Practicing the ministry of presence together

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Commemoration of Zenaida, Philonella & Hermione

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 three women physicians known for treating everyone who came to them regardless of their ability to pay. It is indeed a time for giving thanks to all those in the medical profession who have worked so tirelessly to care for so many people in the last year. They have given their expertise and brilliance. They have given their care and generosity. In some cases they have given their lives to help others. What a beautiful example of the power of love. That self giving love of Jesus has been evident in so many ways and places over the last year. 

Indeed let us honor physicians and all healthcare workers, as our reading from Sirach does. Let us praise their skills and wisdom. Their God given talents to care for those who are ill. Indeed in the midst of illness we should pray, and we should seek medical treatment. We need both. Prayer is always a good idea. So is doing everything we can to take care of our physical bodies. 

Of course, it would be selling them short to say that the gifts of a physician are merely in applying the principles of science. There is more to it than that. It is not just about making the right diagnosis or having the right medicine. There is an art to healing. An art that requires wisdom and understanding. 

I think most of you know by now that I have a long and complicated medical history. Born twelve weeks prematurely, a cancer patient at 13, and then two high risk pregnancies that blessedly resulted in wonderful healthy children brought into this world by c-sections. I have also worked as a hospital chaplain. I have spent a lot of time receiving and observing medical care. It is just that, “care.”

It is care of the whole person. In fact, I learned a lot from doctors and medical professionals about the ministry of presence. About how much it matters how we show up. This is the kind of thing that applies to all of us in our professional and our personal lives. Are we able to be present when someone needs us? And I mean fully present. Looking people in the eye. Listening. Really listening. Open to learning. Open to hearing another point of view. Are we communicating with our body language, with our eyes, with our facial expressions, that the person we are with matters? Can we be the person today who affirms for them the truth that they are a beloved child of God?

Doing that, being that present takes work. Especially this year. We are all tired. Or maybe weary is a better word. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. We all need the space to grieve. Especially now. Things are beginning to feel hopeful and open again, so little by little our bodies are lightening up on their tight grip on everything. I think many of us have been in survival mode for the past year. We have been focused on just getting through it all. We have been coping. We have just been figuring out how to get to tomorrow. It is only now, and in the weeks and months ahead that we can begin to really grieve, to feel the magnitude of what this year has meant. To feel and begin to understand how we and the world have been irrevocably changed by what has happened. It is a time to be gentle with ourselves. To have compassion for ourselves and each other. 

And so it may seem like an impossible task that we are being asked today. To work at being more present. But here’s the thing. I think it might actually be the key to no longer feeling weary and anxious. Because being present has rewards that far outweigh the challenges. Being present enables us to build connections with each other. It reminds us that we are not alone. Remember it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. Remember that smiles (even behind a mask) are the good kind of contagious. When you see someone else smile, when you have helped make someone else smile, how can that not bring joy to our hearts? 

No doubt there are days when we feel empty and depleted. That’s okay. This has been a hard time. And we don’t have to stay that way. None of us has to do this alone. We are all in this together. If we can be more present to each other, we will build each other up. Together we can have what we need to move forward into the glorious future God has in store for us. Amen. 

The both and of Easter

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Easter Monday, April 5, 2021

Psalm 16:8-11:Acts 2:14, 22b-32; Matthew 28:9-15 

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. 

Alleluia. Christ is risen. Happy Easter, friends. There is joy today. Joy in this season. Joy in all that we have to celebrate. Spring. Warmer weather. Sunshine. More and more people getting vaccinated. But I also think it is important to honor the fact that the resurrected Christ still had his wounds. The resurrection did not erase the crucifixion. It transformed it. Easter reminds us that death and suffering do not have the last word. But Easter does not ignore the realities of suffering or pretend they are not there. 

So even on this day, and even in the midst of all the causes for rejoicing, I want to give us collective permission to hold our grief alongside our joy. The grief is real. I bet that most of us did not get to have the Easter celebrations we long for. Hopefully there was meaningful worship and beautiful music. Hopefully there was chocolate and a delicious meal. But no doubt there are people we wanted to hug and could not. People with whom we wanted to sit and linger over the last bit of desert. Even in the midst of celebrations, even in the midst of hearts that are full of gratitude for the transformational truth that love is stronger than death, even in the midst of that we grieve. We grieve for what we are missing in our own immediate lives and neighborhoods. We grieve for our nation, for the realities of systemic racism and injustice that continue to plague us. We grieve for our world and the tragic loss of life from this pandemic and so many other preventable causes. The grief is personal, and it is global. 

We need to honor that grief. We need to acknowledge it. To feel it. Trust me, this WASP with lots of Puritan ancestry has tried the whole “keep  a  stiff upper lip, I can just keep going and pretend it’s not there” thing. It never turns out well. We need to grieve. And we are in good company. Think of the emotions and actions identified in the Gospels on Easter morning. Mary Magdalene weeping. The disciples running home. The women being afraid, as they are at the end of Mark, and in today’s Gospel in Matthew. There is not a lot of rejoicing in our Easter Gospels. What we see is the grief and the fear of the women and the disciples. 

Not a big surprise really, if you think about it. Nothing is going the way they thought it would. Their beloved leader and teacher is dead. Brutally executed as a criminal. They go to do one final gesture of love and care for him, and his body is gone. Talk about adding insult to injury. They are deprived of the ritual caring of the body that would have brought them some sense of solace and comfort. They start home and are completely surprised to meet Jesus on the way. Over and over again in the past few days their hopes have been dashed and their expectations have been overturned. No wonder they are afraid when they meet Jesus. But here’s the thing. The line just before our Gospel passage today is: “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” The women have just been told by the angel that Jesus is not there because he has been raised from the dead. They leave with fear AND great joy. There it is. The both and of Easter. It is okay. We get to hold it all. We get to feel both the great joy of the resurrection and the fear and grief of it. The realization that we do not know what the future holds, only that it will not and cannot look like the past. 

As we grieve what is lost, what has ended, what is missing, let’s hold on deeply to hope, to the conviction that while we might not be able to hold on to him, Jesus is present with us still. Let’s hold on to the hope, to the conviction that we are being invited into a future that is indeed different, and it just might be more wonderful, if we can trust in the power of God’s love. 

As C.S. Lewis ends his Chronicles of Narnia, “ . . . the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only  been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Beauty and possibility await today and always, if our hearts are open. Amen. 

Making Love manifest

 Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021

Psalm 116:1,10-17;1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17,31b-35

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. 

It is Maundy Thursday. I want nothing more than to be gathered in the same place as you all. To honor the holiness of this day by washing each other’s hands or feet and by breaking bread together. Oh how we do not realize how much the tangible aspects of our faith matter until we cannot share them with each other. We are embodied. We worship a God who was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Our bodies matter. Touch matters. To feel the water on our skin matters. To taste the bread matters. To sip the wine matters. All of it matters. 

There is lament on this day. Lament for what is not possible. Lament because this is Holy Week. Lament for a week and a world that have reminded us of the horrors we human beings can inflict upon each other. The tragedy of gun violence. The trial of the officer who killed George Floyd. We have been reminded of the realities of loss and oppression all too well this week. But that is not all we remember today. 

It is Maundy Thursday. Maundy from the Latin for “Mandate” - for the new commandment that we have been given. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’” At its foundation, at its heart, that is what today is about. 

The pouring of the water. The gentle touch of a towel. The feel of the bread in our hand. The sharing of the cup. All of those are expressions of love. They are merely tangible manifestations that point us to that far deeper and more profound truth. Ah. There it is. The reminder I found myself searching for in the midst of all the lament and loss of this week, of this season. As much as I wish to be gathered in person. As much as I wish to share the water, the bread, and the wine. Those things, those tangible realities are not the point. Love is the point. That beautiful truth. That profound reality - that we are beloved of God. So beloved that God would give anything, give everything, to show us the depth of that love. That love is not contingent on anything. It does not require us to do something. It does not require water or bread or wine to show up. The love of God is present with us, always - wherever we are. 

Now I do not want to discount the tangible manifestations of God’s love. Just because we cannot have the ones we are used to, the ones we expect, the ones we long for, does not mean we are without signs of God’s love. It does not mean we cannot make God’s love manifest for each other. 

Indeed my friends, you have been doing just that, making the love of God manifest here in this chapel space for over a year. You make it manifest with your smiles, with your words, your presence. With your trust, your tears, your grace. And I know that this time is a mere glimpse into the rest of your lives, and it consoles my spirit to know that you are making that love known in the world throughout your day, wherever you are. 

We have a new commandment. A foundational commandment. Love one another. Make God’s love manifest in the world. Let the depth of this day, of this week, of this season, of this reminder of just how profoundly we are loved by God - a love that is an outpouring, a self-giving, a love that is not earned. A love that is not contingent on anything. Let this love fill your hearts, so that you may continue to go about your lives making it manifest for all the world to see. The world needs that love. Today and always. Amen. 

Waiting and Acting

 

The Boule

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Chapel via Zoom

Commemoration of James De Koven, March 22, 2021

Psalm 84:7-12; 2 Timothy 2:10-15; Matthew 13:31-33

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 think you all know I love to cook, I especially love to bake. I think you also know that I like accomplishing things, and if I can do so quickly then all the better. Being an achievement oriented person whose life experience taught her at a young age that life is short, means that ideally I would like to have everything done yesterday. I am not good at sitting and contemplating. I am not good at waiting. 

So this means that making bread is a spiritual discipline for me. Especially with our favorite bread recipe, is an amazing no-knead bread recipe. It requires very little labor, just a lot of planning. It is remarkably simple, and remarkably similar to what is described in our Gospel reading today. You mix together flour, yeast, salt and water in a bowl. And you leave it be for 18 hours. After that you fold it over and form it into a ball. Leave it for another two hours. Then you bake it in a preheated dutch oven with the lid on. You remove the lid for the last 15 minutes. The result is an amazing crusty boule with a soft and chewy inside. This recipe creates the kind of hearty, delicious bread that makes you begin to imagine that it might actually be possible to live on bread alone - particularly if you have some nice olive oil and a delicious cheese to go with it. 

But you can only achieve that delicious result, if you follow the recipe. Waiting is the central and essential act of this bread recipe. It cannot be rushed. There are no shortcuts, no way of speeding it up. I have to have patience and faith. I think that is why bread is such a prominent feature in Scriptures and our faith life. Bread is a staple food, but it is not an instant food. It can fill us up and sustain us, but only if we have the patience and faith required to transform its simple ingredients into a food we can eat. 

This theme of waiting resonates with me this week. We are waiting. The world is waiting. For things to change. For enough of us to be vaccinated. To travel. To see and hug the people we love. To feel safe in a group of people again. We are waiting for transformation. 

But I think it is important to nuance the theme of waiting, while the bread recipe does require a lot of waiting, it is not without active participation. Without making the dough, and doing the baking, there would be no bread. A transformed world is not something we just passively wait for. We wear our masks. We get our shots. We love our neighbors. We speak out against horrific acts of hate and violence like those in Atlanta last week. We who are in positions of power and privilege keep learning, keep acting, keep doing our part to dismantle our culture of white supremacy. 

The change we long for is coming, and we can be a part of making it happen. Perhaps one of the lessons we can take from this pandemic is the ways in which small actions can have a huge impact, especially when we act together. If a few of us wash our hands and wear our masks, nothing would change. The more who do, the greater the effect. What else might we do? What other small sacrifices on our part would ripple out far beyond our own communities? As the world reopens and we return to old habits, may we not forget how deeply interconnected our lives are. 

And may we also have patience and faith in the midst of it all. Action is essential. Sometimes the action is urgent. If you don’t take the bread out of the oven when the timer goes off, it will burn. The realities of injustice are life and death realities in this country. 

On the other hand, if we tried to open the world too quickly, we would risk further harm. We need to be wise and discerning. Sometimes we need to act. Sometimes we need to have more patience. Patience is hard. Is this goopy, sticky dough we have in front of us ever going to turn into something delicious and beautiful? 

And yet. When we can have faith, when we can have patience. When we can trust that God is at work in ways we cannot even see or imagine, change happens. Transformation happens. We get to join God in creating something amazing, beautiful, and sustaining from the sticky mess in the mixing bowl. The waiting is worth it. The work is worth it.

As we work and as we wait, may we always remember that Jesus is indeed the Bread of Life. He is that which sustains us through the deserts and the challenging times. He is the source of wisdom and insight. He is the one whose presence gives our feasts of celebration a greater depth of joy. He is the one who inspires us to live lives that embody grace, generosity and gratitude. 

AMEN. 

Choosing Gratitude

with my grandmother on my wedding day

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Vincent de Paul, March 15, 2021

Psalm 37:19-42; Philippians 2:12-15; Luke 12:12-27

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.

A phone rang on a Sunday morning in September 1959.  It broke into the joyful chaos that is life with five children between the ages of three and fourteen.  It was a phone call she knew was coming, but that fact never does prepare one fully for the reality.  It was the phone call that told her that her husband, the love of her life, the father of her children was dead at thirty-eight.  The brain tumor that had taken his health and vitality, and had even begun to take his personality over the summer, had taken his life.   

Breaking into the silence of an empty nest, a phone rang in the summer of 1972.  She thought it might be one of her kids calling to say hi or perhaps her surgeon husband calling to say he was on his way home.  It was the phone call that told her that those swollen lymph nodes were not the lingering effects of a winter cold: they were cancer.  

A phone rang in a farmhouse kitchen on a cold January morning in 1990.  The nurse on the other end confirmed what she already knew in her heart.  Her husband of twenty-seven years had died in the night.  His body had given out. The cancer that had spread throughout his body and sent him into a coma, had taken his life.  

The portable phone on the end table next to the couch rang on a fall afternoon in 2003 and interrupted the quiet solitude of an afternoon spent knitting and reading.  It was her doctor on the line.  The biopsy results were back. She had lymphoma. 

These four phone calls all came to the same woman. And each time she hung up the phone, she had a choice.  When she lost her parents or had to endure the pain of watching her own children or grandchildren suffer, she had a choice. A choice to let that piece of news, that painful, horrible loss be the defining event of her life.  She could choose to let it be the lens through which she viewed the world.  Such an approach would not add hours to her span of life. It would diminish the quality of her life.   

Or she could choose to look around her and be grateful.  She could choose to celebrate life and to celebrate joys of her children.  Choose to be an active and involved mother who continued to play tennis and take her children to the lake in the summer.  Choose to marry again and spend the happy years of her husband's retirement living on a farm in Maine.  She could choose to be host to her grandchildren for countless summers, reading to them and teaching them about the farm and their own family history.  She could choose to be a great-grandmother who moved to an apartment in the city to be nearer to her family and to be able to watch her great-grandchildren learn to walk. 

The woman on the receiving end of these phone calls was my grandmother. For me, she has been my preeminent example of not worrying.  She lives out the conviction at the heart of Jesus' question to his disciples: “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”  We know that worrying does not add hours to our life and that worrying diminishes the quality of the hours we do have. 

Of course there have been plenty of things to worry about in the course of the past year. It is important to note here what I think Jesus meant by “worry.” I don’t think he meant the kind of appropriate thoughtful caution that keeps us wearing masks and washing our hands. An invitation to “not worry” is not an invitation to be careless or reckless. An invitation to “not worry” is an invitation to reframe our current situation. It is an invitation to be mindful of our blessings, of all that we have to be thankful for, even in the midst of tragedy and loss. 

Even when we are living daily, as we have for the last year, with the profound reminder that life is precious and uncertain. Even when we cannot possibly know what tomorrow will bring.  We can find joy in the present. 

We can find hope and joy in the knowledge that we are precious children of God.  Jesus has spent much of today's Gospel reading affirming that fact. We are valued and beloved of God. God cares for us. 

In the midst of challenges, in the midst of tragedy, in a time when it would be so easy to focus on all that we have lost, as individuals, as a community, as a nation and a world. In the midst of all of that, Jesus invites us to keep our eyes and hearts open, as my grandmother did, so that we can see the love that surrounds us. It is my hope that as we move through the coming days and weeks, for we are not out of the woods yet, we will keep finding ways to ground ourselves in the truth that we are beloved. And we will keep finding ways to fill our hearts with gratitude. Because as Johannes Gaertner reminds us: “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”

AMEN.

Awe and wonder

    

with gratitude to my dad for a sense of wonder from the beginning

                                             

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Gregory of Nyssa, March 9, 2021

Psalm 119:97-104; Wisdom 7:24-8:1; John 14:23-26 

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. 

Somewhere in the collection of needlepointed kneelers neatly lined up in each row of St. Luke’s Cathedral in Portland, Maine is one with a quote by Gregory of Nyssa. “Concepts create idols. Only wonder comprehends anything.” My dad commissioned that kneeler. It is his all time favorite quote. Perhaps a “life quote” you might say. One that embodies his way of seeing the world. My dad loved science all through school. He is a lawyer. He has spent his professional life strongly bound to and placing a high value on “concepts.” But even in his practice of the law or his photography of the natural world, there is a foundational curiosity. A reverent awe for all that is beyond his understanding. My parents built the house in which I grew up. They purposefully oriented it on the compass so that you could watch the sunrise or sunset through enormous plate glass windows. Many a childhood dinner was put on pause, so that we could go watch the splendor of creation. There was a nearly flat roof above the living room, perfect for lying on one’s back or for placing a telescope to gaze at the wonders of the galaxy. 

Wonder. Awe. Reverence. These are valuable and essential to our life, to our faith, to the health of our souls. They invite us to inhabit a space, a way of being that fosters the wisdom so beautifully described in our Scriptures for today. An emmenation from God, a reflection of God’s goodness. There are opportunities to see that each and every day. Of course for many of us that can come easiest in the natural world, as my Dad has shown me. But he does not limit his sense of awe to Creation. There are moments of awe in worship, in learning, in small moments of human connection. While certainly those moments of wonder can be inspired by outside forces, by the glorious splendor of a sunset that takes your breath away, what my dad taught me most of all was that really it was about us. It was about the disposition of our hearts. My dad has shown me that our sense of wonder and awe can in fact lead us to a deeper connection with all that is good and holy in the world. It is really a matter of whether or not we are open and paying attention. 

In this time, when our worlds have largely shrunk to our own living spaces and the screen in front of us seems to be our connection to everything. When there are pings and notifications nonstop. Life can feel frenetic and harried. We are pulled this way and that. It could be easy to lose our sense of wonder. To feel disconnected from those moments that ground us and bring us more fully into God’s presence. 

We long to be on a mountaintop or a beach. At a lake or on an airplane. We long to see different vistas. Increasingly we are able or will soon be able to do that. Thanks be to God. 

And I think there is an important invitation to us, in this moment, on this feast of St. Gregory, as we mark a year of life in a pandemic this week. It is an invitation to remember that we can cultivate our sense of wonder in the smallest moments. It is easy to feel awe as we gaze across the ocean or at the “vast expanse of interstellar space.” Yet we can find that same sense of awe in the midst of the quiet moments of daily life too.  

We can be grateful for this technology that allows us to see and hear each other. To gather together across many time zones. We can marvel at tenacious trees and plants that push their way up to the sun. We can marvel at a moment of human connection. The simple joy of a cup of tea or coffee. The beauty of the light coming through our windows and the increasing daylight hours. The list can go on and on. 

So in these days, especially when it will be easy to get agitated as we wait for things to open and to be able to do more and more, let us remember to pause, to find moments each day for wonder. Moments to connect with God and grow in wisdom. AMEN. 

Holding the big picture

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

March 2, 2021

Chad of Lichfield

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. 

Our Saint for today is best known for not being the Archbishop of York, or at least that is how is biographical statement begins. Of course, if that were his only claim to fame, it would be a wonder we even know anything about him. I mean in the grand sweep of Church history, there are millions upon millions of us who are “not the Archbishop of York.” The difference for Chad was that he actually had all the qualifications and was elected to serve. But in the face of disputes and controversy he chose to withdraw. He had the grace and humility to know when to step down and to not make it about him. He opted to affirm the unity of the Church over his own self interest or promotion. 

Chad’s course of action is admirable. He saw the bigger picture and did not want the ministry of the Gospel to get subsumed in political controversy. Now, history has decidedly taught us that we should not always follow in Chad’s footsteps. There are many moments in our history when someone could have stopped pushing, stopped agitating, stopped seeking justice in the interest of the “unity of the Church.” No doubt people asked or at least wished that Absalom Jones or Florence Li Tim Oi or the Philadelphia 11 or Barbara Harris would step aside in the interests of unity. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to write the Letter from a Birmingham Jail because white clergy (including our own) asked him to wait. 

There are times when we should be like Chad. And there are times when we need to be like Barbara and Martin. 

But I think it is interesting to note that there is a unifying principle behind the actions of both. It is not about them. All of those faithful servants lived out our Gospel for today, they did not seek their own personal glory first. They saw the bigger picture. They saw their part to play. They saw how their actions whether on the world stage or in a quiet moment could be used to further God’s kingdom. 

Most of us are not likely to have our names remembered centuries later, like Chad or Absalom, but I doubt either of them were even thinking about that when they made their decisions. As our psalm states, one day in the courts of God is better than a thousand in our own room. It is not about us. It is about God. 

Now it could be easy to take the lessons from today as criticism (trust me, I am expert at hearing criticism even when that is not the intention). As admonitions to make us feel small. As admonitions about us being self-centered or egotistical. A particular challenge when our worlds seem to have shrunk to our own living spaces, and we can feel disconnected from community. We could go down the critical route, but I don’t think that is the intention, nor do I think it is helpful. 

Actually, I think there is a real opportunity here for us to find freedom, inspiration and an unburdening. There is an invitation, in the life story of Chad, in our readings, to open wide our hearts and our perspective. It is about remembering that God, the world, the arc of history, are all so much bigger than we might think at this particular moment. That vastness is not about making us feel small in a negative sense, it is about inviting us to remember that we are a part of something much bigger. We all have a role to play. Who we are, what we do, and how we live our lives matters. We might get to see our impact. We might not. But it would be a pretty small view of God to think that our life and ministry in our little corner of the kingdom did not play a vital role in the wider story. 

So, I hope that today you will hear an invitation to let go. An invitation to remember that it is much more about being faithful to God and who God is calling you to be than it is about a particular accolade or outcome. Remember that you are beloved. Who you are matters. What you do matters. Keep your perspective wide. God is at work in the world. Each day there are countless examples of God’s restoring, reconciling love at work in the world, if we keep our eyes and our ears open. We are called to join in that work. Sometimes we do that by stepping aside to let someone else move ahead. Sometimes that means standing firmly planted and speaking our truth until it is heard in the halls of power. Sometimes that means working quietly out of the limelight, trusting that God uses all of us to transform the world. Amen.