Three Temptations—Three Lies, A Lenten Reflection

Three Temptations—Three Lies

This First Sunday in Lent we’ll read the passage from the fourth chapter of Luke where Jesus withstands three trials from Satan. The temptations come to Jesus as Three Big Lies.

Here they are:

• You do not have enough.
• You are worthless in the eyes of anyone and everyone.
• Your faith won’t save you or help you.

It might take some explaining to show how we get from the story in Scripture to these Three Big Lies—it’s taken me over fifty years of striving to walk with Jesus through these Lenten Wildernesses to get here-- but I can assure you, these are lies we seem always to contend against.

The lies are vain attempts to divide us (the word devil means “the divider”) from a God who, in Jesus, tells us three Truths.

Here they are:

• God gives us plenty enough. So much that there’s plenty for everybody. Everybody.
• God sees us, made in God’s image, as already full of beauty and glory.
• Worldly fame, power, glory are counterfeit. God, in the Resurrected Jesus, will pluck us from even death.

Jesus, filled with the Spirit, refuses to accept any of the lies and chooses to hold fast to the truths. During his life and ministry he will himself become bread for the life of the world, he will display a power and a glory that make puny the powers of this world, and he will do that by utterly trusting in the protection of God’s love, that is even stronger than death.

This Lent, let’s walk together in the light of God’s truth, encouraging each other when we are tempted to see ourselves as less than God’s children, and abiding in the Spirit that empowers us to walk with Jesus and serve boldly and fearlessly in his name.

Let’s stay close to Jesus this Lent, friends!

+Rob

The Right Reverend A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop, Episcopal Church of NH

Bishop’s Address of the 213th Convention of the Episcopal Church of NH, 2015

I would like to begin my address by introducing the 213th Annual Convention to our new Presiding Bishop, Michael Bruce Curry, by video presentation.

By introducing Presiding Bishop Curry, I am also introducing the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire to ourselves and to our mission as members of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement.

Every time we share communion, we restore our identity as members of the Risen Christ, an identity given to us when we are buried with Christ and raised to new life in him through baptism.   It is fitting that, as we recommit ourselves to Christian service as a Church, we renew the promises made at baptism.   There’s a prayer that we offer at every baptism, and I now make it a practice not just to pray it myself, but to invite the whole congregation to join in its petition. Please join me.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy
Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the
forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of
grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them
an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to
persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy
and wonder in all your works. Amen. 

(Book of Common Prayer, p. 308)

Now, we could pray this only for our own kids, the ones who come into our church, our doors.  But I am convinced that Jesus would tell us that that’s not enough.  As God spoke to God’s people through the prophet Isaiah, so God urges us: 

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to restore the survivors of Israel: 

I will give you as a light to the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

(Isaiah 49:6)

In other words, it’s not enough for us to be fixated on the life of the Church and on those who make up our church directories and membership lists.  The Church is here as a light to the world, a light to reach the despairing and hopeless and distressed places right here in New Hampshire. 

For decades we have been overly concerned with things too light, too easy: the survival of the local parish church, the institutional stability of the church in the face of the culture wars, sparked by debates about human sexuality and gender.  There was a season for this. 

In the meantime, more and more of the youth of our communities know nothing of the love of God in Jesus. More of our children are caught up in a culture that is becoming dangerously sexualized, unhealthy, violent, and spiritually deadening. 

Visiting our churches on any given Sunday, I see fewer children or teenagers sharing stories with me about where they encountered God in school or on a service trip or on an athletic field or anywhere else.  As if this is not enough, the agonizing trial this summer in Concord of a recent St. Paul’s School graduate reminded us all how perilous a world it is for our youth. 

The challenges that face children in New Hampshire are of critical concern to me, and it and it pains me deeply to see how God’s children are growing up in an increasingly unsteady and confusing world.

But today we have good news.  We have what it takes to bring Gospel light and hope into our communities.  As part of the Jesus Movement, we are called to be apostles, which simply means to be sent in Jesus’ name. As apostles, we get to bring the loving concern of Jesus to the youth and at-risk families in our own Galilee, here in the Granite State. 

We get to look for those places where God is already at work, showing up to protect, nourish, guide, mentor, teach, and raise youth who are falling off the cliff of a culture that breeds violence, addiction, fear, and hatred toward the neighbor. The call is to GO, to be sent, pushed out of our comfort zone, to wear down the soles of our shoes, to put on our coats and parkas and windbreakers and get out to the playing fields, hockey rinks, dance studios, and classrooms, and cafeterias where all our kids need us.

That’s what it means to be apostolic church, a church that is eager to share in God’s mission rather than waiting for people to come through our intimidating red doors. Our new presiding bishop, Michael Curry, told us at his Installation this week that The Episcopal Church is now committed to two of the hardest things -- not light things or easy things, but essential things. 

We are to be about evangelism and reconciliation.  We are to be about bearing good news and about bringing together those who have been divided by race, class, nationality, gender, or religion.  What the scissor graphs this morning showed as cutting us into divided classes, we can help heal by being apostles.

Let me be blunt.  Lamenting over the lost youth in our churches is not apostolic.  Stressing over just the right Sunday school curriculum in the hopes that it will be the magic formula to bring in all those kids in town -- along with their pledge-making parents -- is not apostolic.   We have for too long bought into the myth that if we had just the right Sunday school teacher, or youth director, the kids would just pour into our churches, like following the Pied Piper of Hamlet. 

I’ve seen the annual reports of our churches, and I can tell you it’s a myth.  It doesn’t bear up to close scrutiny.  And, when we hold on to such myths, such illusions, while expecting different results, we can either be diagnosed as delusional, or be accused of the age-old sin of sloth.  Either way, we are not being apostolic.  Not being sent.

So here’s what we are called to do:  Over the next year, we will establish a new, apostolic Commission for Youth.   The Commission’s charter will be to determine the ways our churches are furthering the mission of God to give the children and youth “inquiring and discerning hearts, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love God, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.” 

The Commission will be charged to review ways in which each of our convocations or parishes will partner with others in an effort that will bridge the gap between those kids who come to church and those who don’t; between those who can get supplemental tutoring for their SAT’s and those who don’t; between those who can afford to go to private schools and those who don’t.  The question, “Why aren’t kids coming to church anymore?” needs to be transformed by the waters of our baptism to “Why isn’t the Church where Our Kids are?”

To get this party for Our Kids started, I am requesting that this Convention approve the 2016 proposed budget, as Amended, which designates over $46,000 for youth and young adult ministry. Additionally, I am pleased to announce that, thanks to a generous donor who wishes to support the Jesus Movement here in New Hampshire, we will be able to make even more funds available in the near future. 

By similar fundraising and budgeting, I want to make $100,000 available in the 2017 budget for after-school programs, mentorships, music and art schools that reach those kids that would otherwise be excluded from such opportunities.  (Just to remind us, the total funding in this area of our mission in 2015 was $29,000, only $5,000 of that was for children).

More effective than hiring another staff position in Diocesan House, a Commission will actually go out to see the way that godly people, whether Episcopal or not, are already furthering God’s mission among all our children and then come back to seek the prayers and the support of the Church.  That’s the one, holy, apostolic church that we believe in.

We heard of several ways this morning of how we can partner with schools, agencies, and organizations that are already doing the mission of God. 

What if we heard Jesus speak to you right now, right here in the Grappone Center in Concord, telling us this: “Your parochial report may tell you that you have less than a dozen kids in your church.  But I say unto you, you have several hundreds in your parish, the region that falls within the influence of your church.  I am already out there among them,” says, Jesus. “I’m waiting for you.  When are you going to go out and meet me out there, in the Galilees of New Hampshire?”

Epiphany Church, Newport heard the voice of Jesus say that.  They met with the principal of the Middle School across the street.  Many parents have to get to work early in the morning and have to leave their kids at the school, but the school can’t open early enough to in the day.   So members of the newly formed team ministry of St. Andrew’s, New London and Epiphany get up way early, just like the first apostles did at the empty tomb on the first Easter.  They welcome children before the school hours, keep them safe, get to know who they are and to hear their stories.  Apostolic.

St. Paul’s, Lancaster and St. Mark’s, Groveton, Trinity, Claremont, Grace, East Concord, all feed children who would otherwise go hungry during school or during the weekend when school lunch is not available. St.John’s, Portsmouth, and Union, Claremont, St. John’s, Walpole, St. Andrew’s, Hopkinton all seek to strengthen children through the healthy discipline of art or music.  St. Andrew’s, Manchester invites students from West Manchester High School to partner with them in feeding the hungry and they offer a scholarship to a college bound senior committed to a life of service.

That’s being apostolic. These are Our Kids, and God’s mission.

The Gospel says, “Go!” and we are going.

Apostolic evangelism is not about “come and see” as much as it is about “go and listen.”  Go and be formed and shaped by the people we encounter in the parks where addicts hang out, on the soccer fields where kids are striving, in the homeless shelters and soup kitchens, on the committees for social justice and environmental stewardship, in our prisons where art classes and bible studies are offered, in the halls of the State House when we advocate against the death penalty and work for gun safety. 

Wherever we go is a chance to find Jesus and join God’s mission.  Go.  The model for evangelism that Jesus showed wasn’t one that would have us hunker down in safe church bunkers until we feel adequately prepared for mission.  He said, “Go, seek me in Galilee,” which is to say, outside the religious establishment, among the secular, the spiritual but non-religious, and among those whose religion does not look like our own.

The presence of the Resurrected Jesus presence is not weak.  It is powerful, stronger than death.  It embraces all.  We learn about and become like Jesus in the seeking, in the serving, in the listening. So, here are some examples of how the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire is poised for a new age of mission:

Thanks to the dedicated and courageous efforts of Grace Church, East Concord, they have been endorsed as the first Episcopal Service Corps Center in northern New England, choosing the name of Assisi House after St. Francis of Assisi.  

Assisi House will host five young adults in an intentional residential community of prayer and service.  The interns will be sent to serve in social service agencies that address issues such as poverty, care for the creation, and homelessness as they practice showing up, telling stories, splashing water, sharing food and witnessing how God surprises.

With the ambitious apostolic vision of a little seasonal chapel on the Seacoast, we are actively exploring building a community of women who seek freedom from the shackles of human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual exploitation.  Based on the pioneering work of the Rev. Becca Stevens and her sisters at the Magdalene Project and Thistle Farm in Nashville, we are gathering funds and energy to proclaim, “love heals” and bring release to the captives and good news to the oppressed. That same chapel is also setting aside funds for a new curate position, being envisioned as we speak, to do critical mission work.

Last year, in faith of a promised but unforeseen future, the Convention voted to allow Trinity Church, Tilton to close. This happened in February. 

Since then we have established close communication with leaders in that town who are eager and excited for this building to be an economic, social and spiritual center in their community.  We will soon be reviewing proposals from town leaders as, together, we envision this property as a centerpiece of the downtown.

Likewise, I am seriously considering the establishment of a new Episcopal worshipping community in Franklin or Tilton.  The Spirit of Christ is urging us to go to this suffering part of our State and find Jesus.  One of the windows of the former St. Jude’s Church depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes of desolation.  The phoenix has become a sign of crucifixion, resurrection and stored hope.  We are being guided by the light of Christ to bring hope to those in the grips of despair, addiction, poverty and who feel forgotten by the Church.

To be apostolic means that we will strive to establish up to three new missions a year…that’s right, three new missions every year, where God’s people, expelled from the waters of our baptism, will be sent out in mission to meet the risen Christ.  Whether on the streets of Tilton or Manchester, on the ships in the port of Portsmouth, in the schools of the Groveton and Lancaster, in the prisons of Berlin or Goffstown, God’s mission is happening already, we just have to go after it. 

Here’s the thing:  when we do these apostolic things, I promise you, we will not be siphoning off energy or resources from the congregations. In fact, our churches will be reenergized and renewed.  Every church that is involved in its community is enlivened, just like the most robust of the vines that insinuate and push out of the limit of the pot which can both nourish but limit its growth. 

The churches that are growing in that way, you know who you are. The parishes that are not actively involved with the community are suffering from a kind of fetid claustrophobic enmeshment.  And you know who you are. The good news is that the Jesus Movement seeks to push you out of the tomb and unbind you to show the glory of God.

To paraphrase Jesus:

“Go. Make disciple of all the nations, imbuing them with the water of life in the name of the God whose love draws all into true freedom and life: the Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I will be with you always to the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:19-20)

Thank you.

A Statement from Bishop Hirschfeld following the Oregon shooting

“In the wake of what has now become an endemic part of American life—a mass shooting in a peaceful community of personal growth and learning—I hope the members of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire are not lulled into a spiritual torpor.  In our prayers may the Holy Spirit pierce our numbness with sharp empathy for those who mourn the dead and for those who are wounded in Roseburg, Oregon.  In our actions, may God lead us to the courage of Jesus who faced down the powers of dominating violence, not with more violence, but with death-destroying love shown on the Cross.

Baptized members of the risen Body of Christ are called to resist the temptation of allowing the heinous actions of a distorted soul to make us more violent. Christians who advocate to take up more weapons in reaction to these acts of evil betray the meaning of our having already triumphed over death in our baptism.   Fear is not a Christian virtue or habit of being, and yet, tragically, we continually cower in the face of those who equate unlimited accessibility to guns with the way of Jesus.  May God lead us through the wounds of these horrible events to a place of deeper trust in God and not the proliferation of deadly weapons.”

The Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop, The Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, 10/2/15

What Would Jesus Do About the Refugee Crisis?

A week ago in Church, we read again of how Jesus travelled outside of his home territory into the Roman province of Syria, more specifically the region of the old cities of Tyre and Sidon.  There, He encounters a person of a different ethnicity, religion, gender, and probably even race, than his own. 

The story of the “Syrophoenician woman” of Mark’s Gospel provides us a clear and irrefutable response to the provocative question, “What would Jesus do?”  When faced with the desperate need and the urgent appeal of a stranger--a person who can claim no cultural or national affinity with Himself--Jesus allows Himself to be moved.  Even if he felt initially resistant to helping the Gentile, or “pagan,” he allows his own heart to be opened to feel compassion for the plight of this unnamed foreign woman and her suffering daughter.    What would Jesus do?  He would allow his own privilege and allegiance to give way to the suffering of the one who humbled herself, asking for mercy.

Also a week ago, we also began to receive the persistent accounts of this woman’s own descendants, Syrians from the same region of the world, who seek to be relieved from the unspeakable violence of the civil war that rends apart that country.  We hear of the scores of refugees from the Middle East, including young children, being left for dead in an overheated truck in Austria.  We also saw the photograph of the lifeless body of a three-year-old boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up in a Turkish beach having drowned, along with his mother and five year old brother, as they fled the fighting in their Syrian hometown in the hopes of eventually finding safety with family in Canada. 

It’s really not a question of what would Jesus do, as though Jesus were absent now and available to us only as a matter of speculation.  It’s a question of what the Risen Body of Jesus Christ, the Church, is doing and is capable of doing, right now, among us.   The Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, has issued a call for every Roman Catholic parish in Europe to provide refuge and sanctuary for at least one refugee household.  As I have heard from several congregations now in New Hampshire, I am confident that were we located there, most of our congregations would answer such a call with compassion and hospitality.   As the U.S. State Department considers how to bring refugees to communities such as Manchester, Concord and Laconia, we can prepare ourselves to be open as Jesus was, and still is, open to the Syrophoenician woman, who may be coming to New Hampshire.  

In the meantime, we pray and work for peace in this and all parts of the world terrorized by violence and war.  We pray for those most vulnerable of populations, especially women and girls who are targets of sexual violence perennially used as a weapon of warfare.  And, we give of our substance, not just the crumbs that fall from the table, of our own relative abundance.  

To learn more about the causes and the extent of this, the worse refugee crisis since World War II, you can go to website for the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), which maintains a web portal for aid groups in the region to share information and coordinate response: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php.

“Refugees From Syria, a Cultural Orientation Backgrounder,” offers provides more information about the unique experiences, trauma, and needs of the Syrian refugee population: http://www.culturalorientation.net/learning/backgrounders.

Or, watch The Episcopal Migration Ministries’ video on “Syria’s Refugees: The Episcopal Church’s Response:” https://vimeo.com/114033002.

President Obama announced this week that while the administration was continuing to examine responses to a refugee crisis, the United States will raise the number of Syrian refugees admitted to at least 10,000 in the new fiscal year beginning in October, from fewer than 2,000 in the current fiscal year. Learn more at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/24/fact-sheet-us-humanitarian-assistance-response-syrian-crisis.

To provide meaningful relief to those affected, I encourage our parishes and people to make contributions or learn more about these partners, who are equipped to help: 

Episcopal Migration Ministries

Episcopal Migration Ministries is The Episcopal Church’s foremost response to refugee crises. Working in partnership with offices and groups within the church as well as with governments and non-government organizations (NGOs), Episcopal Migration Ministries assures safe passage and provides vital services for thousands of refugee families upon their arrival in America: English language and cultural orientation classes, employment services, school enrollment, and initial assistance with housing and transportation. For each family, the goal is self-reliance and self-determination. Learn more at: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/episcopal-migration-ministries.

Episcopal Relief & Development

Episcopal Relief & Development is the compassionate response to human suffering in the world. Hearing God's call to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being, Episcopal Relief & Development serves to bring together the generosity of Episcopalians and others with the needs of the world. You can make a gift or learn more at https://www.episcopalrelief.org.

Welcoming America

Welcoming America is a national nonprofit that helps communities achieve prosperity by becoming more welcoming toward immigrants and all residents. National Welcoming Week is celebrated September 12-20. To find events in NH and across the US, visit: http://www.welcomingamerica.org

Ascentria Care Alliance

Ascentria is the local community service organization, which works most closely with the resettlement of refugees, serving their needs socially, spiritually and economically. Inspired by their faith-based heritage, Ascentria “envisions a world in which everyone can realize their fullest potential and share with others in need.” More at

http://www.ascentria.org.

The Missionary Society

The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church pools its members together to advocate for solutions to a variety of pressing issues, including domestic poverty, environmental protection and global justice. More at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/missionary-society.

Bulletin Insert for August Commemoration of Jonathan Daniels

Please download HERE a message from Bishop Hirschfeld and the Lessons appointed for use on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Seminarian and Witness for Civil Rights, 1965.

Baccalaureate Address at Holderness School

Bishop HIrschfeld's Baccalaureate Address at Holderness School for Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2015, Text: Acts 2:1-21

Today is both an end and a beginning. 

In the readings we just heard, we learn that today is the day when the earliest disciples no longer could claim a special status as having known Jesus personally.   Suddenly, everyone had access to the power of God through the communication of the Spirit.  If the small band of apostles thought they were special, or privileged, or were truly religious, then after Pentecost, the day of the spreading of the Spirit, anyone who had ears to hear, or whose heart was open to it, had within them the power of God to heal, to forgive, to bring justice and hope to a world that was broken and full of despair.

As Peter quoted from the Hebrew Bible:

In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young shall see visions,

and your old shall dream dreams.   (Joel 2:28-29)

The disciples had been thinking that they had true religion, they had a unique relationship with the Resurrected Jesus because they knew the Jesus personally.  But after Pentecost, all who heard and received the message that God’s love and justice and peace was stronger than anything that humanity could accomplish in this world,  anyone could claim to be a child of God.   All people who accepted the Spirit could be drawn into the Presence of God.  All those strangers, (and congratulations, by the way to the young man who read so well all those strange names) all those foreigners, all those people from outside Judea now could say that they may not be religious in the old sense,  but they were spiritual.  Because the Spirit does not care were you come from, or what family you were born into, or who wealthy you are, or even what faith you practice, the Spirit just wants you to know that you are made in the image of God, and God will never leave you alone. 

How many continents do we have represented here.  We know we have students from North America, of course.  How many here are from Central America?  South America?  How many are from the Pacific Rim?  From China?  Korea?  Vietnam?  India?  How many from one of the many countries in Africa?  How about the Middle East?  Central Europe?  Western Europe?

Would it be safe to say that there are maybe a dozen languages represented in this room?   At least!   And yet, over the past few years you have all learned to speak the special language of Holderness. There is something about your being here with each other that has shaped how you will meet and greet the experiences ahead of you.  To speak Holderness you learn the grammar of the outdoors through your Outback, you learn the vocabulary of snow, of activity, of art, of mutual support and care, of striving and accomplishment, of laughter, of sorrow, of concern for those who are less fortunate than you.  All these make up a language, and it’s a language of the Spirit of this place.   Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist, questioning, atheist, agnostic, whether you relished your times in this Chapel or you suffered through them with while grinding your teeth, this school helped teach you how to communicate love, curiosity, care, a hunger for truth and a thirst of justice.  We all can understand that language. That’s Pentecost. 

When the fiery Spirit came down with the power to communicate in language that had not been spoken or understood before, God shows that true religion is not about all being of the same mind, or looking the same, or praying the same, or having the same talents or viewpoints.  Rather, God’s power is made known in difference, in conflict, in confusion, in surprise, in reconciliation, in making spectacular mistakes.  That’s what it means to be truly spiritual but not religious.  And any religion that does not make room for difference, or failure, or questioning, is not at all spiritual.  I urge you to run away from that as fast as you can.  It may be that that kind of religion may be the most urgent crisis that you will face in your time: religion that is devoid of the Spirit of love always leads to violence, and brutality of the soul and of the body.

So here you are, many languages, many nations, about to spread out into the world with the language of Holderness in your hearts and in your minds.  The grammar of Pro deo et pro genero humano.  For God and for humankind.   Go look for God’s deeds of power.  You will see them.  Come back and tell us of them.  We will be listening.

As I said, today is an ending.  The Holderness you have known will cease to be the moment you step off this campus.  Sure there will be things you will recognize, but it won’t be the same because this particular assembly of friends, faculty, classmates, staff, won’t be here.  That may be sad. But that’s what happens when brings forth a new birth.  Something comes to completion. Ends. Even dies in a sense

And as many people refer to Pentecost as the birthday of the Church, so it is also your birthday in a sense, as you celebrate a commencement, a fresh beginning, and your readiness to learn and create worlds of meaning and purpose.  Seek the Spirit.  It brought you here.  The Spirit guided you and protected you while you were here. And in an hour or so you will be expelled from Holderness. The Spirit is now expelling you out from  here so that you will serve God and humankind in ways that only you can.  

Amen.

Easter Message

“When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.”

Wintry hearts.  Fields dead and bare.  For many of us in New Hampshire, suffering from cabin fever and severe snow-fatigue, the springing green that accompanies the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus is almost bewildering.  What does bare ground even look like?  Green leaves?  Flowers?   Some may even say, “I forget. What does the skin of my arms and legs even look like in the light of day?” 

On my desk is a postcard reproduction of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto’s rendering of Jesus at the moment of his returning to life from the dead in the tomb. Del Sarto’s “Pieta” is the only depiction that I have found in the whole world of visual arts of that mysterious moment.  Even the writers of the Gospels withdraw from that scene, choosing instead to say simply that the tomb is empty.  Del Sarto instead takes us into the tomb before the first witnesses of the Rising arrive to show us a quiet Jesus contemplating both the past days and the future.  Our Lord is sitting up, as though for the first time, examining the openings in his hands and feet. The wound in his side is subtly shown, but raw.  The soft palette of the fresco almost invite us to hear his first breaths filling again with air, exhales echoing in hewn stone.

It’s a pause just before the world will be turned upside down as he walks out from the tomb, the stone rolled away.  Soon he will appear to the women, and then the other disciples, and then the two walking on the road to Emmaus.  Soon he will set in motion the movement of Life that we move forward today.  But for now, in the tomb as imagined by del Sarto, he appears himself quite possibly overwhelmed and bewildered by what has happened, even if he himself told us it would happen this way.

In many ways this pause is exactly where the Church is today.  The Church has been crucified, hasn’t it?  It has been pushed to the side of our society and the spheres of influence, status, and privilege.  In some places of the world, such as we saw on the shores of Libya, we are watching a new age of Christian martyrdom. We remember Jonathan Daniels in that same light. The days when Church did not have to compete with youth activities and programs are long gone.  The days when political parties took serious notice of our witness for peace, mercy, and justice in the name of God are also fast fading.   So, the image of Jesus, just waking up to what is real and true after the crucifixion is in a deep sense the image we have of the Church in our day.  Not triumphant, not muscular, but no longer asleep either.  What a beautifully freeing place to be! We are learning to live again, ready to step outside the stone cave, curious about what comes next.

Of course, Jesus is not only curious about his body.  When he appears to the disciples after the Third Day, he starts asking questions:  “Whom are you looking for?  What are you discussing along the way?  Have you tried putting the nets on the other side of the boat?  Do you love me?”   His questions lead others not merely to believing, but to belonging. 

Could it be that to the extent we are not curious about what God is doing in the lives of our neighbors and our world, we remain in the tomb, gaping at our wounds.  But marvelously, everywhere the Church is curious is we are waking up to new life, as though sitting up once again with new wind in our lungs.  So I hope you will spend this Eastertide with patterning your life on the inquisitiveness of Jesus and ask things like “What’s going on with my neighbors?  Who lived here anyway?  What are we discussing along the way?  Who’s hungry?  Who, like our Savior, is wounded?  Who are we not noticing?  How is God showing up in this place?”

As it was at the first Easter, it is again time for questions such as these to lead us out of our tombs into the new life in Jesus. Then may our wintry hearts warm again to the life that springeth green!

An Advent Message

I have been watching CNN’s coverage of the demonstrations taking place all over the country.  Crowds have been gathering, mostly peacefully,  in the wake of the grand jury acquittals of two white police officers whose actions lead to the deaths of two black men: Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

The news coverage of the demonstrations included camera footage of Mr. Garner’s death, the result of being in a “choke hold” by the officer who clearly used excessive force in an attempt to arrest him.  On the film, I saw Mr. Garner:

—questioning why he was being confronted by the police

— being surrounded by at least five police officers

—being held around the neck by an officer in a t-shirt

—falling to the ground

—having his head pinned to the sidewalk

—pleading for relief by saying numerous times, “I can’t breathe.”

—lying motionless, possibly dead,  on his side for several minutes while the police did not attempt to revive him using CPR nor take any other life-saving actions.

This is what we all saw. We are witness of these things.

That sentence brings me to the accounts we have in the Bible of the events of Jesus birth, life, and resurrection.  What does being a witness mean?  Telling the truth?  Believing what we’ve seen?  Sharing it?  Allowing our lives to be changed by the truth?

On the same day I saw the video of Mr. Garner’s death, I had gathered with clergy of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire for a time of prayer and study of St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth.   Here’s some things I learned:

—the principals involved in the birth of Jesus, the Christ, were a teenage girl (Mary)  and elderly and barren woman (Elizabeth) and a group of anonymous shepherds.  All of whom, by reason of their gender, age, and economic class and occupation, would have been ineligible to bear witness to any jury or court of their day.  Whatever they had to say about that first noel would not have been given credence to those who held either religious or civic power in their day.

—Zechariah, the only one who would have a had credible status in his community, was rendered mute, as though God chose to circumvent the structures of power, status, and institutional authority to bring the events of Jesus’ and John’s births to pass.

—Mary’s song of praise that shouts of how God has already turned the world upside down by scattering the proud, casting down the mighty, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good thing and sending the rich away empty—that song was not sung in lofty King James’ English, but in a rough dialect that was spoken on the streets of her day.  When we hear the language and dialects of those most hurt by the agonies in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York City, Los Angeles and elsewhere, we can note the cultural division in our land.  And we can hear the language of Mary---broken, course, uneducated, dangerous, and yet shimmering.  

And now in a bizarre twist, we find ourselves, millions of us,  who have been witnesses to these tragedies, equally discredited as witnesses. What we have seen and heard with our own eyes and ears doesn’t seem to matter to the systems and structures, the “powers and principalities” with which we have entrusted our welfare.   We find our ability to “testify” shares the same ineligible status as Mary, Elizabeth, the shepherds, and the muted Zechariah.  

May God loosen our tongues, and open the ears of those who can hear the cry of the poor and the disenfranchised in our land.  May we, like John the Baptizer, prepare the way of God’s realm by crying out in this wilderness.  Though we may do that from the margins of our society, (the church is now, blessedly, more and more on those margins), may our testimony be as enduring and shimmering as those unheard of  women in Jesus’ day: Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna, each of whom rejoiced at the arrival of the Holy One in their day.