Handle with prayer!

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

Christmas 1C, 29 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD.
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
John 1:1-18. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Our lectionary, which assigns the prologue to the Gospel of John for the first Sunday in Christmas, baffles me. Since we’re in a Gospel of Luke year, why not the story of the presentation of Jesus as an infant in the Temple eight days after he was born? The answer, I guess, is that story will be read on February 2, which is the Feast of the Presentation. Continue reading →

Happy holidays!

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

I’m keeping it short and sweet this week, as this will be my last week with common cathedral until the New Year. It also happens to be common art’s premier of Richard Berman’s play, “Fix the Damn Sidewalk!” I cannot wait to see these performers give it their all. I have learned a great deal as an intern this semester, but what keeps inspiring me is the creativity and passion I witness in this community.

My experience here has only strengthened my conviction that everyone is a creative soul at heart and that creativity truly holds the power to heal. I know there is so much more to come and so much more for me to learn and witness. Until then, I plan to use my time off to rest, reflect, and eat a whole bunch of cookies.

—Mary Swabenland

Our souls tell out.

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

Advent 4C, 22 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Micah 5:2-5a. And he shall be the one of peace.
Hebrews 10:5-10. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
Luke 1:39-56. Blessed is she who believed.

O God of she who believed, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I have always loved Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Godbearer, more than it seems a good Protestant girl should. It is Mary who draws me to the catholicity of the Episcopal Church. I’ve never understood her to be meek or mild, and I don’t know how anyone who reads Biblical accounts of her could understand her that way either. I don’t know how anyone who hears the words of the Magnificat, which are taken from the Song of Hannah in the Book of Samuel, could hear anything but a religious and political manifesto sung to overthrow tyrants and systems of oppression. Some years ago, the Rev. Nancy Rockwell, wrote an essay entitled, “No More Lying about Mary,” which captured what I have always believed about Mary: she was brave, and she was strong.

Rockwell writes, “God chose a spunky woman” to be the mother of Jesus. She points out that nothing in the text indicates Mary’s age or sexual status, just just that she is not married and has not previously delivered a child. Here’s her description: [1]

Mary is unmarried when the angel comes. The angel’s invitation and her independent decision tell us Mary does not need permission of clergy –or her parents-– to become pregnant. Mary, wanted by God, according to the angel, for her bold, independent, adventuresome spirit, decides to bear a holy child – for a bold agenda: to bring the mighty down from their thrones; to scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away. This is Mary: well-spoken, wise, gritty. Traveling alone, like every prophet before her, she sets out on her …journey, to [her kinswoman] Elizabeth’s house, to declare her agenda. There will be more journeys: to Bethlehem; to Egypt and back [according to Matthew], to Jerusalem [at least several time until Jesus was]…crucified.

After Jesus’ death, according to Christian history, Mary traveled northwest to Ephesus, where she lived out the rest of her days, in a city well-known for the professional leadership of women.

It seems to me that Mary’s courage doesn’t imply an absence of fear. I imagine that she left Nazareth and headed for the hills driven first by a desire to get out of town and to check in with Elizabeth, whom the angel Gabriel had said was also unexpectedly pregnant. Perhaps this was before Mary was convinced that any of the news she had was good. Perhaps she wasn’t sure any of her news was good until she was greeted with joy and declared blessed by Elizabeth: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Notice the circularity of the manifesto: the poor will become rich, and the rich will become poor. “Where is the good news in that?” the rich might wonder. Well, as soon as one becomes poor, the blessings start to flow again. The description is not of a particular cataclysmic event or end, but of the circle of life. I’ve experienced this firsthand. Perhaps you have too.

This most fantastic story is of the only two pregnant prophets to have a scene in the whole Bible, and with uninterrupted dialogue! Joseph wasn’t there, and Zechariah had lost his ability to speak. Reflecting on the scene this past week as I worked on this sermon, I felt stirred to retell a story from my young adulthood.

Back in the early 1990’s, I was beginning the difficult and frightening process of coming out of the closet…as a church lady who felt called to the priesthood. Coming out as a Lesbian, even in the hostile territory south of the Mason-Dixon line, was much easier than coming out as someone imagining ordination in the Episcopal Church. Most of my straight church friends and queer unchurched friends thought I was insane. Looking back on that struggle, however, all of it seems easier than coming out of the closet as someone who has had mystical experiences, sleeping and waking. I have never wanted people to think of me as the religious nut that I probably (okay, actually) am. Perhaps some of you have suspected it all along, but I am always reluctant to offer evidence from the pulpit.

My journey from Vice President of Human Resources for a large corporation based in Virginia to seminarian at Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts included some real danger and sizable emotional and financial cost. I risked everything, although I’m glad to say that I didn’t lose everything, I did lose a lot. I’m still paying for it; and I’m still benefiting from it. The love and support of other people made it possible, but what really propelled me forward during those early years was a series of vivid dreams. They were so compelling that I wrote them down; I studied them, analyzed them in therapy, and prayed with them. That’s not really the religious nut part. The things I had dreamed, however, started appearing in my waking life. Scenes and activities in my dreams that I had understood as symbolic, metaphorical but not real, started actually happening in the months and few years that followed. I kept that mostly to myself. As I settled into life in Massachusetts, the memories of the dreams stayed with me.

In one of the dreams, I had returned to St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic parish school run by Franciscans in Joliet, Illinois, which my brother and I had attended for four years of elementary education. Back then, it wasn’t just my status as a Protestant that kept me from having a turn serving at the altar at daily Mass; Catholic girls were not allowed either. But in my dream, a guide encouraged me to journey into the sacristy and then to the altar. The invitation was thrilling, and I accepted with great joy. Then I was told that the whole improbable journey to being permitted to stand at the altar was powered by the surprise discovery of a spring of living water, a source of energy deep within, underneath the structure (the building); and I was invited to walk downstairs to see that wellspring. I awoke with a renewed sense of wonder and courage, well-being and thanksgiving.

Almost fifteen years after I had that dream, in 2007, when I had been a priest for just a few years, I traveled to Palestine and Israel with a group from Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester. Part of the pilgrimage included a stop at The Church of the Visitation at Ein Karem, in the Judean hill country. There in the courtyard is a stunning sculpture of Elizabeth greeting Mary, arms outstretched, with their pregnant bellies nearly touching. Behind the statue is a wall covered with ceramic plaques painted with the opening words of the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”, in more than thirty languages, which makes it abundantly clear that this song applies and belongs to everyone, to the whole world.

The Church of the Visitation stands on the site traditionally identified as the location of the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah. There are Byzantine ruins of a chapel there and subsequent buildings, which have crumbled through the centuries. In 1937 the Franciscans built on top of the ruins in order to preserve the remains of previous chapels found there. When I walked into the chapel, a guide invited me to walk down several flights of stairs to see an ancient wellspring. It was the very wellspring I had seen in my dream so many years earlier. I really don’t have words to describe my shock at seeing it. I was overwhelmed and thrilled by the holy mystery of the fulfillment of what had been shown to me in a dream.

In Luke’s story of this pair of pregnant prophets, I have always heard a story of allowing God’s blessing in difficult situations, of claiming “the privilege of doing hard things,” as one vestry member has called it. I have experienced this Gospel story as giving us an example of how we might be inspired, filled with a spirit of holiness, and how our souls might enlarge or magnify the view of God in the blessed and the stressed situations of our own lives. In this story, each of us is given words to say, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” and in our own languages to repeat whenever we receive an untimely blessing: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” I also hear this as a story of coming out, as acknowledging having received inspiration and blessing, not only bearing it, but sharing it: telling it out loud. It occurs to me even more deeply that in gestating and giving birth to inspiration, we are called to more than a private experience. We are called also to a form of coming out.

One of the things I’ve learned, as I reflect back on the movement for LGBTQ rights and recognition over the last decades, is that what has made all of the difference is individuals telling their stories: coming out. I believe the Episcopal Church, indeed Emmanuel Church, each one of you (whether you are here for the first time or the umpteenth time) could grow stronger and strengthen others by coming out as who and Whose you are, more and more. The song of Mary applies and belongs to everyone. And as anyone who has come out about anything knows, coming out isn’t ever a one-and-done. Once you come out, staying out becomes a lifetime practice of coming out over and over and over again.

Perhaps you remember the beautiful words of the 13th-century prophet and mystic Meister Eckhart, who wrote this:

What good is it to me
if this eternal birth of the divine Son
takes place unceasingly
but does not take place within myself?

And,
what good is it to me
if Mary is full of grace
and if I am not also full of grace?
What good is it to me
for the Creator to give birth to [a] Son
if I do not also give birth to him
in my time and my culture?

This, then, is the fullness of time:
When the Son of God
is begotten in us.

I want to add, ‘This, then, is the fullness of time: when our souls tell out the greatness of the Lord.”

The Rev. Nancy Rockwell, “No More Lying about Mary:, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/no-more-lying-about-mary.

Rejoice!

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

Advent 3C, 15 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Zephaniah 3:14-20. I will change their shame into praise.
Philippians 4:4-7. Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Luke 3:7-18. What then should we do?

O God of the prophets, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

We are careening toward Christmas on this Gaudéte Sunday of Advent (Gaudete is Latin for the imperative plural rejoice.), but we haven’t heard any biblical readings about peaceful preparation for the birth of the infant Jesus. It’s been more about leveling the landscape and reorganizing the society, and less about receiving blankets or swaddling clothes. Our ancient narratives describe nations at war, raging seas, devastation, and disaster with plenty of blame to go around. The people are anxious and afraid; they are struggling. Just to be clear, we are talking about 28 centuries of struggle. The people Zephaniah was addressing were struggling in about 625 BCE. The people the apostle Paul and the evangelist Luke were addressing were struggling in the latter half of the first century of the Common Era. And the people I’m addressing right now are struggling at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Here’s what Zephaniah, son of African descent, says: There is good news in the midst of devastation and disaster, in the midst of the indignities that have been cause for shame and reproach, that have caused hands to grow weak with fear and despair. Zephaniah laments the corruption and injustice rampant in the city of God. The covenant of living in Love has been violated and the religious leadership is implicated once again. (Some things truly do not change.) Zephaniah tells his hearers that in the midst of injustice and oppression, disaster and shame, uncertainty and fear, is the Holy One: very near is a vigorous and mighty One, Who is right now rejoicing over the people with gladness, exulting and singing loudly, and renewing the people in Love. The word here rendered renewing is better translated engraving, as a metal artist might inscribe a mark of belonging or a beautiful design. [1]. It can also be translated plough, as a farmer might cut a furrow for planting seeds. Listening to the Holy One will cause the people to be marked and prepared, opened up for Love. Zephaniah announces that Judgment Day is cancelled; it has become Non-judgment Day. Rejoice because you are being inscribed and opened up for Love. So I wonder about the engravings or furrowings among us as the people of Emmanuel, where in the middle of the chaos, the Holy One is surely opening up new lines for Love among us. Gaudéte!

Our passage from Philippians this morning doesn’t give us the context for the writing, but the whole letter of Paul to the Jesus-followers in Philippi, was written from his prison cell (probably in Ephesus), where he was awaiting trial and a possible death sentence. He was writing to a faith community with a turbulent past, to people who had more than their share of pain. His instruction to rejoice and to not worry, then, is particularly striking and poignant to me, because he is taking a full accounting of fear and grief, of his own and theirs, of past and future. The rejoicing that Paul is encouraging is defiance, according to theologian Karl Barth. In Philippians, Paul’s joy is a defiant Nevertheless! that he sets against the Philippians’ fears that things are getting worse and not better. [2] Rejoice, Paul writes, because of the unnumbered blessings you have already received. Claiming joy is a radical and subversive form of resistance to all that colludes to oppress. I urge you to take some time today to rejoice in the blessings of your life so far. Gaudéte!

In the Gospel reading from Luke. John the Baptist is yelling out at the people who came to be baptized by him, “You viper hatchlings!” [3]. Did anyone get whiplash from today’s Gospel reading, which went from John the Baptist using a metaphor to call the people treacherous and venomous, characterized by deceit and hypocrisy, to the narrator’s best storytelling voice concluding, “With many other exhortations John the Baptist proclaimed the good news to the people.” That always makes me think, “Boy, if that’s the good news, I’d hate to hear the bad news.”

And yet, my virtual colleague Mark Davis writes in his Greek translation blog that there is plenty of good news here. We just don’t hear it, because we are conditioned to fear this language. John the Baptist talks about the wrath to come, but he does not call it God’s wrath. John’s idea of offspring of adders evokes the inherited, generational nature of broken relationships, of injustice and oppression. John is naming reasons they have come to seek the baptism of repentance. They have been participating in systems of oppression, exploitation, and extortion; and they want to stop. They have been complacent in economies that work to make rich people happy and make everyone else afraid; and that must come to an end. John is declaring that whatever tempts us to behave badly toward one another must be separated from the clean grain, the nutritious bits, the good fruit, whether it is physical, financial, or spiritual. Davis notes “There is nothing necessarily violent about a farmer cutting down a barren or soured tree and burning it, particularly if it might cross-pollenate and contaminate good fruit-bearing trees. This is a way of protecting the good trees and ensuring good fruit.” [4]

And what does good fruit mean? “What should we do?” the crowds asked. “What should we do?” the tax collectors asked. “What should we do?” the soldiers asked. John said,

Share your clothing and your food. If you have only a little, share a little. If you have a lot, share a lot. Do not take more than your portion; curb your greed and your fear that you won’t have enough. Do not extort money by shakedowns or false accusations to increase your wages. Exercise restraint. Stop victimizing people to leverage your own power by sucking up to people who have more power.

People, this is not rocket surgery, as my wife Joy loves to say. The good news is that they all wanted to be baptized or immersed in repentance. They wanted to bear good fruit! Gaudéte!

We know that Luke’s community wanted to be immersed by Jesus in a spirit of holiness and fire because the Gospel got written and widely shared. I hear the word fire as fire in the belly, energy and enthusiasm for caring for one another, especially for those who were most vulnerable. That is what being immersed in a holy spirit and fire means. What about us? What should we do? What should clergy do? What about librarians, musicians, artists, writers, office workers, teachers, and retirees? For all of John’s fiery talk, notice he doesn’t tell even tax collectors and soldiers to quit their jobs and join him permanently in the wilderness. John had different advice for different people in varying circumstances, and he expected them to return home by a different way, transformed; and so should we.

I want to tell you a story of Emmanuel Church, which a few of you witnessed, but many of you probably haven’t heard before. Back in the olden days of my time as your priest, early-Tuesday-morning Bible study took place in person at 15 Newbury Street. It was an odd-numbered month (we continue to meet in odd months) and the weather was very chilly, so my guess is late November or early March. Six or seven of us had finished our conversation when someone knocked on the door of the Emmanuel Room. It was a man who was wearing summer clothes with no jacket. I immediately sized him up as someone who had probably just been released from incarceration. If you don’t have family or friends to bring you clothing, you leave prison with the clothes you were wearing when you arrived, no matter what the season. It’s so awful and shameful. The man asked if Emmanuel had a thrift shop with clothing. I shook my head sadly and said, unfortunately we don’t. Meanwhile, Betsy Bunn was also sizing him up and without skipping a beat she just took her jacket off and gave it to the man. It was a perfect fit. He thanked her profusely. I looked at her, awestruck. She said, “I have more than one coat.” I want you to know that there are countless similar stories of generosity, resilience, and well-being that emanate from the many communities who call 15 Newbury Street home, communities where belonging is the way to helping each other grow in generosity, resilience, and well-being. Gaudéte!

You may have noticed our collect for the day pleading for speedy delivery of grace and mercy to help and deliver us. I am here to tell you that the grace of God, the compassion and mercy of God, are already all around us. We are soaking in the bountiful blessings of God. We have cause to rejoice. It is up to us to speedily honor these blessings with gratitude and to speedily respond in kind by sharing our resources and extending the mercy and compassion of God in our every interaction. If that seems daunting because of your circumstances, just start with the people you encounter between now and noon! If that seems too easy, then see how far you can get into this day or this week, and report back! Gaudéte!

Charash can mean keep still or silent. The NRSV translation of renew makes no sense to me at all, but I might not know enough to understand.
Karl Barth in his commentary, The Epistle to the Philippians, found at www.goodreads.com/quotes.
Sarah Ruden’s translation in The Gospels: a New Translation (New York: Modern Library, 2021), p. 174.
D. Mark Davis, posting for the third Sunday in Advent to his blog www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

Haiku

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

As we approach the end of the year and the end of my first semester with common cathedral, I am feeling reflective on my experience with this community and everything they have taught me. I decided for this week’s post I would challenge myself to write a collection of haikus about my experience thus far. Haiku is not my go-to poetry format, but I find it helpful when I want to condense a lot of feelings and ideas into a succinct space.

Continue reading →

With the Depths of Our Hearts

Posted on December 8, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

Advent 2C, 8 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Baruch 5:1-9. Put on the robe of righteousness that comes from God.
Philippians 1:1-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.
Luke 3:1-6. Prepare the way of the Lord.

O disturbing God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This Advent, like most every Advent, I find myself wishing for some pre-holiday quiet; but John the Baptist is always loud. It’s hard to get a sense of just what kind of loud he is from the first six verses of Luke, Chapter 3, when, in many of our heads, the prophet Isaiah’s words are accompanied by beautiful music from Handel’s Messiah. But in verse seven, which we will hear next week, John the Baptist shouts to folks who have come out to be baptized by him (mind you, they have come to receive the very baptism of repentance that he was calling for), and he yells at them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. If you don’t, you are like a tree that is cut down and thrown into the fire.” John the Baptist is loud, and he’s in a very bad mood. He’s wild-eyed and hopping mad. H is not the patron saint of sitting quietly sipping cocoa through a peppermint stick for a straw, dreaming of a white Christmas.

And so, liturgically, we are deliberately setting the context for our celebration of the Nativity in two weeks and two days, not with quiet reflection, but with disturbing visions from the Gospel of Luke. We began last week looking through Luke’s lens at the brink of the Passion. This week and next week we look back a little further at John the Baptist. Luke draws a picture of him as a cousin to Jesus. Perhaps they were blood relatives, but none of the other Gospels mention it; and I don’t think Luke is trying to portray a familial connection. I think, for Luke, John’s and Jesus’ work were closely related, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they had known one another since before they were even born.

Luke’s audience would have immediately recognized John the Baptist as a prophet who was using words from Isaiah. And Luke’s audience would have immediately recognized him as a prophet just like Jeremiah. Both consecrated before birth, they predicted judgment at the end of the age, proclaimed God’s saving grace, and announced that God’s new covenant was available to everyone who repented. The books of Isaiah and Jeremiah are set in the contexts of specific points in history with references to the reigns of particular kings. So Luke dates the moment of this story of John the Baptist: It was in the fifteenth year of the domination of Emperor Tiberius, when the notoriously cruel Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, treasonous and insecure Herod ruled Galilee, Herod’s rival and brother Philip ruled Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruled Abilene. If that’s not enough, Luke adds to the context the corrupt and complicit high priesthood of the retired Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas. Into this period of deepest despair a word of God came to John, son of Zechariah.

A word of God came to John in the wilderness (not the word; there’s no definite article here). Notably, a word of God didn’t come to anyone on the Who’s Who list of rulers of government or temple, but to John, out in the middle of nowhere in the year 26 or 27 CE . Isaiah heard a word of God in something like 738 BCE, which the compiler of the book of Isaiah put on a scroll more than a century after that, a word that Luke recorded two generations after John’s ministry, a word coming to us nearly two millennia later! Here is a word of God for all people for all time.

John was in a particular middle of nowhere at the mighty Jordan River; and he was in every place that is wilderness. Wilderness is the place of formation for God’s people, a place of disorganization and dispute, of loss and grief, of surprising beauty and even intermittent joy, of vulnerability and dependence on God (in other words, a long spiritual journey). Here is a word of God for our particular place on our particular spiritual journey. Here is a word of God for all people for all time in all places, all kinds of nobodies in all kinds of nowheres, all flesh.

Rather than being a claim in the literal meaning of the term, that all flesh will see the salvation of God, this word of hope is echoed in a voice in every situation of despair. Commentator Mark Davis writes, “Its meaning may lie not so much in how it is fulfilled in any given moment in time, but in how true it is in every moment in time.”[1] A word of hope, a word of love is always and eternally being spoken by the Holy One. A word of hope, a word of love, is without limits to those who can hear.

It seems to me that being able to hear a word of hope, a word of love, has to do with immersing ourselves in repentance. Baptism is about immersion. The words baptize and immerse are synonymous in the New Testament. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in repentance, to bathe in repentance? It means to change. Repentance is not about being sincerely sorry, regretful or ashamed. Repentance is about changing thinking, direction, and action: returning to God, returning from alienation to reintegration, from estrangement to reconciliation with God, remembering our citizenship in the realm of God. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in repentance for the forgiveness of sin? Forgiveness of sin here literally means to divorce sin, to send sin away. It means to give ourselves and others a future. It means freeing ourselves and freeing others to move forward in a new direction toward God, which is the direction of Love. It’s not easy, and we need help (a lot of help), but the cost of not doing it is so much greater than the cost of immersing ourselves in repentance, and turning again toward Love.

If you’ve heard me preach before, you know I’m drawn to the practice of weaving together strands of theology, scripture, liturgy, and parish ministry in ways that provoke and motivate us to live out our mission in the world. I recently read about Gus Speth, an environmental lawyer who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth has said he used to think the most pressing environmental problems were the loss of biodiversity, the collapse of ecosystems, and climate change. He thought 30 years of good science could address and even solve those problems. Now he believes the most pressing environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy; and to deal with those, he says, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. Scientific methods don’t know how to address that, but people of faith do. Our scriptures and ethical teachings know about cultivating community where people learn to practice loving others, even complete strangers, to give with an open hand rather than grasp with a clenched fist, and to cultivate empathic and compassionate actions.

A few weeks ago I mentioned novelist and essayist Cara Hoffman. Her latest piece in the New York Times yesterday responds to the voices of people who want to flee this country rather than live under the coming administration. She cautions that she knows from her own experience that it’s nearly impossible to live somewhere in the world where the US doesn’t have influence, positive or negative. Also, the far right is on the rise in many parts of the world. Hoffman’s advice is, “Don’t let the politics of fear displace you. It’s much more important to find your compatriots and to create a life worth living, no matter where that is…imagining what it is [you] want instead of reacting to what [you] fear.” That is the message of the whole Gospel. That is what we are doing here this morning, imagining what it is we want instead of reacting to what we fear, and not just imagining, but enacting. We are building a beloved community right now.

In light of our scripture, this compels me to ask, what repentance, what particular change, are we being called to on this December morning? What repentance for forgiveness of sin might we be immersed in today? What direct ways or level paths are we being called to prepare? What needs to be cleared or smoothed out so that all flesh will see the salvation of God? What joy can be a quiet subversion in the face of despair? This Advent, let us once again immerse ourselves in repentance, change our direction, and head again towards Love. Let us immerse ourselves because we have work to do. We have work to do to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Once again, the final chorale of today’s cantata sums it up beautifully, so I’m paraphrasing: we will succeed if (and whenever) we believe (and behave) in Love from and with the depths of our hearts.

D. Mark Davis, “All Flesh Shall See the Salvation of God,” Left Behind and Loving It, 1 Dec. 2024.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Elizabeth Richardson

I just got back from visiting my family for the holiday and am preparing myself to step back into my “intern” role at common cathedral tomorrow. It’s about to be what I would call “crunch time” in regard to preparation for our upcoming holiday play. This is the first time I have been in the role of director/producer for something like this, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t stress me out a little. The problem is not a lack of belief in the talent and capabilities of the community members involved; in that I have no doubts. I worry about my ability to provide the needed structure and containment to allow these talented artists to be seen and for their work to reach its potential. I have to remind myself that it’s not about the product but the process and the experience. Allowing people the space to enjoy and express themselves authentically is most important. I should also enjoy and express myself authentically, which means I should probably chill out a little and turn the stress down a notch. I will take this mindset of authentic presence and enjoyment into our rehearsal tomorrow. Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Revisited

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Mary Blocher

December 2, 2024

On Thanksgiving Day, people gathered on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth for the annual Day of Mourning. This tradition was established in 1970, spearheaded by Wamsutta (Frank) James, a Wampanoag and activist. James’s son, Moonanum James, now organizes the event.

Prayers for this day often include remembering the losses of Indigenous communities, and praying for healing, truth-telling, and the capacity to be instruments of justice during our lives.

More recently scholars in religious studies have advocated for the study of “living religion” or religion as practiced. The practice of praying for Indigenous peoples was often the first step in a journey of contact with Christianity. Conversion narratives by John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew illustrate the co-existence of traditional and Christian thought and practice as they engaged with missionaries.

In this vein, we recommend David Silverman’s This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019). Silverman notes that in early times, Wampanoags “turned the missionaries religion into a new way to express indigenous truths by melding Wampanoag religious concepts and truths with their rough Christian equivalents…some Wampanoags found Christianity to be a means of reinvigorating old religious ideas to meet the stresses of a new era.” (p. 243) There were other practical reasons, of course, to engage with missionaries, and over time, relationships between the two cultures became increasingly strained. By 1677, 10 of the 14 praying towns in Massachusetts were disbanded.

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church, December 5, 2024.

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Monthly Archives: December 2024