When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. Genesis 9:16

If there’s a Bible story that is universally known – or at least depicted – it is probably the story of Noah’s Ark. Very young children are introduced to this story through play-sets that have a cargo boat and pairs of animals and a few people. Sometimes nurseries are decorated with Noah’s Ark images, complete with rainbows; and there are certainly kids' Bible songs and camp songs that feature Noah and the animals.

Those all have their place. And yet what once seemed like a way for children to learn some of the important texts of Scripture has become a trivialization, something that we can dismiss as a cute kids’ Bible story. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The story of Noah comes from the earliest days of the Hebrew tribes, and it takes up four whole chapters in Genesis – in part because two different versions of the story are woven together, causing some repetition and duplication, which is the subject for a later Bible study; and in part because the events were so momentous. God had taken stock of God’s handwork – the earth and its inhabitants – and found that “the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Gen. 6:5-6). The solution – or so it seemed – was for God to have a do-over; scrap the whole project and start again. And then Noah and his righteousness caught God’s eye. God told Noah to build an ark, a large cargo vessel that would carry and preserve the life of Creation – both human and animal – into the next phase of God’s project. We are clearly in the realm of true myth and symbol here, and attempts to do any kind of modern-day scientific re-creation of the ark or the event are beside the point.

What matters here is that Noah trusted God; he had faith in God’s care and life-giving purposes. And God made a covenant with Noah and his family, with their descendants, and with all creation. Never again would God destroy the entire world with flood, and the rainbow would be the sign of that covenant. Covenants in the Bible are binding agreements in which both parties have responsibilities and rights, and usually carry some sign, symbol, or tangible reminder. This covenant with Noah is not just God’s promise to us, a promise of care and life, but it is also a call for us to be in partnership with God. We are not just passive receivers, but we have a role here, too. Just like Noah, we are called to be good stewards of life – human, creaturely, earthly. We are partners in this covenant that is about the flourishing of all human beings and all creation.

We are living through a time in our common life when this seems to be getting harder and harder – the flourishing of all human beings – or least the challenges seem to be getting greater. The shooting death of seventeen people, students and teachers, on Wednesday – Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday – is the most recent expression of a turning away from our human responsibility to care for one another, to value one another, to work for the flourishing of all those whom God has made and for whom Jesus gave his life. This turning away happens in so many ways and on so many levels – both individual and societal; the abuse of guns and the violence surrounding that abuse are but one very obvious example.

Here at the start of Lent we encounter Jesus, fresh from his baptism, being driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, meeting temptation to turn away from God’s purpose for him, and ultimately overcoming that temptation and beginning his mission. Jesus announced the nearness of the Kingdom of God. He called for repentance – metanoia – that turning to face and embrace God’s kingdom and purpose instead of our own. Do a 180, Jesus is saying, an about-face, trust in God’s good news. God’s good news, salvation, is not just about “going to heaven when we die” but about becoming the people, the human race, that God intended in the first place: loving, just, wise stewards of God’s good creation. Part of repentance means that we need to be on board with God’s life-giving purpose. I believe that in our current time and place, we need to face into our part of this covenant purpose anew, as we see so much dislocation and fracturing and destruction around us. Now is not the time to run away, nor put our heads in the sand – as tempting as that is.

There is no single easy answer to the problems of violence and hatred in our culture, even if some steps we could take may seem more obvious than others. Legislation will be one strand of an answer. A deeper and more thorough understanding of both our constitutional responsibilities as well as rights will play a part. Paying attention to the real needs of children: emotional, social, spiritual, healthy parenting and healthy schools working together is another part of the equation. It will be important to find ways to talk together as local communities and as a society about the overwhelming speed of change that has created the incredible rage and disconnection that erupts in violence over and over again, and that also fuels so many of the addictions in our world.

Most of all, I believe, Jesus is calling us into a spiritual renewal, and as Jesus’ disciples, that starts with us. That does not mean some kind of pious separating ourselves from society at large. It does not mean that we are to be holier-than-thou, but to trust God deeply with our very lives, to be holy/whole people, and communities. To be communities where no one is outside the reach of our love and care, where whatever differences we may have (politics, race, gender, class, sexuality, economics, education, immigration status) we can come together, and talk about what is real. To be communities where we recognize that the threats to our society and our American ideals are not each other, but actually social and spiritual forces that demean and divide and play on our fear, our grief, our loneliness. Because fear, grief, resentment, and loneliness are those are the places in the emotional and psychic landscape where we could say (like the medieval map makers wanting to mark uncharted danger): Here be dragons.

This is very difficult terrain, but we Christians, of all people, have a compass who will help. Jesus faced the physical, external challenge of the desert wilderness, which the outward expression of the inner landscape. He came through the desert with greater clarity and purpose and truth: Repent, turn around, turn your minds Godward; the kingdom of God has come near; turn around and trust the Good News. Jesus is the compass we need to follow.

Like Jesus we need to turn Godward, not just on Sundays or in our private prayer time, but in our whole life. Like Jesus we need to meet people where they are and have honest, true, empathic conversations with them about what life is really like. To do this we must be willing not to accept memes or catch-phrases that we think “says it all” in diagnosing our current very difficult experience; those memes will just suck us down the rabbit hole of disconnection and spiritual alienation and rage.

Like Jesus, we need to continually refill our spiritual batteries with prayer. We need to spend quality time with other disciples with whom we can share wisdom, learning, insights, and the nudges of the Holy Spirit. Like Jesus we need to be healing presences in our communities and families. Like Jesus we must learn when to exercise strength and when we need to extend vulnerability. Like Jesus, we need to learn the power of humility, the importance of forgiveness, the value of self-sacrifice, and the joy of love.

All of this is a very tough landscape. The journey is not easy. But we Christians have a compass – Jesus; we have the companionship of the Communion of Saints under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; we have God’s covenant of care and purpose for all of life – physical life, societal life, the life of the planet, family life, spiritual life: the flourishing of every person, every human community, and the whole created order. Jesus is our compass, and the rainbow is the sign of God’s covenant.

 We can’t give up – lest we either drown in the waters of chaos that Noah navigated, or die of thirst in the desert in which Jesus sojourn. We go forward - God’s partners in this covenant of care, with Jesus as our compass and the rainbow as our sign. May God’s goodness and life come to pass in our own time and place – in us, and through us, and all around us.

Let us pray.
Holy God, we offer ourselves to you. Make us your holy people, sent out to do your work of wholeness and love. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
First Sunday in Lent
February 18, 2018

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"  Mark 9:7

What would you do if you knew, really knew in the depths of your soul, in your heart of hearts, with every fiber of your being, that you are belovéd? How would your life be different?

A couple first in love and on their wedding day, knows what this feels like. You feel strong, and brave, and energetic, like you could tackle anything you need to. You feel at peace, and those around you see your beauty shining from within. We hope that children have this love from their family and experience it frequently.

But we also know that remembering this love and feeling is not always easy. Things sometimes get in the way – misunderstandings, hardships, challenges, difficulties of all kinds can muddy the waters, cloud our love, make it hard to express or receive love. Life happens, and when it does, our hurt and anger can create barriers that we hide behind; we wall ourselves off; we diminish ourselves bit by bit; we become smaller and harder and darker inside.

The Season after Epiphany is book-ended by experiences of belovédness. At Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River (which we read about five weeks ago) we heard God’s voice come from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Now, on this Last Sunday after Epiphany, we see Jesus on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, and hear God’s voice from the cloud, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Bookends of belovédness.

What happened up on that mountain was that Jesus experienced – and Peter, James, and John witnessed first-hand – the power of God’s love. Jesus’ transfiguration was reality breaking through; the fullness of God’s love and truth and power present in such a way that the only words for it are glory, dazzling, light. The veil between the human realm and God’s realm has been drawn back, and we (along with Jesus’ inner circle) get a glimpse of the divine energy – too great for most of us to take in most of the time. And just in case the disciples miss the point, God says: "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"

We often speak of mountaintop experiences as moments of clarity or revelation or perspective, after which everything is different. We think differently, we understand differently, we make decisions and act differently, we value things differently. But we also know that those experiences are usually events we ponder and pray over, keep coming back to because we can’t absorb them all at once, and we often understand new and different layers of their meaning only in hindsight. That may well be the reason that Jesus urges Peter, James, and John to keep the experience to themselves until after “the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” It would be only after the Resurrection on Easter that the fullness of the reality of God’s love, glory, life, and New Creation would all finally make sense.

In the meantime, they are to listen to Jesus, God’s beloved Son – unique, one of a kind. By listening to Jesus they will be listening to God, perhaps in a more direct, easily audible way. That’s important because of what Jesus and his followers are heading into. Mark doesn’t state it as clearly as Luke does, but Jesus has “set his face toward” Jerusalem, knowing that his mission will eventually take him there. We know, in hindsight, that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem will spark the show-down with the powers and principalities and cosmic forces that found their expression in the brutal Roman military governor, the vassal king of Judea, and the failure of the religious authorities. But at this point in the story the disciples don’t know all that yet.

What they do know is that they have been following a rabbi who teaches in a way that is newly authentic and authoritative. They have seen some powerful healing, the wondrous feeding of a crowd of thousands, the driving out of evil spirits, people restored to life – and all in the context of announcing the nearness of God’s kingdom or reign, a harbinger of the Messiah’s arrival.

Peter, James, and John need to have this glimpse of reality on the mountaintop and to hear God’s voice so they will remember to hew closely to Jesus, lest they go off the rails with a different idea of what their mission is. And Jesus, I think, needs to have that affirmation of being God’s belovéd Son, a touchstone to sustain him in the days ahead – not only for the titanic events of Holy Week and Good Friday, but also for the weeks and months of tiredness, frustration, criticism, willful ignorance, and spiritual challenge that will meet him on the road.

Jesus is God’s belovéd. And we who are his followers, we who are “in Christ” by faith and baptism, are also God’s belovéd. Let that sink in – you are God’s belovéd son, belovéd daughter, loved to the depths of your being, with everything God has to offer. God takes delight in you, God chooses you. Imagine that dazzling light, that radiance the disciples saw in Jesus on the mountain pouring into you and through you – enlightening and enlivening you with holy energy. You are loved profoundly, completely, and without end. Not because of what you’ve done, but because of who God is. It’s a gift to be received – as love always is.

So, I ask again: What would you do if you knew, really knew in the depths of your soul, in your heart of hearts, with every fiber of your being, that you are belovéd? How would your life be different? What would you do differently? What could you stop hanging on to – what fear or resentment or anger or injury? What courageous action might you take? With whom might you be reconciled? What might you risk? More importantly, who might you be when you know that you are God’s belovéd – loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, faithful, gentle, self-disciplined…all the fruit of the Holy Spirit working in you. And this is not just for your own self-improvement, to be a “better person”, but displaying the fruit of the Spirit, living from a place of belovédness so that you as an individual and we as the gathered Body of Christ may be carriers of God’s radiant love – spiritual mobile “hot spots” at work, at home, in the community.

We are God’s belovéd; we also are part of Jesus mission in the world. “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” as our Prayer Book Catechism says. Jesus bids us to take the love we have been given so freely and give it away to others, in this world that so badly needs to love and be loved for God’s sake.

But just like Jesus, the road ahead of us is challenging, frustrating, hard, tiring and we will not always be well-received. So stay rooted and grounded in love. Hew close to Jesus and listen to him. Be directed by the Spirit working in and through all of us. And never forget that you are God’s beloved, indeed.

Let us pray.
Lord take my lips and speak through them; take my mind and think through it; take my heart and set it on fire. Amen.
        ~ William Maxwell Aitken

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Last Sunday after Epiphany
February 11, 2018

1) Rector’s Report 2017 (updated to include comments at 2/4/2018 meeting)

          The Parish Annual Report is an opportunity for us as a Christian community to hold up a mirror and take a look at ourselves – from God’s perspective, as well as our own. Part of the image we see is the information we get from figures and statistics, finances and worship attendance. Part of the image comes through the various ministries we engage in and what is reflected back to us by the wider community. And the last part of the picture comes from our own experience of our life together: worship, prayer, growth, death, friendship, challenge, joy.

          When I look back over the past year, I see All Saints’ in transition – just as our culture and society are in transition. Being in transition means some things are changing, and change can be both exciting and uncomfortable or scary. Probably the most noticeable change is Sunday morning worship attendance and Sunday School patterns. I have said before that Sunday mornings are no longer protected time and so all churches face the reality of very strong time demands on parishioners that include children’s activities (sports, parties, dance, etc.), work, family obligations, travel, leisure activities. Lower attendance on Sundays means that it is harder to build relationships with one another, to have a sense of vibrancy in our worship, and to have a consistent diet of spiritual formation – for adults and for children.

          At the same time, our food pantry and the Veteran’s Dinners continue to be well received and make a difference in the lives of those we are serving, as well as building fellowship among those who make those ministries happen. I continue to hear gratitude and appreciation for All Saints’ from people in town for our hospitality and willingness to be open and put ourselves at the service of the wider community. Our three neighborhood walk-abouts this past summer were a fun way to get to know our surroundings in a different way. Our Rummage Sale is our largest parish event: fundraiser, community builder, fall festival. We have about a dozen people at Bible study on Wednesday mornings, and another five in the Monday night Pilgrim group. The Altar Guild shares service and friendship, and our Choirs continue to offer their very best, both in helping to lead the congregation’s singing, and in their anthems – although I know Alison would love to have additional people sing in Choir – especially men!

          Our Church buildings and property are a gift from the generations who came before us. They are also resources for doing God’s work. The stewardship of our buildings is an on-going project for the Vestry – just like our houses are. In 2017 there were a number of improvements and concerns that were addressed. Take a look at the list of capital projects on page 23of the Annual Report. The Vestry moved ahead with all these projects with care, practicality, and prayer.

          One of the biggest transitions for All Saints’ this year was the retirement after fifteen years of our book keeper Molly Faerber, as she left to care for her husband Ken, who then died in December. With Molly’s departure it was time to change accounting systems from Church Mouse (an antiquated, cumbersome system) to Quick Books On-Line. This change took far more work than anyone thought it would, but Barbara Barbeau made it happen – with help from Susan LeVan and Carol Prasa. There are still a few details to iron out, but we are light years ahead of where we were with our financial record-keeping and reporting. Thank you, Babara!

          Transitions in a parish are often both personal and congregational, as people move or die. It may sound odd to say, but All Saints’ does funerals really well, providing care and hospitality not only to the families who are grieving, but also to those who attend. This year we had two very large funerals - for Louis Berry and for Tony Prasa, and we did something new by holding the wake/visiting hours in the Church on the evening before the funerals, which enabled the families to be wrapped in a sense of God’s love and care. Well done, Saints! Louis and Tony made their mark – Louis on our church community, Tony on our civic community; they are both greatly missed.

          When I look in the mirror for All Saints’, the reflection I see is a congregation and staff that is really good at caring for others – both in the parish and outside it. We have a willingness to work hard, to take good care of what we have, to take prayer seriously – even if we are not always sure how to do it. We also have a desire to follow Jesus and listen to the Holy Spirit, although that seems very nebulous and confusing at times for some.

          That is no surprise; our world is very confusing right now, and the changing nature of our culture is fluid – even chaotic. But rather than hunker down and keep our fingers crossed, hoping others will find us and want to join us, I think God is inviting us to keep listening and pay attention to this new reality, knowing that God can and will use us – both corporately and individually – to do God’s work in the world, to be beach heads of hope, joy, faith, and peace.

          Some of this may require a culture change of our own. We may need to examine some of our habits and patterns of parish life and gathering and formation and see if they continue to serve us well and strengthen us for Christ’s mission. I don’t have any specifics about this, but a series of conversations amongst ourselves where we can identify what is life-giving from our past and present, so that we can be sure to take those things into the future with us will be very useful in discerning together the future to which God is inviting us.

          It’s a very strange time to be a Christian in our context. It’s a very strange time to be an Episcopalian in our context. Forces in our culture keep pulling us to the extremes, to polarizations – political extremes, religious extremes, extremes of opinion with no middle ground. And the loudest voices keeping telling us that we have to choose one way or the other. But we don’t have to make that false choice. We can choose Jesus, and we can choose the Episcopal Church and the Anglican tradition. The Anglican tradition has always been about the “via media”, the middle way – neither fully Protestant nor Catholic, but both. We don’t pit science against religion, nor prayer against intellect. We value all of that and we know that God continues to call us to faith, to send us in mission, and travel with us every step of the way. That is our foundation, but it’s not bedrock, it’s more like a surf-board, with the waters flowing under us and around us, and our job is to learn to find our balance, and ride the wave of the Holy Spirit.

          My prayer for all of us is that we will continue to develop an awareness of God’s daily presence, and a willingness to be led by God in surprising paths of love and peace.

          It is an honor and a blessing to be your priest. Thank you.

Respectfully submitted,
Victoria Geer McGrath+

2) Wardens’ Report  Tom Hackett & Roger Kosempel
On behalf of Mother Vicki and my fellow Warden Roger Kosempel I would like to thank our Vestry members for their active participation in all of the issues that we have faced this past year.

To Barb Barbeau, Wendy Clarkson, Linda Kestler, Steve Kowalik, Janice Lettieri, Susan LeVan, Anthony Saitta and our Clerk Patricia Vovchansky, we owe a debt of gratitude for your service, wisdom and positive involvement in all that we have done as a team.

I will not go into all the minute details but instead present to you some of the headlines for the year.
Surprising sinkholes, failing drains, neighboring property issues, crumbling steps at the side door and sacristy, the never-ending story of parking lot lights, bushes to cut back, trees to take down, railings to be replaced, a septic tank to fill in, stained glass windows to be checked out, wi-fi to be explored, construction companies to be reviewed and…BBQ with the Bishop.
And this was just the first half of 2017. The back half was concerned in fixing all that needed fixing and again I commend the Vestry and Roger for taking charge.

But a year in the life of All Saints' is more than dealing with grounds and property issues. As Wardens and Vestry we are stewards of our church and have a responsibility to work with Mother Vicki in looking to the future of the community we live in and explore how we can serve it and find God in it. Cultural change and demographic change are happening around us at an unbelievable rate. And I should add technological change, too.

I wish that understanding and managing our journey in all this change was as simple as fixing a hole in the road. But the more we recognize and talk about it the more we will be guided by Holy Spirit to find our way.

I am proud to be working with our Vestry members and Roger and Mother Vicki as we look forward to the challenges and opportunities for the year ahead And I thank the congregation for your continued faith in us all. Amen. ~ Tom Hackett

3) Dwelling in the Word: Acts 16:6-15 ~ adapted from the New Revised Standard Version 
for All Saints’ Annual Meting 2018

6 Paul and his companions went through the region of Virginia and Maryland, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Delaware. 7 When they had come opposite New Castle, they attempted to go into Cumberland County, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Wilmington, they went to Philadelphia. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Morris County pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Morris County and help us.” 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Morris County, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

11 We set sail from Philadelphia and took a straight course [up the river] to Easton, the following day to Morristown, 12 and from there to Long Hill Township, which is a leading town in the county of Morris and in the Watchung Hills. We remained in this town for some days. 13 On the sabbath day we went down by the Passaic River, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14 A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Reading, and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

The passage will be read twice. After the second reading, notice:

• As the text is read a second time, where do you stop?
• Are there words, phrases, ideas which grasp you?
• How do you think the Spirit of God might be nudging you through what you read/heard?

You have three minutes to share your answers with your partner, during which time he or she will listen. Then you will listen to what your partner says for three minutes. There is no “right” answer.
Share your partner’s answers with your small circle – one minute each.
We’ll then ask for a few responses to the group as a whole.

4) Comments, Insights, and “Nudges” from Annual Meeting 2017
       Mostly from the Dwelling in the Word (Acts 16:6-15) Sharing Time

• Changing the place names (from Biblical to local) helped me find myself in the story.
• Paul and his companions walked really far!
• When we hear in the Bible that the Holy Spirit acted, how are we to understand that – through physical human circumstances? Intuition? Something else?
• When we get up in the morning we all have a “to-do” list. Maybe we need to be willing to have our list interrupted by God because God has something else for us to do.
• Lydia welcomed Paul and his companions to her home. Maybe we could substitute the word “church” for “home.”
• Changing the places names threw me off.
• I like to read the Bible in several different translations because I get different shades of meaning from each of them. Reading this translation made me feel like God was saying: Keep doing what you’re doing.
• What were the women doing by the river?
• Where were the men?
• In Paul’s vision the person with the message/invitation was a man. But when he got to the river the person he met was a woman.
• God opened Lydia’s heart and led her to offer hospitality to Paul. Maybe we should be open for hospitality.
• ..... What else do you remember from the comments/report-out time that you would add?

They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Mark 1:22

Nearly ten years ago when we were making all the repairs and renovations to the Church that were the focus of our Centennial Capital Campaign, I as talking with our general contractor and a learned a new phrase: command presence. The person who has this presence is a leader, one who carries authority naturally and well, one whom others will follow in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances, a leader who inspires confidence. For those of you who have served in the military, I am sure that is a familiar term, but it was new to me.

Our general contractor was a Korean War veteran, and he used that term “command presence” to describe our parishioner who was the liason to the contractor. That parishioner was Charlie Hogan. Charlie moved to be close to his daughter several years ago, but I know that many of you remember him. Charlie, also, was a veteran of the Korean War, serving as a Navy Seabee – Construction Battalion.

I always thought that Charlie was the sort of person to whom you could give a bag of parts, and he’d be able to make a refrigerator out of them. But more than that, was the feeling I had whenever I would speak with Charlie – that I should stand a little straighter, listen a little more intently – even if I didn’t always agree with what he had to say: command presence.

I’m sure that command presence was honed and polished during his military service, but it didn’t start there; it started with Charlie himself, who he was, the strength of his character, the clarity of his thinking, his loyalty towards those he cared for and was responsible for. It just who Charlie was – command presence.

We hear some of that command presence in today’s Gospel. The people in the synagogue at Capernaum were astounded at Jesus’ teaching, because he taught as one having authority, he drove out demons and healed as one having authority – not like the scribes who were merely interpreters of the religious law, passing on what they had received from the rabbis and scholars before them. Jesus, however, spoke and taught and healed with authority – command presence.

Our culture, for many reasons, has had an ongoing struggle and crisis with authority for the last fifty years; and that struggle has left its mark on the Church. I’m not talking about authority as being authoritarian: “Do as I say or else”; but I’m talking about authority as having confidence in what is true and right and good.

Sometimes, of course, we need to stop and ask questions: In what way is this the right thing? For whom is it good, who will benefit? How do we know this? These are all important questions, and we have, as a society, come to some new and broader understandings of laws, policies, traditions, and attitudes that are of benefit to the population as a whole. We should never be afraid to ask important questions of truth, goodness, and rightness.

We in the Church, however, especially in the historic main-line churches, have allowed our confidence in the truth and power of God as revealed in Jesus to be eroded. We have allowed our confidence in the relevance and truth of Scripture to be eroded. We have allowed our trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be eroded. We have lost our nerve in regard to our ability to encounter God for ourselves and hear the way the Spirit speaks to us.

And so often that leads us, the Church, to present a hesitant face to the world because we don’t want to offend others, or to come off seeming judgmental, or to be perceived as people who hold to a very narrow understanding of faith, the Bible, and God. That is very understandable, and good to be aware of, but we don’t have to let those fears shape or define what we know to be true. A very bad, yet telling, joke goes like this: What do you get when you cross an Episcopalian with a Jehovah’s Witness? Someone who rings your doorbell, and when you answer they have nothing to say.

Can that really be so? Do we Episcopalians really have nothing to say about the love and grace of God? Have we really not experienced the presence and power of Jesus in our lives – at least at some time or another? Can we not give voice to the hope that is in us?

The authority that Jesus exhibited in the synagogue in Capernaum was grounded in his trust and confidence in the presence of God with him always. It’s what gave fuel to his command presence in teaching, healing, and leading. Jesus wasn’t following a script. He didn’t have a carefully selected set of verses from the Old Testament that he was going to recite to those he met which would convince them to follow him. He talked with people; he told stories about human life that were true; he listened to what was really going on with those who came to him, and even those who walked away; he did not suffer fools and bullies gladly, but his compassion for the broken and broken-hearted was boundless. Jesus showed people what God is like. That is where his confidence and authority came from.

At our Diocesan Convention on Friday and Saturday we practiced our stories – sharing and listening to, receiving, moments, snippets, snapshots of our lives where faith and God were present, when something profound had happened, even if we didn’t know it at first. A few stories were carefully crafted, shared on video with the entire convention – a mother’s dying, a second chance given, forgiveness received, a legacy of church and family woven together, a false love lost and a true love found. Then the rest of us shared a story of our own, in pairs at our tables, two minutes each, with our conversation partner then reflecting to the table group the hope or energy or joy they had heard in what we had offered.

In sharing my story, which I thought I knew very well, a new awareness and word came to mind: refuge. My story as about finding refuge at a time I sorely needed it, and that then turned to gratitude. But I had never thought of it in terms of refuge before, and it brought tears to my eyes to say it. And it was absolutely the presence and power of God.

We all have those stories, those God stories, those faith stories. Eight hundred people during the convention had those stories – even if they had never before shared them with anyone else, let alone a person they had just met. You all have those God stories – otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Our stories are true, and good, and holy – even if the details lead through some dark and ugly places. Our stories are holy because God is in them. They are true because they are an expression of God’s love and care. They are good because they give us hope.

We can have confidence in our faith and in the hope we may offer to others because we know what God in Christ has done for us; we have witnessed first-hand God’s faithful presence. We can share our stories of God and life with authority because we have lived them. Our stories are the modern-day Scriptures that the Holy Spirit is writing even now. And when we share our stories with others, we share the goodness of God and hold out the possibility of hope to someone who may need to hear that very word of hope for themselves – or forgiveness, or love, or encouragement, or refuge, or gratitude. And all of that is God’s very Good News.

Let us pray.
Holy Spirit, you write your word of hope in our lives and upon our hearts. Give us trust and confidence in you, that we may share our hope and joy and gratitude with others, that they, too, may come within the reach of your saving embrace. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
 
Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
January 28, 2018