I invite you to pause for a moment and examine how you practice the presence of God. The tendency that I hear, see and experience is that people, (myself included), look for God “somewhere out there.” Brother Lawrence reminds us that God is nearer than we might think. Psalm 139 expresses this reality well when the psalmist asks ..
Full text of the homily given at Thursday's Healing Eucharist:
Do you remember March of 2020? The early days of the Covid pandemic. Do you remember how it felt?
I remember the day my kids school closed, the day they sent my husband home from work, the day we had to decide to cancel worship. We thought it was only going to be a few weeks, a month at the most.
At first neighborhoods came together. Love notes and messages of thanks went up in windows around town, everyone was trying to figure out how to stay connected, how to grow hope, how to persevere in the midst of this seemingly impossible thing that was unfolding before our eyes. In those first few weeks, those first few months, we were so naive to what was to come, which was for the best, since what we were experiencing already felt so impossible.
I was working for a small church at the time, and we were trying everything to help support eachother in whatever ways we could think up. I had some friends and colleagues who turned to the Book of Common Prayer, gathering for Compline every night on Facebook Live. A beloved friend suggested a group of us read Morning Prayer over the phone together, we did it once, but the art of holding the phone and turning pages and balancing a preschooler on my knee was more than I could handle. Another time, I left my kids unsupervised to lead a prayer call, and within minutes they were knocking on my office door, one of them with a bloody nose and the other full of stories of brotherly mishaps. By the end of the first month, the days started to melt together, differentiated only by the flavor of hard that day doled out.
Once we realized things weren’t going back to “normal” Zoom school became a thing, which meant putting my first grader in front of a computer screen in a room by himself from seven in the morning till midday - as you can imagine this was unbearable for everyone involved, teachers, parents, and most especially the seven year olds. Seven year olds aren’t meant to sit in front of computer screen all day (and neither are we). After a month of trying to balance Zoom school and remote church work and my own seminary classes, also on Zoom, and life as a family of four with grandparents and friends whom we desperately missed, I began getting the calls no one wanted, but we all knew were coming. Friends of friends were sick with Covid, the degree of separation between the virus and us grew smaller and smaller, until it was clear it was here and people in my community began to get sick.
I woke up one morning and thought “I can’t do this anymore. My littles are little and they are scared. I am not-so-little and I am scared. How do we as a community, as a country, as a world handle this much death, this much sadness, this much isolation. ” The thoughts raced through my head. I was so tired, and soon my exhaustion and overwhelm turned to anger. I began to wonder - will this ever end, and where is God in all of this.
I didn’t want to pray anymore, I couldn’t muster up the energy, I didn’t have the right words, I didn’t really have any words. Have you ever felt like that?
I remember so clearly sitting at my kitchen table later that same day. I was suppose to lead Midday prayer on Zoom, and instead I was crying into a bowl of alphabet soup, looking down and thinking, that’s all I’ve got. That’s all the prayers I can muster. A spoonful of scrambled letters, and a bowlful of heartache. Of course, What I didn’t know then, was that much of the following year, and years, would be scrambled prayers and bowlfuls of heartache.
I took a deep breath and I went live anyway. I logged into Zoom as I had each day before and there staring at me through the computer screen were the faces of beloved parishioners and friends, a dear colleague and a few strangers — all gathered in this strange new place we called “Zoom church”. It was far from perfect, but there they were. The exhaustion and uncertainty in their lives was very different than mine, and yet, very much the same and I could see it on their faces.
We sat in silence for a long time that day and then let the words of our tradition carry us, and as we finished praying, I asked the group if there was anything else we could prayer for, and someone far braver than I called out “for the courage to keep praying. For the strength to keep looking for God in the world.” And then to my surprise, others joined in, with prayers too deep for words. One by one, they prayed the most sincere and heartfelt prayers I had ever heard. The space between us melted away, and what was left was a real, raw, vulnerable and sincere longing for God.
There are many times in our lives when all we have is the desire to pray but not the words. And sometimes, we don’t even have that. Sometimes all we have is scrambled letters, racing thoughts and tears rolling down our cheeks into bowls of soup. Sometimes all we have is a heart full of worry, a body full of rage. Sometimes we are too worn out, too tired, to done with it all, to pray.
And yet, we are called to persevere in prayer. And somehow we do.
In today’s first reading we hear the story of Esther, a remarkable story worth reading in its entirety, but we hear it in today’s lesson because the story of Esther illustrates the purpose and the power of prayer. In the example of Esther we see prayers as a petition to God, as a confession of sins, and as an intercession on behalf of others, but we also see it as a deep desire to seek and find God. In the example of Esther we are reminded that even in the midst of turmoil we must never stop trusting that God is at work in the world. Through prayer, we are expressing our desire to be in Gods presence. Through prayer we are seeking to find connection, real, raw, and authentic.
We are not called to persevere in prayer so that we get what we want, we are called to persevere in prayer so that we can learn to trust that God is at work even when we can’t see it. We are called to persevere in prayer, so that we can learn better how to pray with sincerity and truth for God’s will to be done on earth.
Thinking back to that time at the beginning of the pandemic, my prayers remained scrambled for a long time, I imagine some of yours did as well. But after Midday Prayer that day, when I looked into that bowl of alphabet soup, my scrambled prayers were joined with the prayers of so many others. An offering of our hearts, a letting go of our desires, a transformation of our prayers and a reminder to look up, to find God at work in the world. We are called to persevere in prayer, but we don’t have to do it alone.
Amen.
In Sunday’s Gospel reading we heard the remarkable story of Jesus’s baptism and the start of his ministry in Galilee. In the space between these two events, we hear the story of how Jesus was spirited away, to the wilderness. The wildness is a place Jesus goes again and again when he is preparing to face the challenges of his life and ministry.
The rising sun from Gregory’s kitchen window.
Tell us a Story about....
a practice, habit, or discipline that helps you feel close to God (connected, loved and grounded).
Blessed by the Rising Sun
A Story about Spiritual Practice from The Rev. Gregory Griffith:
When I was in seminary, I spent a summer serving as a chaplain at a large state hospital. Sister Mary Joseph was one of the other chaplains. On the first day, while still dark, I went out and sat on a bench looking east. Soon, Sister Mary Joseph joined me. She told me of how she began the practice of beginning her day sitting in the dark and waiting for the new light of day to emerge. "I serve as a chaplain at the jail in downtown Washington, D.C." she said. "It is a dark place. So, I started getting up while it was still dark and going out and sitting in the garden of the convent to be greeted by the new light of day. It gives me hope for the day ahead."
In August of 2022, I moved into my apartment at Kittery Estates. I was delighted to discover that the windows in the apartment I was given faced east. It is a daily reminder of Sister Mary Joseph and her spiritual practice of being blessed by the rising sun.
What practices, habits or disciplines do you have that help you feel connected to God? Share a story of your practice, in word, image, or art, by sending it via email to Pastor Aaron at: associate@stjohnsnh.org.
"When I Grow Up," by Tim Minchin, from the hit musical "Matilda." Featuring students from the cast of St. John's 2024 Youth Musical, "The Show!," and The St. John's Parish Choir. Featured Offertory Anthem at the 10:00AM service of Holy Eucharist Rite II on The Last Sunday after The Epiphany, February 11, 2024.
Candlemas in the snow.
Full text of the homily given at Thursday's Healing Eucharist:
Once, at a community program I worked at, I encountered an unhoused man, who, as it turned out, had a particularly hard week after his wallet had been stolen. I didn’t have a chance to talk with him myself, but others did what they could to help him and sent him on his way. But then, later that week I ran into him again as I walked through town and he sat on a street corner begging for money.
I hadn’t planned to run into him with my lunch in hand. I hadn’t planned to run into him on my work break. I hadn’t planned for God to put me in that place at that time. But there I was, carrying my five dollar coffee and my twelve dollar lunch, standing there talking to this man who had nothing, uneasy with the space between us. He was about the same age as me, which somehow made it all the harder to engage with him. He reminded me of the many young men, boys really, that I went to high school with, the ones who in the days after September 11th enlisted in the army and had their lives forever changed. It was something about the way he carried his gear that told me he had been in the service, that told me that there in his pack he carried the burdens of our country, that he fought for our freedom and lost part of his in the process.
I could feel the ache growing in my heart - do you know the one I mean? That sort of heart ache that lives on the edge of sacred and profane, sorted to one side or the other only by the choice you make to engage or not. That blurry feeling between disdain and empathy, the one we never want to admit we have.
The urge to walk by was real, but the nudge from God was stronger still, and and so I stopped. As I stood shoulder to shoulder with this man he was playing his part, and I was playing mine. I was ready to do the charitable thing, to help him in the way that I knew how, to offer the prescribed gift card and to move on with my day feeling good about having helped. I asked him his name, without even a thought of telling him mine, and then he gave me a story, the same story I am sure he said to everyone else that walked by that morning, it too felt predictable and prescribed. After a few minutes I was about to hand him the gift card that I had tucked away in my pocket, when the space between us shifted. He looked at me, stopped talking and took a deep breath, he looked away, and then looked up to the sky and swallowed in that way one does when they are trying not to cry, and after what felt like an eternity, he asked, “can I have a hug?”
“Can I have a hug?” were the last words I expected him to say, and yet somehow they were the exact words I needed to hear that day. It was as if in this simple request he had said “here I am, and there you are, and we need each other.” They were the exact words that I needed to call me back from the edge of the profane, that place of distance and prescribed charitable formulas and predetermined roles, of loved doled out in socially acceptable doses. His words called me into a sacred space, a place that is beautiful and messy and holy, a place where love is abundant and genuine, good and mutual and full of hope.
And so there we stood on the street corner, two strangers, no longer shoulder to shoulder, but heart to heart. No longer pretending, no longer playing parts, but fully present to each other. As we embraced, in what felt like a radical act of hospitality, he asked me what my name was, and I mumbled a response, embarrassed that I hadn’t thought to tell him before.
We talked for a long time that morning. He told me his story. He was in fact a veteran and had served many tours in Iraq, Afghanistan & Kuwait. He told me about the love and loss in his life. Of the ways drugs had taken so many from him. He talked about how hard it is to live on the streets. How he ended up there in the first place. How he never saw it coming. We sat together, in righteous anger. And when it was time for me to go, I got up and walked away, and forgot to give him the gift card. I came back later, to give it to him, because I had it to give, but it’s value held nothing on what we had shared. It’s value held nothing on what he had given me.
Each week at our Thursday service we remember that Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on two commandments: love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). We hear these words, we speak these words, we know these words and yet it is so hard to abide by these commandments.
Paul understood this. In his letter to the Romans that we heard this morning, Paul is writing with the assumption that his audience knows that they are supposed to love one another. Just as we know that we are supposed to love one another. But he exhorts them to make their love for each other genuine and real.
His language and the images he leaves us with are powerful: let your love be heartfelt; be eager to show each other honor; be set on fire by the Spirit; be devoted to prayer; contribute to the needs of the saints, and pursue hospitality always, he says.
There is clearly a material element to the work of love. To “contribute” or “participate in” the needs of the saints, in the needs of others, is to give of your own resources to help those in need- resources like money, food, clothing, and shelter. But genuine love, the kind of love that Jesus commands us to do, to be, is so much more than that. Genuine love requires us to live alongside and engage with others in a full-bodied, full-hearted, full spirited, kind of way. It requires us to show up, to be present, to listen, and learn and share something of ourselves with the other. It requires us to love even (perhaps especially) when it’s inconvenient. This is not a love that we speak or feel, but a love we live and do and are. It is love in action.
It is so easy to say the right words, we can even set our hearts to auto pilot and do the right thing, but to be genuine in love in the way Paul describes, in the way Jesus commands us, takes a different kind of presence, a different kind of effort. Which is why we come here each week, we need each other, and we need God. We read the scripture, we say the prayers, we bless the bread and the wine, we listen and share and support each other and we receive the unconditional, unending, love that is our God, not just through the bread and wine, but in the outstretched arms of the one sitting next to you, longing for a hug. It is only because we are loved that we can love. Here in this place, we are given an incredible gift, and it is not ours to hoard. We must go out and put that love into action, in the ways we love and serve others, and in the ways we care for each other and the world around us. May all those we encounter know what it is to be loved, and may our hearts be open to experience the genuine love of others, even (especially) when it is unexpected, and not at all convenient!
Amen.
On Sunday, April 7 at 3:00pm, St. John’s Concerts On The Hill Series will play proud host to the world-renowned choir, The American Spiritual Ensemble for an historic Portsmouth premiere concert. The American Spiritual Ensemble (ASE), whose mission is to preserve and continue the tradition of storytelling through the performance and preservation of the American Negro Spiritual, was founded in 1995 by Dr. Everett McCorvey who remains Artistic Director and Conductor of the choir.
Connected in story, connected in Christ. As we embark on this next season together, our focus will be on creating the space for you to share your stories, stories about how you have encountered Jesus in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of your lives, of the ways you have come to be part of this community, and the ways you go out to love and serve God in the world around you.
