One December, I worked as a seasonal Bell-Ringer for the Salvation Army in New York City. Around 5 AM every morning, I’d be dropped -off in front of Grand Central Station, and I’d ring my bell for 12 hours, inviting people to drop money in the steel kettle hanging from the tripod I was standing by. One morning, instead of my usual downtown spot, the boss dropped me on a sidewalk on the Upper East Side. Even I, rural girl that I was, knew that the Upper East Side was where the famous people hung out. I had my eye out for movie stars! Lo and behold, in the middle of the day, I noticed a couple come out of the deli across the sidewalk from me. A beautiful woman (just a little older than me but so much more sophisticated) heard the sound of my bell, and saw the Salvation Army kettle. She stopped and dug into her bag. A handsome man stood over her speaking right into her ear. Then he turned a looked my way. It was James Spader.
If you don’t know who that is, he is shown above in the John Hughes movie, Pretty in Pink. In that film, he plays an arrogant jerk (to put it nicely). I had thought he was acting. But I don’t think he had to try very hard. When I wide-eyed, star-stricken, looked into his eyes, he sneered at me. Yes, one side of that gorgeous upper lip rose perceptively as he stared coldly into my sweet, innocent, awestruck face. I’ll admit, it didn’t stop me from staring back with my jaw on my chest, still ringing my little bell 500 miles an hour. Later, when I told my friend that I had seen him, she was so jealous! She wanted to see him too! If only she had been able to ring bells for the Salvation Army on the Upper East Side! It just wasn’t fair! No matter that he behaved like an arrogant jerk, he was James Spader! This Sunday, we’ll remember poor Thomas. All the other disciples saw Jesus after the Resurrection, except him. Jesus appeared in the upper room, not the Upper East Side, but Thomas missed it. It’s hard to miss out. But putting these stories together reminds us that sometimes what we think we’ve missed out on is just stinky fish. And in the love and kindness of God, whenever we long for, seek and desire to see Jesus, he shows up for us. So, don’t worry if you missed somebody else’s amazing Easter. Look for your own. Jesus is risen and ready to meet with you just around the corner. Open your eyes and ears and welcome the blessing. -- Pastor Rebecca Share your star sightings below... Have you ever thought about your story and Jesus sightings?
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Some people love marathons, others don’t. Holy Week in the Episcopal Tradition (and some others) is a spiritual marathon; a week that stretches through time and space enabling us to go the distance alongside Jesus. The services of Holy Week begin with Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, take us to his final night (Maundy Thursday), his arrest, betrayal, trial, torture, and death (Good Friday), and into the miraculous power of his resurrection (Easter).
You are invited to run this spiritual marathon. The challenge will exhaust you, inspire you and deepen your solidarity with the one who ran the race for you. Here, you’ll see the services offered through St. Paul’s. Start to finish, there are four. However, if you want to challenge yourself further, attend a Seven Last Words service on Good Friday. Other Episcopal Churches offer a Holy Saturday Easter Vigil. Here are some reasons why running the Holy Week Marathon will strengthen you:
-- Pastor Rebecca When Jesus was brought to the temple as an infant, a devout old man named Simeon took him in his arms and essentially pronounced, My eyes have seen the Messiah! (Luke 2:25-32). But what if Simeon said that about every baby brought to the temple? There’s no reason to think he didn’t, except that we know the whole story. We think of Jesus as Messiah in a distinctive way, and that’s appropriate. But Jesus wants us to be like him. That's messianic.
In his book, The Diary of Jesus Christ, Bill Cain, SJ, has Simeon pray the same Messianic prayer over every child presented in the temple. When Jesus is twelve, Cain imagines Jesus returning to the temple to find Simeon. Jesus asks Simeon many questions, including this: “In the scripture God speaks of Israel as if it were one single person. If that’s true, is it possible—is it possible when the scripture speaks of the Messiah as one person – that he might be many people? Is it possible? Is it possible? (p. 210) Thinking about this question was a lightbulb moment for me. We are called to be like Jesus and if Jesus is our deliverer, our means of being whole, healed, saved (all one word in the New Testament), then we are to do the same for each other. To embody God’s power and love as much as possible so that others can see God through us! (Matthew 5:48). It sounds impossible, but in fact, it’s not. It’s essential. It’s as simple as leaning in on who we truly are, not who we’ve become in our selfishness. Here are a few simple steps to practice your partnership in Messiah:
Don’t miss out on this fabulous opportunity to be Messiah. It’s possible. Every day, all of us together, walking in love, makes it possible. -- Pastor Rebecca If you’ve watched professional sports, it’s likely that you’ve seen a sign flash across the screen as the camera pans the cheering crowds. John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
This verse has been helpful and harmful – possibly since it was penned. The verses before and after (John 3:15 and 17), in fact, the whole context of when and why Jesus spoke this, is often ignored. And I am about to do the same thing! Yup. I want to drill down on just one word in the verse. Kosmon: the Greek word means several things in Greek. It means universe (cosmos), wholeness, the ordered creation, the ordered society (cosmopolitan). And God loves it all. God loves ordered, harmonious humans, and God loves the wholeness of the whole. So much does God love these things, that God goes to every and any length to restore them. Even becoming broken, destroyed, poor, marginalized, and falling through the black hole of evil in order to tie the frayed knot, to fill the vast vacancy, to restore the lost sheep, coin, and human. God does it not by violating the order, but through the order, through becoming Emmanuel – God with us. In flesh, in bread, in wine, incarnate, present. God loving the cosmos does not mean humans are at the center of God’s concern, it means that love, wholeness, interconnection is the center. Our brokenness is God’s concern only because wholeness requires our healing, not because we are distinctive or special within the order. Out there across the vast expanse of interstellar space, it’s likely that there are other creatures who have also fallen into separation. Creatures who willfully chose to move away from wholeness. Perhaps it was pride, greed, lust, or competitiveness. God knows. And the longing at the heart of God has sent God’s love into that world just as much as ours. Flipping John 3:16 open to imagine God’s immense, eternal, expansive love for the whole kosmon invites us to break open our narrow worlds and widen our love so that we too can be a part of the whole. Because, if God so loves the WHOLE, it suggests, if one of us isn’t healed, none of us are. -- Pastor Rebecca As a kid, I absolutely loved this Sunday's gospel reading: Jesus “cleansing” the temple (John 2:13-22). I loved the image of tame Jesus (mostly shown cuddling rabbits and children in my Bible), getting ticked off and flipping tables. Go Jesus! It made him seem more human, more real. He was angry. We get angry. In anger, he acted in ways that seemed destructive. We do too.
Most of my Sunday School teachers explained the story as how wrong it was to do commerce in church. Hence, no rummage sales on Sunday. But, there’s a lot more to the story. Jesus taught, “Be angry, but do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26-27). And in this story, Jesus models how. Anger that increases your heart rate, makes your palms sweat and your face turn red. It makes your jaw tight and your mind race. Psychologists call this “flooding.” And when it happens, we are really likely to sin; to break relationships. Jesus, feeling all of that, expressed his anger effectively. So effectively that the resonance of his actions still echoes in the reading. Mahatma Ghandi’s grandson, Arun, wrote a children’s book about things his grandad taught him. One of them was the power of anger. Ghandi-gi told him that anger is like electricity. It can strike like lightning, or it can be controlled to produce light. That's the lesson of Jesus' behavior in the temple. When Jesus tipped the tables and flipped the money onto the floor, it may have looked like lightening striking. But really, it was controlled enlightenment. Through his actions, he sent a message that rippled through the community, taught a lesson, and enabled the salvation story to go into turbo charge. His death became inevitable and by his death, his power to redeem and resurrect was revealed. Like you, I long to let my anger be a light, not lightening. Learning how to manage our anger effectively is a part of discipleship. May our consideration of Jesus’ actions bring us wisdom on how to be angry, and still turn the tables on our complicity with injustice and sin. -- Pastor Rebecca I love the word, transformation. I preach on it all the time. I’ve found the power of love and the experience of walking with Jesus to be so transformational that I’ve dedicated my life to trumpeting that good news! For me, transformation is positive, holy, and attractive. I hope that’s how you see it too.
But, there is another side. Transformation inherently requires change. And change means loss. Caterpillars may not welcome becoming butterflies. Why would they? Cocoons, physiological morphing, the struggle to break out of the chrysalis, UGH! Who wants all that? Rather that we stay on the leaf munching away in the sunshine. It’s the same with us. Collectively, as the Church, we followers of Jesus in North America are going through a profound transformation. Many of us have stopped attending church every Sunday. At St. Paul’s, only a third of us are in the building on average on any given Sunday. Many of us have stopped attending all together. The drop is precipitous across the nation – for all denominations. This is not a welcome change. It’s a loss that sometimes takes my breath away and makes me cry. You can see why: I deeply believe in the work that we do together as church. But transformation is here. I have to let myself grieve. And so do you. The loss is real. And we don’t know what the future holds. Darian and I have a vision for our transformation. We have hope that our worshipping community will thrive for generations to come. But not without change. Not without transformation. Stop and reflect on how that makes you feel. As we walk through the days ahead and discern next steps, we will make space to mourn, to honor our past, and to comfort each other. Change is tough. But we are tougher. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, our caterpillar community will fly. -- Pastor Rebecca The history of the Episcopal church and the capital “C” Church is long and varied. From the Episcopal Church’s history of being the Anglican church and containing many of the wealthy and elite members of society, to the same thing being replicated in the new world of the time, to now, where Church members represent a cross section of many classes, races and gender categories. The Episcopal Church has seen a ton of history made in its own halls in the evolution and Revolutions that bring us the churches we have today.
While much progress has been made socially, the results and hangovers of the past still remain in place for the most part. Not only do I know this as an anecdotal tale that is told from person to person, I know it from my own personal research into the wealthy and elite members of the Episcopal Church that enslaved my own ancestors. Their names are Wigfall, Baker, Sinclair, Hines and Blow. Yes, Blow. The same Blow family that helped start this church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, also had relatives that enslaved both Dred Scott and my own ancestors; given the names August, Jenny, Phillis, Limbrick, Flora and Nanny. Now it is known that Henry T. Blow did not receive an inheritance of land and enslaved people. In fact, having grown up with Dred Scott, Henry and one of his brothers paid for the legal fees for Dred Scott to sue for his freedom. The fact is that Henry would not have had to do this, had his parents not enslaved Dred Scott and others in the first place. I believe that this church in particular follows Henry’s story: divorced from the slave trading past of our ancestors but still directly tied to the systems those ancestors created in the time of slave trading which started over 500 years ago. The Church is putting funds behind reversing these effects but even after a decade of that effort, it is still a drop in the bucket when we think of reversing over five hundred years of effectively following the same systems. Our church and the Episcopal Church will continue to do the work of God and support our brothers and sisters in Christ, however we have to realize the scale and magnitude of the work we intend to undertake. It will take generations and a lot of hard and smart work, but we have in no way reversed any of the effects our ancestors have had on us to this day. That day, when Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream is realized and no one is judged or has their life outcome determined by the color of their skin or any other ways we marginalize people are gone, we may never see for ourselves. To me, that makes exploring our history and seeking restorative justice in all of its manifestations that much more important, so that future generations are not stuck with the bill yet again. -- Darian Wigfall, Executive Director The Episcopal Church, since its inception has been rooted in the upper class. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is that our denomination was the state religion of England which became the established church in the American colonies. In colonial America, social class often determined one's access to education and opportunities, and this influenced who became members of the church. The term, "cradle Episcopalian" may be a vestige of the birth privilege that has been with us for centuries.
When Scott and I lived in Connecticut, we visited several Episcopal Churches where pew rents (abolished as recently as the 1970s) determined seating. Wealthier members of the community rented the more expensive pews up front while those who couldn't afford such accommodation either stood in the back or sat in the balcony. During the colonial and early post-revolutionary periods, the Episcopal Church comprised members from the colonial elite, including wealthy landowners, merchants, and political leaders. Many of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Anglican/Episcopalian. As the United States expanded westward, the Episcopal Church established new congregations. Nevertheless, the liturgical and aesthetic expressions of our forebears were "classy". To be an Episcopalian entailed having a Prayer Book and being able to read. It signaled pew rents and Sunday morning apparel. These factors often affected who attended Episcopal Churches. When you visit towns in the mid west and west, note where you see Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches. They tend be found in affluent neighborhoods or as beautiful edifices downtown In the last hundred and fifty years or so, Episcopalians have begun to dismantle this class affiliation. But we have a long way to go. The wealth of our denomination is astonishing. One church, Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street, has an endowment of over 6 billion (yes, you read that right - 6 billion dollars). Many of our churches have significant endowments. But that hasn't always meant that our stewardship is generous or faithful. In New England, it's common to find Episcopal churches with a Rector and Associate Rector, and full staff and large building, but only thirty people present on a Sunday. Endowments enable congregations to hold onto the status quo. But what would Jesus say to us who store up treasure like that? Episcopalians want to welcome and include all people. But it's not easy. When we read so much in worship, it's hard for people who struggle to read, (or can't afford eye glasses) to feel included. Even our hymns are high-fallutin' and poetic. As we change, we must discern what in our worship is integral, and what could be abandoned as we widen our welcome. In future essays, I will explore what the Episcopal Church is doing to continue dismantling our upper class, predominantly white, way of being. Much more needs to be done but growth is happening. The Diocese of Missouri and St. Paul's are part of the vanguard moving toward the Jesus Movement that our Presiding Bishop has so faithfully called us to. Many in our denomination long to do better, to walk more faithfully, and together we are making changes for the better. In the comments section, please offer your reflection on Class in the Episcopal Church. Pastor Rebecca by Mary Pipher, excerpted from The New York Times
The despair I feel about the world would ruin me if I did not know how to find light. Whatever is happening in the world, whatever is happening in our personal lives, we can find light. This time of year, we must look for it. I am up for sunrise and outside for sunset. I watch the moon rise and traverse the sky. I light candles early in the evening and sit by the fire to read. And I walk outside under the blue-silver sky of the Nebraska winter. If there is snow, it sparkles, sometimes like a blanket of diamonds, other times reflecting the orange and lavender glow of a winter sunset. We can watch the birds. Recently it was the two flickers at my suet feeder with the yellow undersides of their wings flashing, the male so redheaded and protective, the female so hungry. Today it may be the juncos, hopping about our driveway, looking for seeds. The birds are always nearby. Their calls are temple bells reminding me to be grateful. For other kinds of light, we can turn to our friends and family. Nothing feels more like sunlight than walking into a room full of people who are happy to see me. I think of my son and daughter-in-law on my birthday, Zeke making homemade ravioli and Jamie baking an apple cake, their shining eyes radiating love. Or of my friends, sitting outdoors around a campfire in our coats and hats, reciting poetry and singing songs. We also have the light of young children. My own grandchildren are far away, but I spend time with 9-year-old Kadija. My husband and I are sponsoring her family; they arrived here from Afghanistan, with only the father speaking English, only a few months ago. Already, she can bring me a picture book and read “whale,” “porpoise” and “squid” in a voice that reminds me of sleigh bells. I know someday she will be a surgeon, or perhaps a poet. In our darkest moments, art creates a shaft of light. There is light in a poetry book by Joy Harjo, a recording by Yo-Yo Ma and in a collection of Monet’s paintings of snow. The rituals of spiritual life will also illuminate our days. In my case, it is sun salutations, morning prayers, meditation, and readings from Tich Nat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and influential Zen master. Also, it’s the saying of grace and the moments when I slow down and am present. Whatever our rituals, they allow us to hold on through the darkness until the light returns. Finally, we will always have the light of memory. When I recall my grandmother’s face as she read to me from “Black Beauty” or held my hand in church, I can calm down and feel happy. I feel the light on my skin when I remember my mother at the wheel of her Oldsmobile, her black doctor’s bag beside her. Driving home from a house call, she would tell me stories from her life on a ranch in the Great Depression and during the Dust Bowl. Deep inside us are the memories of all the people we’ve ever loved. A favorite teacher, a first boyfriend, a best friend from high school or a kind aunt or uncle. And when I think of my people, I’m suffused with light that reminds me that I have had such fine people in my life and that they are still with me now and coming back to help me through hard times. Every day I remind myself that all over the world most people want peace. They want a safe place for their families, and they want to be good and do good. The world is filled with helpers. It is only the great darkness of this moment that can make it hard to see them. No matter how dark the days, we can find light in our own hearts, and we can be one another’s light. We can beam light out to everyone we meet. We can let others know we are present for them, that we will try to understand. We cannot stop all the destruction, but we can light candles for one another. Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist and the author, most recently, of “A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence.” In our ever-divided country, a lot of us are pointing our fingers to the left and the right and describing left-wing/right-wing fundamentalism. Recently, I read a blog article entitled, The Five Features of Fundamentalism by John Donaher. I was curious to see what the “pathology” of fundamentalist thinking looks like. I wondered, Do I behave like a fundamentalist? How would I know?
Here are the features of fundamentalism:
As people of faith, we are especially at risk. These qualities can happen even when we aspire to be liberal-minded and inclusive. I remember going to a church that prided itself on being open and affirming, but boy, did they get spiteful about those conservative Christians! It’s easy to find reasons to distrust and dislike. We are all at risk of fundamentalism. If you don’t agree with me, you’re banished! (just kidding). Jesus was never a fundamentalist. And he could have been the very best one. He could have divided the whole world by himself and us -sinners. He didn't. Jesus opposed the Roman Empire, but had mercy on the Roman Centurian and his servant. Jesus knew that they were going to execute him, and yet he never gave in to paranoia and distrust. Jesus predicted an apocalypse and admonished his followers to prepare for it, not prevent it. His life was wrapped in the life of God. His hope and agenda were God’s. No one got excommunicated when they walked away. No one. I want to be like Jesus. Probably, you do too. The more we do, the safer we are from this trap. And the more whole our lives will be. So today, I’m putting aside my part-time fundamentalism for a full time commitment to following Jesus. Join me? -- Pastor Rebecca |
AuthorMost of the blog articles are written by our Rector, The Rev. Rebecca Ragland Archives
April 2024
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