Firmly Grounded

I have noticed that the ground outside my front door is breaking open once again. Flowering plants are coming back, perhaps far too soon. Their reappearance reminds me that survival for all things depends on their being rooted, grounded, or otherwise connected to the Earth.

In one of his parables, Jesus speaks about vines and branches. He is the vine and we are the branches. Branches die when cut off from the vine. They are gathered up and burned with the rubbish. Our survival, vitality, and prospering, both physical and spiritual, require that we remain connected to him. He is our grounding and our life source. As Saint Paul wrote, “In him we live and move and have our being.”

The texts of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds tell us in simple, factual statements about this person who is our grounding. It is significant that most of the text of the creeds is given to stating the divine nature and earthly life of Jesus. For example, in the standard formatting of the Apostles’ Creed, just two lines speak of God the Father, while ten are devoted to Jesus. While the ongoing theological debates at the time of their writing have something to do with this, it is also the essential place in our faith and our being that Jesus fills that explains this emphasis. He is the ground of our being and the source of our life. And this make us unique among faith traditions - that God came in human form as Jesus to affirm a way of life and give life now and forevermore.

The early church was appropriately called “The Way” because to be a follower of Jesus was to live a way of life trusting and abiding, remaining connected to, and grounded in the way of Jesus. To be a follower is not merely to profess a belief, but to live. Those members of The Way were later called Christians because their way of living was as “little Christs.” Jesus Christ was the vine, they were the branches. Branches look like the vine and live like the vine because of the vine. To be a Christian is to be an icon of Christ and to be a reflection of his ways. To profess as the Creeds states, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord” means to live as he lived - lovingly, compassionately, humbly, sacrificially, full of grace and truth. It is only by maintaining our vital connection with Jesus that we can remain in the way. Reading your Bible, spending time with God in prayer, serving others, and staying active in this church community are key disciplines for the health of that connection. The upcoming season of Lent is a traditional time for working on our spiritual disciples. To be firmly grounded is essential. Nature is also trying to remind us of that.

Grace and peace, Fr Bill+

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Let the adventures begin. I like adventures. Wandering actually. The surprises always seem better that way. Maybe it is spatial intelligence, or a product of repetition, or more likely just dumb luck, but I rarely get lost. As Tolkien wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Knowing a few landmarks and having general sense of direction are helpful for wandering and enjoying surprises while not getting lost. As the people of God, we may start out on the adventure of this new year by first stopping and getting our theological bearings - our landmarks and direction. For this we turn to the foundational statement of the Christian faith for Episcopalians. While not a doctrinal church, not one that has a confession that requires assent for membership, the Episcopal Church does profess that the essential elements of the faith are found within the Nicene Creed. God is Father, God is Son, God is Holy Ghost. Jesus is God who became incarnate, died, and rose again. There is one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. You know this and more, I believe. It is not so much that the Nicene Creed explains what we profess but that it provides a return point to truths that are frankly beyond explanation. Explanations stand and explanations fall, but the truth of our creedal statements remains that firm foundation that keeps us from getting lost in our wandering.

“I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth.” As I wander, I am grounded in the knowledge that God is Father, my father and Jesus’ father. Actually, he is everyone’s father. I know that, you do as well, and I hope that I and those I meet are mindful of that when and wherever we meet in our wanderings. Sure, siblings have rivalries, but all those people out there are kin. Maybe I should express more kindness and have a bit more patience with them like I try to have with those closest to me. I am also grounded in the knowledge that all I see and feel, smell, taste and touch are part of God’s creation. Lake Chatuge, Fire’s Creek, the Tusquittee range ... those are all made by the same God and they say a lot about whom God is. God is an artist and has produced a work of art to delight our eyes and to be our playground. And since it is all God’s, I am grounded in knowing that my wandering should not abuse creation, but rather include caring for creation. Lastly, knowing that there should be some family resemblance, I am grounded in knowing that as God is begetter-creator, I am meant to be a begetter-creator. So I wander and explore and find new things and come to beget new understandings of myself and God, and new ways of seeing and living. The nice thing is that I always know where home is. “I believe in God the Father.”

Have a Happy and Blessed New Year. Enjoy the journey and do not forget where you live.

Fr. Bill+

Silent Night

In the beginning was the Word .... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. - John 1:1, 14.

As contemporary philosopher Steve Martin once put it, “Some people have a way with words and other people, well ... uh, not have way, I guess.” If you are like me and are one of those who “not have way”, fear not because there are plenty of others working to fill in the space. I read recently that on average we hear 20,000-30,000 words per day. That’s roughly 120 double spaced typed pages of text. Add to that the roughly 16,000 words per day we speak on average and you see that we are surrounded by words.

Those numbers may actually rise during the Christmas season. Do you watch more movies? Lifetime Network and Hallmark Channel now offer plenty of Christmas movies to fill empty air. Or maybe you have pulled out your Christmas CDs and are listening to more music. Anyone writing more cards than usual? My guess is that during this time of year we are awash with words. The climax of this may just be Christmas day. Buyers beware of gifting anything electronic or anything saying “some assembly required.” A 40 page manual for a child’s toy seems a bit much. Who writes those anyway? Having gone through this with my children I now understand the genius of my mom and dad who gave us pajamas, walnuts, a football, and matchbox cars for Christmas. There was silence in the house on Christmas and my hard-working parents had an opportunity to rest. That is Christmas.

At Christmas, God became one of us. God took on flesh and pitched his tent right alongside his people. I have been to Bethlehem. I have seen the surrounding countryside. I imagine that at the time Jesus was born, a single word at midnight would have punctuated the stillness of midnight and rippled out across all creation.

In silence, you can hear a single word. Ask a contemplative and they will tell you that silence is God’s first language. In that silence a single word can strike every fiber of your being. “And the Word became flesh ...” This is John the Evangelist’s Christmas story. It is a story about the silence and a word spoken into the silence. No noisy angel choirs and little drummer boy. No shepherds shrieking in fear nor their bleating sheep. No muddy -booted visitors bearing nifty gifts. John’s story does not make for a homey nativity or child-friendly pageant. On all those things that make for a traditional Christmas, John is silent.

I think the gift John is inviting us to receive is the gift of silence into which the word of God can be born. “In the beginning was the Word ...” Before light and dark, before earth and sea and sky, before life and death, before PlayStation and Instant Pot, before all the words about all things, there was silence and there was the Word. The Word is still found there.

May God bless you with peace and quiet in your home and in your spirit this Christmas season. May God’s peace rest upon your loved ones. And may the Word of God speak into your silence. Merry Christmas,

Fr. Bill+

Thanksgiving

Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, ki la’olam chasdo, “Give thanks to Adonai for He is good, for His mercy is everlasting.”

On behalf of the staff, vestry, and finance committee, thank you for your faithful support of this parish and the work of God in the world, both nearby and far away. Your pledge of time, talent, and treasure is vital to the vision of our parish to boldly engage the world as God’s shepherds, to share our blessings, and to work with God toward creating Heaven on Earth one person at a time. As we look toward the Thanksgiving Holiday, we should be reminded of the many reasons we have for giving thanks to God and we should be mindful of how we should respond to show our gratitude.

The scriptures provide plenty of examples of the people of God offering their thanksgiving—in response to being blessed Abraham gave one-tenth of all his possessions to the priest Melchizedek; in response to his salvation Zacchaeus gave half of what he owned to the poor; the blind man restored followed Jesus and praised God — and the Psalms tell us that thanksgiving has been a central part of worship from ancient times. For Episcopalians, thanksgiving is also a central part of our worship, not only in our use of the psalms and the offering of our gifts, but in the celebration of Eucharistic, a Greek word meaning thanksgiving.

In Luke’s telling of the Last Supper we read that Jesus gave thanks involving two cups with a thanksgiving involving bread in the middle: cup-bread-cup. This is in the manner of Jewish meal prayers where it is neither the contents of the cup nor the bread, but it is God who is blessed. Words like these may have been used, “Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth.” “Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, Who creates the fruit of the vine.” You might try this at your Thanksgiving table this year.

Just for fun — The Hebrew word above translated as “Give thanks” is “hodu.” That is also found in the Hebrew word for the bird we call a turkey. “Hag Hahodaya,” literally the “the chicken of India” and you probably recall, India is where Columbus thought he was headed when he sailed west and started the chain of events that led to the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621.

I thank God for you and for God’s faithfulness working through you. Give thanks to the Lord.

Fr Bill+

Stewardship

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. - 1 Peter 4:10

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, the first leader of the post-Ascension church, offers a word of exhortation to his community that echoes across time and space. Use whatever gift you have received in service of others. In this way we are counted as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. Grace is gift and gift is grace, all from God and taking a variety of forms, and meant not just for ourselves but for the benefit of others.

Stewards are not owners, but servants and managers of the property of another, and Peter tells us that proper management of God’s property means that we deploy those graces for God’s purpose which here is identified as serving others. It may have been harvest time and time for the first stewardship campaign of the early church.

For almost 2000 years, the faithful have been exhorted to share whatever gift they have received for the work of the church in serving others. Those others are fellow church members, those not yet in the church, and those who may not come to know the Lord in this lifetime.

I am grateful that we have a highly faithful congregation. All in their own way, as circumstances some times dictate, are using the gifts entrusted to them by God for serving others. For some, it is their time that they generously give to the church. For others, a special gift of talent is used to bless the church’s mission. And for others still, it is through generous financial gifts that they express their faithfulness. These forms of stewardship are, of course, not exclusive and those who are faithful stewards are typically generous with their time, talent, and treasure. Is there anything more Christlike than that? God, through Christ, gave his very best and gave his all to serve others.

Thank you for being Good Shepherds of the gifts you have received and for the gift of time, talent, and treasure you will pledge to the church for its mission in 2020. Please know that your generosity is being matched by the generosity of many, many others who make this a special place in which to serve and to worship. You make St Peter smile. May you know his joy and the joy of our Lord who says to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Grace and peace, Fr Bill+

The Stewardship of Life

The story is told of an American tourist who visited the 19th century Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. Astonished to see that the rabbi's home was only a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a bench, the tourist asked, "Rabbi, where is your furniture?"

"Where is yours?" Replied the rabbi.

"Mine?" Asked the puzzled American. "But I'm a visitor here. I'm only passing through."

"So am I," said Hofetz Chaim.

Passing through happens in so many ways. We are visitors to each day the Lord has given us. We pass through places where we live and call home. We pass through friends, losing some and gaining others. Our families change. Youth turns to adulthood and then to old age.

Our life on this side of eternity is a passing through. You have likely noticed that Jesus traveled and did a lot of passing through. You may have also noticed that he did it unencumbered by home and wealth, things we feel we must have and things that can become a cause for us to worry. The felt need for the security of a place and our things is shaped by the world we live in and cannot escape, but the same was true for people in Jesus’ day. Yet, Jesus tells us that we are passing through. To the rich man, who to his credit had kept all the commandments but who was also encumbered by his wealth, Jesus said to “sell it all and give it to the poor. Then come follow me.” He taught that entering the kingdom was through a small door and that holding onto wealth and things could be a problem (Matthew 19:24). To others he spoke of the necessity of setting our hearts on building up treasure in the place we would eventually arrive when the passing through has ended. Like Jesus, in this life we are just passing through.

Likewise with our accomplishments and our failures. These, too, are passing. Most will never have monuments built to their memory and those few who do will also eventually be forgotten by this world. However, earthly accomplishments can provide an opportunity for recognizing our good fortune, our giftedness, and expressing our gratitude. They can lift our eyes off the approval of the world and to the approval of God. Our faith tells us that heaven is our home and the only accomplishment with eternal significance is receiving our family membership through Christ. As with accomplishments, failures are a passing part of this life. Learn from them, let them also be a source of sanctification, and then let them pass. I imagine that it can take much courage and grace to accept the impermanence of our lives and to receive and let go of what each day brings.

In this passing through, know that you are loved and already heirs of a kingdom beyond all you can ask or imagine. It is a place where all that needs to be accomplished already has been accomplished for you and where failures will neither be recalled nor known. Blessings of courage and grace be upon you as you pass through this life to your eternal life in the household of our God.

Fr. Bill+

Clarity

Years ago I heard something that I shared with my students to see if what I heard was true. The point was not to mislead or embarrass anyone, but to point out that clarity of communication matters.

You may have heard about the potential problem of a dihydrogen oxide build up in the environment. It was a rainy day in Charleston when I spoke with my students about the current dihydrogen oxide spill. Scientists say that this dangerous chemical goes largely unregulated although it has incredible destructive potential. It is found in large concentrations in the atmosphere, in lakes, rivers, and oceans, and in the ground, yet the public seems not to be overly concerned or even aware of its dangers. This hydric acid can corrode metals and dissolve rock. It can create sink holes and mud slides. It is a major cause of destruction to our bridges, roadways, communication systems, and sewer lines. Meteorologists say it plays a key role in blizzards and hurricanes, tsunamis and floods. To humans, prolonged exposure can damage skin tissue and ingestion of large amounts of hydric acid can cause gastric distress, diarrhea, or even death. Having shared this news, a good number of students were understandably concerned that there had been a recent heavy spill of hydric acid in Charleston. Bad stuff, this hydric acid, this dihydrogen oxide, this H2O.

“Oh, that is what you are talking about.” Clarity of communication matters. I appreciate that the different professions have their necessary technical language. That language is helpful toward the precision required in those professions and must be learned by those practitioners. It is meant for a limited field and is helpful in the clarity of their internal communication. With my students, I engaged in obfuscation. I intentionally made something simple hard to understand.

One thing I think Jesus tried to do was to be clear and straightforward in his communication. Yes, I get that he spoke in parables and said things about people not understanding because he spoke in parables, but I think that was a clever way of inviting the curious, brilliant, ordinary and lazy to think for themselves rather than obfuscation.

The prophet Micah tells us what God requires - “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Jesus amplifies that in the life he models for us by showing us just, merciful, and humble living, and in the words he left us that summarize the whole purpose of our lives - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

Can it be more clear than this? To act justly is to fulfil our responsibilities to God and neighbor. To act mercifully is to extend grace to others where it is not merited, knowing that we, too, require mercy. To walk humbly is to understand that all that we have is the gift of God. To love God is to love your neighbor and to love your neighbor is to love God. These are the measure for our Christian progress and the measure by which all our decisions should be made. Is this clear?

Grace and peace, Fr Bill+

Spiritual Growth in Ordinary Times

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. - Proverbs 3:5-6

Following the long season of Holy Days and special devotional practices that stretches from the first day of Advent through Trinity Sunday, we now enter that other long season of the church called ordinary time. It is a time when the seeds of worship and devotion sown during the earlier season sprout, take root, and grow. This very much matches the world around us, where nature has fully come alive, the fields and forests have returned to green, and we witness the process of birth and growth which will lead to the fall harvest. Appropriately, our liturgical color for the season is green.

For Christians, this is our growth period and the time for continuing to be mindful of our spiritual lives, adding some water and fertilizer where needed and pulling those weeds that seek to choke off growth. All this is done faithfully so that we might bear fruit individually and as a faith community come harvest time.

So, here is a growth area - trust in the Lord with all your heart. In this season of growth, what is going on with your trust in God with all that you are and all that you have, even to include your thoughts, your hopes, and your aspirations?

In my reading of this piece of wisdom, I understand the goal not as becoming a mindless Christian zombie without my own thoughts or understanding. For the Hebrew people, the heart was the seat of understanding, and not as we might think, a place of the emotions. That was the gut. The goal of trusting God is not mindless obedience. I have seen a bumper sticker that says “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” I do hope there is more thought than seems implied by those words. God gave us the gift of reason so that we might use it to know the will of God and how to apply it in all the varied situations where humans find themselves. Rather than mindlessness, I see this a call to increased mindfulness such that my seeing, my perceiving, my knowing, and my acting increasingly correspond to the mind and will of God. Being mindful, I think about what God thinks about something I am facing and I trust in following that wisdom even when that may be the hard, the unpopular, and the lonely way.

The writer of Proverbs exhorts the person who would be wise to submit, but maybe we can think of this not as self-abasement or humiliation, not as denying our thoughts and intellect, but as becoming more thoughtful, more mindful, and increasingly making God’s way our way in all things and situations so that there is less and less distinction between the two. The faithful promise of God, and God is always faithful, is that this kind of growing mindfulness will direct us in the path we should go.

Here is a discipline that some seeking mindfulness of God may find helpful in this ordinary time. Theologian Karl Barth is said to have once told some young theologians not to isolate themselves from the world, but to read the newspapers and the Bible, and then to interpret the news from the view of the Bible. As a practice in mindfulness, this might be a good start. When you review the news of the day, ask: How does God feel about the events and the people I have encountered in the news? How do I feel toward them and how should I feel toward them? Pray for the grace to have the mind and heart of God.

Grace and peace,
Bill

Happy Tenth Anniversary

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. - Psalm 118:1

It has been ten years now that I have served as an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Some anniversaries, like tenth and fiftieth, and maybe all those in increments of ten, seem to hold a special place in our mental calendars. They seem to be more important milestones than say, the eighth or eleventh anniversary.

I have been thinking around this anniversary of the reasons why I said yes to the call and the occasion of my ordination. That ordination was on the Feast Day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Canterbury, not the more famous Augustine of Hippo. This Augustine, not of Hippo, was a monk at a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him to lead a mission to England in 595. This mission was to re-establish the church in England following an almost two hundred year period when the British Isles were cut off from Rome and the Roman Empire. Augustine was a reluctant missionary and for good reason. His destination was an unknown land, ruled by Saxon heathens who were always fighting and selling the defeated into slavery. The Saxons spoke a strange language that no one knew and whatever authority the Pope had elsewhere did not hold sway here. What good could forty unarmed monks do if they even managed to survive first contact with these fierce barbarians? Augustine stopped before he reached his destination and made an appeal to the Pope to reconsider the mission. Gregory sent him a second time and he arrived in 597 to find a receptive King Aethelbert of Kent. As it turned out, the king’s wife Bertha was a Christian. The king soon converted, gave land for churches, and Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Who saw that coming for Augustine the reluctant monk, Augustine the fortunate, Augustine now forever the saint, and first Archbishop and head of our Anglican tradition?

In the aftermath, I wonder what Augustine had to say to God about his doubts and his hesitation. I wonder what Augustine had to say to God about his good fortune in finding a receptive king and something of a church still remaining in that forgotten land. “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

It seems proper that I was ordained on the Feast Day of Saint Augustine. There have been many times that I have been like him. Like him, I can find myself with doubts and reluctant to take chances on the unknown. In those moments, I want to arm myself with data and probabilities for success before setting out to a reasonable end. Like him, my doubts can lead me to stop short of greater goals. And like him, I can find myself delighted by outcomes that were much better than anticipated. I have lots of old family photos and no one is smiling. They seem to have their doubts and their faces seem to show their reservation. Maybe that is a family trait or a larger German trait. A couple DNA tests say that I am 50-60 percent Britain. Maybe Augustine, with his doubts, is a distant relative.

It is important that doubts and reluctance are not confused with an absence of faith. My ancestors’ faith carried them through hard times and I am sure Augustine’s doubts were not about the core of his faith. Perhaps like you, the unknown gives me reason to pause and to question, but that is because we have faith and are in those moments grappling with our faith. Doubt and faith are not opposites. I would like to think that Augustine shares with me another trait - gratitude. I would like to think that he too experienced over and over that God is good and his love endures forever. I said yes to the call to ordained ministry out of gratitude for so many unforeseen blessings. God has been exceedingly good to me. One might think all those unforeseen blessings would cause me to be less doubting and less questioning. Those remain, but gratitude is really what has grown.

On this tenth anniversary, I am grateful for the places I have gone, often reluctantly, and have been blessed to find something greater than I could have asked or imagined. I am grateful that going through those places has brought me here. I give thanks to the LORD and my witness is that he is good and that his love endures forever.

Grace and peace, Fr Bill+

Founders Day

“The history of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd is your story as well as it is mine. It is the story of God’s people, created by Him to live according to His will and purpose. It is the memory and story of times and events we share, that made us the family that we are.” - Eleanor Wilson, 2005

By now you have likely noticed that I like to share stories. Stories are the vessels of our collective wisdom and truths. When memorable, they are usually more effective in communicating wisdom and truth than are speeches or lectures, or least they seem to have more lasting power. My guess is that many more people can remember and share the basic outline and morals taught by childhood fables than they can of any Presidential speech.

The quote above is from a small book written by Ellie Wilson for the fiftieth anniversary of this parish. If you can find a copy, it is well worth reading again or for the first time. It tells a story of the founders of this parish, how they came to establish this church, and the story of its life since then. In the early 1950's, four couples from Clay County, each with their own local faith community, would occasionally attend the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Murphy. In each couple, one person was a lifelong Episcopalian and the other had strong ties to these Western North Carolina mountains. It was those four - Rufus and Dorothy Vick, Ruth and Quintin Moore, Eva and Jim Ledford, and Ellie and Monroe Wilson - who started a monthly fellowship and study group that became the Church of the Good Shepherd.

From the very beginning, this church has been about fellowship and welcoming. Perhaps that is why we find those so important to our parish character and why we continue to do those so well. We also see that from our beginning this parish has been a meeting place for people drawn to a liturgical form of worship and for those drawn to live in the natural beauty of this area. This is our God-given genesis DNA. Ask your fellow parishioners why they are members of Good Shepherd and you will probably hear something about welcome and fellowship, worship, and the attraction of the mountains. This is in our DNA and it makes us a special place. Ellie’s book is full of stories that may help us all more appreciate just how very special is this church community and its various ministries. For example, do we not all appreciate our wonderful Chancel Choir and our music director, Keith Christensen? Do you know its history? In 1993 “the choir had five members, Mary Anne Koos, Bob Gaunt, Doris Etler, Joe and Evie Green. Every Sunday we pleaded with the congregation to come join the choir. One night this cute little blonde showed up and asked if it was all right if she could sing with us. We nearly fell off our seats! ... That was the first time any of us had met Bev Larson. Then she said she sang alto and she has a sister who sang soprano and a husband who sang tenor. We had more than doubled the choir.” I am grateful to that group of five and that they expressed the welcome and fellowship that mark us as a parish.

This year we have moved our Founder’s Day celebration to Sunday, May 19 in honor of Ellie Wilson’s one hundredth birthday. Ellie and Monroe’s children will be with us that day. Eva and Jim Ledford’s children will be here too. Two of those children are current members of the parish. Can you identify them? I ask that you please save the date for this special occasion when we will celebrate the story of us.

Grace and peace, Fr. Bill+