Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church
Livermore, California
9/29/2024
Proper 21
Collect: O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
Reflection: This week's reflection draws primarily from the Collect prayer, although the Scriptures certainly reference this theme. We are invited to run, not walk, but run to obtain God's heavenly promises. I have a 3-year-old son, and he just loves to run. He does it at every opportunity. But how many of us in the post-40, post-50, post-60, post-70 bracket find ourselves craving the opportunity to run when we don't absolutely have to? I don't know about you, but I often feel pretty tired these days. And I think there's tiredness around. We have a tired church and a tired society. But here God is telling us, even wooing us: "Allow me to give you one more burst of energy, and then run! Run to obtain the utterly staggering promises of reward you see in my Word." Can we do it? Can we, with God's help, muster another bit of energy we didn't know we had and truly run to obtain God's promises?
9/22/2024
Proper 20
Collect: Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
Scripture (Mark 9:36-37): Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
Reflection: The art of welcoming is not an easy one. It sounds easy on the surface, but the act of truly receiving the fullness of another's humanity, without judgment or conflict, is really quite difficult, and we often stumble in the attempt to do it. And of course it gets even more difficult when we acknowledge that, regardless of age and experience, we really are all still quite like children for the entirety of our lives. And while children are of course in so many ways beautiful and wonderful creatures, they can also be quite difficult. Welcoming isn't easy. But it gets easier if we remember one thing. When it comes to church, we are always simultaneously the guests and the hosts. It doesn't matter how long we have been part of a community and how deeply involved we are, we are always guests of the Lord who is the one and only true Host, and guests of one another. And even if it's our first time being in a certain church, even then we are already to some extent the hosts of one another. This of course makes the art of welcoming somewhat more complex, but at the same time it lightens what can at times feel like an impossible burden. When we have the wisdom and strength to be great hosts, we are always called to do just that. And if we happen to find ourselves in a place where we need to be the ones welcomed and cared for, it's okay to be the guests. Realistically both of these things are usually unfolding simultaneously. And this is exactly how it is meant to be. The Church is God's house, and it is our house. We are the guests, and we are the hosts. It's complicated, but it's the place in which we work out our salvation and become fit partakers of the heavenly treasure.
9/15/2024
Proper 19
Collect: O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Scripture (Mark 8:34): Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
Reflection: This verse, and the accompanying image of taking up one's cross and following Jesus, is of course one of the best known in all of the Bible. It is also, however, perhaps one of the most misunderstood. The self denial to which Jesus calls us isn't at all a denial of our true selves, and it is certainly not a denial of all pleasure and joy. Quite the contrary! The sheer number of biblical verses that assure us that we were ultimately created for immeasurable pleasure and joy is more than enough to convince us that this is really what God has in mind for us. So what then is the self denial to which Jesus calls us? It is not the denial of our core nature and our truest desires. It is rather a denial of all the perversions of the good and the true that occur all too often in us, denial of pseudo-pleasures that get in the way of the real ones, and denial of the fears and anxieties that block us from being our best and highest selves. This sort of self denial is the ongoing work to which Jesus continually calls His followers. It requires continual self examination and often a good measure of self forgiveness. But let's be entirely clear on the end game. When we live this way, we do not ultimately lose ourselves. We instead find God, ourselves, all that we have ever truly desired, and even more.
9/8/2024
Rally Sunday
Collect: Almighty Father, whose blessed Son before his passion prayed for his disciples that they might be one, as you and he are one: Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and obedience to you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit, that the world may believe in him whom you have sent, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Scripture (John 17:20-21): ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Reflection: Unity is not only a difficult goal, it is an often misunderstood one. It brings up images of mindless obedience or automatons who somehow always manage to put the "we" ahead of the "I". This is not, however, the vision of Christian unity set forth in John's Gospel. First of all, it is impractical. We humans are simply not capable of always sacrificing our individuality for the whole. Second of all, it is unspiritual. There is actually such a thing as a relationship or a community that, while from the outside it may look beautifully unified, is actually too close. In order to attain the sort of oneness to which Jesus' prayer points, we must always remember that it is primarily the work of the God to whom Jesus addressed this prayer to create that oneness, as opposed to our work. And thus there needs to be a little space in all of our relationships and communities, where God can reside. So it's okay for us to have our differences. It's even okay for us to have the occasional conflict. Our work in helping to create the unity for which Jesus prayed is to constantly allow, and pray for, God to be present as the glue and the mediator in all of our relationships, regardless of their size and character.
9/1/2024
Proper 17
Collect: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
Scripture (James 1:27): Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Reflection: What a wonderful and simple set of marching orders! Religion that is pure and undefiled is to care for orphans and widows in their distress. But is it so simple? I actually think that a desire to live into these words can be found in the overwhelming majority of the human race. But we each seem to think that we know the proper way to "care for orphans and widows in their distress," and we seem utterly certain that our ways are best and others' ways are marked by ignorance or malice. This is the great spiritual problem in our era of hyper-partisan politics. Each side has almost diametrically opposed views on how best to tackle our most vexing social and economic problems, but both sides have one thing in common: they are so angry! And this is why, just a few verses prior to this one, James warns us that our anger does not produce God's righteousness. Perhaps the first hurdle we need to clear in our quest to care for the orphans and widows is to get our anger in check, to stop seeing those whose views differ sharply from ours as the obstacle to be overcome or perhaps even destroyed. Yes, it is of the utmost importance to care for orphans and widows in their distress, but let us always remember that our anger does not produce God's righteousness.