"I Sing a Song"

All Saints, 2009

As some of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church, traveled with Quakers during college and my young adult years, and finally, came home to the Episcopal Church. Before the Episcopal Church though, there were no saint stories. No Virgin Mary, apart from Christmas. No Feast Days or Fast Days. No liturgical calendar. All of this came with my conversion into the Episcopal Church – and I found it utterly delightful – but not quite sure what to do with it. I had suddenly inherited this whole family that seemed strange and unfamiliar and truth be told – in whom I was not really interested.

When I became the lay Associate for Youth and Family at the first Episcopal church I served – Church of the Incarnation, in Santa Rosa - my office was located in a room called “Venerable Bede.” All the other rooms and offices were called by saints names as well. The Nursery was St. Lucia, the choir room was St. Cecilia, the 4th/5th grade classroom was St. Agnes. You get the picture. I remember thinking, with my still overly Protestant brain, why not just name the rooms by what they are: Choir Room. Nursery. Classroom. Associate’s Office.

On All Saints Day, we sang “I sing a song of the saints of God” and the children paraded down the church aisle in costumes of various saints. October Sundays were spent constructing the costumes – presumably learning about whichever saint they were costuming as.

I found it odd, if not slightly heretical.

Still, I was attracted to what all these saints seemed to point to - a life that went on under the surface / a deeper sort of Christianity than I had been exposed to, and had only dreamed existed.

I began to read about the saints – and it was clear that most of them were somewhat odd people, misfits even in their time, but utterly converted, body, mind and soul, with a love of God so significant that they embodied the kind of hunger and thirst that Jesus talked about – but hunger and thirst for what? It differed. Some thirsted for justice. Some for divine union. Some for peace. Some for education and relief of suffering. Some for the conversion and salvation of souls. Whatever form it took for each of them, the underlying reality was the same – a passionate love for God that had united with God’s passionate love for them.

In other words, saints drink from the wellspring of Life and know that we are made from God and for God. We are created by God from our Genesis, and we return to God at our End. And here – in the middle – we adopt an attitude of gratitude, and surrender ourselves in as much trust as possible – to the Divine Spirit that enlivens each one of us.

Gratitude, surrender and trust. At it’s simplest – that’s what it means to be a saint. To give thanks for everything – and to surrender everything, trusting God. The Saints usually have no idea where this gratitude, surrender and trust is going to take them – all they know is that as they surrender their entire being – their possessions, their will, their understanding, their memory, their future, their time, their resources – as they do this, miracles unfold and Life in all it’s abundance begins to take root and grow and to bear fruit.

So, what form did this take for the Venerable Bede – whose office I occupied? It turns out that he was an English monk and scholar in the early 700’s. He lived in the monastery from the age of 7, and was quite clearly brilliant. His best-known work is his History of the English Church and People, a classic that has frequently been translated and is available in Penguin Paperbacks. It gives a history of Britain up to 729, speaking of the Celtic peoples who were converted to Christianity during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their subsequent conversion by Celtic missionaries from the north and west, and Roman missionaries from the south and east. His work is our chief source for the history of the British Isles during this period. Long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he was aware that the earth is a sphere, and he wrote that the solar year is not exactly 365 and a quarter days long, so that the Julian calendar (one leap year every four years) requires some adjusting if the months are not to get out of step with the seasons. For Venerable Bede, gratitude, surrender and trust meant using the gift of his brilliance to spend copious quantities of time and thought and ink separating fact from fiction and hearsay as he wrote history and advanced the cause of what would later become known as science.

For Agnes, for whom the 4th and 5th grade classroom was named, it took the form of martyrdom. Agnes died at Rome around 304 in the persecution of Diocletian: the last and fiercest of the persecutions of Christianity by the Roman emperors. She is said to have been only twelve or thirteen years old – and her young age shocked many Romans into demanding that the persecutions stop. Her fearless attitude caused others to say that “If this religion can enable a twelve-year-old girl to meet death without fear, it is worth checking out.” I think making her the sponsor of a classroom of ten and eleven year olds has the potential to give children courage in standing up for what they believe and resist peer pressure to participate in bullying or sexual activity or drugs….which yes, do affect kids at a very young age. For Agnes, gratitude, surrender and trust, meant calm conviction in the reality of the resurrection – a calmness and conviction that is possible for even the young folk among us.

I want to tell you a third story about saints. This one is not from the 300’s or the 700’s. It’s from 1970’s to now. I heard this story first in 2002 when I met a Ugandan Bishop who wore a large pectoral cross and spoke English with a heavy African accent. The cross he wore was given to him by the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum, before he was martyred by Idi Amin’s government in 1977. There had been many persecutions by Amin towards Christians, and Luwum had personally gone time and again to secure the release of prisoners. In the end, he secured the release of many Anglican bishops and took their place with his own person. Before he was put into the Land Rover which took him away, he handed the cross to the Bishop that I met. I’m sorry that I cannot remember his name – but I will never forget the cross he wore. Janani Luwum’s feast day is February 16th.

At Convention, I met a priest of this Diocese, Jerry Drino, who works with the Sudanese, and has been instrumental in the process of putting the Martyrs of Sudan onto the most recent Episcopal calendar of saints. Here is what the next publication of our Lesser Feasts and Fasts will say about the saints of Sudan.

"The Christian bishops, chiefs, commanders, clergy and people of Sudan declared, on May 16, 1983, that they would not abandon God as God had revealed himself to them under threat of Shariah Law imposed by the fundamentalist Islamic government in Khartoum. Until a peace treaty was signed on January 9, 2005, the Episcopal Church of the Province of the Sudan suffered from persecution and devastation through twenty-two years of civil war. Two and a half million people were killed, half of whom were members of this church. Many clergy and lay leaders were singled out because of their religious leadership in their communities. No buildings, including churches and schools, are left standing in an area the size of Alaska. Four million people are internally displaced, and a million are scattered around Africa and beyond in the Sudanese Diaspora. Twenty-two of the twenty-four dioceses exist in exile in Uganda or Kenya, and the majority of the clergy are unpaid. Only 5% of the population of Southern Sudan was Christian in 1983. Today over 85% of that region of six million is now mostly Episcopalian or Roman Catholic. A faith rooted deeply in the mercy of God has renewed their spirits through out the years of strife and sorrow."

I am stilled by this kind of witness. And I look around at my own life, and wonder how it is that I continue to have trouble surrendering and trusting God. Why it is that I continue under the illusion that my life and my possessions are actually my own - when it is obvious that everything I have, every breath I take, every dollar in my account, every child that sits around my table – is mine on loan and in reality, belongs to God. The truth is, we begin and end in God. And in the middle here? We are called to trust.

Let us join with all the company of heaven, the saints, martyrs and apostles, the witnesses in ages past in and in our age right now – in relaxing our grip, in opening our hands, in surrender and trust – so that the miracles that are always associated with Abundant Life can happen now in our own lives, in our own church, in our own hearts.

Friends

Easter 6, Year B

Acts 11: 19 – 30, 1 John 4: 7 – 21, John 15: 9 – 17

Friends of Jesus

When I went to college in the mid-70's, the Vietnam War was still raging. As a freshman, I went to my first anti-war demonstration in the streets of San Diego. A friend said he thought I would enjoy worshiping with the Quakers, who are known as "peace lovers". So, having no car, and it being a time when such things were still done, I hitchhiked down the hill from UC San Diego to the La Jolla Quaker meetinghouse in downtown La Jolla.

It was a simple white wooden building with green trim. Inside there was no altar, no pews, no pictures, no candles, no vestments, no stained glass …. None of the beauty to which we Episcopalians are accustomed. Instead, there were simple wooden chairs, in rows that faced each other. Light streamed in through the clear windows. There was nothing to distract one’s attention. I sat down and waited. And spent the next hour waiting. I’d never been a part of anything like this before. About fifty people simply sitting together in silence. Every now and then, someone would stand to speak a few sentences – I don’t remember now what anyone said. But I felt God in the spaciousness, resting graciously among us. I was moved to tears.

There was a library in their fellowship hall, and I checked out books and read all that I could on this particular way of being Christian. What I found out was that Quakers started in the early 1700’s as a protest against some of the offenses they perceived in the in the Church of England. I didn’t know anything at the time about the Church of England, but I became absorbed in the stories of early Quaker martyrs – who were flogged and had their property taken from them, as well as a few who were tarred and feathered and killed in the American colonies. The cause of most of the problems stemmed from their stand against being forced to tithe to the established church – as well as their radical stance towards equality between people of all social ranks, in a day and age where hierarchy was strictly enforced.

But at the heart of early Quakerism was their worship life – which consisted of expectantly waiting upon God’s Holy Spirit. Of course, they measured their inward promptings of the Spirit against the standards of Scripture and the wisdom of the community. They trusted that God would tell them what to do and then would enable them to do it. Since I was naturally drawn to contemplation and like most young people, wanted to connect what I believed with what I did, I came often to worship with them.

After meeting for worship, this group went to stand in vigil at the docks. They stood in silent prayer for the well being of the world and for the end of the Vietnam War. They continued to do this every week until the end of the war. Their consistency and their faithfulness to listening and then doing what they felt God calling them to do won me over. I became a Quaker, and stayed so for many years. Today, some of my closest friends are still Quakers.

One of the things I found so enchanting, and continue to love about this group is their formal name: The Religious Society of Friends. "Quaker" was actually a nickname that was intended to be derisive - the early Quakers were known for their trembling when they stood to speak in their worship services, being "under the influence" of the Holy Spirit. Being good peacemakers they took this taunting with good humor and became known by this nickname. But their formal name - the Religious Society of Friends - was drawn directly from this morning’s gospel passage. “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

I have called you friends. Isn’t that the most lovely name you could be given? To have as your identity - Jesus’ friend.

Obviously, I am no longer a Quaker. As my friendship with Jesus matured, I longed to worship sacramentally – that is, not only in silence, but in art and language and music, with water and oil and fire and bread and wine. I wanted worship that engaged me not only as a soul but as a body. I love that the bread that will hold the real presence of Christ is grown from the earth, watered by the rain, harvested by human hands, and offered up in thanksgiving to the God who created us and who continually offers himself to us for our healing and our nurture.

I found that because sacramental worship involves the created world, it leads progressively towards friendship with the natural world and with the poor. As well as being the Sixth Sunday of Easter, it is also Rogation Sunday. Rogation is from the Latin word for asking – and what is traditionally asked for at this time of the year is protection of crops – the production of food. On this Sunday, some churches process around the neighborhood, asking for protection of all people, plants and animals within the boundaries. In a mission church I served, a bagpiper led the way as we prayed at each of the four directions for God’s blessing and protection. Today, on this Rogation Sunday, we are especially remembering not only newly planted gardens and crops, but our calling to be caretakers of the whole of the creation – and especially – in partnership with the Greater Richmond Interfaith Housing Project – we are asking for care and protection for those who are in need of shelter and affordable housing.

So friendship with Jesus leads us to ask on behalf of others. But our friendship with Jesus includes more than asking.

Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” With Jesus, friendship is a verb. It is about what we do. It’s about how we live in the world. It’s about the decisions we make. It’s about the seeds of compassion growing up and bearing real fruit in our lives and in the lives of others. This was what I began learning among the Religious Society of Friends, and what I continue to learn as we Episcopalians connect our sacramental worship with the hungers and thirsts of those outside our doors.

So – our friendship with Jesus is about asking on behalf of others – for all of creation and especially those who are vulnerable. It is about doing – connecting our words with our actions.

But first – First – it is about receiving.

Several years ago, a colleague of mine was the Director of the Catholic Charities Family Support Center, in Santa Rosa. This is the shelter for homeless families and children. There was a young woman with three young children who came in. Mary was homeless and looking to make a change in her life. She had grown up in a family of drug addicts and abuse. She spoke sincerely about how much she wanted help in getting out of that culture and making a different life for herself and her children. She talked like this, until her welfare check arrived. And then she was gone. No word from her. The staff was disappointed but moved on. Three months later, she came back, full of apologies and wanting very much to make amends and get real help in turning her life around. She sounded sincerely contrite and the staff took her back into the shelter and began again to invest time and energy and resources in supporting her. Until the welfare check arrived again. And she was gone. About six months later, my colleague was in a staff meeting, and he could sense that there was tension in the air. Finally, towards the end of the meeting, someone said … “mmm, there’s one more thing. Mary’s back.” “What!” My colleague nearly shouted. “Who let her back in? It isn’t fair to our other clients. It’s not even fair to her. We can’t just let people flagrantly take advantage of us.” There were four other staff members at the meeting, and they all said – “No, we’ve talked to her. We think she’s really ready this time. We think she can finally receive what we have to offer.” They couldn’t point to any evidence of this, but to a one, they held firm. “Mary’s ready,” they said. What could he do? Four against one. Mary stayed. And sure enough, she was ready. She stayed and worked, and slowly but surely turned her life around. My colleague humbly thanked his staff for loving her beyond the point of patience and reason.

Being a friend to Jesus means loving others. We know that, don’t we! We hear it Sunday after Sunday. But first, it means being like Mary. It means falling down and getting back up again. Falling down and getting back up again. Until you are finally able to really and truly let God in – Finally able let God- really - deeply - to the core of your being - love you.

The truth is, accepting love maybe even harder than loving. But it comes first.

To be a friend of Jesus, one has to first accept his friendship. His love. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” This is what my friends the Quakers do in their silent worship – they seek to abide in love. To Rest in love. This is what we Episcopalians do as we break bread together and eat with Christ and one another. We love by first receiving love.

If you have not already, I urge you today to receive Christ as your dearest and sweetest friend.

Amen.