Grief and Hope

My Dad and me

Rev. Molly F. James

DFMS Noonday Prayer 

September 15, 2021

Psalm 116:5-9; Sirach 38:9-17; 2 Corinthians 1:3-11; Matthew 24:1-8

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“My child, let your tears fall for the dead,

   and as one in great pain begin the lament.

Lay out the body with due ceremony,

   and do not neglect the burial.

Let your weeping be bitter and your wailing fervent;

   make your mourning worthy of the departed,

for one day, or two, to avoid criticism;

   then be comforted for your grief.”

Oof. This passage hit a little close to home this week. Saturday was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. As many of you know, my cousin Ben died when the towers fell. Like so many thousands of others, our family has a face, a name, a personal connection that gives that day an additional solemnity and heaviness. And then my dad had a consult with his palliative care physician. The physician has a wonderful bedside manner. He is kind and compassionate. He listens. He offers his wisdom and expertise. He laid out the various options and gently offered what he thought the best course would be. That course was clear to all of us, including my dad. It is time for him to enter hospice care. His limited ability to swallow has meant that his body is already showing the effects of not eating. It may be weeks or even months, but it will not be long. Whether he falls or has pneumonia or his body simply continues to give out, his medical team will now only provide comfort care. 

My dad has had Parkinson’s for many years now. We knew this day was coming. We thought it might have come multiple times before when he has had a particularly bad fall or choking incident. There is, of course, lots of grief in this new reality for my family, as there has been all along the journey of this disease as we have noted each task or activity my dad could no longer do as he had. The reality of recent weeks has been such a sharp contrast from what was. 

My dad was an avid athlete. He was one of those people who possessed true kinesthetic intelligence. He could do any sport reasonably well. He could play a round of golf or join a pick up soccer or hockey game and hold his own even if it had been years since the last time he played. He taught me to ski and play tennis with unending patience. When I was little he would even ski holding me up between his legs on the steep slopes that my older brother loved. Almost without fail, he would win our local tennis tournament every year, but our good friend who was in charge of the prizes always gave the trophy to my grandmother for teaching my dad how to play. 

He has a ridiculously high metabolism - and combined with his love of being active that meant he could always eat well and lots of it. And he loves to eat. Always happy to finish anything we left behind. Overjoyed to sit with a plate of delicious food and people he loved. And he loves people. He is curious about the world. Always desiring to learn more. If he sat next to a stranger on an airplane, he would be able to tell us their life story when we picked him up from the airport. He took time to listen and to care. He always took the “Counselor” in “Attorney and Counselor at Law” part of his job very seriously. 

While these days a smoothie or a milkshake are all he can manage for food, he has not lost that joie de vivre or ability to connect with people. He made fast friends in the assisted living community where he has lived this past year. In no time at all, he knew everyone’s name, and he is beloved there. 

While our mourning is and will be deep, there is already comfort to be found in how my dad lived his life. His own father died of a brain tumor at the age of 38. This meant that my dad has spent his whole adult life knowing that life is fragile, precious, and uncertain. It was a meaningful truth he modeled for me even before my own life experience confirmed it. He has lived with grace and purpose. He has considered every day he got to have, especially the decades he got to live past age 38, as a gift. Always finding joy. Rejoicing and marveling in the splendor of creation. Reveling in the gift of time spent in conversation with those he loved. He has lived a full life and certainly shown us that what matters is the quality of our time, not the quantity. 

And I have no doubt each of us have our own stories of what we are grieving this day, this week, this year. The realities and challenges of this past year and a half do mean that we have much to grieve. It is okay for our weeping to be bitter and our wailing fervent. We can and should make our mourning worthy of the departed. And given the magnitude of our individual and collective grief, it will likely be more than a day or two of mourning. That’s okay. Contrary to the verses I quoted above, I don’t think we will or should be criticized for how we live with our grief. It is also true that we can find comfort in the midst of our grief. In lives lived fully and well. In each other. In community. In the truths of our faith - the reality of resurrection. Easter is real. Hope is real. Love is ALWAYS stronger than death. Thanks be to God. AMEN. 

Meaning and Joy

Dawn

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Martyrs of Uganda, October 29, 2020

Psalm 124; 1 Peter 3:14-22; Matthew 10:37-42

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

On occasion I teach Christian Ethics classes and in the course of that look at a variety of Christian perspectives on life and death. One of the passages that has stayed me with me from that work is from the writing of scholar and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. He writes:

“As a matter of fact, Christians do not believe life is sacred. I often remind my right-to-life friends that Christians took their children with them to martyrdom rather than have them raised as pagans. Christians believe there is much worth dying for.”

I could not help but think of that passage today as we remember Bishop James Hannington and the Martyrs of Uganda. Hannington and so many others are in a long line of forbearers in the faith who have been willing to give their lives. Those who have believed that faith is something worth dying for. 

I don’t know about you, but that thought and the stories of the martyrs give me pause. At first, of course, I want to push back on those stories. I want to say did they really have to die? I want to find a happier ending to the story. Or I want to flag the story with a cautionary note. I want to say there is a really problematic strand in the Christian tradition that has glorified suffering and martyrdom at the expense of those on the margins. A tradition that has told women, people of color, LGBTQ people, the poor, anyone who is different from those in power that they should be grateful for their suffering because it brings them closer to God. No. That is not a message we want to reinforce. That kind of systemic injustice is what we are supposed to change and transform as Christians, not passively accept. 

Okay, now that I have gotten my resistance and my caveats out of the way. I am still left with the all important question of these stories of martyrdom - “What do I believe is worth dying for?”

That is a hard question. Of course it is. None of us wants to think that we would ever be asked to die for our faith. I certainly hope it does not come to that for any of us. 

There is something compelling about the stories of the martyrs. They seem to have such a clear sense of priorities, such a clear sense of what really matters. Their depth of faith and clarity of mind and heart are inspirational. Even if we are not likely to have to follow in their footsteps, perhaps we can still draw on that inspiration. 

Perhaps, rather than asking ourselves what is worth dying for, we should be asking ourselves what is worth living for? What is it that gives our life meaning? 

As you all know, I am fond of quoting Jeremy Taylor, the 17th century Bishop best known for his book Holy Living, Holy Dying. In a funeral sermon for Lady Carberry, he told the congregation, “Go home and think to die, and what you would choose to be doing when you die, that do daily.” He wanted them to remember that life is precious and short. We never know how long we have. So, we should be thoughtful about where we spend our time, our energy, and our resources. 

If we do not have some time each day, even if it is a small window, a tiny glimpse, where we feel connected to God, where we experience joy, where we have a sense that we matter and what we do matters, then perhaps it is time to reassess our calendars and our practices? 

We probably cannot get rid of all the things in the calendar that do not bring us joy - bills need to be paid, garbage needs to be taken out, difficult conversations will need to be had - but we can be attentive to the balance. We can be attentive to always allowing the mundane or menial tasks to crowd out the meaningful and the life giving. 

In these days, when there is so much stress and anxiety and the To Do list seems never ending, may we have the grace to remember that it is okay - actually it is more than okay - it is essential - to set aside time in our day for joy and meaning. We need it. It is what is going to get us through today and whatever lies ahead. Amen. 

Jeremy Taylor and Living a Full Life

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Jeremy Taylor, August 13, 2020

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

As some of you know, Jeremy Taylor, is one of the theologians I wrote about in my dissertation, so today is another day where I feel like I get to visit with an old friend. And like any good friendship, Jeremy is someone from whom I have high regard, deep respect, and with whom I do not always agree. 

I have great sympathy for him. He had 10 children, but only three of them outlived him. He was a prisoner during the English Civil War, and he had a lot of challenges in his diocese. He was not someone who wrote about suffering as a theoretical matter. One of the things I admire most about him is that his experience informs his theology. 

This is evident in a 1665 letter Taylor wrote to his friend John Evelyn. He wrote: “It hath please God to send the small poxe and fevers among my children; and I have, since I received your last, buried two sweet, and hopeful boyes; and have now but one sonne left whom I intend, if it please God, to bring up to London before Easter; and then I hope to wait upon you, and by your sweet conversation and other divertisements, if not to alleviate my sorrows, yet at least to entertain myself and keep me from too intense and actual thinkings of my troubles . . . But for myself, I bless God I have observed and felt so much mercy in this angry dispensation of God, that I am almost transported, I am sure highly pleased with thinking how infinitely sweet His mercies are when His judgments are so gracious.” One could focus in on Taylor’s statement about God “sending” the small pox to his children. There is a long and possibly problematic history in the Christian tradition of blaming God for all one’s suffering or as seeing it as always a form of punishment. 

I don’t believe Taylor was being punished, and a harsh view of God as angry and spiteful does not actually fit with the whole of Taylor’s theology. In fact Taylor, believed that God is present with us in the midst of suffering. God is where our hope is to be found.  In Holy Living, Holy Dying he wrote: “To rejoice in the midst of a misfortune or seeming sadness, knowing that this may work for good. . . This is a direct act of hope, to look through the cloud, and look for a beam of the light from God.” Taylor knew from personal experience that we need to seek out the hope and the joy - the blessing of friends to keep our perspective wide. 

It might seem ironic or counter-intuitive, but for Taylor, the way forward, the path to thriving in the midst of suffering is to have an awareness of death. As he wrote in a funeral sermon: “Go home and think to die, and what you would choose to be doing when you die, that do daily.” Taylor’s admonition invites us to live with purpose, with intention. It invites us to remember that life is fragile and precious. He knew full well that there are no guarantees how long any of us has. As our Gospel reading today reminds us, we do not know the day or the hour. The question is not about quantity; it is about quality. Taylor lamented that if we “spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty, when we sacrifice our youth to folly, our manhood to lust and rage, our old age to covetousness and irreligion, not beginning to live till we are to die . . . then we make our lives short.”

Ultimately Taylor is offering us a holy invitation. It is an invitation to focus our priorities, to ensure that we do not waste the precious gift of time that God has given us. In this time when our world has been turned upside down, and we are having to reimagine how we do all sorts of things in our professional and personal lives, it is a good opportunity to pause, to reflect. To ask ourselves what really matters? What is essential? Are we able to invest sufficient time in the relationships and the activities that give our life meaning? Or as Taylor might frame it, if we die tomorrow what are we going to wish we had done? How about we start doing that now? 

This is a time where it could be easy to give into fear. Taylor does not do that. He confronted the reality of mortality and took it as an invitation to live more fully. May each of us feel empowered to do the same. AMEN. 

Footnoted version here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_4HJH8oUjGhZKqGLTsQr0knGuV3bfwnxvctDJTlkj0U/edit?usp=sharing

Love is stronger than death

Chapel at Episcopal Church Center

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Memorial Service for Kerry
May 7, 2020

Wisdom 3:1-5, 9; Psalm 139:1-11; Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39; John 11:21-27

In the name of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We gather today as a community of friends and colleagues to remember Kerry. Many of us knew him well and had the blessing of working alongside him for years. Others of us know him only through stories. We gather today to remember him, to honor his life, to give thanks for his work with us, and to celebrate the life he now shares in the nearer presence of our Lord.

Indeed, even in the midst of our tears and grief, we give thanks. Even at the grave we make our song “Alleluia.” We give thanks for the gift of life. None of us has any guarantees of how long we will have. Each day is a blessing. If we are given the gift of years, and even decades in the company of those we love, our joy is all the more.

We give thanks for the privilege of having jobs we love and the opportunity, that sadly can be rare for many people, to do meaningful work. To do work that serves God’s people and seeks to build up God’s Kingdom in this world.

We give thanks for the gift of faith, for the gift of God’s presence with us in our joys and our sorrows. We give thanks for communities of faith, including this one, that deepen our connection to God and to each other. Communities that support us and restore our souls.

We give thanks for the profound truths from our readings today. That the death of our bodies does not mean the end of life. Kerry is with God. We mourn the loss of being able to talk with him or see him, and yet the bonds of love - the bonds of fellowship that connect us to God and to each other are stronger than anything, even death.

This is the profound truth we hear in our reading from Romans today: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

As we grieve the sudden loss of Kerry, as we are grieving the loss of other friends and family members in the midst of this pandemic, we can hold fast to this important truth. We are never beyond the reach of God’s love. That love binds us to God and to each other is an unbreakable bond. There is nothing - no tragic death, no pandemic, no challenge, no hardship, no loss, no pain, no struggle where God is not with us. Even death does not sever the connection. They may be beyond the reach of our incarnate grasp, but they have not left the chambers of our hearts. Our love does not diminish. We carry them with us. Their lives, their witness, their faith will continue to inspire and comfort us in the days ahead.

We mourn today. We grieve today. And we give thanks today. For Kerry. For all those we love but see no longer. For the gift of faith. For the sacred truth that Love always has the last word. Always. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

John Donne, Death, and the Path of Life

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer, via Zoom
John Donne, March 31, 2020

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today is the feast day of John Donne. A 17th century priest and poet. He is probably best known for his Sonnet “Death be not proud.” A fitting poem for today. One that reminds us of that all important truth that Death is not the end. Death should not be proud because it does not last. As Donne closes his sonnet, death too shall die.

Our Gospel reading for today closes with the line: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life.”

Passing from death to life. Indeed we are. The hard part is that there is no time frame attached to that. We are indeed in the midst of death. We have lost and will lose those who are near and dear to us. We have lost and will lose friends. Through our wider communities and circles we know others who have died, perhaps of the virus or of some other cause. It can feel like a compounded loss in the midst of all the suffering and challenges of the present moment to be reminded that people will also still die of cancer, of heart attacks, of old age and in accidents. There will be still gun violence, natural disasters, and tragedy in the midst of a pandemic. And yet we are passing from death to life. From death to life.

The challenge, the pain, the heartache, the loss, the grief of this present moment is real. It can fill our hearts and our minds. It can weigh heavily on us. And it will likely still be there tomorrow, possibly even for days to come. And yet. It is also still true that we are passing from death to life. Death does not and will not ever have the last word. We are an Easter people.

Love and life have the last word. Today and always. This is the truth we need to hold on to even in the midst of news that breaks our hearts, even in the midst of an infection rate and a death toll that just continues to go up. Even as we worry for ourselves, as we fear for the lives and the livelihoods of those we love.

The fear is real. The loss is real. The death of our mortal bodies is real. The way forward does not come from denying the truths of our world nor the fullness of emotions in our hearts. The way forward comes from facing those realities and still choosing life. As our psalm for today says, “You will show me the path of life; * in your presence there is fullness of joy.” God indeed is showing us the path of life. It is the path of Easter. The path of life and love. The path to joy.

I hope that each and every one of us has people in our lives who help us to know where the path of life is, in whose presence we find joy. Hopefully for many of us those are people who are also stuck at home with us (although in the current circumstances of being confined together in small spaces, trying to do work and manage children and life, and everything, they may also be the people who can most grate on our nerves at the present moment!). Home life may very well be chaos currently or perhaps home is far too quiet right now, missing the hustle and bustle of friends and neighbors. Or for many of us, just being home this much is taking another sort of adjustment, as we have become accustomed to life on the road. However it may be that we find ourselves situated in these days, we are all being invited to follow the path of life. We are being invited to seek out those relationships, those connections, those activities that bring us the fullness of joy.

So make full use of the gifts of technology - of pen and paper, of phone calls and text messages, and even multi-time zone video calls with those far and near. Make full use of a few moments for quiet meditation or the opportunity to go for a walk. Whatever it is that will help to ground us in the truths of our faith, to more deeply connect us with God and with each other.

Indeed we are passing from death to life. Let us choose life. Let us choose joy. Let us choose hope. Today and each day ahead. AMEN.

Reflections on Joy and Bishop Hobart

Bishop John Henry Hobart

Rev. Molly F. James
John Henry Hobart, September 12, 2019
Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center
Psalm 78:3-7; Titus 1:7-9; John 17: 11b-19

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” Joy made complete. That warms my heart and brings a smile to my face. Something I need this week. Yesterday was 9/11, always a hard day in our family. Our cousin Ben worked in the South Tower and died in the attacks. It is a day that simultaneously reminds me of what horrors and evil humanity is capable of, as well as what grace, goodness, and self-sacrifice. And as some of you know, this anniversary comes on the heels of losing an uncle and a dear family friend. In the midst of the grief and loss, it could be easy for me to give into the fear and anxiety, particularly since so many of our news headlines just seem to add to a culture of division and cruelty. A culture that chooses to believe there is never enough and that invites us to focus on what is lacking rather than the abundance and possibility that surround us.


Given that temptation, it is a good day to celebrate the life and ministry of John Henry Hobart. Our lessons today remind us that God is with us, and that God desires our joy to be complete. This emphasis on joy and possibility is also found in the life of Bishop Hobart. He was in leadership at a time when the Church was in decline, and its future and stability in the wake of the American Revolution was a real question. He had a choice, he could have given into a mindset of fear and scarcity. He could have been inwardly focused and bemoaned the losses. He was not. He chose hope and possibility. He trained more clergy, he planted churches, and engaged in mission. Now, Hobart was not perfect, we may not like his tactics, and we should acknowledge the imperialist manner in which he ministered to the Oneida Indians. I am not advocating for a wholesale imitation of Hobart. I do think his spiritual mindset and focus on hope is worth noting.


Hobart admonished one of his congregations to be: “Humble, submissive, penitent, and obedient, let us seek, by fervent prayer, that divine illumination and grace by which our faith will daily become more strong and triumphant, and our obedience daily more sincere and holy, until our faith shall terminate in the vision of the transcendent brightness of the divine glory, and our obedience in the rewards of perfect and eternal bliss.”*


This sermon reminds us of the daily challenge we face as followers of Jesus. It is the choice to keep striving, keep seeking after God or to give into fear. Hobart reminds us that it is not about our accomplishments, it is about our mindset. How do we see the world? Where is our focus?


My father-in-law was fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln, who said that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Of course, our lives and emotions are more complicated and nuanced than that saying. And there is also some truth to it. What our mindset is matters. Are we convicted in our faith, are we seeking for our joy to be made more complete? Are we looking for possibility? Are we holding on to hope, even when fear is knocking at our door?


Remember that passage in Deuteronomy 30:15-20 where the people of Israel are given the choice been life and death? “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. . . I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life . . .” We have the same invitation, each and every day. The question is, will we choose fear and death? Will we choose to focus our energy and attention on that which brings us pain and sorrow? Or will we choose life? Will we chose hope and possibility? Will we choose to move forward in faith, trusting in the abundant, abiding love of God, and seeking out that which brings us joy? 

And I think it is important to note that joy is more than happiness. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln really meant to say joyful. Happiness can be superficial. Joy is happiness and more. It is deep and profound. It is a feeling in our bones, in our whole bodies. Not just a smile on our face.


I hope that we will stay strong in our faith, and that all of us have the support and encouragement to choose each and every day that which gives life to us and to the world. AMEN.

*(from Sermon 1, “The Illuminating Power of the Gospel“, Parochial Sermons in The Posthumous Works of the Late Right Reverend John Henry Hobart, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New-York, 1832.)

Reflections on Judgment

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center 

August 7, 2018: John Mason Neale

Psalm 106:1-5; 2 Chronicles 20:20-21; Matthew 13:44-52

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard, and may that point us to the Living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Lines like these make me nervous. On multiple fronts, first there is the global front. Particularly in the wake of the horrific events of the weekend, it is tempting to latch on to judgment texts like these as a vehicle for our pain and anger. We can use them to condemn the perpetrators. . . But if we do that we are joining in the cycle of hate and violence that is a part of why mass shootings seem to be such a regular occurrence.

Then there is the personal front, if I weren’t standing up here reading those lines, I’d be squirming in my seat. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I take my mistakes, my errors, my sins very seriously - a bit too seriously most of the time, and so passages like this make me nervous. And I don’t find them helpful because they feed my perfectionist tendencies . . . after reading a passage like this my perfectionist self can say “See! It does matter how you behave! Watch out, you better bear good fruit or else!” NOT HELPFUL! I am quite capable of giving myself a good guilt trip without adding on the fear of the eternal flames of hell.

I have often struggled with the theme of judgment and punishment that are present in our Scriptures. It is tempting to put our Gospel aside and focus on the mercy and steadfast love that are more prominent in our other readings today or to just focus on the life story of John Mason Neale whose life we remember today, and his example of good works in founding the order of St. Margaret. But the questions of judgment and punishment are right there in the Gospel, and I believe in facing my fears, so I can’t just let them slide by. 

Shortly after 9/11 I read a book of essays by Eugene Kennedy* that helped me think about these passages of judgment differently. As you likely remember there was lots of talk of judgment in the days and weeks following 9-11 - who was to blame? Who was now burning in hell for their sins? Not all that different than some of the rhetoric we are hearing today as well. But Kennedy says that we have got it all wrong if we think it is all a dichotomy, that there are simply good people and evil people, or as it says in some of our other texts on judgment, the wheat and the chaff or the fruitful and unfruitful trees. 

Kennedy writes of those who died on 9-11 (and I think this could apply equally to all those who have been victims of mass shootings in recent years): “Their voices, taken from phone calls and emails and the recollections of friends, blend now into one message, one voice like a canyon echo coming back to us out of the ruins: ‘I love you,’ said in a thousand ways is the true harvest of these good people’s lives. The good grain so overflowed that it covered over the patches of human stubble in their lives . . . They defined themselves and what life and faith are all about in the commitment to the relationships in their lives.”  When we look at all those people from all sorts of walks a life - a real cross section of humanity - who perished on 9/11 or in all the mass shootings, we should see the good - the overwhelming good in them, for as Kennedy goes on to say, that is what ultimately matters to God.  Kennedy writes, “What is good and bad in us grows together. On judgment day, God harvests only what is good in us, for that is what is eternal, and ignores the weeds that belong to time.” 

Reading these words lifts a weight from my shoulders. They comfort me because they reminded me that God can see the big picture - and God pays much more attention to the times we get it right - the times we lived a life of love - than to the times we messed up. They also give me a much more hopeful picture of Judgment Day. I have always struggled with the idea that God sends people to hell as a punishment. The image Kennedy offers fits more with the understanding of judgment that I have developed over the years, with thanks to theologians like Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and Rowan Williams. While there may be a moment of reckoning, a moment of cleansing when we come face to face to with God at the end of our lives, we need not fear it. God is not some arbitrary judge. God is the God we know and love. God is loving and merciful - ALWAYS. Hell is not eternal damnation for our sins; hell is a choice we make. God is always reaching out to us, always offering mercy and forgiveness. Always willing to pay more attention to the good that is in us. And God has given us free will, so we have the option to accept that mercy or to reject it. If we choose to turn our back on God, then we will know hell, for hell is the only place where God is not. 

So, today as we are invited to reflect on our lives, it can be tempting to start tallying up all the times we have done something harmful or foolish. But, perhaps, that is not how it is meant to be. What if, like John Mason Neale, we focus on how we can do good to help others? What if we try to see ourselves as God sees us: as beloved children who are capable of generous acts of love. What would it look like to have those be the defining acts of our lives?

AMEN.

*Eugene Kennedy. 9-11:Meditations at the Center of the World. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 32-3. 

2018 Ash Wednesday Homily

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Ash Wednesday 2018

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word by heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

As some of you know, I get up early in the morning multiple times a week to go to CrossFit, which is a fitness program that combines weight lifting and gymnastics. And in lots of ways, CrossFit is like Church. We all have our usual spots in the gym. My spot means that I spend a lot of time looking at poster of “Fitness in 100 words” by Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit. There is one sentence that stands out on this poster. And it is meant to. It is in a different color than all the rest of the text. It says, “Routine is the enemy.” I have been thinking about that sentence this week, as I have been reflecting on the fact that we are about to enter Lent, and on this Ash Wednesday, to be reminded of our mortality.

At first this statement, “Routine is the enemy” could seem completely counter to our common life as Episcopalians. We are, after all, people of the book, the BCP. Our worship is meant to follow a set pattern each time we gather. That is part of our shared identity. We could say that our worship follows a “routine,” but I think that would be missing the point. The point of Glassman’s statement about avoiding a routine is to avoid doing the same thing over and over again. It is to keep the act of caring for our bodies from becoming rote, merely routine, something we do without thinking about it. Our worship is not, and should never be, rote. Even if we are following the book, each time we worship it is different in someway - the readings, the prayers, who is present, what is going on in the world or in our own lives. And if we ever find that worship feels rote, as though we are merely going through the motions without any thought for what we are doing, it is time for a session with our therapist and our spiritual director, because something is missing in our lives.

For me, the statement, “Routine is the enemy” is really about embracing change. And actually, I think that is what Ash Wednesday is about. It is about coming to terms with the finite nature of human existence. We are mortal beings. At some point our bodies will give out. Nothing in this world lasts forever. Everything changes.

Now, change is tricky. I think many of us don’t really like it. It can certainly produce anxiety and fear. I know for myself, as someone who likes to plan, that I can get grumpy and frustrated when things don’t go according to plan. I try (and sometimes I even succeed) to remember how many wonderful blessings have come to me in my life when things have not gone the way I planned. No doubt those of you here from St. Andrew’s know all too well the challenges and multitude of emotions that can come with change. You are have had to change a lot this past month as you have been out of your building.

There is no way around it. Change is hard. AND (and this is a very important AND) change is a blessing. The fact that things do not stay the same is what adds richness and texture, depth and meaning to our lives. As many of you know, my children used to be wearable. They fit right here, between my chin and my belly button. Now they talk in paragraphs and do all kinds of things for themselves. Are there moments when I wish they still fit here? Of course. But now I can have conversations with them and do things with them that were never possible when they were infants.

Change gives us something for comparison. I can marvel at Katherine’s performance in her swim meet this past weekend precisely because I remember when she was an infant.

Or perhaps it helps to think about other rhythms in our lives. Think about how much we savor a vacation or even a sabbath day, when we have been working for many days straight. If everyday were a vacation, we would cease to value it so highly.

Or think of the act of fasting (fitting for this holy day and season). Part of the point of giving something up or choosing not to eat for a particular time is so that we will appreciate it all the more when we do. And the richness of that appreciation is because we know what it is like to be without.

In a few minutes you will come forward to receive ashes and will hear the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Yes, that can seem a morbid reminder of the fact that you too will change, but I hope you will see it as in invitation to find joy in the richness of life. Yes, I am suggesting that you find joy on Ash Wednesday, and I do not think that is contradiction.

I think the joy comes in having our priorities straight. In remembering that nothing lasts forever. We are dust and to dust we shall return. This is temporary. We never know how long we will have. May the knowledge that nothing lasts forever be a source of hope for us in the midst of challenges. May it inspire us to savor all the blessings of our lives.

While the ashes too will soon disappear from your forehead, may their memory linger throughout Lent. May you find this to be a season in which you can slow down and pay attention. Savor today. Remember that nothing lasts forever and there is always joy to be found, even in the midst of all the challenges and all the changes.

AMEN.