It’s gonna be a day, y’all. A day of meaningful and extraordinary events to be sure, but still a single day. Our future, whatever it may hold, isn’t contained in today. Now, don’t go fussing at me and saying I’m downplaying the importance of today. I’m just trying to calibrate our perspective.
With the same earnestness we are seeking God’s presence in the events of today, we should cultivate our awareness of God every day: the God who loves, who brings peace, who sees us with compassion, the God who is the antidote for anger and hate.
Together let’s offer each other the compassion necessary (yep, even that person) to heal the hurt and division in this country. Let’s participate with God in building each other up and offering each other the hope that comes with living on earth as it is in heaven. Today and every day.
We are halfway through the first month of the new calendar year and things were supposed to be different, better even. But the days of 2021 aren’t looking any different to the days of 2020. The pandemic is still very, very real with a new variant that is more contagious. The vaccine rollout is not going smoothly and our frustration levels are rising along with the number of folks testing positive, hospitalizations, and deaths. Our law enforcement agencies are on high alert as Inauguration Day approaches because some people want to violently force their way of hate and anger on the rest of us.
Where is the good? Where is the peace? Where is the compassion? Where is the hope?
It is in each of us – it is in the Image of our loving and compassionate God in each of us.
In the reading from the gospel story today, Jesus is beginning his traveling ministry program by selecting his ministry team – the 12 individuals who would work closest with Jesus to spread the good news message of love and compassion as they themselves learn to live on earth as it is in heaven by learning to live like Jesus.
And, believe it or not, Jesus’ invitation wasn’t always met with enthusiasm and trust.
Philip wanted his friend Nathanael to join their band but Nate wasn’t so sure.
Nathanael responds to Philip’s invitation with skepticism based solely on his ideas of the place where Jesus grew up: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But Philip doesn’t get upset or angry or attempt to argue Nate into submission. He doesn’t even unfriend him. Philip keeps it simple. As Jesus had said to him, he extends his invitation with, “come and see.” Check this Jesus gig out and make your own decision.
The first part of this exchange could be heard in so many introductions today. Can there be anything good about that person because: They are from (insert that place you don’t like). They went to (insert that school you don’t like). They voted for so and so. They commented against my best friend’s facebook post. They posted something I disagree with.
Like Nathanael, we’ve decided that nothing good can come from certain people groups, even though most of us get more than a little irritated when we are characterized by a single aspect of our multi-faceted personality.
We’ve let go of the fact that people experience and interact with the world differently. We want to claim our uniqueness and then get angry when people don’t see things as we do. Sure, there are similarities that come from the family, society, and culture we’ve grown up in but we each add our own flavor. It is part of being the humans God created us to be, each of us bringing a needed and necessary part to the collective whole. Being human is complicated. When we demand that everyone think and behave exactly like us, we are denying their humanness and our own.
“When we demand that everyone think and behave exactly like us, we are denying their humanness and our own.”
Our meme and twitter culture exacerbates this. We think we can boil down our life’s philosophy into a few pithy words that define everyone and if we post that catchy phrase on social media, that we are changing the world. I know this is a bit ironic coming from someone who has ventured into the writing world through social media, but I write what I do with the full acknowledgement that it is my point of view.
I know that you will translate my words from your own perspective. And, yes, I do want to hear your perspective. I need you and your perspective to be fully who I am.
“I need you and your perspective to be fully who I am.”
With the knowledge that we are all different, I know, too, that there is much between us that is the same – we are all uniquely created by a loving and compassionate God, in the very image of God, who wants us to participate in the purpose and plan of all of creation. We each have skills and talents and ways of seeing and experiencing the world that enable all of us to be fully who God created us to be.
When we seek to see the world as Jesus does, with eyes of compassion, we are better able to see the totality of each person. We all have both positive and less desirable traits, we all have good days and bad days, we all at times perform at our best and at others fail completely and most days are somewhere in between.
Come and see how following Jesus, learning to live as he teaches, can better equip us to walk the path of 2021 with compassion and love for ourselves and others.
Come and see this world through the lens of knowing we are all God’s beloved children and find the peace of being loved.
Come and see what it is to participate with God in answering our prayer that it be on earth as it is in heaven and find hope in knowing God is with us.
In the beginning, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep.
And God said, “Let there be light.”
Today, this first Sunday after the feast of the Epiphany, we officially celebrate the Baptism of Jesus.
Mark begins his telling of the Gospel story with the words, “the beginning,” a clear echo of the creation story. A new beginning, a new day, a new dawning. Let there be Light in the darkness of the Roman world in which people lived under the shadow of fear.
We’ve seen a lot of chaos this past year, this past week. Where have you looked for light and for order amidst the chaos?
Our sure and certain hope is knowing that God brings order from chaos and shines light in the darkness. Let there be Light in the darkness of today in which we live under the shadow of fear.
As I often say, ours is a faith of movement, of following Jesus, following God’s light even when we aren’t sure where it is taking us. The creation story tells us that God created in progression, a series of actions rather than one giant “tada”.
Jesus called his disciples with the words “Follow Me” and he took them on a journey teaching them to love actively.
After his resurrection, Jesus commissioned his followers to “Go” (see Matthew 28:16-20).
I was talking with a friend just yesterday about our children growing up and we both said that we didn’t grieve the past ages of our children but celebrated the age they are because we found joy in watching them grow. We don’t have children to keep them as babies but to guide them as they grow into adults.
Life – the life God created us to live – is growth and movement. This doesn’t mean we forget or ignore the past. Each moment, each encounter, each joy and pain, prepares us for the next. We grow progressively. We crawl before we walk. We are nourished by milk before we can eat steak. We learn single syllable words before we can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
We never stay at the beginning. Mark’s new beginning is the baptism of Jesus, the beginning of this Good News sent to us by God to remove the barriers between God and us, between heaven and earth.
We follow Jesus into and through Baptism so that we can go into the world to teach what Jesus teaches us by the way we live. Baptism isn’t the goal but the beginning of a life-long journey.
Somewhere along the way we decided that change, any type of change, is negative, even the growing up of our children, even our continued growth and development as adults.
We like the way things are. We find comfort and security in the organization and rhythm of our life and we decide this is the way we will always be. It’s why we use the phrase “when things get BACK to normal.” Staying the same isn’t normal. Growth and renewal are normal. The seasons of the year change. Day becomes evening, evening becomes night, night becomes morning.
If we’ve learned anything this past year and even this past week, I pray it is that sometimes the way things are isn’t the way they should be; the way things are isn’t the best we can all be. Holding onto the way things are and trying to get back to normal isn’t how God designed us to live.
Jesus teaches us that each day is a new day, not the same day it was yesterday. We aren’t stuck in Groundhog Day – thanks be to God! Jesus says “follow me, follow me into heaven on earth, here and now, follow me and hear God say, ‘you are my beloved child.’”
I’m still a bit numb from yesterday, how about you? What began as a day in which I was focusing on the Feast of the Epiphany and working on some spiritual formation curriculum became a time of staring, dumbfounded at the news reports of our capitol building being besieged.
At one point my husband said, “this happens in third world countries, not here.” And I agreed. And then I thought, we shouldn’t insult third world countries like that. When people rise up against their sitting government, it is generally because of atrocious violations of basic human rights. The people who stormed our capitol weren’t looking to overthrow a corrupt government. They wanted to upend the legal process which keeps our government in checks and balances and honors the voice of the people who duly elected the government (yes, I know our system doesn’t work perfectly but it does work and there are non-violent and legal paths to change if we want to change it).
These were people throwing a violent tantrum because the results weren’t what they wanted. They followed the direction of a narcissist who can’t bear the thought of giving up control so he’s narrating a false reality and inciting his followers to violence. And just to be clear, anyone who preaches hate and violence and follows someone who does is not following Jesus, regardless of what they write on the signs they hold up while committing hateful and violent acts.
These are the same people who mocked the other side in 2016 as they voiced their sadness and despair over the election results when Mr. Trump won calling them snowflakes and worse.
The people who attacked a building and human beings and our very system of government yesterday aren’t fighting for human rights. They are demanding privilege and violently seeking to take away equal rights for every human being, encouraged by a man who continues to speak hate and encourage violence toward others.
This morning, as I sat in prayer, I prayed for God to increase my own compassion because I’m not feeling very compassionate toward these people. They must be held accountable, they must face the consequences of their actions. Mr. Trump must be held accountable and face the consequences of his actions.
And in my cry for accountability, I find the compassion. Compassion enables us to seek the best FOR and the best OF others.
I know the hate and anger comes from a place of human brokenness and I pray for the softening of their hearts. AND I know that their words and actions cause great harm and I pray for those who have been belittled and degraded by their hate, for those physically assaulted by their actions, and the emotional wounds of all of us who watched in shock yesterday.
Last evening, in our first conversation of HOPE through the season of Epiphany (https://www.facebook.com/OdessaEpiscopal/videos/872539536831311/), Padre Ricardo and I talked about the certainty of our Christian Hope. In this sure and certain hope we know that God can and will redeem the events of yesterday and that God will do this through the behaviors and actions of those of us who work to see the world through a lens of compassion as Jesus teaches us to do. In our compassion we seek the best for and the best of everyone, starting with ourselves.
Every day is a new day in God’s Kingdom and God invites us to participate in the answer to the prayer “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will is for love to ground and guide us and in that love is our sure and certain hope that together with God we can learn from yesterday to live more like Jesus today.
What can you do today to show the world God’s compassion and love?
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Belonging.
Belonging, Community, Tribe, My People, Quaranteam. We use a lot of different words to describe that experience of being with others who authentically accept us and truly want the best for us and for us to be our best.
I’m going to try and not go all theological on us here but indulge me as I do a little nerding out: We are created by a Trinitarian God. It is a divine mystery just how One God can be inseparably Three Persons and much ink and blood have been spilled over just how this can be. I’m willing to accept it as a mystery that causes me angst one Sunday each year when I have to preach on it1.
What I can say confidently in my understanding is that God is the ultimate example for us to be in community, to belong. If we are created by The Trinitarian God, created from the abundant love of God, in the very image of this loving God, it seems logical to follow that one of our basic human needs is community, to belong to a group in which we feel known and accepted and loved. We are created to belong.
It seems that a lot of energy these days is spent defining who belongs and who doesn’t. We live in an ‘us vs. them’ society. We’ve taken belonging and made it a way to exclude others so we can feel better about ourselves. We label everyone, by ideals, political leanings, country of origin, color of skin, belief system, etc. Labels allow us to ignore the humanness of the “other” group. If I stick a label on you, I can define who you are so that it fits with my internal biases and I can stay deeply rooted in my comfort zone.
God’s intention with belonging is always to include. Everyone. Yep, even that person, even those people.
Each and every human being belongs with God as God’s beloved child. You, me, them, those. It is in the realization of this wisdom that we live most fully into our own humanness and the image of God from which we are each created.
Do we make room for those who are not like us?
We celebrate the arrival of the wise men tomorrow with the Feast of the Epiphany. Mary and Joseph made room for these unexpected strangers from a foreign land with odd nursery gifts and a belief system different from their own because somehow they knew that these people were a part of God’s plan.
So, on this twelfth day of Christmas, I invite you to ponder how would this world, how would your community, how would your family, how would you be changed by learning to see everyone as belonging to God’s plan? And if you have an epiphany, I’d love to hear your story.
AND, I invite you to join Padre Ricardo Lopez and me for weekly conversations during this season of Epiphany on the theme of HOPE. You can join us on Wednesday evenings, January 6, 13, 20, 27, February 3, & 10 at 5:30pm on the Odessa Episcopal Community Facebook page.
1Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost each year. In 2021 it will be May 30.
Happy eleventh day of Christmas, Y’all? Are your decorations still up? I have to admit that I took mine down this weekend, except for the nativity scene I keep out all year round. If you haven’t put it all away yet, pick a special piece and leave it out all year as a reminder to remember and be re-membered in the coming of Jesus every day.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Joy.
Of all the themes of Advent and Christmas, Joy has been the most challenging to talk about this year. So much of what we label ‘joy’ has been challenging if not impossible. Gathering with family and friends to celebrate has been limited or even nonexistent as we’ve worked together to curtail the spread of COVID19 and protect the most vulnerable among us. The emotional atmosphere of this country is one of anger and we are seeing lots of shaking fists in a time we are not able to shake hands or hug.
Many of us have not been able to gather in person with our faith communities to sing “Joy to the World” at the top of our lungs.
It seems so insensitive to speak of joy under the collective weight of 350,000+ deaths and the prediction of additional surges in the weeks to come.
And yet, Joy remains. Like the tiny flicker of the smallest candle flame in a dark room, it can’t be extinguished.
The message of Joy proclaimed by the angels in the story of Christmas isn’t contained in wrapping paper and bows. It doesn’t hang shimmering from a tree or arrive by post or sit on a platter smothered in icing and sprinkles.
It is important to distinguish between what is meant by joy and by happiness. Happiness is something we seek, something external to us: We are promised by advertisers the the next gadget or car or job or person will make us happy, that it will be better than what we have now and better has to mean happier, right? Happiness is fleeting because there will always be the next ‘better’ thing or person or job that we don’t have.
Joy is different. Joy is internal and eternal. The gift of Joy, regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, comes from God. It is the message that God is at work in this world through us and our willingness to follow Jesus in the Way of Love. It is the message that we are never forgotten, never rejected, never condemned.
The message of Joy doesn’t deny the pain and suffering we face in this world. The Good News message of Joy says that God is with us always, in the good and the bad times, in the celebrations and in grief, loving us as we are, comforting us, encouraging us, empowering us to love.
So, on this eleventh day of Christmas, sing Joy to the World at the top of your voice. Let that small flicker of a tiny candle flame flare up and light the whole house. Hear God say, “I am with you always.”
Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Is come. Not ‘will’ or ‘has’ but ‘is’. God is with us. Sing and celebrate.
On the tenth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: reason (the verb, not the noun).
I hear so many people saying these days “I just can’t watch the news anymore” that I wonder how the stations get enough ratings to keep broadcasting. I doubt that so many of us have stopped watching because we don’t want to know what’s happening; I think we’ve stopped watching because we do want to be informed as intelligent adults with the God-given ability to think and reason. We are so overloaded with the personal opinions of the anchors and hosts that we can’t find the facts and actual information to think for ourselves and form our own opinions.
In the Gospel reading for today, we hear the story of that time when Mary and Joseph lost Jesus in the festival crowds and searching frantically found him sitting with the temple teachers, “listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (see the second chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, in which you will also hear Jesus giving a typical teenage answer to his parents when they question what he’s doing).
As Luke continues the story, he says that Jesus “matured in wisdom and years and in favor with God and people.” We talked on Day 4 about Jesus being our wise teacher. The purpose of following a wise teacher is to learn to live in wisdom as our teacher.
The best definition of wisdom I’ve found is from Peter Enns: “a lifelong process of maturing us into disciples who wander well along the unscripted path of faith, in-tuned to the presence of God along the way.”1
Following Jesus on this journey of life and love isn’t about checking our brains at the door. It isn’t even following “blindly” without thought or opinion as some have decided “faith” means. Jesus’ whole ministry was about getting people to think and reason. Jesus asked questions like “what do you have?” and “what have you seen?” and “who do you say that I am?” not to trip us up or zap us if we are wrong but to encourage us to think and reason.
Jesus doesn’t give us a simplistic checklist of right and wrong answers to memorize and regurgitate but the means to live with the awareness of God in whatever the circumstances in which we find ourselves. With the call to “follow me,” Jesus teaches us how to live using our God-given ability to reason out the answer to the question, “How would Jesus love?2”
Our belief and faith isn’t a static thing because we aren’t static beings. We believe in the God who moves, who comes to us and walks with us and asks us to follow, to go, to feed, to teach, to love. Together we follow Jesus with our eyes, hearts, and minds wide open, living into the fullness of our created humanness, wandering well this journey of love.
So, on this tenth day of Christmas, turn off the so-called news and ponder the Good News of God coming to be with us and showing us how to be who we are created to be – God’s beloved, intelligent, thinking, reasoning, and loving children.
On the ninth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: a Feast.
Have you feasted this Christmas season? Even without being able to gather with family and friends, did you make or order in a special meal? One of the things I miss most in this pandemic is being able to gather with others for a meal. My grandmother instilled in me a love for feeding people and my culinary skills are at their best when I’m cooking large amounts (and even after all this time I still don’t feel I’ve mastered cooking for two).
Jesus speaks often of feasts and banquets. He fed thousands of people with one sack lunch. His last moments with his disciples before he is arrested are spent eating the feast of Passover, a remembrance feast of God’s rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
And at this feast he commissioned us to remember/ponder/consider/think about him, God with us, being among us as we are, getting hungry and eating, hurting with us, celebrating with us, living the ordinary days with us, whenever we eat bread and drink wine.
The bread and the wine that Jesus used were common elements on their table. He took these ordinary, every day items and made them holy for our use. To make something holy means to set it apart for God’ purpose. Jesus teaches us that everything about our life is holy to God, that even in the ordinary moments we are part of God’s purpose of making life on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus compares the bread and wine to his physical body and blood to tell us that we are so important, so valuable, so very worthy of God’s love, that he was willing to give his physical life over to the earthly authorities whose self-serving power was threatened by the Way of Love Jesus teaches us to live. Through this feast, Jesus shows us that nothing is more powerful than God’s love for each and every one of us.
In the Episcopal Church (and in other churches, too, but as an Episcopal priest, I use this church as my reference) we celebrate this feast in our typical form of worship known as Holy Eucharist (a fancy theology word which means ‘giving thanks’). As part of our form of worship, we call the observance of Jesus’ commission to eat the bread and drink the wine “in remembrance,” Holy Communion.
We come together, in community, in communion with God and each other, to collectively remember God’s story, to take in the bread and wine1 as Jesus’ body and blood to become a part of our cellular structure (as all we consume does), SO THAT we are better equipped in the other 167 hours of our week to live as God’s beloved children.
Receiving the bread and wine in remembrance isn’t the goal, it is the starting point, the regular renewal and revival of our commitment to follow Jesus in the ordinary every day. It is hearing God say, “come to my table where all are welcome and take me in. Let my love permeate you and make you whole. Let the abundance of my love flow out of you to help heal the pain and suffering in the world.”
In our remembrance of God in this holy feast, we are re-membered as God’s people, God’s beloved children.
So, on this ninth day of Christmas, feast! Feast on God’s love for you. And if you haven’t made a special meal this season, make or order in your favorite thing to eat, set a special place to eat it, light a candle or two, and ponder while you eat what it is to have God come to us to show us love, to save us from ourselves, and ask us to participate in the bringing of heaven on earth.
1 Just a little note of clarification: because of COVID19, we have adjusted the way we observe Holy Communion either in-person with the necessary safety protocols or with online worship. None of these adjustments make the act of giving thanks and receiving God less holy or less “effective”. God is glorified as we seek God in the midst of our human limitations and precautions taken in loving response to the pandemic. God is not limited to or confined by our human acts and simply asks us to respond and love as best we are able given the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Happy eighth day of Christmas and New Year’s, Y’all!
On the eighth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Love.
You may be asking yourself, “Self, why did Mother Nancy throw Love in the middle, why not make it the first gift?” And my honest answer is, “I don’t know.” As I sat down to write these, I penned the gifts as they came to mind. I did at one point look at rearranging them but the order just felt right and then when I realized that our conversation on love would be New Year’s Day, it just felt right so I let the order be.
Love is the foundation of our relationship with God. God created us through the abundance of divine love giving us the ability to love our Creator Parent, each other, and ourselves. Everything else we talk about radiates from this Love.
God’s presence on this earth is revealed through acts of love. Jesus tells us that others will know we follow him not by where we were born, or the way we dress or the car we drive or our bank account balance, not even by the church we attend or how often we attend, but by LOVE.
Love, as Jesus teaches us how to live it, is action and choices and intentionality. It isn’t the love of greeting cards or dating apps or those so called reality shows that serve up other people on a menu.
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says the opposite of love isn’t hate but self-centeredness. Love is putting others before ourselves. Love is setting aside our individual wants (we all know the difference of needs and wants, right?) for the greater good of all.
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Jesus Followers in Corinth says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV)
Love, as Jesus teaches us to love, is choosing to give all that we are and all that we have as we participate with God in living on earth as it is in heaven.
So, on this eighth day of Christmas and New Year’s Day, let’s commit to continuously learning to love as Jesus loves. We don’t know what this new year has in store but we do know that God is with us, loving us so that regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we have an endless supply of love (and all the other gifts God gives) for others and ourselves, as we follow Jesus.
Happy seventh day of Christmas, Y’all! And Happy New Year’s Eve.
On the seventh day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Compassion.
I wrote a lot about compassion in the fall and winter of 2019 (you can check those out here). I felt compelled to offer up a different voice amidst the yelling and fist pounding, to speak about compassion as the antidote to the hate filled violence (physical and verbal) that has become all but normalized in our country. My intent with all that I write is to help us all learn to see the world around us through the eyes of compassion, as Jesus sees.
And then came 2020 and a worldwide pandemic revealed just how individualist we have become. We hoarded toilet paper, food, cleaning supplies, and personal protective equipment not giving one thought to others who needed these things, too. We were looking out for ourselves. We were given simple tasks to help contain the spread of a deadly virus and we whined because we couldn’t go to dinner or get a hair cut. People were dying and we decided our personal wants were more important than the overall greater good of our communities and the very lives of our neighbors.
It felt like my writings on compassion were like fixing a leaky kitchen pipe with a Q-tip.
And yet, the writers of the Gospel story felt it important enough to tell us that Jesus was “moved with compassion” when he saw people hurting and in need. There has to be something to this compassion thing.
My grandchildren love playing this Nativity Set. This year, my two-year-old granddaughter has been especially drawn to the baby Jesus, carrying it everywhere and showing him to everyone saying, “baby’s eyes.”
Jesus sees all of us with the eyes of compassion. He sees our weariness of this past year. He sees our anxieties and concerns for the year to come. He sees our need for even the tiniest glimmer of hope. And he says to us, “do not be afraid. Follow me in the Way of Love and together we can journey through this next year shining the light of God’s love.”
Just as we talked yesterday about asking for forgiveness being as act of self-reflection to help us see ourselves more honestly, I believe part of seeing ourselves and others through the lens of compassion means being truthful about the situation in which we find ourselves.
It is an act of compassion to be honest with ourselves so as not to set ourselves up for failure with unrealistic expectations of the year to come. We aren’t going to wake up tomorrow, January 1, 2021, without COVID19, without the political polarization and extreme individualism that plague this country, without the systemic racism and social biases that blind us to true compassion.
But, we will wake with the start of a new day and a new year, a new beginning with God with the ability to choose to follow Jesus, walking in the presence of God, revealing God’s gift of compassion to everyone we encounter.
So, I invite you on this seventh day of Christmas to make time to ponder how you can participate with God in making our collective life on earth as it is in heaven. Ask God to give us all eyes to see and ears to hear compassionately as Jesus teaches us.
Together with God, we can be a force of compassion, moved to help heal this hurting world.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 