Holy Mysteries
Encountering the Risen Jesus
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Savannah, Georgia 31401
Seventh Week of Easter
What were you created to do? What gives you energy? What makes you proud of what you can accomplish? These questions are ways of opening up a sense of vocation. Certainly, your vocation can be your career. Our daughter, Griffin, has found her vocation in caring for animals, which she sees as a calling. She graduated from Vet School and serves as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. The great reformer Martin Luther revived a larger sense of vocation from a medieval view that saw vocation as referring explicitly to Holy Orders. Luther wrote, “Every occupation has its own honor before God. Ordinary work is a divine vocation or calling. In our daily work no matter how important or mundane we serve God by serving the neighbor and we also participate in God’s on-going providence for the human race.”
We know baristas, attorneys, artists, truck drivers, teachers, real estate agents, and firefighters who live into their work as a vocation in that their work is an important place where their care and concern for others is made real. Seeing any work as a means of serving God is not about doing different things so much as doing all you do differently because you see the people you encounter as the neighbor who Jesus called you to love. The Rule of St. Benedict that set the early pattern for monks and nuns said, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ,” in describing how to treat the stranger at the gate of the monastery. This describes the way we are to see the people we come across in our day. We know a retired chaplain who bagged groceries at the store to the glory of God, by praying for everyone checking out at the register and treating everyone with kind consideration.
This is vocation, but there is more to vocation than work. We know people who live into their vocation in their job that earns them a living, who also live into service to others in another way, such as serving in Kairos Prison Ministry or being an AA sponsor. A gifted nurse practitioner founded the Boy Scout troop at King of Peace, the church we started in Kingsland. Both the care of patients and serving as a mentor are among his vocations.
Your vocation can and should be every office and situation in life, so that the Reformer Martin Luther could talk of the vocation of marriage and also the vocation of celibacy. Either can be to the glory of God. For your vocation or vocations are the ways in which you use your God-given gifts in the service of God and the coming reign of God.
Our outer actions provide a means to walk the walk of our inner faith. Care shown for others is done with no thought to our gain, but in thanksgiving for all we have already been given. Having been saved by faith alone, without any need for works, we are free from the burden of earning God’s love. Yet as followers of Jesus we have bound ourselves (freely) to living in service to others, not as a means of deserving that love, but in response to that love of God we see in Jesus. The Reformation sought to break down the sharp divide between the sacred and secular that had developed in Christian thought. Instead of those two separate realms, they saw the ordinary world in which we live being the place where we joyfully serve God in loving care for all creation.
In the Anglican tradition, we see how Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who crafted the first Books of Common Prayer in English, in writing two Books of Homilies captured the same scriptural sense of faith and works in his sermons on Good Works and Idleness. He said that no one can buy or purchase heaven with his works, but that we should not be slack in doing good works, “seeing that it is the will of God that we should walk in them.”
In the ‘Prayers for Families to Use,’ found in the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789, there is an intercession: “Be gracious unto thy Church; and grant that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may serve thee faithfully.” This was to make it plain that every Christian shares a common call to serve God by serving others.
We also have different ages and stages of life and so we find new ways to live into vocation and ministry. The teacher or professor who is now a grandparent or great-grandparent finds new ways to use the same gifts and vocation in new ways. Each of us is blessed in giving to others from the gifts we have been given and retirement is a time for discovering that anew. New times in life give fresh opportunities for learning by doing and a great chance to take skills honed in previous seasons to use in an untried opportunity.
• If you are exploring a sense of what is your vocation at this stage in your life, ask: Where is my passion? What makes my heart sing? What gives me joy? How can I use this to serve God?
• How might you do what you already do differently out of this understanding of this being how you are to serve God in your daily life and work?
“All people have access to their True Self
from their very first inhalation and exhalation,
which we now know is the very sound
of the sacred name Yahweh.
We breathe God in and out—
much more than we ‘know’ God,
understand God, or even talk to God.”
– Richard RohrBecause my high school dream of being a hermit did not work out nor did I become a nun, I have pursued those vocations by pouring myself into my life as a Franciscan, and more importantly, into the meditation and quiet times of prayer that are a part of my Rule of Life. Keeping my mind quiet has always been a challenge because I have what is known as ‘monkey brain’. My mind is constantly dashing from one thought to another. Yes, I have a little ADHD, and have to tell myself to focus at times, and it takes constant work, but I can accomplish that task.
Something that has really helped me, I first learned about in 2022—the breathing in and out of God’s name. The concept made so much sense to me. I had already felt certain that God is the very air I breathe but to have it confirmed, to make my inhalations and exhalations have so much meaning, particularly when I am meditating, was life changing.
Numerous scholars and rabbis have noted that the letters YHWH represent the sounds of breathing, or if you prefer to think of it this way, aspirated consonants. When YHWH is pronounced without the intervening vowels, which, by the way, are just a guess, it actually sounds like breathing.
YH (inhale): WH (exhale).
It might help to know that in Hebrew, Y is pronounced yode and H is pronounced hey. I can hear it more clearly when I inhale when I think of it that way. Similarly, W is pronounced vav and the H is the same ‘hey’.
Then, when you really consider it, you realize that when you are born, your first cry, your very first breath, is speaking the name of God.
When you sigh deeply, you call God’s name. A whimper, a groan or even a gasp, a sob or a scream—any sound that is beyond words is still expressing the name of God.
Everything that breathes whether it be your enemy, an atheist, or even your favorite pet, declares God’s name, when they inhale and exhale, even though they might be unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God.
And as you are born breathing the name of God, you will also leave this earth with your last breath, whispering God’s name as your breath no longer fills your lungs.
This is such a beautiful thought that it’s difficult not to get emotional when I sit and consider it. Our God chose to give itself a name that we cannot help but communicate every moment that we are alive.
Every living thing. Always and everywhere. Whether we are waking or sleeping, the name of God is an integral part of our lives.
Meditating on the name of God has made my time in silence so much more meaningful. It has also made it easier to see God in every living thing. Listening to the gentle snores of my cat, the squirrels chattering, or the birds singing and knowing they are one with their Creator makes me feel uniquely connected to them. And that’s important because feeling connected to everyone, and everything, is what God wishes for us. It is only when we feel that connection that we can learn to love without boundaries, loving every creature, human or animal, as God does.
As Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov:
“Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to understand it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. … Things flow and are indirectly linked together, and if you push here, something will move at the other end of the world. If you strike here, something somewhere will wince; if you sin here, something somewhere will suffer.”
• Have you felt a connection to all creation? When and how did that occur?
• What form of prayer nurtures you?
“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’” (Acts 1:6-11)
This Ascension Day reading with the apostles looking up at Jesus’ feet disappearing into the clouds can be a stumbling block. Some will remark rightly that we know better than to conceive of a three-storied universe with heaven above, hell beneath, and earth sandwiched in the middle. We have pierced the sky, traveled to the moon and are even now being watched over by astronauts working at the international space station. What sense does it make to talk of Jesus disappearing off into the sky, a vanishing point of distance from earth ending his earthly ministry?
This knowledge need not distract us as we know through our own faith journeys that God has a knack for giving us not just what we need, but what we are ready to receive. The disciples, or followers, were becoming apostles, or ones sent out, and they needed Jesus to leave in such a way that they would stop hanging around and get about the work of the Gospel. Ascension Day accomplished that essential purpose.
On all the days leading up to that one, the disciples looked for their Lord. Their lives were centered on Jesus. Knowing more about the heavens doesn’t change the truth of Jesus’ leaving his earthly ministry to become once more the second person of the Trinity, no longer limited by the incarnation to being in one place at a time. After the ascension, the apostles began to pray and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Then with Pentecost, they were empowered to go out in ministry.
Ascension Day worked. With Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the disciples were prepared to become apostles. They stopped looking for Jesus here and there, and began to pray for the Holy Spirit who would be with them always. On that day, Jesus’ followers were given what they needed to begin to change their focus.
What would it take for us to change our focus? After all, it is easy for a church to go from being about the mission of sharing the love of God found in Jesus with a lost and hurting world to turning our mission stations into clubs. A church does not exist for its own sake, but as preparation for those who gather to take part in Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world. The word “member” should probably not even be used for aligning oneself with a given congregation. We are not to be members of a club, exclusive or otherwise, as if Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection were for the purpose of starting a new institution. We are missionaries working on the front lines of the mission of the church, which is what we each encounter everywhere we go. The institution of the church exists to further the mission which is God’s mission—reconciling the world to God.
This need to turn outward is so crucial. A commonly used dismissal for the Eucharist, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” is meant to be the equivalent to the two men robed in white who said, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” The words of the angels turned the disciples’ gaze outward to a lost and hurting world and so made them into apostles, ones sent forth on a mission. We too are to turn from being nourished spiritually at the altar to seeing the needs in the world around us anew because of our worship.
• In what ways is your congregation a social club?
• In what ways is your congregation furthering the mission of reconciling the world to God in Christ?
“In the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and Power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than forty years he had lived since.”
This quotation is from the book, Practicing the Presence of God, written by the Cardinal de Noailles, Abbe Joseph de Beaufort, to collect his conversations with Brother Lawrence together with the monk’s “maxims” and letters. In the first conversation, Lawrence recounted his conversion at age eighteen. Seeing the bare limbs of a tree standing out against a world shrouded in snow, he knew the tree would once again sprout leaves, then flowers and fruit. The certainty of the promise of this little resurrection of spring changed the course of his life; having discovered God’s faithfulness, he joined the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Paris.
As a lay brother in the order, he served for 30 years as the cook in the monastery kitchen. Lawrence came to realize that God was present in the kitchen all the time. Yes, he could go to chapel and God would be present, but God was not just in the chapel. Right there in his kitchen, Lawrence became deeply aware of God’s presence. The Cardinal described it this way in the book he compiled:
“As Brother Lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of God, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others; but his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. His very countenance was edifying, such a sweet and calm devotion appearing in it as could not but affect the beholders. And it was observed that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. ‘The time of business,’ said he, ‘does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.’”
The work of the kitchen was transformed by the unlearned monk when he realized that he did all of his work in the presence of God.
• How might your daily life be different if you were always powerfully aware of God’s presence?
First, I wanted to be an astronaut. That earliest dream of “What I want to be when I grow up” lasted until at least fifth grade. But if I look to a hope that stuck with me, I don’t recall a time before I aspired to be an Eagle Scout. I had started out in Cub Scouts before I was even old enough by attending my brothers’ meetings as my Mom was the den mother. When I was finally old enough to be a Cub Scout, I joined and remained in scouting all through elementary school, junior high, high school, and my first year of college. Not only did I become an Eagle Scout, but I got my first tastes of travel in Scouting, twice backpacking out west at Philmont Scout Ranch, traveling to Sweden for the World Jamboree, working on the staff of the National Jamboree, and more.
I have often shared how my Scoutmaster, Gene McCord, was a larger than life figure in my youth. A lineman for the power company, he is a lifelong Southern Baptist, who connected his leadership in Scouting to his faith in God. Mr. McCord and the many other leaders who gave their time to our Scout Troop were my models for how I wanted to be as a Christian. I knew I would want to give back to God by paying forward the time and care they showed me, and I talked to Victoria about this when we met.
In time, Victoria and I would work with the high school youth group at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rome, Georgia. This was our way of “paying forward” what the mentors in our lives had invested in us. We also began to serve in the children’s chapel as our daughter, Griffin, was taking part in those child-friendly liturgies that took place during the Eucharist.
I remember so clearly arriving for a Sunday afternoon Bible Study full of doubts and fears as I wondered what to do with the strong call I felt to ordained ministry. I was worried about whether I was being a responsible husband and father to leave our current work of writing books and magazine articles freelance, to take on the heavy costs of three years of seminary. I got to the church early, and only one other person was there. Lea Taylor and I sat in a porch swing and talked. She said I seemed anxious and I told her that I was struggling with a decision and I needed prayer. She said, “You need to read the Sermon on the Mount.” Frankly, it sounded like pat advice that did not apply to my concerns. I replied, “You mean in Matthew?” thinking of the beatitudes with the familiar, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” and all the rest. Lea said, “No, in Luke.” I told her that I would read it and then she startled me by handing me her Bible. She would not wait. Lea is a dear sweet soul and is not usually so forceful. It got my attention. I took the Bible and read in Luke chapter 12 starting at verse 27 where she pointed me. It reads, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!”
I kept reading scarcely believing my eyes, “And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows you need them. Instead strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” I may be thickheaded, but I know enough to feel a 2×4 when it hits me between the eyes. God had taken away my final excuse. God was faithful to that promise and we were able to go to seminary, even traveling to Africa and Israel during those three years, without building up school loans to bring back to Georgia. This allowed us to go to work for the diocesan minimum salary in accepting the call to start a new church in Kingsland.
The call had not been to something higher or better, but a call to live into being who God made me to be. Through responding to the mentorship roles God had long called me to, I was able to discover what else the Holy Spirit had in mind for me. I have experienced many times in which the Spirit has used others to tell me what I needed to hear, just as Lea handed me Luke’s Gospel that day.
• What did you first want to be when you grew up?
• How have you experienced the Spirit using others to speak to you?
“When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs–in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12)
This is an ongoing tendency in the post-Enlightenment West to treat phenomena for which we have no ready understanding with a heavy dose of reductionism. The physicist turned Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne, said in his book Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, some people are “nothing butters” when it comes to the world we live in. Reductionists see a thing as “nothing but” its physical explanation. They need only look at the most elemental form of a thing to explain everything.
For someone with a “nothing butter” way of making sense of the world, the compositions of Bach and Beethoven are nothing but vibrations that interact with our eardrums to create the effect we call music. The Mona Lisa is nothing but flecks of paint that we experience as differing colors. Baptism is nothing but water poured over someone’s head as a part of a ritual observance. The Eucharist is nothing but bread and wine and the Pentecost experience was nothing but religious hysteria.
Yes, Bach and Beethoven’s greatest works do reach our ears as nothing but vibrations against our eardrums, for that is how the beauty of the composers’ work is transmitted. But you can’t reduce their music to mere vibrations hitting your eardrum. Nor can the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile be understood solely by describing the paint and the canvas. In these works of art, the notes of music and the paint on the canvas convey so much more, that reducing them to the essential physical phenomena misses the point.
So also, the Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit coming to Jesus’ disciples on that fiftieth day after the Passover, would have created some emotionalism akin to religious hysteria. Yet whatever caused some in the crowd that day to wonder whether the disciples had been drinking, was not all there was to the event. We know that there was something more because of the immediate and the lasting impact of that day. The immediate effect was to begin sharing the Good News of Jesus with those who were far off as well as with those who were near to the Jewish faith.
The Pentecost event defied any “it was nothing but” explanation. We can’t reduce Pentecost to “It was nothing but emotionalism,” or “It was nothing but mass hysteria,” or even “It was nothing but a long-ago event we can no longer explain.” The closest we can get is “Pentecost was nothing less than the presence of God.” That day, the Jesus Movement was transformed not by human will, but by an act of the Holy Spirit. For while the apostles first gathered out of fear, this same ragtag band of disciples will bust out of this room, take to the streets, and tell the world about Jesus. Within a few generations the Good News of their resurrected Lord will be known throughout the Roman Empire and in time it will go out to the ends of the earth, all through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is a time to remember that God’s spirit is still present in a mighty way. That’s why our worship can’t be reduced to “nothing but” music, readings and a sermon. The Eucharist can never be described as “nothing but” bread and wine, any more than baptism is “nothing but” water and words. That is far too limiting. We don’t want “nothing but” a religious experience. We long for nothing less than the power and presence of God, a presence for which you were created and for which your soul longs.
We see in this explosive event how God used what was already present. It was new that the first followers of Jesus preached fluently on that Pentecost “as the Spirit gave them ability.” But it is aso significant that there were gifts we had already seen present in the gaggle of Galileans. Simon, who Jesus called Peter, already had the can-do spirit to step out of a boat onto the water. He was often wrong, but always ready to act. Thomas had the backbone to name his doubts. Philip was already bringing those beyond Judaism in to see Jesus. They had abilities and passions that God knew could and would be used in the earliest days of what would become Christianity. But what they required was the inspiration, the prompting of the Holy Spirit, that gave them new abilities for language that they needed, and added to their existing gifts that morning.
• How might the Holy Spirit be prompting you to use your gifts in new ways?
In our Gospel reading for our worship today, Jesus tells his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus said these words on the night before he died, calling his followers to love him through doing what he has commanded. This is the same night in which Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”
Reading John, chapters 13-14, provides the context in which Jesus is preparing the disciples for their lives that will follow his death, resurrection, and ascension. He emphasizes the most important lesson, the one his whole life and ministry made clear, we are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Everything else in all scripture is a commentary on this call to love.
Earlier in this passage, Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” The goal here is to abide in love. Abide means to stay, to remain, to dwell, or even to hang out. Jesus is not teaching that if we don’t do everything he commands, he won’t love us anymore. Rather, if we long to abide in the love of God, we should follow the example of Jesus’ words and actions. To remain in, dwell in, live in the love of God is to live the life Jesus taught us to live. This is the life that bears fruit that will last.
This is also the one vocation all Christians share—love. We are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. This vocation of love is one that works best with learning by doing rather than reading and meditating alone. Want to learn how to love, then practice love. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you must feel a particular emotion toward someone. Love is a decision, an act of will. Love is best learned by putting love into action. In fact, loving those who are difficult to love can only be learned in practice. The love Jesus both taught and lived cost him his life, so this is love beyond mere sentimentality or emotion. Jesus teaches about the form of love that in Greek is called agape. This is a selfgiving love, which is more concerned about the other person than oneself. Agape love starts with God, and God’s love for us. With this love of God and God’s love for me, I can then begin to see other people as God sees them. I can even begin to see myself as God sees me. From this experience, I reach out in love to others with the love that begins in the very life and nature of God.
Our Gospel reading for today also tells us that Jesus promises to send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit saying, “You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” In our call to love others as Jesus loves, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us and support us.
Your life in Christ brings joy when you find the ways to combine the gifts God has given you with the love we are all to have and share. When you let the Holy Spirit guide you, opportunities to show love of God will come up and they won’t be the ways someone else is called to love. For one person, it could be cutting a neighbor’s grass while they go through chemotherapy or assisting a neighbor with a car repair so they can continue to have transportation to work. For someone else it will be sitting with someone in grief. For yet another person, it will be in starting a new ministry that impacts hundreds or thousands of people. None of this is one-size fits all, as each of us is a unique individual. The common call is to a great variety of ways of sharing the love of God we have found in Jesus.
We were made to love. When we share the love of God with others, the world is transformed. In the process, our hearts are transformed more fully by the love of God flowing through us toward others. And in this common vocation to love, we find joy.
• How have you used your unique gifts to show love to someone else?
• Pray for an opportunity to put love into action in the coming weeks.