giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly,

to see the very ground of our being.

~ Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

             I don’t know exactly when it happened. I do know that, despite all the challenges and differences it brings, I love “doing” and being church via Zoom.

         Maybe it happened when Ruth began to join us for our 10 am Zoom worship on Sunday mornings. With help from Ann-Marie and Ruth’s daughter Angela, Ruth now CALLS IN on Sundays. We can’t see Ruth, but her voice always cheers us up. We continue to pray for her husband Chuck, in hospice, who, thankfully, is home with her.

             Maybe it was when Sam bought a new speaker for his computer so he and his mother Mary Beth - our oldest “couple” - could hear us better every Sunday morning for worship and every Wednesday noon for Bible study. Whether it’s via Zoom or in person, Sam and Mary Beth ALWAYS come to EVERYTHING Holy Trinity offers.

               Maybe it was when Jamie and Tim - our youngest couple - Zoomed in with us one Sunday morning, as they do. This time, we noticed something different: they were not in their home. They were joining us FROM THEIR BICYCLES, amidst sunshine and sunflowers. They wanted to be with us, no matter where they were.

             Or maybe it was when Ty, our organist and administrator, said he would be glad to help Tommy, our “senior” Zoom host, make Sunday mornings MORE MUSICAL. Ty finds music videos that Tommy can “screen share” with all of us. We can’t sing in ways we used to, but that version of “Joy to the World” sure did jazz up our Christmas Eve!

               Maybe you can tell how “jazzed” I am about all the ways we keep on staying connected, through this COVID Christmas season and into the New Year we long to see. 2021 will definitely be different from last year, but we do not yet know how. Some say good riddance to 2020. I hear and share that feeling. I am also feeling some gratitude.

               2020 was the year in which Holy Trinity proved, once again, that God is not finished with us yet. We are still, as the little introductory video we made for this year’s Diocesan Convention put it, “alive and KICKING!” While we prepare for Bishop Phoebe to make her annual visitation - this year, it’s online: January 24th - let’s keep kicking!

               The 2021 winter will “clear the landscape.” Meanwhile, we keep being given the opportunity to see ourselves and each other, albeit virtually, more and more clearly. May Parker Palmer’s wisdom be especially true for Holy Trinity in this brand, new year.

Love in Christ,

Tom+

CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS Mark 1:1-8 

December 6, 2020 

Have you ever had a brush with greatness? A moment when you got on the same plane, train, or elevator with someone famous? Or you wrote to a celebrity and she wrote back to you? Maybe you’ve been taken backstage to meet your American Idol. For me, it was the night an entire orchestra backed me up. The church I served as an associate had a large choir and an ambitious music director. One day, the music director decided to go for it: we would perform Handel’s Messiah that December. He set up the rehearsals, assembled the orchestra, and chose soloists, including a tenor. Me. Finally, the big night arrived. Those familiar with Messiah know it begins with a brief orchestral introduction, followed by two tenor solos. The music is set to a bold declaration, using the words from our Scriptures today. The first solo begins: Comfort ye. And the second one starts: Every valley... In the middle of those two verses there is this one, found both in our first reading from Isaiah and in Mark’s account of the Gospel: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness...prepare ye the way of the Lord...make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Those are dramatic words, sung with an equally dramatic orchestral backdrop. Because Handel began his Messiah that way, I got to sing first, before anyone else. I was in my own heaven on earth, brushing with classical greatness! John the Baptist had his own brush with greatness. He came, Mark’s Gospel tells us, to “prepare the way of the Lord.” His proclamation was about “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:3-4). This was not a popular proclamation. Nevertheless, people lined up from all over, ready to confess their sins and be baptized. Four weeks from today, on what is called the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, the last part of today’s Gospel text will be read again. On that Sunday, the next three verses of Mark’s first chapter will be added. They describe a dramatic moment when God’s Spirit descends like a dove on Jesus, at his baptism. Now, there’s the greatness of God! But today, before we observe the birth of Jesus, before his baptism, there is only John. He claims no greatness. He is, in fact, a servant of God, sent to prepare the way for the One who “is more powerful,” whose sandals, John says, he is “not worthy to stoop down and untie.” “I have baptized you with water,” John concludes, “but (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (1:7-8). “And with fire,” Matthew adds in his version of this Gospel text. Even though he never saw himself as great, John was, in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, a fire-in-the-belly wild man, preaching up a storm. He sees the world as so far gone, only a divine intervention can put things right. Sounds like the kind of story we need to hear today.

Now, most preachers in the Episcopal Church are not known for their fire, their greatness. That may be why, when we were first getting to know each other, my wife, a birthright Baptist and something of a teacher of preaching, put things in perspective for me. “Remember, Tom,” Eyleen said, “it’s John the Baptist, not John the Episcopalian.” In the AdventWord meditation you will receive in your e-mailbox later today, a Hugo Oliaz, an Argentinian American Episcopalian, writes: “Prophets not only ‘build and plant’ with their words, but they also ‘destroy and overthrow’ (1:10). This might help explain why the most typical image of a prophet is not that of a sweet teacher soothing people’s hearts. A prophet is, above all, someone who courageously - and sometimes, harshly - says things people may not want to hear.” Oliaz goes on to tell a story about our former Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. She once traveled to the Dominican Republic, and delivered a strong message, in imperfect Spanish, emphasizing the tremendous hardships that country’s decision to expatriate immigrant children would impose on their families. “On that day,” Oliaz proclaims, “I felt Bishop Schori was a true prophet.” These days I’m thinking about people like Katharine Jefferts Schori who have been prophets and preachers - for me, to me. I am clear about this: In my lifetime, I have never experienced the kind of prophetic voices crying in the wilderness - voices of prophecy, speaking God’s truth, preparing the way of the Lord - never have I heard voices cry out in God’s name quite like the voices of women. TIME magazine has an annual “Person of the Year” issue.

Three years ago they named and honored, as a group, women who had suffered sexual harassment and abuse, women who had been crying out in truth for justice, surviving what had been their own wilderness. “This reckoning,” the magazine went on to say, “appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. “Women have had it with bosses and co-workers, who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know boundaries exist,” the editors wrote. “They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women.” “These silence breakers,” TIME concluded, “have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and...their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results.”

Since then, hundreds of high-profile men in the entertainment business, men in the news media, men in schools, men in churches - not to mention men in politics - have been fired or forced to resign. The women who were recognized in 2017 are part of a movement that once had no formal name. It has one now, thanks to a survivor and activist named Tarana Burke. The movement is called #MeToo.

A few months after that issue was published, our current Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, and the President of the House of Deputies, Gay Jennings, issued an Ash Wednesday letter to the Episcopal Church, saying, “We must create contexts in which women can speak of their unspoken trauma, whether suffered within the church or elsewhere. And we must do more.” The prophets Isaiah and John speak to us today, speaking for God. And there are women who keep breaking their silence, women who are powerful prophets, crying out in the wilderness, preaching the need for repentance. I do not believe it is greatness they seek. I do believe they speak for God. I believe they speak of God’s greatness.

My “brush with greatness” didn’t last. As I move into the final chapters of my life, I know it’s high time for something else. It’s time - not to be a bystander, watching people suffer. It’s time to be what some call an “upstander.” It’s time to stand up. It’s also time for this preacher to shut up, to sit down, and to listen to people Jesus called “the least of these...members of (God’s) family” (Matthew 25:40). It’s time for me to sit down, even stoop down, like John the Baptist, in the presence of those who make Christ present to me. It’s time, as today’s Collect puts it, “to heed their warnings and forsake our sins.”

It’s time to prepare ourselves for the way of the Lord, 21st century style. In this season of Advent, while we prepare for Jesus to come, I believe we are waiting to have a brush with God’s greatness. While we wait for the coming of Christ at Christmas, we can look for and embrace Jesus among the least of those among us, the children, women, and men who are crying in the wilderness. We, too, can cry out, each and every one of us, because we are all waiting in a wilderness like none we’ve ever seen.

miss that it most of us miss it.

That’s probably because this is such a tempting story.

It is one of the most straightforward of all the New Testament’s accounts of

judgment;

and one of the most fun.

Here, judgment is connected to actively reaching out to those in need,

specifically to “the least of these,”

to those who are at the bottom,

those who are the most helpless and who have no other champions –

to those with no one else to care for them.

These are God’s favorites,

the ones God sees in a special way.

And it’s really clear that those who are condemned are not condemned for

doing bad things,

or for acting unjustly or cruelly.

Instead, they are condemned for the good they did not do.

You can’t sit out of the Christian moral life.

There’s just no way, by avoiding engagement,

to avoid judgment.

“Well, I never intentionally hurt anybody”

cuts no mustard at the Great Throne Judgment.

All of which can tempt just about any preacher to shout,

“So get out there and serve Jesus in your neighbor.

Do good and save your soul from the judgment of eternal fire all at the same

time.”

Which can make a heck of a sermon,

and one most church leaders aren’t opposed to preaching from time to time.

It’s good stuff.

But today let’s talk about what’s so sad in this story.

Notice that those who have been gathered up at the right hand of the Lord –

those who are called blessed of the father,

the ones we want to be –

have only one thing to say to Jesus.

They say,

“Lord, when?”

“When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food,

or thirsty and gave you something to drink?”

“When?”

That’s it; that’s all they have to say.

This is really sad because of all the loss,

and all the struggle, and all the pain that question implies.

These folks, the sheep,

the saved, the good guys,

they were right,

they did all of the correct things,

but they missed the greatest joy of it.

They missed seeing the Lord.

They overlooked the hidden presence of God in the faces of those they

served.

One of the reasons we have this parable may be to help us avoid that loss,

to remind us what reaching out and caring and serving can be about at the

level of greatest depth.

Because it’s very clear:

No matter how right you are,

no matter how much you serve the presence of Christ in others,

if you don’t pay special attention,

if you simply don’t look for the Lord Jesus in those you serve,

then, like the saved people in the parable,

you won’t see him.

And most of the joy is lost.

Most of the joy of doing good and being right and saving your soul from the

judgment of eternal fire all at the same time,

most of that joy, is lost.

After all, reaching out in love to the presence of Christ in others,

especially in both “the least of these”

and in those closest to us,

this is quite often a great big pain.

It takes a lot of time, and there’s almost never any indication that anything of

lasting benefit has happened.

What’s more, “the least of these” are usually at least partially responsible for

whatever problems and needs make them the least.

And most of the time they don’t look or act **or smell** the way we imagine

Jesus should.

Frequently, they aren’t very nice, and worse yet,

they seldom seem to appreciate whatever good we do try to do for them.

So, doing good, reaching out to feed, clothe, visit, heal and otherwise

minister to “the least of these”

tends to frustrate us,

and we tend to get burned,

and to get burned out.

And much the same sort of thing can happen when the ones we reach out to

are not some distant “them,”

but are, instead,

the people we live with and around,

the people closest to us.

One would think that actually serving Christ shouldn’t be as hard,

and as disheartening, as it often is.

But there we are.

After all, just because we’re doing something for religious reasons doesn’t

mean that, all by itself, whatever we’re doing will look or feel religious

or that it will effect us in a particularly religious way.

Cleaning the kitchen in the church,

or anywhere else for that matter,

is still cleaning a kitchen.

Being nice to a difficult person because you are convinced that Jesus wants

you to,

is still being nice to a difficult person.

Spending time or money or energy out of Christian conviction still means

that you no longer have that time or that money or that energy.

The Lord calls us to serve him,

in our neighbors, in our brothers and sisters,

in the least of these, and – often the most challenging –

in those closest to us.

That call is real;

there are no excuses.

But the Lord also calls us to see him in the face of our neighbors,

and of our brother and sister,

and – we can’t forget – in the least of these.

This is a spiritual call,

a call to discernment as much as it is a call to action and to service.

There’s not a secret or mysterious way to do this.

Here are two quick ideas:

First of all, in order to see the Lord, we have to look.

At the people around us.

Deliberately.

All of the time.

We need to constantly look as we remember what we are doing,

why we are doing it,

and what we hope to come from it.

We need look on purpose.

Second, if we want Jesus to show himself to us,

it can really help if we ask him to.

Sometimes we have to ask him a lot.

That’s one reason why reaching out to others in a way that is not wrapped in

prayer,

any act of ministry that is not consciously and deliberately offered to God

with the request to be shown how the Lord is in it,

while certainly not wasted effort,

is absolutely incomplete.

If our prayers during the day and about the day do not beg the Lord for a look

at his face,

or a glimpse at his Kingdom in all that is going on around us,

then we are cheating ourselves,

and living barely on the surface of a much deeper reality.

To try to live the life Christ calls us to live, without placing all of that in the

middle of some disciplined reflection, prayer, and study,

this is to risk missing the best part of it all.

It is to risk missing the presence and Word of Jesus that can transform a

mundane task into an opportunity for insight and for joy –

that can make doing the things we are called to do a path deeper into the

mystery of God’s life, and of our own.

This story of judgment is more than a call to serve.

It’s more than a call to be good,

and to do the right thing.

Sure, **it’s that**, but it’s much more.

It’s also a call to look, to notice,

to devote our days and our lives in the search for the face of God

in all that we do.

It’s a call, above all, to see.

Psalm 90:1-12                                                                                                  

             If you were a castaway on a desert island, what would you want to have with you, to keep you company? This question is asked on a radio program created by the BBC. More than 3,000 episodes have been broadcast since this program began in 1942. It’s called Desert Island Discs.

               Week by week, notable people are interviewed about their lives. They are asked to choose recordings - spoken word or music - that they would be sure to take along with them to that desert island. The challenge the BBC lays down? Pick just eight.

               I had forgotten about this radio program until I looked last week for one of my books on the Psalms. It was published twenty years ago by an English priest named Jim Cotter.   Psalms for a Pilgrim People contains that priest’s own version of all 150 Psalms, in which he re-writes them to be more “prayable.” He tries to take into account some contemporary realities and issues, while retaining the poetry and beauty of the originals.

         In the book’s introduction, Jim Cotter describes Desert Island Discs and invites the reader to do the same kind of exercise with the Psalms. Which are your “desert island Psalms”? Which eight Psalms would you take with you?

         Over the years he asked members of a number of church study groups to choose their desert island Psalms. “Again and again, the same psalms were chosen,” he says, “from among a group of thirty-seven....No one person’s list (of eight) ever included more than one psalm from outside that range of thirty-seven” (p. xiii). Today, we have prayed one of those thirty-seven: Psalm 91.

               I want to take some time with you this morning to look at the last verse. Actually, there are five more verses, but our lectionary stops at verse 12. Perhaps that’s because Psalm 90, verse 12, which was today’s Refrain, is a longtime favorite. It’s the desert island verse in this desert island Psalm. Here it is again: So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

               As I looked at our other lessons, I saw several references to the end times, what our Scriptures call “the day of the Lord.” “The day of the Lord is at hand,” proclaims the prophet Zephaniah. “The great day of the Lord is near...a full, terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth (1:7, 18).

               Today’s Epistle picks up that end-times theme: “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (I Thessalonians 5:2). And while our Gospel text doesn’t use the actual phrase “the day of the Lord,” the story St. Matthew has Jesus tell ends with: “As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25:30).

               You don’t need me to tell you that we live in times that can seem like, feel like, act like the end of the world, the day of the Lord. It’s hard to know what seems greater: all those deaths of so many people, or the denial of death by more than a few. There is darkness out there, and there is, if we are honest, darkness that wants to creep deep in here (hand on my heart).

               That’s why this verse - Psalm 90, verse 12 - speaks so deeply to me. With all the places to hear or see something of “the day of the Lord,” I now know, even more than before, that today is the only day I can count on being given to me. The words of poet Mary Oliver come to mind: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life? (“The Summer Day”).

         I want to do what is life-giving, today, this day, November 15th, 2020. If I am given another day to live, I want to do the same with the next one: tomorrow, November 16th. I want, I need to pay attention to my one wild and precious life. I need to number my days, and I need help doing that. That’s why the Psalmist, writing centuries before Jesus or you or I walked this earth, says we need to be taught. The Psalmist prays, Teach us to number our days. We will, our Prayer Boom reminds us, with God’s help.

               But how? How exactly do we number, count, or take stock of our days, this day, with God’s help? The second half of verse 12 gives us a clue: that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. For each Psalm, Jim Cotter wrote a new refrain. The refrain he wrote for Psalm 90 is: Amidst the confusions of time, may we hear eternity’s heartbeat.

             Friends, in our heart of hearts, there is wisdom, planted there by God. We just need to apply our hearts to the wisdom in our hearts, to listen to eternity’s heartbeat. Still, we need God’s help and all the other help we can find to get quiet enough to listen to the heartbeat of God within us.  

           Ira Progoff was a psychologist who created the Intensive Journal Method. He once suggested a way that might help us quietly consider how to number our days by applying the wisdom of our hearts. Whether or not you keep a journal, we can write these words: “This is a time in my life when....”. Then, we can fill in the blanks.

               Here are some blank-fillers that come to mind:

               This is a time in my life when...I need to pay more attention to my diet and to exercise more, so I can live as many days in as healthy a way as I possibly can.

               This is a time in my life when...I want to spend a little more time on the phone or in other physically distant ways with my friends and family.

               Here’s one of my personal favorites: This is a time in my life when...I’m just too old and cranky to put up with this crap! My friend who came up with this respons didn’t use the word crap, but you get my meaning.

               The children of Israel probably felt old and cranky when they first prayed Psalm 90. It was nearly a century since they had survived the destruction of their temple and their exile to Babylon. They had no ruler, they were short on food, and they worshiped in a makeshift way. And they had not even wandered yet, for decades, in the wilderness.

         Even their faithful leader, Moses, who may well have written this Psalm, did not live along enough to see the Promised Land. His life and witness helps us understand that, no matter how long we wander in our own wilderness, no matter how long we may feel exiled on some desert island, these songs about God, the Psalms can be of help.

               Psalm 90 tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the ancient Israelites could not possibly be as old as God is or as cranky as God sometimes seems to be. God was for them, God still is for us “from everlasting to everlasting” and for whom a “thousand years...are like a watch in the night.” God is God, and we are not. We are “like a dream...(whose) years come to an end like a sigh.”

               Indeed, the Psalmist prays, and, if we are honest, we will join that prayer, “the days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty” - or even a hundred and three! - “if we are strong.” Our prayer, along with the ancients and others who lived and died before us, is to admit just how short, compared to God, our life actually is, and then to count our days, starting with today.

               When a clergy friend told me about Ira Progoff’s sentence starter, the words that filled in the blank for me were these: This is a time in my life when...I need to remember to say “I love you” to all the beloveds in my life...and to God. The congregation of Holy Trinity is one of my beloveds. Today, the wisdom of my heart tells me I need to say “I love you” to all of you present for this service of worship and to those who are not with us but who read these words. I want, I need to say”I love you” before it’s too late.

               In Psalms for a Pilgrim People, Jim Cotter reimagines the word of Psalm 90, along with all the other, one hundred forty-nine Psalms. He renders the final verses of this desert island Psalm in these song-like words:

               (God), satisfy us in the morning with your lovingkindness,

               So we shall rejoice and be glad all the days of our life....

               (And) fill us with the Spirit of love.

               For in the evening of our days, when we come to be judged,

               we shall be known only by love, delivered only by love.

~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Vicar

fathermom1949@gmail.com

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

3745 Kimball Avenue

Memphis, TN 38111

holytrinityec.org

Matthew 5:1-12                                                                                                   

         Every Wednesday at noon, a few of us gather for our weekly Bible study via Zoom. Bible study was going on long before I came to be with y’all at Holy Trinity, but now, since March, it looks and feels different.

         We can’t give each other a handshake or a hug.   We can’t pass around treats or birthday cards to sign, like we used to do. We can’t greet our friends when they arrive or leave, at least not in the old, familiar ways.

         But we can still see each other and talk to each other. We can still choose some part of Holy Scripture and read it out loud and reflect on it. We can still say “hello” and greet one another when our friends enter our virtual time together. We can still pray with each other before we go. We can still say our goodbyes.

               Jesus was saying “hello” to his friends and the crowds in our reading today from the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. He had just begun his public ministry, picking up where John the Baptist had left off. The first four disciples - Peter, Andrew, James, and John - had just left their lives as fishermen to follow him.

         Then, as we just heard, Jesus sees the crowds, goes up on a mountain and begins to preach. According to Matthew his sermon will take up all of chapters five, six, and seven and will cover all his most difficult teachings. But before any of that Jesus talks about who God is. Not just a God who judges, Jesus preaches, but a God who blesses.

         On Wednesday I invited my fellow students of the Bible this question for reflection: Whether because of its presence or its absence in your life, which one of these blessings speaks most deeply to you today?

           Pick one, I said. I knew it might be hard to choose just one of those blessings to consider, when all of them can certainly speak to us. Blessed are the poor in spirit...the merciful...the persecuted. I wonder: which one would you choose? Honestly, how can you or I possibly choose just one blessing, one single blessing which we feel is so close to us or so very far away?

         I was asking my fellow students of the Scriptures to do something people have done for centuries. It’s called lectio divina, which means divine lesson. In this ancient practice, it is - or can be - the lesson God wants you to learn more about.

         Here’s how it works: choose a word, a phrase, or something else in the reading that speaks personally to you. That lectio is a lesson for today - perhaps even a lesson for a lifetime. That lesson may be one you choose because it’s very present in your life these days - or so absent, you long for it. Where, oh, where is the mercy I need? That lectio, that lesson may also be one that, somehow, chooses you, whether you like it or not.

         The day after I was ordained priest, I did not preach at my first Eucharist. Presiding at the altar, offering God’s blessing over the bread and wine, was enough for me, and so I asked another priest, who was my spiritual guide, to preach.

         In her sermon Elizabeth mentioned a popular commercial that had borrowed Carly Simon’s song, “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain.” When you don’t have time for pain, the announcer said in that commercial, take Excedrin. “Tom,” Elizabeth proclaimed, “as a priest, you must make time for the pain.”

         Her advice has stayed with me through the years, so much so that even now, 34 years later, the Beatitude that speaks to me most deeply, the one I choose because it keeps choosing me, is “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” When it hurts, when there is pain, it almost always has something to do with a loss or losses, a grief, maybe even a death, whether it be the literal death of someone you loved, or a symbolic death—like the death of a cherished dream. When life hurts like hell, there is some kind of mourning I need to do, some kind of comfort I need.

         But these days, who wants to make time for the pain, the loss, the grief, let alone the death? In the age of COVID-19, with so many dying from this dread disease; at a time when family and friends cannot be certain they will be able even to greet their suffering beloved ones in person with “hello” or “goodbye”; in a global season of what some ancient spiritual guides named a “dark night of the soul,” a time when we can’t even sing together! - who can possibly bear to make time for the mourning? Where’s the comfort, the blessing in that?

               Of all the spiritual guides in my life since my ordination, no one has been more helpful than Catholic nun, Joyce Rupp, known globally for her work as a writer, retreat leader and speaker. She also served as a hospice volunteer. Years ago I discovered her book Praying Our Goodbyes: A Spiritual Companion Through Life’s Losses and Sorrows. I have returned to it time and again for insight and wisdom - and for comfort. In that book she helps me remember and reflect on the life of Jesus, who, as Isaiah put it, was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (53:3).

               Joyce Rupp’s own journey with life’s losses began with the drowning death of her younger brother, Dave. She was only 25 years old. That was when the painful truth of how hard it is to say goodbye, she says, “started to take root...and take hold in my (her) heart” (p. xii). Praying Our Goodbyes is the book that grew out of that tragedy. For more than thirty years it has comforted people in grief who are mourning all kinds of events or experiences in which a deep sense of loss is felt. Instead of running from our goodbyes, instead of just saying them, says this wise nun, we need to pray them. We need to pray our goodbyes. After all, “goodbye” is short for “God be with ye.”

               In the chapter called “The Ache of Autumn in Us,” Joyce Rupp writes: “There is an existential loneliness that permeates every human spirit, a kind of unnamed pain inside, deep within us, a restlessness, an anxiety, a sense of ‘all aloneness’ that calls out to us....a persistent (ache, a) longing in us...It happens because we are human. It is as strongly present in us as autumn is present in the cycle of the seasons.” She continues:

               “I believe this ache is within us because we are composed of both physical and spiritual dimensions. Our body belongs to the earth but our spirit does not....No matter how good the ‘good earth’ is, there is always a part of us that is yearning, longing, quietly crying out for the true homeland where life is no longer difficult or unfair” (pp. 7-8).

             I do not need to tell you this, but sometimes it helps to state the obvious: Life in this way-too-long season of coronavirus is difficult, even dangerous and deadly. It is unpredictable, unrelenting, unfair. And exhausting. We are all well acquainted with “pandemic fatigue.” (Not to mention our election fatigue!) No wonder the phrase from the Psalms “How long, O Lord?” comes to mind. “How long,” the Psalmist prayed, “shall I have perplexity in my mind, and grief in my heart, day after day?” (13:2)

               Today is All Saints’ Day, when we remember all the saints who now rest from their labors, those who are now in the eternal care of God, including all those especially dear to us. We claim they are not just reminders of a faithful life well lived. They, along with us, are part of a “mystic, sweet communion,” as one hymn puts it. We Christians say we have come to believe there is, in that mystical body of Christ, an intercommunion of the living and the dead.

             Let us be certain to pray on this Feast of All Saints for all the saints of our lives, especially those who have died since last All Saints Day. Let us also remember those who have gone to God since COVID-19 came upon us. In our prayers for them and for their loved ones, in our prayers for those we love but see no longer, may we be comforted in our mourning.

             And when we simply cannot pray; when we just cannot make time for the pain, the grief, the loss; when we cannot seem to stand to live in a house of sadness or trauma or brokenness, not even for one more minute - we can be comforted.   In the midst of our mourning, we can ask and allow others to pray for us and on our behalf. Sometimes we can pray our goodbyes. Other times, we can ask others to pray them for us, certain that, as Joyce Rupp puts it, “God never leaves us during our winters of the heart” (p. 64).

         On this Feast of All Saints, while we mourn, let us make time to pray our goodbyes. And if, and when we cannot pray, let us allow others to pray our goodbyes for us.

~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Vicar

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

3745 Kimball Avenue

Memphis, TN 38111

holytrinityec.org

fathermom1949@gmail.com

           Monday morning I drove downtown, along Union Avenue, on my way to an in-person follow-up to the “telemedicine” version of my annual physical. It was time for my primary care physician and her healthcare team to check me out more thoroughly. I was glad to go, because I live with pre-existing conditions in a time of life and in the life of this world when I need to pay even more attention to my health, both body and soul.

         While driving there, I noticed, as I often do, the grand, old edifice of a church. Idlewild Presbyterian Church has long been a beacon of light, love, and life in Memphis, and I have spent some deeply meaningful time there over the years. So, I looked again fondly at their buildings. Then , I noticed a new banner. Idlewild’s banner said: Love thy neighbor, wear a mask.

         Usually I take Monday off. I try not to do any work on Mondays, including sermon preparation. This Monday, however, I peeked at the lessons for today. Both our Lesson from Leviticus and our Gospel text from Matthew have these exact same seven words: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Idlewild’s banner was and is right on time, for this preacher and for this time we all inhabit.

         In the midst of what may be the most challenging season of our lifetimes, Idlewild dares fly a banner that, for some, will cross the line from preaching the Gospel to meddling in partisan politics. But I’m with Idlewild. I believe today’s simple, ageless message - “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” - can take on a brand, new meaning for us - if we let it. If we are truly paying attention, “Love thy neighbor, wear a mask” can change our Christian lives.

         Let me say more. Perhaps you know that old expression: “Put your money where your mouth is.” I suggest that, all politics aside, loving our neighbor as ourself these days includes putting our mask where our mouth is.

         If we love our neighbors as much as we say and try to do, we will cover both our nose and our mouth when we come anywhere close to someone who is not in our immediate family or our “pod,” as they say these days. Otherwise, we may expose our neighbors to a deadly virus that wants to control way too much of our daily lives. We live in the midst of COVID-19, even if we don’t actually “have” it.

         “Mask up, Memphis!” proclaims a public service announcement. Of course, wearing a mask is not just a Memphis thing. Even national politicians need to put their mask where their mouth is. Take Chris Christie, for example. The former governor of New Jersey and one-time presidential candidate was infected with COVID-19 at a recent super-spreader event. In an article titled “I Should Have Worn a Mask,” he writes:

         “For seven months I was very careful about mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing. As someone with asthma, I knew I faced heightened risk. Then, at the Rose Garden nomination event for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and during debate preparations with President Trump, I let my guard down and left my mask off. I mistook the bubble of security around the president for a viral safe zone. I was wrong. There is no safe zone from this virus.” Christie ended up in the ICU and is now recovering. He goes on to say:

         “These minor inconveniences (like wearing masks) can save your life, your neighbors, and the economy. Seldom has so little been asked for so much benefit. Yet the message will be broadly heeded only if it is consistently and honestly delivered by the media, religious leaders, sports figures and public servants. Those in positions of authority have a duty to get the message out.”

         In that near-death experience, Governor Christie learned something more about freedom. One of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” he wrote that liberty (or freedom) means ‘doing as we like...as long as what we do does not harm them, even though they (may) think our conduct foolish...or wrong....” Do no harm. Right, beloved doctors in our midst? To put it more colloquially, my freedom does not include the freedom to get someone else sick.

         Dear friends in Christ, please forgive me and my rant. I know I really don’t have to tell you, the good people of Holy Trinity, about freedom. Neither do I need to tell you to mask up. You already do the appropriate things to stay healthy and free, in the best sense of those words. You’re already living into what is our new normal. You’ve already got that new-time religion, in a day and age when parts or all of us would love to sing, Gimme that old time religion.

         What I do want to talk about, for a little while longer, is what I think the rest of Jesus’ message - to love your neighbor as yourself - might be for us, in this time of trial, this season of terrible suffering and far too much death.   I don’t need to say any more about masking up. I want to talk with you for a few more minutes about taking off our masks, yours and mine. Allow me to recite once again those timeless words from today’s Gospel:

     A lawyer asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:35-40).

         As yourself. Love God, and love your neighbor. But love your neighbor as yourself. What does it mean to love yourself?

               Last Sunday I shared a story in my sermon. It was originally told by Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He writes about that story in his new book Walking the Way of Love. This book is one of the finest I’ve read in some time. Now, I’m a company man, a thoroughbred Episcopalian. But I believe Bishop Curry has been preaching, teaching and truly trying to live the Love Command - Love God, love your neighbor - for a long, long time. And I believe what he has to say about love holds something for everyone on the planet.

             At the 79th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, in July, 2018, Bishop Curry preached a sermon in which he referenced the life and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged for his association with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. His most famous book is The Cost of Discipleship.

               Two summers ago Bishop Curry preached at that Convention about another book of Bonhoeffer’s: Letters and Papers from Prison. In that sermon, our Presiding Bishop paraphrased something Bonhoeffer wrote in that book. Here it is: Throw yourself completely into the arms of God. Throw. Yourself. Completely into the arms of God.

         Bishop Curry puts it this way: “Take a deep breath and leap into intimate relationship with Jesus. Make his Way of Love...your own way of life...find a community of people who share that commitment. Then you can walk together and not grow so weary” (Walking the Way of Love, p. xi).

           Now, I know some people are just not ready to do that. I’ve been there! When we throw ourselves completely into God’s hands, we need to be sure that we have a safe place, a trustworthy community with whom we can do that, to be that open to love. And we need to feel brave enough to take that leap. I believe that, when it comes to love, we need to be ready, willing, and able to receive it and to give it.

             And yet, dear friends in Christ, today, together in our Zoom worship experience, we have an opportunity to do just that. You see, today, we are unmasked! Today, we’re a community of people who seek to share a commitment: to love God and one another. Today, we’re a weary people who walk together, virtually. And today, we are people who need the love of Jesus, who need to be in a relationship with Jesus, who need to take a leap, to throw ourselves into the arms of our living, loving, and life-giving God.

               When we do that, when we take that leap, we will not need our masks to love our neighbors or our God. When we take that leap, we’ll love ourselves. And when we love ourselves, we’ll be loving our neighbors and our God. May our God give us wisdom, grace, and courage to love like that, today and always. AMEN.

~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg

Vicar, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

3745 Kimball Ave.

Memphis, TN 38111

holytrinityec.org

fathermom1949@gmail.com

It has been my honor and privilege to be with you these past several months. Now, I share my final homily with you.

Two of our lectionary readings are about fairness. First Jonah. When I think about Jonah, I automatically go to my childhood Sunday School days and Jonah’s under sea voyage as he is swallowed into the belly of the whale, (although scripture say it is a large fish). And truthfully, this is an image of what I feel like we’re going through today, being in the belly of the whale and I am hoping to be spit back on the shore someday.

But there is ‘the rest of the story’ of Jonah. Our lesson is about the conversion of Nineveh and God’s mercy. In the verses preceding our reading we find that Jonah finally does what God has been telling him to do. He goes to Nineveh calling on the people to repent. And they do – the people donned sackcloth and fasted. When the king heard this, he declared that “all shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.” Jonah was not expecting this. When God saw their penitence, God changed his mind and did not bring disaster to the city.

And Jonah was not happy. It wasn’t fair that God just forgave these sinners. Jonah was furious, filled with self-righteous indignation, “I’m so angry, I’d rather die than live” he said. Jonah wanted retribution for the people of Nineveh. He wanted them to get what they deserved for all the sins they’ve committed. God then asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?

How many times have I been filled with self-righteous indignation over a wrong committed against me? I can understand Jonah’s want for retribution. How dare God offer forgiveness and grace instead? As the writer Debi Thomas says, “Isn’t it right to be angry that God’s grace is so reckless and wasteful, it challenges our most cherished assumptions about justice? Theologian Richard Rohr calls this type of forgiveness “restorative justice” as opposed to retribution and the penal system that we are so used to today.

The truth is that even the people of Nineveh are God’s children, they are made in the image of God just as Jonah. Just as we are, you and me as well as our enemies. Like Jonah, sometimes it is difficult for me, dare I say us, to see our sins and that we are living wholly by the mercy of God. Jonah does not understand the mystery of God’s mercy and if I’m honest, neither do I. Just as God asked Jonah, I have to ask myself, “Is it right for you, Debbie, to be angry?”

Speaking of anger and grumbling, we move to the New Testament reading which offers another understanding of fairness. The familiar parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.

The landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. There is an agreement between them for the usual daily wage, a denarius. Later, about 9:00 he goes out and finds others and tells them to go into the vineyard and he will pay them what is right, no agreement, no haggling over pay. Several more times, (about every three hours), he goes out and does the same, sending more workers into the vineyard. Finely, around 5:00 he went out and found others standing around. “Why are you standing here idle all day? They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He too sent them to the vineyard to work. Mind you, they did not say they did not want to work, but that no one has hired them.

At the end of the workday, the landowner has his manager bring the laborers in to pay them. Herein lies the rub. Those whom he hired last are brought forward first and paid the usual daily wage, a denarius; remember they were told they would be paid what is right, no set amount. Lastly the early laborers are brought forth and having seen what has gone on with the late comers are thinking, oh boy, I’m going to get extra, I showed up early and have been here all day. But they do not. They get the denarius that was agreed upon that morning. And they were not happy. It was not fair! But the landowner says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

Several scholars see this parable as the right to work and an economic truth. It was the custom for the laborer to come into the village looking for work. Notice the workers who were hired last did not say, ‘we do not want to work’, they said, “no one has hired us”. Why is that? Maybe they had to walk farther, were not as skilled, didn’t speak the language and had greater challenges that those who could arrive early. They did not haggle over the pay, they just wanted to work. I think landowner knew that. He also knew that a denarius was a just wage for a day’s work at the time. Obtaining work and earning a fair wage meant the difference between feeding your family or going home to a hungry family.

Remember, Jesus, the carpenter, was a working man. I imagine him going into the village of Nazareth seeking work. He had a mother and younger siblings to support. He knew the difficulties and realities of making a living.

The writer, William Barclay, offers another point; it could also be a lesson about timing. It could be that those who come to God early in their life are no more loved than those who become a Christian “till the shadows are falling on his life.” God’s love makes no distinction, whether you come at the beginning of your life, or the end, or somewhere in between. The unbounding and unmerited gift of God’s generous love is there.

Unfortunately, I can see a little of myself in this vineyard story. I follow the rules, show up on time and do my work. It is fair that I get my full share. But as I have gotten older, I know there is more to the story and things are not always as they appear. Not everyone has the same privilege as I have had and continue to have in order to have make a decent living.

As Debi Thomas states, “I’ll be blunt: these two stories about fairness and justice are for us. Stories for right now. Stories for the times we live in.” and I agree. I am, we are, the beneficiary of God’s abundant justice – of God’s generous love and grace. Why are some of us, especially those in power and power comes in many forms, so willing to deny it to others; the “other” that we want to ostracize, those different from us whether based on skin color, ethnicity or nationality; to vilify and lock up instead of rehabilitate; to mock and scorn anyone who is different; unwilling to care for our earth and her resources; unwilling to care for each other in this pandemic?

We are on this planet together. We need each other. We are dependent on each other. But what if what is “fair” for me is not good for you or others? We must re-examine our narrow notion of fairness and realize everyone - everyone has worth and is worthy of dignity and has a place at the table. We need to be building longer tables, not higher walls. How will I, how will we, work to create a more just and fair society for all. How will we show God’s generosity to others?

We cannot talk about justice without remembering Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I leave you with the Facebook post by Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry

11 hrs  · 

He starts with a quote, “The late John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said, “while on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

The he goes on to say “The sacred cause of liberty and justice, dignity and equality decreed by God and meant for all has been advanced because while on earth Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made God’s work her own. Because of her the ancient words of the prophet Micah to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God have found fulfillment. May we follow in her footprints. May she rest in the arms of the God who is love and the author of true justice.

Rest In Peace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shalom.”

I reiterate how will we advance the cause of liberty and justice, dignity and equality for all?

Amen.