And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."… Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!" Isaiah 6:3, 8

Can you think of a time when you had a profoundly moving experience of God, of the holy? It could have been when you were alone, or when you were in a sea of people, or when you were with only one other. Your experience of God may have come through your senses: listening to music, seeing the tremendous beauty of Creation, touching the face or holding the hand of someone beloved to you, singing with a whole group of people. Or it may have come from deep within you: a feeling or conviction of God’s presence in a powerful and incontrovertible way.

One such experience for me was when, as a 16-year old, I worshipped for the first time at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York, a high church, Anglo-Catholic parish, whose tradition knows so well how to open the windows of the soul to the transcendence of God. The service was Solemn Evensong and Benediction, meaning that the prayers and canticles and Creed were chanted, the clergy vested in beautiful embroidered copes and other vestments, the consecrated host of the Reserved Sacrament was venerated with prayers and hymns, and there was incense – clouds of it. I had never seen, heard, or smelled worship like that, and it just blew me away. The sense of God’s presence and grandeur and holiness was palpable, and drew me in. And ultimately sent me out. Like Isaiah, with his vision of God while he was on duty in the Temple, I sensed what Isaiah did, hearing “the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’ It was a piece of the beginning of my call to ordained ministry.

This experience of God’s majesty and holiness and power need not – in fact should not – be limited to worshipping in church, because the whole earth is the realm of God, and all human beings have been made in God’s image and likeness – that is, with the capacity for love and life-giving relationship.

Today is Trinity Sunday, and over the years more dry and dusty sermons have been preached in an attempt to explain the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity than you would care to imagine. Don’t get me wrong, doctrine is important; using the best of our intellect, and precise and careful language to describe matters of faith and theology is very valuable. But all the language and theological commentary in the world is secondary, an unpacking of the experience of the holy mystery that is God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the holy and undivided Trinity, One God.

At the heart of God is a community of love, of relationships – Father and Son, Son and Spirit, Spirit and Father – each aspect or face of God sharing love within God’s self. If you need a visual image, think maybe of a model of an atom with the electrons whirling around the nucleus, the locus of incredible power and potential, always in motion, yet held together by its own internal force.

At the heart of God is a community of love and relationship; and if that is true of God, then it is true for us. We who are made in God’s image, we who have been baptized into the life of Christ, we who are guided and empowered by the Spirit, are to embody this powerful community of God’s love. Our vocation, our calling as followers of Jesus is to reflect the truth and goodness of God into the world around us, and it starts with being drawn into the circle of love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It starts with being caught up into the dance between the Persons of the Trinity. It starts with being grounded in the atom-like movement that is the heart of God. This is what energizes us, this is what empowers us – being loved to our depths from the very source of love.

But that love is not for our benefit alone. The love of God and the life of God is always given for the other; that is the deepest meaning of the Cross. That is why Jesus says to Nicodemus in the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved (rescued, made whole, be put right again) through him.”

So God’s love for you will always send you out, into the world, into human community, to build amongst those around you the same kind of network of mutual loving relationship that is within God. As God’s agents and representatives in the world we are to do on a small scale what God does on a large scale. If that seems like a daunting prospect – and it should – we only can do it in the strength and power of the Holy Spirit. And yet, we cannot shrink back. We cannot draw near to God only for our own comfort or peace or safety or wisdom. If we are truly drawing near to God, if we are really entering that community of love and dance of relationship, then we will be sent out to do God’s work, to be God’s people, to serve as the presence of the Triune God wherever we live and move and have our being.

Call to mind again your experience of the power and presence of God. Did you see, or, hear, or feel in it a sense of being sent out, of needing to do or be differently in the world? Was there joy or blessing that you could not keep to yourself? Or an urgency of truth you felt you had to share? The closer you come to God, the greater your sense of mission will be, because the Triune God has a mission for the world God loves so dearly – to heal, restore, set right all that does not reflect the love and goodness of God.

And this experience of the power and presence of God is not a single-use item, not a “one and done.” While not every day or week or even month will be filled with an over-whelming sense of God’s presence (because, really, we can’t always live in a rarified state of awe and wonder), we can lay the ground work; we can draw near to God through prayer, meditation, and worship; we can know every day that the community of love which is the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – surrounds and enfolds us, and sends us out into the world as bearers of love.

Let us pray.
Day by day, dear Lord, three things I pray: to see Thee more clearly, to love Thee more dearly, to follow Thee more nearly; day by day. Amen. ~ Prayer of St. Richard of Chichester

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
May 27, 2018
 

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Romans 8:22-24a

Today is the Day of Pentecost, the day we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ followers, the birth of the Church, the empowerment of the disciples to carry out and carry on God’s mission in and for, and to the world God has made. We may puzzle over Jesus’ words to his inner circle about the Spirit, which we heard in the Gospel. We may be astonished at the description of the descent of the Spirit in the Book of Acts. But it is in St. Paul’s greatest letter – his Letter to the Romans – that we ground ourselves here and now in our own experience of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and Guide, the One who intercedes for us and through us without end.

What is Paul telling us in this passage? He’s telling us that the whole creation, all humanity, and all who follow Jesus, are in the process of being born into God’s New Heaven and New Earth. One of my current favorite television series on PBS is “Call the Midwife”, about an order of Anglican nuns and nurses in the East End of London in the several years on either side of 1960. The Sisters and nurses care for expectant mothers, run maternity clinics, deliver babies at home and in birthing centers, and act as social workers and nurse-practitioners for the medical, social, and spiritual needs of their neighborhood. The series does not shy away from showing the hard work of labor and delivery, and the noisiness of birth, when every fiber in a woman’s body and voice comes together to push a child out into the world.

It is that image of all creation groaning in labor pains for the birth of God’s kingdom on earth, and for our own redemption – for us to be born anew into God’s best purposes and intentions for us, that Paul is painting. And that work of new birth is the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is work, it is labor, as well as gift. We were saved in hope, Paul says, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, but that is only the first part of the story, God’s story of our redemption. The second part of the story began at Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit to guide and strengthen and shape us into the Body of Christ; and for us to grow into the full stature of Christ. As St. Athanasius put it in the fourth century, “God became man so that men (and women) might become gods.”

The 20th century writer C.S. Lewis said: “[The Lord] said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creatures, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to Him perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what he said.” (Mere Christianity)

This is the work of the Spirit – making us radiant with God’s life, and energy, and joy, but sometimes it s a very hard road, as I think we all know. How often have you struggled to make sense of bad news, a disappointment, or grief? How often have you resolved to speak and act like Jesus, only to find yourself far from that standard? How many times have you begun a daily program of prayer or Bible reading, only to abandon it in a fairly short period of time? How have you wrestled to hang on to the promise of God’s love for you, not sure whether or not you can trust that to be true? And yet, always we begin again, in hope, with the Holy Spirit himself interceding for us, with groans too deep for words.

This is the life that begins for us in baptism, this being joined to Christ in a way that is beyond our understanding, and yet our ultimate reality. This is the life that Brooks is beginning this morning, when his parents and godparents make renunciations and promises on his behalf, and he is washed with the water of baptism and signed with the sign of the Cross and the oil of chrism – a symbol of the healing, gladdening presence of the Spirit.

But the work of the Holy Spirit is not ended on the day of our baptism. It is a daily project as we grow and mature, as we go through life’s challenges and joys and difficulties, as we come face-to-face with the sin and brokenness in our world. The Spirit is always at work – poking us, prodding us, whispering in our ear, giving us a shove, blocking our path and sending us in another direction, inspiring and enlivening us. Sometimes it’s easy to see the Spirit at work, and other times it is much harder to recognize how and when the Spirit is acting.

I have always thought that the Holy Spirit window here to the left of our altar is a wonderful metaphor for the Spirit’s work in our life of faith. When you sit in the center section of the church, you cannot see the window. If you move over to the side, you can get a glimpse of the window, but people, or the lectern, or the paschal candle might block your view. It is only when you approach the altar, when you come forward for Communion – union with Christ and all who love and follow him – that you can see the Holy Spirit window in full. And then there are a few weeks in the year, when the rising sun comes through the window at just the right angle, that you can see the image of the Spirit projected on the wall behind the altar – a fleeting and surprising glimpse. But the window is always there, and the Holy Spirit is always present and active, whether we see him or not.

So on this Day of Pentecost – in the midst of so much change in our lives, in our diocese, in our world – let the Holy Spirit pray in you and through you. Let the Holy Spirit enliven you and direct your steps. Listen to the Holy Spirit whispering in your heart and mind so that you may grow more deeply into the reality of Christ; so that we may all work together under the guidance of the Spirit to build and bring to birth the better world that is God’s dream, as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry so often says – the world for which God’s love was poured out so abundantly in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

Thanks be to God; Amen. Alleluia!

Victoria Geer McGrath
Al Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
The Day of Pentecost
May 20, 2018
 

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Luke:24:36b-37
My father had a knack for running into people he hadn’t seen in a long time, and in unexpected places. It seemed like every few weeks he would come home from work or business travel with a story of someone he had met on the sidewalk or in a restaurant in New York, or in an airport waiting area. It could have been a childhood friend, someone he’d known from college or the Army, or even a former co-worker. Somehow, Dad was able to recognize the essential quality of a person – whether by their face or eyes or voice – even if it had been a long, long time since they had last seen each other. This ability fell into the category of what our kids used to call a “hidden talent” (as in, we all have a hidden talent), which served him very well in his work in public relations.

Inevitably, Dad’s reporting of these meeting to us involved not only the conversation they had, and catching up on news – some of it forty years old or more, and usually in a very brief space of time – but it also involved some reminiscing about how he first knew the person – some tidbit of their boyish hi-jinks, or a college prank, or a sailing experience, or the details of a business project they had worked on. His delight in telling these stories was obvious; he wanted us to share in the joy the encounter had given him.

In a secular sense, Dad was doing what the new definition of evangelism in the Episcopal Church is all about – some of you may have heard me talk about it when I came back from the Evangelism Matters conference a month ago. To refresh our memories, here’s the definition again: “Evangelism is the spiritual practice of seeking, naming, and celebrating the loving presence of Jesus in the stories of all people….and then inviting them to MORE!”

Dad was always on the lookout for people with whom he could make a connection or a recognition; he remembered their names and their stories; and then not only was he pleased to have seen the person again, but he shared the encounter with our family – seeking, naming, and celebrating, if you will.

In today’s Gospel reading, there’s a problem with recognizing – specifically, some of the disciples don’t recognize Jesus in his resurrection body. It is the night of Easter day. In Luke’s telling of the resurrection, the women who had been with Jesus even during the ministry in Galilee had gone to the tomb early in the morning with spices to anoint his body. When they arrived, the stone was rolled away, and two figures in white told them that Jesus was not there, that he was risen. They didn’t see Jesus then, but went back to the place where the small band of followers were staying, and reported to the apostles what they had seen and heard – what they had been witness to. But their report was dismissed, “seeming to the apostles an idle tale”; women in the first century, after all were not considered to be reliable or credible witnesses for legal matters.

Later that afternoon of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas – were walking out of the city to the village of Emmaus, and on the way they met a stranger with whom they talked all about their distress and sorrow over the death of Jesus, and now the strange account of his body being missing. The stranger talked with them all about what the Scriptures had to say about the Messiah, but it was only when they stopped for dinner and their guest blessed and broke the loaf of bread for their meal that they recognized Jesus, who then disappeared from their sight. So Cleopas and his companion rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they had seen, and spoken with, and walked with Jesus. The others had their own news: Jesus was risen and had appeared to Simon Peter.

And in the midst of all of this, Jesus himself stood among them. What was their reaction? They weren’t joyful, they weren’t celebrating; they were startled and frightened, thinking that they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus made it very clear that he was no ephemeral spirit, but had flesh and bones and was able to eat. Even more importantly, Jesus spent time reminding them of the story he had been telling them all along, reminding them of the Scriptures, and God’s purposes. He told them that they were witnesses to all that had happened – every one of them – and that they had a role in making known these events and the meaning behind them to the rest of the world.

This transition from being followers to being witnesses to the Resurrection had a rocky start: the women didn’t recognize the meaning of the empty tomb without a word from the angels, and the male disciples didn’t recognize the meaning, either; the two disciples on the road didn’t recognize Jesus until he was breaking the bread – a flashback, perhaps, to so many meals they had shared together, especially the Last Supper; and then the whole assembled company didn’t recognize Jesus when he came and stood among them.

How good are you at recognizing Jesus in your midst, the Risen Christ? Do you think to look for Christ’s presence in a variety of ways: in prayer? in Bible reading? in your relationships? in your conversations with others? in the suffering of the poor, the sick, the down-trodden, the marginalized? in the beauty of creation and the arts? There are many things that can keep us from recognizing Jesus – not that least in our modern-day reality of living life at warp-speed. I think many times we rush right past Jesus, never even thinking to keep an eye for him, and then we wonder why we don’t seem to see him. I’m not talking about seeing with our physical eyes, as the disciples were able to in the post-resurrection/pre-ascension period were able to – although I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out.

Most often, I believe, we are asked to recognize the Risen Christ through his felt-but-unseen presence in the very human-yet-divine activities of comforting, healing, strengthening, advocating-for, teaching, standing-up-for, creating, helping to restore broken lives, caring for Creation, respecting the dignity of all people, being a loving and true presence – activities we are all called to engage in, especially in relationship to other people.

We need to practice seeking the presence of Christ; recognizing or naming the presence of Christ (Yes, that is what is going on; Jesus is here); celebrating the presence of Christ – being glad, giving thanks. And we need to seek, name, and celebrate the loving presence of Jesus in our own lives, our own stories, and in the story of Scripture just as much as we seek, name, and celebrating the loving presence of Jesus in the stories of others. Recognizing the Risen Christ in our own lives will give us practice and skills in recognizing him in the lives of others.

We are the current generation of disciples. The commission that Jesus gave his followers on Easter night has not changed with the passage of time; we are not off the hook. We are to be witnesses to the power and purpose and promise of God in Christ, just as we vow in our baptismal covenant: ‘Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? I will, with God’s help.’
So, practice this week. See how many times you can see and know and feel and recognize the loving presence of Jesus in what you do and say, and in situations in which you find yourself. And when you recognize the Risen Christ, when you meet him on the road or in the breaking of the bread or in a conversation – tell someone else; share that story with a friend or a family member - and celebrate the loving presence of Jesus in your life.

Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, give us eyes to see you, ears to hear you, hearts to love you, voices to praise you, and minds to be awakened by you, so that we may know that you are our companion in the way, revealed in Scripture, in the breaking of bread, and in the stories of all people. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Third Sunday of Easter
April 15, 2018

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Jeremiah 31:33
Have any of you ever had the experience of exile – whether a forced exile, or one that was self-imposed? Sometimes strained relationships cause a person to leave home, or they are sent packing by their family. Some people have to leave a place they love because it is no longer safe for them. Of course, there are those who are political or economic exiles. But they all share the experience of a separation from home and roots, and if and when they do go back, home has changed; the people have changed; and many things are not as they were before, and even going home brings a sense of loss.

The Israelites of Jeremiah’s day – the sixth century BCE – were in that place. They had been conquered by the Babylonian army, many of them captured and deported, and they lived in Babylon in exile for seventy years. Finally, the Persians conquered Babylon, and the person king Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return home.

But home wasn’t the same as when they had left. The city walls were broken down, strangers were living in their houses, those who had remained in Judea had married outsiders, and the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. The people rebuilt the city, and the Temple as well, but it still was not the same as it had been before they had been taken into exile. The glorious presence of the Lord, whose sign had been the pillar of fire and cloud of smoke that had accompanied them all though their journey through in the wilderness, was not present in the rebuilt Temple; the most sacred place, the place here heaven and earth met. God had left the building, and they knew it. Things were still not right., and the people yearned for the day of Yahweh’s return to the Temple.

Into this situation, the prophet Jeremiah spoke a word of hope and promise on God’s behalf – long-term, but a promise, nevertheless. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…this is the covenant that I will make with them… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” God promises that his people will have a new start, a new covenant agreement, one in which intimacy with God, the life-giving law of God will be written in the hearts of all God’s people. They will become a living temple, the center of God’s presence and God’s glory. This was hope, and good news, and promise.

This past week I spent four days at the Evangelism Matters conference. Four hundred Episcopalians gathered from across our church, including some of the international dioceses. There was a great diversity of people: young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, people with tattoos, people wearing Brooks Brothers blazers, men, women, teens, introverts as well as extroverts, some from very large churches, some from tiny churches – all gathered to learn more about “the spiritual practice of evangelism in the Episcopal Church which is seeking, naming, and celebrating Jesus’ loving presence in the stories of all people – and then inviting them to MORE!”

There was tremendous energy, and joy as well as urgency in the workshops, and worship, and conversations. One very powerful example was an exercise that we did on the first day. We were asked to think of a time when we had reached the end of our rope, had hit the wall, and to remember the feelings we had at the time. And we wrote those feelings on one side of a piece of poster board. Then, we were asked how God had resolved the situation; what made it better, and we were to write those words on the other side. We walked around the room silently, showing our difficult feelings to one another, and then we turned the cards over and showed the other side. Some of the difficult feelings that people wrote down were: abandoned, loss, grief, confusion, sadness, fear, death, alone, ashamed. And then when we turned the cards over we found words like: comfort, meaning, friends, guidance, wholeness, healing, love, community. After we had shared silently with six or seven people, we very briefly told the story to one other person who listened to us, and then we listened to them. We all had a story about God’s love and care for us that had given us hope.

Just like the Israelites, we all had stories of despair and hope; of destruction and restoration; of being at the end of our rope, and being found by the love of God and by community.

And all of us have these stories – times in our lives that have been absolutely awful, and being held and loved by God through the faces and hands of others has made all the difference. That is Good News that we have experienced, the Good News of hope in the love of God.

In the Gospel reading some Greeks, some Gentiles, want to see Jesus. So they go to one of his followers, one of his disciples, Philip, and say “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip then tells Andrew, and they go together to see and speak with Jesus. Now, we never get to hear if these Gentile folks ever connect with Jesus, but what matters in the story is that there are people outside of the Jewish community, outside of Jesus’ own circle, who are curious, who are drawn to him, who see in Jesus the presence of God in a powerful way, and want to know more.

God had promised to his people a new heart, and a new covenant, and it was coming true in Jesus, and people were hungry and thirsty for this true love and hope which held up even in the face of death.
People are no different today; they are just as hungry and thirsty for true love, and belonging, and hope, and goodness, as any ancient people ever were – especially hope, love, and goodness in the face of exile, despair, and death. But they don’t always know where to find it, or that it is even possible to be found.

I hope and pray that all of you in your times of pain, or alienation, or sorrow, or despair have been held by the love of God; that Jesus has met you in that dark and terrible place and brought light to your path, to your heart, to your life. If you have been through this you have a story of hope and love that you can share with someone else who needs to hear it, someone who is in their own dark place. Just by sharing your story with a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor in their need, you can be a messenger of hope, a conveyer of God’s love, one who helps others to see Jesus. Just by offering to pray for or with another in pain, you are conveying that they matter to God, that God notices them, sees them, listens to them; in the very same way that God notices, sees, and listens to you. You matter to Jesus.

Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on
the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within
the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit
that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those
who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for
the honor of your Name. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2018