success. I have lamented with my colleagues about “the good old days”, the state of the program, and how the kids have “changed” since we started teaching. And yet, at the end of each year, I have planned for how I could do a better job for them, for this, that or the other. I have struggled with what music to choose that will be exciting, challenging and playable in my groups. I have written detailed lesson plans and unit plans only to have to scrap them when a new group comes in with different abilities than I expected.

      In all of this, one thing stands clear now. It has never been about me and I guess it never will be. It has been about being a better teacher, being a better conductor, being a better musician, being a better role model and being a better person. I am quite aware that there are many teachers out there who are far more skilled than I. They spend more time working on plans, they are more creative and more dynamic. They certainly have more energy. I hope that when they reach this point in their careers they have as many fabulous memories as I do, and as many young people who are successful as I enjoy now. I can truly say that God has richly blessed me exceedingly abundantly with more than I could ever ask for or imagine and for that I am truly grateful.

Sermon: Hatred

The Rev. Julia W. Messer
June 10, 2012
Mark 3:20-35

Hatred

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying nothing is certain in life but death and taxes.  I wish I would be able to amend this statement to say nothing is certain in life but death, taxes, hope and love.  Unfortunately this is not true for all, but what is true is that we could almost guarantee the addition of another, hatred.  Nothing is certain in life but death, taxes and hatred.   

We live in a world where people can hate us simply because of the fact that our personalities may clash or people may dislike us over a perceived slight. Some people may hate something about us, such as the color of our skin, sexual orientation, the political party we associate with, or even our nationality.

It is human nature to try to distinguish who we are from who we are not. It is normal to notice people’s differences; the problem is when we use it to harm others or to continue to perpetuate hate. Think back to high school…it is humanity at its rawest.  Us vs. them. There were people who were cool, athletic, dorky or grunge.  Think of the rate gossip spread though the school.

It’s no different today. Read a newspaper article online; some of the comments people post are nice but some of them are downright mean!  Look at Facebook, blogs, and other digital mediums.  They are new ways for people to communicate and can be used as a way to stay in touch with friends.  Unfortunately some use them to bully or hurt other people. These resources are not negative or positive in of themselves; it just depends on how we use then.  They become a problem when we use our words, our actions, or other mediums, and turn them into weapons to hurt others.

Jesus faced these issues in his day. When Jesus stood in front of the crowds, the scribes tried to discredit Jesus by calling him the ruler of demons or actually Satan. To this Jesus replied that people are forgiven of their sins, except whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said that if we do this, we can condemn our souls as unclean souls. What exactly did he mean?  This sentence can be taken in two ways. The first is if a person declares his unbelief in the Holy Spirit. The other way to look at Jesus’ statement and to examine more closely what blasphemy means. The definition of blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for a religious deity.  So to blaspheme would to be to insult or continue to show contempt for the deity. This is not do and done act; I take this to mean that if one consciously leads a life that is filled with continued acts that are insulting or show contempt for the divine then one is said to be blasphemous .

This can take form when there is a deliberate continued attempt to injure or harm another person using God’s name. It is by our actions over a lifetime that are done out of hatred toward others that we harden our hearts. Then we make it blasphemy when we use this hate and say that we do it in the name of God.  And let’s face it, history is filled with these acts from the Crusades to slavery.  Today it would begin by posting mean replies to articles, or spreading gossip about others, or to continue to hold hatred for another person.

To understand the link between the two in today’s society, I think it is easier to understand if we look at what we stake our faith on. We believe and know that we belong to God, that we are loved by God, and we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Then it stands to reason that when we hurt another one of God’s creations on a regular basis, we then blaspheme.

The Gospel goes further to explain this with the parable that in order to steal from a house of a strong man, one has to first tie up the strong man. What I take this to mean is that people have to make the choice to let the hate enter into their homes, into their lives, and into their hearts. They have to tie up their conscience -- what they know is right, so that a negative can happen.

We can choose to listen to the naysayers, the people who will try to hurt us or condemn others. It is a choice to then pass it on the hatred or take it on.

This belief is in every culture. For example in China there is a parable about a simpleton who came up to old wise man and said horrible things to him. While he was insulting the old wise man, the old wise man listened in silence, but when the simpleton finished, the old wise man asked him, “Son, if a man declined to accept a present to him, to whom would the present belong to?” The man answered, “To him who offered it.” To which the old wise man replied “Well then, I decline to accept your abuse, and request you to keep it for yourself.”

This is exactly where Jesus was; he was at odds with the crowd, his family, the scribes, and the evil that was being put out there. Imagine the scene:  the crowd closed in on Jesus so much so that he could not even get enough room to eat.  Even his own family and those he loved went to him to try to restrain him. Yet Christ spoke the truth. He loved those around him even when they pressed down upon him. But what Jesus did next was to separate from all that hate that was bearing down on him and spoke what was true. He distinguished himself from him and them; he separated the truth from hate.

The same is true for us. Do we choose to pass on the negative about another person or do we change the action and pass on the good? Instead of posting about what is wrong post about what is right. Instead of saying God was not with them, take a look at the situation and instead of wondering if God is on our side, wonder if we are on God’s side.

 These may seem like small actions not comparable to Jesus’s guiding truth about blasphemy.  But that is where we may start to slip and then we may never recover ourselves. For you see it is these small seemingly insignificant actions that make up our habits and our habits shape how we live our lives. How we live our lives is who we are. And if we are blasphemous then THAT is what Jesus condemned. That is what makes our souls unclean.

In closing I end with the collect from today: Let us pray:

O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding, may do them, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(Collect for the 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 5)

Trinity Sunday Sermon

June 3, 2012    John A. Baldwin

Today is Trinity Sunday......a curious day in the Christian calendar year.....when we remember and celebrate a theological understanding of the divine: One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is one of 4 major Feast Days celebrated by the Church down through the centuries, the others being Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, each of which celebrates a different Person of the Trinity. Christmas, although the birthday of Jesus, is actually the date on which we celebrate God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the first person of the Holy Trinity, who according to Christian theology, enters into human flesh in the form of a little baby. The heavenly choir is singing praise to the Father who is making this bold new initiative in Creation (Luke 2:13). Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who having finished his earthly life on the cross, has now been resurrected to new life. On Pentecost we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God's indwelling presence, on into the future, in the lives of all who love the Lord. Trinity Sunday is the fourth feast day, on which we celebrate the 3 distinctly unique ways that God Almighty reveals himself.

The concept of the Trinity, though woven throughout the Old and New Testaments, did not become a distinctive doctrine in Christian theology until the 4^th and 5th centuries, when 4 Church Councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon) put this mystery (one God in 3 persons) into words. In the process, the reputations of some leading theologians were enhanced, while others were ruined. One heated debate concerned whether to use the word "homoousion" ("of one substance") or homoiousion" (of like substance") with the Father. Out of that heated debate came the expression "one iota of a difference".

Over the centuries, preachers have walked a very fine line indeed in trying to explain what the heck the TRINITY is all about, leading to a lot of pretty esoteric and, in some cases, very boring sermons. While I believe it's important to deal with the Holy Trinity on this particular Sunday, I'm going to attempt to make my sermon more concrete and hopefully not too boring, by sharing some personal reflections on how I became Trinitarian in my theology. It didn't happen all at once. In fact, I may be a slower learner than others.

When I was a kid growing up, I was fortunate to have a father who loved the outdoors. At an early age he introduced me to sailing, to bird-watching, to star-gazing on dark nights in the field in front of our summer cottage, and to hiking in all kinds of weather conditions in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Green Mountains of Vermont. A Creator God, awesome in wonder and power, became intensely real to me at an early age. Every advance in understanding that science has uncovered, far from explaining God away, has only increased my awe in the Master Creator of the Universe.

The second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was harder for me to grasp and embrace. The Virgin Birth, his miracles, walking on water, multiplying loaves and fishes, his Resurrection and Ascension, all defied logic and common sense. I liked his parables, teachings, passion for social justice, compassionate love, high regard for women, and his willingness to defy social convention in his outreach to sinners and outcasts. But I had my questions, doubts and wonderings. Was this man for real? the Son of God???? I wanted to satisfy for myself that all of the claims about Jesus had a foundation in reality, and were not just wishful thinking.

When I entered seminary in 1974, I met twice a week in a discussion group with 6 classmates, two seniors and two professors. We had lively debates about faith, hope and religion. On one occasion we were given the task of reading the accounts of Jesus' Resurrection and writing a short reflection. In doing so, I was struck by a portion of Matthew's account in which the Pharisees ask Pilate to place a guard at Jesus' tomb lest his disciples steal his body and claim he'd been risen from the dead. What a horrible thought – all this might be nothing more than a cruel hoax. All of those other stumbling blocks – miracle stories, Virgin Birth, walking on water, paled in comparison.

This was the real deal breaker....if Jesus wasn't resurrected from the dead, I mused, he is little more than an insightful, spiritual leader akin to the Buddha or Confucius. When I shared my concerns with my group, with quite a bit of anxiety I can assure you, one of our professors recommended that I read The Passover Plot, whose author, Hugh Schonfield, asserts that the Resurrection is indeed a hoax. Decide for yourself, he urged, whether you think his argument has merit. Wouldn't you know it, that very afternoon, while browsing in a bookstore, I came across The Passover Plot. I summoned up the courage to read it, and came away totally unconvinced that the Resurrection is a hoax. The incredible changes that happened in the lives of the disciples, turning them from timid, fearful men into bold proclaimers of the Gospel, could not have been sustained, I believe, on the back of a hoax...nor could the profound effect the life of Jesus has had on millions of people across 2000 years of human history.

This was a significant turning point in my spiritual journey. I found myself saying along with the father of an epileptic boy in Mark 9:24 “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief.” I let go of the need to solve mystery logically, and relaxed into the arms of a merciful Lord. I accepted Jesus as the window, the gate, the doorway to God. If we truly want to know the personality of the divine we have only to look to Jesus. As Jesus asserts in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one”.

This brings me now to the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Growing up, as I did in the Episcopal Church, I held a pretty intellectual view of the Holy Spirit. It's what inspired writers of scripture. It's what the disciples experienced on the Day of Pentecost. It's God's presence in people's hearts and lives down through the centuries. But.....all of that Holy Roller stuff, Charismatic Christianity, talking in tongues, and being slain in the Spirit...it seemed so undignified, and to be perfectly honest, bordering for me on terrifying. Yet, in the early 1990's I accepted an invitation to go to a weekend retreat in the mountains of Colorado hosted by the Episcopal Renewal Ministries.

The only words to describe that week were that I was bathed in the Holy Spirit; I felt a barrier melting between my brain and my heart; I felt the presence of God deep within my soul, and it erased my fears and terror of those who are deeply moved by the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Holy Spirit became for me a reality beyond an intellectual construct. I felt it, I lived it, I breathed it.

It took me a lengthy time to bring the 3 persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit together in a unified whole, not just in my head theologically, but more importantly in my heart and soul. There are many different ways of expressing this three-fold nature of the divine, one of my favorites being: God beyond us, with us, and within us. God beyond us as the Creator....far more awesome and powerful than we can even begin to imagine. God with us in His incarnation in Jesus, his ongoing companionship in prayer, support and sustenance, his presence in the fellowship of faith, the Church; and God within us in the still, small guiding voice, in the power of emotion that surges up in prayer and worship, and in the discernment that allows us to acknowledge the presence of the Holy in our lives.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit....Maker, Redeemer and Sanctifier... Blessed be the Holy Trinity...the 3 fold nature of the divine. Amen.

Reflection: Leaving the church?

June 1, 2012

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

In reading blogs and web postings by clergy across the country, I have noticed that many folks spend a lot of time dealing with members of their congregations who are threatening to leave their church for one reason or another.  I think we waste a lot of time and energy worrying about what we can do to make someone stay. In some ways I understand the heartburn over losing even one parishioner. Our numbers are already declining and churches are closing their doors daily. It is pretty scarey to think what  life would be like without Emmanuel!

When we have been together as a church for a while, we become family. We care about each other. Our kids were in in Sunday school and youth group together. We went through break-ups or divorces together. We married and buried (hopefully not in the same week ) our friends together. Not seeing each other in our usual seats on Sunday is like an open sore. It is only natural that we feel this grief and loss when we have shared life together for any period of time.  At the same time, this is a bit bothersome because the church is made up of human beings, and human beings change; both physically, emotionally and spiritually. No one would expect you wear the same clothes you wore as a teen or young adult, because you have outgrown them physically and mentally. But for some reason, we expect the church to either stay exactly the same as it was when we joined 40 years ago, despite the fact the 40% of the congregation has changed, or we expect it to change with us…as in with me personally.  

When a parish is as theologically and/or politically diverse as Emmanuel, sometimes someone decides that they can't handle the gray areas that come with diversity - so they leave for a church that they feel better reflects their ideas.  This type of exit can be a good thing, when handled as growth or change. But pleading with someone to stay, or trying to blame someone is counterproductive and destructive. 


Now, there are some people who reach a truly toxic level.  Nearly every church has at least one person who, for whatever reason, cannot seem to function as part of a family. They seem to have to stir things up, they try to triangulate everywhere they can and they take and make every opportunity to cause dissention. 

The problems can go beyond personal relationships. Many folks like this threaten to stop their pledge. Every event they come to becomes a moment for them to “spew” to others, whatever their issue might be and try to draw others to them. Even with all this negative energy, when they say we are going to leave, churches go into panic mode. Giving irrational and dangerous people power over our community is even more irrational and dangerous!  When there is a misunderstanding, then of course it is important to learn the cause and try to get it sorted out in hopes of preserving the relationship. Even if a person or family still chooses to move on, then we have done our best to hear them, to rectify if necessary and to insure that we taking the necessary steps to avoid repeating the situation. In the case of
toxic people though, there is probably little we can do to pacify them because they aren’t really looking for resolution. They are looking for power.

There is a part of me, though, that worries that in letting them go, I have failed to “love them” adequately. We are called to be compassionate and loving to each other and I worry about that when I find I cannot. But, when Jesus tells the rich young man that he must sell all he owns and give the money to the poor, and the young man says he can’t and walks away, Jesus doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t run and after him and say “wait, wait, we can work something out!” He lets him walk away and goes on with his teaching. Letting him walk away was not lacking in compassion or un-loving. He gave the young man a choice and the young man chose what his response would be. Letting someone leave the church when they are unhappy doesn’t mean that we don’t care, that we don’t love them or that we won’t grieve their loss. It actually means we are treating them with dignity and respect, allowing them to make the choice of belonging to our community or not.
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