Let your light so shine . . .

Yesterday at the “church job,” there was a guest speaker. The church had hosted a “harvest weekend” to coincide with the local wine festival. The church was decorated with a thanksgiving theme, though, not a vine theme. I thought that rather interesting. But the post today isn’t to criticize the decorations which were really spectacular.

He chose as the gospel the bit in Matthew that tells us to be salt to the word and not to hide our lights.

He didn’t spend any time on the salt bit, but he talked about twenty-five minutes about the light bit. And his focus was on how light spills forth. It was an excellent talk. It was a series of funny stories, mostly, connected by his comments.

He told two stores that moved me a lot. The first was about an old man. The man’s mother had gotten “in the family way” and refused to leave town to have the “emergency appendectomy” that required nine months of recovery with relatives in a far-away town.

The son born grew up being constantly reminded that he was illegitimate and as much an outcast as his mother was. They didn’t attend church because no one wanted them in “their” church. When the boy was about eleven years old, a new minister came to one of the churches. The mother liked this man so they began to attend his church. They would arrive late and leave early so that no one would have the opportunity to “remind” them.

Then one Sunday, they didn’t escape in time. The minister, standing at the door, looked at the boy and said, “I don’t think I’ve met you before; who’s your father, son?”

The boy began to cry – even at church he had to be reminded that he didn’t have a father.

The minister, figured out the situation, having been told about the two, or by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and said,

You know, the more I look at you, the more I see that you look like your father. In fact, you’re the spitting image of your father. I can see God all over your face.”

That statement irrevocably changed the boy’s life. He said that whenever he was ridiculed, he just remembered that he looked like his dad. That boy, who was “never going to amount to anything”, grew up to be a two-time governor of Tennessee and state senator.

The other story that moved me so much involved a little girl, Caroline Kennedy. As she sat in the limousine following her mother and uncles, walking down the Washington DC Avenue to St. Matthew’s Cathedral for the Requiem Mass of her father, she felt all alone. Her little brother and their nanny were in the limo, too, but they were of no comfort to her. But walking beside the door was a secret service agent whom Caroline really liked. She rolled down the window and put her hand out. The agent, Robert W. Foster, reached over and took her hand. He held it all the way down the avenue to the church.

It was against FBI/CIA policy that mandated an agent’s hands must be “free” at all times. But Mr. Foster, who was severely reprimanded but not fired, said at that moment, holding that little hand reaching out to him was more important than anything else. (Mr. Foster died 20 June 2008.)

The speaker concluded that story and his talk with these words, “it is in the little things that our light shines – a kind word to someone in pain; holding the hand of someone who needs their hand held. That’s when our light shines—spills out brightest—It’s not the big things, it’s the little things.”

And to that, I can add “amen.”

Evensong Pentecost XXIV

When I was growing up, the Duffords, Mace and Clara, lived across our fence -- well, they lived in the house whose yard bordered our. They were like an aunt and uncle to me.. It helped that I grew up and went to school with their grandchildren. Their yard! Oh, was like something out of Best Gardeners of the World magazine. I wish I had a photo to post of the way it looked.

Clara always called me "my boy." Both have been members of the Church Triumphant for a very long time -- about twenty years or so. I sang for each of their funerals (old Lutheran family).

Tonight as I came home and drove into the drive way, there was a light on in the Dufford's kitchen; only it's not their kitchen any more. For one split second I was a kid again,. And then I realized that I'm not a kid any more, and I missed my Clara.

Clara's favourite hymn (indeed, favourite song) is This is My Father's World. Tonight, as I remember then, TTLS's Even song is for Clara.

Evensong from the BBC -- Peterborough Cathedral, is here. Peterborough Cathedral is very special to me for it was in it that God called me home to the Episcopal Church.

Pentecost XXIV

Proper 24 - Year A

Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99 or 96:1-9 (10-13); 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

What is in an image?

Reading Scripture is part of our faith walk and as such it means that we have to be willing to actively engage in its meaning. When we do engage in the meaning a door opens for us to be greeted by God through the experience of another. It helps us to keep the stories alive and meaningful. These are also times when we must be willing to listen for clues that lead us to an even better understanding of ourselves and of our relationship with God and each other.

The Gospel today opens up discussions about the separation between church and state. At least that is what seems obvious since officials from the church (temple) and state are identified in this account as asking about taxes. This Gospel is also one that recounts an attempt to trap Jesus into saying something that could be identified as a clear-cut crime. There is also something else present in this account that might have caught your attention. Jesus never really answers the question he is asked, and the response he gives has a bit more information in it than he was asked.

Let’s go over the reading again and see if there might be other information we may want to consider. Matthew tells us that the Pharisees and the Herodians have banded together to ask about paying taxes. The Pharisees were the officials of the temple and would not profit from taxes. But the Herodians were state officials and would have something to gain from taxes. So why would they come together to ask Jesus unless the state officials were conspiring with the temple officials to trap Jesus? This particular challenge would result in someone being unhappy no matter what Jesus answered. And Jesus risked being accused of treason if he elected to deny that taxes should be paid to the emperor. Jesus never really answers the question but he adds an important point we may want to consider.

After the officials affirm that Jesus is sincere and teaches in accordance with God’s truth without partiality to anyone, they ask, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Jesus scolds them for testing him and asks them to show him the coin used for the tax. They give him a denarius. He continues in answering their question with a question. “Whose head is this; and whose title?” They responded that the emperor’s head appeared on the denarius. So, Jesus answered, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

According to other translations of this Gospel, Jesus did not ask whose “head” appears on the coin but rather, “whose image”. But the officials remained on track with their desire to catch Jesus in a treasonous response. They answered that the emperor’s image appears on the coin. They missed completely the possibility that Jesus might have been asking them for a less superficial or obvious answer—particularly since his response included the idea that they should give to God what is God’s. They did not ask him to make that distinction, so why would he have done it?

Since Jesus asked about “image,” let’s think about that a bit. We are made in the image of God. That means everyone is made in the image of God—even the emperor. Might it have been important for them to notice that when Jesus asked them the question? No matter whether we are functioning socially, economically, politically, or religiously we are first and foremost children of God made in God’s image and therefore belong to God.

Now Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy have seen that image of God in the people of Thessalonia. In fact, they are quite moved by their experience of evangelizing the Thessalonians. They are moved and transformed by the experience, are changed and evangelized by Thessalonians. Certainly, this is not the way we usually understand evangelism. It seems safe to say that evangelization usually involves a giver and a taker but in this instance both parties gave and both received. They each saw that the other was made in the image of God and this brought them together as the body of Christ.

This moving experience is documented in Paul’s letter and is one of the earliest records of Christianity. Paul indicates that it is not just the preaching of the Gospel but the power of the Holy Spirit that they shared. Paul and the others may have gone to Thessalonica with the intention of bringing something to them that they did not have before, and the Gospel message may have been exactly that. But what Paul and the others did not expect was that they would encounter God in the midst of the Thessalonians. The Holy Spirit moved them all to be for and to each other a reflection of God.

At the intersection of the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians we discover how important it is to remember that we are children of God. When we are aware that we are made in God’s image and that everyone we encounter is made in God’s image we are closer to understanding that Jesus modeled this for us throughout his life. We may also feel less inclined to separate ourselves from each other. It is equally important that we retain our identity as children of God whether we are functioning as members of our household, our workplace, our neighborhood, or our city.

As committed Christians we are also obliged to look into the faces of our neighbors and see God, especially when we are tempted to relegate those neighbors into a category that would put them at odds with us. Imagine how powerfully the Holy Spirit can work with us and through us when we do not separate ourselves from that image. We might experience what the Thessalonians felt and what Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy felt as they evangelized each other.

The Rev. Debbie Royals, Pascua Yaqui from Arizona, is a student at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in a concurrent M.Div/MA program. She leads the Four Winds congregation in Sacramento, California, and is active in Native Ministry in the Episcopal Church, including involvement in the work of the Episcopal Council for Indigenous Ministry (ECIM). E-mail: debbieroyals@sbcglobal.net

Prayers for JCF

Our brother, JCF has a job interview Monday. Please pray for a result that will best benefit and meet his needs, spiritual, economically, and psychologically. Awra best, my brother.

And while you're praying, I have a job prospect with the State of California. I would appreciate a random prayer or two.