St. John's joins in supporting the New England BIPOC Festival, on Sunday, August 18, 2024 from 12:00-5:00pm at Strawbery Banke.
I invite you to pause for a moment and examine how you practice the presence of God. The tendency that I hear, see and experience is that people, (myself included), look for God “somewhere out there.” Brother Lawrence reminds us that God is nearer than we might think. Psalm 139 expresses this reality well when the psalmist asks ..
In these autumn days, with the changing of the light and the trees dropping their leaves and creatures big and small all around us settling into the cooler months ahead I can't help but think we are entering into a thin place, a holy and liminal space where heaven and earth feel almost within reach of each other.
In this week's Gospel reading, the disciples ask “Who is the greatest?” Jesus, lifting up a child as a symbol of vulnerably and potential tells them that it is anyone who cares for a child. What if we saw the earth as a sacred trust from God, much like the vulnerable child Jesus calls us to protect in the Gospel? Would we care for the earth differently?
The full text of the homily preached at Thursdays Healing Eucharist, celebrating Isabel Florence Hapgood, Ecumenist, 1928
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” As summer envelops the Northern Hemisphere, bringing with it lush green vines and budding fruit, this imagery of the vine and the branches feels particularly resonant to me right now. It speaks to a time of growth, connection, and the hope for a fruitful harvest.
It is imagery that is meant to help us put words to our spiritual life, to our spiritual experience. In this metaphor Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. Our growth, strength, and ability to bear fruit come from our relationship with Jesus. Without this relationship, without this connection, we wither and fail to produce the good works that glorify God.
As the days have lengthened I have enjoyed taking a nightly walk with Marcus around our neighborhood. Together we admire the urban gardens, a sort of landscaping that is very new to us and so full of beauty. And when we drive north to visit family, passing through miles of hayfields and wildflowers I find myself overwhelmed with the goodness and grandeur of Gods Vine. What can happen when we are rooted, when we are connected to God, to the source of all Goodness, is indeed beautiful and beyond my comprehension.
The gift of time and travel, of living in one place and many, is that one gets to see and experience the diversity of growth, the ways different plants, different trees, different vines take root and grow. You also get to experience and taste the different fruits, the smell of different flowers, the goodness of different gifts, and the variety of ways that each of us experience God. It is a gift to experience the beauty of this diversity. A gift to see the abundance of fruit grown in Gods garden.
This week, in the Episcopal Church we celebrate the life and wisdom of Isabel Florence Hapgood. Hapgood was a 20th century ecumenist and translator whose work in the Episcopal Church fostered greater understanding and appreciation of Eastern Orthodox liturgies. Her work exemplifies the Episcopal Church's commitment to promoting unity and mutual respect among diverse Christian traditions.
I am particularly drawn to the Collect, the prayer we read at the start of the service, written in commemoration of Hapgood.
“Teach your divided church, O God, so to follow the example of your servant Isabel Florence Hapgood that we might look upon one another with a holy envy, to honor whatever is good and right in our separate traditions, and to continually seek the unity that you desire for all your people”
Perhaps it is because I don’t yet have a garden of my own here in Portsmouth, that I have found myself envying other peoples garden on these nightly walks. The house with the wildflowers, the tree on the corner, the wild strawberry patch on the banks of the river, the irises that grow in the rock garden— they are deeply rooted, and the fruit of their vines prolific and good. I envy the beauty of it all, but also the hands that tend it, and those who get to call a little piece of this corner of the earth home.
I know something about envy. I imagine you do too. But the sort of envy that I am thinking of isn’t holy. And so I was surprised by this term “holy envy” that we encounter in this prayer.
Episcopal Priest and contemporary theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes at length about this concept of holy envy. Holy envy, she writes, is the admiration and respect for elements of other faith traditions that enrich and challenge our own beliefs. It is a respectful acknowledgment that other religions have truths and beauty that can inspire and deepen our faith. This perspective invites us to appreciate the diversity of spiritual expressions and learn from them, just as branches on a vine draw from the same source yet produce different fruits.
Consider Isabel Florence Hapgood, whose dedication to ecumenism beautifully exemplifies this idea. She worked tirelessly to promote unity among Christians, recognizing that each tradition has unique gifts to offer. Her translations of Eastern Orthodox liturgies opened a window for Western Christians to experience the richness of another tradition. In doing so, she lived out the spirit of holy envy—appreciating and incorporating the beauty she found in other branches of the Christian family.
Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that each of us has experienced moments where we encounter practices or beliefs from other traditions that stir something within us. Perhaps it was the serene meditation of a Buddhist temple, the rhythmic chanting of prayers in a Jewish synagogue, or the passionate worship in a Pentecostal church. These experiences can evoke a sense of holy envy, not because we wish to abandon our faith, but because they inspire us to deepen our own spiritual practices.
These moments of holy envy remind us of the interconnectedness described in the Gospel we read today. Just as the branches are nourished by the vine, our faith can be enriched through our connections with others. Holy envy opens us to the possibility of learning from different traditions, incorporating elements that resonate with us, and growing in our own faith.
Isabel Florence Hapgood’s work in ecumenism reflects this same spirit. Her efforts to share the liturgies and spiritual practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church were driven by deep respect and admiration. She understood that fostering unity among Christians requires mutual respect and a willingness to learn from one another. By embracing this spirit of holy envy, she enriched the broader Christian community.
Holy envy is not about comparison or competition but about recognizing and celebrating the diverse ways people experience and express their relationship with the divine. It is about finding common ground in our shared humanity and collective yearning for God. It challenges us to look beyond our own experiences and see the divine at work in the lives of others.
As I walked through the neighborhood this week I thought about this a lot. To turn my garden envy holy I need to look beyond my own longing, beyond my own ideas and certitudes, I meed to look more closely at the vine to see how heavy its branches are, full of fruit and ripening before my very eyes. Its root, its source, stretching out, reaching beyond and to the next, holding together this abundant garden, this vast universe.
I don’t want to miss a minute of this beauty, I don’t want to give up the tastes of summer or the excitement of seeing something new and different, and so I open my eyes and my heart to celebrate and honor the beauty in the gardens and the farms, in the meadows and the woods that I have coveted. I watch with delight to see how others tend their garden, and I stop to ask them “what plant is this, how does it grow, what is its story, what is yours?” Tucking away the answers in my prayers, feeling ever more connected to the One True Vine.
“May we look upon one another with a holy envy, to honor whatever is good and right in our separate traditions, and to continually seek the unity that you desire for all your people” Amen.
What does an atheist, a pharisee and Jesus have to teach about how to grow in faith and how to talk about what we believe with those we love? In Sunday’s sermon Aaron reflects on the work of chaplains to help others make meaning during challenging times and the unexpected and beautiful ways God shows up in that work.
Full text of the homily given at Thursday's Healing Eucharist:
Do you remember March of 2020? The early days of the Covid pandemic. Do you remember how it felt?
I remember the day my kids school closed, the day they sent my husband home from work, the day we had to decide to cancel worship. We thought it was only going to be a few weeks, a month at the most.
At first neighborhoods came together. Love notes and messages of thanks went up in windows around town, everyone was trying to figure out how to stay connected, how to grow hope, how to persevere in the midst of this seemingly impossible thing that was unfolding before our eyes. In those first few weeks, those first few months, we were so naive to what was to come, which was for the best, since what we were experiencing already felt so impossible.
I was working for a small church at the time, and we were trying everything to help support eachother in whatever ways we could think up. I had some friends and colleagues who turned to the Book of Common Prayer, gathering for Compline every night on Facebook Live. A beloved friend suggested a group of us read Morning Prayer over the phone together, we did it once, but the art of holding the phone and turning pages and balancing a preschooler on my knee was more than I could handle. Another time, I left my kids unsupervised to lead a prayer call, and within minutes they were knocking on my office door, one of them with a bloody nose and the other full of stories of brotherly mishaps. By the end of the first month, the days started to melt together, differentiated only by the flavor of hard that day doled out.
Once we realized things weren’t going back to “normal” Zoom school became a thing, which meant putting my first grader in front of a computer screen in a room by himself from seven in the morning till midday - as you can imagine this was unbearable for everyone involved, teachers, parents, and most especially the seven year olds. Seven year olds aren’t meant to sit in front of computer screen all day (and neither are we). After a month of trying to balance Zoom school and remote church work and my own seminary classes, also on Zoom, and life as a family of four with grandparents and friends whom we desperately missed, I began getting the calls no one wanted, but we all knew were coming. Friends of friends were sick with Covid, the degree of separation between the virus and us grew smaller and smaller, until it was clear it was here and people in my community began to get sick.
I woke up one morning and thought “I can’t do this anymore. My littles are little and they are scared. I am not-so-little and I am scared. How do we as a community, as a country, as a world handle this much death, this much sadness, this much isolation. ” The thoughts raced through my head. I was so tired, and soon my exhaustion and overwhelm turned to anger. I began to wonder - will this ever end, and where is God in all of this.
I didn’t want to pray anymore, I couldn’t muster up the energy, I didn’t have the right words, I didn’t really have any words. Have you ever felt like that?
I remember so clearly sitting at my kitchen table later that same day. I was suppose to lead Midday prayer on Zoom, and instead I was crying into a bowl of alphabet soup, looking down and thinking, that’s all I’ve got. That’s all the prayers I can muster. A spoonful of scrambled letters, and a bowlful of heartache. Of course, What I didn’t know then, was that much of the following year, and years, would be scrambled prayers and bowlfuls of heartache.
I took a deep breath and I went live anyway. I logged into Zoom as I had each day before and there staring at me through the computer screen were the faces of beloved parishioners and friends, a dear colleague and a few strangers — all gathered in this strange new place we called “Zoom church”. It was far from perfect, but there they were. The exhaustion and uncertainty in their lives was very different than mine, and yet, very much the same and I could see it on their faces.
We sat in silence for a long time that day and then let the words of our tradition carry us, and as we finished praying, I asked the group if there was anything else we could prayer for, and someone far braver than I called out “for the courage to keep praying. For the strength to keep looking for God in the world.” And then to my surprise, others joined in, with prayers too deep for words. One by one, they prayed the most sincere and heartfelt prayers I had ever heard. The space between us melted away, and what was left was a real, raw, vulnerable and sincere longing for God.
There are many times in our lives when all we have is the desire to pray but not the words. And sometimes, we don’t even have that. Sometimes all we have is scrambled letters, racing thoughts and tears rolling down our cheeks into bowls of soup. Sometimes all we have is a heart full of worry, a body full of rage. Sometimes we are too worn out, too tired, to done with it all, to pray.
And yet, we are called to persevere in prayer. And somehow we do.
In today’s first reading we hear the story of Esther, a remarkable story worth reading in its entirety, but we hear it in today’s lesson because the story of Esther illustrates the purpose and the power of prayer. In the example of Esther we see prayers as a petition to God, as a confession of sins, and as an intercession on behalf of others, but we also see it as a deep desire to seek and find God. In the example of Esther we are reminded that even in the midst of turmoil we must never stop trusting that God is at work in the world. Through prayer, we are expressing our desire to be in Gods presence. Through prayer we are seeking to find connection, real, raw, and authentic.
We are not called to persevere in prayer so that we get what we want, we are called to persevere in prayer so that we can learn to trust that God is at work even when we can’t see it. We are called to persevere in prayer, so that we can learn better how to pray with sincerity and truth for God’s will to be done on earth.
Thinking back to that time at the beginning of the pandemic, my prayers remained scrambled for a long time, I imagine some of yours did as well. But after Midday Prayer that day, when I looked into that bowl of alphabet soup, my scrambled prayers were joined with the prayers of so many others. An offering of our hearts, a letting go of our desires, a transformation of our prayers and a reminder to look up, to find God at work in the world. We are called to persevere in prayer, but we don’t have to do it alone.
Amen.
In Sunday’s Gospel reading we heard the remarkable story of Jesus’s baptism and the start of his ministry in Galilee. In the space between these two events, we hear the story of how Jesus was spirited away, to the wilderness. The wildness is a place Jesus goes again and again when he is preparing to face the challenges of his life and ministry.
