Author Archives: mbj

Sleepers, wake!

“You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” – Romans 13:11

A few weeks ago, a group of parishioners sat around a table in the Parish Hall, talking about the creeds. It was a Wednesday night, and it was Nancy Lowry’s idea (thank you, Nancy). At her suggestion, we organized an adult ed. series that gave participants a chance to talk about how we make sense of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, and where the creeds baffle or trouble us. As you can imagine, it was a lively conversation. At one point, some of us started discussing which line of the Nicene Creed was currently our favorite, and why. I jumped into the fray and named my favorite line: “we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

Why do I love that line? Because it orients me toward the future with an attitude of expectation and hope. Because it tells me where to focus my attention, so that I keep watch for the in-breaking realm of God. What do we look for? “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” We look for signs of divine power, for unexpected, life-giving words of kindness or forgiveness, for the grace-filled “coincidence,” for the act of selfless courage or the gentle hand that reaches out to clasp a neighbor’s hand. We look for the dawning realization that everything is connected and that I am kin with all that is. God is coming toward us from the future, inviting us to enlarge our minds, to see with new eyes, and to stay awake.

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the new church year, and, as one preacher puts it: “part of what we do during this season is to prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ as a baby in Bethlehem. But that is not where we start on this Sunday. We do not start at the beginning of the story. We start at the end.” ¹

We start the Advent season by looking to the end of time — to the last great day when Christ will come again in glory, and everything in heaven and on earth will be gathered up in love. The prophet Isaiah evokes in stirring terms the future that awaits us. All the peoples of the earth will draw together and worship the one God, and God will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2: 4b). It is a powerful vision, a vision of ultimate peace and hope that rings deeply in the human heart.

When will that great day come? We do not know. Jesus himself warns that no one knows the details, no one holds the map or the time-table that can tell us exactly when and how the reign of God will finally be accomplished – not the angels of heaven, not Jesus himself, but only God the Father. But we do know this: at some unexpected moment, that day will come. So we must stay awake. “You know what time it is,” Paul says. “It is now the moment to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). God will come among us, Jesus says in today’s Gospel, as unexpectedly as a flood, as decisively as a kidnapper, as secretly as a thief. These disturbing images shake us up, and that’s the point: God may break in at any moment, so at every moment we must be ready to welcome God. “Keep awake therefore,” says Jesus, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42).

Later on, St. Paul will soften Jesus’ imagery, saying that God will come like a thief only to those who are not prepared to meet God; presumably those who do love God will greet God’s coming with joy [c.f. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). But in any case, the injunction to wake up and stay awake is repeated throughout the New Testament. We hear it elsewhere in the Gospels, in First Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5:6-8), the Book of Revelation (Rev. 3:1-3; 16:15), and Ephesians, which gives our next hymn its opening words: “Sleepers, wake!” (Ephesians 5:13; Hymn #71).

Other religious traditions also urge their followers to awake from sleep. I think, for instance, of a story about the Buddha. It seems that soon after his enlightenment, the Buddha passed a man on a road. The man marveled at the Buddha’s radiance and serenity, and he asked, “Who are you? Are you a god?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Are you a wizard or magician?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Then what are you?” asked the man.

“I am awake,” the Buddha replied.

The word Buddha means “awakened one,” and every one of us is called to be awake.

Please don’t misunderstand. I have nothing against sleep. I function best if at night I manage to get eight hours of sleep, and my family would be the first to tell you that I am a nicer person when I do. Dreaming is also important — many of us learn what is going on within us when we pay attention to our dreams, and dreams may even convey messages from God. Sleep is good, and dreams are good — but not sleepwalking or daydreaming through our lives.

How many ways are there to fall asleep? I bet we could come up with a hundred. Take habits, for instance. Habits can put us to sleep. They can dull our awareness and close down our perception. Again, I want to be honest here: I love my habits. I’m a creature of habit. Habits give a reassuring order to my day, a pleasant sense of stability. But doing things the same way day after day can also be a way to fall asleep.

Case in point: for twenty years I lived in Watertown, a suburb of metropolitan Boston, and I often went out jogging. The nearest bit of nature from our front door was the Charles River, about ¾ of a mile away. For twenty years I would leave the house, run down the hill, turn right on Mount Auburn Street, reach the bridge at Watertown Square, turn left at the river and run east, making a big loop counter-clockwise that circled me back to my house about an hour later. I ran this route day after day, season after season, year after year, and I got to know it like it the back of my hand. I knew every storefront, every donut shop and driveway. I knew where to watch for cracks in the sidewalk, where to spot the ducks, and at which curve of the river I was likely to catch the wind in my face.

Finally the time came to make our big move to the Pioneer Valley. With excitement, my family and I began to uproot our selves, and we started packing up our belongings. On our last day in Watertown, I went out for a farewell run. As always, I headed out the front door and down the hill. But for some reason, this time I changed direction. Instead of turning right, as I had for twenty years, I turned left. It was the identical route, but now I was running it clockwise, and to my astonishment, everything looked different and new, as if I had never seen it before. I had never noticed that tree, never spotted that arrangement of houses, never realized that the angle of light changed at that particular corner of the road. I had been busily running that course for years, but I might as well have been running it in my sleep.

That’s a pretty harmless example, but it got me to wondering: What else was I doing in my sleep? Where else was I sleepwalking? What else had I missed?

When I want to remember what it means to be awake, I go to my bookshelf, pull out Walden, and immerse myself in Thoreau’s brilliant, cranky, and opinionated quest to wake up and cut through the torpor, fantasy, and illusion of daily life. I agree with his bracing assessment that “We are sound asleep nearly half our time.” ² And I relish his provocative suggestion, “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?” ³

How awake, I ask myself, am I willing to be?

Thoreau was not in any conventional sense a religious man, but he had his own way of looking for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. He writes, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…” ⁴

Both religious and non-religious thinkers clamor for human beings to wake up, and never has that call been more urgent than it is now. What spell has befallen us so that we assault the life-systems on this planet that keep our species and all other species alive? What will it take for us to wake up, and to see through the illusion that we have all the time in the world, that the world’s (quote unquote) “resources” have no limits, and that we can mine and drill, log and burn, get and spend as much as we please? Can we help each other to awaken, and find ways to bring forth on this planet a human presence that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just”? ⁵ That is great work, indeed — a high calling.

Where have you fallen asleep? Where are you bound up in habit, dulled by routine, awash in trivia?

Here are three suggestions for an awakened Advent.

1) Cultivate an attitude of expectancy. Today is a brand new day, a clean slate, an open field of fresh possibilities. How will God show up today?

2) Take a good look at your life. Make room for self-examination. Where do you need to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13: 12)? Where do you need to relinquish old habits of egotism and greed, of violence and unkindness – the old patterns, as Paul says (Romans 13:13), of drunkenness, quarreling, and jealousy?

3) Make space for solitude and silence. Nothing is so like God as silence. Nothing opens our hearts or awakens our minds more surely than “the silence of eternity interpreted by love.” ⁶ Drop in on the Rector’s Contemplative Bible Study that will meet tomorrow and every Monday afternoon for silent meditation on the Gospels. Check out Bill Holladay’s new Wednesday night series on praying through Advent with the prophet Isaiah.

Now is the time to abandon whatever stupefies us and puts us to sleep.

Now is the time to look ahead with hope, for “the night is far gone, the day is near” (Romans 13:12).

Grab the smelling salts! Sleepers, wake! Today, and every day, we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

1. The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter, “November 28, 2010 — First Sunday of Advent,” Sermons that Work.

2. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, in The Portable Thoreau, edited, and with an introduction, by Carl Bode, New York: Viking Press, 1947, 1962, p. 570.

3. Ibid, p. 343

4. Ibid.

5. Visit The Pachamama Alliance.

6. John Greenleaf Whittier, from Hymn #652, “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”

Persistence in prayer

Today’s parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge invites us to reflect on the value of persistence in prayer. Persistence may seem a very humble virtue to consider. Persistence has nothing particularly shiny or glamorous or heroic about it. It’s not a warrior in flashing armor astride a white stallion who gallops in to save the day. It’s not a powerbroker in a gorgeous Armani suit issuing commands from behind a bank of microphones. Persistence is much more modest than that, much more hidden and humble. Persistence in prayer is like a helpless widow who just won’t quit. That woman is tenacious. She is resolute, dogged, determined. She won’t be put off and she won’t take no for an answer. Push her down and she only springs back up like weeds. That widow so pesters the unjust judge — she so wears him down with her repeated pleas for justice — that the hard-hearted judge finally gives in and grants the request so that he can be rid of her at last.

If a selfish, indifferent judge will relent and grant justice in the face of such persistence, how much more, says Jesus, will “God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to [God] day and night” (Luke 18:7)! God is nothing like that unjust judge — God is generous, abounding in mercy, and eager to bring justice. So Jesus gives his disciples a word of encouragement. “Pray always,” he tells them, “and do not lose heart” (c.f. Luke 18:1).

The Gospel writer tells this parable because Luke knows, and Jesus knows, and God knows how easy it is to lose heart. The early Christian communities were suffering persecution. They were praying, as Jesus taught them, “Thy kingdom come.” They were waiting on tiptoe for his return in glory, for the consummation of all things, for the great day when justice and mercy and kindness would prevail at last on earth, and everything broken would be mended, and everything alienated and estranged would be reconciled and healed. But that day never seemed to arrive. Christ’s return in glory seemed to be delayed. Had God forgotten them? Would the peace and justice for which they longed never come? Was their faith only so much hogwash?

Similar questions may beset us today. The news pouring in from the newspapers, TV, and Internet is often chilling and bleak, and there are plenty of voices inside us and around us that tell us to give up the fight for a just, kind, and sustainable world. “All is lost!” the voices say. “It’s too late. We’ll never reach a fair and peaceful resolution to the logjam in the Middle East, never put an end to unjust wars, never stop racism, classism, or homophobia, never stabilize the climate or end the cascade of species extinctions. We’ll never create the world that our children need and that our hearts are longing for. The whole thing is hopeless and we’re going to hell in a handbasket.”

Actually, I’ve never understood how to picture that expression, “going to hell in a handbasket,” but you catch my drift: there are voices inside us and around us that urge us to quit and to slide into despair. Have those voices found a foothold in your soul? Are there times when you feel overwhelmed by the darkness of the world and want to crawl into a safe little cubbyhole and pull the covers over your head? Are there times when you want to raise a fist in cynicism and blame, or to drown your fears in too much alcohol, television, shopping, or busyness? If you know what it is like to feel discouraged, disappointed, or just plain depleted, then this Gospel passage is for you.

“Pray always,” Jesus is saying to you. “And do not lose heart. Do not lose heart.”

Persistence is what we need in a time like this, persistence in faith, persistence in prayer. Persistence has fueled who knows how many breakthroughs in medicine, technology, science, and the arts. I heard a story somewhere that Thomas Edison made a thousand failed attempts to find a successful light filament. When Edison’s assistant complained about all that wasted effort, Edison replied, “Ridiculous! We now know a thousand ways it doesn’t work!”

Persistence is useful in many human enterprises, and it is essential in prayer. Why is it essential? What is the value of persistence in prayer? For one thing, it brings us closer to God. Being persistent in prayer means that we keep showing up, keep making ourselves available for encounter, keep sharing what is truly on our minds and hearts. Prayer is not like speed dating. I have never done speed dating, but I understand that it is a kind of breathless round-robin event in which you meet a great many people very quickly on a superficial level. Persistent prayer is not like that. It’s about taking our time and daring to go deep so that we can form a long-lasting relationship with the divine. For of course the great promise of prayer is that we don’t have to settle for second-hand information about God, or for concepts of God, or for ideas about God. The promise of prayer is that we can come to know God directly, through our own experience. It is one thing to hear a preacher tell you, over and over, Sunday after Sunday, “God loves you. God is with you. God will never let you go.” It is quite another thing to discover that truth for oneself, to come to that knowledge oneself in the depths of one’s being.

So the first reason to be persistent in prayer is because that is how we cultivate a long-term relationship with God. A second reason is that prayer changes us. Prayer is not like mechanically firing off a series of faxes or making a bunch of automated robocalls, as if we can pray and at the same time stay at a safe distance from God. No — prayer makes us vulnerable. Prayer makes us real. If we are honest with God, if we are candidly sharing our hopes and fears, our confusion and disappointment, then we’re getting up close and personal. Prayer is more like making love than like sending a fax, more like engaging in a wrestling match than like sitting politely at a tea party.

It feels right that the first reading this morning is the story of Jacob wrestling with that mysterious adversary that might be an angel or perhaps even God Himself (Genesis 32:22-31). When we are persistent in prayer we must wrestle with our shadow, with our temptations, doubts, and anxieties, and perhaps even with God. In that arduous process we are, like Jacob, both wounded and blessed. Wounded, because we must acknowledge and accept how small we are, how mortal, finite, incomplete, and prone to sin. Blessed, because we discover how loved we are, how completely cherished. We may be small, but we belong to what is infinite; we may be mortal, but there is a life within us that will never die.

In my own experience of trying to pray like the persistent widow and to bring before God my longing for justice and peace, I have discovered that the more I weep over the suffering of the world, and the more ardently I long for the healing of our relationships with one another and with the earth, the more I sense that it is God’s sorrow that is moving through me, and God’s longing for healing that is filling my soul. Do you know what I mean? I hope that you have had that experience, too. It seems that the desire in our hearts for a world in which all beings can flourish is not a desire that begins with us. It is God’s desire flowing into us, God’s desire that is being expressed in our prayer. When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, it is God within us who is hungering and thirsting; when we long for peace, it is God’s longing that we share; when we pray with compassion for the poor and weak, it is God’s compassion that we experience.

This perception should make us bold in prayer, for God seems to be whispering our ears: “Yes, your longing for justice and mercy is my longing, too. Let that longing grow large, and let it burn bright. Whatever the circumstances may be, in good times and bad, be steadfast in your faith and persistent in your prayer.”

Praying puts us in touch with inner resources that we never knew we had. It can fill us with energy, confidence, and determination. Yet prayer also teaches us to let go. Contemplative prayer, in particular, in which we notice and accept every moment as it comes, can ease the ego’s addictive grasping and its urge to control.

I went back this week to re-read part of a marvelous book by the psychiatrist Gerald May, a book entitled The Dark Night of the Soul. With great care, Jerry May describes how contemplative prayer can transform our lives. Through such prayer we learn, he says, to expect nothing, to cling to nothing, and to hold on to nothing. In that experience of open-handed trust and non-grasping, we become “part of…a flowing energy of willingness, an eternal yes resounding with every heartbeat.” ¹ Can you imagine it? A yes with every heartbeat. Yes. Yes. At this point, we no longer hope for peace or for justice or for healing, because we no longer hope for any particular result or any particular thing. We simply experience what Jerry May calls “naked hope, a bare energy of open expectancy.” ²

In the last pages of the book he tells a thought-provoking story. He writes:

…[In] the summer of 1994 I joined a small pilgrimage to Bosnia. I had the opportunity to speak with poor people who had lost everything: homes, possessions, entire families. As they told us their stories through tears of grief, I sensed deep hope in them. Through interpreters I asked if it were true. “Yes, hope,” they smiled. I asked if it was hope for peace. “No, things have gone too far for that.” I asked if they hoped the United Nations or the United States would intervene in some positive way. “No, it’s too late for that.” I asked them, “Then, what is it you are hoping for?” They were silent. They could not think of a thing to hope for, yet there it was — undeniable hope shining in them. I asked one last question. “How can you hope, when there is nothing to hope for?” The answer was, ‘Bog,’ the Serbo-Croatian word for God. ³

“Pray always,” says Jesus, “and do not lose heart.” I will give Teresa of Avila the last word.

Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid, All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. The one who possesses God lacks nothing. God alone is enough.

1. Gerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, p. 192.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 193.

Choosing life

Many years ago, when my son Sam was a small boy, he asked a question that I found quite perplexing. I can’t remember what we had been talking about, what we were doing, or what else was going on, but I do remember my surprise and confusion when he looked up one day and asked, “Hey, Mom, whom do you love more, me or God?”

How do you answer a question like that? Perhaps the safest reply is simply to parry the question with one of your own. “Why do you ask?” you might say to your child, or, “Do you need a little loving right now?” I remember that his question left me stammering, groping for words, as if suddenly faced with an existential riddle. How do you explain to a small boy that God is not an object – even a very big object – that we can set beside another object, compare with it, and then say, “I like you more, and I like you less”? How do you convey to a kid that the sacred mystery we call ‘God’ is not a thing at all, but abides within all things, and beyond all things, and is the source of all things? How do you tell a child that loving God and loving someone else is not a zero sum game in which more love for God means less love for you?

But Sam’s question was a good one. It is tempting to try to dodge it, because it makes us feel awkward. I mean, come on – do we really have to rank our loves, to choose whether loving God or our family-members comes first?

Well, as a matter of fact, the answer is yes. We do.

That is what we hear in today’s Gospel, with its strong, stark words from Jesus. Large numbers of people were traveling with him, an enthusiastic crowd that apparently had no idea what it meant to follow Jesus, or what the cost might be. Rather than welcoming them in some light-hearted, easy-going way – “come one, come all; the more, the merrier” – Jesus turned and challenged them to choose. He made three strong statements and offered two short parables to make his point. In the first sentence: Whoever does not hate family members – even life itself – cannot be my disciple. In the second sentence: Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple. In the last sentence: whoever does not give up all possessions cannot be my disciple.

“Think it through!” He warns those eager, would-be followers. “Consider the cost!” As he explains in the twin parables, if you were building a tower in your vineyard, you would be wise to consider carefully in advance whether you had sufficient resources to finish the job. Again, if you were a king whose forces were heavily outnumbered by the enemy’s, you would be wise to negotiate a peaceful settlement.

In other words: if you want to follow Jesus, you have to let everything else go, everything you love, everything that is dear to you, perhaps even life itself. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to put God first. Are you ready to make that choice?

Jesus is stiff-arming the over-hasty crowds, and I am reminded of the stories (apocryphal or not) of monasteries where the seeker travels a long distance to reach the monastery gates, knocks on the heavy door, and seeks admission as a novice. The gatekeeper takes a look at him, says, “No, go away,” and slams the door shut. The seeker refuses to leave and waits outside. Days go by, and he knocks again. Again the door closes in his face. Time passes, and the seeker’s resolve only becomes more firm, his intention more clear. He sits through storms, cold nights, and a blazing sun. At last he knocks a third time, and only now does the door swing open. Evidently a casual seeker will not gain entry, but only one who has considered the cost and whose hunger for truth is strong.

Many of us start out as rather casual Christians: maybe we hang around, we show up at services, we select what we like and ignore the rest. But quickly or slowly, the more we gaze at Jesus and the more we learn to see what he sees and to love what he loves, the stronger grows the pull to give ourselves fully to God, just as Jesus did, and to love God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength. The paradox, of course, is that the more fully we open our hearts to love and to be loved by God, the more generously, wisely, and freely we are able to love our own self and the people around us.

Let’s be clear. When Jesus declares that we must “hate” father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself, he is not asking us to despise our families or the gift of life. He is expressing, instead, in the strongest possible terms, the need for detachment. If in this very particular sense we “hate” the people around us and “hate” our lives, then we are set free from the burden of people pleasing, set free from the anxious compulsion to look good and make a good impression, set free from the compulsive need to be perpetually liked or praised. If our deepest commitment is to love God and to follow Jesus Christ, then we can relate to our family members and to everyone else with both love and a healthy detachment. We won’t have to cling to anyone or anything in order to know that we are loved, for we will know that our ultimate source of love comes from God. We won’t have to manipulate or control other people, to fuss over them too much or to fret too hard, for we will be confident that their ultimate destiny is not in our hands – it rests in God. We will be given grace to forgive when someone disappoints us, for our disappointment will be a reminder: oh yes, that’s right! That person is not God! Only God is God!

If we love God first and follow Jesus, then we can also relinquish our excessive attachments not just to people but also to other things, too – to money and prestige, to possessions and power, to comfort and habit, to regrets about the past or anxieties about the future. We will learn to enjoy the things of this world with gratefulness, delight, and a healthy perspective, both appreciating them and being willing to let them go.

Loving God is like stretching the roots of our soul deep into the ground. That is what prayer is like, sometimes: we sit alone in silence, maybe keep our attention on the breath or on a sacred word as the tendrils of our being reach out into the dark. Our thoughts grow quiet, our attention is focused and searching, filled with love and a wordless desire for we know not what, and we touch something like a great pool of water, a stream of love that is always being poured into our hearts. The more we sink our roots into that deep stream, the more we rise up, as the psalm says, “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither” Psalm 1:3. Contemplative prayer is one way to practice relinquishing our possessions, for that kind of prayer is a perpetual act of letting go everything we possess – our thoughts and ideas, our opinions and judgments – and simply accepting each moment as it comes to us, just as it is, without grabbing on to anything, without changing anything or pushing anything away.

Jesus’ call to radical detachment – to love God first and to let lesser things go – is a call not only to radical prayer, but also to radical living, as well, especially in these perilous times when we are beginning to see the consequences of business as usual. By now you may have heard that researchers in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed in July that we have just “come through the hottest six months, the hottest year, and the hottest decade on record.” As Bill McKibben writes in an online essay for this Sunday’s readings, “What a summer we’ve witnessed, a summer like no other in human history… Seventeen nations have seen new all-time temperature records, which is in itself a record. In late May, in Pakistan, a new all-time record for all of Asia was set, when the mercury reached 129 degrees. That’s. . . hot.” ¹ Meanwhile, too many of us are out of work, and wars over religion, water, and fossil fuels are being waged.

Yet Jesus has promised that he will be with us. The Spirit he sends us will lead us into all truth, giving us the words to speak and the strength to make decisions that serve the common good. Jesus tells us that we can face whatever is wrong with our families, the nation, our planet, and ourselves, and stay confidently rooted in the love and peace of Christ.

Our call today, and every day, is to choose life, as Moses urges in this morning’s reading from Deuteronomy: “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” Deuteronomy 30:19a. But we have to want it, we have to hunger for life, real life, and the choice will not be easy, as Jesus’ words make crystal clear.

It is good news when we love God first – good news for the planet and good news for the people around us. Only then do we have the courage and capacity to exercise appropriate self-restraint. Only then can we consider carefully and with detachment the sacrifices that choosing life requires. Only then can we love each other and our children boldly and wisely, so that the people with whom we sit down each morning at the breakfast table, and the people whose paths we cross each day, are as sure of love on this earth as they are of sunlight.

1. Bill McKibben, “The Care of Creation: ‘Choose Life for You and Your Children,’” guest essay for Sunday, September 5, 2010, www.journeywithjesus.net

Julia L. Newton
October 2, 1944 – August 10, 2010

We have gathered to mourn the death and celebrate the life of Julia Newton, and to give God thanks for sending her into this world, and for welcoming her home at her journey’s end. I would like to express my sympathy to her family, especially her brother Alan, to her dear friends, and to all of you who have come to honor this woman who touched your life.

I never met Julie, so I can’t speak about her from direct experience. But from what I have read, and from the stories that some of you have told me, I know that she was a woman who loved animals — dogs and cats, her cat, Isabel, and the strays and unwanted pets that she cared for at the Dakin Animal Shelter. I understand that Julie started work in the Amherst College library straight out of high school, and that she worked there until her retirement 40 years later. She must have been good with language and reading and words, for Julie was a champion speller, and her proud mother enjoyed recounting tales of the many spelling bees that her daughter had won.

Julie balanced all that time spent indoors with a yen for the outdoors, too, for she loved to fish — I’m told that she would sneak away sometimes at opportune moments to get in a little fishing — and she loved to golf. She also balanced her work life with what sounds like real pleasure in partying and having fun. She was devoted to her friends, and she loved taking those trips to Hampton Beach. I’m told that she also enjoyed mystery evenings in restaurants, the pleasure of participating in the drama of solving the “Who Done It”s.

It won’t come as news to you that Julie also suffered in her life. She had some very real challenges to contend with. Some of her struggles we know about, and some of them we will never know, for we all have a solitary core, an inner sanctum in which God alone is privy to our yearning and sorrow.

But everyone tells me how much Julie loved her father, Ward, how much she enjoyed playing golf with him, how she always appreciated his company and companionship. And I know how mindful Julie was of her duty to her mother. Of all the stories that I heard about Julie, the one that moves me most is the story of how she eventually moved back in with her mother and shared a life with her. Julie didn’t have to do that, and to some degree it must have been a difficult choice to make and carry out, for Julie and her mother did not always see eye to eye. They had their moments of conflict and mutual misunderstanding. Yet Julie expressed a deep loyalty and commitment to her mother, and she rose above their differences. She stayed the course, and she did the loving thing. She showed up for her mother, and she kept on showing up, doing all she could to allow her mother to stay at home for as long she possibly could. When Elsie eventually had to move to a nursing home, Julie kept visiting her faithfully two or three times a week. Even if her mother didn’t recognize her, even if her mother was combative, Julie visited her all the same, until just a few months before Julie died.

It is that quality of loyalty and faithfulness that stands out for me as I contemplate Julie’s life, her willingness to care for her mother day in and day out, even as her mother grew more forgetful and frail. There must have been something in Julie that wanted to reach out to the weak and the lost, just as she cared for the lost and wounded animals in the Dakin shelter. There must have been something in Julie that gave her the capacity to give her all to something and to stick by it to the end, whether it be a job that she held for decades or the decision to live with and care for an aging parent. Julie knew how to be faithful, even when faithfulness came at a cost.

I wonder now, as Julie greets Jesus, the Good Shepherd of her soul, whether they recognize in each other some of the same qualities — the capacity to be faithful, the desire to protect, the willingness to love, even when it comes at a cost. Julie carried those holy qualities like seeds within her, for she was made in the image of God, and I dare to believe that everything that was good in her, everything that was faithful and generous and loving and kind, is now blossoming in the fullness of God. As we heard in the reading from the First Letter of John, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” I John 3:1-2.

That is the promise of the Gospel: the day will come for us, as it has now come for Julie, when we will see God face to face — when at last we will know and be fully known, when we will see and be fully seen, when we will love and be fully loved. The day will come when everything that is good in us will spring up like flowers, and even now — today, with every choice we make and every word we say — you and I have a chance to let the divine goodness that is planted within us be known and expressed. There are times when Julie did this in a courageous and beautiful way, and I would say that even though Julie never grew tall, her spirit was tall. When we gaze at her, we glimpse times when she stood as tall as those “oaks of righteousness” mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, “the planting of the Lord, to display his glory” Isaiah 61:3.

After the service is over, I invite you to join us in a procession to the Grace Church Columbarium, where we will bury Julie’s ashes. Because of the condition of the sidewalk on Spring Street, the best way to reach the Columbarium is through the church buildings. You may use the elevator or the stairs to reach the bottom floor, and then walk through the Cloister to the Columbarium, which is an interior garden set aside for the burial and interment of ashes. We will have a brief service there as we commit her ashes to the ground, in a place just opposite the burial site for her parents.

Right now, Julie is in the presence of the God who brings healing, the God who brings fullness of life. As we prepare to bring Julie’s ashes to their final resting place, we have the assurance of knowing that she is safe, that she is loved, and that Jesus has prepared a dwelling place for her in the very heart of God.

I would like to close with a prayer.

“O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” ¹

Julie, your work is done. You have found your safe lodging. You have received a holy rest, and you have been given peace at last. Rest in God’s heart, Julie, and pray for us as we pray for you.

1. The Book of Common Prayer, “In the Evening,” p. 833.

Prayer of consecration

I am just back from a week on the coast of Maine, and my eyes and ears are still full of the sights and sounds of the seashore. I spent hours one day with my husband, clambering over rocks, bending down to study the details of barnacle and lichen, the colors of granite and basalt, and then standing up to feel the wind on my face and to watch a cormorant skim over the water. Always there was the sound of the sea, and for a long time I watched as the waves poured themselves out on the rocks, and the rocks gave themselves to the waves, and everything was moving and tumbling and alive.

Standing by the sea, I felt what we all feel when we find ourselves on the edge of mystery: I wanted to praise. I wanted to give thanks. To be precise, I wanted to plant my two feet on that ancient rock, raise my hands, and say, “The Lord be with you. Lift up your hearts.”

This morning our sermon series brings us to the Great Thanksgiving, the prayer of consecration that begins the second part of the service. In the Great Thanksgiving we move from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the table, from the pulpit and lectern to the altar, from a focus on God coming to us in words to a focus on God coming to us in action. It is the place in the service where — if I might play for a moment with the metaphor — we all stand beside the sea, look out to the infinite expanse of God, and open ourselves to the waves of God’s blessing.

“Lift up your hearts,” says the celebrant in a dialogue between priest and congregation that echoes an ancient Jewish blessing, and with these words we launch into the recital of God’s mighty acts of salvation. More than one would-be priest has sought ordination because of feeling called to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, to be the person who stands at the altar and blesses the bread and the wine. It is a great privilege to serve as the celebrant, and I find it one of the most meaningful things that I do, and will ever do. Yet it is worth asking: Who really carries out the Eucharist? Is it the priest? That was certainly the piety of the late Middle Ages before the Reformation, when the service was conducted in a language that most people did not understand, when many of the prayers were inaudible, and the congregation essentially sat back and watched what the priest was doing, as if the priest were the primary actor and everyone else only a passive spectator.

Our contemporary service of Holy Communion restores the understanding of the early church that the whole gathered community actively shares in carrying out the sacrament. As commentator Marion Hatchett observes, everyone stands up in this part of the service as a way to “[foster] and [signify] the participation of the congregation in the action.” ¹ We stand to give thanks; we stand because we have been raised in baptism; we stand because all of us are part of the action. And when the celebrant says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” the celebrant is not just saying, “Let’s do it! Let’s go for it!” — the celebrant is also asking for “permission to offer thanks in the name of those present.” ² The response, “It is right to give God thanks and praise,” is an expression of consent. To put it another way — when I, Rob, Hilary, Susan, or any other priest is at the altar, preparing to celebrate the sacrament, in a sense we wait for you to empower us, to bless us blessing you. When you proclaim, “It is right to give God thanks and praise,” you say to the celebrant: we entrust you to give thanks to God in our name. Yes, we stand with you and pray with you, and together we will open ourselves to the mystery of a God who created the world in love, who came among us, enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth, to enter our sufferings and joys and every part of human life, and who comes to us now in the elements of bread and wine.

All of us take part in the action of the Eucharist, for all of us are standing at the shore of the sea with the wind of God on our cheeks, and God’s bedrock beneath our feet. However familiar this moment may feel, however many times we may have stood in the very same spot and added our voices to the very same prayers, there is always an edge of exhilaration, a sense of anticipation and expectation, for every Eucharist is different. Every Eucharist has something new to reveal. God’s love is as vast as the sea, as full of majesty and surprise, and in the prayer of consecration, we stand before God, uttering words that reach back through the centuries and yet have power to quicken our hearts and to startle us awake. Of course, we don’t always feel this vastness, but like the ocean, it is always there.

In the early church, every worshiper offered prayers of thanksgiving in the posture that today is generally reserved for the celebrant alone: standing with arms outstretched, a posture in which one’s feet are grounded in the love of God, the chest and lungs are open to inspire — to breathe in — the Holy Spirit, and both hands are lifted up to receive the gifts that only God can give. If, during the prayer of consecration, you find yourself nodding off into a state of dreamy inattention, I invite you to be bold and to lift up your hands, to let your body remind you that God is right here, and that you are sharing in this great transaction between heaven and earth. It is you for whom Christ came into the world, you for whom he died, you whom he now would fill with his presence and his Spirit. We come to the table so that everything in us and around us can be lifted up and blessed, so that everything in us and around us can be caught up in the redeeming love of God — not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves, and the whole Creation, every leaf of it, and every speck of sand. Sometimes our bodies can take in that knowledge long before our minds are able to, so if it helps you to experience the sacrament more fully, then I encourage you to give it a try — to lift up not only your hearts, but your hands, as well.

In this context I can’t resist telling you a story that moved me deeply when I heard it. The story concerns Teilhard de Chardin, the 20^th century theologian and Jesuit priest who was also trained as a paleontologist and geologist. What I heard is that one day, while he was exploring a cave, he became so vividly aware of the presence of God, so deeply thankful for the divine mystery, that he wanted — right then and there — to celebrate the Eucharist. But he had no bread and no wine. What could he do? He reached down and lifted up a rock — that is what he could lift up, and bless, and offer back to God, and in that moment he felt as if he were lifting up and blessing the whole creation.

And that is what is happens in every Eucharist.

The first Eucharistic prayers were extemporaneous, ad lib creations that emerged spontaneously from within each gathering of the faithful. Over time, the church worked out a variety of fixed forms for the prayer. Our prayer book offers eight different Eucharistic prayers, each with its own wording and emphasis; some of them keep an open space so that celebrants can praise God in their own words.

All our Eucharistic prayers invite the active participation of the congregation, and all of them emphasize our unity in Christ. You will notice, for instance, that during the prayer of consecration we keep on the altar only one plate for bread and only one chalice for wine. The additional bread that needs to be blessed is placed to one side; the additional wine that needs to be blessed is kept in a flagon. The focus during the Eucharistic prayer is on the one Host (the single, large wafer that the celebrant lifts up), and on the one chalice of wine. The visual and theological point is that we are all one in Christ, that we share the one bread and the one cup. Only at the end of prayer does the deacon turn around and fetch the other chalices and containers that are needed to distribute the bread and the wine.

Similarly, although each of us comes to the service with all sorts of individual needs and concerns, in the prayer of consecration we are gathered up as one body into the story of salvation that we share. Together we turn to the Holy One who loved us into being; together we remember our shared history as a people created, redeemed, and sustained by God; together we discover again that we are more than a haphazard collection of small, ego-driven identities. We are a community that knows that God has come among us, and we are caught up in a holy mystery much greater than ourselves.

Every Eucharistic prayer ends with the same word, a single word that is printed in small capital letters, unlike any other word of the prayer book. It is a word to savor and proclaim. Not long ago one of the children of the parish stopped me after the service to ask about that word. What, he asked, is the meaning of the word ‘Amen’?

“It is a way of saying ‘Yes,’” I told him. “Amen means, ‘I really mean it.’”

When the boy kept staring at me, looking bemused, I added, “Amen is like giving a high five. It means ‘Yes, I completely agree. Yes, I declare that this is true.’”

So when we come to the end of the great prayer, when we reach the place where the celebrant lifts up the bread and the wine, and expresses in the fullest possible terms our praise of the Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, I invite you to sing out your Amen. What is called the Great Amen or the People’s Amen goes back at least to the second century, and even late in the Middle Ages, when the celebrant said most of the Eucharistic prayer in silence, the priest always raised his voice at the end so that the people would know when to respond Amen. ³

‘Amen,’ we say. ‘Yes, I really mean it.’ We are standing at the shore of the sea, looking out toward the expanse and depths of God, lifting up the stones, and seaweed, and water, and every aspect of our lives, and discovering to our amazement that we are immersed in God, and filled with God, and that through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, nothing and no one can separate us from God’s love.

1. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, New York: The Seabury Press, 1980, p. 361.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 373.

Prayers of the people

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”— Luke 11:9

Today we reach the fourth in our 8-week summer sermon series on the Eucharist, and by sheer good fortune today’s Gospel reading from Luke actually has some bearing on the topic of today’s sermon, the Prayers of the People. “Teach us to pray,” asks one of Jesus’ disciples, after watching Jesus pray “in a certain place” (Luke 11:1). Jesus replies by offering a simple prayer that has been “received by the church as [his] essential teaching on prayer.” ¹ What we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer shows up not only here, in Luke’s Gospel, but also in the Gospel of Matthew, and it has become a prayer that unites Christian communities down through the ages and around the world. I won’t speak now about the Lord’s Prayer — we will have a chance to consider it in a couple of weeks, when we reach the part of the Eucharist where that prayer is placed — but for now let’s take from today’s Gospel passage Jesus’ encouragement that we join him in prayer, that we turn with him to speak honestly and fervently to the God who loved us into being, and that we be persistent in our prayers, willing to ask, seek, and knock again and again, fearless in trusting a God who yearns to give “good gifts” (Luke 11:13).

What shall we say about the Prayers of the People? Of course, the whole service of Holy Communion is an act of prayer, but the Prayers of the People give us a special opportunity as a gathered community to lay before God — in silence and aloud — the very particular longings and thanksgivings that move our hearts. We have listened to the biblical readings; we have absorbed the sermon; we have responded with an affirmation of faith by reciting the creed; and now, during the Prayers of the People, we open up a space in which to express the breadth and depth of Christian concern.

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer offers six different forms for the Prayers of the People in a Rite II Eucharist, six different models or templates for prayer that can be used as printed, or adapted according to the needs of the community. A deacon or a layperson leads the prayers, and from your own experience you know how interactive the prayers can be. They create a movement back and forth, an interplay of call and response between the person leading the prayers and the rest of the congregation. Sometimes we respond to each petition by speaking a short line of our own, and sometimes we respond with an attentive silence, as we lift up the concern before God. At the end of our intercessions, the celebrant chooses a closing prayer or “collect,” a prayer that collects or gathers up all the prayers that have been expressed, and offers them all to God.

Now I’m going to be very honest here. There are some things about the Prayers of the People that I find very appealing. For one thing, it encourages a big circle of concern. If you turn to page 383 of the Prayer Book, you will see at the top of the page that whichever form of prayer we use, our intercessions embrace many dimensions of our life — the Universal Church, its members and its mission; the nation and all in authority; the welfare of the world, the concerns of the local community, those who suffer, and those who have died. When I come to church caught up in my own preoccupations, and focused narrowly on my own little band of issues, it is good for me to open my awareness to the larger needs of the world, good for me to place my own concern into the wider basket of our human sorrows and joys. It is good to be reminded to pray for the people and the parts of reality that I might otherwise forget or ignore, and good to pray for the endless needs of the billions of human beings and other creatures with whom I share this planet. Only then can I begin to understand the depth and breadth of God’s infinite compassion, which excludes nothing and no one.

Another aspect of the Prayers of the People that appeals to me is that this part of the service can be creative and engage everyone — it is intended, after all, to be the prayers “of the people.” If there is a concern that you want to name before God and your brothers and sisters in Christ, now is your chance to name it. If you want to feel the support of other people who share your own fervent longing for justice and peace, for healing, or for the mercy of God, now is your chance to experience that Christian solidarity, to know that you stand with others and that you are not alone. For many of us, certainly for me, one of the first things we do in a time of personal crisis is to phone the church and to ask that our concern be put on the prayer list. There is something immeasurably heartening in knowing that other members of the community are praying with us and for us.

And yet — and yet. There are times when the Prayers of the People may not “work” so well for us. Sometimes the orderliness of the prayers gets in our way: we are hungry for something messier, more urgent, intimate, and raw, or more spontaneous. Sometimes the prayers seem too predictable: we stand there, reciting mechanical formulas as if reading something from a phonebook, and spacing out. Sometimes we want to linger on a particular petition, because we have a strong response to it, but we can’t pause, because the prayers have moved on. And sometimes we may feel swamped by words. In this parish we take the prayers at a measured pace, and surround them and undergird them with silence, but even so we may sometimes feel that all these words only cut us off from God. We may be hungry for spaciousness and silence, and find that words, even elegant words, constrict our awareness of divine mystery, rather than enlarge it.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever noticed something like this when you participate in the prayers? If the prayers of the people do bore you sometimes, or give you no felt sense of encounter with the living God, then I encourage you to let your heart speak in the many silences during the prayers. Let your heart cry or sing its lament or song during the silence or beneath the words. Take note of the images, thoughts, or concerns that come to you during the Prayers of the People — the memories, people, or situations that seem to call for more focused prayer — the inward callings of the heart that ask you to return to prayer when you go home

For there are many places to pray, and in addition to drawing you to Sunday worship, God may be inviting you to another place for prayer. There are three “places” in which to pray: the room, the house, and the sanctuary. I am citing here an essay by a Presbyterian minister, Charles Olsen, whose insights helped my own understanding of prayer. ² He argues that each place has its unique contribution to make to our prayer life, and that each has limitations if it is allowed to stand alone. Like sitting on a three-legged prayer stool, we can only keep our balance if we have three places for prayer.

The first place for prayer is the room. Jesus advises his followers, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). Jesus is speaking here about the value of solitude and silence, about the kind of prayer in which we shut the door to all external distraction and preoccupation, and listen with complete attention to the inner voice of love. Prayer in solitude can take many forms. We may wish, as Ignatius of Loyola suggested, to gaze at length on a Gospel passage and to let its sights, sounds, and smells become vivid in our imagination. We may want to practice Lectio Divina, that ancient Benedictine method of reading a biblical passage very slowly until a word or phrase lights up and invites us to linger for a while. We may wish to spend our prayer time giving attention to a word or phrase that expresses our longing for God, maybe by repeating a phrase such as “Bless the Lord, my soul,” or “Come, Lord Jesus.” What other words do we need than that? Or we may wish to dive entirely below words and attend to God in silence. There are many prayer warriors who would tell us that there is nothing more like God than silence. I savor, for instance, the experience of writer Madeleine L’Engle. She loved words, and authored some 60 books, yet she wrote a poem (“Word”) that begins like this:

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stifled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.

The first place of prayer is the room, where in solitude we can go deep, and wait for the living Mystery who comes to us, as it came to Elijah, in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12).

The second place of prayer is the house — which means a small group. Its warrant comes from Jesus, who promised, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). The early Church met for fellowship in house churches (c.f. Acts 2:42), and for several centuries, house churches were the place in which small groups of Christians gathered to pray, hear Scripture, sing praises, eat meals, celebrate Eucharist. Here at Grace Church there are many ways to pray in a small group — perhaps by joining a pastorate, the Sunday morning Prayerful Bible Study, or one of our Saturday morning Quiet Days. Or maybe you want to start a prayer group of your own.

The value of praying in a so-called “house” (or small group) is that we have a place to speak our truth face to face, to be more vulnerable with each other, to offer each other accountability for our Christian life, and to pray for each other in a spontaneous and more intimate way. The “house” is a place for disclosure and empathy — a place, as St. Paul puts it, to “rejoice with those who rejoice, [and] weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

The third “place” of prayer is the sanctuary, where we gather as a large crowd. Jesus met with crowds when he taught the masses and healed the sick, and when he went to the synagogue (“as was his custom,” (Luke 4:16). Gathering to celebrate festivals and to worship in the temple was part of his Jewish religious practice. In the same way, every Sunday we Christians meet in a large assembly to worship the Holy Mystery, and to recite the drama of grace, the story of our salvation.

So if the Prayers of the People give you a powerful and invigorating space in which to name your concerns and to offer them to God, then I thank God for that. And if the Prayers of the People leave you restless or wanting something more, then I thank God for that, too, for the Holy Spirit may be inviting you to deepen and enlarge your prayer, and to explore other “places” in which to pray. We can’t learn to pray all the time everywhere until we learn to pray some of the time somewhere, and these three places of prayer give us a chance to encounter the God who dwells within us, between us, and among us.

Whether we pray in a room, a house, a sanctuary — or in the wide-open spaces of the natural world — the mercy of the Lord is everlasting: Come let us adore.

1. John Ernest Bode, Hymn #655, The Hymnal 1982.

2. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, Made for Goodness, NY, NY: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 170.

Rise up and follow

O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end; be thou forever near me, my Master and my friend. ¹ Amen.

We begin a new section of Luke’s Gospel this morning, the so-called “travel narrative,” in which Jesus “sets his face” to go to Jerusalem. What does it mean to “set your face” toward something? It means to face something with unswerving commitment and determination. When you “set your face,” you know clearly where you are headed, exactly where you intend to go. As Jesus “sets his face,” we can imagine him filled with a deep sense of purpose, even destiny. He is steadfast as he begins that journey. He is resolute. He intends, as fully and completely as he can, to proclaim the kingdom of God, to walk right into the center of Jerusalem, right into the center of religious and political power, and to express right there the redeeming, transforming, and liberating love of God. He is heading for a decisive confrontation with the political and religious authorities, heading for the final and consummate act of self-giving, which he will accomplish through the cross, resurrection, and ascension.

During the next four months, our Gospel lessons will be drawn from this section of Luke, as Jesus shows his disciples what it means to follow him along the way. Of course, when I say that we “follow” Jesus, I am using one of the basic metaphors of Christian life. Just think of all the times that Jesus urges us to “follow” him. For example, early on, Jesus asks the fishermen to let down their nets for a catch; when, with amazement, they haul in a great load of fish, the men leave their boats on the shore, drop everything, and follow him (Lk 5:1-11). Again, Jesus sees a tax collector named Levi, says to him, “Follow me,” and the man gets up, leaves everything, and follows (Lk 5:27-28). A rich ruler shows up in search of eternal life; Jesus tells him to give his money to the poor, and then come and follow (Lk 18:18-22). A penniless blind man cries out to Jesus, pleading for mercy; when Jesus restores the beggar’s sight, the man follows him (Lk 18:35-43). “Take up your cross and follow,” Jesus says, in different ways and places in all four Gospels [e.g. Lk 9:23, Mt 16:24, Mk 8:34, Jn 12:25-26). And so we do, every one of us who is baptized, every one of us who has promised to serve Jesus to the end.

But what does it mean to “follow” Jesus? When you hear the word “follow,” what kind of images spring to mind? If the Christian life is all about following, maybe it’s a good idea to bring to the surface our associations with the word “follow,” and to consider how well they fit with following Jesus.

For example, these days we often use the word “follow” in a very casual way. We “follow” all sorts of things, you and I — we follow sports, for instance, or the news. We follow the stock market, the soaps, maybe the latest celebrity triumph or scandal. We follow Facebook and Twitter — “following” in the sense of keeping up with the latest developments. When we follow something in this way, we add one more interest or hobby to our other interests or hobbies. We take up one more casual or ardent commitment, and we set it alongside our other commitments, adding one more thing to the pile.

Here’s another image of following. I think of taking a trail ride at a dude ranch. Maybe you’ve done that, too. You climb up on a sleepy horse and set out walking in single file, one horse following the next one, the nose of one horse just inches behind the tail of the horse ahead. The horse at the very front of the line is definitely awake and alert, with its eyes looking here and there, and its ears turning this way and that, listening closely. But I have to say: the horses following the lead horse are pretty much half-asleep. For them, “following” is a very passive affair, nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other and staying in line. If the horse we are riding is not the lead horse, we can practically doze off in the saddle. Our horse is going nowhere new; it is not thinking for itself or asking any questions; it is just following the same old well-worn trail, day after day, and it will do that until the day it dies or is let out to pasture.

Is following Jesus anything like that? Is it about adding one more interest to our collection of interests, or about dutifully following directions as we obediently walk in line? Not according to today’s Gospel passage. The journey of following Jesus is more bracing than that, more demanding, more costly, and more full of surprise. In fact, the call to follow Jesus is the call to become fully alive. In today’s Gospel, Jesus names himself the Son of Man, and one way to understand that term is as an archetype of the human being who is fully alive and living moment to moment completely surrendered to the divine. The Son of Man is a human being who lets the radiance of God shine out fully from within an ordinary life, someone who follows where divine love leads, someone who lives right now in the presence of the Eternal, and intentionally and deliberately opens his or her actions, words, and choices to the guidance of the divine. “God-pressure” is what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it, the experience of sensing where the Divine is urging us to go. ² That is what it means to follow Jesus — to set our sights on union with God, and to do what we can every day, in the very ordinary, very particular circumstances and relationships of our lives, to let God’s love shine out of us and to follow where love leads.

Is this costly work? You bet it is. As we heard in today’s Gospel, an unnamed man catches sight of Jesus, and apparently sees something attractive in him — we don’t know what. Maybe the man sees the kindness in Jesus’ eyes, hears the authority in his voice, or notices the compassion with which Jesus meets every person who crosses his path. In all sincerity, the man blurts out, “I will follow you wherever you go.” What does Jesus say in reply? “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:57-58). It is a warning, perhaps, and also an invitation: an invitation to a kind of consciousness that is not attached to personal comfort and security. As we enter that big, wide consciousness and take up our God-given identity as the Son of Man, we learn to be light on our feet — not to grip so tightly to our opinions and beliefs, not to retreat so readily into the safe little confines of what we know, or think we know, not to move so quickly and anxiously to defending and protecting and justifying ourselves, but rather to live out in the open, unguarded and undefended, cultivating an open mind and an open heart.

To someone else, Jesus says, “Follow me,” but this individual answers that first he must go and bury his father. Of course that is a completely worthy, reasonable, and necessary task, so Jesus’ response is all the more startling. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Jesus says to the man, “but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” It makes you wonder — does Jesus sense that the man is clinging to family duties as a way to avoid the radical claims of God? Is the man so caught up in being respectable, or so attached to fulfilling his social and filial responsibilities, that he cannot respond freely to the Word-made-flesh who is, after all, standing right there in front of him?

The next would-be follower also has business to take care of at home before he is able to follow Jesus: he wants first to say farewell to his family. Again, this is a perfectly reasonable request, and in our reading this morning from First Kings we heard how Elijah permitted his disciple Elisha to go home and kiss his father and mother goodbye before heading off to follow the prophet (1 Kings 19:19-21). But Jesus’ response is just as uncompromising as in the preceding encounter: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:62).

It is as if Jesus were saying to each of these people: quit stalling. Quit procrastinating. Don’t hang on to the past. Don’t look back. Don’t cling to your comfort and security, to your possessions or good name. Don’t cling to your good causes, ideas, or rituals — in fact, don’t cling to anything at all! Drop everything you are hanging on to, and let yourself fall into the radical love of God.

Then you will know what to do.
Then you will know how to love, and what to love.
Then you will know the next step in your journey.

As we reflect this morning on what it means to follow Jesus, I want to leave you with two questions.

First, just as Jesus “set his face” to go to Jerusalem, how would you name your own deepest longing? What is the deep intention of your life, the direction toward which everything in you feels drawn, as filings are drawn to a magnet? Toward what end-point or destination do you desire to set your face with complete devotion and commitment?

And second, in order to move forward on that journey, what do you need to let go?

1. John Ernest Bode, Hymn #655, The Hymnal 1982.

2. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, Made for Goodness, NY, NY: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 170.