 By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
This Sunday we begin the Season of Creation, and in particular, we celebrate the Feast of Creation. During this season, which runs from September 1 - October 4, we will join with Christians around the world to celebrate in prayer and action our Gospel calling to protect the Earth that God has entrusted into our care. The theme this year is To Hope and Act with Creation. At the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, we recognized that climate change is: “...an all-encompassing social crisis and moral emergency that impacts and interconnects every aspect of pastoral concern including health, poverty, employment, racism, social justice, and family life and that can only be addressed by a Great Work involving every sector of society, including the Church.”* Our church has recognized that the work of addressing climate change is not one of many things we are called to be doing, it is the work of the Church. In order to help us live into this reality, we need to continue growing in our theological understanding of God’s relationship with creation, in our communal worship and in private prayer. As we engage in this ongoing work of growing in faith and caring for creation, I want to share a new way of praying with the scriptures that I recently came across.** Dr Hilary Marlow, of the University of Cambridge, has encouraged folks to sit with the scriptures by considering an ecological trinity. The ecological trinity consists of God, non-human creation, and humanity. As we sit with a passage, she invites us to reflect on three questions:
Song of Solomon is often considered one of the most beautiful books within the holy scriptures.*** It is a story that boldly celebrates the passionate love between two people, employing stunning poetry to communicate their desire and longing for one another. Interestingly, God is never explicitly mentioned. Yet the abiding love that is in every single verse, is telling us a whole lot about the nature of God’s abiding love. The handful of verses we have today are a bit like watching a character in a play offer a soliloquy, speaking their thoughts aloud. They see their beloved in the distance and they are completely enamored. So as we sit with this text, the first question is: what understanding does it present of non-human creation? The speaker is drawing on every gorgeous inch of creation to convey just how much they are into their beloved - in body, mind, and spirit. This speaker describes their beloved as ‘leaping upon mountains, bounding over hills’, much like ‘a gazelle or young stag.’ The speaker goes on to celebrate the gift of springtime. From the gift of warmth and sunshine, in the absence of winter and rain; to the budding and fragrant flowers, the sound of bird calls, and the new life springing forth upon the fig tree. This speaker draws upon some of the very best sights, sounds, and smells of non-human creation to convey their love and desire for their partner. In doing so, the speaker is lifting up non-human creation as sacred, as one of the highest possible forms of good. The created world herself is recognized as an ultimate holy of holies. Shifting into our second question of the ecological trinity - what are the assumptions of the author about God’s relationship to the created world? While there is no explicit mention of God, there is an unspoken assumption from our author that God’s abiding love is the source of the created world. Not only the origin, but the ongoing, never ending source of abiding love. This intimate relationship between God and the created world lifts up God’s gift of creation as sacred, as the precious holy of holies. A gift the created world is meant to share and gently draw upon with intention, care, reverence, and love. Drawn upon in such a way that when we take from the created world, we barely leave any trace whatsoever, allowing the compound interest of love and the beauty of creation to continue to grow and grow. The final question in the ecological trinity is what effects do human actions have upon non-human creation in this text, and vice versa? In today’s text, humans have a deep reverence for non-human creation. They understand themselves as companions and students who revere creation, while also drawing upon creation’s wisdom and lived experience to convey their abiding love for one another. They consider humanity a very small piece of the created world, with no sense whatsoever that the created world is humanity’s to control or ours to consume. Rather humanity has the privilege of bearing witness to non-human creation and supporting the created world as a form of God’s incarnate holy of holies. Sitting with today’s text from Song of Solomon, through the lens of the ecological trinity, has prompted me to think a bit differently about Creation and Christ. With this lens, humanity understands the created world with such deep reverence, respect, and an enduring trust in creation’s capacity to hold God’s wisdom, truth, and abiding love. It recognizes that the created world, containing non-human creation and humanity, were birthed from God’s delight, joy, and ceaseless love. Affirming that the created world is the embodiment of God’s abiding love, and that the nature of God is love. Yet this understanding of God, has startling parallels to how we understand the incarnation, when God took on human flesh in the form of Christ. We regularly recognize that Christ was incarnate, that God took on human form to help humanity understand that the nature of God is love. Sometimes this act has even been talked about as though God hadn’t really tried to communicate this very effectively at first, and it was God’s chance at a do-over. I’ll admit, this never quite made sense to me. Why would God need a do-over? Instead, what if the Church were to fully embrace other teachings that have also floated around throughout the Church’s history. What if when God poured themself into the created world, bringing forth non-human creation and humanity, God marked the first of many, many, many, countless and never ending ways that God proclaimed their nature was, is, and always will be love. Meaning just as Christ is the incarnation, the embodiment of God’s love; the Created World is also incarnate, and the embodiment of God’s love. And God’s embodiment is an abiding, unstoppable, unconditional love that we have the great gift and pleasure of spending the rest of our lives trying to begin to grasp. As Christians, we largely are pretty faithful at revering Christ, at understanding his teachings and seeking to apply those teachings in our thoughts, words, and deeds. We know it’s not easy, but by choosing to walk in faith, we understand it’s a journey we will be on for the rest of our lives. That it’s not about perfection, it’s about presence. Yet I am not so sure we always have the same reverence for Creation, which if we believe Creation is God incarnate - why not? Sure, in theory we understand and appreciate God created the world out of love. But I wonder, do we embody that belief in the way we speak and think about God? Or in our actions and behaviors? Do we embrace the incarnational nature of God in Christ and Creation in the core values that shape and guide our lives? Wherever we may be on that journey, God is with us - quite literally - in every inch of the created world, non-human creation and humanity alike. We do not have to get everything right. Perfectionism is a lost cause - I encourage all of us (myself included) to let go of that ideal or any pressure we may receive from the outside world to do things perfectly. Instead, what if we focused on being present to God incarnate, both in Christ and in the Created World? As we prepare to head back into the world today, I invite us to do some wondering:
Readings - Proper 17, Year B RCL Song of Solomon 2:8-13 | Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10 | James 1:17-27 | Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Sources * https://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=2022-A088 ** https://www.salalandcedar.com/wildlectionary ***Information from this paragraph is taken from the Rt. Revd. Olivia Graham commentary at https://preachingforgodsworld.org/season-of-creation-week-one-2/
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 By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
Today is an exciting day for our faith community. We will be baptizing sweet Emmalina. Every baptism is an invitation for us to recall the meaning of this ritual, examine why we chose this life of faith, and to reflect on how we are living into our baptismal promises. Baptism is a ritual bath that welcomes one into Christ’s Church. Sometimes referred to as simply the Church (capital C); the body of Christ; the household of God; the Jesus Movement; or the Way of Love. It represents our unity with Christ in this life and in resurrection life; and is a reminder of God’s forgiveness and ceaseless love. Baptism is also an affirmation of the Holy Spirit’s place amongst us. She guides and sustain us as a faith community and in our personal walks of faith. Unfortunately, throughout the Church’s history, there has been some harmful theology around baptism. In particular, teachings about what happens if someone dies without being baptized. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the years, with folks who are anxious that a loved one, often a grandchild, is not baptized. Our family recently watched a pretty humorous depiction of this worry play out within a family on the show Young Sheldon. The parents were hounding their adult children to baptize their new granddaughter. When they finally became exasperated by their parents' relentless pushing, they informed their parents they would not be baptizing their little one. They didn’t practice the faiths they were raised in, and they wanted their daughter to make the choice for herself someday. Well, this answer did not fly with either grandmother. One was a devout Southern Baptist. She was terrified about what this might mean for her granddaughter’s soul. I think it’s fair to say she was equally terrified that the other grandmother, a practicing Roman Catholic, might convince the parents to baptize their daughter within the Roman Catholic church. In this comedy, even though Southern Baptists generally wait for baptism until adulthood, the pastor understood the grandmother’s sense of urgency. He actually agreed to a secret baptism in the family kitchen - a secret he and the grandmother were ready to take to the grave. Meanwhile, the following day, the Roman Catholic grandmother, encouraged her daughter to take some time to go buy herself something nice using her credit card, while she would take her granddaughter out for a walk in the stroller. Seems nice enough, right? Except it just so happened the Roman Catholic church was around the corner, and she stopped by for her own secret baptism. While these grandmothers were Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic, they could just as easily have been Episcopal and Methodist - the particular denominations are irrelevant to the story. Part of what made the unfolding dynamics so funny, was the stark reminder of our human capacity for catastrophizing and the lengths we will go to avoid exploring whether our fears hold any actual truth or not. It was irrelevant whether their granddaughter’s soul was actually in any kind of mortal danger, because like an alert for a tornado watch, these grandmothers could see the emergency that would soon unfold if they did not take action. The secret baptisms left both grandmothers feeling as though their granddaughter’s soul was saved, and maybe even more importantly baptized within the ‘right’ Christian denomination. Unfortunately, their comfort and peace of mind came at the cost of the autonomy of their adult children and granddaughter, as well as, the lack of a community promising to support this child on her faith journey. All the while perpetuating the harmful baptismal theology the institutional Church touted for centuries. Many of us were taught that should a child not be baptized, they would not get to experience resurrection life. But when we take a step back to examine how this teaching unfolded within the Church, it is helpful to remember that it arose from the institutional Church as it sought to ‘grow the church’ in numbers and resources, using fear as the motivaiton. These are the very behaviors and teachings that have left generations of folks questioning and rejecting the institutional Church. Every institution has its shadow side, and this is part of ours; as it does not reflect what we know about God’s nature throughout scripture. Scripture shows us, repeatedly, that our God is a God of transformative, unconditional love. Whether one has formally been marked in baptism, each and every person in this world is adopted, cherished, and loved by God. It can be hard to remember - about ourselves and others - but we are each beloved and beautiful children of God. And as we proclaim here each and every week - there is a place for all of us at God’s Table. No exceptions. Baptism is one of the many doorways or paths to God. At its best, baptism is an intentional act of love, a choice to walk this life in faith with the support of the community. A choice made in freedom, not to avoid an eternal ‘timeout’. The only real requirement or reason for baptism is a desire to be baptized. A desire to be part of this universal Church, that spans across time and space, and a desire to proclaim our intention to the world in thought, word, and deed. To say: I want to walk through this life with faith, hope, and love; to be a part of Christ’s Way of Love, that will help God’s dream for this world come into fruition; trusting in the knowledge that we are all children of God. And when infants are baptized, it is the parents or caregivers desire to raise their child this way. When we choose to baptize our child or to be baptized ourselves, we are choosing to acknowledge in a visible way, an inward truth of God’s grace. God’s grace that proclaims each and every person is a beloved and beautiful child of God. A truth that is there, with or without baptism, yet the act of the sacrament celebrates and lifts up this truth. The ritual bath and chrism oil symbolize it. The gathered community affirms God’s grace, the inherent goodness and worth of each and every person, while also promising to walk with the newly baptized in faith, now and always. Today, we baptize Emmalina. And her parents desire this sacrament for her for all the right reasons. We join them in celebrating the truth that Emmalina, and every child, is beloved and precious in God’s eyes. We wash and anoint her to make this truth visible, and to affirm her family’s choice to raise her to walk in the Way of Love with the support of her family, friends, and faith community. In a few minutes, we will all be invited to stand to reaffirm the promises of our baptism, what we refer to as the Baptismal Covenant. The Baptismal Covenant takes the shape of question and answer. We begin by affirming the Apostles’ Creed. The creed summarizes the basic teachings of our faith: that God created everything; that Jesus Christ lived; our faith in the Spirit, the universal Church, the communion of saints, that our sins are forgiven, and the promise of eternal life. Each of these three statements begins, I believe. In this instance, I believe, does not mean we are intellectually subscribing to something; rather it means, ‘I give my entire heart to this reality’. 1 We then make six specific promises, and these are big, bold, and beautiful ideals for us to strive to live into. We promise:
The only way we can really live into them is in the context of community, and by remembering the words we say when making these promises: I will, with God’s help. 2 Not I will; but, I will, with God’s help - which includes the help of our community. As we head back into the world later today, I wonder if we might explore:
 By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
Last Sunday’s gospel lesson featured a handful of verses from John 6, generally known as ‘the bread of life discourse’. Our lesson today picks up with the provocative statement Jesus made at the end of that discourse: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Or as it says in the Message translation: …“I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever. I have told you this explicitly because even though you have seen me in action, you don’t really believe me. Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. I came down from heaven not to follow my own agenda but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me (6:35-38).” Today’s passage dives into the implications of this claim. It can be helpful to remember who Jesus was speaking to in the crowd. Several disciples were present, many of whom would leave as a result of this discourse. Many more were his childhood neighbors, all of whom would have known him to be Mary and Joseph’s son. Jesus was a familiar face, a kid who grew up in the neighborhood, in a community where everyone knew one another’s business. Except now that kid has grown up. He is claiming to be divine; here to act as God’s agent in the world by teaching God’s Way of Love, and expecting folks to follow him on the Way. It probably would have been difficult to take him seriously. Especially given most folks would have taken his words literally, and imagined Jesus was promoting cannibalism. Awkward and not at all in keeping with their Jewish tradition. At best his kinder and non-judgmental neighbors would have been concerned about his overall health and wellbeing. While the more judgmental neighbors would have rolled their eyes at one another and said, “There goes Joseph’s son again, thinking he is God.” Deep sigh. That said, when we reflect on Jesus’ metaphor, it is incredibly spot on. In my own experience, the truth of this metaphor resonates more deeply each year. Here’s why. Jesus was speaking to folks who were intimately familiar with poverty and hunger, and were living in an empire where they had little to no power or say. They needed to be frugal with their meager food supply, and a bad harvest or moldy stores of grain could be disastrous for households. Their very real hunger and thirst instilled in them the need to be resourceful in finding ways to sustain themselves. We see this same kind of frugality and resourcefulness in many neighbors who make use of our community meals and essential’s pantry. Folks find a way to take a meal or two and stretch it across a few days or to feed multiple mouths. Hunger, poverty, and the resulting marginalization is still all too real, even in our own backyard. As a faith community, we have chosen to be aware of this deep rooted hunger that so many folks face, including our own parishioners. We have chosen to do our small part to ease that hunger by offering meals, essentials, and given the even greater gift of offering our respect and seeing each person’s dignity; remembering each person is made in the image and likeness of God. When Jesus tells the crowd then, and us today, that “I am the bread of life” he is offering us the liberating truth that we can and will be sustained in body, mind, and spirit by our life giving God. Many of us have experienced times when the money we had did not seem like it could possibly cover the essentials. In those moments, we pray for God to help us find a way forward, and somehow, things always come together in ways we never could have planned. To be clear - this does not mean prayer leads to magic money, the power of positive thinking, or easy answers. Prayer is the truth that when we rely on God, our prayers will be answered in one way or another. Often in surprising ways:
This is equally true when we shift from physical hunger to spiritual hunger. Since the very beginning of the Jesus Movement, communities of seekers and believers have gathered each week to worship God. Communities gather as a body in worship for several reasons:
In my own faith journey, it was the experience of receiving communion each week that hooked me into following Jesus and embracing the Episcopal Church. To this day, receiving communion continues to bring a peace and calm that sustains me, while also defying all logic. I mean, how could a stale, dissolvable wafer and some taylor tawny port sustain anyone through the challenges of this life? I don’t know how, but Christ is really present in this spiritual meal, and it is a truth Christians have discovered again and again and again. Yet it took living through covid for some of us to realize just how important it is to gather as a body of Christ. It turns out the communion we create when we gather as a worshiping community is just as essential for spiritual nourishment. Because following the Way of Love is not a solo pilgrimage through the wilderness. It is something that Christians have been doing together since the very beginning of the Jesus Movement. While I imagine none of this is news to those walking the Way of Love, it is helpful to to reflect on Jesus words’: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” His words are offered both as a fact and as an invitation. Where are we seeking out nourishment in our lives? We all have resources we tap into during times of challenge, hunger, and need. Yet instead of seeking nourishment through prayer and community worship, we often will seek nourishment any and everywhere else. In my own faith journey, even as an occupational pray-er, I will routinely seek sustenance in places that lack nourishment (hello, Netflix and BBC), before getting a loving memo from God that a life of faith means turning to God, not a screen. I embarrassingly share this because I imagine I’m not alone. There are so many other bright and shiny ways our world invites us to seek nourishment, when in reality, these ways tend to leave us feeling emptier and hungrier than we were in the first place. There are also seasons when we do seem to get it right, and remember to go to God first, but then somewhere along the way, not on purpose, we get distracted and start looking for our sustenance elsewhere. It’s a pretty human thing. God knows we are easily distracted, and that like our friend Peter, we are frequently a bit slow on the uptake. That’s why I hope this week we will receive Jesus' words as an invitation to reflect:
 I wonder how many times you have read or heard the story of David and Bathsheba? It’s a story I’ve definitely been familiar with for a long time, and the way I have heard or read it has most often been from David’s perspective. David sees someone beautiful, someone who catches his attention, a woman he asks about, wanting to know more about- someone he deeply desires and (in his mind) who he needs to be with. David sends for Bathsheba, she comes to be with him, and she goes back home. And then, there is trouble- this isn’t going to be just a one-time tryst, as she is now pregnant. And this isn’t something that is going to be easily hidden or explained, as her husband Uriah is away. David tries to get out of this trouble by bringing Bathsheba’s husband back to her, but he stays away from her, and shows his integrity. He doesn’t think it’s right for him to enjoy being with her while his men are out and still in danger. So, David has to take more drastic action and sends Uriah out to the front lines, setting him up to be killed. And when we pick up the reading in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, it all works out for David, his problem is solved, Bathsheba becomes his wife and bears him a son. Phew- right?! Well, except for that last part of Chapter 11, the very end of verse 27- “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,” Whoops, David. So, God sends Nathan to help David understand, and how does he do that? By helping him see what he has done from the perspective of Uriah. So David comes to see that he has done something very wrong to Uriah and has sinned against God. We even see in Psalm 51 how very sorry David is and how he pleads with God to help him. I think it’s safe to say that we can all see, in looking at this story, that David did some awful, terrible, maybe some would say unforgivable, things. If we read it as presented from David’s perspective or even as Nathan presents it to David, recognizing Uriah’s perspective, it's awful, AND, unfortunately, when we look at it from Bathsheba’s perspective, it’s worse. Many of us were likely brought up with a patriarchal view of stories in the Bible. We are generally told the perspectives of the men in these stories and the women are referred to as property or possessions, when they’re included at all, except for a very select few. In fact, there exist interpretations which place the blame of seduction and adultery on Bathsheba. But, what if we look at this story through a different lens? Dr Wil Gafney, a prolific womanist theologian says, about Psalm 51, “It is ostensibly David’s psalm of repentance after his abduction, rape, and forced impregnation of Bathsheba, and his subsequent murder of her husband. Yet he does not mention her or his specific transgressions against her in it. To be fair, the biblical text constructs David’s sin as being against God and Uriah, her husband, but not against her.” So yes, the Bible lays it out for us with this patriarchal lens, but if we really look at what it says, David took Bathsheba because he could. He was the king. He saw someone he wanted, and without regard for who it would impact, he claimed her. He didn’t need a wife, he had at least 6, not to mention access to servants or prostitutes. He ended up taking everything from Uriah and he also took everything from Bathsheba. When David spotted Bathsheba and sent for her, she didn’t have the choice to say no. She was taken by and for David and then sent back home when he was done with her, where everything was now different- and that was just the beginning. David’s sin took the life of her husband (who honestly seemed like a pretty stand-up guy) and also the life of her yet unborn child. So what can we learn from this awful story? When Nathan comes to David and tells him the story about the beloved lamb of the poor man being taken by the rich man, it’s clear to David who is in the wrong. Whether David recognized the effect that his actions had on Bathsheba or only on her husband and God, he knows he is wrong and instead of denying it, he immediately recognizes it, owns it and also faces the consequences (as did the others involved). I wonder if it’s easy for us to write this off, finding comfort in feeling like what David did was far worse than anything we’ve ever done. But, what if instead, we looked at where we might have done something that resulted in others being wronged, and look at how we have owned up to our actions? Likely we’ve all had moments during which we may have been so driven by what we wanted that we ignored the impact on others- times when we might have told ourselves we needed something or deserved something because of a position of power or a certain role that we had, or because of something we had accomplished. But when we don’t consider our actions through lenses other than our own, we run the risk of harming others. Living where we live, in this time, in this city, in this country, we all carry privilege- it’s different for each of us, but it comes from our gender, our economic status, our appearance, our skin color, our upbringing, our life experience, our family background, the ableness of our bodies, our education, et cetera. If we’re not careful to consider the ramifications our actions- even our basic daily decisions about if and what to purchase, what we say, what we eat, what we wear, how we get around- hold consequences, some more present and immediate than others. And what about the sins of our nation, and the hundreds of years during which all humans weren’t valued the same? While our laws now don’t allow for this in an obvious way, this is still happening. And our ancestors’ lives still have great impact on our lives today- when the opportunities our ancestors had were vastly different from those of others, we aren’t starting on level ground. We continue to run into the consequences of our sins as a nation and it’s a scary thing. We are so divided, half of us think the other half is at fault, wrong and probably worse than that too. We can’t see eye to eye and we can’t understand each other. I believe there’s something in this story about what our role is going forward from here, like not being paralyzed by the fear of what is to come. David faces the consequences laid out before him and looks to God to help him work through it. Most of the time, we are likely not confronted with our behavior like David is here, but if we hold ourselves accountable, looking to God to help us find our role in changing things and recognize what gifts we have that we can contribute, we begin to move towards a better future for everyone. I see many of you in our church and in our community working diligently for what you believe in and encouraging each other to do the same! And also, looking to the future in the life of our country, it’s easy to feel hopeless, and I think for some of us it’s tempting to say something like what I read between David’s lines, “I won’t like this, but I’ll survive”. The thing is, even if we aren’t directly vulnerable, there are others who won’t survive- those whose lives will be made unsustainable. We all need to try to look at this from their perspective, through their lens. Who would those be? Those who are already facing challenges of poverty, those who rely on the systems currently in place to support themselves, those needing and unable to access reproductive healthcare, individuals seeking acknowledgment of unfair treatment that they still face today, LGBTQIA+ individuals who are outright persecuted for who they are. We can’t just sit back and let this happen. Now is the time to work to protect and look out for people around us who are or will be affected even more than we are. So what do we do? I think we need to ask ourselves, individually and as a community- whose perspective are we missing? Who has God placed in our lives, in our paths through whose lens we can see things differently? Whose voice is in danger of being silenced that we can listen for and amplify? What privilege do we have that we can use for the good of our siblings who might not have as much? How might the audience we have be affected by hearing other voices? How are we connected, how can we be more connected? In these next critical months, may we take seriously our place in God’s Beloved Community, and open our ears and eyes to the others here with us. May we look to God to help us keep our hearts and minds open and consider the perspectives of others in all that we do. And may God help us to see how we can use what we have and what we can access to help those who are in this Beloved Community with us. Amen. |