I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. Genesis 17:7

This year during Lent we are in the season of covenants, in the readings from the Hebrew Scriptures. Last week we heard about the covenant that God made with Noah: that God would never again destroy the entire earth by flood; a covenant of care for the flourishing of all humanity and all creation. And just as a reminder, covenants in the Bible are binding agreements in which both parties have responsibilities and rights, and usually carry some sign, symbol, or tangible reminder.

Today’s passage is about God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah – a very brief version of the much fuller story. Abram, you may remember, first heard the call of God in Chaldea, a part of Mesopotamia which became the Babylonian Empire, which we know today as Iraq. And Abram and his wife Sarai pulled up stakes, left their home to go to a place which God would show them (they knew not where), and make them the founders of a large and abundant family (as many as the stars in the sky), through whom God would bless the rest of the world. Pretty incredible promises – in both senses of the word – especially because Abram and Sarai had so far not been able to have any children together. So if this family of abundant generations was God’s part of the promise, what was Abram’s? It was faith – to have faith, to exercise faith, to trust that God was the center and focus of his life, his decision-making, his purpose. And the sign of this covenant, which the lectionary delicately skips over, is circumcision. Talk about something being etched into your very being! God also changed Abram and Sarai’s names to Abraham and Sarah – another mark of their life-changing encounter with God. If they would walk by faith with God, God would give them a family full of nations and kings, as we know today: Jews, Christians, and Muslims – all descendants, spiritual and actual, of Abraham and Sarah.

God’s covenant was for a world-wide family whose hallmark was faith, trust in God – especially trust for the things we cannot yet see or be sure of. And the mission of that big family was to be a vehicle of God’s blessing to the rest of the world. It’s a responsibility, a role, a job, a ministry to be God’s agents of blessing. These covenants that God made with God’s People in ancient times, in the Old Testament, are still in force today. God has not backed off of them. But they look different now; in many ways their true depth and meaning has been opened and revealed over the years and the centuries.

And so part of what happened in Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection is that he opened the way for Gentiles, for those outside the Jewish community, to be grafted onto Abraham and Sarah’s family tree. By faith – just as Abraham and Sarah had faith and trust in God. When we put our faith in Jesus, when we trust him with our lives, then we know that we are part of that world-wide family that is rooted and grounded in God. And the sign for us is no longer circumcision, but baptism. Our baptism ratifies our faith and seals us by the Holy Spirit.

Baptism is the sign that we have been joined to Christ, that we belong to the big family that God intended from the start and promised to Abraham and Sarah through faith. And in our Prayer Book we use the language of the Baptismal Covenant: the Apostles’ Creed – that ancient statement of faith used at baptism – in question and answer form, followed by the five promises of Christian living and practice:

• To continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers.
• To persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.
• To proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.
• To seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.
• To strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.

These are the practices and the ways of acting and being in the world that God calls us to in our baptism as part of God’s big family of faith. This is what we do in our family, we who have Abraham and Sarah as our ancestors.

And we need to hang on to, and be rooted in, and engage in these baptismal practices, these markers of faith and spiritual family because the challenges of following Jesus and living as a Christian can sometimes seem daunting. It is both hard work, and we meet with plenty of resistance – both in our society and in ourselves.

We have a very clear example of this resistance in the Gospel reading. In the several verses before this, Peter has just gotten finished acclaiming Jesus as Messiah; Jesus’ identity has finally dawned on him and he has blurted it out, and Jesus commends him for it. So far, so good. Jesus then goes on to teach the disciples about his coming suffering, and rejection, and betrayal and death – and Peter is horrified: God forbid! Peter could not possibly imagine that the Messiah, God’s Anointed, the One whom he expected to be king and to deliver Israel from its oppressors, could meet such a fate. That did not match up with Peter’s expectations; it did not follow the script Peter was hoping for.

So Jesus had to speak harshly to Peter, rebuke him, essentially say “Snap out of it!” Peter needed to learn to see Jesus, and his ministry, and their whole project from God’s perspective, not from a human perspective. And we are just like Peter, all of us. Because, left to our own devices, we want to take the soft way, the easy way, the path of least resistance, the story that has the straight road to the happy ending. But that is not the way faith works, it’s not the way following Jesus works, it’s not the way the Kingdom of God works. Jesus tells the disciples and us: What will it profit a person to gain the whole world and yet forfeit their life? If you really want to follow me, you’ve got to be prepared to do the hard stuff, to take up your cross, to tell the truth about life, to put your own desires and ego aside.

We will meet resistance when we follow Jesus – out in the world, and in our own hearts, sometimes in our families, and even in our church. That doesn’t mean everything will be hard, or a struggle, or a life and death issue. There is plenty of joy, and glory, and exaltation in being a Christian, but there is no short-cut through the hard stuff; we can’t leap-frog over it, much as we would like to. And while we are in those hard places we need to remember that we are not alone. God is with us, accompanying us, preparing the way before us, waiting for us to catch up, to notice, to remember that our covenant with God places requirements on us: faith, trust, staying connected to Abraham and Sarah’s family of faith, living the practices that we promised at our baptism: We will, with God’s help.

And when we remember our covenant with God, when we walk through the hard stuff, take up our cross, we will be changed, and we will know the power of God’s presence and love – for the long haul.

Let us pray.

Take up your cross, the Savior said,
if you would my disciple be;
take up your cross with willing heart,
and humbly follow after me.
Take up your cross; let not its weight
fill your weak spirit with alarm;
Christ's strength shall bear your spirit up
and brace your heart and nerve your arm. Amen.
                                                                ~ Hymn 675
Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2018

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

Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. Mark 1:20
I belong to a Facebook group dedicated to my hometown and the memories of it that all of us in the group share. People often post old photos, remembered events, even their phone numbers from the days when you only needed four numerals, or (a little later) when the phone numbers began with the first two letters of the town: AR (for Armonk Village) 3-8736.

Of course, the group is heavy on the nostalgia. And many describe a simpler, more wholesome life than what they see around them now – whether they stayed in town or moved away. They remember a care-free childhood; a community cohesiveness that simultaneously gave children a fair amount of responsibility for themselves, but also the freedom to be kids. You could go off on your bike for the whole afternoon as long as you told an adult where you were going (sort of) and were home by dinner-time – in those days before we knew the term “helicopter parents.”

I know that Long Hill has a similar Facebook group, and I’m sure Warren, Basking Ridge, and many other towns do, as well. In these postings I hear a longing to return to those times, and a sense that something valuable has been lost – the way life used to be.

All around us the world has changed. Sime of the changes have been very good; others have been not so good – they even seem threatening. Despite the nostalgia and the uncertainty, I know I would not want to go back to a time when women could not have access to higher education, participate in competitive sports, have careers in business, law, medicine, engineering, construction, the clergy. Nor would I want to go back to a time when children with special needs were called “retarded” and were shut away; or where men and women of color were automatically barred from fair housing, good jobs, political participation, good schools; or where LGBT folks lived in fear of discovery and, in some cases, their lives; although there is still a great deal of work to do in all these areas.

But in all this positive change there has also been loss – and not just the loss of nostalgia. Our culture is increasingly secular and multi-religious. Our world of work expects to be “on” and available 24/7. Activities for children and teens are often chosen because participation in them will look good on a college application or perhaps gain a kid a sports scholarship. Many households need two incomes to get by. In all of this, the Church as a center of the community has been side-lined – especially churches in the historic, main-line Protestant traditions which used to be understood as central institutions in each community and in the culture as a whole. There never seems to be enough time, even with all the good intentions we may have, to be a deeply Christian person – or even a moderately Christian person – in our current reality.

In other parts of the world – outside of Europe and North America – the situation is quite different. People may struggle desperately to earn their daily bread, but the churches are full, and faith is vital. The Diocese of Haiti, for example, is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church – in terms of both membership and worship attendance, and the outreach of these churches makes an impact in their communities every day.  The challenges of life in Haiti are very different from life in New Jersey, and I don’t think many of us would want to trade places, but Haitian Episcopalians live their faith front and center. It is what gives them hope and courage and joy in the face of great difficulty.

The Gospel passage this morning narrates Jesus calling two pairs of brothers – all commercial fishermen – to follow him, to become his disciples. This was a risky business. Jesus was asking them to abandon what they knew, their livelihood, their family business, and follow him into the unknown. Peter, Andrew, James, and John may have heard some of Jesus’ preaching beforehand; we don’t really know. But Mark’s Gospel wants to convey the sense of urgency and vitality in Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God – enough that these men were willing to drop what they were doing and become his followers, partners in learning, living, and proclaiming the fulfillment of God’s purposes as they were coming true in Jesus. In order to do that, the disciples had to make a change, had to leave behind what they knew, what seemed familiar and comfortable, had to be willing to see the world differently, and learn to live in it differently than what they had been used to. In the presence of Jesus the Messiah, they were in the presence of God far more directly than any of them had been before, and it was going to be a big adjustment, to say the least!

So here we are, not unlike Peter, Andrew, James, and John – and farther along in the story the sisters Mary and Martha, as well as others. Jesus calls us in the midst of our rapidly changing world, in the throes of things we sometimes have trouble wrapping our mind around, to leave behind some of our old life – our old ways, our old expectations, our nostalgia – if it does not serve and support authentic Christian life and practice and faithfulness. That doesn’t mean we carelessly abandon traditions and practices that are life-giving, but it does mean that we need to re-think, and pray, and discern the cost of following Jesus.

Where are the places where we need to make choices about how we spend our time and our energy? Is faith in Christ a nice add-on in our private moments, when we have time? Is prayer and Scripture reading something that we leave to the “professionals” – either out of uncertainty about how to do it, or fear of seeming “too religious”, or the difficulty of making time for it?

In calling us to follow him, Jesus calls us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – our whole being. And in the Episcopal Church, our Anglican tradition rests on the prayerful intertwining of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. More than many Christian traditions, we Episcopalians are not so much told what to do and what to think, as we are called to put all our faculties and abilities at God’s service, and then given the responsibility (individually and as a community, as a body) to watch and listen and think and pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance as to how we can be deeply Christian in our current culture., in our own time and place.

It’s hard; it takes work. And that may be one of the biggest changes of all. In the old days the values of American society and the values of the Church were more or less the same – at least on the surface, at least for main-line Protestants. It was easy to coast in our faith when we had lots of cultural support. But those days have gone, and we have before us a fresh Gospel opportunity. Our world needs so desperately to hear that the idolatry of materialism, of status, of power for its own sake, the idolatry of external perfectionism which papers over the emotional and spiritual void, is not what life is all about. The world needs to know that forgiveness, joy, and hope are possible, and that it comes from being loved to our depths by God, and by returning that love with glad and grateful hearts.

We are the ones who have been given the message and the mission to the places each one of us goes. Each of our participation is important and valuable, and God is counting on us. We all, of course, can always learn more about our faith, become more confident in both what we believe and what we say, can learn better how to pray, how to listen, how to recognize the still, small voice of God, the Holy Spirit whispering in our ear. We never stop learning and growing in our Christian discipleship.

But at some point, the training wheels have to come off. At some point, we have to decide that our faith moves front and center, and that God can use us however God sees fit – no matter how scary that seems.

Why does this have to happen? Because through our baptism, God has called us into partnership with him in his mission to redeem the world; and the world sorely needs Jesus’ message now. Forgiveness, hope, justice, joy, courage, peace, and love. That is what we have to offer, that is what we have to live, that is what we have to say – out loud, to other people. And when we do, Jesus will be with us – even to the end of the age.

Let us pray.
Jesus calls us from the worship of the vain world’s golden store;
From each idol that would keep us, saying “Christian, love me more.”
Jesus calls us! By thy mercies, Savior, may we hear thy call,
give our hearts to thine obedience, serve and love thee best of all. Amen. ~ Hymn 550

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 21, 2018


 
 
 
 
 

Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." John 1:46

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” These were the first words out of Nathanael’s mouth when his friend Philip began to share the news that he had met the Messiah, and the Messiah was a carpenter-turned-rabbi from the village of Nazareth. Can anything good come out of that little backwater, hole-in-the-wall, wide place in the road called Nazareth…for that is the way it was considered by residents of the larger towns and cities of Galilee like Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Sepphoris.

Philip doesn’t argue with Nathanael, nor try to convince him; he just says: Come and see; come and see for yourself. And Nathanael is curious enough to go along, suspicions and preconceptions in hand, to see Jesus. But, in fact, Jesus sees and knows some truth about Nathanael while he is still a little way off: Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit – no guile, a straight-shooter, genuine through and through, a man who speaks his mind. Nathanael is still suspicious and confronts Jesus: “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus replies that he “saw” Nathanael while he was still under the fig tree. Whatever that was about – second sight, intuition, the Holy Spirit whispering in his ear – it made a big impact on Nathanael, who then did an about face, made an abrupt exclamation of faith, proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God and King of Israel. But we’ll never really know what changed in Nathanael, what his inner motivation was in claiming faith in Jesus. That part of the story has been lost to us.

Tomorrow is our country’s annual commemoration of the life, work, and witness of Martin Luther King, jr – an important day. But I wonder if we sometimes are not in danger of losing some of the important realities of his story.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, was a Baptist preacher and a civil rights leader, but if we honor him merely as an inspirational speaker, someone who said things that we now think are self-evident, we miss a great deal. Dr. King was also a martyr, shot by a sniper on the balcony of a Memphis motel fifty years ago this April. He was not murdered because he made speeches that said we should all be nice to one another, or that we should just try to get along.

He was killed because his work, and his words, and the movement that he led challenged what many people believed about race and power, roles and opportunity in our society, and the way that the African-American community in particular had been boxed-in and oppressed by certain attitudes, practices, and (in some cases) laws. What seems like compassion and common-sense to us today was in many places considered scary and threatening to the powers-that-be, to an economic system, and to a way of life.

The positive changes came at a very high cost to those involved directly in the civil rights struggle, and sometimes to those who were on the side-lines. I think, for example, of the men and women who were beaten, hosed, and bitten by dogs in the march in Selma; of the four girls who died in Sunday School when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by segregationists; of the white Episcopal seminarian who was shot while protecting a young black woman colleague in the voting rights effort, taking the bullet that was meant for her.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Atlanta, Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Haynesville, Memphis…Newark, Plainfield….all the places and the neighborhoods and communities where people banded together to work for civil rights?

A classic way of attempting to keep others in a “less than” position, to try to rob them of their dignity and power, is to speak of them in demeaning and disparaging ways. And so there were many who thought, spoke, and wrote about Dr. King, and his colleagues and supporters and friends, just as derisively as Nathanael spoke of any good -let alone the Messiah – coming out of Nazareth.

This is the season of Epiphany, in which truth comes to light, and we see and understand more clearly – often suddenly - as Nathanael saw Jesus and knew him to be the Messiah. But Jesus doesn’t just leave it there. He pushes Nathanael further: "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." In other words, the fact that Jesus knew who and what Nathanael was would be small potatoes compared to what he might see as Jesus worked to bring to reality God’s mission in the world: the sick healed, the outcasts restored, the poor given justice, the Good News preached, sins forgiven, the Scriptures fulfilled, the coming together of heaven and earth in Jesus. Nathanael’s epiphany about Jesus’ work and identity would continue to grow as he followed him.

Epiphanies are not just about having more information or knowledge; epiphanies change us, make us behave differently. The Wise Men returned home by another road, after having worshiped the Christ Child; Jesus launched his public ministry after he saw and heard the voice of God at his baptism; Nathanael changed from being a skeptical disparager to being a believer after his encounter with Jesus; our American society began to make some important changes after our encounter with the truth of equality, justice, and dignity for all God’s people which was the core of the civil right movement.

But epiphanies need nurturing; they need care and feeding and tending. The disciples walked, and worked, and prayed with Jesus for three years, and they still weren’t ready for the Resurrection. It has been more than fifty years since the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed, and we keep finding new ways in which justice, equality, and opportunity for all people can be made more real. We have, I hope, each had epiphanies and experiences of faith that can still grow deeper roots; can be both nurtured and challenged in our walk with the Lord, in our pursuit of living as Christ’s agents in the world.

Can anything good come out of our struggles with prayer, with Scripture reading, with worship, with the daily challenges of making sense of life from God’s perspective and the choices that go along with that? My answer is a whole-hearted: yes! The good is that we will know more clearly God’s direction and purpose; that we will be connected more strongly to Christ, to the Christian community, and to our fellow human beings; that we will feel and experience what it is to love and be loved; that we will help to make a difference in God’s world for all God’s people.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Yes it can; Come and see!

With the words of this prayer of Dr. King’s, let us pray.
"God, we thank you for the inspiration of Jesus. Grant that we will love you with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, even our enemy neighbors. And we ask you, God, in these days of emotional tension, when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, to be with us in our going out and our coming in, in our rising up and in our lying down, in our moments of joy and in our moments of sorrow, until the day when there shall be no sunset and no dawn. Amen."

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday after Epiphany
January 14, 2018
 

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Mark 1:10-11

On these winter mornings it’s often hard to get up and out of bed because it’s cold, and dark. Especially if you have the curtains closed, it may be hard to tell what time it is without looking at the clock; the curtains block out what little morning light there is. But then when you do get up and pull open the curtains, sometimes you are greeted by a crystal clear and beautiful day. A stark difference between a dark inside and a bright and glorious outside has been revealed with one swift movement.

The baptism of Jesus, here at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, is like that sudden revelation. Mark begins his Good News with a brief reference to Isaiah’s words of the messenger who will prepare the way of the Lord, and then we are off and running with John the Baptist preaching and baptizing all who will throw their lot in with the Lord, as a sign of their readiness for whatever it is God is bringing. And it is in that context that Jesus comes to be baptized, along with all those who were drawn by John’s message.

As with the rest of Mark’s Gospel, we don’t get a lot of detail here – his words are spare and economical; so when he does give us detail, we need to pay attention. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Mark is using detail that connects this scene, this experience both backward and forward in time. The water and the dove are reminders of the First Day of Creation, the opening lines of Genesis in which the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters. The heavens being torn open [schizo] is the same word that Mark uses later at the Crucifixion: Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. A new beginning, a new Creation, that takes the path, the highway that runs right through crucifixion and death to open a new way to the holy of holies, the heart of God’s reality.

Not only has Mark opened the curtain for us as readers and hearers of the Gospel, but Jesus has had the curtain opened for him as well. In his baptism the day-to-day reality of rocks, trees, wilderness, people, river, have all been dissolved in the far greater reality of God’s presence: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. No matter what else happens, no matter what other distractions, difficulties, trials come Jesus’ way, this reality of being loved and delighted in by God is his deepest truth. Baptism is the sign of that.

Baptism is the sign of that same reality for us. God loves us and delights in us – deeply, and without end. No matter what else we do or fail to do God love and delight in us will remain constant; it will not change. And on these days when we renew our baptismal vows, when we hear God’s words to Jesus, perhaps the curtain between our day-to-day experience and God’s of reality is pulled back and we get a glimpse of God’s truth.

But then the moment fades, the curtain falls closed, and it is all too easy for us to go on about our business and the world’s and forget what our reality is. We know that when we are loved we live differently than when we are not loved. When we encounter someone who is hostile or bitter or indifferent to us we shrink back inside ourselves, we put up a wall against them, we take up a defensive posture, we become brittle. Sometimes that is just what we have to do. But when we know that we are loved and valued and cherished, then we allow ourselves to be open, to be flexible, free to take risks – because we know that we will not be condemned if we make a mistake.

Baptism is the sign and the reality of God’s love and delight for us. It is the place from which we should begin each day. That’s why the Creed in the Daily Office – Morning and Evening Prayer – is the Apostles’ Creed, the baptismal statement of faith, the Creed we will affirm in the Baptismal Covenant this morning. We have joined Jesus in his baptism; we have become part of God’s family in which God’s love is abundant and new every morning.

As Jesus’ followers, as part of his Body, this is the way we are called to be and to live in the world: knowing ourselves as God’s beloved, and carrying that love into all our encounters, being the ones to draw the curtain back – even just a little – so that the world may see and know God’s love and delight through us.

And now, Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.    Ephesians 3:20,21

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
First Sunday after Epiphany: Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ
January 7, 2018

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. John 1:1-3a

In the old days of the Roman Empire the god Janus was considered the god of “beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.” He was pictured as having two faces, looking to the future and to the past, and it is usually thought that the month of January is named for him. And we stand in one of those transition places this morning, in the liminal space of the old year ending, and the new year about to begin. Many of us use this time to glance backward over what has been before we turn to face whatever is yet to come – with all our hopes, dreams, and good intentions. And, as Christians, I pray that we do that with an eye to recognizing what God has brought to bear in our lives, the way God has accompanied us thus far, and the places to which God may be pointing us – as individuals and as a church community – in the year ahead.

The reading from John’s Gospel looks both backward and forward. When the Gospel writer, the Evangelist says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God,” he is intentionally echoing the opening words of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

These are the words John wants us to be hearing while we read his telling of Jesus’ story. He wants us to know that the same God who made the world and called it good, who created humankind and called us good, who hung in with us through all of the ups and downs of human history – all the places we took wrong turns, went off the rails, were faithless to God’s goodness, sinned and fell short of God’s purposes for us, and generally messed up life for ourselves and the world around us – this God has been faithful to his first purposes by coming to us in the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God began humanity again in Jesus – a new creation, a new humanity, the Word made flesh.

By looking at Jesus we see what God is like – God with skin on. And by looking at Jesus, we also see what we humans – men and women – are to be like. Jesus is the very icon, image, example of true humanity; who God intended us to be all along – to be filled with the goodness, faithfulness, and wisdom of God so that we might care for God’s Creation as good and wise stewards, offering praise and thanksgiving along with the rest of the created order.You may well say to yourself that this is just not possible – you are not good enough, faithful enough, brave enough, holy enough, wise enough….whatever “enoughs” you might think of. And you would be right. On our own, none of us can fully live up to God’s expectations, can fully embody God’s purposes. That is why the Gospel writer goes on to say: “the Word became flesh and lived among us…full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

The grace that has come to us in Jesus – the free gift of God’s favor and faithfulness when we least deserved it – it what makes our new humanity, our new creation possible. Grace is not God waving a magic wand and making us perfect people. Grace does not erase that past mistakes, failures and grief. But the gift of grace is that when we give our hearts to God, when we trust in Jesus’ faithfulness and apprentice ourselves to him, when we allow our minds and hearts and wills to be shaped by the Holy Spirit, then bit by bit we will become the Christ-shaped men and women that God intends. Sometimes it happens in great chunks; sometimes our growth is painstakingly slow, with false starts and backward detours. But always, God calls us to begin again, to hope, to live, to love. That is “the work of Christmas” – to quote the theologian Howard Thurman.

In the new year that begins tomorrow I pray that you will know an abundance of God’s grace as you follow Jesus and become even more deeply rooted in power of the Holy Spirit to shape and fuel your life as the new man or woman God created you to be, as the new humanity we are all called to be in Christ.

Let us pray.
Lord, may your Light shine in us and through us into all the darkest places, and may your grace and truth dwell in us richly so that your glory may be revealed through us to your world, your new creation. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
First Sunday after Christmas
December 31, 2017

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. Luke 2:10-11

What are you doing here? What are we all doing here? We’ve come to celebrate Christmas, of course. Some of us have waited all year for this occasion, or at least this season. Some of you are here because, well, it’s just what lots of people do on Christmas Eve, along with the feasting and the gifts and the Christmas tree. Others of you may have been dragged along by a friend or family member, and you are here to humor them. Still others of you may have come tonight with a heavy burden – an illness or a personal problem in which you are seeking a measure of peace, guidance, perhaps a lifeline. Some of you may be relieved to tune out the noise and strife of political and social discord – change the channel, think about something else. And for some, what we celebrate tonight is the very foundation of their being. All of these are good and important reasons to be here. Whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever burden or blessing you have brought with you, you are welcome here. God has invited you – in one way or another – and you came. Thank you.

At the heart of what we do tonight is to proclaim the news, the good news, the very best news, that God loves us – full stop; no ifs, ands, or buts. There is nothing that we can do to make God love us more than he already does when we are at our very worst. And when you truly love someone, you want the very best for them, and you do whatever you can to make that happen – gladly, generously, sacrificially. That is what God did for each one of us, for all humanity, and all Creation in the birth of Jesus.

After millenia of patriarchs and prophets, judges, priests, and kings, and the whole long history of humanity – broken, disillusioned, alienated – God came into human life, came to share our humanity; not as a reflection of humanity, or a hologram, or an avatar, but as a fully flesh-and-blood baby, vulnerable, dependent, needing the care of parents; powerless, poor, unknown, having no status or influence. Imagine – the Creator and Sustainer of the universe willingly becoming small and weak. And why would God do that? So that we would know there is no aspect of human life and experience that is outside of God, unknown to him. In Jesus, the human and the divine meet, heaven and earth; as the beloved Christmas hymn says: “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” A name often ascribed to Jesus from the Hebrew Scriptures is Emmanuel – “God with us.” God with us – we have not been abandoned, we are not bereft, God has not left us to fend for ourselves, but is here with us, among us, at the center of our heart and being, if we will let him.

And if God comes to us in Jesus, the representative of all humanity, the Everyman or Everywoman, the Second Adam, as the medieval writers said, then there is no aspect of human existence that cannot be healed, redeemed, saved, made whole, participate in shalom, salaam – God’s life of peace and goodness. That includes you – and whatever you are going through, whatever pain or difficulty or joy you find yourself in.

No wonder the shepherds in the field were awe-struck when they heard the angels’ announcement. This was incredibly, exceedingly good news. At long last the Messiah, the Anointed, the Wisdom, the Lord, the Root of hope, the Key of life, the Morning Star, the King, the One who was to bring God’s promises and purposes to fulfillment had come.
 
And he hadn’t come to a palace, or to the Temple, or to the seat of imperial power. Instead, God’s Messiah had come to his people, to ordinary folk who were living their lives as best they could, who were struggling to get by, who had hung on to God’s promises for centuries: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them light has shined and The Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth…See, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. They shall be called, "The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord"; and you shall be called, "Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken."

A God who comes among us, a God who is in our corner, a God who keeps his promises – though not always in the ways we expect or look for, a God who is willing to get down in the muck and mire, the uncertainty and grief, the pain and deceit of human life is absolutely a God worth trusting and celebrating and loving in return. This is the good news we announce and embrace at Christmas, and are embraced by.

So, leave your fear, worry, pain, anger, grief, weariness, lostness, despair, disillusion, and hear God who says: Come; come to the stable – like the shepherds who ran all the way to town to see the truth after hearing the angels’ message. Come; come to the life that God offers, full of faith and hope and new beginnings for us and for all humanity, as we walk in Jesus’ way. Come; come to the love of God in Christ and be embraced by the heart of God, a power over which no earthly force can prevail. Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, will meet us there and we will be blessed, indeed, tonight, tomorrow and in the days to come.

Let us pray.
O Lord Jesus Christ, as you humbled yourself to be born among us and laid in a manger, bring us with the shepherds and wise men to kneel in awe and joyful thanksgiving and to follow the steps of your blessed life; that rejoicing now in your peace, we may come at the last to eternal glory in your presence, where the angels ever sing your praises. Amen. ~ St. Augustine’s Prayer Book
 
Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2017