Category: Prayer

Reflection on Ferguson

11/25/2014

Dear Friends in Christ,

There is much to be thinking about, planning for, and celebrating, with Thanksgiving this Thursday, and the season of Advent and new Church year starting on Sunday, but I wanted to say something about the decision that was announced in Ferguson, MO last night, and the events that have followed the announcement.

Seeing images of violence and looting, and seeing images of anguished and angry people are never easy. Most of us are drawn in by these images, and we react to them viscerally. It is important to remember that what we see on television or news sites is what get covers or portrayed; it is never the whole story. It is also important to recognize that in a setting where passions and feelings are as inflamed as they are in Ferguson (on all sides), there will always be some who will take advantage and manipulate the situation for their own ends.

Frankly, I am not sure what to think or believe about the grand jury’s decision and the shooting back in August. I think there is some information we may not have. I do know, however, that tensions resulting from our national history of racial injustice and the ways that continues to show up, along with strong feelings about income inequality and many other factors, are a reality of American society. Conversation about institutionalized racism and civil rights can be difficult and uncomfortable, particularly when we don’t think those things touch us personally. Having said that, we know that violence and destruction is never the answer.

Here is an excerpt of a message the Right Rev. Wayne Smith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, sent to his churches earlier this month: “...As people of God, we do well [to anticipate these likelihoods] by preparing spiritually. Corporate and personal prayer become crucial in times like these, and I know that some congregations expect to open their doors to be places of prayer for their neighborhoods. Their doing so encourages me, and I hope that you will publicize these invitations broadly. Now is a time to storm the throne of God.

Now is also a time for the renunciation of violence—not just physical violence, but the violence of words. The spiritual discipline of guarding what we say, out of anger or hurt, becomes immeasurably important in times like these. This discipline allows us actually to become instruments of peace.”

We Christians believe in prayer. We also believe that all people have been made in the image of God, and that each person is someone for whom Christ died – loved and valued beyond measure. We know, as well, that human beings are limited and fallible – that we can and do sin, fall short of God’s best for us. It is in the midst of this mixture of love and sin that we are called to work for the fullness of God’s Kingdom: “on earth as it is in heaven.”

So from here, the most important thing we can do is pray for God’s wisdom and peace, reaching for that peace within us, as well as looking for it in the midst of events and interactions: “O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” ~ Book of Common Prayer, In Times of Conflict

Blessings,
Vicki McGrath+

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Spiritual AND Religious - Part II

11/23/2014

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His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” Matthew 25:21

Last week we began a three-part sermon series on the meaning of religion – religion as a rule of life, religion as a way of ordering your faithful response to God, religion as a way of putting a helpful structure around your spirituality, a container for your experience of and relationship with God. We outlined four aspects of Christian religion that the Church, over time, has found to be most useful to us in our practice of faith. The four elements are corporate worship, daily prayer and Bible reading, stewardship, and works of mercy and justice. Last week we focused on corporate worship – gathering with other Christians as the Body of Christ (corpus) to praise God, be fed by Scripture and sacraments, and have our spiritual “reset” button pushed. Next week we’ll think about works of mercy and justice.

Today our topic is daily prayer and Bible reading, as well as stewardship.

But first I want to set the scene with the Gospel parable Jesus tells. It’s usually referred to as the Parable of the Talents, and right away we need to get something clear – this is one of those items that comes under the heading of “Things you want to ask a Biblical scholar.” A talent in the New Testament has nothing to do with abilities or things you are good at, like math or music or sports. A talent is a unit of money – in fact it’s a very large unit of money, equal to 15 years of a laborer’s wage. In modern-day terms, assuming the current New Jersey minimum wage of $8.25 an hour, one talent would be equal to $247, 00. That means we could say that the master gave one of his household servants $247,500; to another $455,000; and to another $1,037,500 – an incredible amount of money!

So right away we know that this is not some sort of morality tale or allegory that Jesus is telling; instead, he’s trying to get a point across about what the kingdom of God is like. For our purposes today, Jesus is saying that we each have been given resources – spiritual, personal, financial – that we will be asked to account for and return to God when the Kingdom comes in all its fullness.. Just like last week’s parable, this one bears a lot of study and digging and asking questions of; but for today I want us to reflect on what we do with the resources that God has given us – especially the resources of our faith.

We know that in traditional Islam, the faithful are told to pray five times daily; in Orthodox Judaism prayer is required three times a day. What about Christians? How often should we pray? When and how? There are lots of answers to that question, but for today I’ll give you the Episcopal answer: pray continually – that’s what St. Paul says just a few verses on from the end of our second reading (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17).

Whoah; how can I do that?! I don’t have that kind of time, or even inclination; not happening! OK, take a breath, and remember that there is a great stream of prayer that is going continually throughout the world from Christians and churches everywhere; somewhere, someone is always praying, whether formally or informally. And whenever we pray, we step into that great stream of faithful, continuous prayer; and our goal is to grow in awareness of that prayer and praise going on all the time.

Having said that, there are some very helpful, structured things we can do. At least twice each day, morning and evening, we should offer prayer to God and put ourselves in a position of listening to God by reading the Bible or some other spiritual writing.
When we wake, we give thanks to God for the day, we offer up what will be before us, we remember Jesus’ resurrection which took place in the early morning hours; we ask for strength, guidance and wisdom; we ask God to use us to be a blessing to others; we pray for the world and to remain aware of Christ’s presence always.

In the evening, we give thanks for what has been, even as we review our day and ask forgiveness for the places where we have fallen short; we remember that God is in charge, even as we sleep, and commend to God’s care all those we love, and all the things that worry us, remembering that Christ is always our light in the darkness.

Now there are lots of ways to do this, and many of you do it already – you can use Forward Day By Day, or some other devotional; you can follow the Prayer Book Daily Lectionary as printed in the back of the BCP or on-line. Some mix of using your own words as well as fixed forms of prayer probably works best – include the Lord’s Prayer, a Psalm, perhaps a favorite collect or canticle.
Take out the Prayer Book and turn to page 137, and you will see a very short form of structured prayer for morning, noontime, early evening, and bedtime; choose one this coming week and try it out for seven days: just what is printed there, nothing more besides your own particular prayer concerns.

The hardest thing, of course, is time, which most of us never seem to have enough of. If that is true for you, you can still pray: in the car, on the train, waiting on line at Shop-Rite, waiting to pick your child up from school, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, while you are doing yard work or washing the dishes. You already know the Lord’s Prayer, and you can easily add your own; and if your time is severely limited, here a prayer that anyone can say: “I praise my God this day. I give myself to God this day. I ask God to help me this day.”

What matters is that you find a way to connect to God each day, to step into that stream of continual prayer, and do it in a structured way that doesn’t leave you floundering on your own. Prayer is the way we recharge our batteries, that we refocus on God; it’s also the way we develop the spiritual resources that God has given us. It’s as though God has planted us seed in us that will grow, eventually and over time, but will be a much healthier, abundant and fruitful plant if we give it the sun and water of daily prayer and Bible reading.

As Christians we have another element to our structured religious practices that helps us to grown in our love of God and love of neighbor – and that is stewardship. There are two short definitions of stewardship: Stewardship is everything we do after we say “I believe”, AND Stewardship is all that we do, with all that we have, all, of the time. The point, of course, is that everything that we have has been given to us by a good and generous God, but that we don’t own it; it all belongs to God, and we are simply the caretakers, the stewards of what we have been given.

With that in mind, we need to use what we have wisely and well, and we also give some of it back to God for the work of God’s Kingdom. In part, it’s a structured way of sharing, of acknowledging that there are other people in the world besides ourselves, and that we live by God’s grace, not only by our own efforts.

Perhaps the most obvious or easily identifiable form of stewardship is the decision to set aside a percentage of your income to give back to God, and then offer it for God’s work – usually through the Church, but also for other ways and projects where you see the Spirit of God working to bring reconciliation, mercy and wholeness to the world. In these days of EFT and on-line giving, we are perhaps a little less connected to a weekly sense of offering than in the past, but every time and offering is made in Church – money, food, music, bread and wine – we remember that the most important thing we are offering is ourselves; as the Rite I Eucharistic Prayer says: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

There are other forms of stewardship, as well. As a parish we have been trying to be good stewards of our buildings – to keep them safe and in good repair, so that they may continue to be good and useful resources for doing God’s work. That is true for any of our physical possessions; not to idolize them, but to use them for God’s glory and for the good of God’s people (and that includes us).

The natural world is another gift of God of which we are called to be good stewards. The beauty and inter-connected life that is all around us in trees, rivers, oceans, air, plants, animals, birds, swamps and mountains is God’s creation, and we Christians are engaged in a struggle (along with the rest of the people on Earth), about how we will care for it; what will be the costs; what will be the benefits; what are our responsibilities?

And then there is time, perhaps the most precious commodity of all. How do we use and apportion and order our time so that it reflects our gratitude to God? How can we be good stewards of our time – not just more efficient or effective, but how do we recognize that time is God-given? We start by recognizing that often there are choices to be made, that not everything that seems interesting is something that we will be able to do.

And it helps to remember that all of our electronic devices tell us 24/7 that there is always something else we could or should be doing if we want to be: fit, smart, successful, attractive, etc., etc. But that is, in fact, a lie – and Christian stewardship helps us to put life into perspective, to remember that we are limited, finite human beings; only God is infinite, and we make ourselves crazy when we forget that. But it is the temptation of our age, and I fall prey to it all the time: God is infinite, and I am not. Stewardship helps us to recall this in a structured, grateful way.

So…
Spiritual resources – daily prayer and Bible reading, and stewardship; these are two of the practices that the Church has laid out for us as a way to develop and deepen our faith.

When we do these things – however skilled or clumsy or half-hearted we may feel about them – we will be like the servant who has more talents to give to the master upon his return. And when we do so we surely share in God’s joy.

To be continued…..

Let us pray.
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. ~ BCP

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 16, 2014

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While You Are Waiting

6/17/2011

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When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. Acts 1:13-14

What do you think prayer is all about?

You might say it’s about asking for guidance or requesting help - for yourself or for someone else who needs it.

Or you might say that prayer is about asking forgiveness for the things we have done wrong – and for the good things we have failed to do; or that prayer is about counting our blessings and saying ‘thank you’ to God.

If you pick up any popular magazine that runs articles on health and wellness, or if you read any of the major news websites that feature the same kind of stories you will often read that “prayer and meditation” are good for you, that they make you calmer, more centered, can even lower your blood pressure and possibly prolong your life.

Well, all of this is true, but this is not what the disciples were doing in that upper room when they gathered and prayed after Jesus’ ascension.

The disciples had returned to Jerusalem from Mount Olivet, where they witnessed Jesus’ ascension, and they had heard him promise them the power of the Holy Spirit, and charged them with being his witnesses.

In fact, the picture that Jesus was that the disciples were to begin their mission of being Jesus’ witnesses right there in Jerusalem and then spread out to the kingdom of Judea, to Samaria (that place so problematic to first-century Jews) and then out into the Roman Empire – the far-reaches of the civilized world.

The disciples had been walking with Jesus for three years, watching, listening, learning from him, being sent off on short-term mission projects.

They had lived through the painful and dramatic experience of Jesus’ arrest and death by crucifixion, and had then been astonished and elated at his rising to new life on Easter.

Then for the next forty days the Risen Christ appeared to the disciples many times – talking with them, eating with them, making final preparations for them to take up the work that he was setting before them.

And now that Jesus had ascended the disciples went back to Jerusalem, to that upstairs room – the one where they had shared the Last Supper, the room they had fled to after the crucifixion, the same room where they gathered on Easter evening when Jesus appeared to them, and the same place where a week later Thomas made his declaration of faith when Jesus told him to touch the wounds in his hands and his side.

This upper room had been a place of worship and shelter and fellowship and safety all through their two-month sojourn in Jerusalem.

And it was there that they gathered once again after the ascension, devoting themselves to prayer as they waited for the promised Holy Spirit.

So the question is: what was this prayer that they were engaged in?

It was a prayer of expectant waiting on God – a prayer of listening, of being open to what God was going to do next whenever that “next” was going to be.

It was also a prayer of worship that drew Jesus’ followers together: the Twelve, the women, his mother Mary, his brothers; they were united in their waiting and listening.

This intense and focused prayer of expectation opened up a space in their hearts and in their midst for the Holy Spirit to come, almost like a spiritual convection that would draw in the power of the Spirit.

Or another way to describe the disciples’ prayer is that it was concentrated enough to harness divine energy, the way a magnifying glass held in the sun over a piece of paper or a pile of tinder can create fire.

This is probably not the way most of us think of prayer.

We want to draw close to God – but not too close!

We come to God with our list of wants and concerns and needs – and most of them are certainly worth praying about.

But the kind of prayer the disciples were engaged in during this time between Jesus’ ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was filled with an intense and expectant longing to be open to whatever God was going to do next with them.

It’s not that the disciples were any more “spiritual” or special than we are, but they had gone far enough down the road with Jesus that there was no turning back, no putting on the brakes at that point.

And so they prayed – intensely, fervently, with eager longing – waiting on God.

And really, that is the kind of prayer that Jesus invites us into as well – to pray with focus and expectation that we may be receptacles of the Spirit, channels for God’s energy and purpose.

But this kind of prayer is risky, because we don’t know and we can’t predict how we might be changed by coming so close to God; after all, look at what happened to the disciples!

And yet this kind of steady, focused prayer is the way we will grow to be more like God, the way we will know best what God plans and purposes and intentions for us are, and then be given the power to complete those plans.

It’s not a prayer of emotions or feelings, necessarily, but rather a prayer of full attention and concentration on God and than waiting with a calm openness for God to act.

This time after the ascension, this Ascensiontide, is an example, and a reminder, and an invitation for us to enter more deeply into prayer to our Ascended Lord – and then wait to be empowered for the mission Jesus has in mind for us.

Let us pray.

Come down, O love divine, seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with Thine own ardor glowing.
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, til earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling. Amen.
-- Bianco da Sienna, Hymn 516

Victoria Geer McGrath
Seventh Sunday of Easter: the Sunday after the Ascension
June 5, 2011

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Reflection on Ferguson

Spiritual AND Religious - Part II

While You Are Waiting

Sermons & Reflections

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All Saints' Episcopal Church

Reflection on Ferguson

Spiritual AND Religious - Part II

While You Are Waiting

Sermons & Reflections

Archives

Categories

All Saints' Episcopal Church﻿

All Saints' Episcopal Church