Relationship

“To ask whether God exists is really to ask about what the relations are that you can recognize yourself as involved in—because God is irreducibly a living complex of relation, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Rowan Williams, “Foreword,” in John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), xi.

In other words, to Whom do we relate and how?  Does it matter if we don't know, as long as we know (and can feel) that we are loved finally and wholly?

Glory Goes Forth

Here's Laurel's reflection for the Christian Century blog's lectionary page, Blogging Toward Sunday, on the Last Sunday of Epiphany:

Exodus 34:29–35; Luke 9:28–43

For this Transfiguration Sunday, the preacher faces at least two temptations.

The first is to move too quickly to the pastoral and personal dimensions of these texts, to consider how we, too, are transfigured by God’s love, glory and grace. And the epistle lesson does bring this theme up. But Exodus and Luke invite us to explore the nature of God’s glory itself, and it’s rewarding to focus first on these rich texts.

When Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai, he doesn’t just have a frighteningly shiny face. He also carries the two tablets of the covenant, a second-chance way for his people to live gracefully with God. In the wake of an intimate dialogue with the almighty, Moses comes bearing God’s fearsome radiance—and a gift.

The Hebrew word that we translate as “shining” implies beams of light coming forth from Moses’s face. Jerome translated it as “horn,” leading Michelangelo and others to depict Moses with devil-like protrusions. This is an unfortunate distortion in more than one way, for it implies a glory that extends—but only slightly.

The Israelites beholding Moses know otherwise, for they are keenly affected by his transformation. This is no mere glow that surrounds only him. God’s glory moves outward into the world.

Among the synoptic writers, Luke alone depicts a frank and intimate conversation among Jesus, Moses and Elijah that is clearly about Jesus’ own “exodus” or “departure.” What do they mean? Are they talking only about his journey toward Jerusalem—with its horrifying and hallowed end—or also about the resurrection and ascension?

Scholars debate the details, but what’s clear is that Jesus is discussing how next he will move in the world. It’s often said that contemplation and action cannot be separated. Here Jesus focuses on action even in the midst of intense, transfiguring communion with the divine.

Then Jesus comes down from the mountaintop rather quickly—“on the next day.” Luke makes very clear that the three sleepy-eyed disciples are dumbfounded by what they have seen and heard.

And then come the parenthetical verses the lectionary lists for Luke (9:37–43). Neglecting or omitting this passage is the preacher’s second temptation: between the shining of Moses and the dazzling of Jesus, it’s easy to decide that there’s already enough to talk about.

But Luke concludes these additional verses—in which Jesus expresses unbecoming frustration and then heals a boy whom the disciples apparently could not—with a big statement. Back on the mountain, the three disciples were amazed. Now at the healing, “all were astounded at the greatness of God.” God’s glory goes forth into the world.

In her memoir Breathing Space—about ministry at a church named after the transfiguration—Heidi Neumark writes this:

Living high up in the rarefied air isn’t the point of transfiguration ... [It was] never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.

At this hinge between Epiphany and Lent, Moses and Jesus ask us to reflect on the nature of the dazzling divine glory that illuminates them. In Epiphany, we contemplate the ways that Jesus manifests God’s light to the ends of an earth blanketed in darkness. This week’s stories might be seen as a culmination of this theme of God made manifest, of holy light on the move.

What I Learned from Watching The Hobbit

(This piece was first published on the Christian Century blog January 18, 2013).

As the band of weary travelers leapt, ran, and tumbled away in dazzling fashion from a caveful of goblins inThe Hobbit, I was convicted. I’m a late Gen-Xer, and I’ve seen plenty of impressive cinematic special effects in his life, from Forrest Gump to Independence Day to The Matrix. But The Hobbit’s multilayered motion of monster-laden ladders crisscrossing over a dark abyss, its wildly imaginative fight scenes and the depth lent by my 3D glasses convinced me that we humans have crossed a significant line: we now have the creative capacity to fashion new worlds.

I was certainly entertained. And it cost a lot to entertain me. Warner Brothers budgeted $530 million to produce the new trilogy. New Zealand granted the studio $25 million in tax rebates and changed the nation’s labor laws to secure the magnificent setting. And the first film has already raked in more than $800 million across the globe.

We humans love this kind of immersive entertainment. We love to enter into Middle-earth, the center of the earth or the far reaches of the galaxy. Why? And what do we forget back home while our imaginations take us elsewhere? Our too-long unemployed neighbors? Our shot-through set of gun regulations? Our swiftly heating planet?

I’ve often assumed that humanity just can’t solve problems like poverty, gun violence and climate change. It seems reasonable to conclude that we just don’t have the money, intelligence or creativity. Watching that goblin chase scene troubled this assumption. Humans made The Hobbit! Maybe we just lack the will to apply our considerable resources and ingenuity to toward social problems instead of entertainment.

I’m no pop-culture-hater. My partner and I recently switched our allegiance from Glee to Downtown Abbey, and our two-year old is already falling in love with Elmo. There’s a place for a good thriller or tear jerker when we need a break.

But what does it mean when we use our wildly capable imaginations to entertain (or protect!) ourselves rather than take care of those in need?

It means our politics suffers. Not the name-calling and sound-byte jousting we see on the news, which is its own form of entertainment. I mean the politics that forms the moral backbone of our society: our will to work together to ensure that all lives thrive. Churches have a role to play here. As Christians we are called to a clear-eyed view of the world and its daily suffering so that we may, with God’s help, serve the least and lost among us.

We need church to be a place of respite from our media-saturated lives, a place to recenter and reground ourselves in the astonishing Christian story, to relish its implications and allow them to move us to action. Through our worship we develop the eyes to see our entertainment for what it often is: distraction from the work we have been given to do. For where our stories take us, there our hearts will be also.

Of course, as creatures with limits we need our rest as well. But as we settle in to enjoy the next big blockbuster, may our special effects-produced awe be cause for not only fascination but inspiration. If we humans can craft a Gollum, we can figure out how to feed the world’s hungry, teach our young and care for the sick, too.

"The Next Big Thing": A "No-Notes" Sermon

I delivered this sermon at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee, TN on December 19, 2012.  

It was a satisfying challenge to preach without notes!

"Treed," a Sermon/Poem on Zaccheus

Here's a morning prayer sermon I preached at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee, TN on November 28, 2012.  Click here for the video.

Luke 19: 1-10

Treed

Orange-leafed trees are blown wholly free, 

their trunks exposed. All gnarls can be seen. 

Nakedness is our cold call in this season ahead 

as we wait for Christ’s coming—king and baby.

Why did Zaccheus climb the tree?
His curiosity proved costly:
Giving money to the poor was just the half
of what a dinner with the Son of Man would mean.

Did Zaccheus know that his gift could
never be enough? His holiness fell short.
And yet salvation, impossibly, came:
though he was no young and rich ruler,
who, striving for perfection, left (un)spent. 

Christ’s loving storm removes the leaves from 

even our most secreted branches.

The wind picks up. A hum of voices nears. 

Do we know who is coming? Really?
And still we hide above the hushed crowd 

hoping that our status quo will hold.

But we cannot evade his recognition 

or his terrible warm call to serve. 

There is nothing to say but yes
to set a table and feast on forgiveness.

The Lord’s presence clothes our bare weakness 

with His reckless generosity. We
respond only to learn a holy lesson:
that the giving of half our store to the poor 

must always fail some crucial test.

And yet we commit to giving more.
Sated, Zaccheus too would serve more still.

Changed, we resist Jesus’ departure
for a final ascent up the mount before
his descent into waiting Jerusalem.
Quiet, full, and with Advent’s space ahead 

we climb that sycamore again for a new view 

not to hide, but now to see need waiting 

as the generous invitation that it always is.
We need a graceful tree so we may see.

Philip's Wild Baptism: Sermon delivered at Chapel of the Apostles

[Click here for the video.]

Today we celebrate Philip, a deacon and evangelist of the early church.  His actions issue an uncomfortable challenge to us liturgy-loving Episcopalians.  In fact, Philip is rather strange to us.  He takes off into the wilderness after a word from an angel, jumps into the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch and preaches, I mean preaches, the good news.  Then, apparently ignoring the eunuch’s perfectly valid question about what’s preventing him from being baptized (oh, I don’t know -- a nine-month catechumenate class, a sponsor, an alb, the examination and baptismal covenant, a blessing of the water, some chrism, the Paschal candle, definitely a priest to preside), they both plunge into a nearby waterhole for a bath.  (I’m not sure there was a Trinitarian formula in there, either.)


Sure, sure.  That was the early church.  They did crazy stuff back then.  We can’t just go around baptizing whomever at whichever body of water we happen across, making disciples of all nations, teaching them about Jesus’ commandments . . . Oh yeah: the Great Commission.  That pesky Great Commission.


What prevents me from being baptized?  None of us wants to answer, “The church.”  Yet sometimes that seems to be how we respond.

Gabi and Jorge are Mexican immigrants living outside Portland, Oregon.  They didn’t carry their marriage certificate north, which means they couldn’t prove that they were married to the local Roman Catholic priest when it came time to baptize their daughter Ana.  This was a problem without a solution for all involved, and so Gabi and Jorge knocked on the nearby Episcopal church’s door instead, distraught.  All seemed to be going well until it became obvious that the couple expected a private baptism on a Saturday a couple weeks away, on Ana’s first birthday.  The prayer book expects all baptisms to be public and ideally to be performed on five particular Sundays a year.  The next date fell some months away.  What would you do?  What would Philip do?  Philip’s fearless evangelism serves an active, even uncontrollable Spirit at work in the world around us.

A master teacher was nearing death.  Her students were very concerned.  One finally asked her, “What will we do once you’re gone?  To whom will we turn?”  The teacher looked about her, taking in the anxious stares of her pupils.  Behind them she could see the far bank and hear the coursing current of their valley’s river.  “All I’ve been doing these many years was sitting on the riverbank handing you river water.  When I die, I hope you will notice the river.”

I wonder if as a priest some day I’ll ever feel like I’m sitting beside a river of God’s grace handing out the sacraments to a polite line of Episcopalians but we’re all forgetting to notice the river?  I think at times I’ll feel, probably because some of my parishioners will feel, that my primary job is to service the church’s liturgy before I serve God and the Trinity’s unpredictable Spirit.  I’m going to pass by some baptisms if I fall into that sort of thinking, because I’ll be forgetting to notice the source of love from which we all, as a church, quench our thirst.

Of course, God’s grace is all around us, not tied up in a lonely river coursing through the spiritual landscape of our lives.  But if that’s the case, we people of God ought not be tied up in our churches alone.  There’s plenty of gas-guzzling chariots full of confused passengers out there.  We just need more of us out in the wilderness pointing out to folks the refreshing, saving waters around them.  Noticing font after font and after font that God provides for us inside and outside church doors.


The Episcopal Church offers candidates a beautiful, powerful baptismal ceremony filled with covenantal words to live by.  We have structured our very Christian identity around the sacrament of Holy Baptism.  We’re talking about an indissoluble bond that God is establishing.  This is serious stuff, which is why it’s a great idea to run a 9-month catechumenate program.

But a funny thing happens when we consider more closely what a high view of baptism entails: two opposing approaches emerge.  One makes us comfortable: it involves careful preparation of the candidate and attention to detail while planning the liturgy.  But a high view of baptism also suggests we don’t wait another minute to baptize someone who asks for it and understands its meaning, at least as much as any of us can understand the mystery of God’s impossible grace.  What prevents me from being baptized?  Heck if I know!  Let’s do this!  Who am I, Lord, to do otherwise?

Let’s say you’ve spent weeks planning a baptismal service.  You finish baptizing the folks who have been preparing months for this moment, and then you ask the congregation: Who else feels called to be baptized right now in the cool waters of God’s grace?  When in return you hear a Spirit-filled “Baptize me!,” and you start getting worried about the propriety of your question, lean on the promise of an indissoluble bond established by God and let the Spirit do the rest.  (Then tell your bishop.)


All of us, not just future priests, are called by Jesus Christ to get out there, I mean out there in the wilderness bringing the stranger to baptism, pointing out the wonders of God’s love like there’s no tomorrow.  This is the good news: God’s love is a ridiculous, all-in, always surprising kind of love, and God loves everybody, including you.  What is your salvation to you?  Where is its joy?  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded you. And remember, Jesus is with you always.  His river is ever-flowing, and it will cleanse us, every one.

Sandy Cove

At ten I faced its rolling waves
mesmerized by the promise of
days spent bodyboarding, eating
cheez whiz on crackers, tracking sand
into the trailer, simple meals at night.

The sand shifted mightily from year to
year: the steps to the beach at times
dangled precariously above ground.
Other trips it seemed the whole shore
swelled wave-like through the back door.
Many similar waters did that.

My friend’s beach trailer sold, but by then
high school had swirled us away.

More time still: my wife and I
overnighting in a beach cottage. Walking
the slick shore we happen upon
—as if I’d walked into my past—
that same cliff, those curls, lonesome now
with the trailers gone. The sand is down,
I can tell, even without the stair marker.

I remain fixed there
uncomprehending the loss
unsettled by the sand swells.

That hidden cove haunts:
cleaving pitifully to its sandy trove
protected by a gnarled cliff that spun off
days’ worth of tight left-breaking curls, the
morning waves fish-filled aquariums,
so quickly drained.