The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda: .
THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!
2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).
3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window
Today is Christ the King Sunday. I like to remind people that this is the youngest of our holy days – just a few years short of its hundredth birthday. It was instituted by Pope Pius the 11th in 1925, in the Roman Catholic Church, and spread to other churches from there. It was a direct response to World War I and the horror of seeing Christian citizens of majority Christian nations take up arms and slaughter one another. The holy day was intended as a reminder that for Christians, our primary citizenship is not that of any particular earthly nation, but of the kingdom of God. And as we heard last week, God’s holy realm is a place of peace: they shall not hurt or destroy on all My holy mountain!
The Gospel lessons for Christ the King Sunday are all chosen to highlight the paradoxical kingship of Christ, so different from the ways we usually see power and dominion exercised in this world. This year’s Christ the King Gospel brings us Jesus hanging on the cross, crucified as a criminal.
It’s so much the opposite of where a king should be that people are mocking him for it. Because what kind of king gets the death penalty, to die in shame and agony?
And what kind of Messiah – the long-promised Anointed One whom God will send to execute justice and righteousness in the land, in Jeremiah’s words – what kind of Messiah dies at the hand of the Roman occupying forces, instead of throwing them out and liberating his people?
It’s always a little startling to read this passage out of context. The Church usually reads about the Crucifixion in the context of Holy Week – on Palm Sunday or Good Friday. But I’ve come to welcome the opportunity to reflect on the scene on its own terms.
I’m able to notice different things about it when I’m not caught up in the trajectory of the Great Story of Holy Week, and to tune in to details that might bring new understandings, or new questions.
One of the things I think is really important to remind ourselves about, now and then, is that following this King – this one, the one hanging from a cross – should give a certain skepticism, a kind of critical distance, to our views of any human king, or president, principal, mayor, bishop, et cetera. Really, ANY leader – the ones we like as well as the ones we fear.
On Good Friday afternoon, every year, I invite kids here to walk the Stations of the Cross with me. And when we come to the eleventh Station, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, I tell the kids a really important truth: Sometimes the people in charge are wrong.
Maybe they’re wrong because of a mistake or a failure. Maybe because their priorities or intentions are not good. Maybe they’re just exhausted or distracted or don’t have all the information they need.
But one way or another, sometimes, the people in authority – our leaders, teachers, principals, moms and dads, policemen, presidents – can be wrong.
We all know this is true; it’s just hard to admit to our kids. But it should be easy for us to remember, as Christians. Our God was executed as a criminal. We must be prepared to question our leaders and the structures of power in our time, holding them up to God’s standards of justice and mercy.
And let it be noted, please, that the leaders in Jesus’ day weren’t just wrong because they condemned and executed Jesus, the Son of God. They were wrong because they perpetuated a system that punished minor crimes with brutal public execution.
It’s not clear from the text whether the criminals crucified with Jesus were simple burglars or violent bandits. But it is clear in ancient sources that crucifixion was routinely used as the punishment for theft, fraud, and other non-violent crimes, especially when committed by those of low status, the socially and economically vulnerable.
The criminal justice system in Judea under Roman rule was wrong because it murdered people for minor crimes. The leaders of that time and place were unjust, because they created and reinforced a political and economic status quo that drove people into poverty and desperation, and then punished them harshly when they did the things that poor and desperate people sometimes do.
If that sounds familiar, it probably should. We execute a lot fewer people than the Romans did, but our criminal justice system routinely destroys lives for trivial reasons. And our system is most certainly weighted against those with fewer resources and opportunities – as well as against people of color. If you’d like to learn more about all that, Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy is a great place to start.
Reading this so-familiar story this year, I noticed something I hadn’t thought about before. There are two criminals crucified with Jesus, right? The first one joins in mocking Jesus because everybody says he’s a King and a Messiah, but look at him now! “Come on, Messiah, save us!”
The second criminal rebukes the first – “We have been condemned justly, and we are getting what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”
I’ve always heard it preached and taught that the first criminal is wrong and the second criminal is right. But you know what? They’re both wrong.
The second criminal – no: the second person, who has been found guilty of a crime and condemned to death – the second person is wrong about what he deserves. Whatever he did that landed him on a cross at the Place of the Skull, he thinks he’s getting what he has coming to him. That he’s been condemned justly.
Look: Whether the death penalty is ever justified is something on which people of good conscience can disagree. Though I personally think it’s tough to make the case for it as a Christian, whose God was literally executed by the state.
But regardless: the second man here is almost certainly not some remorseless brutal killer. Maybe he’s a thief. Maybe he’s a political dissident. Maybe he committed fraud. Maybe he hurt somebody. Maybe he even killed somebody.
It does not follow that he deserves death.
And it’s a sign of his bondage to the regime of death that he believes this. And it’s a sign of our imprisonment to that same cruel master that we continue to accept this logic so readily.
I hope that when this man awakens in Christ’s presence in Paradise, he knows that he did not deserve to die. That his life and worth are so much more than the worst thing he’s ever done.
Did you notice that the word save occurs over and over again in this Gospel passage? Four times – uttered in mockery, each time. “He saved others; let him save himself is he is the Messiah of God.” “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
That word “save” – sozo in Greek – it’s the root of the word that the church translates as salvation. This is core vocabulary for the New Testament. Save: rescue, deliver, free, help, heal, sustain, restore – all of that wrapped up in one word.
It’s the right word for this moment. But the people taunting him are pointing it in the wrong direction. Jesus will not save himself. The people mocking him think he’s powerless. “Save yourself!” is a joke because how could he? Look at him.
With the Gospel writers, we know better. We know he has chosen this. Could he have used divine power to step down off the cross? To cast himself into the arms of angels, as Satan tempted him to do, way back at the beginning? Maybe; or maybe he had laid down divine power and protection, as he turned his face towards this moment.
Regardless, it’s very clear from the Gospel accounts that Jesus chose not to resist this death. Chose, even, to walk towards it. Praying in the Garden, submitting his fears to God’s purposes. Rebuking his disciples for resisting his arrest. Silent when asked to speak in his own defense. As human, and as God, he gave himself over to this. Saving himself was never the point.
I don’t claim to understand the meaning, the power, of Jesus’ death on the cross. But I accept the mystery that something salvific, something saving, happens here.
There’s another important word in our Colossians text, in verse 19: Fulness. “In Jesus, all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.” It’s easy to read right past it, but it turns out there’s a lot of theology packed into that word.
Fulness, pleroma in Greek, is used a number of times in the Epistles, the letters of the first Christians. So is its opposite, Kenoo, which means emptiness, inadequacy, incompleteness. Those words, dancing around each other, trace the outline of a theology of the cross: In this moment, the human part of Jesus empties himself (Phil 2:7), to make room for the fulness of God. His weakness makes room for God’s strength, his brokenness opens the way for God to restore and heal.
And early Christian leaders and teachers see in this a path of discipleship. They urge one another, especially in times of struggle and fear, to empty themselves. To let God’s fulness work in them. To trust, in the words of Paul, that whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:10)
We heard a hint of this in Jesus’ advice to the disciples in last week’s Gospel: “When you are arrested for your faith, make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” (Luke 21)
This idea of self-emptying is mystery and a challenge for me. When something is difficult, I tend to respond by trying to put more of myself into it. But I do believe – despite myself – that sometimes the wiser response would be to put less of myself in. To let my inadequacy, my weakness, my uncertainty drive me to a more profound openness to God. To serving God less like an independent contractor – and more like a musical instrument, or one of the tools I use in my jewelry workshop.
This is the paradoxical kingship of Jesus, of God on the cross. Following this Christ, serving this King, calls us to carry lightly any earthly loyalties or deferences which may mislead or distort. It calls us to freedom from our bondage to the logic of death and retributive justice. It calls us not to settle for saving ourselves, when others are suffering and struggling.
And it challenges us to find grace and possibility even in the moments when we feel like we have nothing to offer. For in this Kingdom, emptiness is fulfilled, brokenness can reconcile, and dying can lead to eternal life.
The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda: .
THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!
2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).
3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window
WAIT
The first week of Advent, November 27 – December 3
This Week’s Song: “Wait for the Lord” The Taizé Community
Wait for the Lord, whose day is near; wait for the Lord: keep watch, take heart!
Learn it and sing it here!
About Taizé
The Taizé Community (pronounced tah-zay) is an order of monks based in eastern France, with a strong devotion to peace and justice through prayer and meditation. The monks come from many different Christian traditions, including both Roman Catholics and Protestants, and from 30 countries around the world. The Taize Community was founded in 1940 by its leader Brother Roger, who died in 2005.
Today Taizé is one of the world’s most important sites of Christian pilgrimage. Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims, many of them youth and young adults, flock to the small village of Taizé to share in the community’s worship and way of life. Young people from every corner of the globe are encouraged to live out the Christian gospel in a spirit of joy, simplicity and reconciliation.
Taizé has spawned a unique style of worship that has become popular in churches and other settings around the world. Taizé music highlights simple phrases, usually lines from the Psalms or other pieces of scripture, repeated over and over again. The repetition is designed to help meditation and prayer. Songs often have text in many different languages, including French, Latin, Spanish, and English. We have sung other several Taizé songs in worship at St. Dunstan’s, such as “Within our darkest night,” “Jesus, remember me,” and “Ubi caritas.”
(Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/priests/taize_1.shtml)
WORD FOR THE WEEK: WAIT
How to say “Wait” in American Sign Language…
The sign for “wait” holds the hands up and off to the side a bit, with palms up; then wiggle the fingers.
You can see the sign by Googling “ASL Wait”, or click this link.
PRAYER PRACTICE for this week…
Practice quiet. You can do this by yourself or together with a family member or friend.
Sit somewhere comfortable.
Ask God to help you rest in holy silence.
Set a timer and try just being quiet for one minute. (If you feel like you can do more, try two minutes, or three, or five!)
Pay attention to your breath. In… out.
It’s OK if your mind wanders, but when you notice it wandering, try to gently bring your attention back to your breath. In… out.
When the timer goes off, don’t rush back into normal speed and activity.
Notice: how did that feel? Would you like to do it again?
HANDS-ON PROJECT: Do a project that involves waiting!
There are so many possibilities!
Paint a picture with watercolors and wait for it to dry.
Bake cookies and wait for them to cook – and then to cool!
Put vinegar in your teakettle… and wait for it to dissolve the lime.
Wash your sneakers in the washing machine… then put them near a heating vent to dry out.
Order a perfect gift for a loved one, then wait for it to arrive.
Some things just take as long as they take!
SOMETHING TO LEARN… Practicing Patience.
Did you know that patience is a skill that people can practice and build?
Some ideas to help kids practice patience…
Source: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_help_your_kids_be_a_little_more_patient
And there are some great tips about practicing patience for grownups here at this link.
RESONATING TEXTS
These texts offer some other ways to think about holy waiting.
Our time is a time of waiting; waiting is its special destiny. And every time is a time of waiting, waiting for the breaking in of eternity. All time runs forward. All time, both history and in personal life, is expectation. Time itself is waiting, waiting not for another time, but for that which is eternal. – Theologian Paul Tillich
With inward pain my heartstrings sound, My soul dissolves away – Dear Sovereign, whirl the seasons round, And bring the promised day. – Early American hymn
Poem: Black Rook in Rainy Weather, Sylvia Plath – click to read
Poem: This is the Dream, Olav Hauge – click to read
Poem: I sing to use the Waiting, Emily Dickinson – click to read
St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church Job Description: Vestry Member
Revised 2019
What is a vestry?
According to the parish by-laws and the National and Diocesan Canons, all Episcopal churches must have some form of vestry. Vestries serve as the governing and legal decision-making body of the parish. More importantly, vestries also serve as the visioning and and goal-setting body of the local parish. In this way, serving on the vestry is different from simply being on a corporate board, or being in a business meeting. Being a member of the vestry is a form of ministry, with a sacred and exciting spiritual component to the work. Vestry members are also close working partners with the clergy team.
Eligibility for election
Since vestries, in their capacity as governing boards, have fiduciary responsibilities towards congregations, state law often dictates that all members of the vestry must be of legal majority ages. Our church by-laws allow any person 16 years of age or older to serve on the vestry. Vestry members should be active members of the parish, but do not need to be confirmed or received into the Episcopal Church. Election of vestry members occurs at the Parish Annual Meeting. While not technically in our parish by-laws, and while exceptions are always possible, here are some helpful boundaries to keep in mind when considering running for the vestry:
Terms of Office
While the terms of vestry members varies from congregation to congregation, St. Dunstan’s vestry members are elected to serve a three-year term. If for some reason a vestry member is unable to complete their full term, they are expected to notify the Senior Warden within a least one month of the Parish Annual Meeting.
Eligibility for re-election
You may run for two consecutive terms on the vestry (a total of six years). After the second term, you must take a full year off before running for vestry again.
Qualifications and Gifts
We seek to invite people to serve on the vestry of St. Dunstan’s who…
Time Commitment:
Responsibilities of the Vestry
While we acknowledge that no single member of the vestry may be called upon to fulfill all these responsibilities, we aspire to have our Vestry be a body that, as a whole:
If you have any questions about serving on the vestry at all, please feel free to speak with any current member of the vestry at St. Dunstan’s. They would be very happy to help you. Being on the vestry can be an empowering and spiritually deepening experience. If you think God is calling you to this ministry, please consider running for vestry. Your congregation values and needs your leadership and skill!
As our home-grown Advent resource this season we are offering a Song Cycle – with a song each week, a keyword, and some activity and prayer suggestions. This post is for Week 0, the week BEFORE Advent begins – November 20th through 26th.
This Week’s Word: PREPARE
This Week’s Song: “People, Look East!”
1. People, look East! The time is near of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look East and sing today: Love the Guest is on the way!
Read the whole poem at this link: https://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=2853
Listen and learn the tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SPLN1g_ZFY
People, Look East was written by Eleanor Farjeon, who lived from 1881 to 1965, and published in 1928. Farjeon was a British children’s author and poet. She wrote wonderful short stories and poems, and her Christian faith was often part of her work. She also wrote another well-known hymn, “Morning has Broken” (#8 in our Hymnal).
In this song, Farjeon uses different images to help us think about preparing to celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas: Guest, Rose, Bird, Star, Lord.
Why look East? East is the direction of the rising sun. In the Bible, many texts describe God’s salvation as coming from the East. Many churches face towards the East for this reason.
WORD FOR THE WEEK: PREPARE
How to say “Prepare” in ASL: Hold your hands in front of you, a little to one side, palms facing each other, with some space between them.
Now, keeping your hands in the same position with facing palms, move them across in front of your body, making a small loop-the-loop as you go.
Watch the sign here at this link:
SOMETHING TO LEARN…
Which way is East, at your house? Which was is East, at church?
Try finding East in other places you often go.
Notice the sunrise!
PRAYER PRACTICE for this week…
Clean, tidy, or decorate, prayerfully. Prayer doesn’t have to involve sitting still, or reading the words of a prayer from a book. Washing dishes, clearing a table to make room for your Advent wreath, unboxing seasonal decorations, preparing food for yourself or people you love – all of these can be prayerful acts.
Just turn your heart towards God before you begin, and try to do what you are doing with your full attention, focused on the task and what it means to you.
HANDS-ON PROJECT: Prepare your Advent wreath!
This is a good week to prepare your Advent wreath, so you are ready for Advent to begin on Sunday the 27th. Maybe you have a wreath already, and you just need to get it out and set it up. Maybe you don’t have one, and you need to get materials from church or shop for some candles you like. We have simple Advent candles, and booklets with Advent prayers to use, available at church. Reach out to Rev. Miranda if you need to pick something up, or have something dropped off!
The Advent wreath has roots in pre-Christian Europe, when evergreens and candles were symbols of the persistence of life and light through the dark and frozen winter. In the Middle Ages, the custom was Christianized and became a way for families to observe Advent at home.
An Advent wreath can be as simple as four candles – they don’t even have to match! Pillar, jar, or votive candles work well. Set up your candles/wreath somewhere central in your home, like the center of the table where you usually eat. You can decorate your wreath or candles however you like – evergreen cuttings, pine cones, ribbons, whatever feels pretty and special for the season. Purple and blue are traditional Advent colors, but you don’t have to use them.
When you sit down for dinner, or at another quiet moment in your evening, light a candle (or two, or three, or four) and spend a moment praying or just enjoying the light. During the first week of Advent (after the first Sunday of Advent), light one candle; after the second Sunday, light two candles, and so on. You may add a fifth candle to light at Christmas. Adding lights week by week, as it grows darker and darker outside, helps us enter into the anticipation of the season.
RESONATING TEXTS
These texts offer some other ways to think about preparing for Christmas. Click the links to read the poems and texts!
What is the crying at Jordan? – by Carol Christopher Drake; Hymn #69 in our hymnal.
Making the House Ready for the Lord (Mary Oliver, 1935 – 2019)
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent– its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
That’s the end of today’s Isaiah text. By an oddity of the lectionary, in just three weeks we’ll hear something very similar in Isaiah chapter 11, on the second Sunday of Advent:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Today’s text, Isaiah 65, is referring back to this part of Isaiah 11. These passages are 54 chapters and perhaps 200 years apart. The original Isaiah was a prophet, someone who speaks God’s words to the people, living in the eighth century before Jesus. Isaiah 11 falls in the midst of prophecies, oracles, about invasion, conquest, destruction and loss – and promises that a faithful remnant of God‘s people will survive and be able to rebuild.
This famous passage in chapter 11 moves from the historical to the eschatological. Eschatological texts are concerned with the end, or rather the fulfillment, of history. They’re about things that will happened in God’s time, not human time; and by God‘s power, not human power.
Isaiah 65 is alluding back to Isaiah 11, almost as a kind of shorthand – from a very different historical moment. This writer is often called Second Isaiah or Exilic Isaiah. The consensus of scholars is that there are at least two, maybe three, main voices in the Book of Isaiah – but these later voices are so deeply steeped in the language and vision of First Isaiah that it really is all one book.
By the time of Isaiah 65, God’s people Israel have been through invasion and conquest, destruction and loss. Many have been killed; many have been dragged into exile in Babylon. Two generations later, the new boss of the world, Cyrus of Persia, allows them to return to their homeland and even funds their rebuilding.
This period is fascinating to me. The returnees were so full of hope, and of idealized visions of what Judea and Jerusalem were like in their grandparents’ day. But they had to deal with the reality that you can’t just recreate the past – and the past you’re trying to recreate may never have existed anyway. There were conflicting priorities and identity struggles and disappointment and disillusionment.
Isaiah 65 was probably written when the great Temple in Jerusalem was at least partly rebuilt. God speaks through this prophet to call God’s people to a bigger vision than just getting back to some approximation of what they had before.
Another text from this part of the book that may be familiar is Isaiah 60: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you! Nations shall stream to your light, kings to the brightness of your glory!” We often sing this text in the season of Epiphany. It’s a vision of Jerusalem as much more than the capital of an independent nation, but as the holy heart of the whole world.
Isaiah 65 pushes this vision even farther into eschatology: God says, For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth! This isn’t just rebuilt Jerusalem, this is cosmically renewed Jerusalem.
How would this have sounded to the rebuilding generation? Maybe it was a word of comfort: God’s power and God’s faithfulness are equal to the challenges of this time. Maybe it was a word of challenge: God has bigger plans for you than you have for yourselves. Either way, this prophet is intentionally bringing back – and building upon – the vision of Isaiah 11, of a promised realm of peace. Holding up this hopeful image, so that perhaps struggle and disillusionment may alchemize into a new determination to keep on building what is just and good and holy.
Isaiah 11 is famous for its imagery – often called the Peaceable Kingdom. And it’s associated closely with the work of the artist Edward Hicks.
Hicks was an American folk painter, and a minister and writer in the Society of Friends – better known as the Quakers. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1780. As a young man he learned the trade of painting coaches – and discovered that he had a knack for artistic or decorative painting as well.
But at the age of 23 he became a Quaker, and married a Quaker woman. His new faith carried with it a strong commitment to simplicity and plainness in all things. The decorative arts were viewed with suspicion as worldly distractions.
Though Hicks’ painting business was making good money and helping support his growing family, in 1815 he gave it up and attempted to support his family by farming.
This was an unmitigated disaster.
In 1816 a friend approached him and convinced him to save his family from starvation by returning to painting.
Hicks later wrote about this period in his life: “I quit the only business I understood, and for which I had a capacity, painting, for the business of a farmer, which I did not understand, and for which I had no qualifications whatever. I verily thought then, and still think, farming more consistent with the Christian, and was willing to sacrifice all my fondness for painting. But it would not do, for notwithstanding I worked hard, I went behind hand daily. The cruel moth of usury was eating up my outward garment, soon to expose me a poor naked bankrupt.”
He continues: “If the Christian world was in the real spirit of Christ, I do not believe there would be such thing as a fine painter in christendom. It appears clearly to me to be one of those trifling, insignificant arts, which has never been of any substantial advantage to mankind [but has been] the inseparable companion of voluptuousness and pride.”
But at the same time, he admits, “there is something of importance in the example of the primitive Christians… to mind their calling or business, and work with their own hands at such business as they are capable of, avoiding idleness.” (Thanks, Edward, for tying in that difficult Epistle for me…)
We may not share Hicks’ view of the decorative arts as inconsistent true Christian faithfulness. To a significant degree, Hicks’ Quaker faith was defining itself against our faith heritage as Anglicans, with our worldly fondness for beautiful buildings, stained glass windows, fine wines, and all that sort of thing.
But I hope we can hear that this was a genuine conflict of conscience for Hicks… and respect his decision to use his God-given gift, rather than starving as a farmer.
Having, in his own words, “been unsuccessful in every attempt to make an honest an honorable living,” Hicks settles in to be a painter for the remainder of his life. He does a variety of types of decorative painting – signage, landscapes, historical scenes.
But he also starts creating art that expresses his faith convictions. As a Quaker, Hicks was deeply committed to peace and reconciliation. The Quaker tradition places a strong value on non-violence – and so these Isaiah passages – They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain! – are particularly meaningful.
In 1820, at the age of 40, Hicks paints his first Peaceable Kingdom painting, an artistic rendering of Isaiah 11. Over the remaining 29 years of his life, he paints 62 versions of this scene. But close observers of his work point out that he wasn’t simply repeating himself.
Hicks’ early Kingdom paintings had a naïveté and simplicity. Often in the background he would include a stylized depiction of some historical event that seemed to him to be a fulfillment of Quaker ideals about peacemaking – such as William Penn’s treaty with the Lenape tribe.
However, in the 1820s, there was rising conflict among Quakers in the Northeast, leading to a schism in 1827. Hicks’ older cousin Elias Hicks was one of the core leaders of that struggle.
This was very painful for Edward Hicks and other Quakers. Their religious movement, with reconciliation and peace as core values, couldn’t even work through its own internal conflicts. It must have felt like a profound failure of faithfulness and witness.
Holland Cotter, art critic at the New York Times, observes that in this period – from 1827 into the 1830s – Hicks’ kingdom paintings become more expressive and strange. Cotter writes, “Additional children and animals crowd in. The carnivorous beasts — lions, leopards, wolves — grow in size. Where once they had cast their eyes docilely to the ground, they now stare out, alert, aggressive, challenging, even rabidly agitated… Occasionally animals are in conflict. But even when they aren’t, the assemblies have a jumbled, restive feeling. The ground beneath them is eroding…”
But then, Cotter observes, around 1840, when Hicks turned sixty, the mood of the paintings shifts again. Hicks accepts that the ideological battle will remain unresolved; the ideals at the heart of his faith and his life will not be fulfilled in his lifetime, and perhaps not in this world. The animals in his paintings start to look aged and weary. Sadder but wiser, perhaps.
Victoria Emily Jones writes, “Although Edward was initially hopeful about [humankind’s’ ability to establish peace on earth by simply exercising biblical principles, over time he became more and more cynical… The animals in many of his middle- and late-period paintings are tense or exhausted… Hicks wrote later in life that all the intrafaith dissension he witnessed had destroyed his hope of ever seeing established in the here and now a kingdom like the one Isaiah envisioned. But that realization only caused him to cling to Christ all the more tightly.”
Hicks never stopped painting Peaceable Kingdoms, despite struggle and disillusionment. He was still working on his final Peaceable Kingdom painting, a gift for his daughter, when he died in 1849.
I really love Hicks’ Kingdom paintings. Their strangeness; their simplicity and complexity. The emotions that seem to swim within them – hope, yearning, ambivalence, frustration, a kind of wry humor.
I wonder how Hicks’ contemporaries – his friends, his enemies – received these images of improbable peace. I wonder how we receive them. Maybe there’s comfort here: God’s power and God’s faithfulness are equal to the challenges of this time.
Maybe there’s challenge: God has bigger plans for us than we have for ourselves.
Either way, Hicks’ art makes him yet another Prophet Isaiah, carrying forward that eschatological vision of a realm of peace. Holding up this hopeful image for a new generation, and generations to come – so that perhaps, again, struggle and disillusionment may alchemize into a new determination to keep building what is just and good and holy.
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hicks
https://artandtheology.org/2016/12/06/the-peaceable-kingdoms-of-edward-hicks/ – Victoria Emily Jones
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/16/arts/art-review-finding-endless-conflict-hidden-in-a-peaceable-kingdom.html – Holland Cotter
The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda: .
THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!
2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).
3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window
Today I want to talk about the Communion of Saints.
The outline of the faith in the back of the Book of Common Prayer, the official prayer book of our church, says, “The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, … bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.”
I found a lovely description on another Episcopal church’s website: “All Saints’ Day [November 1; we’re celebrating it today] and All Souls’ Day [November 2nd] remind us of our belief that all Christians that ever lived, are living, and will ever be, are bound together in one Communion – the Body of Christ. All Saints’ and All Souls’ celebrates this bond as we continue the ancient practice of praying for the saints who have gone on before us and acknowledge that those saints in heaven are praying for us.”
(The Rev. Jeff Shankles, https://wearestalbans.org/celebrating-communion-saints/ )
The Communion of Saints binds us together with all Christians in all times and places. But at All Saints’ and All Souls’ we may be most mindful of the saints who have gone on ahead into the nearer presence of God.
Of those holy ones whom the Church names as witnesses to celebrate and remember, and of our own beloved dead.
There are several reasons the Communion of Saints is on my mind right now.
I think it’s no accident that these feasts of remembrance, this time when the Church and her people acknowledge that the veil between worlds feels particularly thin, comes at this turning time of the seasons in the northern hemisphere.
Autumn is dying, winter is on the horizon.
In the words of a favorite hymn:
Signs of endings are all around us.
These solemn feasts resonate with the cycles of the natural world; change, loss, transience and mortality are writ large everywhere we look.
The second reason the Communion of Saints is on my mind is – of course – that it feels like our little St Dunstan’s chapter of the greater Communion has been growing, lately.
Jane.
Martina.
Dan Geisler.
Dan Hanson.
Scott Tyre.
Mike Vaughan.
Mo Lewis.
Sue Lloyd.
All gone on ahead in 2022.
Some more remembered than known, by today’s congregation, but some very much known and loved – and missed. Absences keenly felt.
I keep expecting to Martina to stop by and drop off some political buttons, or an email from Jane that starts with an error in the Enews but goes on with an update on her life, and kind questions about my family.
It helps to remember that they’re still out there, somewhere.
The third reason the Communion of Saints is on my mind is that I heard a great sermon about it recently, at our Diocesan Convention in early October, given by Bishop Matt Gunter, the bishop of our sister diocese of Fond du Lac.
Bishop Matt challenged us to take that idea of the Communion of Saints seriously. To think of church as the momentum of all those holy lives pushing us forward, encouraging us.
What if all those people we named at the beginning of this service – what if they are actually listening? Hearing our call, our invocation of their presence and prayers?
Bishop Matt talked about how we might feel a sense of unease at the idea of being watched over by the holy departed. Surely they’ll judge our every small failure or unkindness!
But what if – he said – what if instead it’s the reverse? What if they break out in joyful cheers every time we manage to be patient or kind or generous in some tiny way?
And what if the saints don’t just watch us like some trans-dimensional twitch stream? What if they’re an active presence in our lives?
Coming alongside us to whisper: You’re going to need to be patient, today. Pay attention in this conversation; there’s something here for you. Get some rest this evening; tomorrow may demand a lot from you.
After all, the saints know what it is like to try to be people of justice and mercy and love in the real world. In ordinary times and in extraordinarily difficult times.
Bishop Matt reminded us of the great theologian Augustine of Hippo, who lived in a time when the Roman Empire, the world as everyone had known it for centuries, was falling down around his ears.
And Augustine writes this great work called the City of God, saying, This earthly city, this earthly empire, may crumble; but there’s another city that we really belong to, and that city endures, because God is the Founder of that city.
Julian of Norwich, a beloved saint for some people in this congregation, lived in the 14th century – in the time of the Black Death, the great plague that killed something like a third of the people of Europe. But she encounters Jesus in a vision, and Jesus tells her that despite the suffering she sees around her, the heart of the Divine is not judgment but deep, deep love. And Julian is able to say: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Not because the hard and terrible stuff isn’t real. But because it’s not as real as the love that holds her – that holds us. And it’s not as real as the joy that awaits us.
These people lived in times that make what we’re dealing with look not so bad. But we may well have harder times ahead.
As I’ve gotten to know Bishop Matt, I’ve noticed that he carries a keen awareness that we may be moving into a difficult chapter in the life of the world – with worsening climate change, polarized violence, and pandemic disease. I find it – oddly comforting? – to hear a church leader name that.
And he makes the case that it’s important to anchor ourselves in what matters, in what’s deeply true and truly good, to face the coming times. Our understanding, our awareness, of the Communion of Saints is one aspect of that anchoring.
Because all these people – Augustine, Julian, Dr. King, Sophie Scholl, so many others – they lived in hard times too.They faced into it with love and courage.
Bishop Matt told us: The saints remind us that we are part of a bigger story. My part in the story, or your part, might be pretty small. But we’re called to play our part in the great story, in our time.
And what kind of story is it? Well: We know where the story is going. Because of Jesus, who comes into the story to give us a foreshadowing of how the story will end. The story ends with resurrection. With restoration and renewal.
It’s not a tragedy, no matter how it might look sometimes. It’s the kind of story that ends with laughter, with joy. With old friends and loved ones reunited. With feast and song.
Knowing how the story ends might free us to see the hard stuff along the way in a different light.
And as we continue to live the rest of our parts of the story, we can be assured that there is this great cloud of witnesses, the Communion of Saints, cheering us on.
The St. Dunstan’s chapter, and all the others you’re thinking of today too – maybe a beloved grandparent, a friend from childhood, a mentor, a sibling or child – watching over you, praying for you, urging you on. Standing here beside you. Beside us. Accompanying us on the journey.
Thanks be to God.
This Week’s Song: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” verses 1 & 2
This song is #56 in our church’s hymnal.
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily.
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!