Intergenerational Church, Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Homily, July 24

A homily about prayer for All-Ages Worship, based on Luke 11:1-13. 

What does it mean to pray? 

At church it might feel like praying is when we read certain things out of our booklets. But that’s only one kind of prayer.

Or maybe it’s when we place our flowers and stones in the prayer gardens. But that’s also only one kind of prayer. 

Prayer means so many things! 

Anne Lamott says anything you say from your heart to God – out loud or inside yourself! – is a prayer.

But prayer isn’t just talking.  Listening is an important part of prayer, too. 

Prayer can look like coloring or knitting or walking… It can look like laughing, or crying. It can look like sitting very still. It can look like dancing.

In the Gospel today Jesus’ friends ask him how to pray. They want to know if there’s a right way to do it. And Jesus gives them an example: “Here’s a way to pray!” 

I think he was just trying to show them that prayer can be very simple.  Not that this is the ONE RIGHT PRAYER. But his friends wrote it down, and passed it on, and over time people started calling it the Lord’s Prayer, and using it in worship, and in their daily prayers too.

The Lord’s Prayer is an example of what’s good and what’s bad about worshiping the way our kind of church worships: with set prayers that we read off a page, or memorize. The bad is that it can get boring. Too familiar.  Sometimes we’re not really praying it at all; our mouths are just saying the words. The good is that it’s always there for us. It’s an anchor. When it’s hard to find our own words, we can use these ones. 

At our church we say the Lord’s Prayer using lots of versions! Everyone can pick which one they want to use. But we still know we’re all praying the same prayer together. I know for some people it feels like a lot for their ears – maybe too much! For other people it lets them pray from their heart, whether their words match everyone else’s or not. 

We started doing this because we were using the “contemporary version” of the Lord’s Prayer from our Prayer Book – the one that starts, “Our Father in heaven…”

But some people liked the older version better – the one that starts “Our Father who art in heaven…” So they were praying that version instead. 

When I noticed this, I remembered that at General Convention, when all the Episcopalians from the United States and the Caribbean and parts of Europe and Latin America and the indigenous churches all get together, people are invited to pray in the language of their heart. It’s amazing to be in a room with two thousand people all praying this same prayer, the prayer Jesus gave to his friends, but in so many different ways! 

So we started doing it that way too. 

Today there’s a new version in your Sunday Supplement, one I learned from a member of our parish. It’s based on the Message version of the Bible. It has some beautiful and surprising language and you might like to try it out, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer later on! 

So what’s in this prayer, the simple prayer Jesus gave his friends? Let’s take a quick look – and as we go, I’ll show you the signs from ASL, American Sign Language, that some of us like to use. 

First, we pray as God’s beloved children, calling God Father or Mother. If those are difficult words for you, you could use another name for God that brings you close in love. 

Then we say, May your Name be held holy! We pray for God’s goodness and glory to be seen and known. The sign for Holy is like wiping something clean so it can shine. 

Then we pray, Let your kingdom come! The Message version says, Set the world right! The sign for Come is just like calling someone with your hands. 

Then we pray, Give us the food we need for the day. We’re not praying for a Mercedes Benz here, or a Playstation 5. We’re praying for our most basic needs. Just enough. The ASL sign we use here is Feed or Eat. 

Then we pray for forgiveness of our sins. That the things we’ve done that we shouldn’t have done, or the things we didn’t do and should have done, will be wiped away, in God’s kindness – and that we’ll do better next time. And we pray for help forgiving other people, too.  The sign we use there is like sending someone on their way. You’re free! Go in peace! 

Then – in Luke’s version of this prayer, which is very short! – we pray that we won’t face tough situations and hard times. We use three different ASL signs here! We ask for God to strengthen us … And to spare us… look, two fists together, but then one escapes! And we ask God to save us, to set us free from the grip of evil. For the ASL sign, pretend your wrists are tied together – but then someone cuts the rope!

Then we hold up all our prayers to the God who rules the Universe in love… Amen. 

But then what happens? What happens AFTER we pray?

Praying isn’t like ordering in a restaurant, where you ask for mac and cheese, and in ten minutes, they bring you mac and cheese. 

But Jesus tells us to keep knocking, keep asking, keep seeking. And he says that God knows how to give us what we need. 

I bet some of us can think of times when we prayed for or about something, and it did happen, and we were glad and grateful.

I bet there are a lot more times when we didn’t even notice when our prayers were answered – because it’s easy not to notice when you stop being sad or anxious about something. 

We can also think of times when what we were praying for, didn’t happen the way we hoped it would.  When we prayed for an egg and feel like we got a scorpion. 

That could be another whole sermon. Let me just say that I don’t think everything that happens is God’s will. The world is not the way it is meant to be. 

Sometimes, though, the response to our prayers just doesn’t look like what we expected.

At Drama Camp this week, we worked with the story of Tobit, from the Apocrypha in the Bible. Among other things, Tobit is a story about prayer. Early in the story, Tobit, who has suffered many tragedies, prays for God to end his misery. At the same moment, a young woman named Sarah is praying to be freed from her own shame and suffering. And God decides to take care of both situations at once. 

The way the story unfolds from there involves a journey, a dog, a demon, an angel in disguise, and fish guts. I can’t possibly summarize it. Look it up, or ask a kid! But there is, eventually, a happy ending for both Tobit and Sarah. 

Sometimes the resolution of our struggles or yearnings takes the long way round. I’ve lived that. Maybe you have too. 

Now it’s almost time for us to pray together, friends!…

Worship

Bulletin for July 24

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for July 24

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. 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

Worship

Bulletin for July 10

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for July 10

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. 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

Worship

Bulletin for July 17

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for July 17

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. 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

Uncategorized

Zoom sermon, June 19

Preached by the Rev. Lorna Grenfell. 

The young poet Amanda Gorman burst on the American consciousness at the presidential inauguration in January 2021 when she read her poem “The Hill We Climb”. More recently, she has written a poem entitles “Everything Hurts”. The first four lines of which are as follows:

“Everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed and strange,

Minds made muddied and mute.

We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.”

Certainly, the phrase “everything hurts” sums up much of what each of us sees, hears, and experiences in our world today.

-The pandemic continues to dictate much of our lives.

-There is a very decisive war being fought in Ukraine and in 20 armed conflicts–terrorist insurgencies, civil wars—in the rest of the world right now.

– Storms, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires continue to rage and devastate many parts of the planet with our inability to address climate change adequately and quickly.

– Our beloved country is enmeshed in a political morass of unbelievable proportions.

– And our attention is riveted to the demands of addressing gun violence, reproductive rights, homelessness, inflation, and our systemic, ever-present racism.  This morning, we praise God that Juneteenth, begun in 1865, is finally a federal holiday.  It took us 157 years to make that happen, and there are still only 18 states that have actually funded this federal holiday.

Good heavens.  Have I left anything out?  No wonder the phrase “everything hurts” comes to mind.  Our world seems barely tolerable.  In fact, a good word for today is INtolerable.  So, let us turn together to our scripture lessons that were so beautifully read for us this morning.

After King Solomon’s death, ten tribes broke away from Davidic rule and set up Israel where Ahab was king in the 9th century BCE.  Ahab marries Jezebel, daughter of the King of Sidon, Israel’s Phoenician neighbor.  Jezebel promotes the worship of their god Baal.  The prophet Elijah appears on the scene and overwhelmingly demonstrates YHWH’s superiority over Baal, ending in the slaughter of all the prophets of Baal.  Jezebel is furious and swears revenge on Elijah.  She’s so angry that she swears death to Elijah.  

Elijah has to get out of town fast.   He flees into Judah and then into the wilderness.  After 40 days and 40 nights, exhausted and alone, Elijah lies down to sleep beside a wadi.  While he sleeps, angels come and leave food—a cake by his head. (I think this is one of the first biblical references to Angel Food Cake?  Don’t tell Miranda I said that!)  After his long journey alone into the wilderness, after wild wind and splitting rocks, after earthquakes and fire, there is the sound of silence.  Verse 12 tells us God speaks to Elijah when he is alone in the sound of sheer silence.  The words translated as the sound of sheer silence have more than one meaning: quiet, small voice, gentle whisper, stillness.

Our New Testament story this morning tells of the Gerasene demoniac who also finds the world Intolerable and flees to a place where he can be alone.   This Gerasene demoniac is a heartbreaking, Biblical figure, a man possessed by demons, a man with no name, a human being who, when asked his name, replies “legion”—a direct reference to the oppressive Roman rule that all are living under.  A Roman legion is composed of up to 6,000 armed men trained for war.  Like Elijah, life in community for the demoniac becomes intolerable.  He also flees to a place where he can be alone, the cemetery.  Alone and afraid, ranting, naked, violent and shouting, he lives among the dead.  He lives amidst a great silence.  And, of course, it is here that God comes to him in the form of a human being, Jesus.  It is exactly here that Jesus comes to the demoniac and exorcises all his demons, banishes them into the pigs who rush into the sea and drown.  And Jesus tells the man to return home and share with people how much God has done for him.

So, what about us gathered here this morning?  Retired Bishop Steven Charleston writes:

“When I watch the news, I get the feeling that history is deconstructing itself all around us.  What we knew is not what is now.  What we once assumed or expected is giving way to what we never could have imagined.  Old alliances are breaking apart.  Old assumptions about who we are no longer apply.  Like it or not, we are a transitional generation, people living on a hinge point of history.”

I think one of the questions for us gathered here this morning is how do we address what the World Health Organization describes as our collective ‘exhaustion, cynicism and burnout’.  When everything hurts, where will we get the courage, the stamina, the expertise and knowledge to live in and change our communities, our country and the world which have become nigh on INtolerable with violence and prejudice, with the systemic and ingrained harm human beings are doing, one to another.

It seems to me that our lesson is first to find a place where each of us can be alone.  In Jesus’ time, the world population was 250,000.  Today it is 1 billion people.  So, this finding a place to be alone might pose a challenge, but I think we can each do it if we are intentional about it.

maybe on a hilltop watching a sunrise on a morning walk or run

maybe a woodsy spot where we can feel and smell the sun-warmed pine needles

maybe an evening canoe paddle on a glassy smooth lake

maybe a chair outside at dusk to watch the stars come out

…a place for you alone where you can listen for the sheer silence, the small voice, the gentle whisper, the stillness.

…a place where there is a joining of the seen and unseen

…a place quiet enough for the transcendent and the immanent to meet

…a place for simply and passively receiving healing and strength

…a place where you don’t have to be busy

…a place where you don’t have to hold a prayer seminar with God

…a place to just let the sheer silence, the stillness, the gentle whisper flow into your very being.

Down through the ages, there has been a great deal written about these places of silence.  Songs and poems abound, and I know you know many of them!

–Of course, there is the old hymn “I come to the garden alone”, the place where “he walks with me and he talks with me”

–and for those of us who came of age in the ‘60s, there is Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hello darkness, my old friend/I’ve come to talk with you again…And the vision that was planted in my brain/Still remains/Within the sound of silence.”

–And here are the words of beloved American poet Wendell Berry:  “When despair for the world grows in me/and I wake in the night at the least sound/in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,/I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water….”

–And here are my all-time favorite words from all of Christmas.  When a congregation sings this, I hold my breath and just listen: “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given/So God imparts to human hearts the joys of highest heaven/No ear may hear Christ coming, but in this world of sin/Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

Again, in Bishop Charleston’s words:

“Our task is not to run away from change, but to run towards it.  We must swing the hinge of history in the direction we want to go for our shared future.”  In being alone with God, both Elijah and the demoniac receive the strength to return to community.  Elijah goes on to deal again with Ahab and with his son Ahaziah and eventually to pass his own mantle on to Elisha.  The demoniac becomes an active community witness to all God has done in his life.

When life seems to become intolerable, may each of us find a way to be alone, a way to let the sheer silence of God reach in and bring comfort, courage, strength, solace and renewal.

It’s important.  It’s what enables us to go on, and you never know–maybe there’ll be Angel Food Cake?

Amanda Gorman ends her poem “Everything Hurts” with these words: 

“Maybe everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed and strange,

But only when everything hurts

May everything change.”

In the words of poet David Whyte, ‘the visible and the invisible working together in common cause produce the miraculous.’

Amen and Amen.

Lorna Grenfell

June 19, 2022

Current Events, Sermons

Homily, July 3

Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights of the Women, July 4, 1876: “It was the boast of the founders of the republic, that the rights for which they contended were the rights of human nature. If these rights are ignored in the case of one-half the people, the nation is surely preparing for its downfall. Governments try themselves. The recognition of a governing and a governed class is incompatible with the first principles of freedom… Now, at the close of a hundred years, as the hour-hand of the great clock that marks the centuries points to 1876, we declare our faith in the principles of self-government; our full equality with man in natural rights; that woman was made first for her own happiness, with the absolute right to herself – to all the opportunities and advantages life affords for her complete development; and we deny that dogma of the centuries, incorporated in the codes of all nations – that woman was made for man – her best interests, in all cases, to be sacrificed to his will. We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.”

 

We have this custom of sharing readings from American history on the weekend of the Fourth of July.  It’s a way to mark the holiday without too simply endorsing it. I hesitated about doing it, this year, but when I looked at the readings, and sat with my own feelings a little, I decided we needed these voices. 

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a difficult couple of weeks for my patriotism. I’ve been forced to face the fact that, as educated and thoughtful and aware as I think I am, there’s a part of me that has always believed in the ideal of American progress. That has always assumed that as a nation, we’d keep marching in the direction of more rights, more freedoms, more human dignity for all. 

And that was a hopeful belief for me, because it was congruent with my values as a Christian – my belief in a God who does not have favorite kinds of people, a God who is about freedom from bondage, and about calling people from the margins to the center, and about human wholeness.

That hopeful belief is what was really shaken by the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe vs Wade – and by the direction that decision seems to point. 

The Roe decision is painful and frightening on its own terms. As far as anyone can tell, abortion is now illegal in Wisconsin, with basically no exceptions, due to an 1849 law still on the books. Over half the states in our nation will soon have banned abortion. 

I know we likely have a range of convictions and feelings about abortion here. It’s both a big polarized political issue, and a deeply sensitive human issue. Whatever your views, whatever your experiences, I hope you understand that many people with uteruses truly feel less free today than we did two weeks ago. To borrow some phrases from Susan B. Anthony – writing nearly 150 years ago! – we feel consigned to being a governed class, without the absolute right to ourselves. 

There’s so much that could be said about abortion. Let me say three things, very briefly. The first is that the Episcopal Church supports legal abortion. The second is that God asked for Mary’s consent before having her bear and birth Jesus Christ. 

The third is that the terrain of conceiving or not conceiving, birthing or not birthing, parenting or not parenting, is some of the most tender and delicate territory of our lives. We are so easily bruised, here. When we talk about all this, as perhaps we must, let us strive to listen, and to be kind. 

But the impact of overturning Roe is bigger than reproductive rights. It has shaken – shattered – any comfortable sense of progress. For one thing: There is a very real concern, now, that Obergefell is also under threat. If Obergefell isn’t a household name for you: It’s the Supreme Court case which secured a nationwide right to gay marriage.

It meant that same-sex couples were no longer dependent on geography and state governments for whether their marriages – and the many rights and privileges bound up with marriage – were legal.  

Obergefell was decided on June 26, 2015. I remember the day! I was at General Convention in Salt Lake City. There was a huge party at a local park. Lots of General Convention deputies joined the celebration. People were dancing. Rainbows everywhere. It was amazing. So much relief. So much joy. 

Now, it’s increasingly clear that many conservative leaders, and at least some Supreme Court justices, would like to overturn that decision as well. Every same-sex couple you know is watching and worrying and planning. Figuring out what to they need to do to protect their families, their livelihoods, their selves, in the coming months and years. 

As a faith community, part of our work in this season is to find out what it means to have the backs of our gay, lesbian, and gender-diverse members and households, and friends and neighbors too. Dancing in the park isn’t enough anymore. 

I believed that rights, once acknowledged by the Supreme Court of our nation, would remain secure. I should have known better. I’m an anthropologist, a student of human nature. I’ve studied the Bible closely. I know that history is full of pendulum swings.

Maybe it’s my naïveté, my whiteness, my privilege, that let me believe otherwise. Probably all of the above. I know plenty of people were never under any such illusions. Those of us who were, are sadder and wiser now – and, I hope, ready to listen and learn from those who have always known that the arc of history only bends towards justice if we all pull on it together with all our strength. 

How do we live now? What do we do? How do we show up for each other and ourselves and those burdened, or desperate, or at risk? 

Those are questions to be explored in both the short term and the longer term. Let me say again, as I did last week, that if you are looking for people to connect with, to share ideas about how to respond, together, to the times in which we find ourselves, let me know – and we’ll see what takes shape. 

I appreciate Paul’s paradoxical advice in today’s Epistle: Bear one another’s burdens; but also, Each will bear their own burden. I think what he means is: Figure out what your work is, and do it. Seek out your way among the many, many ways to work or march or give or serve or sing or study or make art or pray, as part of God’s holy movement for justice, compassion, and the flourishing of humanity and creation.

Do your work. But also, when you have a chance: help others. Lighten their load. 

What’s OUR work, at St. Dunstan’s? Well, that’s for us to continue to discern together.  But maybe part of our work needs to be digging in to who we think Jesus is, and what we think it means to follow him. 

If it’s been a tough couple of weeks for your patriotism, it probably has been for your Christianity too. There are people who claim the faith of Jesus at both extremes. And right now the Jesus who seems to be winning some of these big legal and cultural battles doesn’t look much like the Jesus we talk about around here. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus sends out his followers with a simple message to share: The Kingdom of God has come near. I always feel like I need a whole sermon to talk about the Kingdom of God. It can’t be simply explained or described. Jesus talks about it a lot – but he talks about it in stories. The Kingdom of God seems to be Jesus’ vocabulary for … an alternative way of being or seeing or living, or an alternate reality. Maybe it’s somewhere else, or maybe it’s here but hiding just behind our familiar reality. It’s not Heaven; it’s closer and stranger than that. 

In the Kingdom of God the last are first, and the lost matter more than the found. 

In the Kingdom of God small good things grow, even when big bad things threaten to overwhelm. 

The Kingdom of God is an intentional contrast with the powers and politics of this world. 

The Kingdom of God is not coercive or controlling. It does not shame or blame. It shines. It teases. It invites. 

That inviting mystery of the Kingdom of God is actually pretty important to my spirituality and my faithful living. I don’t claim to understand it! But it calls me. 

In the face of a Christianity that seems to want to become more and more deeply embedded in the structures and institutions of this world, I am drawn to a way of faith that invites us to imagine our way into a different kind of world.

In the face of a Christianity that seems to be so much about control and shame, I’m drawn to a Christianity that’s about kindness and possibility and play. 

In the face of a Christianity that makes laws, I’m drawn to a Christianity that tells stories. 

And even if I can’t believe in American history as an inevitable march from worse to better, I do still believe in a God at work in human history and human hearts.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days. Amen. 

Uncategorized, Worship

Bulletin for July 3

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for July 3

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. 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

Worship

Bulletin for June 26

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for June 26

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. 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

Worship

Bulletin for June 19

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin for June 19

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. 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

Sermons

Sermon, June 12

Today is Trinity Sunday – the Sunday after Pentecost. The only Sunday named after a doctrine… which always threatens to be a particularly dry topic for preaching. 

The Trinity is the name for the church’s teaching that the God we worship is Three in One and One in Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the One who creates, redeems, and befriends. 

A late 5th century text known as the Athanasian Creed tries to put words around the paradoxes of the Trinity: 

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. 

For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. 

But the Divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. 

Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. 

The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. 

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. 

The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite…”

It has a kind of beauty… but it doesn’t exactly clear anything up! 

I feel a certain pressure every year to offer you the church’s teaching about the Trinity. But I’m also always aware that we’re trying to stretch human language and concepts around divine realities that we do not fully comprehend. 

What catches my attention about our Trinity Sunday readings this year is the way they point to the ongoing role of the Holy Spirit in forming, guiding, and teaching God’s people. Today’s readings kind of send us back a week to Pentecost – and to the Holy Spirit! 

The text from Proverbs about Lady Wisdom invites us to hear the voice of the Spirit in this pre-Christian text. The assigned portion focuses on her role assisting God in Creation, but in the full passage, she is encouraging people to heed her voice:

“I have good advice and sound wisdom;
I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just…  

I love those who love me,
and those who seek me diligently find me.”

A few verses later she’s inviting passers-by into her home for a banquet: “She has sent out her young women, she calls from the highest places in the town,
‘You that are foolish, turn in here!’
To those without sense she says,
‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Forsake foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’” 

Lady Wisdom is one of several ways Jewish thought and sacred writings have described a companion or emanation of the One God. The Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit builds on those ideas. 

I like holding that image of Lady Wisdom, laying a banquet and urgently inviting us to come partake, in my mind as we read what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel today.  

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, they will guide you into all the truth; for they will not speak on their own, but will speak whatever they hear, and they will declare to you the things that are to come.” 

I’m sure libraries could be filled with interpretations of those intriguing verses. But a plain sense reading seems to suggest that Jesus expects that the Church’s understanding of the full meaning of God’s redeeming love will grow and change. 

Jesus says, You don’t know everything now; and even what you do know, or think you know, may change in the years and centuries to come, guided by the Spirit. 

Christianity is, after all, founded on metanoia – a transformation of heart and mind that bears fruit in our lives. That transformation, change, renewal, conversion, can be sudden and dramatic and / or slow and lifelong. And as Jesus says here, becoming a Christian – a follower of Jesus – isn’t the end of that renewal, that opening of mind and heart.  It may be just the beginning. 

That’s why Learn and Turn are two of the core practices of the Way of Love offered by our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry;  and why Wondering and Turning are two of the discipleship practices we name and strive to practice here at St. Dunstan’s. 

We expect our understandings of God, humanity, self and world to change. We are cautious about it. As I said a couple of weeks ago: New isn’t better just because it’s new. But neither is old! 

In the Anglican tradition, our foundational theologian, Richard Hooker, suggested we use a threefold approach to discerning what is true and right: Scripture, tradition, and reason. 

Hooker lived in the 16th century, a time of rapid change and expanding knowledge. He believed we could best discern what is right, good, and true through holding these things in balance and seeing how they inform each other: the truths revealed in Scripture, the truths passed down to us by tradition, and the truths we discover by the use of human reason – which Hooker meant in a more holistic sense than we might think: using our capacity to think, analyze, and wonder to reflect on what our senses and our experiences have to show us. 

It’s Pride Month right now. Pride is celebrated annually in June, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The purpose of Pride month is to recognize and celebrate LGBTQ+ people, and to reaffirm shared commitments to work for equal justice and equal opportunity. 

Honoring Pride in Madison is a little weird because Madison’s Pride celebration is in August. But I’m hearing from our young people that they’re talking about Pride at school, seeing Pride-themed posts on social media and Pride products in stores. So maybe it’s important to acknowledge Pride here, too. 

Our capacity to learn, listen, wonder and turn is how our denomination, the Episcopal Church, has come to hold a fully inclusive position with respect to LGBTQ+ people, while some other churches continue to feel bound by what they understand to be the gender and sexuality norms of the Bible. (Though I would argue that the Bible’s witness on those matters is rather more complicated than it might seem on the surface.) 

Since the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Episcopal Church has been actively learning from gay and lesbian Episcopalians – laypeople, deacons and priests, and eventually bishops. In 2012 the Episcopal Church’s General Convention resolved that transgender people, too, have an equal place in the life, worship and governance of the church, including access to ordination. 

As a church we’re learning – slowly – to acknowledge and embrace people who find themselves in other places on the spectrums of gender and sexuality, as well. 

How did we get here? How did we move from being a church that asks its LGBTQ+ members – who have always been there – to live with silence, secrecy, and celibacy, to a church that – in some places, on our good days – fully includes and celebrates them? 

Well: We studied Scripture together. There’s an amazing study document called To Set Our Hope On Christ, created in 2005 by some of the Episcopal Church’s top scholars, that explores how to read the Bible faithfully and find in it support for the goodness of a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities. It’s just one example, but it’s a great starting point for the curious. 

We looked to our tradition with fresh eyes. We discovered that heterosexual marriage is perhaps not as central an institution in Christian history as we had been led to believe… and that among the boldest and brightest witnesses to God’s love down through the ages have been many saints whose gender expression, partnerships, or manner of life did not conform to the expectations and norms of their time or ours. 

And we listened to, and reflected on, experience – our own and others’. My first job after seminary was in the Diocese of New Hampshire. The bishop at the time – since retired – was Gene Robison. Gene was the first openly gay and partnered man to be elected as a bishop in the Episcopal Church. His election in 2003 was a big deal. Things got messy. In some corners, things got ugly. 

It was 2008 when we moved to New Hampshire. But now and then somebody would still tell me their story about that time. New Hampshire is a small diocese in a small state. Gene had been on the previous bishop’s staff. A lot of people knew him. 

What people kept telling me was: Of course we knew Gene was gay. We knew his husband. But we called him to be our bishop because we thought he should be our bishop. We saw in him the gifts we needed in our leader. We weren’t trying to make a splash by electing the first openly gay bishop. We were just following the Holy Spirit. 

So many versions of that story are part of our church’s journey. Leading us deeper and deeper into the apostle Peter’s epiphany: I truly understand that God doesn’t have favorite kinds of people. 

I need to say that our church has not arrived. We have a ton of work to do to live into our intentions and commitments. But that’s often how the Holy Spirit works. 

They lead you to a new understanding or conviction… and then it takes time to reorganize your thinking and your life, or that of your organization, to align with what you have come to know. 

And sometimes, beloved in Christ, sometimes the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead us to new certainties. Sometimes they lead us to new uncertainties. That can be even harder, friends – embracing the holy unknown. Loosing our grip on things we thought were fixed or settled can be very disorienting. 

And yet: Our God is a God of paradox, mystery, transformation. Much more can be mended than we know. 

I wonder what else we have to learn. 

I wonder what holy truths we’re not yet ready to bear… but might be, someday. 

I wonder where Lady Wisdom, the Spirit of Truth, has laid out a banquet, and is standing in her doorway calling out to us: “Come, and eat, and walk in the way of insight!”

 

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St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church