Author: All Saints Episcopal Church SF

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, June 30, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Reverend Beth Lind Foote for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, June 30, 2019

Happy Pride Weekend!  This morning I came over the Bay Bridge and looked for the Pink Triangle.  There was too much fog, but I knew it was there.

One evening last week I crossed Waller Street to talk to our neighbors who were painting a banner for the Pride parade. It was for the Harvey Milk Democrats, and it said Stonewall 1969. They are young; Stonewall was a historical event to them.  It prompted me to reflect this week on Pride, and how it’s affected the world for good. Pride celebrates courage and authenticity, love, and acceptance, and creating a new world that brings those values into reality.  I wonder how these values of PRIDE shine a light on our readings for today, and for us at All Saints?

Elijah is one of the most prominent characters in the Old Testament; people of Jesus’ time thought that he might be Elijah returned.  Elijah had a showdown with 400 idolatrous priests of Baal, and called down fire upon them, and confronted the powerful Queen Jezebel and King Ahab.  In last week’s reading, we saw him taken care of by angels in the wilderness. Today we see Elijah rolling up his mantle and using it to part the Jordan River, in much the same way as Moses parted the Red Sea. Elijah is at the end of his life. He has been mentoring Elisha to take on his powerful mantle of prophecy. 

Elijah knows that he will soon be taken up into heaven, and he asks the younger Elisha “what may I do for you, before I am taken from you?”  Elisha says, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”  Elijah says, “You have asked for a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” 

As Elijah is swept up by the whirlwind, Elisha sees the chariot of fire, and he receives the double portion of Elijah’s spirit.  He takes on the mantle of Elijah as prophet, and when he reaches the Jordan, he is able to use the mantle to part it like Elijah did.

We are most familiar with the image of the chariot of fire in this passage, but the heart of the Elijah story today is the transition between the two prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  Elijah has completed his ministry, and is passing on the mantle (literally) to Elisha. I see a lot of hope in this story for us at All Saints, and for our wider society. 

Like Elisha, we are here today at All Saints because of those who came before us, built this beautiful place,  and created a spirit of inclusion, generosity, and service, that are hallmarks of this community. One of our tasks in the Interim period is to ask, how we can be Elijah to Elisha?  How can we pass on our mantle of ministry?  In a neighborhood that has embraced many of the things we have nurtured, like LGBTQ rights, how do we as a church renew and pass on our ministry in today’s changed world?

In our Gospel passage we see another kind of mentorship: between Jesus and his followers, including us. Jesus’ close disciples, James and John, have been with him for a long time, yet when a Samaritan village ignores Jesus, these two brothers live up to their fiery reputation as “the sons of thunder.” They ask Jesus, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 

Jesus rebukes them because raining fire on people is about the most un-Christ like thing they could do.  But I think this episode shows us how easy it is for people to break into factions, and how quick we are to label another group “the other.” Substitute any ethnicity, religious group, or sexual orientation you would like in the place of “Samaritan “and you can see how not much has changed in the world since Jesus’ time.

But Jesus pushes against that natural human response. He challenges his followers, and us, to grow in courage and love, and see all people as members of the human family. In our world where immigrants and refugees have been turned into the “Other”, Jesus’ teaching of love, which is also the teaching of Pride, speaks profoundly this morning.

I had a very interesting experience this weekend being “the other” myself, and it was instructive because I am not often in that position. Our oldest niece was married in the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. Her parents are high up in the Mormon Church, and she and all of her siblings are devoutly Mormon.  My husband and I and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law were about the only “gentiles” in attendance.

Of course, we could not attend the marriage sealing in the Salt Lake Temple, only Mormons in good standing can do that, but we cheered with the larger family when the couple emerged from the Temple and we danced at the reception with our many our nieces and nephews, without champagne.

Three years ago our very Mormon sister and brother-in-law came to our daughter’s same sex wedding.  I realized that must have seemed as just as different to them, and they might have felt like “the other.” Though there are theological and cultural differences between us, we love each other dearly. Over the weekend, I heard anew Jesus’ challenge to love as he has loved us.

We also hear in this passage that Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  He knows he must give himself as an offering of love. 

Jesus is about to push the boundaries; he knows that’s what it takes to move the world forward.  He says in our reading today, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Jesus challenges us to take up his mantle and do the work we are given to do in his name.

There’s an article in the New York Times this week about the first Pride Parade in 1970 in New York, a year after the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. The first Pride Parade was a protest march of LGBTQ people walking through the streets of Manhattan simply owning who they were. Those who marched set their faces to go to Jerusalem. They could have lost their jobs, or been disowned by family for being there, but they marched.  And as they proceeded up the street, more people stepped off the sidewalk and joined in.  They marched for their own authenticity and they marched in the name of love.

Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians speaks directly to how we need to live into this kind of transformational approach.

Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.  For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters…For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Paul translated the Gospel to the Gentile culture of his time. He talks about the flesh as if everything about it is corrupt. This, of course, led to centuries of Christian dualistic theology that the body was bad and the spirit was pure. He says, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

I’m going to call out St. Paul this morning.  Paul equates Christ Jesus’ crucifixion as a dismissal of the body in favor of the spirit but the Incarnation is a deeper truth than Paul’s teaching. 

One of the gifts of Pride is a celebration of the body.  Our bodies are good, and, as Christians, we believe we are created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ who came to live in a body like one of us. The body, including our “passions and desires” are holy because Christ became human.

Paul celebrates the “fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” I find these fruits of the spirit most evident when we do not punish our body, but accept and honor who we are as body and spirit together, as a beloved creation of God.

I don’t often step off the lectionary, but this morning I am inspired to go back to last week’s lesson from St. Paul’s letter to the Galations: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Amen.

A Sermon for Corpus Christ/2nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Reverend Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, for Corpus Christi/2nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2019

June 23, 2019

“Send out your light and your truth; that they may lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.”

This week I ran into a quote from Anne Lamott that resonated with me:

“When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth…It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me…Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness…when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable.  They were all running around in mazes like everyone else.”

Anne Lamott’s humor reveals uncomfortable truths. Life does sometimes feel like a confusing maze.  Mazes of achievement, mazes of responsibilities; mazes of traffic, mazes of loneliness, or or routine. Our culture says we’re supposed to navigate the mazes of our lives on our own. 

But, I wonder this morning, if, as Christians, we can break out of our cultural pattern of thinking and ask if it’s really all up to us. Where is God in the mazes of everyday life?  Do we need to seek out God? Or does God seek us out?  Does God surprise us? Does God ask us to grow and see the world differently?

In our Gospel story. Jesus meets a tortured soul, “the Demoniac” a man “with demons” who lives shackled in the tombs. Jesus asks him his name, and the man says, “Legion”, for many demons had entered him.” (In the Roman Army, a Legion was a company of 6,000 men.) 

We see Jesus in control of the situation: he negotiates with the legion of demons, and gives them permission to enter into the herd of pigs.

If we look closely at the text, Jesus has already “called ahead” to command the unclean spirit to come out of the man before he docks the boat.  And Jesus has possibly taken a detour to this side of the lake, in order to heal this man. The next thing we know, we see the Demoniac talking with Jesus,” clothed and in his right mind.” 

Jesus seeks out the lost and the tortured to lead them out from their maze of despair.

I’m reminded of our Psalm for today, #43, “send out your light and your truth that you will lead me,” which happens to be the psalm the altar party prays in the sacristy together before every Mass.  Whatever anxiety or distractions I have before 8:00 and 10:00 are given over to God when we pray that psalm together, and a sense of calm purpose comes over us. 

At the end of the story, we see the townsfolk who are “seized with great fear” and ask Jesus to leave.  He’s just too threatening. They were used to the way things were before.  The healing of the Demoniac in their midst is too much to handle.

When people are afraid they push away help, they push away newness of life, and growth. Fear prevents us from receiving the healing love of God. 

I see fear in many places recently.  Here in San Francisco, people are afraid of hosting navigation centers in their neighborhoods. 

In other parts of the country, people vote against their own interest out of fear of being “socialist.”

We live in fear of gun violence, but, as a country, we’re afraid of changing our relationship to guns.

Living in fear means we can’t imagine life being any different. 

But there is good news.  There is progress amidst the chaos.  Transformative work is happening all around us.

Here at All Saints’ we have many 12 Step Groups that meet in the Undercroft several nights a week.  People come “religiously” because they find community and healing in working through the 12 Steps together. The meetings are spirited and laughter spills out the door.

“Send out your light and your truth that you may lead me,” comes up for me as I meditate on the transformative work that’s happening in our midst, and which deserves our attention.

I recently rediscovered a book called “Breathing Underwater, the Spirituality of the 12 Steps,” by Richard Rohr.  You may know Rohr; he is a prolific Roman Catholic writer and teacher, and in this book he draws some parallels between the 12 Steps of Recovery and the Gospel.  He says addiction is a modern name for what the biblical tradition called “sin” and medieval Christians called “passions” or “attachments.”

Rohr says substance addictions are merely the most visible form of addiction, but we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing things, and our own view of the world.  He mentions the story of the Demoniac because Jesus asks the man, “What is your name?” and the man’s problem must be correctly named before the demon can be exorcised.  Rohr says, “you cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge.”

It’s helpful for me as an Interim to consider how we can look at the way we do things at All Saints’ so that we can understand them and ask our higher power—Jesus—to lead us out of the sometimes confusing maze of patterns we find ourselves in during the Interim time.  And I want to make it clear that this process of self-examination is not a punitive thing, rather a way to open a space for God’s grace and spiritual growth.

Again, let’s remember psalm 43, “Send out your light and your truth that they may lead me.” 

I believe Jesus untangles the mazes of life.  Mazes are similar to Labyrinths, but mazes are designed to trap us.  That’s why those mazes made of hedges are so fun, we keep getting lost, until we really need to find the exit. Labyrinths have one meditative path that leads us on a pilgrimage of faith. 

I believe that is what Jesus turns the mazes of our lives into a Labyrinth, with a clear path towards God.

Today we observe Corpus Christi. In many Roman Catholic Churches, and our Anglo-Catholic neighbor, Church of the Advent, the priest carries a monstrance in procession through the street of the parish. The late medieval feast celebrates the Holy Eucharist and the belief in transubstantiation of the bread and wine into Corpus Christ, the Body of Christ. 

The Episcopal Church leaves the mystery of the Eucharist as a mystery. 

We affirm that in the Eucharist, God feeds us. We come with outstretched hands to receive holy food to fill an empty space that only God can fill. In receiving the Eucharist, we become the Body of Christ, the Corpus Christi, in the world.

Today’s reading about a frightened Elijah retreating to the wilderness reminds me of how much God cares for us even in our fearful moments.  Angels come to Elijah in the wilderness and feed him, twice, so that he will have strength for the journey ahead.

God asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?” and invites him to stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. 

After great wind, an earthquake, and a fire, Elijah heard the voice of God in the sound of sheer silence.

May we, like Elijah, hear the voice of God speaking to us in the sheer silence of our hearts.  May we come to the altar of God to be fed for the journey we’re traveling together, and for the journey through the mazes of our lives. May Jesus untangle them into labyrinths of faith. May we be transformed into the Body of Christ for the world.  Amen.

A Sermon for Pentecost, June 9, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, for Pentecost, June 9, 2019

In the name of the Holy Trinity: Creator, Savoir, and Giver of Life, Amen.

On Pentecost we celebrate the birth of the church and the gift of the Holy Spirit, who comes to empower us in our ministries.  I believe the Holy Spirit is always blowing through our lives, we just need to listen to her whispers. Last Wednesday I had a couple of moments where I felt the Holy Spirit whisper a little more loudly, maybe even give me a nudge.

On Wednesday morning I took my 90 year old Dad back to Costco to replace his hearing aids that went missing. The audiologist put some special earphones over Dad’s ears, and had him sit down facing a speaker on the wall. Then she played an audio clip through the speaker. I could hear it, too.  

There was a chorus of many voices speaking all different kinds of languages at the same time.  It sounded just like the “Pentecostal sounds” we just heard when we read the Gospel together.

The audiologist said the audio clip is a compilation of voices and languages that includes all the sounds the human ear is designed to hear, and with the special earphones she could diagnose what my Dad was hearing and what he was missing.

As soon as she said that, I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me.  When this happens (very occasionally) I stop, look, and listen.  What was I supposed to notice?

As the week went on, I think The Holy Spirit was nudging me to think about: How do we listen to and hear God’s communication to us especially during a time of transition? How do we listen to the Holy Spirit so we can communicate God’s message of love to the world in our day?

My Dad left Costco saying I was talking way too loudly and he could understand so much more, which was a Holy Spirit moment of its own.

Our readings show us several approaches to this idea of listening to God’s voice and communicating God’s message.

The Genesis reading shows us the fascinating Tower of Babel story, which explains why there are different languages and different groups of people scattered all over the world, and the reason is telling. Though this story happens at the beginning of human history, I think it speaks pretty directly to us in the 21st century.  Human beings became too full of them selves, and began to see themselves as becoming as powerful as God.

So God acts, and scatters the people and adds diversity to humanity. People have to learn how to communicate with each other anew, and unfortunately, it became unlikely that they would work together again.  We’re struggling with the Babel event to this day.

One commentator I read this week says that our historic human response to the Babel event is the source of individualism, and a survival of the fittest mentality that’s so prevalent in our culture. The Babel event made us into “us” and “them,” which leads to individual and corporate sin. 

That is not what God intended for us when God scattered everyone and caused us to speak different languages. God saw that if we were all the same we weren’t going to learn anything new. God wanted to challenge us to grow and mature into the people God formed us to be: like Christ.  God wants us to love each other and build a world that embraces all humanity, and protects the beauty and diversity of God’s creation. 

Throughout history, humanity has done a fairly poor job of listening to God’s intent, and living up to God’s plan for us. That’s why Christ came to live among us and teach us how to live, and reconcile us to God’s image.

Our Reading from Acts shows us the opposite of the Tower of Babel. When the Holy Spirit whooshes in she empowers the disciples to speak many different languages so that the scattered peoples are able to hear and understand the Gospel. 

Diversity is honored, and embedded in that diversity there is one, unified message:  God’s love is active and God wants us to share it. 

The Pentecost story is about gathering many diverse peoples together under God’s flame of love, and sending us out to share it in many ways of expression.

When I first arrived at All Saints’ in February, I started to read Larry Holben’s history of All Saints’. As an Interim, it’s a pretty amazing to have a 400 page book about the history of the parish where I serve.

In his forward, Larry Holben writes about the way All Saints’ has been challenged to transform itself many times, and that embracing diversity has always been a strength of All Saints.’  In the 1950’s Father Leon Harris reached out to a Haight-Ashbury Community that had become more diverse after WWII, and brought people together under the Anglo-Catholic style of worship. He famously reached out to the Hippies in the late 1960’s. But then, when the Haight went through its rough times with crime and heavy drugs, there was a deep trough in membership at All Saints’; the church almost closed.

Rev. Lloyd Prader and  Neil Little reached out to the LGBTQ community, which built up the All Saints’ community again, continuing under Rev. Kenneth Schmidt.  The AIDS crisis was a major blow for All Saints’ but the parish ministered to their members and stood by the needs of the neighborhood. 

All Saints’ has successfully listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the past, and that is what we are called to do now in our Transition period.

It takes a lot of time and energy to do this sort of listening to the Holy Spirit, and we will be doing more intentional parish listening through all parish meetings in the coming months.  We’ll review the past and celebrate our history and our ministries.

And we’ll do serious work on who we are now as a parish without your Rector of thirty years. The identity of the parish and the identity of the Rector became tightly woven together over the years.  We need to untangle that, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

At our Vestry Retreat last Saturday our Vestry began some of this discernment work on a leadership level. It takes more time than we thought to have these conversations, and I was very pleased by the Vestry’s willingness to engage and by their level of mutual respect.  I believe the Holy Spirit was drawing us out and encouraging us, like a good coach does.  I’m grateful for the work we’ve begun to do together.

My other nudge from the Holy Spirit happened after Wednesday’s 6:00 Mass. We had a visitor is a professional coach of Episcopal clergy. She came to the Bay Area from Seattle for a silent retreat at Mercy Center in Burlingame starting that evening.  She had a hunger for taking the Eucharist before starting her retreat.  She did a Google search to find an Episcopal Church that held a mid-week evening Eucharist in San Francisco, and guest what: All Saints’ came up as the number one hit on her search!  She also read my statement on the website about the Interim time being a time of renewal and congregational growth, and was very interested in talking more about that.  In turn, I was thrilled to meet her, and may use her coaching services.

Again, I felt the Holy Spirit giving me a nudge.  Stop, look, and listen. This is what I heard: Our improved online presence is working well enough that she could find us.  Our online presence is a ministry of communication that’s become extremely important. I also heard that our Wednesday 6:00 Mass is something significant we can celebrate. And sometimes the Holy Spirit sends along a particular person as their messenger.

In our Gospel reading, the Risen Christ stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you…As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and left them with a message to continually forgive others as they went out into the world with God’s message of love. 

I believe the Holy Spirit blows through our lives and through All Saints’ all the time, and we need to be ready for her nudges. Stop, look, and listen! 

Come Holy Spirit!  Come refresh and empower us for newness of life.  Amen.

A Sermon for Easter VII, June 2, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Spencer Hatcher, Director of Diocesan Relations and Recruiting for CDSP, on June 2, 2019

“I have experienced more freedom here in this place where, by so many measures, I am anything but free, than at any other time in my life. For the first time, I am not captive, even though I am, in fact, held captive,” he told me, tears welling in the corner of his eyes.

I held his eye contact, full of bother wonder and skepticism, and yet feeling in that deep place of knowing, that something important and true was stirring- something that would change me and my understanding of my faith- something that was already changing the landscape of this place.

This place being San Quentin State Penitentiary.

Or more specifically, this place being the Roman Catholic chapel in San Quentin. where weekly restorative justice circles, led by the inmates themselves, would gather to grieve and to support, to talk about what it means to be free, even when you’re not.

I don’t hear scripture passages about prison- spiritual or physical- the same anymore, after the experience walking alongside the Spirit and the inmates at San Quentin. They hold onto me differently now.

Today, our passage from the book of Acts is one such passage. Where we’re invited to explore imprisonment in three very different and yet inextricably linked ways. What is the freedom to which we are called? The one which we are promised?

First we meet an unnamed, young, slave girl filled with a spirit of divination, that is to say, she is possessed- a slave in both body and spirit- she is at the mercy of her masters who exploit her for money and at the mercy of a cultural system which does not count her worth as greater than that which she can bring those who hold her captive.

She follows around Paul and Silas, the Spirit within her calling out to them. And while I would like to believe they were stirred by compassion for her situation, by their God’s call to loose the chains of oppression, instead, they are moved by annoyance.

She, or the Spirit calling from within her, prove to be irritating to Paul- enough so that Paul calls out the Spirit. He casts out that which has held her spiritually bound. Her faith did not make her well, like so many of our scriptural healing narratives. And in many ways, she may now be in an even more precarious situation- unable to continue to provide money for her masters. And yet, she is still set free- from one form of bondage.

What sort of freedom is that?

This unnamed woman may invite questions, but she will not, or her narrative will not, provide the answers. In fact, we do not hear of her again.

Instead, next, because they are angry at losing their money-maker, her masters drag Paul and Silas to the magistrate to accuse them of “disturbing the city’- by which they really mean, upending their personal means of market production. Paul and Silas are stripped, beaten, and put in prison.

And perhaps, the next piece of the story comes as no surprise given that Paul has escaped physical imprisonment before. God, we’re told, hears the prayers and the songs of Her people, locked away, falsely accused in a Roman prison. Suddenly, a great earth quake shakes the very foundation of the prison, loosing the chains and opening the doors. Paul and Silas are now free.

But they do not leave.

The roman jailer, himself held captive by the system of honor and shame, realizing what has happened and the consequences a jail-break will have on his life and his family’s life, bound by the shackles of empire, which will not tolerate mistakes, takes his own sword to kill himself. Before he can complete the action, however, Paul calls out “we are all here”.

Only together are they free.

What can I do to be saved, the jailer asks on his knees. Saved from what, we don’t actually know. Saved from Rome’s wrath? From the prisoner’s retribution? From a feeling of captivity- in all it’s forms? From their God?

“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,” says Paul.

For theirs is a God who promises salvation. Paul, who has regularly called himself a slave to God, seeks to invite the jailer into the salvific freedom God has promised from the very beginning of time-

a freedom that comes with a hefty price of everything you are and everything you hope to be.

A freedom that breathed the world into being- that danced over the face of the deep before whispering life into the void.

A freedom that called out from a bush burning and yet not consumed, that toppled an empire, that parted the seas

a freedom that reminded a people that even those as mighty as Pharaoh could not contain them forever.

A freedom that walked with people in the person of Jesus Christ, calling into question the very systems which seek to deal death to what God has proclaimed alive- that is everything.

If you want to be free, Paul said, then follow us- for ours is a God of true freedom.

If you want to be free, then ours is still a God of true freedom.

At this- the last Sunday of the Easter season, where we celebrate liberation from all that deals death- where we celebrate the victory of life, questions remain. Because ours is still a world where, this week alone, 12 children of God died at the hands of a violence that has become all too familiar. We are still bound, held captive.

So, people of God, from what or whom do you, do we need a salvation which has already been given?

Because I am not incarcerated- I am not literally held captive. And yet, I know there are tender places in myself which are not yet free. There are voices in myself which whisper lies of a captivity that hold me bound- lies  that I am not enough- that I am in competition with those around me- that my worth is what I produce, or, perhaps, what I consume. That I am still in Pharaoh’s Egypt.

Perhaps you, too, feel the rub of the chains in your tender places

And if you do not feel the chains of captivity in your person, then perhaps you recognize them in our world- in a world that builds walls- literal, spiritual, and emotional- that all too often chooses the destructive forces of death as though that is the only choice- as if it’s own freedom is not bound up in that of everyone’s.

In a world where slave girls continue to call out on the streets, where masters continue to be bound by the forces of the market they, themselves ,created, where captors continue to suffer the consequences of a system which does not seek freedom- theirs or anyone else’s. In a world where we are equally more connected and more disparate than ever before- what truth do we need from this narrative?

What if this passage from Acts that we hear this morning is not about the incomplete liberation of one particular slave girl, or the imprisonment of two particular disciples, or the salvation of one particular jailer?

What if, instead, we read the story as a reminder that ours is a God who promises and who delivers- true freedom- and that that freedom is one that cannot and will not be done alone.

That the voices you hear in yourself which whisper that you are not enough serve to disconnect you from the very people who would remind you that you are.

That to silence the voices which remind us that captivity is still the lived reality for many people in our world, serves only to further bind up ourselves.

That the very walls we build to keep others out serve to keep us locked away.

What if this were a story reminding us that the earthquake has already come- the chains are already broken, the doors are already open- that God’s liberative work is done and is being done and will be done. Yesterday- today-tomorrow. Ours is to recognize that as children of God, we are not bound to the forces which deal death- those in ourselves and those in the world around us. That ours is to remember that there has always been another way.

That we are bound to a God who speaks and breathes and promises liberation.

What if we believed it? What if I believed it? What if you believed it?

From what do you cry out for freedom? For salvation?

Sister Joan Chittister, a roman catholic nun, and author, is known to respond to the question: “What should we do,” with the simple answer of, “something- each of us must do something”. 

As we transition between Easter and Pentecost, between a focus on the life and death of a savior and the call of a people, of a church- what liberating “something” are you called to do? Are you called to embody? Are you called to set free?

A Sermon for Easter IV, May 12, 2019 on Julian of Norwich for Mother’s Day

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, at the 8:00 Mass, May 12, 2019.

This last Wednesday we had a special 6:00 Mass to honor Julian of Norwich, whose Feast Day was May 8, and I preached about her theology of God’s motherly love.  As the week went on, I realized that we are celebrating Mother’s Day today, and that the people at 8:00 might enjoy hearing about Julian. Our first reading this morning was “A Song of True Motherhood,” by Julian, and I’d like to share some more about her this morning.

Imagine living in the Lady Chapel for the rest of your life.  That’s probably about as much living space Julian of Norwich had as an anchoress, or recluse, in her cell attached to the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, England in the 14th Century.  And maybe she had a cat to keep her company.  There are lots of icons that show her with a cat.  But we don’t know.

We don’t know a lot about Julian of Norwich, but she was the rare medieval female mystic whose voice has come down to us and she speaks powerfully to us here in the 21st century.  Julian’s work, Revelations of Divine Love is considered the first book published by a woman in English.

Julian was born in the English town of Norwich in 1342.  Norwich was a prosperous town in the extreme East of England, closer to the Low Countries and Scandinavia than London. With a population of 13,000, it was the second largest city next to London at the time. Norwich was known for the valuable wool trade and for fishing.  During Julian’s lifetime, the entire city was surrounded by a tall, thick medieval stone wall that protected the city.  Mary Rolf writes in her work, “Julian’s Gospel, “Growing up in a walled city must have had a lifelong influence on Julian’s understanding of what it meant to feel enclosed, safe protected.  The “holy city” would figure strongly in her Revelations as a metaphor for the inner sanctuary of the soul itself.”

In 1349, when Julian was a child, the Bubonic Plague swept through Norwich.  Scholars agree that at least half the population of Norwich perished, and it would never regain its position as the second-largest city in England.

It’s difficult to imagine the trauma of a child living through the Plague. No doubt she lost family and friends.  There must have also been the guilt of surviving when so many around you had died. It must have branded Julian with the connection between suffering and the need to pray.

Julian grew up in the midst of this trauma as an upper middle-class woman who was well-educated in her native English, but not considered high educated because she did not learn Latin, which was the language of the elite, and the male clergy.

At the age of 30, Julian became gravely ill.  On 8 May 1373 she was receiving the last rites in anticipation of her death. The priest held a crucifix above the foot of her bed, and she began to lose her sight and felt physically numb, but gazing on the crucifix she saw the figure of Jesus on the Cross begin to bleed. Over the next several hours, she had a series of fifteen visions of Jesus’ suffering, and a sixteenth the following night.

Her visions brought on a sense of great peace and joy.  “From that time I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning,” and I was answered in ghostly understanding:  “Wouldst thou learn the Lord’s meaning in this thing?  Learn it well.  Love was his meaning? Love was our Lord’s meaning.”

Julian completely recovered from her illness on 13 May. She wrote about her visions, what she called her “shewings,” shortly after she experienced them.Her original manuscript no longer exists, but a copy survived, now referred to as her Short Text.

Twenty to thirty years later, perhaps in the early 1390s, she began to write about the meaning of her visions, now known as The Long Text.  After her visions, Julian became a recluse, or anchoress, living in a cell attached to the Church of St. Julian.  Becoming an anchoress, a recluse, was a solemn thing. You took a vow in the presence of the Bishop in a ceremony that was like a funeral, because you were renouncing life outside the cell. In many cases anchorites/anchoresses were bricked into their cells.  But records show that sometimes there was more freedom, and sometimes there was a small community of recluses who retreated together.  One hopes that you got along with your fellow recluses.

There was usually a window between the church and the anchoress’s cell where she could visit with people who came for prayer and advice.  Medieval people supported their local anchoress or anchorite and in turn they prayed for and counseled the local people.  Julian became well-known in her own time as a mystic, spiritual counselor, and a person of great wisdom.  Margery Kempe, one of the other few well-known medieval English mystics, wrote about visiting Julian.

As we heard in our first reading, Julian’s mystical theology made a daring comparison of divine love to motherly love.  According to Julian, God is both our mother and our father. In her fourteenth revelation, Julian writes of the in domestic terms, comparing Jesus to a mother who is wise, loving and merciful. Julian compares the bond between mother and child as the only earthly relationship that comes close to the relationship a person can have with Jesus.Julian also wrote about Jesus metaphorically in connection with conception, nursing, labor, and upbringing, and she saw him as our brother as well.

Julian lived in a time of great turmoil and suffering, but her theology was optimistic.  She spoke of sin being “behovely,” or lovely, something for us to embrace because it can bring us closer to Christ. 

In our time, when we are worried about so many things going wrong in the world, I find Julian’s trust in a loving God, who loves us like a good Mother, to be comforting and affirming of our faith in Christ.  Julian is best known for the message she received from Christ, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  May it be so.  Amen.

A Sermon for Easter III, May 5, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector

Several years ago while I was serving at St. Anne’s, Fremont, we took a field trip to the local multiplex to see “Risen”, a movie about the Easter story from the perspective of a jaundiced Roman tribune played by Ralph Fiennes. 

The Tribune supervised the crucifixion of Jesus—just another day on the job for him.  When the tomb is later found to be empty, Pilate charges the Tribune to find the body of Jesus.  The Tribune finally hunts down the disciples in hiding and walks into the room where the Risen Christ is meeting with Doubting Thomas. 

Movie snob that I am, I was not expecting much from “Risen.” But I gasped when the Tribune recognizes the Risen Christ as the man he’d seen dead on the Cross.  It is life-changing for him.

“Risen” was just good enough that it made me really consider what it would have been like to be one of the people who saw the Risen Christ. 

The 21st Chapter of John we heard this morning is an addendum to John’s Gospel, and it’s almost like a stand alone parable. We find the disciples back in Galilee fishing.  What are they doing there after the Resurrection?

Lately I’ve been dipping into the work of best-selling author Brene Brown, who researches vulnerability and shame. Her book, “The Gifts of Imperfection” really spoke to me in the last few years, and I’m currently reading her book, “Dare to Lead.”  I highly recommend her work.

Brene Brown says that Shame is not the same thing as guilt, but they do overlap.  Guilt is about something we did, shame is about who we are.  Both immobilize us because they leave us feeling vulnerable in our deep human imperfection. These feelings are painful.  And so we avoid feeling shame and vulnerability at all costs, and continue on our usual path.  We keep on fishing.

Brene Brown says it’s human nature to avoid these difficult states of mind.  It takes courage as she says, to “dare greatly,” even if we know we will experience failure. She calls embracing the hard stuff and doing it anyway, “whole-hearted living.”

It seems to me that Peter and the disciples go back to Galilee to the comfort of what they know—fishing on the Sea of Galilee— and as usual, they aren’t too good at that, either.  They’re flawed individuals, like us, and I have a feeling they are overwhelmed by what has happened to Jesus, and their role in it.  Did they measure up?  Did they love their friend Jesus enough to save him from a gruesome death?  I’m sure they were feeling guilt, and shame, especially Peter.

Here, in the 21st chapter of John, the disciples experience the same amazing catch that they experienced at the beginning of the Gospel of John. I noticed that John says they caught 153 LARGE fish.  That’s important because the large fish were sold to the Romans; they would have only kept the small fish for themselves.  Out of despair the disciples experience abundance again.  It’s through that miracle of the amazing catch that they recognizes the man on the beach as the Risen Christ.

They share the abundant meal on the beach.  And then it all comes back to Peter. Maybe it happened when he smelled the charcoal fire; remember he was warming himself around a charcoal fire when he denied Jesus three times. He remembered his betrayal. He feels ashamed, and vulnerable.

What does Jesus do? Jesus guides Peter to counter his three denials with three “I love you’s,” absolving Peter of his guilt and shame. It’s simultaneously consoling and challenging.

The Risen Christ turns Peter’s attention from ruminating on the mistakes of the past to a new call to lead the church in the future. He ends with a new call for Peter, “Follow me.” 

The Good News of the Resurrection is challenging. It turns the world inside out. Jesus took one of the worst things in the world (the Roman Cross) and turned it into one of the best (the Tree of Life). He recruits Peter, who denied him three times, to be the cornerstone of the church.  We see it also in our amazing reading from Acts, the conversion of Paul.  Jesus chose Saul, who persecuted the early Christian movement to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles.

I also find some resonance with our Interim period. Even positive change can be a lot to take in. Like the disciples, we would prefer sometimes to keep fishing and have the safety of familiarity.

The Good News turns the world inside out.  The Risen Christ calls us to leave our tombs as well, and step out into the unknown.  To live “whole-heartedly” as Brene Brown says, and to risk failure for the sake of the Gospel.

At the end of the movie “Risen,” the Tribune has a one on one conversation with the Risen Christ as they look up at the night sky.  Jesus asks the Roman, “what can I do for you?” and the Tribune says, “I want to leave behind so much death.”

So for me, this Easter Season, I realize that the Resurrection has a real effect on my life, and on the life of our church.  There’s so much to “feel bad” about in the world; and I tend to build up defenses against it all.  It’s a kind of negative loop that can repeat over and over.  I yearn to let go of that.

I believe the Risen Christ meets us where we are, in those times when, like Peter and the disciples, we keep fishing over and over in the same way and expecting a different result. And we continue to have empty nets because we do not have Jesus with us. 

The Risen Christ understands this predicament and absolves us of our sin and calls us to freedom, and like the Tribune, to “leave behind so much death.”  He points to the other side of the boat and says, “put down your nets over THERE for a catch.”  There are new ways of freedom when we follow Jesus.

In the Season of Easter we leave off the Confession of Sin as a sign of our salvation by the mighty power of the Resurrection. Christ is Risen, the work is done. The Resurrection frees us from sin and death, and offers us a way to follow him in freedom and newness of life.

Amen.

A Sermon for Easter II, April 28, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Davidson Bidwell-Waite on April 28, 2019

Jesus breathed on them and said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit”.  This is such a powerful image. Imagine for a moment that we are gathered, maybe even huddled together in the undercroft with the doors locked, sitting perhaps in small groups around the room in murmuring conversations, and suddenly Jesus appears in the middle of us.  The first thing He does is say “Peace be with you” which is a logical opener since we would all be pretty freaked out. Then He shows us his hands and his side to confirm that the image we are seeing is not an apparition but rather that it is a person and that person is actually Jesus.

He then says a second time “Peace be with you” but rather than telling us again to stop hyperventilating, Jesus is changing the subject from greeting to command. He then breathes on us and we inhale, deep into our lungs, the breath of the Divine. 

Jesus has often said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me, and so that same life generating, divinized air that has animated his risen body, Jesus has just pushed out to us, into our nostrils, penetrating our lungs  transforming the oxygen that is sucked into our veins and pumped into and through the chambers of our heart.  Just close your eyes for a moment and image inhaling the breath of Jesus.

I imagine that it might be dizzying like breathing in pure oxygen that you can feel permeating your body and flowing out to your toes and finger tips. Maybe it would be like breathing ether not just the giddy gas formerly used as an anesthetic, but the ether of ancient times which filled the upper reaches of the heavens, or the ether of current wave theory – the medium that permeates all space and transmits transverse waves oscillating through the cosmos.

This idea of breathing in and very literally internalizing the Divine has been percolating in my thoughts for the past week as I read Vince Pizzuto’s book “Contemplating Christ”.  The Rev. Dr. Pizzuto is a professor of New Testament and Christian Mysticism at USF and is the founder of the New Skellig Contemplative Community in Inverness.  In January, I spent a weekend in conversation with Vince at the Bishop’s Ranch during the School for Deacons annual retreat, and we did a deep dive into his concept of Divinization and Deification.

Dr. Pizzuto writes: “Deification is an ancient Christian doctrine that affirms the belief that through the incarnation, through which God took on human nature, so too humanity has been made, as Peter termed it in his First Letter, ‘partakers of the divine nature’ ”. Fr. Pizzuto goes on to say that “The spiritual life can no longer be understood as humanity in search of God, but God in search of humanity…” and “…discipleship is not about us serving Christ but Christ serving others in us.”

If you’ll permit another quote from Vince’s book, he says; “The tradition of discrete appearances of the risen Christ dissipates not because Jesus has gone away to some distant heaven but because He has made of us his very body through grace. Insofar as the church is the Body of Christ, we might also understand it as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit in the world. “

Now returning to the Gospel, in saying “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you”, Jesus is telling us that our mission is to take His peace-FULL-ness into the world to all with whom we will engage. Being bearers of Peace is how we most fundamentally enable Christ to serve others in us.  This is the foundation of our and the church’s ministry of Reconciliation.

This idea was laid out succinctly in today’s Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.”

Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection reconciled Humanity and God.   It created a new relationship, which is what reconciliation means, and that new relationship is of oneness with God through our Divinization.  As Christ’s body in the world, filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are to seek reconciliation between persons, and groups, and between humanity and The Creation.

But in the next phrase, Jesus speaks about Forgiveness, and this for me raises the question of whether there is a difference between Forgiveness and Reconciliation. 

After breathing on them, Jesus says “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  We traditionally understand this as authority to given to priests in Apostolic Succession to administer the sacrament of Absolution.

Receiving forgiveness can enable one to move past the guilt or sorrow which has impeded the work of the Holy Spirit in them and to create new relationships, with God and others.  But what about the retaining of sins?  This, I would suggest, is not so much about the granting of an authority, but a description of how the human heart works.  Sins that are retained, by either the one seeking forgiveness or the one refusing it, fester and block the work of the Holy Spirit, which is in itself one of the definitions of sin – that which separates us from the redemptive love of God.

There are several very powerful examples of this in the documentary, “A Long Nights Journey into Day” about Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the work of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission. It focuses on 4 stories, 2 of which I’ll deal with here. 

The first is about Amy Biel, the Stanford student murdered by a group of young men in a Township outside Capetown where she was working and serving them. Amy’s parents wanted to meet the boy who killed their daughter.  The rules of the TRC required that in order to receive amnesty, the individual had to 1) tell the whole and complete truth, and 2) the act had to be politically motivated – not an act of personal animosity.  The object is to create a space for healing by answering the tormenting question “Why?” In getting to know the young man, the Biels came to understand the vicious way in which Apartheid warped the souls of the oppressed.  They eventually were able to actually forgive the young man and eventually supported his legal defense that the act was politically motivated.

The fourth story is about the Guguletu 7.  Here 7 mothers were confronting a black African police officer who helped his white colleagues entrap and kill their sons.  They considered him a traitor to his race, a morally bankrupt collaborator, an animal, and a soulless being unworthy of amnesty or redemption. The women spoke of how they had carried the pain of their sons’ murders and how their anger and hatred of this man had infected and spoiled their lives.

 Then one mother rose and addressed Archbishop Tutu directly.  She said: “If you are asking me to forgive this man, this murderer who killed my beautiful innocent son, I have to say No – I cannot – ever.  BUT if you are telling me that if I reconcile with this man, he can have his humanity back and I can have MY humanity back, then Yes – Yes I will reconcile with him.

This reconciliation was an agreement to engage and live in community, not forgetting the past, but not allowing the past to poison the future.  Reconciliation creates a state where the Holy Spirit can begin to create something new. When forgiveness is not possible or seems an insurmountable challenge, choosing reconciliation is in effect Practicing Resurrection.

Taking this concept to the personal level, Bishop Marc, in his Easter sermon at Grace Cathedral, spoke about the dreams we may have cherished, around which we devoted much of our energy and imagination, and which for whatever reason – died.

We may have moved on, but Bishop Marc suggested revisiting those dead dreams.  To stare at and engage with that moldering. To acknowledge the failure and whatever or whoever contributed to it, and to reconcile with it. 

In doing so, he suggested that a space would be opened within us which the Holy Spirit could fill and begin a New Work. This is connecting with the Divine within- with our divinized being – to reanimate our entire being.  Again, I would call this – Practicing Resurrection, which by the way is the title of a wonderful book by spiritual writer Nora Gallagher.

The willingness to reconcile, always and everywhere, creates the opportunity for transformation and for peace – the kind of fullness of Peace which Jesus continually gave to the disciples and that He continues to offer to us if we will but receive it.  He invites into New Life through our Divinization as His continuing body in the world, as rartakers of the divine nature.

In this time of deep division, where fear-mongering and hate are shaping our society and constraining our civil discourse, we have an even greater obligation to breath in the Peace of Christ; to acknowledge, engage with and live out of the divine nature within us; and to Practice Resurrection as reconciling instruments of the Holy Spirit.

Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.  Amen.

A Sermon for Easter, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on April 21, 2019

Good Morning!  The Lord is Risen!  The Lord is Risen Indeed!

I am very glad that we are here together at All Saints’ on this beautiful Easter morning. 

The question I’d like to explore this morning is, How did we come to know that the Lord is Risen?  And what does it mean to us today?

In today’s Gospel we hear that “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.”

Naturally, Mary Magdalene went to tell Peter and the beloved Disciple that Jesus’ body was gone.  They run to the scene and check it out.  They seem to spend a lot of time noticing the condition of the linen wrappings, and that the body is not there. John says, “Then the disciples returned to their homes.”

What?  They returned to their homes? That could have been the end of the story.  We might never have heard that Christ is Risen.

Mary Magdalene tried to tell her male colleagues what she experienced. They took in the information she conveyed, but it didn’t make sense to them so they decided they were done. They went home. 

But Mary Magdalene stays.  There is a pause in the story.  John writes, “But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.”

Let’s step back for a moment.  John’s Gospel is the most mystical of the Four Gospels and it shows us a slightly different Resurrection Story. The other three Gospels show us Mary Magdalene, and other women returning to the tomb.

But John’s Gospel is different.  It is set in a garden.

The story of humanity’s relationship to God began in a Garden, the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  Here the relationship between God and humanity begins again, in a garden. There’s definitely some symmetry between the two.

The early church saw Christ as the second Adam, who gives humanity a fresh start by reuniting heaven and earth in the person of Jesus.  Here we have the second Adam appearing in the Garden, emerging from the Tomb.

Gardens are places where we connect with nature and the earth.  In the Celtic tradition, the presence of Christ is found most commonly through nature, because through Christ all things were made, especially the Earth.  Celtic spirituality saw places in nature as “thin places” where the veil between heaven and earth was thin, and we can suddenly be in God’s presence.

The Garden in John’s Gospel is a “thin place” where Mary comes into the presence of the Risen Christ, and has an extraordinary personal encounter with him.

Mary Magdalene weeps, and then looks into the empty tomb.  There she sees two angels in white who ask her a silly question, ”Woman, why are you weeping?”  She tells them why, and then she turns around and sees someone standing there.  It is Jesus, but “she does not know that it was Jesus.”  He asks her the same silly question, ”Woman, why are you weeping?” Consumed by grief,  “She supposes that he is the gardener.” Then Jesus said to her, “Mary!” and she recognizes him. “Rabbouni!” she says.  “Rabbouni!”  OMG, it is you.

John gives us a remarkable personal encounter between Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ.  In a way, it’s a “nevertheless, she persisted” moment.  While Peter, and the beloved disciple look for the body of Jesus and do not find it, Mary weeps for the person of Jesus, and he finds her in her tears.

This scene makes me wonder, how many times have I missed seeing Jesus when I have been too quick to judge and too busy to pause and enter into a moment of deep reflection, and maybe painful emotion.

There’s a lot of action in the first half of our Gospel passage:  Mary runs to Simon Peter and the beloved disciples, they run back, then they go home.  That business, that action is what we are mostly good at.  It’s often too much to ask of us to take time to stop and wait in the moment.  So we do not understand.  Like the disciples, we return to the comfort of what we know.

In a society like ours where weeping is looked down upon, I think that tears are a sign that the spirit is breaking through to us.  “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she stood weeping, she bent over to look into the tomb,” and through her tears she sees beyond the obvious.  In her weeping, her heart is opened to see the Risen Christ.

Karoline Lewis, a Lutheran professor of preaching wrote recently,  “At a certain point, the reason for Holy Week (and Easter) then ends up being this — to teach us to detect the holy when the world denies it. To show us that the holy is present when most will resist it. To witness to the holy in those places and spaces where the holy is deemed not to be and not to belong.” 

We are called to open our hearts and see the Risen Christ in places and spaces where the holy is deemed not to be and not to belong. 

In the past few days, we saw the holy present itself in the young people of Paris singing Ave Maria as Notre-Dame burned.  The spirit still moves through a society that is highly secular.  Where do we see the Risen Christ here at All Saints’ in our highly secular place and time?  This is a question for us as we move forward in our Interim time together.

Mary Magdalene had an open heart.  She wept with grief for the loss of Jesus.  She wept with love.  It is through love that we reenter the garden that is so green with possibilities for hope and growth.

Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “go to my brothers,” Jesus entrusted her with the Good News of the Resurrection and he empowered her with the truth.

Notice that John writes, “Mary Magdalene went and ANNOUNCED to the disciples.”  She spoke with the authority of love.

She was the bearer of the Good News, and it was heard then, and today we heard the Good News from Mary Magdalene in the midst of our liturgy in 2019.  Alleluia, Alleluia!  The Lord is Risen Indeed.

Amen.

A Sermon for The Easter Vigil 2019

A Sermon preached on April 20, 2019 by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector

For me, The Easter Vigil is something like the view from the window seat of a plane at 30,000 feet. The Vigil is the one time during the church year that we hear the sweep of the biblical narrative read in church, from Creation to the Resurrection. 

Several years ago Hale and I were invited to go on a group “glamping” trip in Baja California with our friend Susan, who was celebrating a cancer-free anniversary. We camped on a deserted beach on an island called Espiritu Santo Island, or, in English, Holy Spirit Island. It was easy to enter into the Creation story in such an unspoiled and primitive place, and to imagine the Spirit of God moving over the turquoise waters.

One day, we all put on wet suits and fins, and motored out to a large rock outcropping where a large colony of sea lions lived, for an activity called “Snorkeling with the Sea Lions.”  In retrospect, I realized that this is something you can only do in Mexico, and a little reckless, but at the time the adolescent sea lions had fun bumping into us, and they felt like our brothers and sisters in creation.

It reminded me of the fourth day of the Creation Story when God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves…with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind.”

The Story of Creation shows us God’s delight in creating the world. After creating each day, God says “It is good!,” and God creates us in the divine image as an expression of God’s love.

We are God’s creation, and we are also mortals. We have free will, which allows us to stray and often become our own worst enemy.  But God loves us anyway.

We see that love in the Exodus story, when God leads us out of slavery to the promised land.  Much of the biblical narrative tonight helps us remember how God stuck with us and loved us through thick and thin.

There are times in our lives and times in our history when all seems lost.  Ezekiel wrote, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”  In the story of the Dry Bones, we see God reaching out to us yet again and promising resurrection:  “I am going to bring you up from your graves…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…you shall know that I, the Lord have spoken, and will act.”  Tonight this reading speaks to me as we enter our Interim time together and open ourselves to God’s grace and guidance in the months ahead.

And we heard the beautiful promise, also from Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will sprinkle clean water upon you and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” 

Tonight we blessed the baptismal waters, and renewed our Baptismal Covenant.  When the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was put together, the Baptismal Covenant was a new element that put baptism at the heart of our liturgy and our faith. 

Here at All Saints’ we are sprinkled with “clean water” every Sunday, which is one of my favorite parts of our liturgy. Tonight at the Easter Vigil, we are refreshed in our commitment to serve God, and seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  With God’s help.  That is so important.  We cannot do it alone, or even with each other.  We need God’s help through grace to follow Christ and gradually over time, become more like him.

Though we heard many readings tonight, it seems to me that we’re missing an important one—the Christmas Story.  Because in the gift of Jesus, in the Incarnation, God becomes one of us; Jesus lives and dies as one of us, which allows God to raise him and us to new life.

Tonight’s Easter Story is from the Gospel of Luke. The women go to the tomb to prepare the Body of Jesus, but it is not there.  They encounter two men in dazzling clothes who tell them, “He is not here, but is Risen.”  They hear the words and remember what Jesus said about rising in three days, but it doesn’t sink in, and being women, “these words seemed to the (male) disciples an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Peter, who had denied Jesus three times does go and look and sees that only the linen clothes were there. 

There is a gap between what they saw and what they understood, and what had really happened, through the grace of God.  In that gap lies the mystery of God’s action, the mystery of the resurrection that we can only understand with God’s help, and with faith.  In the coming days, they saw the Risen Christ, and they were changed forever, “with God’s help.”

I’d like to take you back to Baja for a moment.  Our friend Susan, who was celebrating her recovery from cancer asked us to go for a swim with her back at the rocky outcropping where we’d swam with the sea lions.  There was a natural arch in the craggy rock where the sea lions lived.  Susan asked that we swim with her single-file through the opening in the rock.  So we all put on our wetsuits and our snorkels, and we followed her through the arch.

It was a long ways to swim away from the security of the boat, and it was a very deep place in the ocean.  As we passed through the arch, I looked down through my snorkel mask and saw fathoms of water below me, filled with layers of sea life: tropical fish of all colors, sea lions, schools of fish glinting like silver. Swimming with the group, yet with no way to communicate, I felt at one with the ocean, and was thankful to be alive. Our swim through the arch was an act of thanksgiving for Susan’s recovery, and it was also a something holy and mysterious, a shared sacramental experience.

While the readings of the Vigil show us our common journey with God in the past, the Easter story shows us where we are going.  It points to the future, and our continued journey with God in Christ.  Sometimes it feels like we’re a long ways out away from the boat, and the way is uncharted.  But it is a beautiful journey.  The Vigil is symbolic of our shared journey with the lighting of candles and multiple symbolic actions.  As a parish, All Saints’ is moving forward and our liturgy tonight helps unite us as a community, and reminds us who we are as a people blessed and renewed for ministry.

Tonight, I know that Christ has gone before us through the mysterious arch of death into new life. As the Lord of Creation, He makes all things new, and makes us Easter people, filled with hope.  As Easter people, we live with the assurance that we will follow Christ through that arch into everlasting life. 

Tonight, the Risen Christ invites us to follow him, single file, up to the altar to receive Communion, and then go out to share the Good News! The Lord is risen indeed!  Amen.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 18, 2019

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector

With a last name like Foote, I’ve decided that God has called me to wash feet on Maundy Thursday.  But I also have a deep appreciation for feet. As some of you know, I walked the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. The Camino begins in the French Pyrennes and goes 500 miles to Santiago de Compostella, where the bones of St. James, one of Jesus’ disciples, are buried in the Cathedral. 

Walking 10-15 miles a day with a pack on my back, my feet became very important to me.  They negotiated rocky Roman roads, trudged up mountains, slipped and slid through miles of mud and across endless flat wheat fields. They carried my weight plus the weight of my pack, and by the end of the day my feet had taken a beating. Every morning I rubbed Vaseline on them to reduce friction and prevent blisters, and I paid attention to hotspots as they developed.  But whatever I did, I got some blisters anyway. I came to the conclusion that blisters are part of life, and are a message from God that we need to slow down.

From the time we take our first steps as a toddler until we finish walking in old age, feet carry us through life. As I walked the Camino, I found great solidarity with people who lived before the invention of modern transportation.  For most of human history, to travel meant that you walked.

Once or twice a fellow pilgrim along the Camino offered to massage my feet, and I struggled with it. It’s a little different when you go for a pedicure, I think. What’s the etiquette around having a stranger massage your feet? It seemed too intimate of a thing, although a few times I accepted the offer, and it was glorious.

Having our feet washed on Maundy Thursday brings up some of the same concerns.  Many of us are hesitant to have our feet washed because we have to reveal our feet—a part of ourselves that is so important, but also reveals our vulnerabilities. We like to keep our feet under wraps. Feet are metaphors, perhaps, for our souls.  And there could be some connection between the English words soul and the soles, of our feet.

Tonight we celebrate the Last Supper, and the institution of the Eucharist.  But in the Gospel of John, which we read tonight, there is no sharing of the cup at the Last Supper.  Instead we see Jesus washing the feet of the disciples.  It’s confusing.

But I’ve come to believe that Jesus was a master of confusion.  Jesus knew that to learn something new, people must go through a period of confusion and reintegration. Maybe Jesus would be at home as an Interim.  We Interims tend to cause confusion and, with hope, reintegration, and growth.

Jesus confuses me and causes me to reintegrate his presence in my life on a regular basis. Who would have thought that God would enter human time as a baby born to an unwed teenager?  And who would have thought that Jesus, the Son of God, would die as a criminal on the Cross?  Jesus confused his disciples. He ate with tax collectors, treated women as equals, healed lepers and those possessed by demons.  On his last night with the disciples, he confuses them again by taking the role of a lowly servant—and washing their feet. 

Jesus is teaching them about a new kind of authority.  After God has given all things into his hands, he takes the role of someone with the least amount of authority, a lowly servant.  He uses those hands of ultimate power to wash the feet of his friends.  To serve.

It’s no wonder that Peter says, “you will never wash my feet,” he is embarrassed for Jesus. In a society built on honor, lowering yourself like that was shameful. But Jesus insists that this is the very definition of what it means to follow him. This is the exercise of authority like no other, the kind of power that will change the world.  The authority of love.

Our journey through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil takes us along the path the disciples walked so long ago: through confusion and sorrow, and finally to the joy of the unexpected Resurrection.  It’s a journey of transformation through the portal of death to unexpected new life.

Every year we’re invited to walk this path of transformation together, and it begins with an invitation by Jesus to become closer to him and each other through the simple act of foot washing.

Jesus teaches us to be servants to each other, and also to be vulnerable enough to accept the care of others. One thing I learned from my mother’s slow heath decline this past year was her ability to accept help with grace, and thanksgiving.  She was a favorite of the staff in the skilled nursing unit because she always said thank you, and honored the work of those who nursed and served her on a daily basis.

Jesus teaches us how to exercise the authority of love, rather than of oppression.  We need more of this kind of leadership in the world today.

Jesus leaves us with the words, known in Latin as the Maundanum, or Commandment. Maundy Thursday is an English adaption of Maundanum: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

Tonight we begin our walk of transformation to the Cross, and through the Tomb, towards Easter, and the joy of receiving God’s love for us.  Please come forward to have your feet washed in holiness.  Amen.