Swords into Plowshares

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom
Helena of Constantinople, May 22, 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 we remember Constantine’s mother, Helena whose leadership fixed the spot of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. As the story goes, a woman was healed by touching a cross that had been buried at a possible building site. Helena declared that to be the True Cross, and so that is where the Church was built. It is a day for honoring the Cross as the symbol of our faith, and it is a day when the Prophet Micah reminds us that God desires to turn swords into plowshares.

So, I would like to tell you the story of a cross I have that brings these two themes together. This cross is made from the firing pins of an AK-47. It was a gift to me from a friend and mentor. It comes from the Diocese of Lebombo in Mozambique. A parish I served and my diocese as a whole have had a longstanding companion relationship with Lebombo. Through that relationship I learned the remarkable story of what happened to the guns at the end of their civil war. Their bishop started a program that quite literally turned swords into plowshares. People were invited to trade in their guns for farming equipment and tools of industry. And the people did. Over 800,000 guns were turned in. Those guns were then turned into artwork, such as the cross I have. One of our bishops has a sculpture of a saxophone player that is made entirely of gun parts.

Because of the sheer size and weight of the cross, it is not one for everyday wear. I have worn it on multiple occasions as a testimony to a different way forward, to our Gospel call to seek peace and to transform tragedy and violence into beauty and new life. My diocese (Connecticut) has done a lot of work and witness against gun violence. My bishop is a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence. We have marched and advocated for changes in policy at a local and a federal level. I have worn this cross at marches in Hartford and DC. I often wore it with a photo of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012. [See inside cover of our CT Stations of the Cross for 2013.]

As some of you may know, I had the opportunity to assist at his funeral in 2012. It was a difficult, heartbreaking day, of course. And yet, there were also moments of beauty and hope. The truth of Easter was spoken and felt, even though many of us felt like we were still living out Good Friday and Holy Saturday. One of the images from that day that will stay with me is the moment we walked out of the Church at the end of the service, singing “Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee.” Surrounding the lawn in front of the Church was a line of Boy Scouts in their shirtsleeves (in December!) standing at attention with their flags. They had been there for the entire service creating a human fence to ensure that if the rumors of Westboro Baptist coming to picket were true no one would not be able to get near the Church. That image has stayed with me as an icon of community care and support. Even in the midst of tragedy, the fundamental goodness and resiliency of the human spirit shines through.

Over and over again in our history and in our lives, God’s healing, redeeming love is at work transforming swords into plowshares. Transforming pain and tragedy into hope and new life. In these days when the realities of pain and suffering in our world are ever present, we can easily lose sight of all the signs of hope and new life that are present all around us. I hope that each of you have something like my cross in your workspace. Some small, tangible reminder of a time or a place or a way you have witnessed God’s love at work in the world. Keep those items nearby, and keep your eyes and your hearts open to discover more. They are there. Everyday. I promise.

Amen.

Cultivating Connection

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom
Dunstan, May 19, 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.

“Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Be ready. At first, I read our Gospel today, and I feel exhausted. Be ready? God, I am already tired or weary or whatever the word is for the kind of tired that is not just fixed by more sleep. Now you want me to get ready? That just sounds like more work, and I don’t even know what I am preparing for . . . I just know I will be blessed if I am “working” when God shows up.

And then I pause. Then I take a deep breath. I think, does work purely for the sake of work, does valuing “being busy” above all else really match up with what I know about God? No. It doesn’t. So what other interpretation might there be?

What if the “work” into which God is inviting us is not just more tasks, more accomplishments, more tangible proof that we are “productive”? What if the “work” God is inviting us to is the work of our hearts and souls? It is indeed true that we do not know what tomorrow will look like. Sure, we could make some educated guesses. We could analyze the data we have to make some logical predictions about what the future will look like. But we cannot account for all the variables, and as we know all too well, we can often get thrown a curve ball that we did not see coming. So our preparations cannot be limited to the particulars of all the scenarios we think might be possible.

The best preparation we can do is to cultivate our gifts and our habits, so that we are ready to respond to whatever the future brings. I think there are two “habits” or practices that are particularly worth cultivating in our lives, especially in a time like this. The first is being grounded.

Being grounded means that we are connected to God. We stand firm in the truth that we belong to God. We are beloved of God, not because of what we do, what kind of material wealth we have or how famous we are - or any of the ways society measures success. We are beloved of God because we belong to God. Because God loves us. Period. Full stop. We do not earn that love. It is a gift, pure and simple.

Life is full of tempests, of changes and chances, of tumultuous times that can easily knock us off that sure footing. That can temporarily (or even permanently, if we let it) blind us to that foundational truth of who and whose we are. And so we must be in the habit of cultivating our connection with God, so that we can find it quickly in the midst of a challenge.

That probably looks a little different for each of us, and yet I am guessing that prayer and worship are a significant part of that. I would also bet there is something else that helps that connects with the second “habit” we can be cultivating - each other.

That second habit is collaboration. It is connection and community. It is NOT isolation. In our land of rugged individualism, in a society that consistently rewards individual achievement, it can be easy to think that we have to do it all on our own or that it is somehow a mark of strength or superiority to be able to go solo. But it is not. Jesus didn’t. The disciples didn’t. The women at the tomb didn’t. Paul didn’t. Again and again in Scripture we are reminded of the value of having a partner or even multiple teammates in our ministry. The story of Dunstan, who we honor today, is also a reminder that we are not meant to journey alone. He revitalized monasticism in England, and set a precedent for centuries that the Archbishop of Canterbury was a monk - someone who lived in community.

We need each other. We need companions on the way. We need the wisdom and perspective that comes with shared insights and different points of view. We need the encouragement and the gift of being able to care for each other. We need the reminder that we do not ever have to bear our burdens alone. We need the reassurance that comes through holding the faith for each other in moments of fear or doubt. We need the fullness of joy that comes only through being in relationship.

I hope as we go through this week, and the weeks ahead, we will keep making space for all those habits that renew our connection to God, that help us feel grounded and rooted. I also hope we will keep reaching out, keep seeking connection, keep looking for opportunities to collaborate, so that we never feel lonely. The future is indeed uncertain, but we CAN be prepared for anything if we ground ourselves in the truth that we are, each of us, a beloved child of God. And if we keep ourselves connected to those who make the journey a delight. Amen.

Loaves and Fishes, Scarcity and Abundance

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom
Frances Perkins, May 13, 2020

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.

Today's Gospel tells the story of the feeding of the five thousand. One of Jesus' many miracles in the New Testament story. It is a seemingly fantastic story – a story of how five loaves and two fish managed to feed more than five thousand. To our modern ears this may sound like a tall tale. We might try to explain it away by saying that there couldn't possibly have been that many people or assuming the author was just exaggerating for effect. Or we might say that everyone only got a crumb. We could come up with any number of ways to “explain” this story. But if we do that, we are missing out on the miracle and the message in the story. The miracle in the story is not about how many pieces of bread there were. The miracle is that everyone was fed. The miracle is that God created abundance in the midst of scarcity.

Jesus blessed the bread and the fishes. He invited God's blessing in and he invited all those present to share with another. Those actions transformed a time of scarcity into one of abundance.

That is a message that resonates in these days. An appropriate lesson as we honor Frances Perkins, FDR’s long serving Secretary of Labor, who helped implement so many programs like Social Security that help to ensure that no one is without a safety net. That endeavor to ensure that everyone in our society has the resources to meet their basic needs.

Most of us are fortunate enough that we probably cannot relate to the scarcity of food that the Gospel lesson describes. We have not looked into our kitchen cupboards or our refrigerators to find them empty. And even if we did, even in the midst of a pandemic, we are still able to get plenty of food. While we may not know material scarcity, that does not mean we don't understand the reality of scarcity. In fact our material prosperity can sometimes form a stark contrast with the scarcity that does exist in our lives.

Let me tell you the story of a woman I know. We'll call her Jane. Jane has every material and economic advantage. She lives in a big beautiful house. She has servants to cook and clean. Someone to drive her around. A nanny to watch over her children. She is a brilliant woman, well educated and intellectually curious. She does not need to work, and in her community it is expected that a woman of her social standing would not work. Rather she is expected to be a hostess, have hobbies and volunteer. To many it would seem that Jane had the perfect life. Where would we find scarcity in such a life? The scarcity is not in material comforts, it is a scarcity of depth and meaning. Jane wants more from life, a sense that she has made a meaningful contribution to the world. There is a hole in Jane's life, in Jane's heart, that she did not know how to fill. The pain is overwhelming, and so she does what many do. She finds ways to dull the pain. She finds it in alcohol and pain medication. But this temporary remedy only causes more scarcity as it causes Jane to withdraw from society, from her friends and even from her family. Thankfully that is not the end of the story. With the help of those who care about her, Jane gets into recovery. She stops drinking, and she stops taking medication. She transforms her life and her relationships. With help, scarcity turned into abundance.

Jane discovers that by being willing to turn over her problems, to give her scarcity up to God, she is able to invite God's blessing in and to allow healing to begin. The spiritual journey of recovery fills that hole in Jane's heart in a way that alcohol never could. Jane finds love and meaning. She finds that as she opens up to allow others to help her, not only is she strengthened by their care and support, she in turn is strengthened by the opportunity to care for others. She feels great pride in being able to help others on the journey of recovery – to share how God can turn scarcity into abundance. Jane's joy and pride does not only come from being able to help others discover the deep joy and satisfaction she now knew, it also comes from her relationship with her family. The gift of recovery means that she is now able to be fully present and engaged. Her relationships are deepened. Love abounds.

Although our own stories may be very different from Jane's, there is perhaps a universal element in the experience of scarcity and the desire to escape from it. Given the choice, we would all choose abundance over scarcity. We would choose the blessings of love and meaning, of material comfort and opportunities for education. And so when any of those things are lacking, when there are holes in our lives, we seek to fill them. We seek to escape from the reality of scarcity. Yet so often, like Jane, we seek a temporary or easy “solution” to our scarcity. We try to find a band-aid, a way to dull the pain. Maybe we fall victim to addiction as she did. Maybe we just ignore the problem, hoping it will go away. Maybe we throw ourselves into our work hoping that will provide the sense of joy that is missing in our lives. Maybe we buy more things. Maybe we do any number of unhelpful behaviors. But hopefully we have the strength and the courage to acknowledge wherever there is a spiritual scarcity in our lives, and to open ourselves up to the possibility that there might be another way forward. Like Christ did with the loaves and the fishes, we can hold our scarcity up to heaven and ask God's blessing upon it. We can ask that with grace and love, our scarcity may be transformed into abundance.


AMEN.

Grumbling into Hope

A reservoir

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom
May 11, 2020, Commemoration of Johann Arndt And Jacob Böhm
Exodus 17:1–7;Psalm 119:137–144; Mark 6:45-52

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 don’t know about you all, but I love the stories of the Israelites grumbling in the wilderness. They are so real. So human. They sound just like any long family road trip. Or our own internal monologues on days that just are not going the way we had hoped. Today we get the Israelites complaining that they don’t have enough to drink water. Recently in our Morning Prayer readings we got them talking about how slavery in Egypt was better because they had fish and cucumbers. Ah yes, I bet we have all done that. We have wished to go back, we have wished for comfort and familiarity, even when it was miserable - merely because it was a known entity.

Now, of course, we should give the Israelites some credit for asking for water. I mean, water is a necessity of life. We cannot live for long without it. They were not just asking for caviar or complaining that the soup wasn’t hot enough. They were desperate for survival. They were fearful. They had lost their perspective.

That is something else I love about these stories. That is part of why they resonate. If I find myself in a place of worry and fear, in my own places of grumbling and frustration, it is because I too have lost my perspective. My world has shrunk in on itself. I am only aware of my own needs, my own emotions, my own pain. It can feel frantic because I think I am alone, and I have to get myself out of it all by myself. Yet, nothing is further from the truth. I am not alone. The Israelites were not alone. They had each other. They had Moses. And God was with them. Oh. Right. We are not alone. Ever.

It is easy for us to forget that all important truth. Pain, struggle, fear can all feel overwhelming at times. These are indeed days when it is easy to lose our perspective. Like the Israelites we are wandering in a wilderness. The future seems uncertain, and there are moments when our very survival seems unsure. We have been, sadly, regularly reminded that these are perilous times.

That can shrink our vision. They can make us lose sight of the abundance of God’s love that is always present in our lives, if we are paying attention. God is indeed present to us each and every step of the way. Johann and Jacob, the mystics we remember today, remind us that God is indeed present in our lives, evident in the simple things, like the beauty of a sunbeam.

I hope that you can hang on to that knowledge in these days. I hope that even in the moments where your perspective has narrowed, even when the fear and sadness are very present, that somewhere in the back of your mind, in the depths of your heart, there is niggling reminder that there is more. May we see God in the beauty of a sunbeam. May we hear God in the voices of our friends, in the voices of loved ones, who gently remind us to widen our vision. Those who remind us that we are not alone. Who remind us to trust in what we know is true. God is with us. What we need is here. We are blessed with sustenance for our bodies and our souls. This wilderness may be longer and more challenging than we ever would have imagined. And yet we will not find hope and courage if we focus only on what is missing or what we wish were true.

Hope is found in letting go of a desire for everything to go as planned. Courage is found in trusting that we do not journey alone. God is with us. We have each other. Let us hold that truth together in our hearts, today and always. Amen.

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.

Wisdom from Julian of Norwich

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer, via Zoom
Julian of Norwich, May 8, 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.

Ah, it is the feast day of Julian of Norwich. For me, it feels like a day when I get to visit with an old friend. Julian is one of the five thinkers about whom I wrote in my doctoral dissertation. So, she is indeed an old friend who just about lived with me for years!

Given how much I value her wisdom and insight, I could probably come up with reasons why her message was relevant any day of the year. And yet she has some particularly important messages for us as the Church living through a pandemic in 2020. Just in case you don’t know much about the life or times of Julian, let me give you a brief synopsis.

Her name “Julian” is taken from St. Julian's Church in Norwich where she lived as an anchorite for many years. An anchorite is someone who lives a solitary existence in a cell attached to a church. They have a window into the Church to watch mass being celebrated and a window through which they can serve as a counselor to the people of the world, but they do not generally leave their cell. She lived like that for decades! I bet she could offer some practical wisdom to those of us who are struggling with being stuck at home for weeks.

Julian was born in the late 1300s and died in the mid 1400s. She lived through the Black Death, a plague that came multiple times in the 14th century and took approximately 40% of the population. Hear that again - 40% of the population. She would be marveling at all the advances of modern medicine and how many people are surviving and recovering from the virus. Currently the mortality rate for COVID-19 worldwide is about 7%.

Julian is famous for her writings. It was a rare thing in the 1400s for a woman to be able to read and write, but Julian was definitely a scholar who knew her Scripture and the theology of her day well. She had a series of visions during an illness which she then spent many years reflecting on and writing about. Her writings are collected in a text known as Revelations of Divine Love.

If she is known in popular culture at all, she is known for her saying, “All will be well. All will be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” Taken out of context this can seem like a pollyanna statement that seems to completely disregard the realities of the present moment. But Julian was not oblivious to the realities of pain and suffering. She knew them well in her own life, and in the lives of the people who came to her for counsel and advice.

Julian lived in a time where “death was to be met any day, around any corner.” The fragility and sacredness of life was a truth she knew all too well. Suffering and hardship were an expected part of daily life. Her conviction that all will be well is a deeply meaningful one, precisely because it is a statement of deep faith and hope born out of a daily life where things rarely went "well.” It is a statement that believes there is more to life than what we can see in the present moment. It is a belief that tomorrow can and will be different than today. It is a belief that there is always the possibility of more, the possibility for new life, for transformation, even in the midst of our darkest moments.

So I hope you hear Julian’s conviction and affirmation that “All will be well” in a new way today. It is not a platitude meant to paper over the trauma of the present moment. It is a deeply faithful statement that expresses the conviction that God is with us, that God’s transforming love is at work in the midst of whatever challenges and hardship we might be facing. All may not be well yet. It may not be well today or even seem well tomorrow or next week. And yet, we can join with Julian in affirming that “All will be well” in God’s time. Amen.

Monica: God is never far

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer
Monica, May 4, 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 we remember Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. Her life and faith are worth remembering in their own right, not just because of who her son became. Interestingly, she actually has a lot of hope to offer us. There is hope in her story because it is a very human one. She struggled as a mother. She wanted her son to become a Christian early in life. If you know much about Augustine, he had quite an interesting and complicated life and did not come to faith until much later in life.

Side note here, when I spent a summer working with a chaplain in a juvenile detention center, I had a group read some excerpts of Augustine’s Confessions. He has a great story of stealing bags and bags of pears from an orchard with a group of friends in his teenage years. The pears aren’t even good. He just does it for the joy of stealing. And yet he went on to become a Saint in the Church. Made for some interesting conversation.

Back to Monica. Her parenting did not go the way she wanted. She wanted her son to change his life, but it did not happen in the time frame she desired. And yet it happened. She also had hoped to be buried in Africa, but she did in Italy and managed to make her peace with that. In fact, she told Augustine, “You will bury your mother here. All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord. Do not fret because I am buried far from our home in Africa. Nothing is far from God . . . ‘

Monica’s faithfulness is an example to all of us. A willingness to trust in God, to trust that God is never far from us. A willingness to trust that hope and faith are stronger than fear.

Our readings for today can be somewhat of a challenge on this front. Hannah prayers for a child, and Samuel is born. In Luke’s Gospel today, a mother is miraculously given back her son whom she thought had died. These lessons taken on their own can be problematic. No doubt we all have things we have hoped for and wished for, sometimes so deeply it hurts. And yet they do not happen as we wish they would.

If we had only our readings for today that could leave us feeling discouraged and desolate. For our lives so often do not match up to what we wish for. So it is good that we also have the example of Monica’s life and the rest of Scripture to remind us that we are not alone in things not going the way we might hope or desire.

From Rachel weeping for her children to Joseph being sold by his brothers to the Israelites slavery in Egypt to Job’s suffering and countless psalms to the Prophets to Jesus’ own family and life experiences, we know that we are not alone in experiences not going according to our plans or our hopes.

I would guess that none of us planned or hoped to be quarantined for all these weeks. None of us wished for a pandemic. None of us wished to lose dear friends and colleagues in the midst of it. None of us wished to have our lives turned upside down or so much fear and anxiety swirling. And so it is important for us to remember that we are not alone in our struggles. It is important to remember Monica’s wisdom that nothing is far from God. Indeed, God is with us in the midst of all of this. God is very near. We need not fear the future. We do not journey alone. God is always with us.

No matter how uncertain things may seem, no matter how often things do not go according to plan, we can find comfort in knowing that we are not alone. And we can trust that God is always at work. God’s redeeming love is bringing forth hope and new life even in the midst of whatever challenges we face. That is the Easter story. That is the heart of our faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.