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Table Talk: Wow! Thanks! Help!

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by Linda Carter and the Rev. Carey Chirico, Deacon

Smiles, laughs, and lots of them! Who knew we had a rector who could juggle apples while saying the opening prayer or juggle plastic bags? The mood in the room went from the usual quiet, concerned one to a momentary respite from life’s troubles. Thank you, Joe, for bringing the gift of laughter to The Table.

Ann Lamott explains that there are three major types of prayer – “Wow, Thanks, Help.”

The Table regularly presents us with all three moments sometimes at the same time. This past Tuesday, we had a dad come in asking about baby food. As we worked on finding community resources, a young mother who regularly shops with us came up to Chris Cook and said she could help. She had some extra baby food at home from her small family and she would happily share. She ran home (with her children in tow) and returned with two bags of baby food to donate to this fellow shopper in need. The previous week, this same mom had felt terrible when her baby, hanging from a front carrier, had kicked out and knocked Tom Way’s coffee mug off a table and smashed it. She also returned with a new mug for Tom.

At the end of the night, just as the doors were being closed and tables put away, a small family of four came in asking for food. They were first-timers, and the mom and children were given a personal tour of the tables and invited to choose what they needed. The nine-year-old was mortified and would not look up from her phone as her mom tried to involve her in the choices available. Finally upon reaching the baking area, the mom broke down and sobbed. “It has been a long time since I have seen this much food,” she said.

The greatest words of comfort we could offer were powerful ones: “We will see you next week. Please come back and let us know how you are doing. We will be here waiting for you.”

Wow, Thanks, Help – all at the same time. The Table continues to transform us through the grace of Christ’s presence there. Thanks be to God.

We will celebrate and bless the cooling shed on Sunday, June 14, from 2-4 p.m. at the George St. courtyard. There will be refreshments, music by The Table’s own DJ Richard, a ribbon cutting and thank yous to all who made it possible. Who knows? Maybe we can convince Joe to show off some of his juggling talents with produce from the Flores Farm delivery. Kohlrabi, beets, fennel, Daikon radishes might be a challenge even for him!

Surrendering to the Good Shepherd

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From the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B, April 26, 2015

"Shepherd," by Reza Vaziri
“Shepherd,” by Reza Vaziri

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” There are few other words in scripture that are more comforting. I have said them at the bedside of sick and dying persons. I have said them at funerals. They bring that reassurance that ultimately, God is the only One who turns our scarcity into plenty. The Divine and Holy One is the only one who can reassure us in the shadow of death, feed us in the presence of our enemies, and bless us with abundant and steadfast love. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Shepherds have been around for nearly as long as humans have walked the earth. The relationship between shepherd and flock was sacred in ancient times. The shepherd cared for the animals which in turn provided labor and sustenance for the people. Survival depended on having good shepherds. To be a good shepherd took skills, sharp senses, and wisdom. Ancient peoples began using the term, shepherd, to describe their rulers. A good ruler like a good shepherd would care for the people. They would lead, protect, and provide.

We know, though, that not all shepherds are good. Not all monarchs are good. Jesus, in today’s Gospel describes himself as the Good Shepherd in contrast to the hired hand who runs away in the face of danger. What Jesus is saying, and what Psalm 23 is also saying, I think, is that there is really only one true and loving shepherd for humanity.

Sometimes, we have trouble believing that God is our shepherd. We can feel like God has left us defenseless. We worry that we won’t have enough. We fear that life is falling apart. Remember that the psalm which comes right before Psalm 23 is Psalm 22. Psalm 22 begins with the words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?!” In Psalm 22, packs of wild animals surround the speaker. Enemies are on every side. The speaker cries out, wondering where God is: “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.” When have we felt in trouble? When have we felt like no one had our back? For many of us, myself included, it is tempting in such times to turn away from God. We look for guidance and sustenance in the arms of inadequate shepherds, hired hands. The hired hand might do the job for a while, but runs away at the first sign of trouble. What “hired hand” do you turn to when you turn away from God? For some of us, we turn to money and the temporary security it offers. Some of us turn to unhealthy relationships or destructive behaviors. Some of us turn to overindulgence. Some of us turn to experts who tell us exactly what to do to find happiness. We fool ourselves by thinking that more knowledge will save us. None of these things give us the pastoral care that God provides. They help us deceive ourselves into thinking we can handle the situation on our own.

Truly, we can probably handle a lot of things on our own. There comes a point, though, where we say to ourselves, “I am ready to give up some control and stop trying so hard.” I’m ready to take my place among the sheep and stop pretending to be the shepherd. Some of us surrender to God easily. Some of us won’t give up until we hit rock bottom. Some of us surrender one day and put our defenses back up the next. I do not understand why we have trouble surrendering to God, why we have trouble believing “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” What I do believe is that when we can give up, even temporarily, God cares for us much better than we can ever care for ourselves. Following God, we are much more free than we are following our own guidance.

So how do we surrender? How do we convince our hearts to believe that “The Lord is my shepherd?” We could spend several sermons on these questions. Certainly part of surrender is found in obeying the command to love one another that we heard in the letter of John today. Another part of surrender is definitely listening in quiet prayer for the voice of the shepherd that Jesus mentioned. I want to focus on something a little more uncomfortable, perhaps. It involves the collection plate. In the Episcopal Church, we tend to start with the material and move to the spiritual. We start with the wet water of baptism. The edible bread and wine of holy communion. We touch, taste, hear, smell, and see things in the act of worship. At first we may not have much understanding of what is going on before us, but with time and practice, we develop a sense of the Spirit at work. Every Sunday we put out an empty plate or pass it around. We don’t say much about it, but many of us put money in that plate or send a check to the church. Yes, that money does sustain the ministry of the church and helps others in need, but that is only a part of the purpose of the empty plate. Yes, we offer our gifts in thanksgiving to the one who gives us everything. But thanksgiving, too, is not the whole picture. We offer each other this empty plate as an invitation to surrender. Sacrifice some money as a material gesture of our desire to trust in God. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Money is not my shepherd. The things money can buy are not my shepherd. My true needs are not supplied by money. So I put some money in the plate. At first we may not be sure what this material gesture means. Over time, with practice, for many of us giving away money to God has become a sign that we want to be free. We want to stop following the hired hands who would feed us to the wolves. We want to be free to give, free to love, free to trust that God really is our shepherd.

I know there are lots of invitations to give money in the church. Since I got here in January, we have invited you to give to the operating budget, to Shrine Mont’s Shout to the Mountain campaign, to outreach, flowers, and trust funds for Easter, to United Thank Offering, and the Community Give effort for The Table. It may sound like a lot. Let me emphasize that this is not a test. You will notice that the plate does not sound an alarm if you give nothing. Nor does a choir of angels sing if you put in a million dollars. Your gift does not necessarily indicate great faith. The open plate simply extends an invitation to surrender who we are and what we have to God so that we can stop following false shepherds. Money is just one thing that goes in the plate. We can surrender our time to God. We can give energy and effort to God. We can offer whatever it is that we value instead of God. Money is often helpful, because it’s very tangible and we give it a lot of power in our minds.

Yes, money does help us keep the lights on and the bills paid. It helps us feed the hungry and be available to care for others. But the church too surrenders to God. We give away a lot for free and proclaim that God’s grace is without charge and plentiful. Over and over God shows us that we can do more than we ever thought possible. So again, this is not a test. The plate is not a fundraising tool. It is not a veiled attempt to get you to give more. The plate openly proclaims that when we surrender to God and Christ the Good Shepherd, God shows us our true life and revives our souls. The Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. You, O God, spread a table before us, you have anointed us to follow you and announce your abundant love to the world. You will pursue us to the ends of the earth with goodness and loving kindness all the days of our life. May we surrender to you, O great, holy, and mysterious One and dwell in your house, our true home.

Peace be with you

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From the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Third Sunday of Easter Year B, April 19, 2015

handshakePeace be with you. These are the risen Jesus’ first words to his disciples as he appears to them late on that Easter Day. These are the words we share with one another each week in our worship service before we share the Holy Eucharist together. These words are really a resurrection greeting. They are an invitation to wholeness, fulfillment, and new life. Peace be with you.

So often when we think of peace, we think of the absence of conflict. We think of peacefulness, serenity, calm. So when we say, “The Peace of the Lord be always with you,” we might be thinking: “Jesus was such a peaceful person…may you also be peaceful like Jesus.” When we share the peace, though, we are sharing so much more than just a feeling of calm. The word that Jesus and the Hebrews used for peace, “Shalom,” carries with it a sense of being whole and complete. Peace means the fulfillment of all that God has called us to be. We are not merely without conflict. We are at peace, because all the pieces are in place. We are no longer at war with ourselves and each other, because we have all we need.

It was customary in Jesus’ time to greet someone with the words, “Peace be with you.” The words did not necessarily carry a lot of symbolism. It could have been that Jesus was just greeting his disciples in the customary way. But I choose to believe that he also really meant what he said. He really wanted them to know true fulfillment. Jesus wants us to know true fulfillment also, wholeness and completeness that can endure suffering and even death and still live and breathe, touch and taste, just like the risen Christ.

I am reminded of an old story which takes place hundreds if not thousands of years ago. In these ancient times, if you were traveling alone, you had to be on your guard. Deserted trails and roads were rarely protected. If you met someone along the way, they might be a bandit or a thief. One day, a man was traveling in a wild and lonesome place where the path was quite narrow because of the rocks on either side. He sees another man coming along the path towards him. He does not recognize the man as anyone he knows he can trust. He will not be able to step aside to let the other man pass. So they meet, unable to easily pass one another in this narrow spot, and are looking at each other, trying to decide what to do. Then the first man does something completely unexpected and unconventional. He extends his empty right hand to the other man. Now to extend your empty dominant hand, the hand you would normally use to pull out your sword or knife…to put that hand, empty, out in front of you…was a risky thing to do. It meant being vulnerable. The second man was so taken aback by this gesture that he wasn’t sure how to respond at first. He had never seen anyone do this. Was it some kind of trick? He looks the first man in the eye and thinks maybe he will try it too. He extends his empty right hand. The two hands get closer and closer until they touch and the two men squeeze hands. It was the very first handshake.

Of course, we don’t know for certain when or where the first handshake occurred. But somewhere, sometime, there must have been someone who was willing to take that risk to extend the empty hand as a gesture of peace. The open hand was a sign that you could trust.

The risen Jesus extends his empty and wounded hands to his disciples with the words “Peace be with you.” His resurrected body is a sign to us that God is ready to make peace with us. Jesus is God’s handshake to us. God wants us to trust and believe in the gifts of repentance and forgiveness. God is ready to help us change our lives and release us from all our spiritual debts. Even though we continue to put our hands on our swords. Even though we continue to look with suspicion at the good things of this world. Even though we doubt that we are loveable or that we can love…God extends the vulnerable, empty hand of the Easter Jesus to us and says “Peace be with you.”

Our Easter gift to ourselves and one another is to put aside our fears and reach out that empty hand to God and to a neighbor. There will be moments when we encounter another, and we will be tempted to reach for our defenses. What are our defenses? What words, thoughts, actions do we use to protect ourselves from others? What is our go to response when we meet a stranger along the way? The stranger in ourselves, the stranger on the street, the stranger who may be Christ in disguise? I admit, I am an idealist, but I also know that sometimes we have to defend ourselves. The world can truly be a dangerous place. The murder of a University of Mary Washington student this past week is a horrible reminder. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. This week, our Diocese has called upon us to remember the 100th anniversary of the genocide of Armenians in what is now Turkey. Over 1 million Armenians were systematically killed by the Ottoman Empire. But even in a world where such awful things can and do occur, the risen Christ comes and says “peace is possible.” The resurrection witness of Christ is to suggest that we can have the grace to open our hand, open our heart, take a risk to know another, to know ourselves, to know God and God’s peace.

It is no accident that many of us pray with open hands. The Roman Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, once wrote a book about prayer with that very title. He talks about opening the hand that we often form into a fist. When our hands are tightly clenched around the things we cling to, we cannot be whole. We cannot know peace. We know the peace of God when we come with those open hands, ready to accept the gift only God can give.

Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters. May the peace of Christ, the wounded and vulnerable Christ, be with you. May his shalom, his wholeness and completeness show us where we are clinging too tightly, holding on to our defenses, where we are unwilling to open ourselves. May the peace of the risen Christ help us know that peace which we can share with the world, an open-handed, open-hearted, repenting and forgiving peace that passes all understanding. Alleluia.

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.

A reflection on the Feast of the Annunciation

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By the Rev. Joe Hensley, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | March 26, 2015

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. It’s nine months before Christmas. I explained this to my daughter, and her response was, “Wow, so Mary meets the angel this week and Jesus dies next week?!” It’s a bit of whiplash to be reminded in the midst of Lent, on the verge of Holy Week, that Jesus’ life miraculously began in Mary’s womb. It seems harsh to hear Gabriel address Mary as “favored one” when we know that next week Jesus will speak to his mother from the cross. What kind of favor is it to endure the torturous execution of an innocent son?

It reminds us that God’s favor, God’s grace, is not measured in earthly terms. Mary is not spared agony or suffering; she isn’t granted any favors. Her favor is measured in terms of devotion. Her devotion enables her to bear the son of God, raise him, and watch him die. Her love is so profound, that no wonder Christians look to Mary as a shining example.

One of my favorite hymns of Holy Week is the “Stabat Mater dolorosa,” the last verse of which reads: “Jesus, may her [Mary’s] deep devotion stir in me the same emotion, Fount of love, Redeemer kind; that my heart fresh ardor gaining, and such a purer love attaining, may with thee acceptance find.”

This feast is our occasion to ask for the prayers of Mary and all the saints that we might receive such grace and favor which Mary received. May we have adoring hearts conceived within us, so that we may say in sorrow or joy with the mother of Jesus: “Let it be with me according to your word.”