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Chapel Songs

One of my favorite things about serving as Rector at St. Stephen’s in Huntsville is doing chapel services with the students at St. Stephen’s Child Development Center. Singing is one of the best ways to teach children, and adults for that matter, about our faith.

I recorded our chapel songs a couple of weeks ago after the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stop holding public gatherings. I know that physical distancing is necessary during these strange days, but I do miss singing with the preschool classes.

Perhaps, soon we’ll be able to gather again and make a joyful noise to the Lord.

Jeff+

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Something Wonderful

I’ve linked an audio file of the sermon I preached on the Feast of the Transfiguration on Sunday, 6 August 2017: Transfiguration Sermon.

The lesson of the day are here: Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Peter 1:13-21, Luke 9:28-36, Psalm 99:[1-4], 5-9. 
I started writing a manuscript sermon but stopped after the introduction. Even though I ended up preaching an extemporaneous sermon, I decided to include the written introduction below.

In Christ’s Peace,

Jeff+
 
 
“Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28 NRSV). I love that sentence. At first glance, it simply looks like a typical day in the life of Jesus and his disciples. But it is actually full of potential and the promise of something spectacular. First of all, Jesus didn’t take the multitude up the mountain to pray. He didn’t take the Twelve up the mountain to pray. He took Peter and John and James. He took the inner circle of the inner circle.
His closest associates.
His most trusted colleagues.
His best friends.
It wasn’t a typical day at all; it was an extraordinary day. But it isn’t just Jesus’s choice of companions that gives us a clue about what kind of day it is; it is also the setting. They went up on the mountain to pray. Mountain tops were sacred in ancient tradition. The Temple in Jerusalem was at the top of Mount Zion. Elijah heard the still, small voice of the LORD on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19). Moses spoke with the LORD and received the tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34). (Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai are actually the same place, by the way.) So with just one simple sentence, the author of the Gospel of Luke has careful readers expecting—-something wonderful.
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Wrapping Up Romans 8 (a reflection on last week’s sermon and a link to this week’s)

Last week I had trouble with the voice recorder (again), so there is no audio file for the sermon. The text was Romans 8:12-25 where Paul argues that if we “are led by the Spirit of God,” we “are children of God” (Romans 8:14 NRSV). We are also “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17 NRSV). That’s pretty good news, but it doesn’t end there. Christians often make the mistake of stopping short of the full implication of Christ’s resurrection. Redemption, reconciliation, and renewal don’t just apply to people. God is restoring the whole creation through Christ. The whole universe “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Romans 8:19 NRSV) because when we come into the fullness of our inheritance, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20 NRSV). Nothing is disposable. Resurrection is a cosmic level event.

 
We have already been set “free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2 NRSV), but we still “groan inwardly while we wait for…the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23 NRSV). Our call as Christians is to live in the liminal space between “Christ is risen” and “Christ will come again.” And the only way to inhabit that space is in hope. The Holy Spirit teaches us to “hope for what we do not see” and to “wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25 NRSV).
 
As I preached about the hope that we learn from the Spirit last week, I remembered a poem by Emily Dickinson which begins: “Hope is the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul….” Actually, before  I remembered the poem, I remembered a really good song by Trailer Bride which sets the poem to music and captures the nature of the hope that Emily Dickinson and St. Paul write about.
The recording prominently features a musical saw which is among the most annoying instruments ever invented. It grates on the nerves like the harmonica or the saxophone in the wrong hands. It is horrible, but the band puts the saw to excellent use in this song.
 
The whine of that saw in Trailer Bride’s musical setting represents hope which “sings the tune without the words, /and never stops at all….” The hope that the Holy Spirit teaches us simply won’t leave us alone. It “never stops at all,” and that is why we are able to wait with patience until Christ’s work is completed within us and among us.
 
 
I did manage to get a recording of this morning’s sermon for Proper 12, Year A. The Epistle assigned for today was Romans 8:26-39 in which Paul elaborates on the reason for our hope in “Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34 NRSV).
 
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul asks (Romans 8:35 NRSV). The answer is nothing. No thing. Not death. Not life. Not angels. Not rulers. Not things present. Not things to come. Not powers. Not height. Not depth. Nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). Realizing the truth of those words turned my life around. The hope and the love that we find in Jesus can change everything if we let it.
 
The audio file for this morning’s sermon is here: Sermon Audio Proper 12.
 
In Christ’s Peace,
 
Jeff+
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Easter Faith

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter, (Book of Common Prayer, 224)


We Christians often refer to ourselves as Easter people. We are people of the Resurrection. We have died to our old selves—-our false selves—-and have been raised to new life in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been set free from sin and death. Renewal is among the defining characteristics of an Easter faith. We shouldn’t expect everything to stay the same as always if we’re serious about following Jesus. We’ve set out on a path that leads to transformation, reconciliation, and rebirth. Christ is making all things new including us.

In the Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter, we ask God to “[o]pen the eyes of our faith” so that we will be able to see Jesus “in all his redeeming work” (BCP, 224). We’re accustomed to looking for Christ in certain predetermined contexts such as worship, prayer, service, and study of scripture, but the resurrection touches everything—-absolutely everything—-in creation. It’s not just people who are being redeemed and reconciled. We ask God to open our eyes and teach us to see Christ at work in all things. Easter faith teaches us that God’s love for us and all the creation is unconditional and unlimited. Nothing in God’s holy creation is disposable, and when we are able to see with God’s eyes, we see Jesus everywhere in everything and in everyone.

It’s important to learn to see Jesus even in times and places that we don’t expect to find him. The best spiritual lesson we can learn is that we are never alone. Christ is with us always. Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke offers a good example. Two of Jesus’s disciples are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection. They are grieving and confused, and despite having heard from some of the women in the group about the empty tomb and the angels’ message that Jesus is alive, they believe that their hope for redemption died on a Roman cross.

And that’s when everything changes. Jesus shows up, but Cleopas and the other disciple don’t recognize him. Jesus asks the two disciples what they are discussing as they walk along. They tell him about the events of the day, and Jesus explains “to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27 NRSV). But the disciples still don’t recognize their Risen Lord. At the dinner table that night, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples (that should sound familiar). Then their eyes are opened, “and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:31 NRSV). The Risen Christ “had been made know to them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35 NRSV). Hope never dies. Faith never dies. Love never dies. That is the Easter faith that opens our eyes to our Lord’s resurrection and teaches us to see his redeeming presence in ourselves, in each other, and in the creation itself.

In Christ’s Peace,


Jeff+
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Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Phyllis Tickle

“…logic suffers from the fact that it is human, not divine, and suffers all the limitations of humanity, including being irrevocably contained in time and space.”

Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why

PhyllisTickle makes a good point. Here in the Western World, we have trusted logic—rationalism—seemingly above all else for about five hundred years now. Reason has been our philosophical guide since the Renaissance and beginning with the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries, it has been our common philosophical and scientific language. Reason is not always comfortable with paradox. It seeks certainty (or at least proof beyond a reasonable doubt) in all things.

And all that used to be just fine with me. Philosophical Rationalism is what I lived and breathed. I was an agnostic for twenty years or more. When I was a kid, I watched Star Trek re-runs religiously (interesting word choice, huh?) and still do whenever I can. I loved Spock. I wanted to be like Spock. Devoted to logic. Alien. Dispassionate. Above the emotional turmoil. Knowledge was an end in itself, and logic seemed like a good, safe  place to hide.

The thing is, I’m nothing like Spock. I never have been. It took a spiritual awakening, therapy, and a Facebook quiz to help me realize that I am much more like Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy. Trusting his feelings. Human. Irascible. Prone to occasional emotional outbursts. Knowledge was a tool rather than an end in itself.

I still trust Rationalism, but like Phyllis Tickle, I recognize its limitations. She argues “that logic is not worth nearly as much as the last five hundred years would have had us believe,” and she’s right. Logic is limited. It’s not absolute. Given the paradoxical nature of our lives, it is good for us to balance the rational with the non-rational. It’s good for us to seek as much wisdom from poetry as we do from science. It’s good for us to realize that our perspective is finite and that we will never be able to articulate the infinite love and grace that we find in Christ.
God is a mystery that defies explanation. The Incarnation of Christ is a paradox that we will never resolve, and we shouldn’t even try. Phyllis Tickle would advise us to “recognize the ubiquity of paradox.” She would also advise us not to fear that paradox, but to “see in its operative presence the tension where vitality lives.” That’s good advice. We don’t have to choose between the rational and the non-rational. We can pick both/and rather than either/or. In the end, both Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are necessary. We can learn a lot from them (just ask Jim Kirk).
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