Marks Archive

Whenever I go to New York, I am energized by the hum of the city—it runs through the very marrow of my bones. I love all of it—the sidewalks under my feet; the the scent of fresh bagels; even the sudden rush to catch the subway, when Christian and Jew, Muslim and Hari Krishna, are all jumbled together in a single-minded quest for the A train or Broadway local. And I especially love the infinite variety of humankind and the dogs that walk with them—it’s as if the Creator Himself used every ounce of imagination and ingenuity when he blew life into dust.

Just thinking about New York takes me back to when I was a little girl growing up on West 85th Street. To our right was Riverside Drive, with wide pathways perfect for roller-skating and jumping rope, and park benches tailor-made for mothers and grandparents to sit and visit on. To our left, up a couple of blocks, was the Presbyterian Church and the Rev. Dr. McAlpin—I remember him still; and then Broadway, hospitable to all kinds of folk. There the Tip Toe Inn offered proscuitto and lacy Swiss cheese, while around the corner, the sausage shop sold paprika solona—a Hungarian specialty.

But best of all was the public library. Like Hollyhock in the comics, I’d happily delve into the stacks and emerge with arms full of exciting reading, like Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. And I’d have other books, as well, that my mother would check out for me; books about the planets and stars, or about Egypt, or about dinosaurs. And then, if we stopped at the newsstand on the way home for a magazine or two—well, that was Nirvana.

So growing up, I guess I was a bookworm, and a happy one at that. I was fascinated by words—and still am; how they twist and turn and weave themselves not just into sentences, but into sense. I’ve never ceased to be amazed that such tiny marks of ink on a page, mere dots and scratches, can have so profound an effect.

And while words seem so authoritative— so orderly, so unshaken in form and shape, they are also allusive. What they say is not always what they mean. And their roots sometimes stretch back to places we’ve never seen and can scarcely pronounce.

Take the word “hate” in Luke’s Gospel, for instance. It comes from an Aramaic word meaning “to love less.” Nonetheless, it is a word that calls us to attention. This is Jesus speaking, after all, Jesus, who in the next couple of passages talks about searching after the lost sheep that has gone astray and about welcoming home the Prodigal. The word startles us; and it must have startled the crowds who followed him.

Those crowds—I wonder about them. Are they the ones who demanded signs even after Jesus healed the sick? Are they the ones who tried to trip him up, asking whose wife in heaven the seven-times married woman would be, or chastising him for picking grain on the Sabbath? Are they simply carried away by crowd fever, ready to vanish when the shadow of the cross falls across their path?

There is a cost to discipleship, Jesus tells them. To take the first step—to follow him—is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind. And that suggests that we must redraw our boundaries—to think beyond the ones we were born into or ourselves created. We are being asked to love large; to open our hearts and arms not only to our kin but to our neighbors. That can be hard enough now—think what it was like in the fiercely tribal society of that time, when to walk away from tightly-knit family support was tantamount to turning your back on life itself.

There is a cost to discipleship. Following that path without understanding that it leads to the cross-roads is like being a builder who doesn’t calculate the cost of his tower, is like being the commander of an army who has underestimated his foe and thereby puts everyone’s life in danger.

There is indeed a cost. Oh but there is also grace—grace to turn hate into love, death into life, the cross into triumph. We see it in Jesus and we see it every day, in those who give and give again. We see it in Mother Theresa, who through the dark night of the soul continued to serve and love the sick and needy. We see it in the unnamed priest who died at the Twin Towers giving last rites to one of the fallen firemen. We see it in Martin Luther King who preached equality in the face of injustice. I see it in you, in all that you do.

And we see grace working in Paul, who against the cultural values of his time, crosses boundaries to embrace the slave Onesimus as his “child.” It is your choice, Paul says to his owner; but I ask you to welcome him not as a slave but as a “beloved brother.” In sending him, I am sending myself, my own heart, Paul says.

And Jesus says the same thing. Welcome not only your family but your neighbors as beloved brothers and sisters. It is your choice to welcome them as you would welcome the very Christ himself. In sending them to you, Jesus is sending himself.

It is by God’s grace that we have the strength to pick up the cross of our life, with all its difficulties and contradictions, and yet find joy; it is by the flame of God’s love that we have the light to see the face of Christ in all those he has sent to us to care for; it is by God’s grace that we have the strength to stretch the boundaries of our lives and families, our words and definitions so that we may love God with all our heart and soul and mind and love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.+

Strive to enter through the narrow door!

For some of us, that brings up images of black-and white gangster films with figures skulking through shadowy alleys, pulling on the brims of their fedoras and speaking lines like “knock twice and ask for Joe.” In the disciples’ day, however, the narrow door was a real, if hidden entrance in the city wall.

In those times cities were not simply marked with DOT signs saying “welcome to Zion”; rather, they were walled, often with tall guardhouse gates supporting huge wooden doors at the main entrance, doors that could be bolted shut at the slightest threat of danger.

They could be opened, too, for triumphal entries, the conquering hero riding high on his horse, preceded by ranks upon ranks of foot soldiers and cavalry, carrying long spears and shining shields. People would line the streets, then, to show their loyalty; would wave palm branches, would prostrate themselves on the ground.

Not to be there, in the midst of the crowd, shouting words of praise, was to be disloyal, was to be a traitor to the Emperor. Not to be there was to seek refuge in God, to sing with the Psalmist for war to cease in all the world, to praise God for breaking the bow and shattering the spear.

To turn away and seek the narrow door was dangerous and downright difficult. And it still is today. Those ancient doors, those magnificent entrances, are with us yet. We see them, we walk through them, in shopping malls and office buildings. And they are inviting, those doors that welcome us into the noisy space beyond, where people are eating and drinking and talking.

It is Jesus, who taught in our streets; Jesus, who calls us away from the crowd; it is he who tells us to strive to find the other entrance, the quiet one, where the cornerstone meets the sure foundation. But sometimes the path to that narrow door is circuitous.

Almost seven years ago, during Lent, Nancy Mills—our own Nancy Mills, who became a priest right here in front of this altar—brought a canvas labyrinth to Christ Church. We laid it down at the side, there where the pews have been added, and placed candles and icon nearby. And we were all invited to take part in an ancient form of meditation, to make our pilgrimage by walking the labyrinth, to open our hearts to the living God.

To take that meditative journey, circling back and forth on a narrow path until you reach the center, means letting go of all preconceptions. It means walking through a simple entrance with no fanfare at all, into a silent space where you can really hear. It means focusing; it means opening the door of your heart, mind, and soul to whatever happens as you pray your way around the circle.

And so on one of my walks, I found myself asking a question. “What, Lord,” I said, “should I do?”

“What should I do?” I who was about to retire, who had grand plans to write, to travel, to volunteer all over town. “What should I do?” I certainly hadn’t planned to ask that.

And so I walked. “Be patient,” said a voice in my heart.

“What do you mean, ‘be patient’!” I said—impatiently! “I want to roll up my sleeves and do something worthwhile. I don’t like to sit still!”

And God laughed.

Well. It was a while before I remembered my etymology—that the word “patience” comes from a word that means “to suffer,” or “to allow to happen.” And so perhaps patience and striving are in their own odd way related: perhaps to find that narrow door we must allow ourselves to turn aside from the hubbub and distractions of the everyday. It is then that we can roll up our sleeves and strive to enter.

And there are many roads to that door—they are everywhere!

Where justice is the line,

and righteousness the plummet—

there are the signposts,

there are the pathways.

They lead us

to comfort the child crying for her mother

to help the man by the side of the road

to make the soup and take the food

to weep with the broken hearted

to set free anyone imprisoned in distress or want or hunger.

They lead us to pray.

And because the door is narrow, we need to travel light;

we divest ourselves

of all the baggage we have accumulated over the years

of grudges and growls, grumps and griefs;

divest ourselves of all but the obedience

of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

who saw God face to face.

And so we set out on our journey . . .

following the path to Jerusalem

following in the footsteps of Christ.

We set foot on the path,

the narrow path

and walk the winding way

east and west, north and south

we walk and walk

and we think we are walking in circles

until

until we reach the center, and there we find the door we sought.

And all the times we turned aside

because we could not bear to see

grief go uncomforted

hunger go unsatisfied

thirst go unslaked

we were really living in God’s own time

moving along God’s own path

and opening God’s own door.

And all the times we thought we stopped

and put our lives on hold

to take the time to walk this aisle,

the pathway to God’s grace;

we really came from east and west,

from north and south,

and found the narrow doorway open wide

the table set, the feast made ready

to strengthen us to turn again

and go in peace

to love and serve the Lord.

Amen.

The shopping mall looked, in some respects, like any other upscale mall. To my right was a window inhabited by artfully posed mannequins, all holding leather bags in rich chocolate browns and mysterious black shades. The "Louis Vuitton" logo was a prominent part of the decoration. To my left, Christian Dior was emblazoned over the heads of mannequins stylishly dressed in tones of cranberry, blueberry, and grapefruit. Further in, exclusive designer boutiques stood shoulder to shoulder with electronic stores virtually alive with the latest wires and plugs and glimmering screens, all calling out for a goodly degree of technical education, to say nothing of literacy. And on it went, as all malls do; mothers with baby strollers, looking at the svelte clothing; teenagers talking and laughing; passersby checking their reflections in the plate glass windows.

Outside, it was much the same. The square was crowded with families and single folks, strolling, playing, talking, or just basking in the unseasonably hot sun. The Mall of America? The Valdosta mall? Well, no: this was Moscow, and we were standing in Red Square, known locally as Krasnaya Ploschad. The towers of the Kremlin were visible on one side and St. Basil’s Cathedral on the other; and the mall we had walked through was GUM, the famous Russian department store.

In Russian, the word for "Red" is not necessarily a political term—it also means "beautiful." And some of the buildings on Red Square are beautiful. GUM is an elegant structure, a nineteenth-century arcade that replaced the original rows of merchants’ stalls, where everything from shoes to babushkas spilled over into the dusty byways, where raucous cries to buy buy, BUY! wine and fish and bread, sandals and shawls, carpets and headgear echoed down the aisles.

So I looked up at the glass roof, at the Finnish marble and Tarusa granite that graced the façade, and saw—Icons!

Yep—right there, over every arched entryway, there was an icon. St. Basil looked down at people toting shopping bags; Sts. Boris and Gleb—at least I think that’s who they were—stood side-by-side as tourists with pockets full of rubles passed underneath; and Christ himself looked down at me as I gazed wonderingly up.

"Oh yes," said the Russian guide, who had failed to point them out "each merchant who helped build the arcade gave an icon in thanksgiving for his prosperity."

And is there really anything wrong with this picture? Why not be thankful for prosperity, be grateful for the bigger barn and the tall wheat and the abundant crops? Where, after all, are we going to store all those goods, all that merchandise that our hard work has earned?

And last of all, when it is sealed and blessed, why not hang the icon high overhead?

Vanity, all is vanity, I can hear the preacher say: it is like trying to catch the wind itself.

Christ looks down on us amidst the hordes of people, as tourists, families, youngsters, pickpockets, preachers, old, young, of high degree and low, rich and poor together jostle by. Christ looks down, and I imagine that his tears mingle with the rain that strikes his face.

We are his people, who were made, like him, of the clay of the earth. We are his people, Christ’s own icons, breathed upon by God’s breath, given life and limbs and heart. And we are the ones who are called to stop, to consider the question in Ecclesiastes: "What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?"

Vanity, all is vanity, unless, says Paul, we strip off the old self with all its customs and practices and clothe ourselves with a new self, one made in God’s image. To do so is to be rich towards God.

Clothe yourself with compassion, Paul says: a fine-textured cloth that wraps around the shoulders with no questions asked; a priceless cloth that soaks up the tears and warms the aching heart.

Clothe yourself with the soft hue of kindness, a smooth and lovely drapery that veils awkwardness and heals resentment.

And drape yourself with humility, whose soft threads and open weave is gossamer thin; it is the cloth of courtesy and innocence, the cloth of unpretentiousness.

Make meekness your armor, he says, meekness that sheathes its sword and extends its hands in a gesture of friendship. And weave yourself a carpet of patience, ribbed and twilled and striated, a long-lasting swath richly embroidered with the lives of others.

And above all clothe yourself with love, woven by the grace of God himself, Creation’s Great Designer, his hand on the warp and woof of the loom.

“A new creation is everything!” says Paul. My father lived by that motto, although he gave it his own whimsical interpretation. For us, a paper napkin is good for holding a sandwich, wiping up spills, or serving as a coaster. Give one to him, however, and he would twiddle and twist it into a paper airplane; or fold it into an impromptu palette knife for a painting he was working on; or spread it out like a sketchbook. He’d make lists of ideas on it, doodle faces, houses, and mountains, and draw diagrams to show me how to stretch a canvas.

And oh the paintings he produced. Real artists transform whatever they look at, \ whether they work in ink or pencil, paint or marble. I’m prejudiced, of course; but his watercolors really are transparent, and even the little studies he dashed off make the world come alive in special ways—people sauntering down a street; an old barn, the very texture of its marled and pitted wooden planks attesting to its owner’s honesty and hard work; oranges and apples that practically roll off the canvas.

But his studio was hair-raising for anyone who subscribed to the “place for everything, and everything in its place” theory. Books balanced together became table-top easels; jam-jars held water-color brushes; and a radio, perched on a high windowsill, propped up the blinds at just the right angle so the light would fall on his worktable. For him, everything held potential to become something new, something other than what it was ordinarily thought to be.

I’m not sure that anything he touched would have wanted to change; would on its own have come up with the idea of being folded or stacked, or being obliged to carry on its shoulders the cross-bars of the window blinds. But given the choice of lying flat on a table or soaring through the air as a paper airplane; of lying dusty and unproductive or being useful in steadying a painting or focusing the sunlight—well.

And so I wonder what the crowd of folks really thought as Jesus sent them out in pairs to every place where he himself intended to go. Did any of them grumble or murmur, as their ancestors did when they went through the wilderness?

“No extra sandals—suppose ours wear out? I just bought a new pair of Nikes!”

“I’m not sure I really like the fellow I’m supposed to travel with. Can I trade?”

“Such a long walk—and my mother promised that I’d sit at His right hand!”

It’s hard, sometimes, to be taken out of the box; to be folded in an unexpected way, to be called to do something unimaginable, to be transformed into something that disrupts your very being.

But that is exactly what Jesus is asking. The commission he gives the 70—no, let’s be honest: the commission he gives us—means turning everything we expect upside down.

He asks that we pray for laborers to be sent out into God’s harvest. That means not just praying that the hungry be fed or the homeless housed; it means that we are being called to make the soup and nail the roof on the house.

“See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves,” he says—in short, we are going where no self-respecting lamb would venture—right into the wolf’s den, knowing that to answer God’s call may very well mean sacrifice, knowing that our strength and courage come only from the resurrected Christ.

To travel where Jesus intends to go means being a fool for Christ. It means, as Paul says, that the world is crucified to us and we to the world; that is, that worldly values are nothing—they are turned upside down and inside out and reborn and recreated by the way we act.

It means taking nothing with us but faith. And it means being focused—no chit-chat along the way, no dallying at the local coffee-house, being satisfied with whatever shelter and food are offered to us.

And when we get where we are going—which is, my brothers and sisters, right where we are today in our own lives—when we get where we are going, we have a task—to heal, to cure, to make whatever we lay hands on better in some way. To help make everything into a new creation.

Because when we do that, we change not only the people in front of us, the ones who are holding out their hands for help; we change the whole world. The poet Wallace Stevens says just that in an odd little poem about what happens when you put something made by human hands in the midst of the wilderness:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

To go where the good Lord sends you, to be the one thing different in the wilderness, is to follow the pillar of fire and participate in God’s creative act. To see with the eye of the Creator is to transform the ordinary: it is to take the old and make it new, the dusty and make it clean. It is to bring peace where there is war, education where there is ignorance, and tolerance where there is none. It is to mend the broken-hearted and to bring joy to those who weep. It is to comfort anyone who hurts. Anyone.

It means acting out of the compassionate heart of the Lord God himself, who has promised, as Isaiah says, to hold us and comfort us like a mother.

And in doing that, in making a new creation out of whatever you have at hand, you are saying by your actions that the Kingdom of God has come near.

The effect of bringing that Kingdom with you is to change the perspective on absolutely everything. You really are the light of the world. You really are the plate that is full, the hands that are overflowing.

And you are all those things because today, when the time comes to walk out of those doors and gather up the harvest, you will have been recreated by the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Things are seldom what they seem,” cheerfully sings Buttercup, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta H. M. S. Pinafore. That’s my theme song too on this Trinity Sunday as I contemplate a mystery that has caused untold theological speculation over the ages.

Contemplation: that’s the best I can do, since I am not a theologian, but rather a teacher of literature. And so it is that instead of analyzing definitions, I like to look beneath the surface, to catch a glimpse of metaphors lurking in unexpected places, symbols dancing on the edges of words. I love the double-sidedness of parables, in which the story on the surface hides the lesson underneath.

Perhaps that is why I also love origami, the art of making something out of nothing, of taking a flat piece of paper and creating a three-dimensional figure. Just an ordinary piece of paper—it’s nothing, really;

Just an ordinary piece of paper, with the mystery of the universe pressed into a single sheet. Talk about infinite variety. Look at the texture, the creaminess of real rag stock; the gently ruffled pages of old books. Look at the translucency of rice paper or the unassuming smoothness of plain stock.

And then, consider what that sheet becomes. Celtic monks in their austere cells on Iona put pen to paper, celebrating the Gospels with letters that curled around themselves into fantastic shapes and designs. They penned the precious Word with care and beauty, overlaying rich reds and greens and blues with gold leaf. And so from the dust breathed on by God’s Spirit comes the tree, comes the paper, comes the Book of Kells.

Last week, someone showed me a lovingly preserved family notebook, frayed at the edges—just an unassuming notebook, just a riffle of old paper. But look at it closely, and through the elegant penmanship, through the stories recounted in that small, bound volume, a wonderfully courageous and gracious ancestor takes shape. Holding that paper, tracing that penmanship, you can see her, you can know her.

Things really are seldom what they seem. This piece of paper, for instance; inexpensive, absolutely flat, a neat square—it’s a notepad; it’s a coaster for a dripping cup of coffee; tucked in a volume, it’s a bookmark.

But—fold it; and it’s still square, but there’s more about it than meets the eye Give it a few more twists, turn it inside out—something that no self-respecting flat piece of paper would ever contemplate on its own—give it wings, blow life into it—and—behold! A Crane.

There are many “flat” things, “flat” places that the spirit of creation transforms utterly. How do we describe that experience, that mystery of transformation? Eventually, words fail. Dante, in his great work La Divina Commedia, comes face to face with God and says at the end,

It is the great flash of light, the turning of one’s being that counts; it is being moved with the sun and the stars by Love itself.

And that, dear friends, leaves me speechless too. I, who have worked with words all my life, am in need of a hot, live coal to touch my lips, am in need of a guide, a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to help me bear the truth, to help me grow into God’s Love.

To help me understand that things are really not what they seem. What seems to be flat, like an ordinary piece of paper, may have many layers. The unity is the trinity; God’s Word became flesh; and Love came down to us in the form of a tiny, naked baby born to an obscure village girl.

Came down to us as a carpenter, as an itinerant preacher, as one who offended the rich and powerful, who walked the earth and cured the incurable, fed the hungry, comforted the poor.

God came down to us as flesh and blood, and His Spirit is with us still. And for us, today, this Trinity Sunday, what does that mean?

He had a shock of brown, unruly hair, this boy, the one who stood on the edge of the crowd. And if you looked into his eyes, you would see depths upon depths, like pools of deep water, only—around the edges, some movement, some perturbation, as if someone had thrown stones into a pond. He had a thoughtful face, and he was thinner than most boys his age. There was a frail air about him.

And yet he stood there quietly enough, in that crowd, a multitude of strangers drawn out of their regular paths to stand at the crossroad. There were mothers, holding hungry babies; grown men, ill-equipped for anything but field work, jeopardizing their hard-won jobs by their very presence. Teenagers, old beyond their years at thirteen and fourteen, scrambling and jockeying to see the Hope of the Future. And the elderly . . . leaning on sticks cut from trees, crouched near the front, weary with waiting but determined.

The boy stood there quietly, but it was not always so. Throughout his childhood he would feel something come over him; and sometime later—he could never tell how long—he would awaken, covered with the dirt and dust of the ground where he had fallen, his sisters gathered around him holding up their shawls and spreading their skirts to protect him from the curious stares of the villagers. Later, they would tell him how he had writhed and twisted and clenched his teeth, but he never remembered that.

Always it was like coming back from the dead, always it was as if he entered a new world, his senses sharpened, his ears hearing sounds and eyes seeing what others couldn’t perceive. His parents, laborers like all the rest, refused to let him work, frightened that one day he would no longer be able to get to his feet. All that, until . . . until . . .

His father, his love for his son shining in his voice, had gone to a rabbi, a teacher, and had asked for healing. What courage that took, his son still marveled; what courage, for a meek and reticent man, to brave the ones he worked for, to brave the wrath of the leaders, to set himself up as a laughingstock. “Teacher,” he had said, “please cure my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.” What courage it took to say, “Teacher, I believe; help thou my unbelief!”

And ever since that time, when the Teacher took him by the hand and lifted him up, he had been at peace. He spent most of his days listening to an old man in the village, learning all he could about this Rabbi; And yet, every so often, his senses would suddenly sharpen and his eyesight change; and people were afraid of what he would say, for it seemed that he looked right through them into the truth of their hearts.

And now, peering between the heads in front of him, he saw a colt come slowly down the road, the man on it almost too tall, his feet nearly touching the ground. And as it approached, the crowd became noisier and noisier, and the boy’s head began to throb in the old, familiar way.

“Hosanna!” they cry. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

“Hosanna!” they cry. And in the root sense of the word, the oldest sense in the Hebrew, they are crying at the same time, “Save us, deliver us!”

At that, the boy looks closely and his heart swells with joy. It is the Teacher who took pity on him, pity on his father. And he tries to cry out, with the rest, but cannot. Save us, deliver us! That is what the boy’s father begged of the Teacher. And afterward, his son remembered, as if in a dream, his father falling to his knees in the dust and whispering “Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord!”

Hosanna! “Save us, deliver us”—how many times has Jesus heard that plea? The wedding guests have run out of wine—what should we do? My friend, my child, my mother is dying! I cannot see, I cannot hear, I have leprosy, I have a demon. In their need, their desperate need, the crowd cries out for what it thinks it needs—an earthly Messiah, one of the house of David. But they are really crying out for much, much more—for God’s grace. For transformation. For God’s will to be done.

In that plea for deliverance we hear the undertone of a memory reaching back to a time when a lamb was sacrificed and its blood spilled on the doorposts, when a whole nation went into exile. That memory is bred in the bone of the One who turns His face resolutely towards Gethsemane, where he himself prays his own version of Hosanna: “Father, if you are willing, deliver this cup from me”; where his own pure faith speaks in adoration: “yet not my will, but yours be done.”

So they fling their cloaks in front of the colt, lest the mud of the road spatter the Messiah. Old cloaks, torn cloaks, dusty cloaks; cloth with patterns faded and torn; cloaks made painstakingly by hand, handed down, used day in and day out.

Flung without a second thought, these cloaks that covered the backs of the laborers, that sheltered the heads of the infants, that served as blankets by night. And the boy moved by something indefinable, joins in, pulling from his own shoulders a worn, blue cloak, woven so long ago by his mother. The edges, carefully embellished with a tiny pattern; the fringe, lovingly knotted.

And as he takes it from his shoulders, he hears his mother gasp and his father groan. “That is all you have, my son,” he says. But the boy is still speechless. Eyes shining, he pushes his way through the crowd and throws his cloak under the hooves of the colt.

What does he see, looking up at the figure who bends down towards him? The dust of the earth shot through with God’s own light; Heaven and earth coming together in one still point. The old covenant raised up and made new; the poor, the hungry, the grieving made whole; the potential of a new creation springing up in joy.

And the boy, astounded at the greatness of God, falls on his knees in the mud. The boy, possessed by the grace and the love of God, cries aloud,

I remember the time I discovered the Stations of the Cross at Honey Creek. I had escaped from a meeting to walk parallel to the salt marsh, listening for the birds and keeping a wary eye out for fire ants. And then, unexpectedly, there it was—a curved line of wooden crosses, nearly hidden by the underbrush. Planted there lovingly some years ago as a Scout project, they were overgrown, the underbrush heaped up, the vines wrapping themselves around the central pillars, and the dry twigs and nameless sprigs rising to the crossbars where Christ’s hands had been nailed to the wood so long, long ago.

Coming upon that forsaken place was like stumbling into Gethsemane and finding that those who were supposed to watch and weed had fallen asleep and deserted their post. It was like seeing that withered fig tree that Luke writes about. Today, I hear with no little joy, the Stations have been cleaned up and restored by a group of youth—many from Christ Church. No longer a forlorn reminder lost in the woods, the Stations have been given back their identity—they show the Way. And those who helped with the clean-up also showed the Way: these youth are like the gardener, digging and fertilizing to give the fig tree another chance to bear fruit. Their act makes it possible for others to walk the path and return revived, refreshed, and renewed.

What can a cross tell us? In my own study at home, I have a cross made of glass. This wondrous gift stands in my window, right where the morning sun shines through it. And the colors cast by this transparent cross dance across my desk, making a festival out of ordinary light. The blazing light from this cross casts jewels on my computer keyboard; it turns the stacks of books and notes and all the flotsam and jetsam of an undisciplined desk into a rainbow of order, a promise of letters answered, lists checked off, and projects neatly completed.

"Who am I—really?" Perhaps this was what Moses was asking when he saw the blazing bush on Mount Horeb. "Who am I?" asked Moses of the Lord our God, "that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

Who is he? Nothing, quite nothing. An alien in a strange land; an Israelite angry at injustice; a simple keeper of the flocks, a man known as Jethro’s son-in-law. Who is he, to face down Pharaoh and all the ones in charge? To walk the gilded path of the Pharaoh's court, his sandals caked with mud and cloak torn from sleeping with the flocks? To brave the shadow of those pyramids and banquet halls, the statues of Osiris and all the other gods staring in a kind of blank derision? Who is Moses, indeed?

God’s emissary, that is all; God’s hands and feet. "I will be with you," God promises.

And that is the key, of course. Moses is the sign of God; His presence in the world. And so it is that Moses becomes himself, his true self. Not the Moses who stutters and stumbles, not the one who is fearful and uncertain, but the obedient child of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses comes into his heritage as the offspring of the One who says, "I AM who I AM."

And in the face of all of God’s power, compassion, and mercy; in the face of all that loving-kindness, that presence, who are we? Who are we, to face to face down the Pharaohs of this modern world, to come, just as we are, to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to take in the stranger, to clothe the poor, help the sick, and visit those in prison?

I am an only child, and that—as other only children understand—has given a certain shape to my personality. And while I missed the companionship of brothers and sisters, there are some advantages to being an “only.” You get to play with all the toys, to begin with. And you are showered with attention—which can be a blessing or a curse, depending upon whether you’ve aced your spelling test or spilled raspberry jello on your mother’s white rug.

I have fond memories, though, of sitting for hours with my father, who was an artist. He would light his pipe, and the lovely aroma of apple-scented tobacco would fill the room, blending with the smell of turpentine and oil paint. He outfitted me with a little canvas and a fistful of brushes, with Strathmore drawing paper and Conte charcoal pencils. Nothing but the best for his only daughter! And with infinite patience he taught me to draw grapes that looked round, drapery that looked folded, and buildings that receded into the distance. It was like magic, three-dimensional shapes appearing on a blank sheet of paper.

And he gave me good advice. “You don’t need to put in every detail!” he’d say, as I painstakingly copied every hair of the tiger, every petal on the flower. This is your world, he was telling me; you make the choice. There are no lines to color inside of. Your sketch is a reflection of the lifeblood of the thing itself.

So those were happy times. But being an only child has disadvantages too. For one thing, I was shy. Very shy. I didn’t like to talk to strangers; was terrified at the mere idea of standing in front of a crowd and talking. Which is why I decided that the one career I’d never, ever choose was teaching. And believe me—never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would stand here as your deacon.

And so I can tell you, first-hand, it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hand of God. He shines a light into the hidden landscapes of our lives; he looks behind the sketch, beneath the surface outlines, shapes, and shades that we so carefully create

He makes us take the path we never thought of traveling. And it isn’t always easy. Walking His way brings us to the edge of things. But sometimes, by grace, we learn that words, and things, and people, are hidden by their surface; we glimpse the lifeblood beneath the fragile shell of life.

Things are seldom what they seem: and that is what Luke’s Gospel is telling us. And so we find God’s own Son sitting in the Galilean dust, teaching his disciples, teaching us.

Blessed is the widow, whose two copper coins were untold wealth. Blessed are those who have nowhere to lay their heads, who are the victims of fear, injustice, and oppression. These are the ones who will be consoled by God’s kingdom.

Blessed are those who hunger for healing; the woman at the well who asked for living water; the Christ who said upon the cross, “I thirst.” Blessed are you who are filled with the bread and the wine and go out into the world, to be apostles and disciples.

Blessed are the women at the tomb who weep for Jesus. Blessed are you who grieve for the slums, the criminals, the sick and troubled, and who turn that grief into action, loving and serving the Lord.

And, finally, "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.

BLESSED are you who love your enemies, who minister to those in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble, for your unconditional love will be returned tenfold. You will look at all people, at your families, friends, and neighbors, and those who are alone, and you will see the flame of the Holy Spirit.

To follow the beatitudes is to live by God’s Word, looking beneath the surface and coloring outside the lines. It means that we walk on the edge, where we see the resurrection story in everywhere.

But it also means that we throw away the script that we have written to define ourselves. And that is very hard to do. For some of us—for someone like me, who loves the very shape of words and lines, the beautiful grain of pencil on paper—it is almost impossible. Except for the grace of God.

And so I invite you to walk with me away from everything that is safe—the pulpit; our preconceptions; our ordinary ways—and open the doors of the church and with our lives take God’s love into the world.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.+

Last Tuesday, we returned from a week-long visit to my home town—New York City. It was a treat to hear the hum of the city, to stroll along quiet side streets, and to revisit favorite haunts. Best of all, at Christmastime, the city is wrapped up like a gift! At Rockefeller Center, the Christmas tree—a Norway spruce—is crowned with a star and illumined with a myriad of lights, delighting tourists and city folk alike. Crowds hang over the railings around the ice rink, applauding the skaters. A pro zips by, waltzing and twirling for the sheer joy of it; ribbons of ice sparkle behind her. Children giggle and trip over their tiny skates; and a host of couples, clinging to each other for dear life, stumble over each other and everyone else, finally collapsing in laughter.

It’s a sight to see. The store windows on Fifth Avenue are ablaze with fairy-tale decorations. Lord & Taylor’s features a Victorian Christmas story that unfolds, window by window. And so we stand hand-in-hand, like children ourselves, marveling at the little figures of top-hatted gentlemen and tiny-waisted ladies, merry elves and angels, all aglow amidst gingerbread houses, tiny gifts, and children playing in the snow.

Walking along the avenue to 57th Street, we see an enormous star suspended over the avenue; it shines radiantly against the night sky like a burning torch. People rush by with coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other; street vendors sell scarves and mittens, hot chestnuts and “Rolex” watches, and the scent of spices fills the air.

From Broadway and Mary Poppins to Lincoln Center and Pinchas Zuckerman—what a variety, what an offering.

For us, being there is gift enough. But the buildings themselves, wrapped in ivy and holly, are like treasure-boxes waiting to be opened. The Museum of Modern Art, newly renovated, with its open-armed welcome to the avant-garde; the Metropolitan Museum, with its beautiful Neopolitan crèche and wealth of old masters. Oh—I could go on and on. At the NYPL, there’s a display of Japanese Ehon—books with wood block prints. And I, who will follow the siren call of books anywhere, am entranced by this gracious display of art dancing with words. In front of me lies a panoramic book, some 6 or 7 feet in length; it was written by two friends, an artist and a poet. As they sailed a river together, the artist sketched the scenery; the poet wrote haiku beneath.

Eyes dazzled by this wealth of creativity, I am nonetheless brought up short. On the steps of Lincoln Center, where opera-goers and traffic are heaviest, stands a tiny elderly woman with a cane. She is holding a sign; “I need money for food.”

Is she an actress? Is she real? Is there truly, in all of Manhattan, no one to give her a morsel of food?

This is a common sight in a city wrapped up like a Christmas present. What should we do about this woman, who looks as if she has stepped directly from the pages of one of the slums in Dickens’s Christmas Carol?

Walking back to the hotel, we pass three churches. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is open, and so we go in. Amidst the splendor, amidst the triptychs and paintings and gold facing on the chapels, an exhausted young man clutching a guitar has fallen asleep in the pew. A guard stands nearby, studiously ignoring him.

Well. The guard gave him a gift that night, the gift of a place to sleep.

We go out and walk past the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian church, on to St. Thomas, the beautiful Episcopal Church noted for its music. What an organ it has, nestled in the carvings over the choir; what a carillon; and what a magnificent altarpiece. Reaching from floor to ceiling, it is said to be one of the tallest in the world, carved with Christ the King and all the saints. The beauty of the surroundings is in itself a gift, a quiet space for contemplation.

But on the steps of both churches, we see heaps of cardboard boxes and discarded coats and trash of every kind—paper cups and newspapers; an old hat, a pair of scuffed boots; rags that even as dustcloths had seen better days.

And under these disreputable heaps, something stirs. Under these nesting places for those with nothing, are human beings. Someone’s mother; someone’s son; someone’s child. Forsaken. Desolate. Heads pillowed on stone-hearted steps.

These too are the gifts of the city

the city that ranges from gold to dust.

The guard at St. Patrick’s had pity. And us? What, oh what, should we do?