The Shepherd’s Response Luke 2: 8-20

Well, it’s happened again! About a week ago I got fed up; fed up with what I was listening to on the car radio. Most of you know that I’m something of a political junkie, and this facet of my personality comes across when choosing what to tune into on the radio while driving. Frankly, given how distracted (and worked-up) I get from these talk-shows, it’s a miracle I haven’t driven off the road years ago.

Well, as I said, about a week ago I got fed up with all that. I turned the dial. Instantly, strains of Christmas carols were pumping through all ten speakers in my car. Being in a bad mood already, I was not pleased by this occurrence of yuletide messaging. All the usual objections flashed through my brain: “What? Christmas already? Thanksgiving hasn’t even had a chance to happen yet! Wow! Madison Ave. just can’t wait, can it? Why does THIS have to happen every year to a favorite music station?”

Strangely, though, I didn’t turn away. The music, and its message of hope and cheer was conquering my grumpiness. I was actually starting to feel good inside my head. My inner Grinch vanished, and all that was left for several minutes was a three-sizes-larger heart full of warmth and contentment.

Then it hit me: how you and I arrive at Christmas this year will depend entirely on how we respond to its message. Consider, for a moment, how the Shepherds responded to the message of that first Christmas. They didn’t have to respond as they did. It could have gone like this:

“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another,” (Luke 2:8ff)

Shepherd #1. The Purely Emotional Response:

“Oh, wasn’t it wonderful! What a sight! The singing was beautiful!

The lights were super! Oh, I’ll remember this as long as I live!”

Shepherd #2. The Rationalist Response:

“It was just a unique astronomical phenomenon; the conjunction

of spheroids in the ionosphere accompanied by an amazing

display of sonic waves.”

Shepherd #3. The Psychological Response:

“This can all be explained by the high state of nervous tension

created by living in a time of pandemic fear, political unrest,

financial insecurity, and unfounded hopes of a rescuer.

Shepherd #4. The Pragmatic Response:

“So we saw some bright stars and heard some singing. We still

have sheep to take care of. The night’s only half over and so is

our shift. If there’s a baby in Bethlehem he’ll still be there in the

morning.”

Shepherd #5. The Indifferent Response:

“(Yawn). What’s all the fuss about? How do you expect me to

sleep with all this racket going on!”

Shepherd #6. The Faith Response:

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken

place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

Question #1: Which shepherd’s response comes the closest to our response?

Question #2: Which shepherd found the Savior in Bethlehem?

The Lord bless you as you prepare for the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season ahead of us. May your worship be filled with celebration, your home glow with light and love, and your heart and spirit be lifted into joyous song and revelry at the Good News of everything that our Lord's birth means for us all.

GOD BLESS US, (and ours, and theirs, and all else's) EVERY ONE!

Peace,

Fr. Rick

A Word from Deacon Chip about Moments.

This week St. Luke’s got to rise in joy at the announcement of the Rev. Nick Hull being called as our next Priest-in-Charge. Its a moment in the life of our Parish that signals hope, life, and change. Many hours of work, prayers, and reflection by our search committee and Nick himself led to what we get to revel in now.

Anticipation can be maddening and wonderful. I know I felt that acutely on my wedding day. Knowing something good is just around the corner can make you sit up straighter or laugh longer.

All the while, there is still some time to wait.

Nick and his family will be joining St. Luke’s in the middle of January, a little less than two months from now.

I’m reflecting on that this week as we continue to receive news about the Covid pandemic, it’s resurgence and the promise of a vaccine that is highly effective. All signs point to having a viable way to immunize against this horrible disease and return to life together.

All the while remembering that it is still a ways off. There are moments of importance between then and now, both with Nick’s arrival and the vaccine.

Our nation will celebrate thankfulness this coming week. Advent arrives just after. Christmas, the celebration of our savior's birth, is at the end of December. Then, New Year's.

These moments are just as worthy of our joy at the moments we hope for beyond them, no matter how restricted our socialization may be.

My prayer is that we will continue to show Christ’s love through our actions of caring for each other, keeping each other safe by staying home, and living each of these moments in the joy they are worthy of.

In peace,

Rev. Deacon Chip Russell

A reflection from the Rt. Rev. Porter Taylor:  No Future Without Forgiveness

With the announcement that Joe Biden has enough electoral votes to be the President-Elect, some are joyous, and some are dejected. Some are laughing and some are weeping. All the emotions and reactions we feel are to be honored. Here's the thing: our work as followers of Jesus hasn't changed. Remember the promises in our Baptismal Covenant?

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself?

Yes, the configuration of our government matters because it has enormous ramifications. However, when we are baptized, we gain agency. We become Christ bearers and our task is to align ourselves with God so that we are available to be God's instruments to bring God's realm of justice, peace, and mercy near. I realized that since Election Day, I have not been present to the actual world around me. My focus is on what might happen instead of what actually is happening.

In Walden, Thoreau writes, "I have never met [a person] who was fully alive. How could I look [that person] in the face?" My hope is that I and all faithful people will wake from our preoccupation and distraction of the election and attend to the hopes, and joys, and hurts of the world right around us. "Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." In other words, this is the only day we have, so let us be fully incarnated here and now and do the work God gives us to do wherever we are.

If we are to "seek and serve Christ in all persons," then we must let go of our preoccupation with what happened or didn't happen and embrace the world around us. A spiritual teacher when listening to one of his/her students go on and on about mystical theology would finally ask the person, "Yes, but where are your feet?" In other words, "Are you grounded in the here and now?" It's not enough to be wise about the universe if you are unkind or simply a jerk to your neighbors.

Perhaps it's time for us to attend to the events and people in front of us. Perhaps it's time to focus on this moment which is the only moment we have instead of what people should have done in the past or ought to do in the future. The present moment is the only place reconciliation happens.

There's a reason Desmond Tutu entitled his book about the struggle over South Africa's apartheid No Future Without Forgiveness. Until we find a way to reconcile, we will simply transfer the current division and acrimony to another subject. The doorway to forgiveness is to let go of a desired future and stop defining others by one act or one aspect of their lives.

Some time ago, I read an account of the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg in 1913. The surviving soldiers from both sides dressed in their uniforms for a re-enactment of Pickett's Charge. The Union soldiers took their places on Seminary Ridge, and the Confederate soldiers stood on the farmland below. Instead of rifles and bayonets, they had canes and crutches. When the two armies approached one another, the Confederate army let out a rebel yell. However, instead of shooting or stabbing, they embraced. They put the past to rest -- they forgave -- and they stepped into new life.

Let us not wait fifty years or fifty days for the healing to start. Reconciliation is our calling; it's what we promised in baptism and it's time for us to embrace our calling.

A Word from Deacon Chip about endurance.

When I was a child there was always a part of playground culture where everyone would try to one up the last person who had everyone's attention. Going high on a swing? Well, I’ll try to go higher. Hang a long time from the monkey bars? I’ll try and hang longer. And so on. I remember one day in particular in Elementary School when someone claimed they could run farther than me. They didn’t know that I had asthma and that they were probably right. It didn’t stop me from trying to best them even. What did happen is that I failed to run farther, or even as far, as they had. I didn’t have the endurance. 

I was reminded of these events this week in the wake of the national elections. Oh, I know there are temptations to compare our electoral process to a playground but that wouldn’t be fair to the election or the playground. 

Instead, I’m reflecting on the feelings I had after not measuring up to my peers in elementary school. I remember feeling broken, wrong, and less. All of that was wrapped up in this one event and it weighed me down. I learned that I was good at other things and grew to appreciate myself for those qualities over time. I even outgrew the asthma. Endurance wasn’t everything in the world.

It’s tempting to wrap all of our emotions into an election. To engage the world in a moment of winners and losers. To take the outcome of a single event and hold it up as what’s true. 

As Christian’s we know that God is calling us to be changed. That we are constantly transformed by the power and love of God. Any single moment is always the gateway to the next moment where the justice and truth of God might be more fulfilled in the world through our actions. We know that change is a part of our faith.

As a Sophomore in College I had my parents ship me my trusted bicycle and I began to ride it again as I had (forgive the pun) religiously in my teenage years. A few months later a few friends and I decided to take a long ride together around town. We rode for 16 miles. At the end both my friends were worn out and one commented to me that I didn’t look tired. I remember answering, “I’m not really. I never used to track how far I rode. I guess it was farther than I thought.”

There are times in our lives when we can’t match our own hopes. There are other times when we may not even know our own strength or how much has changed over time. Sometimes, those are the exact same moment. 

Know that no matter what we are called forward by our God into what comes next, no matter what that is, and that we are blessed with the grace to bring God’s Kingdom closer.

In peace,

Rev. Deacon Chip Russell

A Word from Deacon Chip about “Soon”

Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself saying to friends and family that I hope to see them “Soon”. It isn’t a joke and almost always the immediate reply from them is that they share that hope. So it was curious to me when I realized how thin and far away “soon” was starting to feel.

Two weeks ago I confessed my love of Oreo Cookies. I feel compelled to mention it again because there is always a moment in that relationship with my food, when I run out. All of the cookies are gone. I have shared them with my wife and eaten them myself until this moment when the next time I have any Oreos is, “Soon”. There is a hurdle to cross before I can have more, going to the store. No small matter in Covid-tide.

There it is again. Covid. A deadly and terrible sickness hurting and killing some, while distorting time and perception for the rest of us. The press of the pandemic is a weight that shifts but does not seem to lessen. It pushes “Soon” farther and farther away.

In Eucharist, there is a moment called the Anamnesis. It ties past, present, and future together in one all encompassing now. On Sunday we will say it this way, “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.” Definitions fail in describing this. In Anamnesis, Christ is on the cross, stepping out of the tomb, and welcoming us on the last day all at once.

The reality of God’s love is not limited by time. “Soon” is just as much “now” as it is “past” to God. When we come to the table together and receive the presence of God in the Eucharist we too can experience that gathering together of all time that is outside of time. We are gathered together as we hope to be.

Soon.

In peace,

Rev. Deacon Chip Russell

A Devotion on Psalm 6

Dear St. Luke’s Family,

Does a broken prayer still work? Can God understand us, even when we can’t find the words that say what we think and feel? We’ve all had such prayers; ones that just don’t say what we want, that don’t sound/feel as though we’ve made ourselves understood. When those prayers happen, will God still “get us?” Psalm six, from our Daily Office readings this week, can help us answer that question, along with a little help from the Apostle Paul.

Blessings,

Fr. Rick

Psalm 6: When words fail. How often we struggle with our prayers! We want God to understand us; to know how we really feel, the depths of our thoughts and emotions. We worry that if we can’t quite say it as we fully mean it, God might not understand; might not understand just how afflicted we are, or how urgent is our cause, or how honest is our reasoning. And, if we can’t get it right, then we worry: God, we think, just might not answer in the way we need.

In our Psalm this week, Psalm 6, (the first of the “Sorrowful Seven”), the Psalmist is struggling for the right words, when suddenly, words literally fail. It happens in verse 3. It’s not as clear in the Prayerbook translation as it is in the NRSV, but it can still be detected. After laying out the preceding verses with mounting reasons for the need of deliverance, the Psalmist begs for God to intervene. The verse reads, “My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O Lord---how long?

To this point, the Psalmist has “held it together.” The rhythm of the poetry and stanzas is working, the rhyming at the end of each line (in the Hebrew) is successfully happening, then--then, it all falls apart. No rhyme, no rhythm; even the syntax of language itself disintegrates. The Psalmist is at a complete loss for words. He is at the impossible point of trying to express the inexpressible. This is, I think, the only place in all the Psalms where this happens, where words truly fail.

The effect of this on the Psalmist is good, though. He changes direction and immediately gets to the point, blurting out, “Turn, O lord, save my life;”. We don’t know if this is a desperate shout, with hands uplifted in an agitated cry, or a hushed whisper from a soul completely spent. Some of you, perhaps all of us, have been in this place; maybe even sending out the desperate shout and the spent whisper simultaneously in the deep prayer of our souls. And, we wonder, “Has God heard this? Does God understand? Even when I can’t even think it straight, much less say it?”

Here is God’s answer to our question. It comes from the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs (and “groans” KJV) too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom 8:26-27 NRSV) Yes! This passage answers. Even when words fail, even when thoughts don’t “gel” for us, God still understands us. In such moments, God understands us better than we do ourselves. That is God’s promise in this passage from Paul.

Even the Psalmist seems to understand this. For a few verses further on from his broken words he says, “for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping…the Lord accepts my prayer.” His weeping, moaning, and tears have been the deepest part of the prayer. What Paul is telling us, what the Psalmist already understands, is that God does hear and understand us even when we cannot fully understand ourselves. We need have no fear for God’s understanding of us. God will always hear us and “get us” in our prayers.

A Word from Deacon Chip about Little Joys and Guilt.

I love Oero cookies. I love them almost as much as I love plain white rice with a little bit of soy sauce. The only difference being that I can eat a nearly endless amount of Oreo cookies but only about 2 bowls of rice before I’m full.

Having some Oreos is one of the little joys I allow myself, as a practice in generosity towards myself. Being generous is as much a skill as it is a good deed. It takes practice, using it more often will make it easier, and leaving it unused will see it diminish.

One of the best ways I know of to build the skill of generosity is to bring it into my everyday life, especially at home. Hence, the joy of Oreos.

Covid has brought into our lives a new awareness of imbalance and the needs of our vulnerable neighbors. Being able to be safe at home while a service industry employee must risk going in to work day in and day out in order to survive is a very real difference being experienced by thousands of people in Fairfax county. Does this mean that I should feel guilty about the joy I receive from a few Oreos?

There isn’t one right answer. God doesn’t want us to live in fear and heart ache all our lives. We are Easter people, living in the joy of the resurrected Christ all because of God’s will for creation. So too, God wishes us to be generous and knows that we are creatures that have to learn the skills of love that come so naturally to God’s-self. I should be sharing my Oreos.

If I start by sharing Oreos, even at home, I may learn to better share the rest of what I have with the world. May my awareness of my Joy inspire me to act so that others may have the same.

In peace,

Rev. Deacon Chip Russell

A Devotion on Psalms 80, 77, and 79 from Fr. Rick.

Dear St. Luke’s Family,

Do you sometimes have trouble telling God how you really feel? As though there are some feelings and thoughts that just aren’t appropriate to say to God? Doubts, angers, and fears that will be found unacceptable? Reading several of our Psalms from the Daily Office this week has reminded me that the Psalmists didn’t seem to suffer from our polite reservations. They laid it all out in their prayers. Consider reading Psalms 80, 77, and 79 today. I pray that you will find them, and my reflection, helpful in this.

Peace,

Rick+

The Psalms: The prayers that pray us. I think of the Psalms as the prayers that pray us. That’s because the Psalmists are boldly honest, sometimes bluntly so, in their prayers with God. We see it in all our Psalms this week. Their honesty shocks us and even causes us to recoil at times. “I would never say such a thing to God!” We think. “What a terrible attitude, thought, wish, request!” We can come away from the Psalms, if we allow ourselves to, with a sense that we are different from the writers; that we are a better people. But on closer inspection, if we are honest, we find that we have merely tamped down and covered over the same in ourselves. The honesty of the Psalmists prays for us what we do not want to own. And that is what God wants. God wants us to be honest about what we are thinking and feeling. It is when we have trod the breadth of our thinking, and plumbed the depths of our emotions, that our prayers become a dialogue with God. A Place of meeting. Be fully honest in your prayers today.

Then do one more thing as the Psalmists nearly always do: It is there, in verse 11 of Psalm 77, “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.” Remember and dwell on God’s faithfulness in your life in the past. It will restore your sense of God’s faithfulness to you for the present, and it will give you confidence in God’s faithfulness for you into the future.