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“Pentecost: True Spiritual Unity and Fellowship in the Holy Spirit” by Rebecca Brogan

Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs, CO

Seasonal Journal Pentecost / Ordinary Time / Christ the King Sunday

June 9-November 24, 2019

Mission: To accept God’s grace and bear witness to His grace in the world

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On the cover: “Pentecost: True Spiritual Unity and Fellowship in The Holy Spirit”: Rebecca Brogan, the artist who created the wonderful drawing, reports that from left to right the celebrants’ ethnicities are Northern European, Australian Aboriginal, Hispanic, Russian/Western Asian, South American, Middle Eastern (modeled after the original Christians who received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2), African, Pacific Islander, South Asian, Native North American, East Asian, and Mediterranean European. You can see more of Rebecca’s Christian-themed art at John the Baptist Artworks online.

Table of Contents The Liturgical Season 3

by Joan Ray

A Pentecost Poem: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur” 4

by Joan Ray

Pentecost: A Lesson in Active Listening 7

by The Rt. Rev. Larry Benfield

Pentecost: Leap of Faith 9

by The Rev. Tim Schenck

Trinity Sunday 11

by The Rev. Rainey G. Dankel

Ordinary Time: The Green Season 13

by The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

The Not So “Ordinary” Time 14

by The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary 16

by The Rev. Jen Williamson

“Fear Not”: A Sermon for Christ the King Sunday 17

by The Rev. Lonnie Lacy

A “Heart Strangely Warmed” 19

by David Margiotta

Walking with the Mystics: My Journey with Saint Teresa of Ávila 21

by Nicole Hensel

Editor’s Note Bishop Kym Lucas’s Easter Sermon Song 23 Back Cover: “A Portrait of Grace,” © Poem and Drawing by GSS Parishioner, author Ronnie Lee Graham (about whose work you can learn at http://www.ronnieleegraham.com) Image of Jesus and Nicodemus, a stained-glass window at GSS, photo by Nicole Paulson Editor: Joan Klingel Ray Editorial Assistant: Cindy Page Layout and Design: Max Pearson Printed by Print Net Inc., owned by David Byers, 306 Auburn Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80909 Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church at Tejon and Monument Streets (Nave), 601 N. Tejon St. (Office), Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Tel: (719) 328-1125 http://www.gssepiscopal.org Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, Rector Rev. Brendan Williamson, CSJC Curate Pastor Jennifer Williamson, Youth Minister The Seasonal Journal does not receive funds from Grace and St. Stephen’s. The Journal’s publication is made possible through the generosity of parishioners. If you’d like to donate to the Journal’s publication costs, please note “Journal” in the memo section of a check made out to GSS Episcopal or on an envelope with cash that says “Journal Donation.” Permission to reprint: Nearly every article in this issue of the Seasonal Journal is available for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your church website. Please credit Grace and St. Stephen’s Seasonal Journal. For sermons by clergy of other churches, please contact the appropriate church. Any copyrighted image is so noted. Permission to reprint any copyrighted images must be obtained directly from the artist. Let us know how you’ve used the Seasonal Journal by emailing susan@gssepiscopal.org.

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The Liturgical Season

As we observed in the previous issue of our church’s Seasonal Journal, the Episcopal Church’s Liturgical Year is divided into seasons. The current Seasonal Journal treats Pentecost and Ordinary Time. During this period, we will also celebrate the feast day of Trinity Sunday and conclude with Christ the King Sunday. To Celebrate Religiously: hagag חגג

The Hebrew root-verb hagag “describes “a gathering of people in order to celebrate or hold a feast, specifically any of the three main pilgrimage feasts that Israel was to celebrate (Exodus 23: 14-16)” (Abarim’s Online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary http://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/ht/ht-g-g.html#.XI0SjxNKiGg Retrieved April 3, 2019). When we celebrate in a religious sense, we are honoring a day with solemn rites. In the Church, we celebrate feast days. Feast Days and Movable Feasts

Feasts in the Church are days of celebration with solemn rites. “The seven principal feasts (Easter Day, Ascension Day, the Day of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints' Day, Christmas Day, and the Epiphany) take precedence over any other day or observance” (Book of Common Prayer, 15). Church Feasts are all Sundays, the fixed dates of Christmas (December 25) and Epiphany (January 6), and the “movable feasts.” Movable feasts on the liturgical calendar are feast days that do not fall on the same date each year. Easter is a movable feast, as it falls anytime between March 22 and April 25. Easter’s date determines Ash Wednesday (40 weekdays before Easter), Ascension Day (forty days after Easter), and Pentecost (fifty days after Easter, the 7th Sunday after Easter). Pentecost

Pentecost, derived from the Greek word, pentecostē, meaning fiftieth, as in the fiftieth day, is a major feast day in the Episcopal Liturgical Year. Marking the end of the Easter Season, Pentecost in 2019 falls on June 9 and celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, fifty days after the resurrection of Christ, as told in Acts 2:1. In the British Isles, Pentecost Sunday is called Whitsunday.

In Acts 1, we read that the Apostles, along with “certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus,” were gathered in a room, praying. The second chapter recounts how a sudden gust of wind filled the room, and “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability” (Acts 2:3-4). Some scholars interpret the speaking in tongues as symbolic of the Church’s worldwide reach. For this reason, Pentecost is frequently called the “birthday of the Christian Church.” The BCP identifies Pentecost Sunday as “especially appropriate for baptism” (312).

Liturgical Color

On Pentecost, the liturgical color for the clergy’s vestments and the paraments (hangings on the altar, lectern, pulpit) is red, symbolizing the tongues of fire as the Holy Spirit descended. Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost. It is the only feast day in the church year that commemorates a doctrine—the Trinity—rather than a person or event. Trinity Sunday is the “Feast that celebrates ‘the one and equal glory’ of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,’ in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Being’” (BCP, 380). Ordinary Time

The term “Ordinary Time” does not appear in the Book of Common Prayer; however, it is addressed in the Episcopal Glossary. The term is used in the Roman Catholic Church to describe that period after the Day of Pentecost through the First Sunday of Advent, which is the beginning of a new liturgical year. Ordinary Time, also known as Early and Late Pentecost, is the longest season in the church year. We will see in our church bulletins that Sundays are named in relationship to Pentecost, the previous feast day: for example, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, etc. “Ordinary” is likely derived from the word ordinal, meaning counted. Ordinary Time—the season that begins after Pentecost Sunday—is the time of year when we are not commemorating the major events in Jesus’ life (his birth at Christmas; his death on Good Friday; his resurrection on Easter). Instead, we are reading Scripture about the life Jesus led during his time on earth in terms of what he said and did. The Liturgical Color Green is the liturgical color after Pentecost Sunday. Green is the color of living, growing things; it is the color of hope and renewal as we celebrate the Holy Spirit in our lives. We are growing in our Christian lives as we learn about the life of Jesus Christ. Christ the King Sunday: The First Sunday after Pentecost The final Sunday of the Liturgical Year is Christ the King Sunday: November 24, 2019. Pope Pius XI originally instituted it in 1925 as a “celebration of the all-embracing authority of Christ, which will lead mankind to seek the ‘Peace of Christ’ in the ‘Kingdom of Christ’” (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church). Initially celebrated on the last Sunday in October, it is now celebrated on the final Sunday before Advent, the first day of the liturgical year, which will be year A for 2019: year A is always a year that is divisible by 3 without a remainder.

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A Pentecost Poem: “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Joan Ray

A fourth-generation New York City native, Joan has been a member of our church since moving to Colorado in fall 1978 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of English at UCCS. Retired, she is Professor Emerita of English and President’s Teaching Scholar. Her PhD in 18th-century British literature is from Brown University. With others in the Faith-Seeking Class, she reaffirmed her confirmation vows on May 25, 2019 with Bishop Kym Lucas at Pueblo’s Ascension and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.

One of the great Christian poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), was born to a British family of the Anglican faith. While studying at Oxford University, Hopkins was drawn to John Henry Newman’s Oxford Movement: members were High Church Anglicans who desired to restore the

liturgical rituals and beliefs from the Roman Catholic Church to the Church of England. In July 1866, Newman (later Cardinal Newman) received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church, a conversion that estranged him from his family. By 1870, Hopkins became interested in the Jesuits; he was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1877, the same year he composed “God’s Grandeur,” one of his most well-known poems. His fame as a poet came posthumously when, in 1918, his friend Robert Bridges, by this time England’s Poet Laureate, arranged for the publication of Hopkins’ poems. In addition to his deep interest in Christianity, Hopkins was also fascinated with nature. “God’s Grandeur” celebrates the presence of God’s grandeur in nature, which has always led me to think of this poem as both religious and ecological.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 8 And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 14

This sonnet, a poem of 14 lines, is, to be more

precise, an Italian sonnet, wherein the final six lines resolve the thought or problem set forth in the first eight lines. In the first eight lines, “God’s Grandeur” explores the relationship between God—particularly God’s grandeur—and the natural world and the way “man[’s]” or humanity’s works are at odds with God’s work. The poet then provides a resolution in the final six lines, showing that God’s grandeur is immutable, inexhaustible—infinite.

In the first line, the poet confidently asserts, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” The line echoes Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork,” as well as Psalm 104, a poem dealing with God’s majesty in creating the world, particularly verse 24, “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches” (KJV, which is used in this essay because that is the edition of the Bible that Hopkins would have known). We are speaking here of God’s grandeur: dignity, majesty, beauty, not to be confused with grandiosity.

The speaker’s use of the word “charged” is a provocative choice: “charged” is an active word, suggesting an invisible electrical “charge” that is a continuous action in the world. A Victorian poet using a word associated with electricity? It’s perfectly natural.

In 1600 British physicist and physician William Gilbert (1544-1603) coined the word “electricity” from the Greek word elektron, meaning amber. Humphry Davy (1778-1829) first demonstrated electricity in England in 1806. By the 1870’s middle-class British homes had electric lighting. The poet, therefore, would have been familiar with the concept of electricity. Using the word “charged” gives the opening line far more potency than simply saying, “The world is full of the grandeur of God.”

This “charge” is not just a one-time occurrence, as the moment when God said, “‘Let there be light.’” The grandeur of God is ever-present, charging through the world: divine pyro-technics. Moreover, God is in charge. The first line stands alone: the statement ends with a period.

Lines 2 and 3, along with the first word (Crushed) of line 4, which completes the thought of line 3 and is followed by a period (Crushed.), are two complete thoughts connected by a semicolon (;). The “It” that begins lines 2 and 3 refers to “The grandeur of God” in line one. In these lines, the poet illuminates what he stated in line one.

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First, the speaker states that divine grandeur “will flame out, like shining from shook foil”: God’s grandeur will manifest itself suddenly, like a flame. When I taught this widely-anthologized poem in freshman-level Introduction to Literature classes, I had to caution my students not to interpret the phrase “flame out” in the way we use it today: to lose power suddenly and abruptly, or in aeronautical terms, “when the flame in the combustion chamber of a jet engine being extinguished, with a resultant loss of power” (Oxford Online Dictionary).

Hopkins, writing in 1877, uses “flame out” in the sense of emitting a sudden flame. He thus invokes Pentecost, Acts 2:3, when God’s grandeur “flamed out” on Pentecost in the person of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles as “cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them” (KJV, my italics).

In a letter dated January 4, 1883 to Robert Bridges, Hopkins explained that he used “foil in its sense of leaf or tinsel”: leaf means “gold, silver, or other specified metal in the form of very thin foil” (Oxford Online Dictionary, leaf definition 2.1 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/leaf). Hopkins continued in his letter: “Shaken gold foil gives off broad glares like sheet lightning and also, and this is true of nothing else, owing to its zigzag dents and creases and network of small many cornered facets, a sort of fork lightning too.” In other words, God’s grandeur, a radiant force, operates like sheets of gold foil that, when shaken, will refract light brilliantly, will shine in the way that “Shaken gold foil gives off broad glares.”

God’s grandeur also “gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.” When olives are pressed, the oil oozes slowly, gradually from the press, and gathers in the decanter as valuable olive oil.

So, we have divine grandeur not only shining abruptly like lightning, like flames, but also oozing slowly like oil from a press that is gently, slowly crushing olives. These images intensify God’s grandeur charging through the world. Line 2 states that God’s grandeur “will flame out”: will is the future tense. Line 3 states that God’s grandeur gathers to a greatness: gathers is in the present tense. Thus, God’s grandeur was, is, and will be charging: in the past, present, and future.

With God’s grandeur charging through all Creation, how has that creation fared under man’s / humanity’s “charge”? And here I use “charge” in the sense of mankind or humanity being in charge of the world. “Why” asks the poet, does not man “reck” or heed God’s “rod”? The poet uses the word “rod” as it is used in Isaiah 11:1-2, “And there shall come forth

a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” Jesse is the father of King David: Isaiah prophesies the coming of Jesus, who is of the House of David. In Matthew 1:1-6, we read the genealogy of Jesus: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son [descendent] of David, the son [descendent] of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). Mankind ignores Jesus. “Rod” also suggests rule: why does man—why does humanity—not obey God’s rule? In Revelation 19:15, we read that the rider on the white horse “will rule

them with a rod of iron.” Put simply: mankind is recklessly ignoring God.

The poet laments how humanity has failed to heed divine rule in terms of what man has done to God’s Creation. “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod:” historically, mankind has slowly trampled the earth, which the poet emphasizes by saying “trod” three times (trod, trod, trod). I can almost hear the incessant pounding of careless, heavy footfalls of successive generations. The line suggests the blind repetitiveness of back-breaking, mind-numbing trudging over the earth.

This is more than just a warning to keep off the grass.

Hopkins wrote this poem at the height of Victorian England, a time of increasing urbanization and industrialization, which led to the growth of wealth and a consumer culture. Consequently, the Creation bears the weight of history trampling over it and crushing it. The Whole Creation is “seared with trade”: humanity is overly concerned with industry, commerce, and monetary profit. Business sears (burns, dries, withers) the grandeur of God’s creation. The trodding, trodding, trodding, the searing, blearing, and smearing: all are signs of the industrial culture where the smoke stacks of the factories foul the air. In “Jerusalem” William Blake back in 1804 wrote of “the dark Satanic mills” that befoul the English countryside. This thought echoes in the Hopkins poem, written decades later as increasing industrialism spread across the land.

As line 6 continues, the poet despairs that “All is . . . bleared, smeared with toil”: earlier in the line the poet said the world was “seared.” We have in a single line the rhyming of seared, bleared, and smeared—internal rhyming words that suggest, respectively, drying out, making obscure and unclear, and spoiling or making dirty.

The world “wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell”: what an indictment of mankind’s treatment of nature! Mankind befouls nature. Even

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the fresh aromas of nature are tainted by human body odor. Moreover, “the soil / Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.” Industrialization treats the earth as nothing more than a repository of minerals: think of the scar on our own Pikes Peak. The poet concludes the poem’s first 8 lines with modern man’s disinclination to go barefoot. Wearing shoes is just another sign of humanity’s disconnecting from nature. But don’t you love to go barefoot on thick, green grass? (Hopkins’ fellow Jesuits frequently found their brother on the ground outside on all fours, examining a bug or a leaf as he was connecting with nature.)

Remember, this is an Italian sonnet, where the final six lines resolve the problem posed in the first eight lines. Line 9 in an Italian sonnet is called the “turn” or volta. Consequently, line 9 assures us, “And for all this, nature is never spent [used up, exhausted, completely depleted].” Despite all the bleak observations about man’s blight of nature in the first eight lines, Nature is ever alive, ever fertile, ever charged with God’s grandeur. Why? “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”: invisible to the naked eye (similar to God’s grandeur charging through the world like electricity), freshness or spiritual energy are ever alive, ever potent, “deep down things.” Divinely charged grandeur in the Creation is inexhaustible.

The poet reassures us that although the sun goes down at night, leaving the world in darkness, the light springs up again at dawn. This, states the poet, is the work of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit: the poet uses the image of a bird for the Holy Ghost. Think about these lines: “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

The World is “bent”: bent means curved and morally corrupt, reminding us that we live in a fallen world. The Holy Ghost / Spirit “broods” over—contemplates sadly—the “bent,” corrupt

world. But the poet also speaks of the Holy Ghost

with “warm breast” and “ah! bright wings.” More specifically, he uses the image of the Holy Spirit as a brooding mother hen: when a mother hen broods she is ready to hatch her eggs and raise her brood of chicks—an implied play on words.

In Matthew 23:37 (KJV), Jesus, after lamenting over Jerusalem, changes his tone, showing God’s merciful love for His people, and expresses His desire to gather them the way a mother hen gathers, warms, and protects her brood of chicks: “‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!’” Thus, the Holy Spirit, like a mother hen, protects her brood, warming them with her “warm breast and ah! bright wings.” The exclamatory phrase, “ah! bright wings,” returns us to the first line of the poem with God’s grandeur charging through the word like an electric current. That exclamatory “ah!” before “bright wings” suggests a sudden realization, a moment of intense wonder.

Finally, the phrase “ah! bright wings” reminds us that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, hovering over Jesus when he was baptized (Luke 3:22) and descended on the Apostles at Pentecost “like tongues of fire.”

“ah! bright wings”

Could any image be more appropriate for Pentecost?

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The Rt. Rev. Larry R. Benfield was consecrated in 2007 as the 13th Bishop of Arkansas. He visits one of the state’s 55 congregations almost every Sunday. A native Tennessean, Bishop Benfield graduated magna cum laude with a degree in agricultural economics from the University of Tennessee; he then proceeded to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania to earn his MBA. After working in commercial banking in Houston, TX, he entered Virginia Theological Seminary, where he received his Master of Divinity degree in 1990. Ordained as a deacon and then a priest in Texas, Benfield served Texas A&M University as its Episcopal chaplain. (1990-1992). In 1992, Father Benfield went to Hot Springs, Arkansas as curate and then interim rector at St. Mark’s Church. In 1996, he assumed the same role at St. Luke’s, also in Hot Springs. He worked at the Diocese of Arkansas Office as executive of planned giving and then as Canon for

administration. Christ Church in Little Rock called Father Larry as its rector in 2001; he redeveloped that historic downtown congregation that traces its roots to 1839. Bishop Benfield remains in that position while also serving as Bishop of the Diocese. He currently serves as a member of the board of the Anglican Theological Review and as chair of the General Board of Examining Chaplains of the Episcopal Church.

Pentecost: A Lesson in Active Listening A Sermon Preached on June 4th, 2017,

Pentecost Sunday At Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock©

by the Rt. Rev. Larry Benfield, Bishop of Arkansas

In a sermon years ago during Advent, I

told a congregation that we need not be so purely Protestant1 that we forget the power of image as an aid to evangelism. So, for Advent, I wanted a powerful symbol for chasuble and altar frontals: a bulldozer. That’s right: a big, yellow bulldozer, representing the coming in judgment of all of God’s power to change the face of the earth, lowering mountains and filling in valleys, making the way level, bringing an equality to all humans regardless of whether they grew up on the safe hills overlooking towns or in flood-prone lowlands. If there is one thing the church can easily do, it is to remind us through liturgy and symbol of our call to reconcile one human being to another.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, a principal feast in the life of the church that may also be crying out for even wider ways that we see liturgical symbols in an age in which the idea of evangelism is so fundamentally changing. For example, we no longer see it as our goal to go evangelize the unchurched so that we can help them become more like us. That sort of evangelism, for example, led to the subjugation of Native-Americans in our own country and the destruction of their cultures. And I want us to be able to see the fire of Pentecost day as more than just flames. Subconsciously, flames can play into

a narrative of destruction, because fire destroys, and we have destroyed much. Even our sense of fire as purifying agent has resulted in modern purity codes, which have kept so many people away from Christianity’s Holy Tables. We need to be focusing on real issues of everyday hurt.

But I do know that something holy and vital for today’s church is going on in the lesson from the Book of Acts. The amazement and astonishment on Pentecost arise when people listen to the many and varied voices. Not tongues of fire, but honest to goodness tongues. Perhaps it is time to look at the outlines of fire on the altar frontal as also representing an oscillogram of sound wave, a reminder for us to listen.

I have just returned from a meeting of the House of Bishops theology committee. We had not met in over a year, and as you know, a lot has occurred in this nation in the last twelve months. We were trying to determine exactly what the church can do to help overcome the tension that exists even inside congregations over political loyalties. How can the church address the selfishness of our actions? And then there is the environmental struggle to care for creation, and more broadly, the isolation that results when the only voices we hear are chosen for us by unseen algorithms designed to reinforce what we already believe. Everything I read or listen to mirrors my worldview, and there is something unholy about that fact. What we know is that right now we are in a world of hurt. This world is broken and sin filled. I think the anxiety that almost everyone feels every day is proof enough of the reality of that statement.

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The story of Pentecost gives us a chance to change the status quo. The change can come from the admission that it is amazing and astonishing, to use the words of the writer of the Book of Acts, to listen, to open one’s ears to new voices [Acts 2:7]. Good news comes from listening as much as from talking. That is certainly a change from how we have looked at evangelism.

Pentecost is as good a day as any to talk about the mission of the church. After all, we like to say, somewhat truthfully, that the church was born on this day. Any entity needs a mission, or it will soon die. Our mission is no less than the reconciliation of God with humanity and human being with human being. Authentic reconciliation can become reality when we listen, when we converse, when we engage.

When our theology committee started taking a close look at what it means for the body of Christ—and its members—to use the body’s ears to listen, we realized that it is not something that we can do while sitting in church buildings. Churches are fairly quiet places. Come here any weekday and experience the silence. Rather, listening and conversation and engagement take place when the church gets out of its buildings and puts its ear to the ground for a real Pentecost experience. Hear the multiplicity of languages, hear the stories of people who disagree with us, hear the stories of the least and the last who have never been in this room, even hear the story of the earth itself as a creation—and the earth’s varied peoples—that continues to groan under our poor stewardship [e.g., see the essay on “God’s Grandeur” in this issue].

Active listening will be painful, but if we can so talk about tongues of fire coming down on people, which seems rather painful to me, then we can push through the experience of the pain of listening to stories that make us uncomfortable about our own complicity in the evils—both small and large—that make up so much of life.

This is holy pain, and such holy pain can lead to repentance, and repentance—not simply an apology, but a turning around to a new way to live—starts to make real the hope that we

Christians have that ultimately, we will be reconciled to one another and in that process be reconciled to God.

The church that is born on Pentecost is not about having as its primary focus bringing more people into its buildings in order to make them like us. If anything, people coming into our buildings ought to teach us a few things about what the world is really like. The church that is born on Pentecost is about good news, and good news first and foremost must be presented to people who feel that they have no good news in their lives, whether because of skin color or lack of opportunity or ill health or broken relationships or crushing debt or any accident of birth. We who are inside this church sometimes will find ourselves in one of those groups. And thus, we need to listen to each other.

And for all those people outside the church, we have to go stand beside them and listen to their stories and talk with them and engage them so that good news breaks forth even in the midst of a broken and sinful world. It is then that the kingdom of God becomes current reality.

On this Pentecost listen to the writer of the Book of Acts when he tells us that it is amazing and astonishing when we hear the Medes and Elamites and Pamphylians2 of the 21st century. Whose voices are they? That is exactly why Holy Scripture is still holy; it is still speaking to us right now; the Pentecost story being lived out today.

Whose voices, whose languages, will we hear? If we want to experience the good news, then listen to what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. And when we listen, we will be well on our way to finding eternal life. Amen.

Endnotes 1 The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation (1560-1700) against the spread of Protestantism famously used art to revitalize that Church. See Bernini’s altar piece, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, on p. 21, for example. Prominent Counter-Reformation painters include Caravaggio and Titian, whose paintings hung in churches and cathedrals. Contrarily, Protestant Churches were historically austere inside. 2 Medes and Elamites were early Persians (Iranians); Pamphylians were ancient Greeks.

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The Rev. Timothy E. Schenck, Rector of the Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist in Higham, Massachusetts, on the south shore of Boston, came to the editor’s attention by his being the founder of the inspiringly clever and literally saintly online alternative to basketball’s March Madness, Lent Madness, described as “a unique, engaging Christian formation experience. Lent Madness has been featured in such media outlets as USA TODAY, the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, network television, and National Public Radio.” A graduate of Tufts University, Father Tim worked on political campaigns and as the Public Affairs Officer for an Army Reserve Unit in Baltimore after being trained as an Armor Officer and paratrooper. At Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (Episcopal) in Evanston, IL, he was Student Body President. Ordained in 2000, he has been rector of St. John the Evangelist since 2009. Father Tim’s blog is Clergy Confidential, and he writes a

monthly syndicated column, “In Good Faith.” A runner, guitarist, and patron of Higham coffee shops, he enjoys spending time with his wife Bryna, two teen-age sons, as well as their dog and ferret. Father Tim is the author of four books, including Father Tim’s Church Survival Guide (Morehouse, 2015) and most recently Holy Grounds: The Surprising Connection between Coffee and Faith—From Dancing Goats to Satan’s Drink (Fortress Press, 2019). Biographical information about Father Tim is from his blog and his church’s website.

Leap of Faith by The Rev. Timothy E. Schenck

A Sermon Preached on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost,

July 29th 2012

There is some really bad Pentecost clip art out there. I know, because after seeing someone post what looked like a flaming pigeon on Facebook and Google, I did a little poking around.

Now in fairness, the Holy Spirit is hard to conceptualize. Traditional imagery includes flames, as we heard in our reading from Acts, that “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among the disciples.” Wind roared, as in “from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.” A dove appeared, as when Jesus is baptized and we hear that “the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove.” So, wind, fire, dove: kind of like Earth, Wind, and Fire, but different. All of these are metaphors, of course, as we hear the Spirit described “as of fire,” “like a violent wind,” and “like a dove.” If teachers were allowed to talk about the Holy Spirit in a middle school English class, this would be a textbook lesson on the use of the simile. [Ed. note: For those who were absent from English class the day the teacher taught figures of speech, a simile is a figure of speech that compares two dissimilar things using the word “like” or “as.”] So, the Spirit is tough to pin down both as an image and as a concept. You can’t hold onto or grab ahold of wind or flame, and neither can you control them. I guess you could theoretically grab a dove, but I think you get the point. If there was ever a strong reminder that we’re not actually in control of the things that happen in our lives, the Holy Spirit is Exhibit A. The Holy Spirit blows where it will. It can churn things up inside; it can knock you off your feet; it can

blow the lid off our preconceived notions; it can challenge us with new ideas whether or not we’re ready for them. An encounter with the Spirit in your life isn’t always a comfortable experience, but I find that once we stop resisting, once we stop fighting a battle we can never win, we’re often left with that elusive sense of peace that surpasses all human understanding. And we can start living again.

I’ve been thinking about my own personal metaphor for the Holy Spirit of late, and I keep coming back to an experience I had about 30 years ago. One August I found myself at Fort Benning, Georgia, having volunteered to go to Airborne School to be trained as a paratrooper. I was an Army ROTC cadet at the time and afraid of heights, so naturally I decided I needed to jump out of an airplane.

The “friendly” instructors stress two things over the first couple of weeks of ground training before you make your five jumps to qualify for your Airborne Wings: how to exit the aircraft and how to land. Since it’s the equivalent of jumping off a ten-foot wall, you spend a lot of time learning how to land. And it’s painful. But I want to focus on the other piece of this — learning how to properly jump out the door. There’s a training apparatus / torture device called the 34-foot tower. Why 34 feet? Because Army engineers determined that this was the precise height where fear was maximized — you’re not so high up that everything on the ground looks fake, and you’re not so low that it looks safe. Now, it doesn’t help that these wooden towers were built during World War II, and they kind of sway back and forth as you climb up the rickety stairs with a bunch of other nervous soldiers.

When it’s your turn, you get hooked up to a harness and free fall about four feet before your line catches and yanks you back down on a zip line. Chin

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down, eyes open, feet and knees together, count to four. Each exit gets evaluated by one of the instructors, and you have to do it properly three times in a row before you “pass” that portion of the training, which generally ends up taking a few days. Anyway, when you’re actually up in the airplane and standing in the door, it’s loud; it’s windy; it’s unnerving, and then suddenly the green light goes on, and you leap out into what feels like the abyss. We were taught to leap out rather than to just fall out to make sure your lines don’t get caught in the big propellers of that massive C-130. That would not end well. And in those four long seconds before your parachute deploys, you feel like a rag doll caught in a tornado (that’s another simile for those keeping score).

And to me that is precisely what it feels like when the Holy Spirit grabs ahold of you. Sometimes it takes you where you’d rather not go; sometimes it completely disorients you; sometimes its sheer force overwhelms you; sometimes it makes you feel utterly powerless.

So how is the Spirit working in your own life? It may be urging you to take a new career path or join a ministry at church that might be out of your comfort zone or pursue a passion you’ve neglected or reach out to an estranged friend or family member. Sometimes the Spirit moves like that violent wind, but sometimes it’s more of a gentle breeze. But how do you know if it’s the Holy Spirit or something of your own invention? Something you’ve made up out of thin air? A reflection of your own desires rather than God’s? That’s where listening, and discernment, and testing come in. First, we can’t listen unless we make room for some intentional silence in our lives. Second, we need to have conversations with wise friends or counselors. Third, we need to try things out. If it’s not truly of the Spirit, God will let you know. And if it is, I guarantee that

powerful feeling of discombobulation will yield to an overwhelming sense of peace.

After you leap out into that violent rush of wind known as the prop blast, and you’ve gotten separation from the airplane, and your chute opens up, the contrasting silence and peacefulness of the descent is remarkable. It’s just like what happens after the Holy Spirit knocks you down, and you suddenly find yourself exactly where you need to be doing exactly what you need to be doing. You enter into that sense of peace and let it wash over you and know that Jesus is with you.

Now, the ground starts to come up awfully quick, so you can’t stay in this state of reverie for very long. The whole point of military jumps is to get as many people onto the ground in as short a time as possible, so you’re only in the air for about a minute before reality starts to rapidly rise up to meet you.

The Holy Spirit isn’t just about some individual personal spiritual experience. We take the experience and hit the ground running— sharing our faith with others; opening our hearts to one another in Jesus’ name; becoming part of a faith community that acts as Jesus’ own hands and heart here on earth. And so, on this day we say, whether we’re ready or not, “Come, Holy Spirit, Come.”

Re Lent Madness: Many of us at Grace and St.

Stephen’s enjoyed and learned a lot about The

Church’s Calendar of Saints by playing Lent

Madness during Lent 2019. Lent Madness began in

2010 as Father Tim’s “brainchild.” Learn about

Lent Madness at the following site:

https://www.lentmadness.org/bracket/

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Rev. Rainey Dankel served as Associate Rector of Boston’s historic Trinity Church until retiring in March

2019. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and was ordained priest in 2011. Her

previous careers included teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and working

in municipal administration, including ten years as Assistant City Manager, and seven years as General

Manager of WHQR, NPR’s classical music station in southeastern North Carolina. Rainey was a vocational deacon—an ordained person with a special call to care for those in need— for ten years, discerning a call to

priesthood after the death of her husband in 2005. The Journal editor gives great thanks to Patricia Hurley,

Trinity Church’s Director of Communications, for help above and beyond the call of duty in contacting Rev.

Dankel and photographing the John La Farge Nicodemus mural for us.

Praying in the Trinity

A Sermon Preached on Trinity Sunday, May 17th

2018

by The Rev. Rainey Dankel,

Trinity Church, Boston

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17 John 3:1-17

“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit

bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Romans 8:15b-16). “Very truly I tell you, no one

can see the kingdom of God without being born from

above” (John 3:3).

In the mid-1600’s, the English Parliament, under

the control of the Puritans, created a group called the

Westminster Assembly and tasked them with providing documents for the reform of the Church of England. It

took almost five years for the Assembly to complete its

work, as there was much debate over each point of

doctrine, worship, and polity. In preparing the catechisms (which have a question and answer format),

there was particular difficulty in writing an answer to the

fundamental question, “Who is God?” After hours of exhausting debate, it is said that the participants decided

to take a break from writing and turn to prayer. One of

the men stood up and began to pray, “O God, Thou who art a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in Thy

wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and

truth….”1. By the time the prayer was over, they had the

makings of a beautiful answer. When they moved from a theoretical exercise to an experience of worship, their

hearts were opened.

Today is Trinity Sunday, always observed on the Sunday following Pentecost. It is the time when the

Church celebrates the revelation of God as Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, a fundamental expression of Christian faith as we have received it. And for us, whose parish

bears the name of Trinity, today is the equivalent of our

patronal feast. It is especially tempting, therefore, for the

preacher on Trinity Sunday to offer words of explanation about the doctrine of the Trinity, the affirmation of one

God known in three “persons” as Father, Son and Holy

Spirit. You have undoubtedly heard many of these. We try analogies like ice, liquid, and vapor as the three states

of water to affirm unity and diversity. Or the three-leaf

clover or intersecting circles. I once attended a service where the preacher lobbed Three Musketeers candy bars

into the congregation shouting, “All for one and one for

all.” Relax, no such demonstrations here! Instead, I am going to take my cue from the

Westminster Divines, and point us away from an

intellectual exercise. The New Testament does not use the term “Trinity.” The three-part formula of Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit occurs only a few times, and it is

primarily a liturgical expression: in Matthew we are

twice commanded to baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians it is a benediction:

“The blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . .”

This suggests that we experience God as Trinity through the poetic language of worship rather than discursive

argument.

The Scripture readings for today invite us to make this move, to understand the unfolding revelation

of God through the eyes of the heart more than the

words in our head. And it seems especially appropriate

for us worshipers at Trinity to experience this revelation through prayerful worship rather than an analysis. (This

reminds me of the tired joke about some kinds of

Christians who expect when they die, not that they will go to heaven or hell, but they will go to a lecture on

heaven and hell.)

In today’s Gospel reading from John, we

encounter the figure of Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a leader in the Jewish community, who comes by night to talk

with Jesus. He wants to know more about this rabbi

whose deeds mark him as one sent by God. He is prepared for an intellectual discussion. But Jesus

immediately moves in a different direction: “No one can

see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus is perplexed at this unexpected turn.

He keeps trying to understand as Jesus repeats the

mysterious symbolic language. Nicodemus thinks he has

come to this man for personal edification. Jesus takes the discussion to a cosmic level: God has come to the world

out of love, not to argue with, but to save us.

Perhaps we are irritated with Jesus. Here is a chance for him to engage with an educated, curious

person, who seems genuinely interested in learning

about Jesus. What comes back seems unpastoral, even

disrespectful. When Nicodemus is confused, Jesus says, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not

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understand these things?” (John 3:10). Jesus is not engaging in an intellectual exercise. An encounter with

Jesus is not a lecture on heaven and hell. It is an

opportunity to encounter the transformative power of

God, the Spirit wind that blows where it will, whose source is shrouded in mystery. This encounter is so

dramatic, so life-changing that it can only be understood

with the metaphor of a second birth. Just when we are feeling dismissed or

discouraged, Jesus turns the attention to himself, as the

One sent by God to embody this transformation. Jesus has been sent to be lifted up (John’s standard language

pointing to crucifixion) to draw the world to himself, so

that all might be reconciled. Jesus concludes this

discourse with some of the most beloved words in Scripture: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only

son, so that everyone who believes in him may not

perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). God has chosen to identify completely with this

messy world, this world of darkness, in which we

stumble around and try to find our way. This world where violence, greed, and hopelessness seem to be the

dominant powers. Where we long to know that we are

beloved of God, despite the ways we fail to live into that

love. Like Nicodemus, we want to know; we want an explanation. With Nicodemus, we encounter one who

says, “I want more than your mind. I want your whole

self. Because I am offering you a different way of life. It is costly, because it is infinitely valuable.” The Spirit

whom Jesus offers, the one he has called the Counsellor,

is his continuing presence, assuring us of God’s love and

challenging us to live into that transforming power. Our reading today from Romans continues this

call to transformation. Paul uses a familiar image of

being children of God, a welcome that is extended to us through the Spirit: “For all who are led by the Spirit of

God are children of God.” And how does this happen? It

is through the radical action of God: we are adopted by God. This is not the result of our merit, our own

struggling to be good, but out of the depths of God’s

great love for us. It is symbolized as we use the words

Jesus taught us: “Our Father!” Abba! Father! We acknowledge our dependence on the source of our life.

We are called into a new relationship with God: as

Father, Savior, and Spirit of Love. We open our hearts to God, and we discover that we belong to God as beloved

children.

The Spirit who makes us God’s children is the Spirit revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who has

taught us to call God Father, Mother, the loving Creator

of our life. Jesus, who throws himself on the ground in

the dark of Gethsemane, to pray to Abba for the strength and fortitude to continue the fight. Jesus who assures his

followers that they will receive the gift of new life on the

other side of suffering, through the Spirit that the Father sends to them. The Spirit of God empowers us to reject

the life of fear and move confidently into the future to which God calls us.

Nicodemus doesn’t say anything further in his

encounter with Jesus, so we don’t know how he reacts.

We see him only two more times in John’s gospel (the only book that mentions him). In chapter 7, when the

Jewish leaders (the Sanhedrin) are talking about

arresting Jesus, Nicodemus disagrees, pointing out that Jesus has not received a fair hearing. The last time we

see Nicodemus, he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to

ask Pilate for Jesus’ body, bringing expensive spices to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.

The one who had come to Jesus in the dark has

now shown himself publicly to be one who knows and

cares for Jesus. Perhaps this is a sign of the new birth that Jesus offers, turning to a new way that leaves the

darkness of fear and moves into the light of love. It

seems that Nicodemus is being born “from above,” as Jesus said. The Spirit of God is blowing into his heart,

giving him new courage and a new direction.

I love that we read this story on Trinity Sunday. And I love that the figure of Nicodemus greets us each

Sunday as we come here. One of the two murals we see

as we enter the nave of the church shows Nicodemus in

his encounter with Jesus. It’s on the south wall, in the shadows as it faces

north. I don’t know if

this was an intentional connection to the

lectionary for Trinity

Sunday on the part of the

designers. It certainly speaks of the welcome

that Jesus offers, an

invitation to encounter the new life that he

promises us.

For us, as for Nicodemus, it is an invitation to discover God’s great love for us. To take us beyond fear

of condemnation into the warmth of transforming love.

To assure us of God’s never-failing care for us. To

challenge us to come out of the shadows and to stand bravely in the light of that love, to work against

oppression and hopelessness, to be willing to be

transformed more and more into the likeness of the one who offers us this gift. To find ourselves as brothers and

sisters in Christ, mirroring the intimacy of Jesus’

relationship with God as the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we come into this place, to pray “Abba,

Father!” may we discover ourselves as newly born

children of God, brought into relationship with Christ and with each other. May we find ourselves renewed by

the Spirit that helps us in our weakness and in our

confusion. May we find ourselves transformed by the power of Christ’s love that enables us to share the gifts

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we have received, so that the world may see what this new life means. May everything that we experience in

this place speak to us, and to all who enter here, that

“God so loves the world.”

Endnote 1 See The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Answer to Question 4: What is God?” [https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/westminster-shorter-catechism/ Retrieved April 28, 2019.] Many sources recount the anecdote about the incident at the Westminster Assembly; see for example A.W. Tozer, The Cost of Spiritual Maturity. Moody Publishers: 2006. David James Burrell. The Laughter of God and Other Sermons. NY: Fleming-Revell, 1918: 168.

Ordinary Time: The Green Season by Jeremiah Williamson,

Rector

For me Ordinary Time is always awash in vibrant greens. And it’s not just the beautiful vestments that I wear throughout the season; it’s not just the green that hangs from the pulpit like a conquest flag

reminding Eastertide that the fifty days have once again been exhausted. Green is the color that I see in my memory when I think about summer, the season that always nestles itself into the wide expanse of the Church time we call Ordinary.

It’s the green rolling hills of eastern Ohio. The hills I rolled down as a child, from my grandparents’ farmhouse to the ditch that was like a moat between yard and rocky road. And my grandfather pushing the lawn mower over the green grass for what felt like hours. And the pond, thick with frogs and cattails and slime.

And I would stand by the pond and look out over the valley. A lush valley turned green by the water that spilled over the banks of the

creek that cut through the field and sustained the deer that hid among the wild briars. And of course, the sun that I imagine is much brighter now in my mind than it ever was in my eyes.

And I know there was time—that time existed back in those days. But I guess it was less in control. There was always some kind of freedom in the green of summer. For three months, life was not ordered by alarm clocks or by school bells. Instead it felt more primal: life ordered by sun and moon and sometimes by rain. It was as if for this short period of time, each year, God ordered our days. And it was good. And always green.

And now I am older. And my alarm clock sounds even on summer days. And so that has changed, as everything does. Everything except the picture in my head: the green of Ordinary Time.

This year, once again, I will wander through the season, dreaming of green frogs in green pond slime. I will think of those vibrant summers when God ordered my days. And I will be reminded that that is the meaning of Ordinary Time. And I will say a prayer, a prayer laced with memory and hope. And all will be good. And always green.

“The green frog is the most abundant and widely distributed frog in Ohio.”

To the left is an image of the Northern Leopard Frog found in Ohio. Image and information from https://trekohio.com/2012/03/17/ohio-frogs-toads/

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The Rev. Denise Vaughn became the fourth rector of The Episcopal Church of the

Annunciation, Vidalia, GA, in 2015. A 1976-graduate of the University of South Florida

with a B.A. in Political Science, she entered Deacons’ Training in the Diocese of Southwest

Florida in 1995. Ordained a vocational deacon in 1997, Vaughn served three congregations

in Charlotte County, Florida, until 2005. Her ministry included recruiting and leading groups

to cook and serve at the local Homeless Coalition and leading youth groups to participate in

the Guadalupe Center in Immokalee, FL. She also received training and led groups in a bereavement care ministry called “Walking the Mourners’ Path.” As a deacon, Vaughn

coordinated, recruited, and led parishioners on short-term missionary teams to the

Dominican Republic. She served her Diocese in many ways, including as a member of the

Commission on Liturgy and Music and as Chair of the Companion Diocese Commission. In

2008, Vaughn received a Master of Divinity from The Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest

in Austin, Texas. Upon graduating, she was ordained to the priesthood and accepted a call as priest in charge of outreach and pastoral

care for the more than 1000-member Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin, Texas. From 2010 until November 2015, she

served as the Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Chillicothe, Missouri. Denise has two brothers, a daughter and four grandchildren

in South Carolina.

2 Corinthians 4:5-12 We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for

Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be

made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but

not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live,

we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So

death is at work in us, but life in you. Mark 2:23-3:6 One sabbath Jesus and his disciples were going through the grain

fields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and

his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate

the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord

even of the sabbath.” Again, he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him

to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the

withered hand, “Come forward.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said

to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and

immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

The Not So “Ordinary” Time

A Sermon Preached on June 3rd

, 2018

by The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn, Rector

Annunciation Episcopal Church, Vidalia, GA

Last Sunday, we began the long Season after Pentecost, which many refer to as “Ordinary Time.” Not

to say that this time will be boring or uneventful as the

meaning of ordinary might imply. It just refers to the Sundays after Pentecost Sunday by ordinal numbers 1-

33. This year the Sundays number 1-27. [In 2019, the

numbers go from 1 to 24.] Today is the Second Sunday after Pentecost. Our task for the months ahead in this

season, which extends to the end of November, is

anything but ordinary. Our task is to look at what Jesus

taught his disciples and see what is in these teachings for us as we seek to carry out the work of the gospel today.

Jesus promised his disciples a helper, the Holy Spirit,

who would stand with them making their work possible.

This same helper, the Holy Spirit, stands with us today

to help and guide us in carrying out the work of Christ. These weeks for the church in the northern

hemisphere are connected with growth and fruitfulness

in the Christian life. We come to understand that through

our “ordinary” lives we live out our Christian faith. From the beginning, the church founded at Pentecost had

to grow in its understanding and it had to take in—

assimilate—and continue the life and work of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, while actively

anticipating his second coming. We, too, must do these

same things. Joan Chittister, O.S.B., well known author and

theologian, writes, “Each Sunday, remember, is a feast, a

little Easter in its own right. . . . Each [Sunday]. A

return to the core of the faith, the center of the church, the call of the Christian community that ‘Jesus is risen.’

Week after week we go back to the center of the system,

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not because there is some unusual event going on but precisely because this is normal to the faith.”1 The

resurrected life of Christ pours into his church! Through

the scriptures of Ordinary Time, we are led “along the

path of salvation history,” which makes us part of the crowds who follow Jesus from one situation to another.

Week in and week out, we enter more deeply into the

resurrected Christ and gain understanding of his life and ministry.

So, let us begin this season by becoming a part

of the crowd that follows Jesus during these 27 weeks of “ordinary time,” and let us see what is in the teaching

today that Jesus would have for us to help us live out our

Christian faith. In this section of Mark’s gospel, Mark is

using a series of stories to show the way in which Jesus begins to perplex the Jewish religious leaders and also to

demonstrate the beginnings of opposition to Jesus and

his ministry that will only grow in time. The religious leaders assume that they know all about Sabbath

observance and that assumption reveals their pride and

arrogance. They know the details of the law, but have forgotten the One who gives it.

When I was growing up, the observance of

Sabbath was a day when most everyone I knew went to

church and the whole American culture shut down. It was a day for being, not doing, and that was part of the

gift of the day called Sunday. Although for the Christian,

Sunday is our Sabbath, not Saturday as it is for the Jews, our whole culture inherited its understanding of the

Sabbath from Judaism. The way we spent our Sundays

when I was growing up, was very similar to how good

Jews had kept the Sabbath for several thousand years. Within Judaism the Sabbath teachings were central. A

good Jew kept the Sabbath as a way of honoring God, as

a way of remembering God, as a way of renewing the human side of the God-human covenant. Rituals,

prayers, and songs expressed the teachings and

spirituality of Judaism. All the gospels say that Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath.

Today if the Sabbath, Sunday, is to be a holy

day of worship and rest, we need to make that a priority.

We have forgotten, me included, how to keep the Sabbath. And in a way this is what Jesus is saying and

doing when he concludes his incident with the Pharisees

by saying, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” Yet, keeping the

Sabbath in Jesus’ day was not easy either because it was

governed by many laws. No one was supposed to do any work, no cooking or selling, and a Jew could get into

trouble with the religious authorities if he or she were to

break any of the Sabbath laws. This included a law that

said you were not to help anyone in need. On this particular Sabbath, Jesus breaks the laws of the Sabbath

by allowing his disciples to pluck heads of grain to feed

themselves, and then he heals and restores a man’s deformed hand. Jesus obviously sees these actions as

part of keeping the Sabbath. They are hungry. They are being fed. Someone needed a cure. So that person is

cured.

We see Jesus breaking the Sabbath over and

over because the keeping of the Sabbath laws needed to be changed to take into account human need, human

hunger, to include what matters to humankind and to

God. This highly symbolic story sets the stage and tone for much of what Jesus’ ministry is all about. He is not

recommending that the secularized weekend replace the

religious and cultural observances of Judaism. Jesus is not telling his disciples not to keep the Sabbath, nor is he

diminishing the importance of the Sabbath, or

recommending it be abolished. He is allowing it to be

humanized. He knows that on the Sabbath people need to be fed, with physical and spiritual food. The laws

need to be broadened to accommodate human hunger.

We are hungry and in need of many things. We need food, water, and shelter, and we also need God’s love

and presence. We need regular contact with God and

God’s people in community. And that is the reason we come together each

week to share the meal of God we call the Eucharist,

which has very few rules that govern it. We do need

clergy and baptized people, some prayers, bread, and wine. We don’t necessarily have to dress up, but we do

have to be here to be fed. After we are fed, the Spirit of

God continues its work in us. When laws fail to take into account human need, or violate compassion and respect

for all human life, Jesus gives us a model of change.

And disciples continue to break laws in his name. Being

a Christian in today’s world is not easy. Living into the Sabbath takes discipline and courage, as we resist the

pressures to conform to the world. But as we are fed,

week after week, by God’s Word and Sacrament, by God’s people in love and friendship, we find keeping the

Sabbath is what we know we need in order to live.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us words of encouragement for our journey as we

are reminded that God acts in ways that do not fit into

the world’s criteria, and this is what Jesus is reminding

us, that the Sabbath is made for us as a gift for living our lives with each other and with God because the world

gets more and more frantic every day. Let us remember

in these “Ordinary Days” the importance of keeping the Sabbath, as a time for being, a time made holy to receive

and be fed, to reflect and learn what Christ would have

us understand about his life and ministry. Then send us out Holy Spirit to do the work we have been called to

do. Amen.

Endnote 1 Joan Chittister and Phyllis Tickle, The Liturgical Year: The

Spiraling Adventures of the Spiritual Life. Nashville: Thomas

Nelson, 2009:185.

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Although she is an ordained Pastor in the United Methodist Church, Jen has spent a lot of time in Episcopal Churches with her husband, our rector, Father Jeremiah, whom she met at Drew Theological School, Drew University in Madison NJ. The Theological School was founded in 1867 “to provide organized theological education for

Methodist Episcopal Church ministers” (http://www.drew.edu/theological-school/about/ Retrieved May 14, 2019).

The Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

by Pastor Jen Williamson, Youth Minister

It is an ordinary room, with ordinary chairs

that we arrange around an ordinary table. We bring bottles of water, sweaters, purses: the things that meet our ordinary needs. It takes about 15 minutes before we start, as we all come from our ordinary days filled with meetings, jobs, school pick-ups, errands, etc. We peel our children from our sides and entrust them to the care of kind and loving babysitters in the nursery, and then we begin.

It starts ordinarily enough: making small talk, silencing cell phones, breathing deeply. Our breathing opens our ordinary eyes, ears, and hearts to something more. After a brief silence someone offers a short devotion she has prepared. Then silence again and a simple/ordinary question, “How is it with your soul?” With that question in mind, we check in with one another. We share our triumphs, challenges, stressors, worries, fears, doubts, and joys from the previous month. We all share— except for one. We pause; we take deep breaths, and when the person who finally volunteered to share deeply is ready, she begins to talk.

It starts off with a few disclaimers: “I will probably ramble”; “I'm not sure where I am going with this”; “I don't know how much you want to hear”—as the rest of us silently nod with reassuring

smiles and postures that are both relaxed and anxious to hear. Then it begins. Sharing . . . deep sharing. Usually there are tears and laughs, questions and affirmations. No one walking into that ordinary room ever knows what will come, even the person speaking. When she finishes, we pause, breathe, and then reflect on what was shared. We ask ourselves: “Where does this person's story intersect with my story?” “Where do I see God in what this person has shared?” Then we reflect, affirm, question, and discuss out loud. Time is up more quickly than seems possible. We pull out our calendars and arrange our next meeting in one month.

Somehow in that ordinary space with ordinary breathing and ordinary words, the Holy Spirit enters, and we all leave knowing we have experienced something extraordinary. I began this spiritual direction group hoping/trusting that we would experience just that. I had been part of a group like this before: a group of all clergy women whose ordinary moments in an ordinary room have stayed with me years later. It helped me to grow, heal, and connect.

When I started this group at Grace, I invited people from the church to join by simply saying it is a spiritual direction group; it meets once per month; only 6-8 persons can be in it, and you have to commit to it for at least one year. People trusted me and showed up! As we approach summer and reflect on the seasons we have met, we all feel like we have found something valuable, needed, and special in our time together.

When I think of “Ordinary Time” in the liturgical calendar, I think about Jesus preaching, teaching, interacting, changing hearts, and speaking words of wisdom and hope that were so extraordinary that we are still hanging on to them thousands of years later. There is something really beautiful that can happen in the ordinary spaces of our ordinary lives when we allow the Holy Spirit to move among us and open our hearts to each other. Just like wine and bread becoming body and blood, water becoming grace, our time together as brothers and sisters in Christ becomes sacred and it is extraordinary.

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The Rev. Thomas A “Lonnie” Lacey was called to St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Tifton, GA in 2009, after serving concurrently as the Episcopal Chaplain at Georgia Southern University and the Assistant Rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Statesboro. He is a native of the Diocese of Georgia and was ordained to the priesthood in 2006 after graduating from the Virginia Theological Seminary. As Rector of St. Anne’s, his primary responsibilities are in the areas of preaching, worship, discipleship, and leadership development. Beyond St. Anne’s, he is a trainer for the Church Development Institute and Chair of the Examining Chaplains for the Diocese of Georgia. He and his wife Jay have two daughters.

Fear Not: A Sermon for Christ the King Sunday

by The Rev. Lonnie Lacy

Preached at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, Tifton, GA, on Christ the King Sunday,

November 25th, 2018

Today is what we in the Church call “Christ the King Sunday.” It’s the last Sunday of the Church year, and everything begins anew next week with the start of Advent.

But on this day—the bridge between what has been and what will be—we stop to remind one another that we are servants of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Before we are Tiftonians, before we are Georgians, before we are Americans, before we are Democrats or Republicans, before we are anything else . . . we are citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Who is this King of glory, and how shall we call him?

Well, anyone who has ever walked into this sanctuary cannot miss the fact that we at St. Anne’s consider Jesus Christ to be our King, for there he is, front-and-center: our Christus Rex, hand-carved by former member Travis Smith, crowned with glory and welcoming all with open arms.

When he’s like that— perfectly lit and robed in splendor—he ought to remind us of the One we see promised in the book of Daniel [2:44-45; 7:7-28; 9:24-27; 12:1-4], the One to whom all dominion, glory, and power are given, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

Or maybe we see the One described in Revelation, who comes with the clouds and declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” [Rev. 1:8. 22:13]

All of that is powerful, and right, and true, and we Christians look for the Day when that King will return in great power and triumph to judge the living and the dead.

But no matter how we picture him, this King of ours is not like any other king, and his power and triumph are not like the power or triumph that others in this world try to wield.

We already know this King, and he has shown himself to be like no other. In one month on Christmas Eve, we will remember that when we first found our newborn King, he was a poor peasant child, lying in a manger. A few months after that, we will look for him robed in glory, but instead we will find him naked, dying on a tree. No, when God sent His emissary— when God sent us our King—some would say we got less than we bargained for, but I would say we got more.

We wanted a Messiah, a warrior, a strongman, a demigod to wipe out all fear and subdue our enemies. But what we got was a Messiah who could barely speak before the court of Pontius Pilate.

This is our King. His power is not bluster. His triumph is not fear. Given the present unrest in our own country and the palpable turmoil in other nations across the globe, what we hear many people saying these days is, “We just want someone who will keep us safe. We need someone who will make us secure. We need someone who will protect us and keep us from fear.” Of course, this is nothing new.

For thousands and thousands of years, people have been looking to the horizon, searching high and low with their hearts and minds set to the quest of finding that one king who would set them free, keep them safe, and release them from all fear.

The difference is, you and I have already found him.

His strength is in weakness; his power is in love; his protection is in grace.

Our King is like no other. Some of you have heard me tell the story

before of a man named James Hampton. Hampton

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was a quiet, unassuming night janitor for a D.C. government building in the 1950’s. Every morning when he would leave his shift, he would head to this garage and work inside it for hours before returning home to sleep and begin the cycle again. He kept the garage locked at all times and worked in it for fourteen years. Then, in 1964, Hampton died of stomach cancer, and the owner of the garage decided to break the bolt and open the door.

Perhaps the landlord was hoping to find that Hampton had been working on a car or something valuable he could sell to recoup some of the back rent.

. So, imagine his surprise when he threw open the door and found a glittering throne surrounded by lecterns, stands, tables, crowns, tablets, and more: 180 pieces in all. James Hampton had been building a throne for the return of Christ, and he had been doing it out of aluminum foil, gold candy wrappers, cardboard, old light bulbs, air conditioning ducts, thumbtacks, pins, tape, and glue.

Out of the trash of our lives, James Hampton was making way for the Coming of our King.

In his 108-page loose-leaf notebook, he called it The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. To this day, it can be found on display in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.1

Here was a man who was downright “soul-possessed” by something larger than himself, grasped by the promise of a King who would not let him go. But as fearsome and fantastic as Hampton’s throne

was—and it was—the most telling part was the inscription emblazoned at the very top.

For a man so soul-possessed by the vision of Christ’s triumphant return, you’d think Hampton would have been filled with dread.

But there, rendered in foil just above the crest of the throne of the Almighty, Hampton had inscribed the two words that God’s angels and emissaries have declared to his people for thousands of years: “FEAR NOT.”

Who knows what was going on in James Hampton’s heart and head all those fourteen years? But in the end, he was right: our King is coming.

And when he does, he will sit on the throne of the trash of our lives—for what else do we have actually to offer him? —to rule in justice, mercy, and love as no other king ever has.

Brothers and sisters, on this day and every day, we are citizens of the Kingdom, and we belong to the King.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

In the meantime, be not afraid.

Amen.

Endnote 1 I first learned of this piece through Thorne, Jesse. “Big Boi & Catherine O’Hara.” Podcast. Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. MaximumFun, 19 May 2015. Below: James Hampton’s “Fear Not” is now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art

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GSS parishioner David Margiotta, a lector and intercessor at the 8am

service, which he attends with his wife Cynthia, is a retired United Methodist Pastor. Currently a clinical psychologist at The Colorado Mental Health Institute,

Pueblo, he earned his BA in Psychology from The State University of NY at

Albany, Master of Divinity from The Iliff School of Theology (Denver), and Doctor of Psychology at The Colorado School of Professional Psychology. David

served as Senior Pastor at Calvary United Methodist Church and Associate Pastor

at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, both in Colorado Springs, and Pastor of First United Methodist Church in Gillette, WY. David’s other professional

positions include being a Chaplain Counselor at Pikes Peak Hospice and Pastoral

Counselor at Samaritan Counseling Center. When he shared his Methodist history

with me, I immediately asked him to consider sharing it with all of us in the journal. Methodism in the US dates back to 1736 when brothers John and Charles

Wesley came to the colonies to spread the movement they began as students at

Oxford University. Both Wesleys had been ordained in the Church of England. Charles Wesley experienced a conversion on May 21, 1738; John experienced his three days later. Their conversions were part of The Great Awakening or

Evangelical Revival that swept through England and the thirteen colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, a movement that

stressed individual piety and religious devotion. John Wesley was famous for his sermons. Charles Wesley composed

over 5500 hymns. Twenty of these hymns appear in The Hymnal (1982) we use. Thanks to parishioner / photographer John Stevenson for photographing David as he serves as the Intercessor at the 8 am service on May 5.

The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. 4 vols. London: Charles H. Kelley, 1827: I, 97, ed. boldface [May 14 [24], 1738] “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a

society in Aldersgate Street [London], where one was reading Luther’s preface to the

Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me

that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and

death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now

first felt in my heart.” According to James Kiefer, a prominent writer of Christian

biographies, John Wesley (1703-1791) was a “powerful preacher, [who] averaged 8,000 miles of travel a year, mostly on horseback. At the time of his death he was probably

the best known and best loved man in England” (http://satucket.com/lectionary/Wesley.htm Retrieved April 24, 2019).

The Methodist Church “celebrates Aldersgate Day on Sunday, May 24th (or the Sunday closest), to commemorate the day in 1738 when John Wesley experienced assurance of his salvation” (http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/what-is-

aldersgate-day Retrieved April 24, 2019).

A “Heart Strangely Warmed”:

A Retired United Methodist Pastor Discusses his

Attraction to the Episcopal Church

by David Margiotta,

GSS Parishioner

The Book of Common Prayer “Calendar”

commemorates the brothers John and Charles

Wesley on March 3 (21). As you might recall, the

Wesleys initiated a movement to refresh the life and

mission of the Church of England in the 18th

century. The participants in this movement were

called Methodists, even while retaining their

membership in the Anglican Church. Like the

influence of other charismatic leaders in

Protestantism, such as Martin Luther and John

Calvin, John Wesley, through his sermons and his

exceptional ability to organize people in groups,

accompanied by Charles’ hymns, resulted in a

further fracturing of the Church and the formation

of what would eventually become a family of new

denominations. Despite these unintended

consequences, John and Charles remained faithful

sons (and priests) of the Church of England until

their deaths.

I was baptized, confirmed, ordained, and

served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church

(UMC). Some years ago, I retired from pastoral

ministry. These days my ministry is that of a

clinical psychologist working with the mentally ill

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involved in the criminal justice system. It is here at

Grace and St. Stephen’s that my spirit is nourished

and renewed. When Joan Ray asked me to consider

writing an article for the Seasonal Journal about

why I, as a clergyman in the UMC, am now active

in an Episcopalian congregation, it was not difficult

to think of a plethora of reasons. But I will confine

my reflections to just one central reason.

When I was active in ordained ministry, I

would often describe myself as an “Anglo-Catholic

Methodist”. Of course, this was not an official wing

or movement in the church. It did and still does,

however, express my lifelong appreciation of the

liturgical, sacramental, contemplative Catholic and

Anglican traditions, as well as the social concern

and devotional spirit of Methodism’s “warmed

heart.”

Like many individuals at our church, I was

exposed to more than one church in my youth.

There were the spirited hymns and Sunday School

songs ringing out from the white clapboard

Methodist church nestled in the woods beside the

brook in the suburbs not too distant from New York

City. And closer to downtown were the vaulted

arches and haunting cadences of the Roman mass at

St. Mary’s. In ways that I do not fully understand,

but which I do appreciate, the gifts of both

communities came to reside in me.

For me, the heart of the Christian life is the

Eucharist. The bread and wine nourish our hearts

and shape our lives in the image of Christ. I pay

particular attention to my heart because I live with a

mild heart condition. My daily round of medications

keeps it working well. But once a week I care for

my heart by receiving what the early church called

“the medicine of immortality,” the Eucharist.1

Through the liturgy and the sacrament, all of

our hearts are steadied, renewed, and prepared for

the week ahead, which Christ invites us to live with

trust and compassion.

The centrality of the Eucharist was strongly

emphasized by the Wesleys. Charles wrote over 150

Eucharistic hymns. John, in his address to his

students at Oxford, The Duty of Constant

Communion, asserted:

Let everyone, therefore, who has

either any desire to please God, or

any love of his soul, obey God, and

consult the good of his own soul by

communicating every time he can—

like the first Christians, with whom

the Christian sacrifice was a constant

part of the Lord’s day service. And

for several centuries they received it

almost every day. . . . Accordingly,

those that joined in the prayers of the

faithful never failed to partake of the

blessed sacrament.2

As conceived by Wesley, Methodism was to

be an evangelical order within the catholic Church

of England. Unfortunately, the Eucharistic focus

was lost as early Methodism, influenced by many

forces, developed into a more Protestant church.

However, a 20th-century Roman Catholic historian

characterized John Wesley’s work as “a return to

Catholic doctrine in its deepest and most traditional

form, but powerfully revived by the most positive

Protestant intuitions.”3

The Eucharist can be that symbol of unity by

which Christians of all types transcend their

differences and divisions. The Eucharistic unity of

the church empowers our missional unity, which is

crucial for the healing and saving of God’s world.

By receiving Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, we

are strengthened to be Christ’s presence in the

world.

For me, participating in the weekly

Eucharist at Grace and St. Stephen’s is a way in

which I stay in touch with the sacramental focus of

early Methodism. More importantly, for all of us,

the Eucharist is a means of staying in touch with

what is the real life of all churches:

I am the living bread come down

from heaven. Whoever eats of this

bread will live forever; and the bread

that I will give for the life of the

world is my flesh. Those who eat my

flesh and drink my blood abide in

me, and I in them (John 6: 51, 56).

Endnotes 1 Ed. Note: St Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110 CE) in The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chapter 20, explains the healing power of the Eucharist, which he calls “the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live forever in Jesus Christ”

(http://www.orderofstignatius.org/files/Letters/Ignatius to the Ephesians.pdf Retrieved 8 May 2019). 2 John Wesley. “The Duty of Constant Communion” in John Wesley, Albert Outler ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964: 336 3 Louis Boyer, Orthodox and Protestant and Anglican Spirituality. New York: Desclee Co. Inc., 1969: 192. [ Ed. note: Louis Boyer (1913-2004) was a French Lutheran Minister who in 1939 was received by the Roman Catholic Church. A prominent writer about

Christian spirituality and history, Boyer served as a consultant on liturgy at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).]

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St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) grew up thinking she was great sinner. Her strict and pious father sent her to a convent when she was 16. While first despising the

cloistered life, she became attracted to it when given the choice between marrying and

becoming a nun: she saw how unhappily her parents were married. At the convent, Teresa

practiced mental prayer—what we might call meditation—to keep, in her own words, “Jesus Christ within me.” Stricken with malaria, she ceased praying for years until, when

she was 41, a priest urged her to return to a prayerful life. Teresa began to experience

active spiritual enlightenment: quiet prayers during which God overwhelmed her senses, rapturous prayers when her body seemed to be raised from the ground, ecstatic prayers

during which she felt God melt her soul away. While a contemplative, she also spent time

and energy reforming the Carmelite Order in order to return the nuns to their Primitive

Rule. In 1562, she founded the convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of St. Joseph at Ávila: discalced means without footwear. Teresa is unique as a writer on

mystical theology [i.e., treats acts and experiences of the soul that cannot be produced by

human effort even with Divine Grace] insofar as she writes from deep personal experience and made no effort to establish a school of thought. Her most famous vision was of a

seraph repeatedly driving a fiery, golden lance through her heart, which she described: “I

saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails;

when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a

great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive

pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.” (St. Teresa of Avila The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans. David Lewis. NY: Cosimo, 2006: 226, which reprints chapter 29 of St. Teresa’s autobiography.)

Teresa’s account inspired the great Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) to create the life-size

marble statue, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, also known as the Transverberation [being pierced through] of St. Teresa, which resides in the Cornaro Chapel of the Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. Art historians consider Bernini’s

sculpture as the masterpiece of High Baroque Art during the Counter Reformation. Pope Gregory XV canonized Teresa in

1662. In 1970 Pope Paul VI named St. Teresa a Doctor of the Church. (Information about St. Teresa is from Benedict Zimmerman. "St. Teresa of Avila." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14515b.htm Retrieved 28 Mar. 2019).

Nicole Hensel receive her BA in English from Toccoa Falls College and her MA in English from Georgia College and

State University. She taught college English and is currently working toward her 200-level yoga instruction certification. A member of our church since 2016, Nicole serves as the volunteer leader / coordinator of our church’s Women’s

Fellowship and Study Book Discussion Group, where the participants read and talked about St. Teresa's The Interior

Castle, a book considered to be a guide to Christian mysticism and Christian meditation. Teresa envisaged the soul as a

diamond-shaped castle containing seven mansions, which she saw as a seven-stage journey of faith culminating in union

with God.

Walking with the Mystics: My Journey with

Saint Teresa of Avila

by Nicole Hensel,

GSS Parishioner

When it comes to studying a mystic, in this

case, Saint Teresa of Avila, there are seemingly

endless pathways of inquiry down which one can

venture. I could, for instance, examine her theology

of the soul. Or original sin. Or angels and demons

(by which she was apparently plagued by intense

visions). But I don’t have time for any of that. So

instead, I decided to take a walk with her.

What initially drew me to Saint Teresa was

curiosity — as a person for whom things like

spontaneous trances and being suddenly pierced in

the heart by an angel were not regular

occurrences—I wanted to know what it was like to

exist in that space, where the line between physical

and spiritual is constantly being blurred, where the

Divine seems to interrupt daily life with alarming

regularity. In her book The Interior Castle, Saint

Teresa leads us through a series of rooms, or

dwellings, representing the layers of the soul. And

although she claims this many-faceted castle exists

within each one of us, the territory feels at times

wondrous and unfamiliar. Saint Teresa, a sort of

tour guide for the human soul, beckons us to cross

this internal threshold, and, with her gentle and

earnest guidance, to draw ever nearer to the Source,

the Divine, who resides in the center of our being.

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I cross this threshold reluctantly, very much

aware of the myriad of earthly attachments that

demand my time and attention. How could I

possibly, in the midst of the chaos of everyday life,

attain even a comparable degree of the daily,

intentional, focused contemplation that is much

more accessible to someone who, like Saint Teresa,

spends her days in a cloistered setting? Saint Teresa

pulls no punches in her response:

We tend to get lost in our worldly affairs:

buying and selling, grasping and indulging,

falling into spiritual error and rising up

again. These kinds of spiritual serpents are

so virulent and venomous, so numerous and

dangerous, it would be a miracle if we could

avoid stumbling over them and falling (56).1

“Venomous serpents?” I reply. “Yikes. Well, when

you put it that way, the thought of leaving some of

those things behind doesn’t sound so bad. Lead on.”

We continue through the passageways of

this interior castle, slowly making our way towards

the center. However, at about the third dwelling,

wherein the soul draws ever nearer to the Divine

through prayer and focused intention, I find myself

wrestling with an increased sense of

discouragement. “I thought I had been here before

at one point in my life,” I lament, “but unexpected

trials assailed me, and I found myself completely

alone in the void. I could hear the voice of God no

more, and I could no longer sense His guidance. I

doubted even His very existence, and still wonder if

God, in fact, ever speaks to us in such meaningful

and tangible ways as you describe.”

“My child,” Saint Teresa replies, “those are

the very circumstances in which the Beloved

works most powerfully in our lives.” [She

explains:] We shouldn’t be surprised by our

own suffering. Sometimes it is God’s will

that his loved ones become conscious of

their limitations, and so he withdraws his

support a little. Not much of this kind of

pain should be required for us to quickly

come to know ourselves. We would clearly

recognize our own imperfections and

immediately understand what is happening

to us. We would realize that we are overly

attached to unimportant worldly matters, and

then this imperfection of ours would cause

us more pain than whatever it was that was

troubling us to begin with. This kind of

distress is, I believe, a great mercy from

God. Even though it compels us to painfully

confront our own flaws, we grow in

humility” (76).

As I reflected upon my own experiences, the

truth in Saint Teresa’s words grew more and more

apparent. The various trials and seeming distance

from God I had experienced actually resulted in a

profound interior transformation. Moments of doubt

(which in all honesty, I continue to experience)

produced within me the unique form of humility

that comes with realizing one does not have all the

answers—that there will always be an element of

mystery within authentic spiritual inquiry.

My heart enkindles anew as I proceed onward,

deeper into the soul’s dwellings. I find myself

pondering one of the great mysteries of Saint

Teresa’s physical departure from this world—when

her body was exhumed, her heart appeared to bear

the mark of an actual piercing, lending credibility to

her recurring visions of being pierced in the heart

with a spear by an angel. I can’t help but wonder: in

my preoccupation with this and other extraordinary

accounts of mystical experience, have I missed the

ways in which my own heart has been “pierced” by

the Divine, through trial, and testing, and suffering,

leaving permanent marks of transformation?

Perhaps we all, if we were honest with ourselves,

could find similar marks and scars, and subsequent

healing and growth. In leading us through the

interior castles of our own souls, towards the central

dwelling of the Divine, Saint Teresa shows us that

we are actually all mystics, if we would only

embark within.

Endnote 1 Saint Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle. Trans. Mirabai Starr.

NY: Riverhead Books, 2003. All quotations from St. Teresa are from this edition.

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Editor’s Note: “Bishop Kym’s Easter Hymn”

The composer is Clara H. Fiske Scott (1841-1897). Born in Illinois, Mrs. Scott was a prolific hymn writer, and the first American woman to publish a book of anthems; she composed the hymn in question in 1895. Inspired by Psalm 119, verse 8 (“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” KJV), “Open My Eyes, That I May See” appears in 203 hymnals. In the United Methodist Hymnal, the song is on page 454.

<https://hymnary.org/person/Scott_Clara> To the left are the lyrics to the hymn. You can listen online to the choir and congregation of Strathroy United Church, Ontario, Canada, sing the hymn. Go to <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqieerOaTy8>

Concluding her sermon on Easter Sunday, Rev. Kym Lucas, now Colorado’s Bishop Kym, sang a cappella the first stanza of a hymn from her childhood, “Open My Eyes, That I May See,” earning a round of applause from the parishioners. I was sitting in the back row of the nave next to Cindy Page. As soon as Mother Kym began to sing, I softly accompanied her, as I remembered the hymn from attending Vacation Bible School as a child at a Methodist church and had not heard the song since then. This prompted Cindy to joke later that she heard this sweet hymn that morning “in stereo”! Here’s some background on that hymn.

1. Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me; place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free. Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see. Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine! 2. Open my ears, that I may hear voices of truth thou sendest clear; and while the wavenotes fall on my ear, everything false will disappear. Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see. Open my ears, illumine me, Spirit divine! 3. Open my mouth, and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere; open my heart and let me prepare love with thy children thus to share. Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see. Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!

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601 N. Tejon Street

Colorado Springs, CO 80903

In the South Aisle of our church’s nave, we

see Jesus explaining spiritual rebirth to

Nicodemus (John 3:3-5) in the St. John the

Baptist and the Adulthood of Jesus stained-

glass window (1939). Jesus and Nicodemus

appear directly below the figure of St. John

the Baptist, who is depicted at the top and

center. The studios of George Owen Bonawit

(1891-1971) created this window. See pp. 8-

9 in The Windows of Grace and St Stephen’s

Episcopal Church. Photo of detail by Nicole

Paulson. The Rev. Rainey G. Dankel writes

about Jesus and Nicodemus in her Trinity

Sunday sermon printed in this journal. The

famous John La Farge mural of Jesus and

Nicodemus hangs in Trinity Church, Boston.