My dear family in Christ,
 
Next Sunday, we change to our summer worship schedule:  a single morning service at 9:30, and a brand new Sunday evening service at 6:30.  We understand, and deeply regret, that the change will be a hardship for some of you -- thank you for bearing with us through this month and next.  But we also hope that as many of you as are able will take advantage of this opportunity to reconnect with your brothers and sisters from “the other service” as we all come together at the same time for these combined services.
 
I am particularly excited, though, for our new, experimental evening service.  We’re hoping to try a number of new things … and indeed this service may be a bit different week to week as we discover what works best.  But today I wanted to share with you the theme that I hope will run through all of the evening services.  It’s a line that comes from an old hymn … that ended up being reused by one of my favorite rock bands back in the ’90s:  “Lay down your burdens by the riverside.”
 
My hope is that, whatever the details of these services, the atmosphere and community that we create will put us all at ease and give us an opportunity to come together and, at least for a few minutes, lay our heavy burdens at the foot of the Cross of Jesus Christ.  I’m really looking forward to encountering Jesus with you all in new ways as we seek refuge from the many storms that beset us at present.
 
Please consider making this new evening service a part of your worship and devotion at the start of your week.  Hope to see y’all there this Sunday!
 
Peace & blessings,
 
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,

As many of you know, I’ve been deliberating over the past several weeks as to what, if anything, to do with our schedule of worship services for the summer months. A number of folks have asked me when we can go to a single service at 9:30, as we did last year, because they particularly enjoyed a combined service and getting to reconnect with friends from the “other congregation.” On the other hand, I’ve also heard from folks who strongly prefer to keep the two services as they are during the regular program year. It is inevitable that, no matter what we do -- whether we keep the schedule as is, or whether we change it -- some of us will end up feeling frustrated. For that, I do apologize in advance…

This year, however, there is another factor that’s recently been brought to my attention: our roster of lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and acolytes is currently pretty small, and it’s likely to get smaller as we move into summer, with people travelling, vacationing, and otherwise being gone. So “staffing” two full services every Sunday morning may become a bit of a challenge.

In order to relieve that burden, here’s what we’re going to try: 

For July and August this year, we will do as we did last summer: a single Sunday morning service at 9:30. That time slot is exactly halfway between the two current services. Some of the 8:30 folks will not be able to attend a service that to them is that much later in the day. Likewise, some 10:30 folks will not be able to attend a service that is to them that much earlier. Again, I apologize in advance to the folks for whom this schedule change is a hardship.

But for the majority of our people, that “middle way” will be doable and will give us an opportunity to gather more fully, to reconnect with people we haven’t had the chance to worship with for a while, and to fill up our pews a little more fully that a two-service schedule allows. (The fact is that during this program year, we haven’t really had enough in-person attendance to justify having two services, anyway -- just something to bear in mind.)

But wait -- there’s more!

I want to offer you all something for Sunday worship that we did not do last year. So in addition to a single Sunday morning Eucharist, I will also be celebrating an evening Eucharist at 6:30 each Sunday. 

“Now, Fr. Christopher,” I hear you say, “you just told us we don’t have enough servers for two services on Sundays -- how is adding an evening service supposed to work?”

Excellent question! My plan is not to require any additional servers beside myself for the evening service. We don’t use extra servers at our weekday services, so the Sunday evening service should work just fine that way, too. 

Now, I have to tell you, I am super excited for the opportunities that I believe this Sunday evening service will offer. Folks who are not able to attend our healing Eucharist services during the working week may be able to come out on Sunday evening, for one thing … and folks who are eager to have the daytime hours free for summertime fun can do so and still be able to attend Mass in the evening.

More importantly, though, this service will give us a chance to experiment with different kinds of music, different liturgical practices, a more intimate and contemplative environment, and new ways to encounter the living Christ together. It will be a worship space in which we can get creative and reimagine how we connect with each other and with God -- a place where we can discover new life together in Christ. 

I very much look forward to exploring these possibilities and more with all of you! As always, if you have thoughts, ideas, questions, concerns, or anything else on your mind or heart, I beg you to get in touch with me -- email address and direct phone/voicemail number below.

Peace & blessings, y’all!

Christopher+
[email protected]
920-266-9262

My dear All Saints family,
 
As we continue to explore new ways to revitalize, re-energize, and eventually to grow our parish, it is important to remember that our God is relentless in love, always yearning after us, calling to us, reaching out to us at all times and in all places.  So we should, for our part, always be seeking God, listening for the voice of the Spirit for new ideas, fresh inspiration, and exciting new ways of seeing, thinking, and being.
 
Whence this lofty and poetical introduction to this week’s column, you ask?  Well, I’ve been finding some inspiration is a place that is not personally familiar to me, and I want to share that with y’all.
 
Many of you know that for some time now All Saints has been providing space one night a week for a local chapter of Narcotics Anonymous, an addiction recovery program and support group founded in 1953 and modeled on the 12-step program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous.  The Twelve Steps to recovery have been around since the 1930s, and the individual steps may well be at least passingly familiar to a lot of us.  If you’ve never read through all twelve steps, or if it’s been a while since you looked at them, I highly recommend your looking them up.  They constitute a powerful spiritual journey, and completing them is far from easy. 
 
Although the Steps are written explicitly for and in the context of substance abuse and addiction, they are also unapologetically spiritual in form, intention, and methodology.  As such, they have much to teach all of us -- a point I will come back to more explicitly in just a bit.  But first, here are the Steps as written out, in the introductory booklet that’s given to new participants in NA, presented as “the principles that made our recovery possible”:
 

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood Him.  [emphasis in the original]
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him [emphasis in the original], praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 
Now, other than the fact that God is explicitly mentioned several times, you might be wondering what all that has to do with us here at All Saints.  Well, setting aside the fact that problems with addiction are pretty rampant in our society, affecting many more people that we might necessarily imagine, take a look at what happens if we frame the entire process … by admitting that we as human beings, all of us, are addicted to sin.  To be sure, we may each of us be addicted to different particular sins, or patterns of sinning, or types of sin, and we may all be at different places in terms of managing our addiction to sin, but the addiction to sin itself is the great equalizer that puts us all on a level playing field (Romans 3:23 comes to mind).
 
Imagine what our church communities would look like if we understood the mission of the Church to be helping sin-addicts into recovery.  Imagine what our individual relationships with God would look like were we to root that relationship in acknowledging that we cannot free ourselves from our addiction to sinning, that we depend utterly upon God to free us.  Imagine if church were a place where it was safe to make a searching, fearless, and honest moral inventory of ourselves, without fear of judgment, scorn, or shame.
 
There is a particular paragraph in the NA introductory booklet that really jumps out at me.  I’ll reproduce it here, but I’m going to substitute the word “sinned” for the word “used” in the original:
 
“We are not interested in what or how much you sinned or who your connections were, what you’ve done in the past, how much or little you have, but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help.  The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting [emphasis mine], because we can only keep what we have by giving it away.  We learned from our group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly stay clean.”
 
Can you imagine what our church community would be like if that paragraph were our mission and mandate?  How that might invigorate our faith, both personal and shared, how it might reshape our parish’s relationship with the larger community around us, what we might be able to offer the folks God put us here to serve?
 
I would love to hear what y’all think!  Please call, text, email, or otherwise let me know!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
Happy Easter, everybody!  Despite unexpected illnesses (HUGE thanks, once more, to everyone who stepped up in my absence on Palm Sunday!) and other unforeseen challenges, our Holy Week liturgies and our Easter celebrations were beautiful, meaningful, and deeply spiritual.  It has always been such a joy to me to have the privilege of celebrating these, our holiest Mysteries, with all of you.  People of All Saints, y’all do worship well!  
 
So here we are, then, people of the Resurrection, living in the time of Resurrection.  In this first week of the great Fifty Days of Easter, we are called once again to reflect upon what all that means.  The world around us seems, to all appearances, little changed indeed from what we saw and experienced prior to Easter Sunday:  violence and conflict around the world; financial and social chaos abroad and at home; our society fractured deeply; the evil of fascism rising again both locally and globally; and the institutions we trust to protect us challenged, even outright attacked.  What does Easter mean, in the face of such real-world crises?
 
It means proclaiming hope, even - especially - when the hard circumstances around us virtually command us to despair.  Hope, real hope, is neither wishful thinking nor a denial of reality.  Real hope, Christian hope, is the understanding that there is a greater reality than that which the world around us has to offer.  Not an imaginary dream, but the actual reality of Resurrection.  It is no mere metaphor that we proclaim at Easter.  No, we bear witness to the fact, the fact, that Jesus actually was crucified, actually died, actually was buried, and on the third day, actually rose again!  It’s not just a story.  It’s not just an abstract idea.  It’s a fact.  A fact that puts the lie to the despair that these dark times around us tempt us to embrace.
 
When we say that, in rising to new life, Jesus destroyed death, what we mean is that death can never again have the final word for us.  Easter proves that even death cannot stop love - the love of God for us, our love for our God, and the love for one another that Jesus even still calls us to live out in our lives together.  Yes, our current moment in history is truly frightening.  So was the world of Jesus’s followers in the 1st Century, under the brutal boot of the Roman Empire.  It was in the midst of such darkness that the first Easter burst forth. 
 
Easter’s glory still shines today for us.  In us.  Alleluia!
 
Grace, peace, and blessings to you all,
Christopher+

My Dear Family in Christ,
 
We are drawing to the close of our Lenten journey this year:  next week is Holy Week, beginning with this Sunday, when we shall celebrate both the Liturgy of the Palms and the Passion of Our Lord.  We will then have our regular healing Masses -- Tuesday morning at 9:30 and Wednesday evening at 6:30.  And then we shall enter into the Triduum, the 3-day liturgy which begins with Maundy Thursday, includes Good Friday, and culminates in the Great Vigil of Easter.  The highest, holiest observance of the Christian year.  It is almost upon us.
 
This year, as we have sought to make our inward, spiritual journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, the outside world around us has swirled and roiled in even more chaos that usual.  To call our present times “unpredictable” doesn’t quite cover it.  Many of us are deeply, profoundly afraid; even those of us who are not must surely acknowledge the extraordinary levels of ambient tension and anxiety in the air.  I keep thinking of a quiet scene from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a scene perhaps more famous now from Peter Jackson’s film adaptation than from the original text.  But the language of the novel captures something that not even the remarkable film can fully translate…
 
The heroes of Tolkien’s epic tale are small and all but powerless.  In the scene I’m thinking of, the main character, Frodo, is learning just how dark and dire his situation and circumstances are, now that he’s been caught up in great and terrible tides of history, power, and war.  The great Wizard, Gandalf, is explaining things to Frodo.  Gandalf says:
 
‘Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’
 
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
 
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’
 
Wise Gandalf makes it sound so simple.  But Gandalf, like his creator Tolkien, understands deeply that “simple” and “easy” are very often not the same thing.  Still, the wisdom of his response to Frodo’s admission (a confession that I strongly suspect hits close to home for many of us in the real world right now) cannot be overstated.  No matter how much we would prefer otherwise, we do not get to choose the larger circumstances within which we find ourselves.  Our first challenge, in challenging times, then, is to remember that we can still make choices, even if those choices seem to us to be small or even insignificant.
 
Many of you chose to come out last Saturday to the “Hands Off” demonstration/protest in downtown Appleton.  For those of you who weren’t there, let me tell you it was a pretty amazing experience.  I’ve read an estimate of 2,500 people turning up over the course of the couple of hours scheduled for the demonstration.  I’ve been to a couple of such gatherings in my time in Appleton, but I’ve never seen a single demonstration that was this big.  Or, moreover, that brought out so many different people, and different kinds of people -- different ages, backgrounds, looks, costumes, &c.  Fear, anxiety, uncertainty -- these things all have the side effect of isolation, of making us feel alone and cut off from support.  It was quite something to see a tangible example of the principle of unity in diversity, of e pluribus unum.  
 
And yet … the first question to arise after Saturday was, “So what did all that demonstrating accomplish?”  Well, from a short-term, pragmatic standpoint, perhaps not a whole lot.  No policies got changed on Saturday, no executive orders got rescinded, no deportees got returned, and so forth.  The status quo in the following days was, in tangible terms, not a whole lot different than it had been in the days leading up to Saturday.
 
And yet … something had happened.  Something important.  The experience of unity and solidarity extended beyond 2,500 people gathered in Appleton.  The demonstration here was but one of hundreds, maybe thousands, around the country.  I’ve seen estimates of nearly 3 million people turning out across all 50 states last weekend.  That happened.  And the fact that it happened has been reminding me of another passage from The Fellowship of the Ring.  After Gandalf explains to Frodo just how desperate the situation is, Frodo agrees to accept the near-impossible quest to save the world.  He then tries to set off on his quest without dragging all his friends into the dark tangle of destiny with him.  But his friends will not have it:
 
‘It all depends on what you want,’ put in Merry. ‘You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid – but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.’
 
Elsewhere, Gandalf has already informed Frodo that:  “There are other forces at work in the world … besides the will of evil.”  And here is what I think is one of the best examples of that truth.  We are not alone.  We are called, and brothers, sisters, family, in Christ into community with each other.  This is God’s will for us, and it is the path God offers us to human flourishing.  Tolkien, a devout Christian himself, understands this truth deeply, I think.
 
My dear friends, next week is Holy Week, and that will lead us up to the Cross and Death.  And it will lead us beyond, to the inconceivable glory that is Easter.  Though we may live in uncertain times that we wish had not come to us, we live in them together, and we face them, not as isolated, powerless individuals, but as a covenant community drawn together by the grace, compassion, love … as well as the might, majesty, dominion, and power … of Jesus Christ.  Reach out to each other; hold onto each other as Christ reaches out and holds onto us.  For Easter is coming!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My Dear Family in Christ,
 
The season of Lent is upon us once again.  Ultimately, this is good news for us, for it means that we have begun once more, in earnest, the great journey that leads us to the incredibly glory of Easter!  At the moment, however, we are in the first week of Lent, at the very beginning of that journey.  Glory, it would seem, is still a fair ways off from where we find ourselves at present.
 
Our Lectionary appoints specific readings from Scripture for each individual day in Lent, and the Gospel appointed for the Wednesday in the First Week of Lent is very much on-message for the start of a season of fasting, self-denial, self-examination, reflection, conviction, confession, and penitence:
 
When the crowds were increasing, Jesus began to say, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” (Luke 11:29–32)
 
The early days of Lent tend to focus on our sinfulness, the imminent arrival of God’s justice, and our urgent need for immediate repentance.  The “sign of Jonah,” as Jesus explains, is a sign that reads:  REPENT OF YOUR SINS AND CHANGE YOUR EVIL WAYS BECAUSE JUDGMENT IS COMING!  Indeed, says Jesus, it’s already here:  the Queen of Sheba sought out Solomon for his wisdom … and “something greater than Solomon is here”; likewise, Jonah went (eventually) to Nineveh, the city of his people’s enemies, and the Ninevites heard his proclamation and repented of their sins … and “something greater than Jonah is here!”  In Jesus, God is right here, standing in front of us in the flesh.  Why, then, do we not seek his wisdom and believe his proclamation and repent of our sins?
 
That’s a tough Gospel for any of us at any time, I think.  It feels especially tough this year, in this moment, though.  With everything we see and hear that’s going on in our world just now -- war in Europe, social and economic and political chaos at home, open & actual fascism surging all over the world, severe weather driven by climate change, and rapidly shifting cultures that make it hard to believe there’s much solid ground left to stand on -- the last thing I personally want to hear about is God’s judgment on me for my sins.  How about y’all?
 
And yet, if we read our Scriptures closely and faithfully, we discover something about God’s judgment:  God’s judgment is mercy.  God sends Jonah to tell Nineveh to repent or else be destroyed.  The people of Nineveh repent and their city is spared (much to the consternation of Jonah, it must be noted!).  Even when the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden leads to the consequence that they must leave paradise never to return, God’s judgment is to provide them the means to survive and make their way in the world (even though they will now have to work for that in ways they did not before).  At the time of the great flood, God’s judgment was to call Noah to save and preserve as much life as possible from the deluge to come.  And in the fullness of time, when our disobedience and sin had broken the world beyond repair, God’s judgment was to come among us as one of us in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, to let us do our very worst to the Son of God in the flesh, and then, through his unjust suffering, to grant not only forgiveness but redemption and everlasting life.
 
God’s judgment is mercy.  And in the meantime, God’s gift is presence.  Living the Christian Way certainly does not protect us from all suffering or prevent suffering from happening to us and those we love.  Indeed, to live authentically as Christians in this world can sometimes dramatically increase our suffering.  But we do not do so alone.  We follow and worship a God who experiences and feels and knows everything we do -- everything -- and so the One we follow is always with us and beside us, sharing the burdens as well as the joys.  But perhaps even more importantly, when it feels like everything’s falling apart and the Judgment must surely be at hand, we can rest assured that God’s judgment will bring mercy.
 
In the meantime, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we try to embody that grace to and for and amongst each other.  So if you’re struggling this Lent with anything, please come join us on Monday nights at 6:30 for our current Living Christianity series, where we wrestle, in confidence, with the trials of our present circumstances and seek the Grace to sustain us through the chaos.  And as always, please reach out to me by phone, text, email, or face to face conversation to let me know what you need, and what I can do for you in addition to keeping you all in my prayers.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My Dear Family in Christ,
 
There’s a very old joke, familiar to cynics and students of sarcasm alike, that purports to be an ancient curse from [insert “exotic” culture of your choice] and says:  “May you live in interesting times.”
 
The notion, of course, is that the most interesting times throughout history -- interesting, at least, in terms of reading about such times as one relaxes in a comfy chair with maybe a nice, warm mug of chai latte close to hand -- are those times in which many dramatic and monumental events are happening in rapid succession:  societal upheaval, governmental collapse, revolution, natural disasters, “wars and rumors of wars,” &c.  Very exciting reading indeed!  Ah, but to have to live through such “excitement,” boots-on-the-ground, as it were?  That would be a very different proposition, wouldn’t it?  Hence the “joke” of the “curse.”
 
My dear friends, it doesn’t take a whole lot of deep searching to begin to suspect that we ourselves are now living through some extraordinarily “interesting” times.  Longstanding norms and values that our society has at least nominally held up for generations now seem rather “up in the air,” and many of our foundational institutions seem to be under direct, open attack.  Given the unprecedented nature of the last couple of months, it’s all but impossible to imagine what might be in store for us in the next few months, much less the next several years.  The future is of course “always in motion,” as the famous movie quote goes, but at the present moment, the future seems less predictable, certainly less certain, than ever before in living memory.
 
So what does it all mean?
 
First and foremost, it means we need each other, now more than ever.  We need to do what Christians have always done, are always called to do, in times of crisis.  We need to gather together to hold and support each other.  We need to do what we can to strengthen and encourage each other to go out and minister to those around us -- the suffering, the vulnerable, the hungry, the lost, the oppressed, the victimized, the desperate -- in the name of Christ.  We need to remind each other daily to lay our burdens, fears, worries, and outrages at the foot of the cross and rely utterly on Jesus to heal us and our world.
 
Sounds good, doesn’t it?  That description captures, in my opinion, the Church at its very best, the Church as it ought always to be.  But how do we get there?  After all, despite being created and called into existence by God, the Church is made up of people just like ourselves -- folk who are just as scared or anxious or angry or confused or whatever as I might happen to be on any given day.  Well, that truth may in fact be our greatest strength.
 
Y’all, we don’t have to have all the answers!  We don’t even have to have anything resembling an unshakable faith to be God’s people -- just look at the examples from Scripture!  All we have to have is a simple feeling of yearning.  A longing after God that draws us closer to each other as we seek some connection, or some deeper connection, with our Maker. 
 
That’s it.  That’s the secret.  And it’s the basis for the new Living Christianity series that’s starting up on Monday, March 3rd:  a weekly gathering in which we’ll take time to connect with each other where we are -- wherever we are in that moment each week.  If that means ranting and raving about everything that’s wrong in our community, our nation, and/or our world one week, then that’s what we’ll do that week.  If, the next week, it means rolling up our sleeves to brainstorm what practical, local actions we can take here in Appleton to combat some of the terrible things that are happening around us, then that’s what we’ll do for that session. 
 
We will go where the Spirit leads us, week by week, and we’ll do it together, leaning on each other and especially on Jesus … and if some of us happen to feel that our faith in Jesus doesn’t seem to be all that strong some weeks, we will know that our fellow seekers are there to hold us up and help hold us together.
 
Folks, I’m really excited to see what a program like this might be for us, during such chaotic and unsettling times, and to see what it might grow into.  If you’re even the least bit unnerved about the “interesting times” in which we find ourselves these days, I truly hope you’ll come and be part of this new ministry.  It’s designed for you.  And I think it’s something we all need just now.  I hope to see you there next Monday!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

A follow-up to my special message after the 2025 Annual Meeting
 
My dear family in Christ,
 
My deepest thanks to all of you who reached out to me in response to my post-Annual Meeting message last week.  The energy and enthusiasm that our parish meeting and my subsequent reflections about the path ahead seem to be generating are exciting! We are already exploring opportunities to make spaces in our building available to different groups in our community who are doing work we’d like to support (and who might be able to help contribute to our parish via rent or donation), and we’re hoping to get very creative this year about putting ourselves out into the larger community around us.
 
This week, I wanted to offer a follow-up to one of the points that I emphasized in my message last week:  that we at All Saints have something that so many people in the neighborhoods and communities around us are truly hungry and thirsty for -- we have Jesus!  What I mean is that, as Episcopal Christians and as heir and stewards of the Anglican branch of the Christian Faith, we bear an authentic witness to the life, death, resurrection, and teachings of Jesus Christ as first received by the Apostles, and as guarded and preserved by the Church for two millennia. 
 
In many ways, this Jesus whom we know and seek to follow now seems rather distinct from (if not in outright contrast to) the false images of Jesus that fill up our popular culture.  Here’s an example:  part of the backlash to Bishop Budde’s homily at the National Cathedral (in which she implored the most powerful man on Earth to practice mercy towards the least powerful and most vulnerable peoples in our society) included a number of religious leaders and teachers sharing warnings against the “sin of empathy.”  Folks, there is no such thing as “sin of empathy.”  Empathy is not a sin!  It is, on the contrary, the heart of the Gospel and the key to the entire message of Holy Scripture.
 
But people who don’t know the Scriptures, who haven’t been brought up in the Christian faith and teachings of the last two thousand years, might not know that.  And if all they hear, out in public or on social media, are the rants and pontifications of self-proclaimed ministers about the “sin of empathy” … and they therefore think that’s what Jesus is all about, they will almost certainly reject Jesus and Christianity.
 
Unless someone shows them a better alternative.  A truer, more authentic Christianity, with empathy for the suffering of others not just as an allowed option, but rather as the key to the entire faith.  People are actually hungry for that Jesus! 
 
And that is the Jesus we know and seek to follow here at All Saints.  That is the Gospel we proclaim every week, all year long.  That is what we have to invite people to come be part of.
 
On the idea of inviting people to come to church with us as a challenge and a goal for 2025, let me also say this:  you don’t have to feel like you have all the answers in order to invite someone to come to church with you.  Heck, you don’t have to feel like you have any answers!  One of the great “selling points” of All Saints, and of The Episcopal Church, is that we are a place where it is not only safe but actually encouraged to ask questions and explore, even challenge, ideas! 
 
You might invite a friend to come to church, and your friend might say, “Well, I don’t know if I believe all that stuff, y’know?  I’m not sure I believe any of it.”  If that happens, let your friend know that that is a perfect place to start.  “Come to church and bring your questions, doubts, skepticism, and everything with you!”  Let them know that our parish community is a place where you don’t have to be certain about anything, and you can ask whatever questions you want.  If your friend asks you questions about Jesus, or the Bible, or anything church-related and you don’t know the answers, invite them to come to church with you to ask and explore.
 
I’ve said in many sermons that we can’t share what we don’t have.  I stand by that truth.  Maybe you’ve never (yet) had a life-transforming encounter with Jesus like our beloved sister, Faith Sealy, had and so often shared with others.  Most folks haven’t.  But what do we have?  If what we have are questions and doubts, then that’s what we can share with other people out in the larger community who are dealing with questions and doubts.  You never know how healing it might be for someone to discover that … they are not the only ones with questions and doubts!
 
And if you have happened to have a dramatic encounter with the risen Christ, then let’s definitely share that with folks, too! : )
 
The point is, inviting people to come to church with us doesn’t require us to be fanatics, or to feel or act like we have all the answers.  It doesn’t require us to be anything other than who and what we actually are, and to share a little bit of ourselves with other folks.  If we can train ourselves to do that as a regular practice, I think we’ll be in for an amazing journey in 2025 and beyond!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
This week, we launched the latest course in our ongoing Living Christianity faith formation series:  an extended workshop focused on discerning our specific spiritual gifts.  As I introduced the course and laid out some foundational concepts, I realized that much of what we covered last Monday applies to the nature of just being Christian and trying to live a Christian life -- particularly, the work of discernment.
 
In The Episcopal Church, broadly speaking, we tend to associate the word “discernment” with some very specific activities:  rector searches, the elections of bishops, capital campaigns (or just general stewardship), &c.  But probably seven or eight times out of ten, when people in Episcopal circles bring up discernment, we’re going to assume that they are talking about exploring a potential “call” to Holy Orders (to priesthood, in the vast majority of cases).  Naturally, y’all will be able to think of exceptions, but I’m pretty confident in my claim that when most Episcopalians hear “discernment,” they think about a possible call to the priesthood.
 
That, my dear friends, is terribly unfortunate!  Not the call to priesthood itself, obviously -- we still have quite a priest shortage across The Episcopal Church; there are many more full time positions for priests throughout the country than there are priests to fill them.  What is unfortunate is that, in our boots-on-the-ground practice in our Church, we end up restricting the work and practice of discernment only to those folks who feel that God might be calling them to ordained ministry.  Now, why is that unfortunate?  Precisely because the work (and joy!) of discernment is what every single Christian is called, invited, and indeed commanded into in the sacrament of Holy Baptism!
 
It is not an overstatement to say that the entirety of the Christian life is meant to be defined and profoundly shaped by the constant, consistent, and ongoing practice of discernment.
 
Hmm.  After a blanket statement like that, I suppose I’d better get around to offering some concrete definitions (the former English teacher in me will only allow me to write so much before “defining my terms” as I should have done in the introductory paragraph…).  What do I mean by “discernment”?  Well, here’s the dictionary definition (from the website dictionary.com):

discernment [noun]
1. the faculty of discerning; discrimination; acuteness of judgment and understanding.
2. the act or an instance of discerning.

[to discern:  verb
(used with object)
1. to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see, recognize, or apprehend:
They discerned a sail on the horizon.
2. to distinguish mentally; recognize as distinct or different; discriminate:
He is incapable of discerning right from wrong.
(used without object)
3. to distinguish or discriminate.]
 
And here’s an Episcopal Church definition (from the website of The Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina):
 
“In recognition of our baptismal covenant, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church provide guidelines for ministry of the laos (the people of God). The canons require each diocese to make provision for the affirmation and development of the ministry of all baptized persons, including assistance in understanding that all baptized persons are called to minister in Christ's name, to identify their gifts with the help of the Church and to serve Christ’s mission at all times and in all places. Specific roles express that identity in accordance with God’s calling to each of us to use our unique gifts in the service of God’s kingdom.”
 
So, to put it all together, all Christians, by dint of their baptisms, are called by God to perceive, apprehend, and/or distinguish, by whatever physical, mental, and/or spiritual “senses,” their unique, God-given gifts, and to discover the specific roles which express their identities in the use of those gifts as ministers in and of the Church and in service to God’s kingdom.  And the Church is instructed to make provision for this work of affirming and developing the respective ministries of all baptized persons (i.e., all Christians).
 
Whew!  That’s a lot much, isn’t it?  It is, indeed.  But it’s also extraordinarily exciting -- at least, that is how we ought to see it.  The work of discerning one’s spiritual gifts can be (always ought to be) incredibly inspiring, energizing, affirming, even healing.  Discovering your particular spiritual gifts is a process of connecting ever more deeply and specifically with the person, the identity, the Gift that God created you to be, that you already are (even if you don’t yet know it or fully understand it).  It reveals an intensely personal connection and relationship with our Maker, who not only made the heaven and the earth, but also and more to the point made each one of us, individually, each one a special, one-off, custom creation, called to particular roles and identities and ministries within the Body of Christ and in service to God’s world.  It’s not about the burden of work that we have to do; it’s about the ecstatic joy of getting to be what we were created to be.
 
So, in the short term, I hope those of you who were not able to join us last Monday for the kickoff of this latest Living Christianity series will be able to attend some or all of the workshops these next three Mondays (Jan. 20 & 27, and Feb. 3).  We’ll be rolling up our metaphorical sleeves and really digging into the hand-on practices of doing this kind of discernment.  It’s going to be exciting and very fun!  But I also hope that we as a parish will find more and more ways to integrate the ongoing practice of discernment into our daily, monthly, yearly cycles of life in Christ and in Christian community.  This kind of spiritual work is literally transformative, for individuals, for congregations, for communities, and ultimately for the whole world.  So join us, won’t you?
 
Yours always in Christ,
C+

My dear family in Christ,
 
When I was growing up and learning the unwritten rules of civil society, the number one, top priority, most important Prime Directive was that there were two topics that one is never to discuss in public:  religion and politics.  Interestingly, the two things that have our society most deeply divided at present are, well, religion and politics.  But I’m sure that’s just coincidence.  Er…
 
The notion, of course, was always that conversations on those hot-button topics always lead to disagreements, and disagreements lead to stress, conflict, and strife, and we’ll all just get along better if we never go there in the first place.  The thing is, as noble as it might sound, that notion is ridiculous.
 
Not talking about the things we may disagree about doesn’t magically make the disagreement go away.  Not communicating merely robs us of any ability to deal constructively with those disagreements that we already have. 
 
But there’s an additional side effect of decades of not talking about politics and religion, one that applies directly to church communities.  Avoiding such conversations in church communities creates the dangerously false impression that it’s possible to have a Christianity that is itself devoid of politics … and thus a Christianity that has nothing to say to or about the politics of our larger society.  In other words, a Christianity that is totally irrelevant to how we live our lives in this world.
 
As an ordained minister, I can’t tell y’all how many times folks have said to me (whether they were talking about me, personally, some other specific person, or ministers in general) that “preachers should keep politics out of the pulpit.”  In many places, that notion is widely accepted as self-evident wisdom and propriety.  But it makes me ask:  “How, then, is a preacher supposed to preach the Gospel?”  Especially, for example, the Gospel appointed for this coming Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Advent.  But more on that in a moment.
 
In August of last year, Scott Detrow of NPR interviewed Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, about Moore’s book Losing Our Religion:  An Altar Call for Evangelical America.  In the interview, Detrow asked Moore why he (Moore) thought that Christianity in America was (is) in a state of crisis.  Moore replied:
 
Well, it was the result of having multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount parenthetically in their preaching - turn the other cheek - to have someone come up after and to say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak. And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.
 
You can find the entire interview online here:  https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192374014/russell-moore-on-altar-call-for-evangelical-america
 
My dear friends, the Gospel is inherently political.  It cannot help but be political. 
 
You see, the term politics, properly defined, is just the name we use for how a group of people goes about making group decisions (what the group will do as a group, what the group will not do, what the group believes is important to the group, &c.) and how the members of the group are going to behave and how they’re going to treat each other. 
 
That is what politics is, whether the group in question is a clique of friends, a family, a county commission, a school board, a Christian congregation … or a whole entire nation.  Any group of people, however small or large, has to have a way of making group decisions and a way of determining how the members of the group will interact with each other.  That means every group of people, however small or large, engages in politics. 
 
Now, the Gospels have some very specific things to say about how we are supposed to make decisions as a group of faithful Jesus-followers in covenant with God and with each other.  And about how we are to treat each other (and all our fellow human beings—our fellow God-image-bearers) in this world.  Just take a close look at the Sermon on the Mount, or Matthew chapter 25, or the portion of Luke appointed for this coming Sunday.  Luke’s Gospel for Advent 4 for contains the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, one of the most profound political statements in the New Testament.
 
To be sure, politics ain’t the main point of the Gospels, not remotely.  The main point is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is Lord!  And that God broke into this created world in the flesh and person of Jesus to save us and redeem us from our sin (both individual and collective sin!).  It is because of who and what Jesus is—because of who and what Jesus incarnate reveals God to be—that his teaching matters and must shape our politics.  Because God takes sides:  God sides with the lowly, the poor, the oppressed, those who suffer injustice, those on the margins, those who are vulnerable … and God calls us to side with folks in those situations, too.
 
The Episcopal Church has often been accused of “pandering” to “woke progressivism.”  All Saints has been accused of that a few times since we became officially inclusive and affirming of LGBTQA+ folks (and put up our rainbow signs).  Some folks have even argued that the Church is “dying” because it’s supposedly more concerned with left-leaning politics than with the Gospel.  But I don’t think that’s accurate.  If we are in fact dying (and that can be debated!), it’s not because of some alleged “woke agenda.”  It’s because we as a Church have not been clear and enthusiastic about the Gospel message that we have been entrusted to proclaim far and wide.  A Gospel message that is as relevant and as engaged in the real world where people live their real lives now as it was two millennia ago.
 
As we conclude our Advent preparations for the birth of God among us, let us pray to God to rekindle in us that same zeal that burned in the Apostles to proclaim the Good News boldly, lovingly, enthusiastically, joyfully, to a world that walks in darkness still, longing for the Light of Christ!

My dear family in Christ,
 
This past Sunday, 1st December, was Advent 1.  It marked, of course, the beginning of our annual journey through the season of Advent as we make our way towards, and make our souls ready for, the Nativity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ on the 25th.  But it also marked the completion of my fifth full year here with you all as Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church.
 
Advent, like Lent, is a good season for contemplating endings and beginnings, and the connections between the two.  The Anglo-Saxons had a saying:  “The end and the beginning are not always alike”—but they are inextricably linked together.  Every time one thing ends, another thing begins.  And every time a new thing begins, whatever came before either ends … or changes and grows into a new thing, itself.
 
The world looked rather different when I arrived at All Saints in December of 2019.  For one thing, I drove up through a terrible ice storm to begin my time here in a “new world” buried under vast drifts of snow.  It seemed as if Fate had got hold of a book called The Most Predictable Clichés of the Upper Midwest and brought the first few pages to life, just for me, this Southern ex-pat now come to the Frozen North. 🙂 I was quite amazed that Spring, when the sun came out and everything turned green!
 
And then Covid hit us.  Nearly two solid years of being shut out of gathering together to worship … or do anything else.  We responded, as this community always has, with deep faith and a “Well, I guess we’ll have to do a few things different now, so let’s get going…” attitude that helped us weather the global crisis amazingly well, for as excruciatingly hard as it was.  And we launched a dynamic online ministry & kept on going.
 
Reopening to in-person gathering was, as y’all remember, incremental and not easy.  Constantly having to discern what was safe, what wasn’t, and what was “safe enough” was no easy task, and we had a lot of disagreements in lots of different directions.  “Too many restrictions” … “not enough restrictions” … “can’t we just be done with this mess?” … “you do realize that Covid is still happening, right?” … and so it went.  But we managed by the grace of God to stay together, and even to grow our community, during those hard times.
 
But we realized that, upon reopening, really to grow our parish meant inviting more new people to come be part of our community.  And we realized that, in order to do that, we needed to be able to let people know, specifically, what kind of community we were inviting them to join.  We had some serious discernment to do, and we stepped up to and into that challenge just as we had with the challenge of the pandemic shutdown.  Through Zoom discussions and Bible studies and Vestry meetings and parish gatherings, we discerned God’s call for us to become, officially, as fully welcoming, inclusive, and affirming parish, ensuring that, at All Saints, all persons, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc., are truly invited and welcomed into the full communal and sacramental life of this church.  An incredible milestone in the history of All Saints.
 
So we have a little bit better idea, at least, of who we are as a worshipping community now.  And maybe, just maybe, we’ve started to get somewhat accustomed to this crazy Southern ex-pat who’s been sojourning among us for five years and counting.  Or maybe not.  Either way, we’re turning once again to a new set of present challenges … and opportunities.  Being an inclusive and affirming congregation means perhaps a bit more now than it did a year ago, with the recent “climate change” in the larger social and political environment around us.  Our commitment that All Saints is to be a truly safe place for all people, but especially for people who are members of marginalized and/or targeted groups is no longer as abstract and idealistic as it might formerly have seemed.  It has real-world consequences and carries real-world obligations.
 
But it’s also the right thing to do.  The Gospel thing to do.  And if what we’ve seen and experienced and learned of the Holy Spirit over the past two thousand years holds true, it might just be one of the ways that, as the Body of Christ in this place at this time, we help to shine a light in the darkness, that the darkness cannot overcome.  My dear friends, people need the light of Christ now as much as ever.  We need it, ourselves.  Our families, friends, and neighbors, and those who are alone, need it.  The people of Appleton, the Fox Valley, Wisconsin, the U.S., and the whole world need it.
 
From what I’ve seen firsthand in my time here so far, this parish community has always had a deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ.  I haven’t seen that change in five years; I’ve only seen it grow.  And speaking of that, my heart tells me that the deeper and more fully we lean into that love of Christ, and the more courageous we get about showing it do the community & the world around us, the brighter Christ’s light will shine here, and the more our parish will thrive.
 
So let us not merely anticipate with eagerness the coming birth of Our Lord this Christmas; let us yearn after God, let us long for Christ Jesus to be born and nurtured in our hearts, so that we shall be moved to seek and nurture Christ in everyone around us.  Let us find a way to believe in miracles.  And let us be the miracle for all those who are hurt and lost and lonely in our midst.
 
Yours always in Christ,
Christopher+

My Dear Family in Christ,
 
Bishop Matt recently shared the following, somewhat lengthy, quote from Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
 
“The church confesses that it has not professed openly and clearly enough the message of the one God, revealed for all time in Jesus Christ and tolerating no other Gods besides. The church confesses its timidity, its deviations [referring to nationalism], its dangerous concessions. It has often disavowed its duties as sentinel and comforter. Through this it has often withheld the compassion that it owes to the despised and rejected. The church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven. The church did not find the right word in the right way at the right time. It did not resist to the death the falling away from the faith and is guilty of the godlessness of the masses.
 
“The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evil ends. . .
 
“The church confesses that it has witnessed the arbitrary use of brutal force, the suffering in body and soul of countless innocent people . . .
 
“The church confesses that it has looked on silently as the poor were exploited and robbed, while the strong were enriched and corrupted.
 
“The church confesses that it has coveted security, tranquility, peace, property, and honor to which it has no claim, and therefore has not bridled human covetousness, but promoted it.
 
“The church confesses itself guilty of violating all of the Ten Commandments. It confesses thereby its apostasy from Christ. . .”
 
These, my friends, are … harsh words, to say the least.  Perhaps their aggressive tone is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Bonhoeffer was writing in the context of the rise of Nazi Germany, and in particular of the complicity of many German churches in openly supporting the rise of the Nazis to power.  But as you can see, he was not only calling out the complicity of the churches which openly supported the Nazi cause, but also the silence, the passive “neutrality,” the refusal to oppose actively the clear evils of Nazism in that present moment.
 
Perhaps Bonhoeffer’s more famous quote on the subject is that “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil:  God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act.”
 
Such talk can make many of us feel uncomfortable.  I’ll be honest ~ it makes me feel uncomfortable!
 
But there is something, I think, in the purity of this ethic, of this moral standard, that is not only compelling … but is also biblical.  It is also Gospel.
 
Consider Luke 10:25-37:
 
25 An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
 
29 But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
 
The story of the Good Samaritan is, as you know, a parable about mercy, empathy, compassion, and justice.  About what it means ~ in God’s eyes ~ truly to be a “neighbor” to our fellow human beings.  It makes concrete what love ~ again, in God’s eyes ~ actually looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, etc.
 
But we fail to grasp the full import of the parable if we do not also see that it is a scathing indictment of those persons ~ and institutions ~ whose supposed function and purpose it is to embody and enact the love and mercy of God in this world, yet which fail to achieve that purpose … or, worse, choose not to try.
 
Here at All Saints Episcopal Church, we have made a conscious choice and taken on a shared, intentional commitment to build and to be a community of Jesus followers that is welcoming to, affirming of, and safe for all persons.  That commitment guides the way we receive visitors, and also the way we treat and care for each other as members of this parish family, certainly.  But it also lays upon us an obligation to speak up and speak out, in our larger community and society, on behalf of and in solidarity with any and all persons who are marginalized; oppressed; suffering from injustice, bigotry, prejudice, and hatred; at risk of being denied basic human rights; or are targeted by people in power.  We are called to be a voice for people who have no voice, to use our place and our privilege in this society to work towards inclusion, affirmation, and justice for groups of people who are being excluded, dehumanized, and denied justice.
 
In other words, we must not only believe in and cherish the Gospel inwardly; if we really want to follow Jesus, we must also seek to embody the Gospel outwardly, actively, tangibly, in the world around us.
 
And this is not a new thing.  It was not a new thing in Bonhoeffer’s day, either.  It has been central to the witness and ministry of the Christian faith since Jesus himself became incarnate in real, human flesh and gave his life, a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, showing us “the way, the truth, and the life.”
 
It’s a tall order.  It’s not comfortable.  It ain’t remotely easy.  Of course, Christianity was never meant to be easy.  It is meant to bring us ever more deeply into the joyful and abundant life God has always intended for us to have.  It’s as simple, and as difficult, as loving God, and loving people.
 
As 2024 begins to draw to a close and we start looking towards 2025, let us commit to seeking out, eagerly, new and bold ways to be, for Appleton and the Fox Valley, the active and engaged Body of Christ at work for God in this world.

 My dear family in Christ,
 
It’s a hard day, I must confess, to be trying to compose my bi-weekly message to the parish.  This election cycle just concluded has been particularly brutal for many of us ~ mentally, emotionally, spiritually ~ myself definitely included.  I’m old enough to have lived through many presidential elections now, but it’s difficult to recall one which truly seemed to play out along the lines of a cosmic contest of powerful primal forces, the way this one has felt. 
 
Regardless of where you locate yourself on the American political spectrum (or whether you do), the deep dividedness of our society, the differences that have less to do with particular policy positions and more to do with existential (and irreconcilable) worldviews and values has left so many of us feeling beaten, broken, hopeless.
 
Some folks are no doubt happy about the results of the election.  Others are surely relieved that it’s “over.”  Of course, for folks in vulnerable populations ~ women, people of color, LGBTQAI+ folx, non-Christians of all varieties, immigrants, it’s hardly over.  In many ways, it’s just beginning … or beginning again. 
 
Established rights and protections under the law are no longer necessarily secure, with the change in national leadership and the different set of values and priorities coming with that change.  The domestic and international order of the past four years is now much more uncertain than it was a few hours ago. 
 
As a result, it may well feel as if we awoke this morning in a very different world than the one in which we fell asleep last night.  It may feel like reality has fundamentally shifted underneath our feet.
 
The good news, and the bad news, is that this is not so.
 
The world that stands revealed today is in fact the same world that was real yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.  All that has changed is that it now stands revealed.  What I mean by that is that the majority of citizens ~ the ones who carried the day in the election ~ did not just magically appear in our midst overnight.  They’ve been here all along.  The reality we woke up to today is the same reality that existed yesterday. 
 
The difference is that, today, we are less able to pretend otherwise.  We are less able to hold the notion that most Americans, when presented with a clear choice, would embrace the fundamental values of empathy, compassion, respect for human dignity and the value of human life, and reject the path of rage, hate, dehumanization, demonization, violence, apathy, and a deeply callous inhumanity.  The people have spoken, and that illusion is gone.  But it was in fact an illusion.  The reality underlying it has not changed.
 
Make no mistake:  the effect may be no less devastating, no less a gut-punch, for the realization that the only real difference is that we see more clearly now than we did before.  It is no less appropriate, no less justified, to grieve and grieve deeply.  For even the loss of an illusion is still a loss.
 
Be as kind and gentle with yourselves as you can, through this harsh awakening.  It’s okay not to be okay.  It’s okay to need time to reel, to lament, even to rage against what shouldn’t be.
 
But let us covenant with ourselves, our God, and each other not to stay in that state for too long.  Because the truth is we have not so much lost the things we feel like we’ve lost, but rather have been shown that those things we treasure have not really yet been achieved.
 
We don’t live in the world that we thought we lived in.  Grieve at this discovery, this revelation, yes.  But we must hold fast to that vision of the peaceable kingdom, because that vision is still true.  Compassion is still true.  Justice is still true.  Truth is still true.  Love is still true.
 
We stand this morning in the midst of a stark, nigh crushing revelation about the state of things.
 
But we do not stand alone, and this story is not yet over.
 
You are all in my prayers.  If you need to talk, please reach out to me:  920-266-9262.  Many, many people are struggling deeply today, and many of us feel like we have lost any lingering thread that remained of something we might call “faith.”  If that’s where you are, please know that you are not alone!  Many, many people are right there, right now.  Even pastors and priests.  It is Golgotha, the place of the skull, where light and love and even hope itself hang bloodied and murdered upon the cross at the hands of brutal empire.  Many people are feeling exactly what you're feeling, and it is a deeply Christian feeling, for what that's worth.  The darkest of Black Fridays.
 
The folks who were there on Black Friday two millennia ago could hardly have believed that Sunday was going to be the first Easter.
 
All we can do in the darkness is hold fast to each other and try to remember Whose we are, yesterday, today, and always.
 
God bless you all.  You are in my prayers.
 
C+

My Dear Family in Christ,
 
It has recently been suggested to me, ostensibly in jest, that “no one knows what the rector is doing.”  Good-natured humor (at least, so I hope! <gulp>) aside, it’s a topic perhaps worth addressing.  Pastors, much like teachers, sometimes fall prey to the notion that we either do not exist outside of the relatively few hours in which we are visible to the public, or on the other hand that we simply sit in our respective boxes (offices or classrooms) in between services or classes like automata plugged into our recharging devices.  (Oh, if only!)
 
Today, I want to share with you a little bit of what’s been going on in rector-land these past several weeks.  It’s been a busy time, but then it generally is.  Seems like things started to get busy here around Advent of 2019, then ramped up significantly when Covid hit, and since then … have only continued to get busier!
 
But before going on, let’s take a look at the parts of my weekly schedule that are more or less regular.
 
My work week begins of course on Sunday.  As we’ve recently returned to a two-service schedule, I celebrate the Mass at 8:30 and again at 10:30, and at present we’ve got coffee and fellowship time after each service.  Sunday afternoons ~ as long as there is no pressing pastoral or priestly need ~ tend to go towards family time and the time-honored tradition of the “clergy nap.” 
 
It may sound a bit strange to say, but something they didn’t tell us about in seminary:  standing at God’s holy altar, at the fulcrum between heaven and earth, and holding that space where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, both the sacrifice and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are re-membered in the present moment … is not a thing to undertake lightly, and it does rather drain you!  By the time I make it home after doing so twice back-to-back, I generally need some time to recover.  (That’s also why Sunday is generally not the best time to talk “business” with the rector ~ my mind and soul are focused primarily on the altar on the Lord’s Day.)
 
On Mondays, I host a weekly Bible study from 11:30 to 1:00, via Zoom.  This is a ministry we began during Covid and it has been going strong ever since.  Each week, we explore the readings appointed for the upcoming Sunday, and these sessions never fail to astound me with the insights and perspectives that come out.  The format is informal discussion, and though ~ when it’s helpful ~ I try to provide some historical, linguistic, textual, or theological context, what we mostly end up doing is sharing our personal perspectives and life experiences as fellow Christian just trying to understand our faith a bit better.  It’s less academic and much more personal & spiritual.  If you haven’t tried it and you’re free to Zoom at that time of day, please consider joining us.  Monday afternoon is for catching up on “business,” and on Monday nights at 6:30, the ongoing Living Christianity program has been running since June.  We finish up around 8-ish, sometimes 8:30, so Mondays are one of my late-night days during the week.  I sometimes take appointments before the Bible study Zoom, so Mondays can also be rather long days, as well.
 
On Tuesdays, I celebrate Mass at 9:30 in St. Mary’s Chapel for a small but very devoted group of parishioners.  Afterwards, I have office hours from 11:00 until 12:30 or so.  I try to keep the rest of my Tuesdays open for meetings, pastoral visits, appointments, or any of the other dozen things that tend to come up all the time. 
 
When possible on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, I try to hold some “office hours” downtown at the Copper Rock coffee shop.  They have excellent (free) wifi, so I set up my laptop and work remotely for a couple hours.  The back of my laptop has a full-size sticker with an Episcopal cross logo and the text:  “I’m a priest.  Ask me anything.  Seriously, interrupt me!”  It works a treat ~ I’ve had dozens of conversations with all sorts of folks over the past couple years since I’ve been doing this.  Some folks just stop to thank me for being out in public “in uniform”; some folks have had pretty serious life-crisis situations they needed to talk about; and some folks just have questions.  In any event, I find it a great opportunity to tell new people about All Saints just down the street.
 
Wednesdays are my other late-night days, so I begin Wednesdays with a weekly staff meeting at 11:00 unless something has come up that requires an earlier start to the day.  There is also a standing weekly meeting between our two Wardens and myself at 4:30, followed by office hours at 5:30 and Mass at 6:30.  A note about the weekday Masses:  they tend to be a bit less formal and more intimate than the principal services on Sunday, and the homilies are designed to be conversational and interactive (for those who are comfortable chiming in, of course).  If you’d like to experience Holy Eucharist in a closer, more personal setting than we can often manage on Sunday mornings, I highly encourage you to attend either the Tuesday morning or the Wednesday evening services.  On Wednesdays, we usually finish up between 7:45 and 8.  Fifteen or twenty minutes to close down & lock up the building, and I get to go home.
 
On Thursdays, the fixed point in my schedule is our second weekly Zoom ministry:   the Christian formation series Faith Talk, which runs from 12:30-2:00.  This one also got started when Covid first shut us down and kept us from gathering in person, and it, too, has continued ever since.  Topics vary widely from week to week, but our focus is always the points where our individual lives and experiences intersect with each other and with our shared faith tradition.  The places “where the rubber meets the road,” so to speak.  It’s a safe and welcoming place to ask any and every question that you perhaps have never dared to ask out loud before, and also to challenge and explore every aspect of Christianity in a supportive and encouraging community.  Again, highly recommended!  The rest of my Thursdays, morning & later afternoons, I try to keep open for meetings, pastoral visits, etc.
 
Fridays are my “Sabbath,” my weekly day off.  Note:  I will always respond to pastoral emergencies as fast as possible and to the best of my abilities, even on Fridays.  But on Fridays, I will generally not respond to “rector business.”  So if you suddenly find yourself in the hospital or having an acute existential crisis on a Friday, CALL ME!  But if you need to talk to me about a budget issue or want to pitch me an idea for a new ministry program, I probably will not be getting back to you about that on a Friday.  (Of course, between church business and family business, my last four Fridays have been filled up and have not been Sabbath days for me, which does happen to priests fairly frequently, but in general, I do try pretty hard to keep my Fridays sacrosanct in order to make sure that I can be refreshed and ready to serve you all fully.)
 
Saturdays are “on call” days, reserved for church functions and activities that cannot be held on weekdays ~ vestry retreats, some Mosaic task force meetings, conventions, parish events, funerals, weddings, etc.  If we don’t specifically have church business happening on a given Saturday, then it becomes a day for family time, since my family has to give me up at least two nights a week and for a large chunk of my Fridays and Sundays.
 
Then, I start all over again!
 
So, that’s a rough outline of the ideal for how a week is “sposed” to go for the rector.  It’s the nature of the business that things rarely go exactly to plan, but that’s at least the plan.
 
That’s hardly the whole job, though.  That’s just the skeleton.  Regular weekly business also includes responding to requests from folks in the downtown community for assistance; pastoral visits (to home or hospital) either for pastoral care or to share Communion (or both) with folks who aren’t able to come to church on Sundays at the moment; handling funerals, weddings, or other requests for Episcopal services; Executive Team and Vestry meetings; meetings with various ministry teams within the parish; meetings with various diocese-level groups (at present, primarily the soon-t0-be-renamed Mosaic Task Force for Racial Reconciliation and the newly created Mission Council for Region B of the Diocese of Wisconsin); connecting with clergy colleagues in the diocese (some of whom owe me a lunch, and to some of whom I in fact owe a lunch!); sermon preparation; my own practices of prayer and study (which honestly should receive a larger portion of my weekly time, but that’s a work in progress…)
 
These things fluctuate week-to-week and month-to-month.  In the past month or two, for instance, I’ve had to field a sudden, dramatic increase in the number of people from the downtown community who’ve come to our church looking for some sort of help with gas, groceries, and/or other necessities.  Up until recently, I had been seeing an average of three or four people every two to three months, and I’ve been able to respond to these requests out of the “rector’s discretionary fund.”  (The RDF is a canonically mandated bit of money to be set aside by the parish to allow the rector to help folks in exactly these kinds of emergency situations ~ the offering from the collection plates on one Sunday out of each month goes to the RDF.) 
 
But in the past couple of months, I’ve had somewhere between fifteen and twenty different folks approach me for assistance.  This aspect of our parish’s outreach is thus taking a bit more management now than it has previously.  Just FYI, to make sure that I continue to be able to help, with the resources that we’ve got, I am limiting each individual to one instance of assistance every three to four months.  The idea is to prevent the whole RDF going only to one or two people when there is so much more need out there.  And for long-term assistance, we direct folks to Pillars, the Salvation Army, LEAVEN, and other municipal and community resources who are better equipped to offer more than just minor, emergency help.
 
Recent weeks have also seen Arden Kuehmsted’s funeral, the first diocesan convention for the recently unified Diocese of Wisconsin, and the very first installment of All Saints’ newest ministry, our Open Mic night for parish and community artists. 
 
Each of these events, of course, is much more than just what happens on the day of.  Funerals can take a week or two of planning ~ at least, if there’s to be any process of pastoral care for the family.  The diocesan convention was a two-day affair (Friday & Saturday), but Mosaic was expected to have a display table to set up for the duration of the convention, so that took some prep beforehand.  And I’ve been proposing an open mic night for the past several years; it was truly a blessing to discover that Oliver and Seth were so willing and eager to work with me to make it happen.  Even so, we first met to get the ball rolling more than a month prior to the inaugural event itself and had been working on it together ever since.
 
A half dozen pastoral visits and pastoral conversations with various parishioners and folks from the community rounded out my weekly schedules in the past couple of months.  And that’s pretty typical ~ and a good and joyful thing!
 
Hopefully, this article demonstrates that the iceberg principle definitely applies here:  there is always so much more going on behind the scenes than is typically visible on the surface.  Of course, that is true for absolutely every single person who does anything for our All Saints community!  It’s one of the many ways we are so deeply and truly blessed in this parish, and a great opportunity for us all to cultivate gratitude for each other.
 
I hope this has been helpful to anyone who’s found yourself saying “I wonder what the rector’s actually doing?” 
 
Maybe next time, I’ll try to tackle “What ISN’T the rector doing?” ;)
 
Yours in Christ,
C+

All Saints.  All Welcome.  All Needed.
 
My dear family in Christ,
 
The “long green” of the Season after Pentecost draws to a close.  Soon, we will embark upon a new Church year as we enter the expectant, hopeful season of Advent.  This time of year is always a period of liminal space -- we are no longer exactly where we were, but we are not yet where we are going to be.  Likewise with our parish -- we are no longer what we once were; we have not yet become what we are going to be.  The very definition of liminal space.
 
Liminal spaces and in-between times are sacred.  Our central act of worship, the Eucharist, takes place in a timeless space in between the here-and-now of our mortal lives and the eternity of the heavenly banquet that awaits us in the next life.  Time spent in between is time spent becoming.  Liminal spaces are the places where we are most open and receptive to the life-giving, world-changing presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Such times and spaces can be exciting and magical. But change brings uncertainty, and sometimes it’s hard to remember to trust God through it all.
 
Of course, All Saints has a long-established practice of trusting God through challenging times.  The fact that All Saints is still here testifies to that!  This year, particularly, I have perceived a genuine sense, a real and inspiring faith, that God is not yet done with us.  My dear friends, as we launch this year’s stewardship drive, will you commit to join me in pledging that we, also, are not yet done with God?
 
Remember our theme:  All Saints -- All Welcome -- All Needed.  These phrases have never been more true.  We are All Saints Episcopal Church.  We are committed to welcoming all people.  And now, more than ever, every single one of us is needed to help realize God’s vision for this parish.  The attached pledge card will help you discern just how God is calling you to give of your time, talent, and treasure.  My friends, consider altogether your time, your talents, and your money, and you’ll see how great a treasure God has entrusted to our care, for the building up of God’s kingdom in our corner of the world and beyond. 
 
Consider as well that God doesn’t need our treasure.  It is we who need to give!  In order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar must give up its whole self in the liminal space of the cocoon.  We can scarcely imagine the wings that God has in store for us on the other side!
 
Peace & blessings,
Chistopher+

For information about & options for making your financial contributions, please visit the All Saints Episcopal Church website at:
http://www.allsaintsappleton.org/giving-at-all-saints.html
 
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:34)
 
And as you prayerfully explore the many ways in which you can contribute your time and talents to the life and mission of our All Saints community, please consider these areas of opportunity & aspects of our parish life with which we always need your help:
 

• Pastoral Care & Lay Eucharistic Visits
• Christian Formation & Education (share your knowledge with us!!)
• Parish Event Planning & Engagement
• Liturgy Planning (Special Services)
• Online Tech Support & Digital Outreach
• Communication, Branding, & Advertising
• Music – All Voices, Instruments, & Varieties!
• Worship Service
            Livestreamers
            Altar Guild members
            Ushers
            Acolytes
            Lay Readers & Intercessors
            Eucharistic Ministers (Chalice Bearers)
• Parish Governance & Administration
            Vestry members (& Vestry Clerk & Vestry Treasurer)
            Finance Ministry Team
            Stewardship Ministry Team
            Building & Grounds Care Team
            Office Assistance
• Outreach & Volunteer Opportunities
            Pillars, Salvation Army, et al.
• Almost anything else you can imagine -- let’s hear your new ideas, y’all!

 
But most of all, what All Saints needs is you!  Each of you is a treasure-trove of talents, abilities, knowledge, experience, and interests, blessed with many gifts that God has given you to share for the building up of God’s Kingdom in this particular corner of the world.  If you’ve got a notion, concept, or idea that isn’t listed above, please call the office, or message me at [email protected], and let’s make it happen!

Allhallowtide
Allhallowtide, Hallowtide, Allsaintstide, or the Hallowmas season is the Western Christian season encompassing the triduum of All Saints' Eve (Halloween), All Saints' Day (All Hallows') and All Souls' Day, as well as the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (observed on the first Sunday of November) and Remembrance Sunday (observed on the second Sunday in November) in some traditions.  The period begins on 31 October annually.  Allhallowtide is a "time to remember the dead, including martyrs, saints, and all faithful departed Christians." 
            ~ from Wikipedia
 
My dear family in Christ,
 
We draw near to the next holy time in our Church year.  Though it is not a formally established liturgical season like Lent, Eastertide, Advent, or Christmastide, it is nonetheless a time of special observance that has been acknowledged as sacred and marked by practices of devotion, penitence, worship, and baptism since ancient times.  In our Anglican tradition, especially ~ perhaps as the Church in England (which predates the Church of England by centuries) had been influenced by the Celtic cultures of the British Isles ~ Allhallowtide is often understood to be a time when the so-called “veil” between this mortal life and the life to come becomes somewhat “thinner” than it is throughout the rest of the year.  Certainly, in the West, it seems natural and intuitive as we move into the season of harvest and the transition between the growing season of summer and the darker, colder, less vibrant season of winter to contemplate our mortality and the ultimate impermanence of the material world and our material lives.
 
All Hallows’ Eve
The vigil held in preparation for the observance of All Hallows’ (that is, All Saints’) Day developed alongside the development of All Saints’ Day itself.  Holding a vigil prior to a holy day of feasting or celebration is itself an ancient practice in the Church, the best known contemporary example being the Great Vigil between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.  Early Christians having continued to follow the Jewish custom of marking the beginning of a new day at dusk rather than at midnight may have been an influence on the custom of holding a vigil (the term itself coming from Latin in the sense of “keeping watch”) the evening before the main observance.
 
The vigil held on the eve of All Hallows’ eventually gave us the English term Halloween, from All Hallow’s E’en.  The English language has a long and glorious tradition of squeezing words together to form a new word, and that’s what we did with Halloween.  It’s possible (according to Wikipedia) that the modern custom of trick-or-treating might have arisen from the practice of baking and sharing “soul cakes”:

The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria.  Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling."  Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat, or the 'soulers' would act as their representatives.  As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating they were baked as alms.  Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593).  While souling, Christians would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips," which could have originally represented souls of the dead; jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits.
             ~ From Wikipedia
 
While both the origins and the current liturgical practice of All Hallows’ Eve are rooted in the somber contemplation of our mortality and the remembrance of those Christian souls who have passed into the nearer presence of our Lord, it is nonetheless wholly appropriate and quite okay for Episcopalians to enjoy Halloween.  It shouldn’t need to be said, but just to be clear, trick-or-treating, costume parties, scary movie marathons, and the like are good and joyful things to do, even as we prepare ourselves for the more solemn observances to come.
 
And for the record, just to be abundantly clear, there is nothing evil or satanic or otherwise diabolical about Halloween!
 
All Saints’ Day
All Saints’ Day, traditionally celebrated on November 1st in the West, is one of the seven principal feasts of the Church.  It developed in the early Church initially to commemorate the deaths of the holy martyrs.  By the Fourth Century, there were frankly too many martyrs to commemorate each one’s death separately, so the idea emerged to have a single major feast to commemorate them all. 
 
We need to take a moment to let that sink in.  Three hundred years into this new faith, so many people had given their lives for Christ—not merely in abstract devotion only, but also in actual fact:  willingly, literally dying for Christ—that it was not feasible to hold annual memorials for each of them individually.  The calendar simply wasn’t big enough.
 
From our corner of the world, in our time within history, here in this place, it is hard for most of us, myself included, to imagine, much less really to know, what it’s like to be a Christian in a time and place where you can be killed—executed by the state—for being Christian. 
 
I’d wager that many of us in this country and in this culture, when we think about what it might cost us to offer up our lives to Jesus Christ, think mainly of reorganizing our priorities, giving up certain things (maybe), taking on “difficult” goals like being kinder and less selfish in our dealings with other people.  And to be honest, I truly hope that you and I won’t have to think about much else other than that.
 
Because there are places in the world even today where simply gathering to worship Jesus Christ really does mean risking one’s actual life, just as it did in the early days of the Jesus Movement, under the shadow of the Roman Empire.
 
That is the testimony of the blessed martyrs, the saints whom we remember on this feast day.  The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness,” and in the early Church, it was believed that those who remained faithful to Christ in the face of suffering and death had offered to the world the highest and purest possible witness to the truth of the Gospel.
 
And that is what we commemorate and celebrate at the Feast of All Saints.  If it sounds like a big deal, it is!  It hearkens back to the origins of our faith tradition and invokes the very heart of the Gospel.  For us here in this parish, moreover, it serves as our “patronal feast.”  Since we are not dedicated to a single, particular saint, we wouldn’t normally think of ourselves as having a specific feast day for our “patron,” but since we are in fact dedicated to the entire body of the saints in light, I’d say this is also our feast day!
 
All Souls’ Day
All Souls’ Day is something a little bit different from All Saints’ Day.  The celebration of All Souls, observed on November 2nd in the West, emerged in response to a slightly different but equally important need in the church:  the need to remember and celebrate the lives of countless “unknown” baptized Christians in every generation who lived and died in the faith of Jesus Christ. 
 
“Unknown” in the sense of not having become famous as hermits, mystics, or martyrs on a grand scale, but known to each of us as parents, children, extended family, friends, neighbors—all of the children of God whose lives intertwine with ours in the great Communion of Saints.  Generations past and generations yet to come, all part of the “great cloud of witnesses” to the Gospel in their ordinary, individual lives.
 
In many places throughout the various Anglican communions around the world, and especially here in this country, All Souls’ Day is often folded into and blurred together with the observance of All Saints’ Day.  The All Saints liturgy will in such cases include a reading out of the names of those in the parish (and those connected to folks in the parish) who have died in the preceding year.  It is a good and holy practice, and it is something that has also been a tradition here and will continue to be for as long as we gather here to worship. 
 
Blessings,
Christopher+

“What’s so funny about peace, love, and scientific understanding?”
 
My dear family in Christ,
 
Like many of us these days, I live with an addiction or two.  Most are harmless (or mostly harmless):  food, television, rock and/or roll.  Some of you know that I also nurse a social media habit.  Not proud of it, necessarily, but there’s no sense not being honest about it, either.
 
Now, in my (admittedly questionable) defense, I do try to use my social media platforms to do more than just share pictures of cats.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I simply don’t have any cats.  But I also try to engage in some aspects of what we once called “the public discourse” in our society, particularly when topics happen to float across my feed that touch on matters relating to our Christian faith tradition.
 
I’ve recently shared a couple of reflections online related to the science of biology—one on the particular topic of the complex relationships between genetics, sex, and gender expression; the other touching on evolutionary biology, specifically the origin and evolution of the human species as we know it today.  What, you may ask, do either of those conversations have to do with our Christian faith tradition?  Well, on the surface, perhaps nothing.  Yet, there are huge swaths of the ostensibly Christian landscape out there in our culture where it is widely, though wrongly, believed that in order to be a good, faithful Christian, one has to reject the clear evidence of biological science on both points.
 
In other words, there are a lot of folks who are actively teaching people that if you “believe” what science proves to be true about gender, or about human evolution, then you cannot possibly believe the Bible to be “true” and therefore you cannot be a “real” Christian.
 
(Of course, when we talk about facts that can be proven or disproven, “belief” is not the correct term to use at all.  Likewise, we often make the mistake of erasing the difference between “facts” and “truth” when we talk about Scripture, thinking—falsely—that the details in a passage of Scripture must be literally factual in a scientific sense in order for the Bible to be “true.”  That is obviously not the case, and Jesus proves time and again by teaching truth by means of parables that he just makes up on the spot.  I’m not going to comment on the bit about “real” Christians…)
 
My dear friends, such assertions are not only patently, demonstrably false but also actively dangerous.  Any approach to religion that requires would-be members to reject reality in order to “embrace the faith” is already several steps down the road towards being a cult to begin with.  Moreover, Christianity, specifically, has a long and glorious tradition of scholarship and scientific endeavor.  Indeed, as our modern university system evolved from the High Middle Ages into the Renaissance, students were once required to study all the natural sciences before being allowed to attempt the study of theology, itself once considered the queen of the sciences.  It was believed that one could not properly understand Christian theology if one did not first have a deep grasp of the natural world.
 
Worse still, in order to arrive at the conclusion that a person is required to choose between being a faithful Christian, on one hand, or accepting the things that scientific exploration has proven to be true, on the other hand, more often than not requires Christian Scripture to be mangled beyond recognition.  It requires that portions of the Bible which were from the beginning written as allegory, symbolism, poetry, and myth (in the grandest, truest sense of the term) to be crushed into simplistic and nonsensical texts devoid of any truth or meaning beyond the crudest and most literal reading.  (At the same time, many of the groups who insist on such literal readings of Genesis and other portions of the Bible also insist that we not take texts like Matthew, chapter 25, literally at all!)
 
Now, let’s be as charitable as we can be.  Let’s assume—and I truly believe this is a good assumption to make—that these ideas, as wrong as they are, come from a place of good intentions.  Folks want to be faithful.  Folks want to lift up Holy Scripture and say (and know) that the Scriptures are true.  Y’all, I aspire to both those things, myself!  I want to be faithful to Christ.  And I know that the Scriptures are, in fact, true.  This all fits together, because as John tells us in his Gospel (chapter 14, verse 6), it is Jesus himself who is “the way, the truth, and the life.”  If we are to be Christians, we must be people devoted to truth.
 
But that’s where many folks go off the rails.  They think that it’s either one thing, or the other, and if the choice is between God & salvation, on one hand, or scientific facts on the other, they enthusiastically choose God & salvation.  Well, as far as it goes, that’s the right choice … but it’s a false dichotomy to begin with.  The very notion that such a choice exists, much less has to be made, is just flat wrong.
 
I believe that Pope John Paul II spoke wisely and rightly in 1996 when, speaking on the subject of evolution, he told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that, “truth cannot contradict truth.”  If we, as Christians, believe in the truth of Scripture because we believe that Jesus is truth, then we must also accept what scientific examination has revealed to be true of the created world in which we live, the very world which was made by, in, and through God in Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit:  “All things came into being through him [Christ], and without him not one thing came into being” (John 1:3).
 
Our understanding of the material world must be informed by our faith … and our understanding of the Faith must take into account what we know of the created order.  The science of biology has revealed that all living human beings are of one biological species.  So when our Scriptures tell us that all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, that means that not only our oneness but also our sacredness, our shared spark of the Divine given us by God, transcends all seeming differences and apparent barriers of race, nationality or culture.  And we must act accordingly, seeking and serving Christ in all persons.  Likewise, genetics has proven that even something as seemingly basic and fundamental as “biological sex” (much less gender identity) is extraordinarily complex and truly difficult to define, far from being simple and binary.  And that fact has to have an impact on how we understand such key aspects of our faith tradition as the sacramental rite of marriage, among other things, and it must spur us to examine more deeply any lines of Scripture that we previously thought said otherwise.
 
My friends, these are difficult ideas to consider.  But be encouraged by the fact that our Christian faith tradition has a long and, honestly, glorious tradition of faithfully wrestling with the highest, deepest, most difficult, most challenging concepts in human history.  Episcopalians have in the past been known to brag that our branch of the Faith does not require you to “check your brain at the door.”  Let’s do better than that.  Let’s actually steer into the difficult questions; let’s wrestle with the facts that make us uncomfortable, and the Scriptures that give us pause or make us shake our heads.  Jesus went to the cross for us.  We can, at the least, love him back with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
As we continue to gear up for the launch of our 2024 Fall Program Year, I continue to be encouraged by your enthusiasm and deep commitment to the ministries of All Saints.  Our weekday Eucharists (Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.) have each developed into intimate communities around their respective services ~ come try one out to see what I mean.  Meanwhile, our newest program, Living Christianity on Monday nights, has been well attended thus far, both for our first series (on theological reflection) and our second (on Christian meditation).  A third series in the program is now about to begin ~ see the announcement elsewhere in this newsletter.  Our sidewalk ministry during the Farmers’ Market is a great success, and our weekly Zoom offerings (Bible study on Mondays at 11:30 and Faith Talk on Thursdays at 12:30) are still going strong after more than two years now.  But perhaps most importantly, a parishioner recently shared with me her impression that our parish feels “spiritually alive” (her words) now, and what an amazing testament to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit amongst us that is!
 
Our principal worship on Sundays must have something to do with that feeling, I think.  Since I came back from my vacation in July, it’s been a pleasure, a delight, and a privilege to move back into our time-honored liturgies with all of you.  Our Sunday morning gatherings have felt, to me, truly life-giving.  I hope that’s been y’all’s experience, as well.  And I truly hope that at least some of that feeling comes through in our livestream for everyone who participates in worship with us from afar.  In fact, aside from some technological issues that we’ve struggled with (the hearing aid loop suddenly not working & sound issues with the livestream, both of which I hope are now resolved), Sundays have been so good that I hate to bring it up, but Sundays are about to change a little bit.
 
On September 22, we return to our familiar two-service schedule:  a Rite I spoken service at 8:30 a.m., and a Rite II service with choir & music at 10:30 a.m.  That was the schedule we used prior to going to a single service at 9:30 this past June, as an experimental “summer schedule.”  The experiment, I think, has been overall a success.  A number of folks have gone out of their way to tell me how much they’ve appreciated seeing so many more people in the pews with them, not to mention reconnecting with long-time members of our congregation whom they had not seen for so long because they went to different services on Sundays.  On the other hand, a number of folks have shared with me that the summer schedule did bring some hardships, as well, and did prevent some folks from being able to attend worship in person.
 
This is a perennial tension in any parish ~ the attempt to find the “perfect” service time that works for every person in the parish and creates hardships for none.  I bring it up now for our parish because I want to invite you to notice what, if anything, changes as we go back to the two-service schedule:  notice how the services you attend feel.  Notice who’s there in the pews around you.  Try to see our church as though you were a stranger visiting All Saints for the first time.  How does it strike you to see how many pews are filled?  Or how many aren’t?  How does the liturgy of whichever service you attend speak to you as a long-time member of the parish?  How, on the other hand, would that same liturgy feel to a new visitor who just walked in off the street?
 
I invite you to reflect on these questions in part because the fall is a time when we’re likely to get more visitors coming to check us out than we might at other times of the year.  Because we are making (and need to make) a concerted effort to start growing our parish.  And because, as I mentioned before, we are in a real moment of spiritual alive-ness here!  We want to do everything we can to feed that energy and give the Holy Spirit as much to work with as we can.
 
So what I’m really inviting you to do is to hold on somewhat loosely to our “regular” service schedule, and let’s see how well it works moving forward.  There are all sorts of approaches to arranging services that we have not tried yet (or at least recently, since I’ve been here).  We’ll be on this two-service schedule for the foreseeable future ~ let’s go into it with a “let’s see how it works” frame of mind.  It may well be that by doubling our Sunday services, we’ll end up doubling our attendance at worship.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?
 
On that note, I’ll leave off with this reminder:  when studies have been done, the statistics have shown that when folks are asked what got them to start attending whatever church they attend, the most common answer is “A friend invited me to come.”  That’s the main reason, by an overwhelming margin.  So as we change to our Fall service times, don’t forget to invite people to come to church with you, to whichever service you’ll attend.  It will make a huge difference.
 
Thank you all ~ each of you ~ for everything you do to make All Saints the incredible spiritual community that it is.  Your faith is inspiring!  Now, in the words of the song that Anne and I once sang to you:  “Go tell somebody!” : )
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
We are gearing up for a most exciting Fall this year, my friends.  While our official kick-off date of 22 September might seem a tad late in the season to be beginning, things are already in motion “behind the scenes” that will make for a Fall program that should be not only interesting, uplifting, and meaningful, but also a whole lot of fun!
 
Up first, our ongoing Living Christianity: a How To program has already been up and running for many weeks now.  Currently, Karl Bjornerud is leading a wonderful exploration of meditation in the Christian tradition.  If you haven’t yet joined in to see what this program is all about, this series is a fantastic introduction and will run for two more sessions (on the 9th and 16th, as we’ll be closed for Labor Day).  And on 23 September, we’ll begin a new series:  Anglicanism 101, a class designed to be both an introduction to The Episcopal Church for newcomers and a refresher course in the basics of Anglican Christianity for all of us.  (The plan right now is to run this series twice a year going forward, once in Fall and once in Spring, since the same series will also serve as preparation for Confirmation.)  Make plans to join us, and bring ALL your questions!
 
Next, save the date of 11 October, when we will host a coffee-house style Artists’ Open Mic Night, the first of what we hope will be many more to come.  We’ll get the Palmer room all gussied up for the occasion, and artists both from the community and our congregation will be encouraged to sign up for a time slot to do your thing, whether that be singing an original song, reading or reciting of poem or short piece of prose, exhibiting your visual art, or even performing a dance.  Performances will run in five-minute time slots from 7 p.m. till 8, followed by a time for casual gathering and fellowship.  We’ve already got a couple of dedicated volunteers working hard to arrange the logistics for this event, but we could definitely use more help!  If you want to get involved, please contact Fr. Christopher asap!
 
Also in October is the annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service put on by the City Park area churches, and for which this year All Saints will be the host church!  It’s very exciting to have the opportunity to invite our brothers and sisters in Christ from the neighboring congregations into our parish home for an event that is always well-attended and deeply appreciated by the community.  More details will be published as the planning comes together for the event, so stay tuned!
 
Last thing ~ for now! ~ is a reminder of what our Senior Warden shared with us after the recent Vestry meeting:  we really want to celebrate our “namesake” feast of All Saints this year in a big way.  In fact, we’re working to put together a series of celebrations and services for All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day (and, of course, All Saints Sunday, as well) that will be rather like an Autumnal equivalent of Holy Week and the Triduum leading up to Easter in the Spring.  If you’ve got ideas for how we can make these celebrations truly special, please share your thoughts with the church office and/or with Fr. Christopher, because plans are being made even now.
 
Y’all.  Y’all!  This Fall is going to be a wonderful time to be part of this incredible faith community.  I can’t wait to celebrate our shared lives together in Christ with all of you.  Thank you for everything you all do to make All Saints what it is.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
Greetings, salutations, peace, and blessings!  I’m recently back from my vacation month, and I’m excited about everything that’s coming up for the Fall Program Year for 2024 here at All Saints!  But before we get to that, I must repeat in print the thanks that I’ve previously expressed verbally to all of you who stepped up and stepped in and gave your support to the lay-led services that offered such beautiful and meaningful worship at All Saints whilst I was away.  Y’all are awesome!
 
Indeed, just this past Sunday, we had a young person visit and worship with us.  She’s about to go off to college in New York and wanted to check out a number of different churches before she goes.  She filled out one of our visitor info cards, so I emailed her on Monday to thank her for visiting us.  She replied:  “Thank you so much for having me, it was a truly beautiful service and it opened my heart so much. I really do hope to come back at some point and join you all again, your community is so wonderful, the people that make it up are so kind.”
 
I’ve spoken repeatedly this year about what I have felt to be the Holy Spirit’s urging our church family towards a spiritual revival; from everything I’ve heard since returning (and from what I’ve seen of the livestream videos), and from what I’m seeing first-hand now that I’m back, I strongly suspect that such a revival is already well underway in this congregation!  I’m very much looking forward to seeing where the Spirit leads us this fall and beyond…
 
So, looking ahead:  Sunday, September 22, will be our official “kickoff” day for our Fall Program Year.  We will return to our two-service format for Sunday mornings:  8:30 a.m. Rite I spoken service and 10:30 a.m. Rite II with music & choir.  
 
We’ve got a number of new program ideas in the works to launch this fall, including the first installment of Anglicanism 101, a small series that will run twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring.   It will be a combination of an inquirers’ class, an introduction for newcomers to The Episcopal Church, and a wonderful “refresher” for lifelong Episcopalians who’d like to explore just why we do what we do the way that we do it.  Look for more details about that series in the very near future.
 
I’m also kicking around a few ideas for expanding our Wednesday evening Eucharist service.  For instance, we’ve got a number of musicians in our parish who’ve expressed some interest in helping to add music to our midweek worship ~ if you play and/or sing and would like to be part of a music team for Wednesday nights, please let me know.  Let’s be creative here.  Instruments and styles that you might not think of when you think of “church music” could just be perfect for this service.  Let’s talk about it!
 
But what I’d really like is for us to be able to offer a meal each Wednesday before worship.  For one thing, we’ve seen that whenever we’ve done so in the past, attendance at worship has doubled (or more).  For another thing, I believe this would be an excellent way to offer a church experience that would be meaningful and valuable to the communities around us, particularly the students at Lawrence.  What college student couldn’t use a free home-cooked meal once a week, guaranteed?
 
The catch, of course, is that I, myself, can barely “cook” a bowl of cold cereal, much less an actual meal.  So to make this idea happen, I’m going to need help from some folks who do actually know what they’re doing in the kitchen.  Ideally, we’d want to have a rota of cooks so that no one person would have to be “on” for more than one Wednesday every 4-6 weeks.  I know it’s a big ask, but it would be a ministry that could really help grow our parish community.  Please contact me with any questions, and let’s see if we can get this going!
 
Other surprises are also in the planning stages for this Fall Program Year, so stay tuned for more information to come.  And if you have ideas for what you’d like to see at All Saints, either this fall or in the coming year, please reach out and let’s talk.  As I said, I’m excited about where the Spirit is moving us ~ let’s go!
 
Peace & blessings,
Fr. C

My dear family in Christ,
 
By now, you’ve probably heard me plug our new Monday night offering, Living Christianity:  a How To, at least a couple of times.  But I’d like to use my newsletter column today to share with you what we’ve been doing so far in the first mini-course of this ongoing series.  For the past four sessions, we’ve been practicing a process of Theological Reflection that I first experienced back in the 2010s in the Education for Ministry program ~ EfM, for short.
 
EfM is a program administered by The School of Theology of the University of the South, Sewanee ~ my seminary alma mater ~ primarily for lay folks who seek a deeper knowledge of an engagement with their Christian faith, from an Episcopal perspective.  And Theological Reflection is a cornerstone of the EfM program.  Essentially, TR is a formal, structured process of asking “Where is God in this?” ~ whatever “this” might happen to be.  It is based on a few presumptions:  first and most important, that God is always trying to speak to us, at all times and in all places; second, that discernment, while always personal, often works best in the context of compassionate and loving Christian community; and third, that the connections between our individual experiences, our shared faith tradition, and the larger culture(s) in which we live are dynamic and interactive ~ that the different aspects of our lives exist in constant conversation with each other.  The structure of TR helps us both to tease apart and also to find the links between the various facets and categories of our lives and experiences.
 
Whew!  That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?  Well, for what it’s worth, it’s the kind of thing that makes much more sense after you do it a few times than it does just reading a description of it.  So, what exactly have we been doing these past few Mondays?  Well, we’ve been exploring what EfM calls the “microscope method” of Theological Reflection.  The process begins with a focal point ~ in this case, someone in the group volunteers to share the story of a personal experience they’ve had in the past.  (That’s a rule, actually:  present situations that are unresolved and/or ongoing are not allowed for TRs; TR is not therapy, and it’s not designed for folks to work out their problems in the present.  So the incident offered for reflection has to be in the past, something that’s over and done with.)
 
The volunteer briefly tells the story of that single experience.  The rest of the group may then ask questions for clarification of details ~ just the “journalism questions,” at this point:  who, what, when, where, and how.  We deliberately hold off from letting ourselves ask what it all meant or trying to interpret the incident in a larger way.  After any needed clarifying, we then as a group look more closely at the incident to identify the moment of “highest energy,” the point in the story that is the most intense, compelling, or interesting.  That, of course, is subjective, but it’s usually not too hard to come to a consensus.  Once we do, that single, individual moment out of the original story becomes the focal point for our TR ~ that’s the bit that we put “under the microscope,” so to speak.
 
Having identified that one moment to focus on, we go back to the original volunteer and ask, “In that specific moment, what were your thoughts and your feelings?”  And we list them, separately, on the chalkboard.  It’s sometimes tricky to separate thoughts from feelings, but it’s important, because from the lists of thoughts and feelings, we then turn to the other members of the group and ask:  “Can you think of a specific time in your life when you had those specific thoughts and those particular feelings?”  With that question, we move beyond the limits of one person’s individual experience and start to make more universal connections.
 
Once we’ve had a few minutes to share our own experiences of the thoughts and feelings at hand, we then work together to create an image or metaphor ~ completely independent of anyone’s individual experiences ~ that captures and expresses the thoughts and feelings that we’ve all just connected with.  At this point, the hapless facilitator is tasked with, um, attempted to draw said image or metaphor on the chalkboard … whether or not he has any artistic ability whatsoever.  Er.  (A bit of laughter often ensues.)
 
For the rest of the TR, we explore the world of the metaphor we’ve come up with.  In particular, we examine it in term of Creation (life & existence), Sin (destruction & disharmony); Judgment (epiphany & realization); Repentance (change); and Reconciliation (restoration, healing, new life, &c.).  It’s in this step that we learn and practice the art of seeing our worlds and us, ourselves, in and through the archetypes of the Christian paradigm.  And while this step often results in keen and even surprising insights, I think its real value is in training ourselves, through practice and repetition, to understand and know that all stories are part and parcel of THE story, the story of God’s self-sacrificial love for us made incarnate in Jesus Christ and revealed through the Holy Spirit.
 
But we don’t stop even there!  The last portion of the TR calls us to examine the story of the metaphor through four distinct lenses:  the tradition, the larger culture, our individual experiences & actions, and our abstract positions or beliefs.  We ask, “What does the 2,000 year old Christian faith tradition say about the world of this metaphor?”  The answers could be lines of Scripture, verses from hymns, bits of liturgy, even particular doctrines.  We ask the same question of the larger culture/society in which we live ~ what does it tell us about the world of the metaphor?  It’s really interesting to see the ways in which the tradition and the culture agree … or contradict each other.  We go back and reconnect with our individual personal experiences, both the original focal point and other incidents that have come to mind throughout the process.  And lastly, we consider whether, through this reflection, any of us has identified a position, belief, or conviction related to the world of the metaphor.
 
It’s important to know that, especially with that last step, the purpose is not to generate some sort of broad consensus that we all share.  Often, one person’s “I believe that…” statement with be diametrically opposed to that of another group member.  And that is OKAY!  Again, the purpose is not to agree; the purpose is to discover!
 
As you can see, it’s a somewhat involved process, but done faithfully (and with a good sense of humor), it bears much fruit.  It has been thus far an absolute delight getting to share this practice with our Monday night group.  We have a lot of fun along the way, even as we’re doing some serious and faithful reflecting.  If you have not yet had a chance to come check it out, fear not ~ we’ll be sticking with Theological Reflection for a few more weeks, at least.  We’ll do so partly because we’re having such a great time with it, but also because it’s a practice that offers a stellar foundation for Christian living in general.  In addition, I think that after each mini-course we do for this program, coming back to TR afterwards will be a great way to stitch together all of the various things I’m planning for us to explore.  Say we do a mini-series on Anglican prayer beads; after practicing that for several weeks, we might do a TR on our experiences of using the prayer beads.
 
Pursued faithfully, Theological Reflection becomes a way of living our Christian faith, even in the seemingly mundane day-to-day details of our ordinary lives.  We eventually begin to perceive that, in fact, there’s no such thing as ordinary, that each of us individually and all of us together are extraordinary, miraculous, exquisite creations of an amazing and loving God.
 
So come check it out if you get the chance ~ Mondays at 6:30.  Hope to see y’all soon!
 
Peace & blessings,
Fr. C

My dear family in Christ,
 
Recently, I re-shared on one of my social media accounts a quote from a colleague and fellow Sewanee alum, the Rev. Boyd Evans, that I thought particularly relevant to the state of the Christian faith in our American culture.  To my surprise (and it’s always at least a little to my surprise to discover that every single person on Earth does not in fact see every single thing exactly the same way I do), my sharing of Fr. Evans’s quote led to a bit of controversy in the comments section.  Some compelling and interesting points were raised by some good friends who took issue with the quotation, and that indicates to me that there’s some good “faith talk” to be had in exploring these ideas.
 
Here’s the quote from Fr. Evans:
 
“Christianity was never about individual salvation.  It is well past time for us to get over this notion.  If you don’t believe that your salvation is bound up with your neighbor’s, you have entirely missed Jesus[’s] message.”
 
Now, we’ve talked in a number of different sermons, as well as in our Zoom Bible study and Faith Talk sessions, about the communal nature of the cultures in which both Testaments of Holy Scripture came to be produced.  Both the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Greeks put family and community first, and the individual second (or third…).  That is, of course, painting with a broad brushstroke; there were exceptions, and “community/family first” was not an etched-in-stone, inviolable law.  But the fact remains that it was characteristic of both cultures that one discovered and understood one’s individual identity primarily in terms of one’s family and one’s community.  “Who I am” was a question answered in the context of “who are my people” ~ or, better yet, “to which people do I belong?”
 
To be sure, the ancient Hebrews understood things like justice in communal terms:  if one individual in my community is the victim of injustice, then my whole community does not have justice, and I, as a member of that community, am likewise a victim of that injustice.  The Greeks, as well, placed emphasis on community, as can be seen in the philosophies of, for example, Socrates as recorded by Plato.
 
From such cultural perspectives, the notion that salvation could be something to which an individual could attain, regardless of the state or status of that person’s family or community (i.e., his or her “people”), would have been nonsensical.  And yet, in so much of contemporary American Christianity, that does seem to be the way the concept of salvation is presented, is understood, is ~ to a real extent ~ practiced.  We tend to commodify salvation, to turn it into a product or service that one person can possess or access without regard for or connection to anybody else.  “I am saved; as for the person next to me, who can say?  That’s up to God, and anyway, it’s none of my business” seems to be the popular understanding.
 
But a number of my friends took issue not only with Fr. Boyd’s quote, but with the kinds of explanation that I just mentioned, above.  One of them responded by asking, “So, individuals don’t matter, then?  Can God not save an individual?”  More than one person raised the concern about corporate culpability:  “Does that mean, if my family or my community is evil and unrepentant, I’m going to go to hell, even if I’m a good and faithful individual, myself?”
 
Personally, I didn’t see anything in the initial quotation to imply either of those meanings, but I have to admit that they are good, valid questions.  So, what do we do, then?  How do we respond?
 
Well, to clarify, I am not claiming, nor will I ever claim, that there is anything that God “can’t” do.  Full stop.  I don’t think the question here is about what God can or cannot do.  I think the question is, rather, about what it means to be human.
 
What I am saying, and what I believe Fr. Boyd is saying, is that we as human beings do not and cannot even really exist as individuals totally separate from other human beings. Our interconnectedness is not an abstract ideal to aspire towards, but rather a material fact of our present existence. In light of that fact, it’s simply not feasible to consider just my individual salvation one way or the other as if I existed in isolation in some sort of individual vacuum. It just doesn’t make any sense to think about salvation in such terms.
 
And it’s important to point that out emphatically because Western culture for centuries has elevated ~ really deified ~ the principle of individualism so much that it’s now gotten beyond the level of caricature. Western individualism has so distorted our subconscious conceptions and perceptions, of ourselves and of each other, that we’re often in active denial of the fact that we’re connected to each other at all.
 
And that’s a perspective that is so utterly alien to that of either Testament of Holy Scripture that our perspective actively prevents us from understanding the Bible accurately.  So again, it’s not about what God can or cannot do in terms of saving people. It’s that we in our culture are simply put unable to read the Bible correctly when left to our own cultural devices.
 
And that is dangerous, to be honest.
 
Likewise, it’s not “the group instead of the individual”; it’s that the individual is subsumed within the group, and the point of Jesus’s salvific atonement is the redemption and reconciliation of all humanity with (and within) God…
… whereas postmodern American Christians have a lamentable tendency to view salvation as we view every other “consumable” good in our culture, whether it be good, fashion, housing, education, etc.:  as a matter of individual benefit and/or privilege. I.e., “my salvation is my own, and as long as I’m saved, I might feel bad for someone else, but that between them and God, and in any event it ain’t none of my business, and it certainly ain’t my problem.”
 
If that is indeed how we look at salvation, even (especially) subconsciously, then I think we’ll have a devil of a time (that phrase chosen very deliberately!) actually grasping what Jesus it teaching us, and what He’s calling us to move toward and live into.
 
The other thing I think we need to consider is that “bound up with” and “depends upon” are not the same thing, just to clarify further.  To say that our individual salvation is bound up with our fellow human beings is not at all to say or to imply that our individual salvation depends upon any other human being.  The only One on whom our salvation depends is Jesus. But that same Jesus doesn’t allow us to imagine our own salvation in isolation apart from our fellow human beings.
 
Perhaps that is one of the greatest Mysteries of the faith ~ namely, that Jesus Christ did absolutely and in actual fact go to the Cross and sacrifice His life for me, lone me, an individual sinner, in an intensely intimate and personal fashion … and that is exactly what He did for every other individual, and also exactly how He effected Atonement for all humanity and indeed all of Creation at the same time.
 
Maybe we cannot really understand it fully as limited, individual human beings.  Maybe all we can truly, authentically do in the face of such a magnitude of grace is to shout ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!
 
Happy Easter, y’all!
 
Fr. C

My dear family in Christ,
 
Alleluia!  He is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
We are now well into the great Fifty Days of Easter, and despite some fits and starts (and stops, and restarts), it appears, at least as of today, that we might even be on the verge of Spring.  Alleluia, indeed!
 
In the previous column, we considered the shape the disciples were in when the risen Jesus Christ appeared to them after the devastation of the crucifixion.  In particular, we looked at their need for recover and healing before they could take up their new vocation as apostles.  I mentioned that there were two stories from Scripture that have been on my mind of late:  the first was from John’s Gospel, the story of the man by the pool of Beth-zatha whom Jesus asked, “Do you want to be made well?”; the second, our subject for this column, is from the Second Book of Kings,  the story of Naaman of Aram and his encounter with Elisha the Prophet.
 
“Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from a skin disease. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, ‘Go, then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’
 
“He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his skin disease.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his skin disease? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’
 
“But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” (2 Kings 5:1-14)
 
This passage offers a contrast to the one from John’s Gospel.  Unlike the man at the pool of Beth-zatha, Naaman is not physically hindered or prevented from accessing the healing he seeks.  Indeed, he is not only given permission from his king to go to a foreign country to be healed, but he is also given a royal letter to give to the king of that foreign country, formally requesting that he be healed.  In view of the length of his journey and the size of the retinue he brings with him, Naaman does not need to be asked whether he wishes to be made well.  He is not in despair or on the brink of giving up.  In fact, circumstances seem to be conspiring in his favor:  the Prophet Elisha himself actually sends for Naaman to come see him so that he may be healed (and so he will “learn that there is a prophet in Israel”).
 
No, Naaman has a different problem.  His difficulty is not gaining access to healing; his difficulty is trust.  When Elisha tells him ~ indirectly, through his servant ~ simply to go to the Jordan River and wash seven times, Naaman cannot accept it.  But his reaction goes beyond mere disbelief … he gets angry.  In his anger, he inadvertently reveals what is keeping him from trusting Elisha. 
 
He first rants that he had thought that, for him, the prophet himself would have come out to do the healing himself.  After all, Naaman was an Important Person, the commander of the army of Aram, in Israel with the blessing of his king.  And Elisha doesn’t even deign to come out of the house, but sends a messenger, a servant, to tell Naaman what to do?  How insulting!
 
Furthermore, he’s astonished that the prescription is just to dip into the Jordan a few times.  There are rivers in Aram that are perfectly good ~ far better, in fact, than any in Israel!  Why should he have had to come all this way when he could have just as well gone swimming at home (in those better rivers)?  And how could something so simply and easy possibly cure such a serious illness as his?
 
So it’s not just a lack of trust, and it’s not just disbelief.  It’s also ego.  It’s also pride.  Elisha has not shown him the deference that Naaman believes he’s due.  Nor has Elisha taken his illness as seriously as Naaman thinks the prophet should have; if he had, he would have prescribed a more intricate and demanding ritual to make him clean.
 
But that’s not how healing works.  To seek healing is to be called to a place of humility.  It is to put our trust, to put ourselves, into the hands of another.  It is to relinquish our illusions of being in control.  And when the healing we seek is to come from God, it is to accept that we are no more (or less) important than anyone else.  Interesting, then, that it is Naaman’s servants and underlings who manage to convince him to go back and trust the prophet, to humble himself and submit to the instructions Elisha gave him.  Naaman does so and is healed.
 
The man at the pool of Beth-zatha was neither prideful nor arrogant.  The obstacles that had kept him from receiving healing were different than those of Naaman.  But the two figures do share something in common:  the healing they each experienced came to them in forms that neither man had imagined.  At Beth-zatha, Jesus healed the man without his putting so much as a toe into the healing waters that he’d been trying to reach forever.  Naaman expected Elisha to come out and make a show of calling on the name of God and placing his prophetic hand upon the wound to heal it.  For the man who could not walk, simply standing up seemed a preposterous notion, as merely dunking himself a few times in the Jordan did to Naaman.
 
Can we, today, find a way to accept that the healing God has in store for us will come to us in ways and shapes and forms and experiences that seem equally preposterous?  Could we go beyond merely accepting that?  Could we perhaps learn to expect it?
 
My dear friends, I think we should expect it!  We are here because we are followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  All of Scripture, and the whole history of the faith, demonstrates again and again that God’s people must expect two things:  1) God’s gonna show up in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected times, and in the most unexpected ways; and 2) God’s gonna keep God’s promises, no matter how preposterous or crazy or impossible that may seem to us. 
 
We’ve been through a lot as a parish these past four years and change, and y’all had already been through a lot when I first got here.  We need some healing.  Let us seek healing with the diligence of Naaman, and let us respond to Jesus with the faith of the man at Beth-zatha.  And let us continue to expect God to show up, right here, and do great things!
 
Peace & blessings,
C+