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Why I Want to Talk About Race

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From the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 14, 2015

Ugo and SarahWhen I heard that our regional church would be holding conversations about racial reconciliation, I cheered and signed up to participate right away. Why do I want to talk about race and racism? There must be a better way to spend my Saturday. I have attended and even led numerous trainings about these issues, and I keep going back for more. Why?

I want to talk about these issues, because we, as a society, have trouble talking about these issues. We start talking about how everyone should be treated equally, which is fine. As soon as we start talking about how whites have received far more benefits than non-whites, then people start to get defensive. We are willing to admit that the system was broken for a long time, but when we start trying to talk about how the system might still be deeply flawed, about how people are still dying because of racism, then we start having difficulty. I say this without judgment. I do not want to talk about race in order to make other white people feel guilty. I do want other people, especially white people, to see that we enjoy benefits simply because we are white, which is not how God created the world to be. I want us to experience the freedom which God does intend for all of us. Racism resulted in the literal slavery of African-Americans in this land, but it has and continues to hold us all in bondage to falsehoods about humanity.

I also want to talk about race, because I have a lot to learn about being white in America and about what it is like for people who are not white in this country. My experience is not enough. I need to hear what other people have gone through and are going through. In order to know what it means to be in the Body of Christ, I need to know what other members of the body are feeling.

I will give up another Saturday talking about race, because I believe God created us to love each other. The categories of race have done little to help us love. Most often they have made it easier to mistrust, despise, and kill one another. If I am to love my neighbor as myself, then I need to be talking about race. If we do not talk about it, racism will continue to work its evil on us.

These conversations do not make anyone better than anyone else. They do not give us higher ground upon which to stand and shake our finger at people who have other things to do. I hope others will want to participate, because they do knit us together in ways that we might not ever imagine otherwise. Why do I want to talk about race? I do not know and cannot wait to see what will emerge from the next conversation.

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia will be holding “Hand in Hand Conversations” about race during 2015. To sign up for this event on April 18 at Trinity Episcopal in Fredericksburg, visit the Hand-in-Hand Listening Session registration page. For information on other listening sessions and Bishop Johnston’s racial reconciliation initiative, go to www.thediocese.net

Running instead of sleeping

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The Easter Sunday Sermon from the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 5, 2015

"The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection" by Eugene Burnand.
“The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection” by Eugene Burnand.

Happy Easter! It is a glorious morning to be gathered together here at St. George’s. Easter morning in this and many churches is grand. Lots of alleluias, beautiful flowers, gorgeous music, bells ringing. We gather to celebrate the good news that Christ has risen, the Lord has risen indeed. The forces of death have not triumphed. God’s grace and love cannot be buried, cannot be contained. The stone has been rolled away, and the tomb is empty. Alleluia!

We wouldn’t have Easter morning any other way, but we have to admit, it is not exactly the tone that we encounter in the Gospel accounts of that first Easter morning. Those who arrive at the tomb are scared and confused. They fail to see right away what has happened. There are no alleluias, no bells ringing. And so even as we celebrate, even as a we set a feast for the eyes and ears and prepare, perhaps, for a big meal later on, it is a good thing to stop and imagine what it might have been like on that first Easter morning.

What has caught my imagination this year as I ponder this familiar account of Easter morning in the Gospel according to John, is all the running. The running. This may be the only passage in the whole Bible where three major characters are all running so close together. Mary Magdalene, after seeing that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb, runs to tell Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved. That unnamed disciple, by the way, we tend to call John, since he identifies himself later on as the author of that Gospel. So Mary runs to tell Peter and John the disturbing news that “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” It was early in the morning, still dark. Were Peter and John asleep? Did Mary stop to catch her breath or did she just launch into the news while still gasping for air? Then Peter and John run together to the tomb also. Why? Did they think they could do something? Or maybe it was one of those times when you run because you need to know and see right away.

Let’s remember that these were not joggers. Running as a recreational activity really did not happen until the mid to late 20th century. You ran regularly if you were a child, an athlete, a messenger, or a solider of some kind. Otherwise you only ran if you had to. So I’m thinking that neither Peter nor John were used to running. They were probably wearing sandals and clothes that might not have been suitable for all that jostling around. Plus they had likely just gotten out of bed and had not had a chance to warm up. Yes, the adrenaline was pumping, but still I don’t imagine that it was a very comfortable thing to be running to the tomb on Easter morning. For some reason, Peter begins to lag behind. Adrenaline will only take you so far, and he’s sucking wind at this point. I came across a painting entitled: The Disciples Peter and John running to the Holy Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection. It was done in 1898 by a Swiss artist named Eugene Bernand and hangs in the Musee D’Orsee in Paris. In the painting, Peter and John’s hair is blowing in the wind as the dawn is breaking. They are tilted forward. Peter is grabbing at his chest. They look distressed. It is not a peaceful scene.

How many of you are runners? How many of you are NOT runners? People ask me if I’m a runner, and I say, “I like to run around.” I’m one of those runners who runs just enough to know that I’m not much of a runner. So I can understand how Peter is feeling as John pulls ahead, and his lungs are burning. Happy Easter, Peter! So they get to the tomb and we can just see them bent over, trying to catch their breath. They don’t say anything, maybe because they didn’t have breath to say it. Peter goes into the tomb. John soon follows. They see the burial cloths. Jesus is gone, and neither of them understands fully what has happened.

That first Easter morning was not a pretty picture, not a blissful experience. It was a sleepy, sunrise sprint that left these disciples panting and probably sore. I’m imagining Mary running to catch up only to find that Peter and John are leaving. Wait, what’s going on? All she can do is weep. Yes, later she does encounter Jesus and she does eventually go and tell the disciples the good news. But let’s not jump to that part too quickly. An important part of the Easter message is found in the breathless and uncomfortable running.  [Read more…]

What are we holding back from God?

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The Good Friday Sermon from the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 3, 2015
Passion V - Deposition from the Cross: stained glass detail by Kempe from Little St Mary's church in Cambridge, UK. By Flickr user paullew.
Passion V – Deposition from the Cross: stained glass detail by Kempe from Little St Mary’s church in Cambridge, UK. By Flickr user paullew.

The collect prayer for Good Friday, which we prayed earlier, included these words: “Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.” Jesus was willing to be betrayed. Jesus gave himself into the hands of sinners. Jesus suffered death upon the cross. We call this a “good” Friday, because Jesus was willing to surrender, suffer, and die, and he reveals the awesome and mysterious generosity of God’s love. God’s love is so abundant and forgiving that it can absorb our worst behavior and still have more to give. On Good Friday, Jesus made a sacrifice. On this Good Friday, we are invited to make a sacrifice as well. We are invited to offer all that we are, our best and our worst, to the crucified Christ and hold nothing back.

What do I mean by this? Sometimes in our relationships with God and in our relationships with one another, we have a tendency to hold back. We do not say everything we are thinking or feeling. We do not express our whole selves. In our relationships with one another, this is very appropriate. If we said everything on our minds and hearts…if we held nothing back, it would likely hurt feelings and cause a lot of unnecessary trouble. TMI! Too much information. I don’t need or want to hear everything that you are thinking or feeling. But in our relationship with God, we get into trouble when we do not share everything. When we hold back from God, we suffer. We suffer, because we tend to hold back the things we’re not proud of, the things that most need healing: our shame, our fear, our anger. We somehow got it into our heads and hearts that God only wants to see shiny happy Christians. God expects us to dress up for church and look our best and pray with pure and strong hearts. No! God knows us. God knows that underneath our Sunday best, we carry around some heavy and messy stuff. We do not have to hide that from God, but we try to. We try to, because we think we can handle it. We think we can figure it out on our own. [Read more…]

It begins with feet

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The Maundy Thursday Homily from the Rev. Deacon Carey Chirico, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 2, 2015
feet-cclicense2015
“Seated, six feet off the ground” by Flickr User CDM. Licensed through Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Psalm 116:8
For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. Amen.

It begins with feet. Small, innocent feet which have never touched the ground.
Small feet which kick and wave in the air.
Feet that will grow and stretch and carry a grown man around the countryside, walking miles and miles each day – hot, brown, dusty and sweaty.

It begins with love.
The love of Mary’s words in the Magnificat. The love of teacher for his disciples.
The love of a shepherd for his lost sheep.

It begins with shame.
The shame of an unwed mother.
The shame of an unexpected pregnancy.
The shame of sheltering to be born -in a cave not a palace, among animals not friends.

And so we come to this day. The night when having journeyed with our Savior through the giddy days of Hosannas we arrive at the meal which will be our last.

On this night the disciples have gathered to eat together as they have on so many occasions yet surely they must have sensed, known that things were about to change. Jesus has given them the best he has, the best he can. In one final gesture he kneels down and again upending the Kingdom washes their feet.

Gently wiping, pouring, cupping their tired, dusty feet. Their protests are the final sign of their lack of understanding of this man they have followed.

Tonight we will walk in their steps. We will come forward, sit down and let someone take our foot and gently, lovingly rinse it with water. Then they will pat it dry, carefully returning it to the earth. Tonight we will have the opportunity to let ourselves be loved, be served, be cared for, be cherished. Is this not the greatest of His messages to us – care for each other, love one another as I have loved you?

And we will struggle just as they did.

We will resist showing someone else that which is imperfect, unmanicured, unlovable. We will protest. We will resist, we will want to stay in our seat. But when we relent.

When we let go…….. then we will get it. Then we will begin the work of understanding.

My friend Jane tells a story about an experience she had right here in this Church. Jane is a teacher, and one year she had – that child. That child that you struggle to love, struggle to reach but who defies your every attempt. And she was ashamed. Her inability to love this child made her feel ashamed.

At her wits end, dreading school the next day, Janie prayed here in this Nave. Then she stood up and walking up the aisle to the altar for communion she pretended that she carried in her arms this child. And at the rail she knelt beside him, offering up what was broken between them and her inability to fix it.

Three months later she asked the children to write an essay about something significant that had happened to them during the school year.

The unloving, unlovable child wrote about the day, that day, in the middle of the year when his teacher ……started loving him.

“Generally speaking,” says the great Fredrick Buechner,“if you want to know who you really are, keep an eye on where your feet take you.”

It begins and it ends with feet. Feet battered and pierced. Feet, which the Gospel of Matthew tells us, were grasped and worshipped by the women at the empty tomb. Feet, which carry us into the world, humble, misshapen, dusty and hot.

As it began, it ends in shame. The shame of a slave’s death on a cross, tried, beaten and defeated. Deserted and denied by disciples. Alone between two thieves.

And as it began, it ends in love, the greatest love mankind has ever known or will know. Love that takes all our cares, all our shame, all our brokenness and hands us back – hope, joy, growth and healing.

Tonight I invite you to take a chance and experience in a small way how hard it is to share that which is rough and unpolished even shameful about ourselves.

And I invite you into a small experience of the joy of being entrusted to care for someone else’s hard, embarrassing place.

Love one another as I have loved you and by this the world shall know that you are my disciples.

Amen.

Hosannah!

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palmcross-webPalm Sunday Homily from the Rev. Joe Hensley, Mar 29, 2015

Hosannah! Hosannah in the highest! Today, Palm Sunday, we hear these words with new ears. We sing or say them every week when we celebrate the Eucharist together. Today we remember that the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem shouted those words from Psalm 118 as he rode on the donkey colt. They shouted Hosannah as they covered the road with leafy branches. That word, “hosanna,” literally means “please save.” Today, as we begin our Holy Week pilgrimage, we put into our hearts this same same word: “Hosannah! Save us, please.”

The origins of the Hosannahs and the leafy branches of willow or palm come from the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the festival of booths, which is a fall, harvest-time celebration. Bible scholars have long puzzled over why the crowds who are making their way to Jerusalem with Jesus for the springtime Passover festival would invoke the words and signs of Sukkot. One possibility is that the hosanna prayers were offered while praying for rain, for literal salvation from drought. “Please save,” becomes a plea for life-giving water. By reenacting the Sukkot liturgy as Jesus enters Jerusalem, perhaps the crowds are emphasizing their hope that he is a “rain maker.” These are a people who have long-suffered under the yoke of oppression by their own leaders as well as the Roman Empire. Hosannah becomes a political and spiritual cry: “Here comes the one who will rain down justice upon the heads of our oppressors.”

Jesus does not deliver the rain like the crowds expect. He does not ride into town on a war horse but upon a humble donkey. He does not occupy the temple but instead hides on the outskirts of town. He does not announce victory but instead teaches in parables. By the time Jesus is arrested, perhaps the crowds have become impatient. Maybe this teacher is not the savior they had hoped for. Their hopeful “hosannas” give way to frustrated cries of “crucify him!”

Holy Week is our journey from “hosanna” to “crucify him.” The pilgrimage will take us from the hope for salvation to the realization that the one who offers it to us has been slain. This raises some questions for us. Have we been among those who have denied knowing Jesus, like Peter? He we been among those who have stood by helpless or silent while other suffered, while the light of the world was cloaked in darkness? Have we been among those who played a role in the unfair suffering of others? The answer is ‘yes.’ We know our guilt. The purpose of this Holy Week pageant, though, is not to feel guilty. The reason why we dwell on this tragic story and come back to church this week night after night is not to wallow in our sin and shame. We take these steps together so that we can come face to face with the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of our own souls, and realize that we have a companion in Jesus. Jesus walks with us and will not turn away from our worst. Jesus accepts our hopes and our failures, our hosannas and our cries for blood. He accepts them and he redeems them. He is the true rain maker, the one who waters our dry and cracked souls with mercy and forgiveness. In Gethsemane garden, at Calvary’s cross, even from the stony tomb, he rains down grace in the face of violence. He rains down right in a world of wrong. He rains down love in the midst of hate. This Holy Week we are invited to walk with Jesus on the road of suffering and surrender so that we might better know the gifts he showers upon us. Hosannah, Jesus, Hosannah. Save us, please. Save us and help us, we humbly pray. Amen.