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When You’ve Got Nothing Left

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Sermon — November 10, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Today’s sermon began with a bit of an extended preamble about prayer in challenging times, followed by a prayer; you can listen to this all in the audio, but there is not a written text. The text of the sermon proper is included below.

I don’t have much to say about the scribes, who like to wear long robes, and have the best seats, who tend—if we’re being honest with ourselves—to say some rather long prayers. I just might risk hypocrisy with that, today.

And I don’t want to say much about the poor widow who comes, and puts her last two coins into the Temple treasury. It’s too easy, on the week before our Stewardship Ingathering, to make this one about giving money to the church; and that’s not really what I want to do today.

But I do want to say something about what to do when you’re at the end of your rope; when you’ve worked as hard as you can, and done everything you can, and it hasn’t worked; and it feels like hope is lost.

Because that’s exactly where Elijah finds this woman who lives at Zarephath, in our first reading today.

It’s worth saying that, throughout the ancient Near East, we have evidence of laws that tried to provide for widows and orphans, that tried to establish some kind of social safety net for those who didn’t have the property, or labor, or the family support to provide for themselves. And it’s not just that this woman and her child have fallen through the cracks; there’s been a drought, and food is scarce, and there simply isn’t enough to go around. She has nothing prepared to offer Elijah. Her pantry is empty, just a cup of flour or so, and a little bit of oil, and there’s nothing else.

We can assume she’s prayed for rain, and so has everyone else. We can assume she’s asked for help, and there just isn’t enough to share. And so here she is, at the end of the line, and her story is deeply sad. Her plan is just to go, and cook what she has left; and then that’s it for them.

And this strange man, this man she doesn’t know, comes to her and says, “Do that; but give me some as well.”

And she does. And that is an extraordinary thing. He’s not her son. He’s not her neighbor. He’s not even her fellow-citizen, because she lives in Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, in Phoenicia; and he’s an Israelite. He’s crossed the border to her, and the only document he has is the word of God telling him to go. And I can tell you, because I have studied these two tongues, that she could understand his words, but she could hear it in his voice that he was not from here. And yet she took a quarter-cup of her last cup of flour, and baked a little bread for him, as well.

And that’s the generosity of desperation, because this is all they have, and then their lives will end; so why not give a little bit away?

And “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”

Now—Miracles are not a great answer to the concrete problems of the world. Faith alone cannot solve the problems of world hunger, or of drought, problems that have plagued humankind throughout history, however hard they’ve prayed or not. Such concrete miracles are rare. But every day, God works miracles of the heart. And so I don’t exactly want to give you any advice. But I want you to tell how I used my flour this week, and I want to invite you to think, when you find yourself at the end of the line, about how you might use yours.

So like I said, I was up for about half of Tuesday night—which did give me some valuable sermon-writing time, as I lay in bed—and then Wednesday is a day when I’m home with Murray for the day and Alice is at work. And so I got up, on Wednesday, after a couple hours’ sleep, and spent the rest of the day with a child whose sleep had been blissfully undisturbed. We read a chapter of our history book about the Alaric the Goth and the fall of the Roman Empire, and did some single-digit math—this is a humanities family, to be clear—and we went out for a walk on a beautiful, warm day. And at the end of this long and high-energy day, I found that I was not as exhausted as I sometimes am. I was feeling better than I had when I woke up. In fact, I was feeling better than I had the last night when I went to bed.

I had very little left in me on Wednesday morning, and I gave some of it away; and I found that “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.” And I know exactly why. Not only had I not spent the day entirely in my head, as I had for those sleepless hours at night; but I had spent my day loving someone, in a very concrete way.

I don’t know what it is that has you at the end of your rope today. If it’s not the election, it may well be something else. But I do know that sometimes, when you’re all at of flour, paradoxically it can help to try to give some of it away. Not to give more of yourself away to whatever it is that has you drained. But to spend some of your energy, in a very concrete way, on something else that’s fueled by love.

Because while miracles of bread and oil are rare, miracles of the heart are not, and you just might find a new abundance at the very moment that you give what you have away.

Heaven is a Place on Earth

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Sermon — November 3, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Is anyone here familiar with the work of Belinda Carlisle?

In the 1980s, she wrote some pretty interesting things that touched on what Christian theologians call “eschatology,” the study of the “last things.” Eschatology means thinking about what exactly we mean when we say, in the Nicene Creed, that we look for “the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” And in many ways Carlisle’s work really resonates with our first two readings today, which are two of my favorite passages in the Bible, these powerful visions Isaiah and John the Divine had of a new heaven and a new earth.

You may think you have no idea who or what I’m talking about right now, but I think it’s very likely that that you have, in fact, heard Belinda Carlisle’s reflection on life in the new Jerusalem. It goes like this: “Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth!”

That isn’t even really a joke.

“They say in Heaven, love comes first,” she sings. Well, that’s certainly true, theologically speaking. “We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth,” she goes on—which I think is supposed to be, like, a romantic thing, but it actually works really well as a statement of Christian ethics. And then she really gives us a keen theological insight in the bridge: “In this world, we’re just beginning / to understand the miracle of living.” Belinda: That’ll preach.

Now, I don’t know if Belinda Carlisle is a woman of faith. The nature of the music video implies that she might have something more earthy in mind with this metaphor; also, there are a lot of people dancing around with globes. (Never mind.)

But I have to say: If Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a place on earth” is over on one side of a theological spectrum, and the most common ideas of what “heaven” means in our culture are on the other, then you have to admit that the view that you find reflected in the prophecies of Isaiah and of John is a lot closer to Ms. Carlisle’s than you might think.

Both the prophet Isaiah, in the 8th century BC or so, and the seer John the Divine, in the 1st century after Christ, envision “the world to come” not as one in which we leave this world behind and go away to be with God, but one in which God comes down to earth to be with us. Isaiah sees God coming to the people “on this mountain,” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem itself. (25:6) The Lord of hosts will host “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” The good things of this world aren’t left behind, they’re embraced, enriched, and multiplied. But the hard things of this world are wiped away. The shroud cast over us is destroyed, the sheet that’s spread over us is removed; in other words, God swallows up death itself, and wipes away the tears from our eyes. (25:7-8)

In the Book of Revelation, John picks up that same thread. He sees a new heaven and a new earth, a holy city coming down to us from God. John sees God dwelling with us as God’s people, and “wiping every tear from our eyes.” For “See? The home of God is among mortals.” (Rev. 21:3)

That’s very different from the way we tend to think about things in 2024, even in the church. When we think about the life of the world to come, when we reflect on what happens after death, we tend to talk about how someone has gone away to be with God in their eternal home in what is, hopefully, “The Good Place.” But wait! Revelation seems to say. It’s not so much that our true home is out there, somewhere, with God. It’s that God’s true home is here with us. The world to come will be a better place not because we’ve left this world behind, but because this world has been transformed by the presence of a holy and living and loving God.

In other words: “Ooh! Heaven is a place on earth.” And what we think of as heaven, the place where the souls of all the departed rest in the hands of God, is exactly that, a resting place where they wait until the resurrection of the dead, when we will live again with them once more.

Which sounds, to me, even better than all the harps.

I don’t know what’s happening in your soul this All Saints’ Day.

Perhaps you’re here, mourning the loss of someone in your life who’s died, very recently or very long ago. Perhaps one or two of the names in our prayers today, silent or out loud, will make you choke up, and you won’t be able to say the response, because that pain is still there. And I have to admit, that might be the case for me, too. Or maybe hearing one of those names will fill your heart with gratitude for their life, and remind you of their love. Maybe both. And there’s a reason that we pause, together, once a year, to say these prayers.

Perhaps you’re here, rather anxious about the election process that is already simmering along, and will reach full boil on Tuesday, and will not, by the grace of God, boil over when it is decided some time in the next few weeks. Perhaps it’s one outcome or the other that keeps you up at night. Perhaps it’s concern about the safety and stability of the work of American democracy itself. Perhaps it’s the estrangement that our politics have caused in your life, from other people with whom you no longer want to speak. And there’s a reason that we pause, together, not once every four years but every year, to hear these words from long ago about a holy city coming down to us from God.

Perhaps you’re simply enjoying your life in this world; maybe things are good, and you don’t want to think about leaving them behind. Perhaps you love your family and your friends, your work, your life. Perhaps you don’t; maybe things aren’t so good. Maybe your body hurts. Maybe you’re sick, and tired. Maybe there’s or two that you wouldn’t mind having wiped away from your eyes. And—not to repeat myself too much—there’s a reason we pause every year, to remember that the life of the world to come is a life like this one, but with the goodness deepened and the sorrows wiped away.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, we believe, it wasn’t the end of the story of the Resurrection; it was the first glimpse of the life of the world to come. However incredible it is, the Christian hope is that we will one day live again in a world where “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

And there’s good news there. But there’s also a challenge.

I’ll never forget an afternoon workshop I spent sitting in the undercroft beneath the chapel of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. For those who don’t know, SSJE is an order of Episcopal monks who have a monastery just up the river, right on Mem Drive in Cambridge. It was a workshop on “community,” in all its beauty and complexity. And I think it was Brother Curtis Almquist and Brother David Vryhof, two very dear, kind, loving men who’ve spent a long time living in close quarters with a group of other monks, who—like all human beings—sometimes have rough edges.

So during the Q&A, somebody described a conflict they were having with someone. I can’t remember what it was. But I do remember that Curtis listened to them carefully, and he replied—And this is my Curtis impression—“Mm. Mm. …Mm. God loves you. God loves you so much. God wants to spend eternity with you. And them. Together.”

If you’re missing someone who’s gone, this All Saints’ Day, the good news is that God wants to spend eternity with you, and them, together. And if you’re struggling to understand, this All Saints’ Day, how someone could be voting differently from you, how someone could support someone who’s so clearly the wrong choice for the office of the President, then that’s the challenge: God wants to spend eternity with you, and them, and that candidate for office, together. Surely we can’t really believe that the political beliefs of the people with whom we disagree are enough to separate them from the love of God. And so we’re left with the unpleasant fact that we’re going to have to find a way to live together. And we might as well start practicing now.

And that’s the invitation, here. We can begin to live, even now, as if we are in that holy city to come. We can begin to live, even now, as if our lives are governed by compassion and love. We can participate in the process by which God is making all things new, already, here and now. We can try to draw back the curtain and let the heavenly reality lying behind all things be revealed, because, as it turns out, heaven will one day be “a place on earth.”

For All the Saints

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You may know that tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. It’s one of the easiest dates to memorize in the church year, in large part because it falls on the day after the Eve of All Saints’, also known as All Hallows’ Eve or, in some quarters, Hallowe’en. (You all spell it with the apostrophe… right?)

Halloween, of course, is a major holiday in our secular year, but it stays true to its ecclesiastical origins. While it’s veered off a bit in recent years, Halloween still fits in recognizably with the sequence of All Saints’ on November 1 followed by All Souls’ Day on the 2nd, a day on which we commemorate all those who have died. In the church, All Saints is a major holiday too, a significant enough day that, unlike other, lesser feasts, we tend to celebrate it on the Sunday following, in addition to our celebrations during the week.

And so it is that most years, on the first Sunday in November, you’ll often find yourself standing in church, singing the beautiful hymn, “For all the saints.”

It’s a beloved hymn, and one that sums up the Episcopal or Anglican attitude to the saints fairly well, I think. Take a read through the first verse:

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

There are a few things worth observing here:

It’s worth saying, first of all, that the “saints” are not just some specific set of especially-holy people. “Saints,” in this hymn or anywhere else in our church, doesn’t refer to a canonical set. We use “saints” in the Biblical sense, as when St. Paul addresses a letter “to the saints who are in Ephesus” (Eph. 1:1). The saints are all the “holy people of God,” living and dead, and that’s not only St. Paul or St. Monica or St. Martin Luther King, Jr.—that’s you, and me, and your Aunt Joan who first brought you to church when you were young.

Like any good hymn, this is a prayer. But it isn’t a prayer to the saints. It doesn’t address the saints, asking for their help or prayers. It’s always fine to ask a friend for prayer, living or departed, but we don’t need their help; we can address our words directly to God.

And while we begin with the words “For all the saints,” this hymn isn’t a prayer for all the saints. We aren’t asking for their prayers; but neither are we offering our prayers for them. It can comfort us to pray for those whom we have loved and lost; it certainly can’t hurt, in any case. But this is not a prayer for them; it’s not a prayer for God to give them something good or save them from something bad.

Instead, it’s a prayer of thanksgiving and wonder. “For all the saints who from their labors rest…thy name, O Jesus be forever blessed.”

The history of the world, and of each one of our lives, has been full of holy people. They were people, still, and therefore imperfect. But they were, and they are, holy people, people who have inspired us to be the best, most loving versions of ourselves. Some of them are famous. Some of them are completely unknown. But all of them have left their mark on our lives.

Sometimes we might ask them for their prayers, and be comforted by the reminder that we share some mysterious, ongoing relationship with our ancestors and departed friends. Sometimes we might pray for them, putting words to our yearning for them to be at peace. And this day—on All Saints’ Day—we can simply offer thanks to God that they lived, and bless God for creating a world that has such people in it.

A Slight Change of Plans

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Sermon — October 27, 2024

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

A fun fact about me this summer: I had a minimum of one hundred cups of water thrown in my face. For those of you who don’t know, this summer, I had the privilege of serving as the Assistant Camp Director at the Barbara C. Harris Camp. A summer camp that is run in association with the Diocese of Massachusetts. As you would imagine, we get into a lot of odd and sticky situations because you have dozens of children, a handful of counselors, and a whole summer camp with a lake, sports fields, arts and crafts, and so much sugar. 

One of the fun things we did was a water carnival. For the uninitiated, it involves remaking your classic field games with water-based elements. You use a big bucket of water for the “goose” in duck-duck-goose, for example. The first week, it went ~~swimmingly~~, we had some logistical hitches (the cups we were using for one of the games kept breaking, though such are logistical hitches at summer camp). But overall, it was all going very well—until–I hear a piercing scream and see a rabid band of teenage girls sprinting for one of the big buckets we were using to refill the game stations. 

Now, I think if you are a parent or have worked in childcare before, you will know the difference between “good scream” and “bad scream”. Two thoughts went through my head very quickly: these were good screams, and I know what is going to happen next. The moment the other children (and counselors) realized what was happening…all bets were off. Any structure to whatever games we were running broke down as mobs of children descended on the closest refill station with whatever receptacle (re: water based weapon) they had in hand.

In the moment, there was a feeling of loss as the very well-thought out afternoon I had meticulously planned for the benefit of these campers gave way to absolute chaos. There was a brief period of uncertainty as I locked eyes with the camp director–I again suspect many parents will know what I am talking about–and wondered if something dangerous was about to happen that we needed to stop. And a lot of feelings of water in my eyes as the campers I so dedicatedly served day after day repeatedly threw cups of water in my face–in their defense,  I did, as Assistant Camp Director, comandeer the main hose for my weapon of choice at the beginning of this water altercation. 

As we ran out of the various sources of water, and shut off the hose, and people stopped and looked around, there was exactly what I had expected: a bunch of happy campers and counselors. In that afternoon, something that easily could have been a disaster or disapointment instead became an amazingly fun moment.  

Believe it or not, this is reflected in our scriptures: in our moments when we feel helpless, or when things are falling apart, God is still operating towards our restoration.

In Mark today we experience an example of a miraculous restoration of a beggar. I think it is easy to say that this man is restored from blindness to sightedness–though I don’t think that is exactly a faithful reading. The first reason is that Eli, an important teacher and leader, is blind for at least one important part of his story. This shows that rather than blindness being this beggar’s primary issue, it is the fact that his community abandoned him in a time of need that is the issue. The second reason I think it isn’t about the blindness per say is that Jesus asks the man what it is he wants–Jesus does not assume that what this man needs is his sight. Of course, the transformation that takes place restores this man’s sight, like he asks, but it seems to be more about his place in the community rather than the specific faculties he has. As we engage with this miraculous action of Jesus, it would behove us to remember this. 

In any case, in Mark Jesus acts for the restoration of this man. It is crowded, Jesus and the disciples are approaching Jerusalem and the events of the crucifixion. It is probably already chaotic and overstimulating, and this beggar imposes himself on an already inconvenient situation. Jesus, in the chaos of the situation and in what appears to be the hopelessness of this man’s life, intervenes acts for his restoration. Similarly, in Jeremiah, God promises to restore the people and gather them back to Him after they have been under exile. Not only that, God promises to gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, and to gather all the people–not just the able bodied people who can travel easily. He promises to restore all of His people, and bring them back with consolation. 

It is easy to say that God acts for our restoration if the stakes are water in your face, and maybe a few children with some water stuck in their ears. It is also easy to recognize this restorative activity of God as something that has happened to these Bibilical heroes, and relegate it to the dust of ancient history. 

Maya Shankar was studying the violin at Julliard, and was by all accounts going to be one of the best violinists of our time. The entirety of her life revolved only around one thing, one instrument, and being great at it. Until one normal day, when she was practicing like she did every other day, she permanently injured her hand–and would never be able to play the violin ever again. The entirety of what she built her life on was suddenly ripped out from under her, all of the time she had spent over the course of decades was entirely wasted. 

Maya Shankar would eventually go on to receive her doctorate in neuroscience many years after this tragic twist of fate. In her life now she hosts a popular podcast called “A Slight Change of Plans” where week after week she interviews people whose lives have been completely overturned by some force: career-ending injuries like her own, but also other accidents and tragedies that have robbed people of their life’s work, and even sense of identity. 

In each case though, these people find that they are not actually as “done” as they thought they would be. If you had asked Dr. Shankar at Julliard what she would have done without being able to play the violin, she would have told you that her very life, her reason of existence, would be entirely gone. And yet, here she is today with an award winning podcast that provides not only a sense of meaning to Dr. Shankar, but also is a phenomenal help to others who may be experiencing something like she did. Even in a career ending injury, robbed of her mission in life, it does not seem like God was done acting in Dr. Shankar’s life. Like our beggar who transforms into a follower of Christ, and like the people who are brought back from exile, Dr. Shankar found a restoration after an immense tragedy, and helps others find their restoration after tragedy.

I have given you a relatively silly example–water fights at summer camp. And a relatively extreme example in Dr. Shankar. Though maybe you, like Dr. Shankar, were at some point going to be the next “great” in whatever skill you pursued. I suspect though, that many of us find ourselves in a more ordinary mess than that. We may not be a beggar on the road outside Jericho, nor are we in exile, and we likely have not experienced career ending tragedies. Our messy situations might be harder to define: bad grades, lost or strained relationships, goals we never acheived, promotions we did not get, or other shortcomings and disappointments that add up.

Even so, our scriptures today remind us that even when things are falling apart–like a group of rabid teenagers descending on you with water to throw in your face; when things seem hopeless–like a blind beggar maligned by his society; when we have a career ending injury, and our life’s purpose is irreversibly taken away from us; or when we amount what might be a more normal amount of failures, God is never done with us. Not only that, but that God is the master of taking what we believe to be a hopeless situation, a blind beggar, a people far away from home in exile, and showing us that our notions of hopelessness are not God’s plan. 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it better than I could: “There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now”. In Jeremiah God led the people from a sense of brokenness to a sense of wholeness, in Mark God made a beggar a follower of Christ, and God is operating in our world and in our lives today. In the name of the one who loved us first. Amen

The Pelican in her Piety

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There is much that could be said about the consecration of our new bishop on Saturday, but one image in particular stuck out to me from that day.

The cover art on the (forty-six page!) bulletin for the service was taken from a mosaic in Aachen Cathedral, in Germany. The mosaic depicts “The Pelican in her Pietry,” a classic medieval image of Christ. Medieval scholars believed (for whatever reason) that pelicans “nurse” their young by piercing their breasts to feed them with their own blood, a symbol that seemed to evoke both Christ’s sacrificial self-offering on the Cross and his continual self-offering in the Eucharist.

It is an image of Christ, as the program for the consecration notes, that is “both eucharistic and maternal in nature.”

It was an image that I was thinking about as I read through the bulletin while waiting for the service to begin. I happened to be sitting next to a dear friend, a priest with two young children even smaller than mine, someone with whom I’ve shared much of the complicated and sometimes-difficult experiences of parenthood and parish ministry alike. For both of us, having a bishop who is the mother of three teenagers and young adults was meaningful.

I was moved by the way in which this image of the pelican is a beautiful and complicated one: a depiction of the ways in which we offer ourselves to feed the people we love, and are fed by God’s own self-offering in turn.

But I was especially struck by a momentary glimpse, when Bishop Julia, after being vested, happened to turn—and we could see this image on her back.

What an image to choose, as the new leader of our portion of the church. It’s something I’ll be sitting with for a while. What does it mean to feed the people of our diocese from your own blood? What does it mean to be fed? What does it mean to carry this on your back, at every visitation, ordination, confirmation—at every sacramental event at which you serve during your time as bishop? How is this a comforting reminder of the maternal nature of a bishop’s ministry? And isn’t it kind of a troubling one?

I hope you’ll join your prayers with mine for Bishop Julia as her ministry officially begins. Bishop Alan has handed over the crozier; his time of shepherding our diocese is over, and Bishop Julia’s has begun! May Alan’s retirement offer him time for refreshment and rest, and may the Holy Spirit guide Bishop Julia in the weeks and months ahead!